Mar 17, 2020 City Council on 2020-03-17 1:00 PM

Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is Tuesday, March the 17th, 2020; it is 1.07 p.m. As you see, we're not in our regular configuration. We've instituted some procedures to accommodate and to also adhere to some of the best practices for social distancing and so forth. What I'd like to do, we've got a couple of agenda items. I see no citizen comments on consent agenda items; I don't see any blue cards for citizen comments. I would like to take requests for clarification after 3A because we have a presentation by Dr. Matt Richardson with Denton County Health Department, and I'd like to get him in and out of here quickly, and then we'll move back up to that just because he's got a lot going on and certainly want to hear his update, but allow him the time and opportunity to also make his other engagements as well that are just as important. So we will go ahead and call agenda item 3A, receive a report, hold discussion, and give staff direction regarding a presentation from the Denton County Public Health Department on the recent global outbreak of the coronavirus, 2019 COVID-19. Good afternoon, mayors and council members, Kenneth Hedges, Fire Chief, also Director of Emergency Management, so that will come into play here in just a few moments. So first off on this work session item, we actually are very fortunate to have Dr. Matt Richardson, Director of Public Health with the County Public Health Department here to give a brief update on the coronavirus, COVID-19, and answer any questions, and we'll follow up with myself and other staff member to really answer what we are doing here internally in the city. Without further ado, Dr. Richardson. Afternoon, council members and Mr. Mayor. I'm just going to give the situation report, the sit-rep I gave to the county judge and commissioners this morning, so you're going to hear, although I will tell you that the information has already aged a bit even from this morning, so I will give the latest update as I know it to be, and then I will be happy to answer your questions, anything in specific that you would like to address. So Denton County Public Health, some of the things we're doing, we are in a 24/7 response as you can imagine, we have epidemiologists working day and night to consult with doctors, hospitals, clinics, emergency departments all across the county, physicians and providers are calling asking for consultation about the evaluation of patients, so we are answering those questions, again, dealing with that in a 24/7 environment. Just a quick snapshot, one of the things we do is we use the Johns Hopkins website, that's one of the best tracking websites for the current outbreak of COVID-19, it's a compilation of CDC, the World Health Organization, state health departments, and so right before this meeting I looked, and again, the data had already aged since my presentation at 10 o'clock this morning, the U.S. has 5,702 cases, U.S. deaths are now sitting at 94, and Johns Hopkins is reporting one death in Texas, I am unaware of what county that death would be in. Denton County does have one case, I will tell you that that case, it's interesting, we report cases by county of residence, this is a bit different, this person does not reside in Denton County permanently, but they are here for an extended period of time, they are out of state, they were a traveler, they were ill, taken to a Dallas hospital, tested there, tested positive, and have come to a relative's home in Double Oak, Texas, in Denton County, so they are temporarily residing in Denton County, because of that, we did report that as a Denton County case, again, a little against reporting convention, because we typically do it by county of permanent residence, but out of state traveler, but they are going to be here a while, that is a community threat, they are under a control order, isolated to that address, and household contacts are under quarantine. We have done quite a few of those control orders, I don't know the count, but I believe it is over 30, we have done 30 control orders that were quarantine, not isolation, again, terminology matters, quarantine is if you have been confirmed as exposed, isolation means that you are ill, and have tested positive, so, again, Denton County, one case, and then we have quarantined over 30, I will tell you that number is difficult, because a quarantine is a moving window, and so people are added and then dropped as the calendar progresses, so I am not reporting every day how many people are under quarantine, because that is in flux, and frankly, our staff, we are so overwhelmed with the consultation responsibilities, that we just know we have many people under quarantine, and our job is to monitor those people for signs and symptoms, if they convert with signs and symptoms, we then have them tested, and then if they become positive, they will then be isolated, and we will continue the contact tracing, that is the disease investigation, where if you are positive, we now track and trace the people that you have come into contact, close contact, 6 feet or closer for 2 minutes or longer, those are the individuals that we then investigate them for signs and symptoms, place them into quarantine, so you see the broad scale of the response, at some point, I will tell you, nationally this has happened, New York, California, Washington state, where the numbers of cases outpace the local public health infrastructure's ability to do contact tracing, meaning there are so many cases now that you can't do the disease detective work for every person, so then you have to go to much more restrictive community mitigation strategies, okay, we are not there yet, because we don't have evidence of local transmission in Denton County, but other places are there, and I just wanted to make that point, I will answer every question, I do want to get to testing, so testing has been a very important part of this process, and I want to talk about the specifics of testing, first of all, I think it is important to note how testing happens, COVID-19 testing is a little different than the flu, the sample is taken the same way, the sample is a nasal pharyngeal swab, so it is up the nose, or oral, through your mouth, the back of the throat, that swab happens in the flu, when your doctor or your provider does a flu test and has this swab, they do a test on site on that swab, okay, there was a flu test kit, as it were, COVID-19 is different, once we take that swab, we have to send that swab to a laboratory, it is not done on site, I think that is a little confusing to the public, they talk about test kits, there is no kit, it is a sample, and it must be sent to a laboratory, maybe that changes, we hope that that changes, to mirror more like a flu situation, but currently in Denton County, that technology is not available, I don't know if it is available anywhere globally, but I know that is the goal, is to have a kit, but right now, it is a sample, and a laboratory test, in public health, so we can and have done samples on patients, again one positive case, we have tested people who have tested negative, a little bit about the law, the law requires laboratories and doctors and providers to tell us of a positive case, the law does not require anyone to tell us of cases tested, patients tested, so I do not know the denominator of how many tests have been performed in Denton County, I do know how many tests that we have either coordinated or consulted, we have coordinated 28 tests where we have directed because of an investigation, all of those tests were negative, we have been part of a consultation with physicians where in some form or fashion, we have assisted them in obtaining a test, either at a public health laboratory or at a private laboratory, we have done that 77 times, so that is 105 tests that I am aware of, all of which as of 10am this morning were negative, but that, I don't want the public to confuse, I know there are many many more tests than that that have happened in Denton County, because private providers can access private laboratories without our permission or our enrollment, we don't need to coordinate, so your doctor can order a lab from LabCorp, Quest, CPL, these large corporate labs, they do not have to notify public health, and in fact don't, the law does not require it, so if they consult with us, I know about it, if they don't, I don't, so I do know there have been likely hundreds of tests performed in Denton County in the last 2 weeks with commercial solutions that we are unaware of, and so I know that is frustrating, people want to know about negatives, I will just say that negative tests don't have a lot of utility or practicality, it is the positive tests that really direct our actions, and so that is a little more about the testing, testing supplies and testing capacity are what is important, the swab has to go into a media, it is called a viral transfer media, VTM, that media is supplied by the private labs or procured by the provider themselves, we have a handful of those on hand that we are reserving for medium and high risk patients, if you want a test that is not enough in a public health investigation, we have to verify an exposure for you because we have limited testing supplies, we are working to get more, that testing capacity is expanding nationwide, expanding in Texas and expanding in Denton County, typically those laboratories provide that testing media to whoever they contract with, so if your physician works with LabCorp, they can order viral transfer media, they get it in their office, then they can swab, then they can send it out for the test, that is how that works, so testing supplies are important, then there is the lab capacity, I am unaware of the capacity of private labs, how many tests they can run, I think some of that is public knowledge, I think some labs have chosen to disclose how many tests they can do nationally or maybe even in the state, I will say that in a public health investigation, we use Tarrant County and Dallas County's lab, I do not have a public health laboratory, public health reference laboratories cost millions of dollars and Denton County as a governmental agency does not employ a laboratory function, so that laboratory is not available to us, a state or county lab is not available to us, so I work with my partners in Dallas and Tarrant, they have limited numbers of tests that they can perform, we try to prioritize medium or high risk individuals in our investigations because of that limited testing capacity in epidemiological investigations, so that is how that works, I rely on my partners in DFW for that public health lab capacity, again private labs are different, the turnaround in public health laboratories is typically much shorter, the private labs is much longer, but that is where we are today, that depends on the day and the numbers of tests submitted, that is a moving target, let's see, I think we have talked a little bit about that, some of the communications that we have been doing, we are trying to be very transparent and very communicative with the public, that is difficult, the public is very invested, it is a 24/7 news cycle, COVID-19 is obviously foremost on everyone's minds, we are doing Facebook, post, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, we have our website that has CDC recommendations and the embedded micro sites to make sure that we have the latest and greatest guidance from CDC, people can use us, they can use the CDC, we can always try to help them navigate those resources, it is a lot of information, they focus on businesses, on schools, health care facilities, long term care facilities, we really simply share those guidelines and recommendations to the public and we do help navigate through that just enormous amount of information, we do have people that can assist in that navigation, we do have a hotline that is manned and womanned by our medical reserve corps and some staff members, that is an 8-5 hotline currently, we may expand, it just depends on the response needed, that hotline number is 940-349-2585, that is reserved for the general public, we have shared with the medical society and our response partners a hotline dedicated directly to providers and hospitals that gets directly to our epidemiology staff and our medical authority, our local health authority Dr. Marty Buchanan, so we do have a separate line for medical providers but the general hotline 940-349-2585, again general questions, we have volunteers assisting us with that, we have done numerous presentations, much like this one as you can imagine, and it sounds like a general, almost a dismissive comment but I will tell you it is not and that is that we have constant communication with state, local, municipal partners and it is constant, I spoke with Congressman Burgess this morning, he and I have maintained quite a bit of communication over the last few weeks as you can imagine, I think we first started talking mid-February about testing capacity, supplies to be deployed in Denton County, we remain very integrated with state, our state legislative delegation, we are in constant communication with those offices as well, it is hard to describe the amount of communication that we are having with these governmental agencies to try to maximize our responses here in Denton County, certainly even within the city of Denton, all right, I think I have hit my briefing, I am ready for questions Mr. Mayor. Yeah, we are going to make these very concise and we are going to be limiting the questions simply because he has a lot of other commitments to attend to today so first of all thank you so much for being here. Well thank you for the invitation. And sharing that information with us, Council Member Armitra I believe you had your hand up first. Yeah, so people are told of course if you think you have symptoms go see your doctor, many people as you know do not have insurance, don't have a primary care physician, so what is the advice to those people and whatever it is can we incorporate that into the general advice that is given out, given the numbers. So we really have limited options here, unfortunately the information is what it is and that is that a private provider has the supplies and they can provide those to their patients. Urgent care centers have supplies, urgent care centers are, some are and some aren't taking respiratory illness, that depends on the center itself and then hospitals obviously are providing this to emergency departments. For uninsured or for people who do not have access to health care, they can certainly call our hotline and we can try to link them to services but those resources are limited. We would recommend an urgent care center, we would recommend an emergency department if they called ahead and we would assist them in trying to assess their risk, either a known exposure or symptoms and then we would ask them to call the emergency room prior to their arrival. There simply aren't other solutions than those three, your doctor, urgent care, emergency services or emergency department. I think in communities that have a public hospital, they have some ability to do, you've seen some examples of drive through clinics that requires lab capacity, remember how we talked about how you get tests accomplished, it's supplies plus lab capacity. Some of those much larger systems have in house labs, they don't even have to use corporate labs. We don't necessarily have that function here and we don't have a public hospital so we rely on our hospital partners and do those emergency departments, we rely on urgent care and we rely on private providers for that service. And so a couple of follow up questions, so when you say- Yeah, if you can make them pretty quick because we got several council members who want to speak. Sure. So when you say they have the supplies, you don't mean that they all have the testing? Again, the supply is the swab plus the media and those supplies are somewhat limited and I'm unaware of how many each provider would have. Some hospitals have a much larger supply, some might not. So, and why can't they do to the car service, why can't that happen? I think again, it depends on the business model for each entity. I think when you have a public hospital, you can direct that to happen from a governmental standpoint, but private providers, a non-profit or a for-profit facility can't be directed to do that. If they choose to do that on their own, then I think that's always helpful. Well I would like to know just from our city attorney, just for now, if under declared- We can, we're going to have a presentation after Dr. Richards' presentation on that and we're going to have discussion about it so we can talk about it then. Okay. I just want to get him in and out. Sure, but that is the recommended best practice, right, to avoid contamination, to have people come out. Well, but it's hard to know because what we don't want to do is to gum up the lab capacity. We like to prioritize tests because we don't want to take the worried well and have them tested and for them to limit the response, the public health response. Oh, of course. So that's a struggle. Of course. If you want to test heretofore in Denton County, that's not enough to get one. We're trying to prioritize for the medium and high-risk individuals because we're still in a containment. This is an important point too and I appreciate the question. We're in a containment strategy because we don't have local transmission. So the containment strategy is I need to test, we need to test as a system the most likely positives and we need to isolate them and quarantine their contacts. And so we need the most likely positives to be tested first. So whenever I'm sending tests from an investigative standpoint, we are prioritizing those to public health laboratories. In a drive-through situation, that becomes more difficult. So here we're really trying to focus the most likely test. I will tell you that we're weeks away from that changing. As the capacity grows, we're going to expand the testing, no doubt, so that we can meet the demand. Right now, it's such a precious commodity that we are trying to focus that with my partnerships with Tarrant and Dallas Counties. We're trying to focus those tests. But again, as that capacity grows, then our ability to do some of those mass testing events should grow as well. Okay. All right. Yes, Councilmember Meltzer and then Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you for all you're doing and all you're about to do. If the public and everybody does everything they're supposed to do, and we flatten the curve as we've been hearing, what would the expected hospital bed need be at peak and how does that compare to the supply in Den County and surge capacity as well? Surge capacity is a really difficult topic and there's no precision available. That's the problem. So, if we do flatten the curve, just for those, the terminology, sort of this jargon in public health right now, we're talking about the epidemiological curve, the EPI curve, as we say, and that is number of new cases per day. So we're trying to make sure that we don't get an explosion of new cases every day. If you can have a sustained number of cases and really limit the new cases per day, that limits the surge at the hospital. So if your question, the way I understand it is, what's our capacity to respond? And I think the answer is that the health system is designed to flex some, but it is possible that we would have to ration and prioritize health services in our communities. Luckily, we're not there. We don't have local transmission, but I think in the Northwest, they're having to remove elective procedures from hospitals, you know, we are, they're having to ration some of those services and really prioritize what's happening in those inpatient facilities. We're not there yet in North Texas, but that is a possibility and that's going to be something that we really, honestly, and I'm not trying to evade, I'm simply saying that's a day-to-day situation and it can change rapidly. If you had a mass casualty disaster on top of a COVID-19 outbreak, you would be in dire straits. I have other questions, but I'll wait until we get around. Okay, sure. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. I wanted to ask, what's unique about the MTV medium? What makes it unique than two other tests? It's just the specific viral transfer media. It's the way that after the swab, that the pathogen, the germ, the bugs, that's the germs are on that particular kind of swab and it's in that particular media to keep it constant and isotonic is the word, but making sure that you don't damage the germs in transport and as it is stored, waiting for a test. So it's a very specific chemical media viral, different than a Petri dish for a bacterium. It's just more specific and the actual containers are also very specific and then they have to be frozen as you wait for testing. So it's just specific and it can be in short supply. Got it. And then are we just rotating? Yeah, that's what we'll do. We'll go and then we'll come back to John and we'll come back around. So we know many members of the community are practicing the social distancing. We know that many folks are isolating themselves because they are part of an at-risk community, but then many others are also isolating because they don't want to cause unnecessary risk to at-risk people. Are there any specific medical criteria or can you give us specific medical advice for when people should be self-quarantining? You mentioned people who are quarantined but have not yet shown symptoms. Do you have specific medical criteria you can give us before we need to absolutely shut ourselves off from work responsibilities, all that kind of stuff? I think the key has been, and again, I'm trying to stay away from jargon, don't let me slip into jargon, but this idea of containment. So right now, because there's not local transmission, I believe that there's minimal risk to the general public out in the public today because we don't have that local transmission documented, but we're seeing it in the Northeast and the Northwest, and so we really believe that that's coming. And so right now, self-monitoring is the recommendation. That's the guideline from the CDC. I will say that it's time to make common sense decisions for yourself. So for instance, I have been immune compromised in the last 90 days. I had some medical treatments. Those treatments suppressed my immunity. I'm pretty conscious of social distancing. I'm making sure that I'm being careful with my hands. I'm doing multiple hand washes. That's a prudent decision on my part. I'm not choosing to stay home because I'm not symptomatic. I have no known exposures to a positive case, and there's not local community transmission. If those three things change, I may have to self-quarantine at home, and I think it's time for the public to make those decisions for themselves. If there is local transmission, we will be very directive in recommendations on what to do next, and so we might recommend from a county perspective. I know from a municipality, you would do the same, you can make a prohibition on mass gatherings instead of just a recommendation. Right now, we're in the recommendation phase at Denton County, but with local transmission, that might change, which is what they're doing in New York, Northern California, Washington State. Communities will begin as they have more morbidity, and sadly, as they have more mortality, they're going to make more and more restrictive recommendations, and then finally, my suspicion is ordinances and prohibitions, but right now, for Denton County, we're not there. I hope that answers your question. I think the only thing I didn't hear in the response, and it was very detailed, and I appreciate that. The only thing I didn't hear was the specific criteria for that self-evaluation, so at what point, based on what criteria should I decide when I'm showing symptoms, when you say positive exposure, what does that mean, and can you tell the folks at home when they should decide to stay home? Yes. So that they don't transmit, not because they're at risk, but so they don't transmit. Okay, so transmit is very ... This is why the terminology matters. If someone is positive, that's isolated to home. We don't want them to transmit to anyone, so then if they are positive, that is home isolation, that is under a health authority control order. If they violate that, we take them to district court and get a court order. If they violate that, they could be incarcerated to the facility of our and the judge's choosing. So there's a very controlled plan for individuals that are positive, and then we are quarantining, not isolating, we're quarantining their contacts. We're doing the disease investigation. So individuals who have a known exposure to a positive case, they don't have to make that recommendation for themselves. We do that for them in this containment strategy. People that have been exposed to a known case are being contacted by local health departments all over the country, and part of that contact tracing. So if the health department has not called you, that means we don't know that you have been exposed, if that makes sense. In local transmission in communities, then we won't know. If there's someone who has it in one of our communities and we can't document travel or can't find a way that they're linked to another case that concerns us, that's happening in the Northwest and the Northeast. So people need to make a decision for themselves based on their immune compromised status. I'm waiting to see, and our recommendations are, for people to self-quarantine to their home if they're immune compromised. So if you're having radiation and chemotherapy or if you have a chronic health condition, we do think to self-monitor is a wise choice. That is just a recommendation and that's up to each individual. But that becomes much more drastic if there's local transmission. And I think that's really a tipping point in every community. That's a member of Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. Is the county doing anything on the social media besides just putting stuff on their social media to kind of bring back some of the misnomers out there? I mean, we all know that it's cute to see gargle with whiskey helps you, but we all know that that's not true. But there's some that seem a little bit more legitimate. And how do we make sure that we don't have too much false information out there? This is so difficult. The rumors are so rampant and the sources of information are so varied, many of them illegitimate, that it is hard for us to combat every rumor. Rumor control for public health has become almost impossible. And so what we do is we try to answer social media questions. I don't know how long we'll be able to respond in that way. At one point in our Facebook page had 1,400 followers. I think at the beginning of the week it had 12,000 followers and they're asking questions. We're trying to interact with the general public. That's becoming almost impossible for my limited staff. So yeah, the rumor control is disconcerting. And I know it's difficult for city government. I know it's difficult for county government. I don't have a good answer on how to combat the ridiculousness of the interwebs. But it is out there. And I'm sorry, I wish I had -- we do try to dispel a rumor, particularly if it starts to get community traction and it starts to negatively impact providers, facilities, agencies. When it has a mass effect we do try to combat that as best we can, but every day seems different. >> Real quick question. Just to put together concisely as you've done, these different terms of isolation, quarantine and self-monitoring. Because I think the question for most people is the self-monitoring seems to be the one at least today is what people are concerned about. If I go to a conference, let's say, and it's a large conference, as we've heard an example here that we've received some information with some of our members attending a large conference, two people have tested positive in that large conference. What I'm hearing you say is those people that are tested positive, they're going to be in isolation. >> That's correct. >> And there's going to be some type of investigation, review, investigation, whatever the term is to try to determine who those people were in direct contact with during that time. >> That's correct. >> And those people would be in quarantine if they're able to identify them. >> That's correct. >> But if you were simply at this space, not even necessarily maybe in the same space, but if you're at that gathering over a few days, then what you're saying is the self-monitoring is what you need to do as far as make sure how your symptoms are. If you're asymptomatic for I don't know how many days, then you're saying that's the one that each individual person has to decide based upon either how they're feeling or things such as that. Is that -- >> Excellent explanation. That is exactly correct. >> Yes. >> That is exactly correct. The self-monitoring is if -- honestly, the self-monitoring should be the baseline for all of us. >> Okay. >> Is watch for symptoms. The risk seems very low in Denton County because no local transmission, so even the self-monitoring is a step above. I think that's a legitimate response, but if there's local transmission, self-monitoring becomes hypercritical because then we wouldn't know the point source because then we know it's in the community being spread without our knowledge because we've moved past containment. Right now in Denton County, we're in containment. Should we move past that, then the community member's responsibility for themselves is heightened because I won't be able -- we won't be able to investigate every case and contact you about an exposure. >> Okay. All right. So what I want to do is, Council Member Armitage, I think you had two or three questions, follow-ups, and so what I'd like to do is we're just going to allow one more question per council member and I think you've had two or three in the beginning, which I -- so I'll just make a determination we get there as far as time-wise because I want to make sure that we have an equilibrium here, equality of opportunity to ask questions. So Council Member Meltzer, do you have an additional question? >> You probed the issue that was present and, you know, I think we'll still have to individually or maybe collectively judge what would set a good example for the public. >> Okay. All right. Mayor Pro Tem? >> So I have -- I'll ask one, I have another if we can make it to that, I'll wait, but my primary question is, so we have a number of retired nurses in the community. What is the process or is there a point by which we could say, you know, you retired, you did not renew your licensing, but is there a way to kind of say, here's a quick, simple process to evaluate to then bring those nurses back on board? >> So I believe that both the Texas Medical Board and I think the Texas Board of Nursing, I think there are state statute provisions for emergency response and surge where inactive license may be able to be activated. I can't recall and I apologize if the governor has to make a declaration for that or if -- but there are vehicles to allow retired licenses to be activated. Luckily, we're not there yet, but I do believe that there are avenues to make that happen in a broad, wide-scale emergency. >> Could you point me to where I could get that information or -- >> I think the Texas Medical Board or the Texas Board of Nurses could answer that specifically. There's some good Samaritan laws that were passed after September 11th in 2001, 2002. Those good Samaritan laws have to do with licensure and some relaxing of guidelines. I can't quote those specifically to you, but the Texas Medical Board and the Board of Nursing could speak directly to the activation of inactive or retired licenses. >> Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> Yes. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, Mayor. You've answered all my broad questions. You've answered some very specific questions here and in other places also. I want to thank you for being there. We don't maintain your department, the county does, and I'm very thankful in this crisis that the county has an office like yours, so thank you for being available. >> Thank you. >> Councilmember Bryan. >> Just to kind of reiterate and make sure that it gets out there in the public quite a bit is that we want people to make the phone call before going to a doctor's office to an emergency room or any type of healthcare. >> We do. If an individual has respiratory symptoms, fever, the cough, the shortness of breath, which seems to be specific to COVID-19, again, flu has fever, cough, maybe shortness of breath, but typically the aches and chills. If we've ever had the flu, if you've had the flu, you know that your earlobe hurts, your eyebrow hurts, very achy, lots of pains, the hot, cold, the chills. That's the flu. Either way, we think it's prudent to call the provider, call your doctor, tell them your symptoms, call the emergency room if you believe that you're going to the emergency room and let them know that you're coming. That's a wise choice as well so that they can prepare with a mask for you. A little bit about masks quickly. Surgical masks are to protect other people from you. A surgical mask, think surgery, a surgical mask is used to prevent you from coughing or sneezing on someone else. An N95 respirator is a mask that has been fit tested to protect you from other people. That fit testing is very specific. So we're telling people don't go and buy masks because lay people, just the general public doesn't have the, doesn't have the wherewithal to test an N95 respirator and a surgical mask does not protect you, the wearer, from other people. It protects them from you. So that's why when you hear don't go buy masks, it's because the functions of those masks are separate and we're trying to save N95 masks for healthcare people who are coming in contact with flu patients, COVID-19 patients. We want those people to be protected so they can continue to operate the public health and the acute care infrastructure of society. Okay, I did receive a couple of questions from Councilmember Briggs, well several, but I can, I can barely read them, but I can read the first one. And she asked how can we say that there are zero, I'm assuming she means community spread. We have one confirmed, but it was from outside or it seems to have come from outside. Travel associated. Yes, travel associated. How can we say that there's no community spread with just that one when we don't know for sure or we don't have the testing capabilities to know that? That's a good question and the answer is we can't. I don't have evidence of community spread. So the truth is there's, I don't have testing evidence and contact tracing. We're most concerned when we have a case and we simply cannot find the genesis. We don't have evidence of that. So yes, there is likely community spread we don't know of. It is good news that we don't see a bloom of cases. That community spread has not caught on like it has in other communities and we do know that. So we see the emergency room and emergency department census is not what it is in other communities with community transmission. We have syndromic surveillance. We actually in Denton County Public Health are monitoring what we call chief complaint data, which is when you go to the emergency room, you get chief complaint of influenza like illness. We are monitoring that and that has not bloomed as well like it does in communities that have local transmission and have this explosion of cases. So yes, it is very possible, even probable that there is local transmission that we haven't found yet. The good news is it is not negatively impacting our system as we have seen in other communities that do exhibit that testing evidence and the surge. We don't have the surge and I don't have the test results. Other communities do have the surge and do have the test results with no genesis of the origination of that case. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. Well. I passed. Okay. Something that we are a bit dancing around and the mayor addressed it fairly head on was the fact that we had members at a conference, big conference where there were two confirmed cases. I don't know if there was direct contact, you know, those are all the facts. Would it be prudent or a bad use of resources to do the detective work from this end to see if the dots connect back to the two cases or just sit and wait and see if it comes our way? In our health, we don't release the names of individuals. So I don't think you can work backwards and find the person. We only will release names of individuals when we cannot do the contact tracing on our own. And we believe they pose an imminent threat to someone else. A good example is we all know Michael Duncan's name as the Ebola patient in Dallas. You know a lot about Mr. Duncan and the nurses who treated him. That's because we shared that information publicly because there was a public health threat for those persons and we are not doing that for COVID-19 yet. If COVID-19 becomes much more deadly, that might heighten the risk and then we would heighten the violation of your protected health information. In public health, there are very broad powers to violate your protected or personal health information. We almost never use those powers. If you have HIV, Hepatitis C, or COVID-19, we are not going to disclose your name or your address to your neighbors. That changes if we believe you are an imminent threat or you are not compliant, not cooperating, and then we have to show everyone who you are and they need to call us. We are trying to pull the information. In this case, at a conference, as public health, we don't believe that's necessary. Does that answer the question? You have answered the question, yes. I'd like to pretty much stick with the limit of two questions if that's okay. It is, but I don't think that that was properly stated and that's concerning to me. Okay. All right. I would certainly say, I think you had probably two or three questions. Of course, if we have additional questions, who would we send it to or through our contacts through the city to someone in your office that would be able to possibly answer those given? Council members, you feel free to email me at any point. You can contact the county judge's office. You can contact public health. Our general number will filter to the right professional. I'm happy to take those questions for elected officials at any point. My business card will have my business cell on that as well and I'm open for any communication. Okay. All right. Can you leave a copy? Yes, and I can leave some business cards. I'll just leave them on council member Briggs's desk and you'll have several of those cards, but I can be contacted multiple ways and call our general number and ask for me and I will get that message. You might email matt.richardson@dentoncounty.com or dentoncounty.gov and I can get to those questions. Well, thank you so much for being here and taking time out to brief us and to answer our questions. Yes. We know you're very busy and you have a lot going on, a lot on your mind, a lot of responsibility. So again, thank you very much, sir, for all that you do for the county. Thank you so much for the invitation. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Yep. You bet. And I know we've got now, we're still on agenda item three A. Thank you, sir. And we will I think we have a staff presentation as the other part of our agenda item, which is pertaining to the city of Denton's response efforts. Correct mayor. So this is going to be a two part presentation. I'll take the first part more about mercy response, what we're doing internally in the city and what we plan to do and then we'll follow up with the remaining slides. So just a little update, I think most everybody's aware of these information. So preparing for emergency, your city has a emergency management program and has a coordinator and a director of emergency management, which is the fire chief is assigned to. So we have a member that is assigned to the Denton County public health departments, communicable disease response team. This isn't nothing new. We have a mercy management plan that actually has a pandemic annex that we go through these things that be tested on a regular basis. Obviously, this event is something different. We're setting precedence, so we're all kind of learning as we go. So to update you this past Friday, we did stand up the Mercy Operation Center located central fire station. The function of that is really to bring all departments together in one location to check resources, logistics, finance, several different areas are covered. Out of that, I want to point out really right now our two goals from stand up EOC is to filter the amount of data that's coming through all the organizations at the county level, state level and feds. We're on conference calls every day trying to filter that and really get the information that impacts us locally to the right people in the right places. And the second thing is to communicate a clear, concise, singular message. We're in partnerships with the local universities, Dent ISD as well. We all put communication out together so it all aligns as well. And then tonight, obviously, you'll have something, an item on your agenda about the disaster declaration and individual consideration. So just real quickly on public safety response and I'll be speaking on behalf of Chief Dixon as well. He is in the bullpen if we need him. So Fire Department, what are we doing? Effective Saturday, we actually implemented two different specialized units with personnel that are specifically going to respond to potentially COVID-19 calls. And this is screened at a dispatch center first. If it falls a certain category of screening process, these units will be dispatched. It's a code one dispatch. So we're not considering these emergent calls. If this person has an underlying issue, a true emergency, it is our normal process as well. And we just have certain terms that we know to use universal precautions. The benefit of this is we do have these crews have access to the majority of the personal protective equipment we have in the city. So to protect yourself is wear goggles, wear N95 mask, what Matt Richardson was talking about gown and gloves. So currently right now we do have enough of that stock. We are actually in the process of acquiring more, which is a great benefit. This benefits by we keep our normal response units available for our normal call volume while still utilizing the specialty units for the potential COVID and the fact we get to control our PPE supply. Even though we do have surplus now, we expect that stock to obviously decrease over the future. So that minimizes exposure to fire, fire, paramedics, and we are actually making this a voluntary assignment. So these employees are actually working an extra duty. It's not the regular shift. It is overtime basis. So we are not forcefully telling people you have to make these calls on potentially COVID-19 patients. So we want to make that more option for employees. The last thing is just the increased cleaning of facilities and vehicles. We do have some specialized cleaning equipment that we're utilizing and we're also sharing that with our police department as well. So we're kind of in this together as far as decontamination processes. You saw from some of the Q&A that was sent back to you what the DENT PD is doing. They have established a non-emergency line that any residents that need to file a police report, they can call in. That's open 24 hours a day and we'll make sure we'll publish that information as far as the phone number as well. Chief Dixon has wrote a very thorough memo outlining what their response protocols are as well and really anything as far as they can do to minimize exposure and then the diversion from city jail where the law allows. He wanted me to make sure and be specific about that. So if the law allows them to misdemeanors class C, something of that nature as well, they have some flexibility to make a little bit more decision making in the field than in the past. And then I'll just follow up, same thing, cleaning facilities and vehicles. We have actually a designated bay at one of the fire stations that either fire truck, ambulance or police squad you can come through and be fully decontaminated as well. And we are, we'll be sharing PPE supplies with our police force also. That is my part. If you have any questions for me, if not, I'm going to pass it over to Sarah Keakler at this point. Council member Armitage. So can you tell us about the staffing for the COVID-19 ambulance? Is it, you know, who is, not by name, but you know, what kind of training? Is it people are you doing overtime? Is it, you know, senior level, what, who is, who is staffing those ambulances? Right now. So there's two units. There is a squad and there's an ambulance. So two people on each unit, four people total. It is overtime. That's where I say it's voluntary. These people have the ability to sign up. They know by our communication to them what their job responsibilities are going to be for that period as well. What was the second part of your question? Oh, no. Yeah, that's fine. I can you explain the reason for why it's, it's voluntary overtime only or really we're trying to isolate the rest of the department and not being exposed to potential. If we don't get the right screening process and we have a five person crew walk into a potential exposure, then you're going to potentially have to self-isolate five crews. So it's all about maintaining our staffing. We're seeing reports back from up in the Northeast where fire department losing 50% of their staffing because they didn't proactively do these types of measures. They sent crews in. They were exposed. Now they're taking off the streets from working for 14 days. So this is the proactive approach that we isolated to just minimum amount of people. We give them the right amount of PPE where they are totally protected. That's the whole thing. We give them the right gear. There's almost, I'm not going to say, you know, a hundred percent, but 99% they're not exposed to any of this. Thank you. Chief, one question. This was sent by Councilmember Briggs. As far as what information is allowed to, like if someone lives outside of the city, works in the city and somehow tests positive, what, if someone tests positive, what information do you receive or maybe Sarah can answer this or that the city receives the first responders as to the extent of that information? If you could, if you're able to share that, that'd be great. It actually comes from the County Health Department. If they receive a positive test and it's somebody that resides within the city limits of Denton, we will get notification. We have two members assigned that were received on the fire department. That is actually programmed into our dispatch center. So if for some reason a call originates at that address, there is, that address is flagged to inform our personnel, be sure and wear your PPE as well. We get very limited. We don't get name. We get age and physical location and that was a positive test and that's really it. And that information really cannot be shared. That's more of a HIPAA violation. That's the reason why they get very, very minimum facts. They're just trying to protect first responders and keep the staff out there on the streets. And I guess the thrust of the question was because part of it was if a person, similar to the one case that's been reported in Denton County that was a travel related case, that if a person is living out, their residence is outside of Denton, but they work in Denton and they, wherever, I mean, it doesn't matter, they travel here for their employment and they're tested positive. Of course, from what we heard, if they're tested positive, they're going to be isolated and then there will be the review or the investigation or whatever terminology is appropriate to determine who those contacts were, which I would assume would be anybody that they work with here in the city of Denton and then the health department, county health department would be responsible for those kinds of things. So I guess that was the thrust of the question. So it's only if there's a positive that is identified as an address within the city of Denton city limits that it's flagged at the dispatch level so that first responders are aware of that circumstance as they go to respond to a call. From my knowledge at this point, but I think it's a good question that we'll follow up on and get answers back to as well. Because every evolving, we had this communication channel in place even on the H1N1 swine flu and I cannot recall, but we will give the health department to make sure and get all the components of this as well. We were told it was just within the city limits of Denton, but that's a very good question that we need an answer to. Okay. You bet. All right. Anything else for the chief up to this point? All right. Thank you very much. Thanks. And then after this work session, we'll go back to the request for clarification. Well, was the police planning on making a presentation? He was only available for questions. Okay. So if you have a question for him, let's go ahead and take questions for him first. Okay. If that's okay. Yeah. Is the chief still here? Erin, could you see if the chief's here, I guess? It'll just take him a minute. He's down the hall. Okay. All right. He's watching. So I'm sure he'll be here shortly. Okay. Sure. Sure. No problem. Okay. Okay. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Council Member Amartya, I believe had a question. Yeah. So yeah, a couple of questions. So first of all, I wanted to thank you and, you know, the department for the measures that you've taken, you know, the non-emergency line, you know, shutting off the lobby, eliminating exposure. I think that does a really good job, you know, not only in protecting the public and your staff, but in setting a model as a workplace. So that's excellent. So two things, number one, if you could speak to, and I love the idea of the diversion from city jail because I keep hearing that, you know, that jails and also, you know, prison and juvenile detention, which I know are not city jurisdiction, but here within the city of Denton because of the density are an issue with COVID-19. So if you could speak to the possibility of diversion for class B misdemeanors, is that possible, you know, in the different classes of, you know, crimes and misdemeanors, the kind of people who might come into the jail, what can be diverted under law, and how might that be different under a state of emergency, state of disaster? So I guess what I need some help, and I certainly don't mind you answering that question, but that's also a council policy discussion, so certainly don't mind hearing your answer on that, but that's nothing that this council has discussed as far as a policy, and I'm not even sure how much council has as far as directing police policy. I mean, we have, obviously we can do that, but that's not something we've discussed here. So it's a question for Councilmember Armitage, so certainly feel free to answer it, but I wanted to give you some feedback and some context on that. So understanding the state of emergency that we're in, not just locally, but nationally, we're taking into consideration all of our citizens, our community members that we may arrest and bring into our facility, as well as our employees, so we're looking at implementing as many of these changes as we can. Outside of this emergency, I'm looking at how we can more efficiently do that anyway, so that's part of an ongoing discussion that's been going for some time now. And for Class B misdemeanors. We're talking about any things that are non-assault, fast shoplifting, things like that. Okay, excellent. And then, so the capacity in the jail, so can you speak to the capacity in the jail and how many people are there now? I don't know how many are there from this morning. I mean, we can only hold up to about 26 or so at a time. Very rarely, if ever, are we at capacity. So we are taking every precautionary step where we can to keep people single-housed in units. So if there is an exposure, we only have to worry about decontaminating the singular cell instead of the entire building. But we did do a full in-depth cleaning of it this weekend, and we are going to have that on a rotating basis, so we make sure we keep it as sanitary as we can for everyone. Okay, and the staffing of the jail and how many staff are actually in the jail at any one time, the area where the cells are? So at any one time, you can have between two and six employees back there working, just depending on who's here and how many people we have back there at the time. So at maximum capacity, that could be potentially 26 in terms of people in jail and staff, and at minimum and on average, it would be a lot less than that. Yes, very much so. Thank you. So Chief, and this question comes from Council Member Briggs. She's emailing questions because of the emergency declaration and things like that. She makes a comment that they're hearing about the transmission of the virus in incarceration facilities. But as far as the City of Denton jail, how long, what's the maximum time somebody typically, I mean I say typically, obviously Class C you're trying to get, but aren't they eventually transferred to the county after some time if they're going to be, continue to be incarcerated? We don't hold them for, how long do we typically hold someone? So the City of Denton doesn't run what is typically known as a jail, it's a detention facility, because we're not typically holding anyone max 72 hours, oftentimes people are bonded out well before that, or they're transferred to the county before that. Okay, so then if someone's unable to bond out, then they're going to be sent to the county at some point, you're saying maximum within 72 hours, but probably before then, they'll be sent to that. The question was, how many non-violent individuals do we typically have that are unable to bond out that stay in the city jail, or are they transferred to the county, any idea? That I wouldn't have any data on right now. Anybody else? Thank you, Chief, I appreciate it, thank you very much. Okay, Sarah, you can try this again. All right, great, good afternoon Mayor, City Council, Sarah Keechler, Chief of Staff. I'm going to share some information with you today. I appreciate your understanding if I'm not able to answer all of the questions. Information continues to change rapidly and staff is working tirelessly to get as much information as we can verified and out to the public, but I do want to take some time to at least share some of that publicly through a presentation. We also shared a Q&A document with City Council that has also been posted to the public agenda, if residents would like to see more information that was distributed to City Council last evening. So I want to start first with reviewing what are our plans, our immediate plans. Before I get started, we do have a draft press release ready to go that we plan to send out later this afternoon, but want to have the opportunity to discuss with you here first with Council. So as you heard Dr. Richardson talk about in terms of slowing the spread, that is our goal with the city, with our city employees, to their families, to the community, and so forth. We plan to close tomorrow, Wednesday, March 18th until, I should say through, until Monday, April 6th. We are proposing to close all city facilities to public access with a couple exceptions. And really the primary reason again is the health and safety. If we can minimize the number of individuals in our facilities, we can reduce that spread, keep the appropriate social distancing, not allow the public to come in. We can still conduct services online or by phone as we're able to. So those are really the goals in addition to just keeping our employees healthy so we can have business continuity for all the services that we provide. So I want to take a moment to go over what does that mean for closing public access to all of our city facilities. So all library locations will be closed, however, as it will contain in the press release some more information out to our public library customers. You can still access all materials online. You can pick up materials if you call in by appointment to the library. Staff will actually bring them out to the vehicles. And the library is working on different educational opportunities for students and families as they may be at home that they can be involved in from their residence. It also means that all of our parks and recreation facilities will be closed except for MLK Junior Rec Center. That facility will continue to be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday to allow those individuals in need who might need to access it for restrooms, drinking, or, sorry, water fountain, or something that they may need to have a facility to go in for a respite amount of time, maintaining the appropriate social distancing guidelines that we have. The Animal Services Center will also be closed except for by appointment only. So if someone is needing to come in to pick up their animal, wants to adopt or foster an animal for the time being, they can still do so, but they are asked to call Animal Services and make that by appointment so that we can handle that appropriately. And then all other city facilities will also be closed to public access. We'll be going more virtual. So what that means is this city hall, City Hall East, including the Customer Service Center area, Development Services, the Service Center, any building that is a city facility will not have open public access. How will we keep, so the question then is how will we keep some city services going forward for the staff that are maybe in these various facilities, and how do we maintain our business continuity? Management has made a decision this morning that beginning tomorrow we're actually going to be splitting most of our departments up into shifts. And you will have one shift, for example, a shift, will work a week on site in the buildings that are not open to the public. And then rotating, B shift, will come in the next week and work on site while the other shift is working remotely. So we're trying to do that alternating shifts between being on site or working remotely, again to make sure that we have enough employees to continue service. And so that's what we're doing for, these are more the non-essential services, the essential services of water, wastewater, electric, solid waste, public safety, all of those will continue to be provided to residents, and each of those departments is spending a lot of time coming up with business continuity plans to specifically address for the services that they provide as Chief Hedges and Chief Dixon kind of went over just planning for if they lose staffing, how will they handle and respond, and what could be changed? >> Council Member Archer, do you have a question? >> Yeah, several interrelated questions related to this. So how many people per shift, per department? >> We're still coming up with all of those, the departments are working on it directly, and I see City Manager Heilman is coming up, I'm not sure if he wants to weigh in on this a little bit further in terms of how we are thinking through critically with our leadership to make sure that we're being fair and equitable as possible. >> Excellent. >> Each department director has been asked to put together basically an analysis of the department, what are nonessential functions, essential functions, those functions where we actually need somebody here to either answer the phones, do direct input into the computer system such as accounts payable, payroll, those sorts of things. We will break those expertises down and ask people to work at home one week, the next week come in, kind of trying to make sure that we've protected the shift and mitigated the risk as much as possible, but each department director is being, it's been left up to them to make that assessment with their respective management teams, who they need on site, how many, and who they can let work remotely in a more permanent fashion. So there's lots of projects that are being, will be able to get caught up, that sort of thing, but it's not going to be possible to have the entire staff working at home at this point. We just have too many functions that need to be done on site. Is the recommended number, at least last time I checked this morning, federally recommended number of 10, cap of 10, is that, to what extent is that being considered? We're considering it. I think what's most importantly, what's most important is even with every meeting here, we're basically taking them out of areas where they're congregating, making sure that the social distancing of at least six feet has been kept to a premium and it's just trying to get people used to thinking in those terms. So it's highly unlikely that we would have any group of folks working together, it would be 10 or more in a room or even an office suite at this point. Excellent. What about child care for those staff members who have children who are in school that are not in session? Part of the idea, and we thought one of the benefits of breaking the staff into two shifts was it would partially alleviate that if you had someone who was able to work at home and they had their children at home, they'd be able to more easily deal with that. We don't have a solution at this point to deal with child care on a permanent basis, nor do I think it's the city's obligation to handle that full time, but at least those weeks that they're at home and our employees that we can't allow to telecommute, we believe we've addressed a good part of the issue. I would like to just let fellow council members know, I would like to see some form of child care provisions because, especially even if somebody's working from home, it's hard if you've got a really young child to do that work and that'll affect the quality of the work and also the quality of the child care. Can you speak to, so as far as the public buildings go, are we making preparations to have our public buildings available for use for emergency medical and excess shelter purposes if need be? I specifically asked that the MLK rec center stay open for that population in particular in case there's a need to help those folks out. The other thing is we're not allowing any use with the exception of our management team staff meetings once a week in the civic center at this point, just in case that is needed if the shelters get overwhelmed. So we're thinking about it, there's no proposal on the table, but we want to at least be flexible for the council. Okay, and as far as also working with hospitals as far as if occasional, because we've got a limited number of ICU beds with the equipment. If it comes down to that, chief hedges and who oversees our emergency operations center will let us know. We're in constant contact with both hospital CEOs and their medical professionals. So if it gets down to that point, you will know well in advance and we'll pull the trigger on that and let you know. Wonderful, I would like to be prepared because from what I see, as I understand it, we shouldn't even be thinking if we should be acting as if it's a preparing issue. I would caution the council to, this is a joint, it's just sort of an update in time right now. We don't even know what we're preparing for at this point. And so I think as the days go on, we've learned a lot more in the last 24 hours. I don't think that we can sit here today with any level of certainty and do any planning until we get those hospital folks in the room and learn what they need from us, how we should be thinking as well as Dr. Richardson. So I think it's too early to have the conversation you're wanting to have. We will mobilize immediately. We don't need the council to act if it gets down to that. I think under the emergency powers that we've got and the mayor's got for the seven day periods, if we need to put a plan in place immediately, we'll do that. But right now, I think any plan we put in place is gonna be outdated tomorrow. Oh, yeah, yeah, as long as we're prepared. Right. Yes. Council member Melcer. Yeah. Questions might, these questions might be answered better by Sarah, I'll let you decide. Okay. Just a few specific ones. The senior center is closed, right? And then, I mean, that's already been closed. And then is the American Legion senior center closed as well? Yes, the senior center is closed right now. However, the staff continue to work and check in on those residents that regularly come to the senior center. And they're also coming up with different activities that maybe seniors could do from home. So work continues, but the center itself is closed. And then the American Legion Hall, I believe, is in reconstruction right now. My point of my question was ultimately about those who expect to, you know, routinely get a meal there, and is there an alternative way for that, you know, meal service to happen? And just to say you have a second more, you know, is there some thought given to maybe help supporting SPAN in increasing meals on wheels? I believe SPAN is still being allowed to operate in terms of meal preparation to be able to then go outside and provide the meals to seniors as needed. So SPAN is still being allowed to use that facility. Yeah, I know they exist -- oh, wait, if you have something you want to do. We're trying to lay it to 60 right now. I gotcha. Yeah, I mean, I know that the existing operation is going on, but really the point of my question is kind of closing the loop if that's viewed as needed for those who today aren't served by SPAN, but typically would get a meal at the senior center if it were open. So is there some way that we're kind of closing the loop on that? I just threw SPAN out as, you know, sort of a thought of how you might close the loop, but maybe you have some other -- No, I understand. Laura Berens, Assistant Director for Parks and Recreation. So SPAN has two different programs. They have Meals on Wheels, and then they also have Congregate Dining. And that's for individuals that can pre-register to receive meals. We have on average about 10 meals that are served through Congregate Dining at the senior center and about four to five out of MLK. So at this time, SPAN has actually discontinued the Congregate Dining because of the, you know, the different guidelines that are in place. However, the senior center and MLK are still open as hub locations for Meals on Wheels delivery, which is the second program that they have. So SPAN is still able to access those centers, to come in, bring in the meals, their delivery volunteers, pick up the meals, and those meals are still being delivered to the seniors who are signed up for that program. Okay. So maybe they can reach out -- I mean, that'll be on them to figure out if they can reach out to the people who ordinarily come for the Congregate Meals -- Correct. There is a process for them to register for that service, and so they will have to go through the normal procedures in doing that, but you -- a minute ago, I'm sorry, you mentioned ALH. ALH is actually closed right now, and so those seniors have been going to MLK, but again, under the current circumstances, we're encouraging them not to congregate in any one location. Okay. Thanks. I'll, you know, kind of wait till you come around again for questions. Any other questions? Yes. Can you speak to the -- to what extent is Meals on Wheels in need of more food and more drivers, and, you know, to what extent are they in touch with the city about what their needs are, and how can we help? We haven't received any requests from them directly, the Parks Department, on any additional resources that they need, so I'm not able to provide that information. Okay. So I should just contact them directly? Correct. Unless they've contacted, you know, through other city resources, they haven't contacted parks directly for that additional resources. Thanks. Okay. And I'll touch on nonprofits through the presentation as well. I tell you what, before you get into the second sort of half of your presentation, let's just take a real quick five-minute break. We'll be going for about an hour, a little hour, 25 minutes, so let's take a quick five-minute break, and we'll come back around 2.30. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council, Tuesday, March 17th, 2020. It is 2.33. We are still on agenda item -- or work session item 3A, and then after this, we'll jump back up to agenda item 2, but we'll move on with our presentation. Thank you. Mayor Watts, I'll continue kind of going over what the city's plans are. Still taking questions on this page. Sure. Actually, I assume we have more pages to go, but if that's possible. Yes. Do we have the capability within customer service for people to work from virtual desktops at home? Do they need to be -- you know, in order to do that job, do they need to be on site? I believe they do. They're coming up with that plan right now. They will be able to continue to operate, and residents will still be able to pay their utility bills either online, by mail, they can drop off a check into the drop-off box, or they can also pay by phone. And then -- thank you. And then on animal services, so where -- okay, it's close to the public, but animals can still be brought in by, you know, by those employees, yes? The information I know at this time, yes, but we will confirm that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So continuing, what this also means is we're going to be announcing that development services will suspend accepting new application submittals, and sorry, I forgot to add that word in here, will be for new application submittals going forward that require planning and zoning review and/or city council review and approval. So that means all other permits will continue, or applications, and you can still submit building, construction, and health-related permits, and those can be submitted online through our city website, and then you can also reach development services by phone for any questions that developers may have as we're going through this interim process. It also means that all board and commission meetings are suspended for the time being through April 6th, and then we'll re-again, these are timeframes we have set forward. We'll continue to reevaluate, monitor the situation, and if we need to make further announcements or closures, that will be done with city management and announced through press release. Quick question. So people who still have projects in the queue, those projects still move forward? Correct. And I understand about big meetings, pre-development meetings and those kinds of things can maybe be done via teleconference. So what -- because I know that with the Animal Adoption Center, you could do by appointment, so are we excluding appointment only in the development services? It's just like, no, we're just going to do it all by phone or however? We're not excluding it yet. These are just the plans as of this morning, so they're changing daily, and in terms of the -- in terms of the projects in the pipeline, we're discussing with the City Attorney's Office how we get those through the pipeline, what the current pandemic, how that impacts the 30-day shot clock, which is really what's driving them right now. So we're working our way through that. We need to give Aaron's team a little bit more time to give us those answers. In addition, we decided just to hit the pause button on accepting any more applications until we can put in some technological solutions in order to at least get the planning and zoning and City Council up and moving again in a more comfortable fashion as this goes on. So tomorrow we'll be testing basically these telephonic town halls to see if it's something we can recommend to you, as well as I've asked our Technological Services Director to look at videoconferencing opportunities now that the Governor's given us that authority last night. So not sure what the timing is on that, but that'll directly impact when we start taking the applications again. Right now we're just not comfortable pulling everybody together to get them through the process in time. So we're suspending it all together. Because part of the issue is on this "shot clock," if it's in the process with no change in the law, either an abeyance or a waiver or something like that, if there's no action taken within 30 days under certain circumstances, it's deemed approved. That's right. So that's why, except for notwithstanding some legislative change or directive such as what the Governor did last night, that's why it's important that they move through and we find a way to accommodate them at the various meeting levels so that we don't just have a default of the projects without any consideration from any of our boards, commissions and or council, and or public. That's right. Okay. Thank you. All right. Okay. Thank you. The second bullet point here, I think Manager Heilman has kind of addressed previously in terms of how we're looking at our workforce, business continuity plans, how the departments are each evaluating their operations and staffing plans. We can do remote work as well. Our HR department is working on a number of items and communications that can go out to city employees to clarify how they're able to remotely work, leave, so forth, travel. A lot of guidance is going out to our city employees and we're closely monitoring any potential legislation that could come from or guidance from state or federal government in terms of what we required to do as an employer. Sorry, I failed to relay a question or comment from Council Member Riggs. Something about the libraries being closed and that some children use the libraries for some Internet hotspots and then, of course, there's a question or an issue raised about or a comment made about, you know, the one area of the city that still doesn't have Internet, which we've talked about here before. So just as far as that, are there, I'm not sure how Wi-Fi hotspots work. That shows how technically illiterate I am, but apparently those were available at the library, so is there some kind of accommodation for that or is that just one of the kind of impacts that we're just sort of in? I'm looking through our FAQs right now to address, but I believe residents can still call the library, ask to reserve that material, like any of our other materials or equipment, and then they could come and pick that up from the library if available. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, so I wanted to move into kind of just giving a brief overview of what we've learned so far about what our community is doing to mobilize and really help each other in this time of need, especially those that are most in need. Denton ISD does have a page on their website specifically dedicated to COVID. They do have some resources that they are continuing to put up on that website page for their students and families, and they are serving breakfast and lunch to their students at certain locations during this time when school is out. There is various efforts from nonprofits and religious organizations to work together to assist those in need, for example, on child care or meals. One of the ones that we've heard prominently about is Grace Like Rain is actually coordinating with many different entities to get various locations set up to help those who maybe still have to continue to work to provide child care in the interim, and what our team is doing, our community development staff right now is doing, we've actually made phone calls to all these various organizations to understand what services are they providing in the interim, what are their volunteer needs, and then do they need anything just to understand what sort of resources or what are they in need of. So really trying to gather that information together so that we can understand as a city if there's something that we can bring to you that you would like to support them, if we can help connect the public who are wishing to volunteer, who want to have those volunteer opportunities, or if there's someone in need, where maybe some resources of where they could go to. So we're kind of working on all those things, and again, trying to do it as quickly as possible and get a site up on our website. - Councilmember Amitra. - Yeah, and thank you for that. I happen to know that Denton ISD is collecting volunteers to help with distributing breakfast and lunches to kids in where they live, because obviously many children can't, or it's not safe for them to just trot over to the school and get their lunch and come back, and many parents are still unfortunately finding themselves having to work. So when that information is up there, are you saying that it'll be distributed to council and put on the website about volunteering opportunities? - Yes, and we have a link right now to the Denton ISD website, but all of their current information is up on their webpage, and they've also sent communications out to parents and families. - Excellent. So I love that there's a link, and we'll continue to spread the word about that, thank you. We have heard that United Way of Denton County has created a COVID relief fund, so they are soliciting support from businesses or any individuals that might be able to provide assistance to those in need. There'll be more details to come in terms of how this fund will be administered and how people can apply for funds if they need it, and for what purposes. And then lastly, there's more information in the Q&A document that was sent out, but the shelters, MKOC, Salvation Army, Our Daily Bread, they do have mitigation and response strategies in place, and they do have infectious disease protocols, so limiting physical contact and proximity between clients and employees or volunteers, and between clients and clients themselves. Wellness, they're doing a wellness intake at assessment, they're creating isolation area potential if they need it, doing intensive cleaning each day throughout the day, maintaining contact with each other between MKOC, Salvation Army, and Our Daily Bread in case they need to adjust together. And then MKOC has been in contact with the Denton County Public Health Department, and they've provided them some resources, and so they're maintaining that line of communication directly with the Health Department as well. So assistance to residents, we've received questions about what may be available to residents during this time. Again, this information is still evolving, and we'll continue to push it out, but just an example of some things that we wanted to highlight. Through the disaster declaration, the city suspended residential utility disconnections for non-payment for water, wastewater, electric, and solid waste. Atmos has also suspended natural gas disconnections for non-payment for the time being. The disaster declaration also gave the authority to the city manager to expend up to $50,000 to provide to United Way. We also have gotten some questions on if the city can do anything in terms of evictions or foreclosures. That is the jurisdiction of the Denton County Justice Courts. We have not heard anything currently in terms of if they will suspend their operations during this time period, so we will keep you informed if we hear of anything that will change in terms of the justice courts. And then again, we're waiting to hear more on potential legislation that could be coming down from the state or federal government as they also have declared their declarations. It's one thing to seek legislative solutions on some of these things, which probably done in haste can have unforeseen consequences and so on, but can the city or is the city already playing any kind of a coordination role? For instance, just being the organizer of meetings, say, between members of different local industry groups, lenders, large-scale landlords, retail, just to coordinate some creative thinking to help avoid some of the economic impacts that may be coming. It seems like something we might be able to do that's not, like I said, not a legislative function but to help people work together and collaborate a little bit. I think if we have a scope that the council would like us to work on, we're happy to do it. Right now, we've basically been focusing our efforts on trying to keep people housed to lose their income, might be close to eviction foreclosure, which is why we asked for United Way dollars. But we're certainly happy to play whatever role you think is appropriate for us. So I'm concerned that the $50,000 to United Way isn't enough given the number of renters we've got. Last I heard, around 60% of Denton residents are renters. Many of them are in the service industry and various levels of working class jobs. I love that we're doing the utility shutoffs. That is wonderful. By the way, it's so much easier to do when you've got a city-owned utility than private utilities. So I think it's just a good example of an advantage of that. In fact, I'm wondering why $50,000 and why can't we, for instance, place a moratorium on notices to vacate, which it's up to a landlord to issue a notice to vacate. That is necessary to initiate the eviction process. But it's not judicial. It comes from the landlord. So I don't see how we couldn't put a moratorium on that, which would end up effectively prohibiting eviction since it's a requirement for eviction. Well, I'll hit the first part and then I'll defer to our city attorney on the second. We've asked in the initial declaration for spending authority up to $500,000. That could include housing. Our employees could include, you know, if we run through this program and we find there's a lot more need, you know, allocating some dollars and coming back to the council to explain what happened. But it was our best guess on what that initial budget needed to be. We don't have any necessarily applications in the pipeline yet and we're just -- we've been setting this program up on the fly, to be honest. Last night I met with Gary Henderson to try to talk through some of the logistics of this. So I think what I would commit to the council is if it's not enough and we need to spend some additional dollars, we'll be back with the reporting to you. You can always extend this amount. We've got enough money, I think, initially, until you meet again to get through this initial phase. But by then we'll be able to collect some more data. In terms of the jurisdictional issue on the notice of vacate, I'll leave that to the city attorney. Okay. The eviction process is -- Erin, you got to -- I mean -- Yeah. Do you have a mic? Yes. Oh, okay. Well, you can go -- I didn't know if you had a mic or did you -- yeah, you know. I'm just going to say that the eviction process is a statutory process and in order to get into the justice of the peace court, that is one of the first requirements to get in there that a landlord has to do. So us trying to -- instead of prohibiting them filing and you wanted to go even further before that, we're still encroaching upon a state statute with the process spelled out that the jurisdiction to hear these is with the justice of the peace court and not with the city. So until you do it later in the process or in the beginning, that is something that we don't have our purview to jump in and try to stop that process. So can you explain to how San Antonio and Austin, how are they able to -- Austin, I read a news article yesterday about the city of Austin, one particular council member who was proposing that and another council member answered and said, "We don't have the authority to do that." That was in their newspaper, yesterday's edition of the Austin American Statesman. And so they're struggling with that issue and as well as with others because we do recognize that the justice of the peace is a constitutionally created justice court and we do have a concept of separation of powers and for us to try to invoke our jurisdiction to forward that, we're going to run into an issue with the county. And I don't know what consensus on council is, but I want us to try because of just what we know from a scientific public health perspective about the way spread happens and as the city manager said, doing everything we can to prevent people from being homeless, to allow them to have a place to do social distancing. So now, what about a moratorium on rent or on rent and mortgage payments, foreclosures, can you speak to those three things? Mortgage payments is a whole different process and it's similar to the rent where if a mortgage holder is going to close upon that mortgage, there's a court process, again, that's still within a, not with the justice of the peace court but with a higher court. I think the best recommendation that we provided and that I would repeat again today is that make these concerns known to your justice of the peace courts. They have been given guidance by the office of court administration, which is part of the Texas Supreme Court. They are the ones who set the guidelines for all the court system under our constitution and so the three justice of peace courts that encompass the city of Denton have not made that decision to stop the eviction process, they may, but you as elected council members are free to call upon the county and the actual three justice of the peace court justices and make your concerns known. They're also elected, just like you are, and you're free to do that. That to me would probably be the best and quickest way to try to get them to address that issue. Well, thank you for mentioning that, I think that's important. What about rent forgiveness, since landlords are private, and I know that some of my fellow council members, our landlords know more about it than I do, it's been a long time since I've been a tenant, I believe we're all resident property owners, I don't think we have any tenants on council, but as I understand it, rent is a private matter, and couldn't we under a state of declaration of disaster just say no rent, given the numbers, given that we have so many more tenants than we have landlords. In essence, by saying that, you're now moving back again, taking away the option that a landlord has to come forward to invoke the jurisdiction of the justice of the peace court to perform an eviction, again, you're just moving up, trying to stop this at an earlier stage. Eventually you're going to run into an issue as far as the landlord being able to exercise his or her legal rights under state statute through the justice of the peace courts. Again, that is my legal advice, as I've always mentioned, I provide legal advice if this council of consensus wishes to go in that direction, then we will honor it and we will abide by it, but again, I would not recommend that, and that is my legal advice. Thank you. I think from a public health and safety perspective, speaking to my colleagues, just given the numbers of tenants we have in Denton, I think it is worthwhile under a declared state of disaster to forgive rent, I think it's worth it. I would gladly go to jail for it, get sued over it, to stop the spread for everyone. Mitigate the spread, I should say, not stop it. Couple questions on the United Way, of course, they haven't developed the criteria yet for how those requests will be made and what criteria will be used to address those requests. Probably similar to either the barriers fund, but it might be more specific to rental or to assistance with housing specifically, but those are in the process of being developed? Correct, they are, and through initial discussions it would probably be similar to the barriers fund, just making sure that they have flexibility to get the assistance out immediately to those in need. And also, probably have not been able to determine the impact, potential impact to the budget, but I'm assuming that you're guessing that this will have an impact on current budget, and also the new budget that will be coming forth in as little as two or three months. Yes, and I would kind of remind the council, the general fund, which basically pays for our public safety and a good share of the employees, is about 35 to 40 percent dependent on sales tax, so I've been working with our finance team, our finance director, to go through some scenarios, and we're sort of estimating if this goes on for another three to four months, we can see anywhere from a three to five million dollar drop in sales tax, so I put a freeze on all hires that we are not needing to be essential at this point. We've got a couple in the police department, a couple in the fire department that are in process, we're going to put through, and we've got a couple others, but yeah, the idea right now is to try to offset as much of that loss in sales tax that we see coming at us as possible, so as we get into the summer, working on the '20-'21 budget, we're not digging ourselves a huge hole to where you're in a tax increase situation or scenario or cutting services when people have been dealing with some very difficult times, so we're being as proactive about as we can. I've suspended a number of capital projects at this point, and we're also looking at any one-time expenses software, that sort of thing, to make sure that we can save as many dollars as possible right now, knowing that our residents are going to have a tough time for the next couple of years. Councilmember Arbacher, a couple of questions after your, if you could limit it to one question. Sure, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Are there any, so I take it on the consent agenda today that that's been vetted and everything on there is, you know, doesn't fall under one of those categories? Yeah, we're still recommending that those move through. We will be looking at delaying a number of other projects. There's a couple that we probably still need to move through, the day breaks, for instance, because it has a direct impact on the police department, and we've got those types of things, but we're vetting all of those projects, putting anything on the back burner that we can right now to not put your back against the wall heading into this budget. Same thing in the utilities, any of the, we basically shift a number of our utility crews and water, wastewater, electric, solid waste, more into a maintenance mode, and we're not filling those crews back that we're more construction oriented at this point in time, because it's the same principle with the utility fees as it is the general fund with the taxes. So doing as much as we can to offset our expenses right now and hold onto those dollars and hopefully be starting the budget process from a little better place than we normally would have. All right. Okay. Next, I wanted to just give some information. We've received questions on what assistance might be available to businesses, again, still rapidly changing, but right now, my staff, my team is working on building a webpage that will be specific to businesses to list resources that might be available to them, especially as things develop, and we expect more announcements might come from the federal or state government, so we're trying to build that one resource for businesses. And then I know economic development, Jessica Rogers and her team have sent out the resource list that you see here on the screen, just the initial way to acknowledge, we understand this is going to be difficult times for you, we're going to be providing more information and trying to help you as much as possible. We also sent out a press release this morning, the Small Business Association has designated COVID-19 as a qualifying event for the provision of economic injury disaster loans, and so we sent that information out to the community, please reshare it in order to have us be qualified, we have to have a certain number of businesses fill out a worksheet form, discussing what their losses and impact are, and then all of that information is compiled from the city and sent to the state, and the state uses that to help determine what resources or what amount may be available, so it's important that the more information we can gather from our local community, it might help the state in their determination, which then eventually flows back down to us. And then lastly, we understand there is some legislation that is being considered at the state and federal level, and as soon as we hear more, we will get that out to you. So moving forward today, because the, you might address it, you have a couple more slides after this. Just a last slide with resources that are available, we have a page on our website that has links to all of these resources and more, we're going to continue to develop that as we're able to put more information out there for our residents, and we're working as hard as we can to get information out there. So the current declaration expires on Friday, the one that I executed unilaterally. And I believe we have an action item on the agenda for that. Is that correct? That is correct. Yeah. And I think we need to, you know, we've read the declaration, so we need to ensure that we're okay with what it's saying, because that's what's going to define what we do going forward under the declaration. So as far as what's actually in the declaration, would you mind just sort of summarizing that? I'm actually going to ask our legal team to summarize that or to have manager Hellman -- I think they're in my office. (Pause.) So I'm going to -- I've pulled the ordinance up, the order, the proposed order, and so I just want to sort of go over some of these things. And if counsel would like to follow along, it's -- I can't remember what exhibit it is. It's exhibit four of the first item of individual consideration on our normal agenda. Mayor, if you just give me one moment, I can try to find it on our website so that you can see it. (Pause.) Yeah, exhibit four. Yep. Okay. So this order basically outlines and pretty much parallels, I believe, the original order executed by me last Friday. Obviously, however, we're not limited to those things that were in that order. So we're seeing the first item is this order prohibits community gatherings of persons or more within the city of Denton beginning at 5 p.m. on March 17th. We'll have to change that -- oh, no, that is today -- and continuing through, and we don't have an end date there. And then we've got the other blank, not attend events that we'll have or will likely have blank numbers, and that's for high-risk individuals. So thoughts on that? Now I will make a distinction here. This order is an absolute prohibition. I believe the county order that was signed today is a recommendation. So the language is a little bit different. And I'll just -- I'll go ahead and read it from the disaster declaration executed by the Denton County Commissioner's Court today. It talks about in -- therefore, and it's got 10 points to it, and point number seven is the recommendation of the postponement or cancellation of all gatherings over 50 people. And, of course, it has the recommending the high-risk individuals, as we do here. The county judge may limit or close the facilities, which is appropriate for the county, and we've already heard from what the city manager is proposing on city facilities. And then in the county order, it is requesting businesses and organizations to follow the best practices for social distancing to include as attached. And then attached to that are social distancing recommendations. So I will open it up for discussion. Councilmember Armitage? So the last I heard, we've got two numbers coming from the federal government. We've got the CDC -- excuse me, number 50, which last I checked, is that still the CDC recommendation? That was the last I saw. And then we've got 10 that I believe just came from just the White -- came from the White House from the -- as I understand it. Behind the mic, sorry. Sorry. Yes, the latest to my knowledge, but again, as you've heard, those continue to evolve and change. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm trying to confirm. Yeah. So I would want to err on the side of the utmost caution for the next three weeks, which -- and the county public health officer who spoke, I don't recall whether he mentioned that people are saying that these next three weeks are critical. But as I understand it, that's the case. And because of that, I think that it is -- it would be worthwhile to prohibit gatherings of 10 people or more, and to also include, as Dallas has done, a limitation of food providers to takeout and delivery and curbside and when applicable drive-through. And yeah, I'll stop there because that's what fits in that -- this part of the ordinance. Okay. All right. Yes. I just wanted to clarify, because the county ordinance was done -- the county resolution was done at the behest of Dr. Richardson, and I just wanted to clarify that they're recommending postponements for cancellation of all gatherings of over 50 people, and they're recommending -- they're drawing a distinction, recommending that high-risk individuals, as defined by the CDC, not attend gatherings of more than 10 people. It's probably the more prudent approach to take simply because we can't enforce, and it's not reasonable to expect us to enforce folks, you know, being barred from gatherings of 10. So I think that's why they -- you're seeing these recommendations between high-risk folks and regular public, is it's one of enforceability and managing expectations. Monitoring Facebook traffic right now, we have got to be crystal clear in what we can and cannot do, and what we're recommending versus requiring, and it would be our advice to you. Okay. Can I ask a follow-up or respond to that? Yeah. So -- and I understand that, that, you know, enforcement is difficult, especially in a situation where we want to protect our enforcing staff, so -- but I do think it's effective in sending a message, and I worry that, kind of making this distinction between gatherings of -- what is the term they use, like symptomatic people or high-risk people, you know, my problem with that is because we're telling high-risk people that they -- you need to isolate yourself, and, you know, and that's extremely important. So as far as symptoms, we know that, you know, science tells us that you can be asymptomatic and still be a carrier. So that's why I think that the science tells us that, you know, we shouldn't be making these, you know, those kinds of distinctions and limiting the number of people who could get -- who can gather just because of the three-week period. And I completely agree that it is impossible to enforce it all. But as far as -- even as far as messaging, I think that that could make a difference and save lives and help to mitigate the community spread. Yeah, and I think my answer to you would be that some of the more formal gatherings, the conventions, the meetings, that sort of thing, if you want to discourage those, not permit them for over a certain number of folks, I think that's fine. My concern in this whole issue, as well, is manage expectations appropriately. And secondly, I'm particularly concerned about making sure that the expectations on our public safety folks who do, you know, go out and enforce your mandates, you know, are as reasonable as possible. We have no idea how long this pandemic is going on. We have a finite number of officers right now, and I want to be very careful about the situations we're expecting them to involve themselves in. So just the word between recommending and asking people to take caution and some -- a little bit of independence there with the decision-making versus being overly prescriptive. It's important in terms of how we message this, and it's particularly important, the expectations we're putting on the police department from our -- for our public. So just ask you to -- words matter in this particular issue. Okay. All right. Yes. I don't know if you have there -- I'm just looking for it myself, but you might already have it. What is the language coming from the CDC related to 50? Because, you know, we've been hearing 500, 250, 125, now 50 -- what are all the words around the number 50? Okay. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. So I have a few because I've been holding my question, so bear with me. So it'll be a little bit all over the place, and really, the doctor left, but I want to be very clear. The conference that was referenced earlier, there is no direct -- the statement and the email I'll send to the city manager so it'll be part of the record. It does not state that someone at the conference had and was confirmed at the conference. It says they don't know where they contracted it and if they had it at the conference. I just want to make that clear. And then two, with respect to the MLK access, do we have a plan to restrict the numbers to maintain those numbers? So if it's the only facility open, do we have a plan to then make sure that's segmented or people are staged properly? For right now, the folks are using it. We are expecting that they adhere to the six foot social distancing numbers. That's what we know today. If that number turns into 10 feet or 12 feet next week, it's going to further restrict who can use it. So we're monitoring as best we can and hoping that -- and I have not heard of any issues with people not honoring that. Well, but the other places are open currently, and so that's -- and so I just want to make sure in the document we approved today that we give you the authority to adjust without us reconvening. Right? So whatever that wording is, it needs to give you the authority to adjust accordingly when that is the sole source. And I really would like to hear you on the fact that it has a shower there as well. So is that minutes access to the full facility? Are we going to restrict it to portions of the facility? And that matters also when you're talking about disinfecting and making sure we're doing what we're doing after they're closed. And kind of a long-winded question, but I want to give you credit with credits due. I saw city staff proactively at the Fred Moore Park today spraying the equipment and the benches and that sort of thing. So kudos to you for being on top of it and managing the city as you're tasked with doing. But want to understand, are we going to restrict different parts of the MLK? I appreciate that. I think right now we've talked about, and Laura Barron is here if I say anything wrong, we have basically been managing the social distancing requirements. We do have folks in the community that are without housing that have come in and used the showers from time to time. We're not putting an end to that, is my understanding just yet. There may be a time where we learn additional information. We have to stop that practice. But I think to your point, Council Member Huntsman, I would just kind of urge the council to give us as much flexibility as we need to adapt as the CDC seems to be adapting on a 24-hour basis as they learn a little bit more. If things change, we will keep you informed. We will notify the public, but we're going to have to really have the authority to be nimble here. What we know today versus a week ago is very different and what we know a week from now is going to be very different. And so I'm telling you how we're responding to it today. There could be a point where we shut it down, and it's going to depend on any new restrictions that come out, and quite frankly, if we can keep our staff healthy. Yes. And I'm all for that, and I hope that as we get ready to vote that that's tailored. But also I think it's important to maybe have some, even if it's a fast draft of a policy that then says, you know, that lays out we're going to disinfect at this point in time for the showers, we're going to treat it as regularity, so that it's not as confrontational as, hey, we have a prescribed methodology, and it doesn't vacillate because of the health and safety risk. And it supports staff in those hard decisions, obviously they're on the front line. And also, could you speak to the April 6 kind of stipulation, that window of time, why was that selected? Obviously there's some thought that goes into that, just want to make sure that's out there. We've been trying to sync up with the school district to the extent possible. I have a feeling we'll be hearing from Dr. Wilson here in the next day or two as well in terms of their thought processes, but I did not feel comfortable, I didn't know when you're going to want to meet again. As I stated earlier, we are in the process of coming up with some new tools to help facilitate your meetings as this crisis goes on, and there's just no way those things can be put in place that fast. So we are planning to get you back together on April 7th at the earliest, unless I hear differently from you, and we wanted authority to get to that next meeting. Okay. And then, and this is just me speaking, but I want to put it out there, if in your analysis of kind of preparation for the budget, if early retirement offers, you know, understanding the costs that go with that are prudent, and you feel like that's a good option for us, I'd ask you to bring that back and present those cases to say here's some opportunities where we can benefit someone now and at the same time down the road the city benefits as we try to manage the budget and bounce back, and then. Mayor Pro Tem, if also in your comments, if we could, also we need to talk about just what we're talking about now is the number of people and dates and extension of the order and so forth. Yes, sir. Certainly. And I think I know the answer to this, but when we're talking about some of the stipulations with on businesses, that was Dallas County or Dallas City that enacted those things. I believe it was the county, I'm not 100% sure on that, but I believe it was the county that came up with the restrictions on the restaurants and bars, gyms, restaurants. And then what, yeah okay, I just wanted to understand what the jurisdiction, I mean because it gets referenced a lot, and it may be both and that's fine, I just wanted to, maybe they're syncing up and that's fine, I just wanted to, and I can get up to speed on that, and I guess for me, also, with this document, I'm okay mirroring what the county stipulates with your clarification that it restricts, my concern though, truly is, are the churches, I think there needs to be a, almost a reasonable accommodation clause that says there needs to be some level of notice to say here's alternatives, but if you choose to attend to, because we're not going to go into Denton Bible Church and start arresting people or handing out citations, and so let's not feign as if we are, let's not put out, you know, kind of broad grand statements that then aren't backed up that have no teeth. I think we do our community a service by saying here's our recommendations, here's what we know today that is ever evolving, but we understand you have a right to worship and we want to respect that and be mindful of that, and here's our recommendations, here's, you know, tap into our resources, we can evaluate, tell you what we're doing, but ultimately you have a decision to make as a private entity and as individuals, and so whatever can accommodate those two things, I just don't, that's the only thing that gives me pause about the 50 is we can't, I can't in good conscience say for two more weeks I'm going to prohibit people from going to church and not enforce that. Okay. Any comment? Council Member Meltzer. Just sort of thinking whether there might be a way to give staff the flexibility they need in a changing environment by rather than just referencing a number, referencing a term that the CDC has, and I don't, you know, like I'm making this up, you know, the current CDC guidance, which as of such and such a time is a number, but that way if that changes, you don't have to go back and make a new ordinance, you're empowered to follow the new guidance. Before Council Member Amitra, I'm going to see if we can't have some other comments before you continue on yours, Council Member Davis. So I think I broadly agree with Mayor Pro Tem. I prefer mirroring the recommendations in the county's, the county's disaster declaration. Again, if we prohibit public gatherings of any size, anything smaller than about a hundred people, there's one no way for us to know that these are going on unless we're knocking down doors in every Denny's and Waffle House in the city. There's no way for us to know that there's more than 10 or 50 people gathered in any of these spaces in the city. Anecdotally, we know that many businesses, you can't go sit in a Whataburger right now, you can't go have a beer at Oak Street Drafthouse, you can't go to a Taco Bell without going through the drive-through line. People are taking reasonable precautions without us putting the threat of a $2,000 fine out there. So to me, it seems kind of absurd that Dallas has taken the steps that they have when they're not going to do any enforcement either. They're going to be making recommendations, and they're going to call it a prohibition. They're not going to be issuing any tickets to churches, to Whataburger's, to whatever. They're not going to be doing that either. So I think what the county has done is reasonable. It puts the onus on the individuals to do the right things, it puts the onus on the business owners to do the right things, and so far, that's what people have been doing. So I prefer that. As far as the date, how long this needs to go on, the county left theirs open, the city of Dallas left theirs open. I'm not sure. I'm very comfortable with just an open-ended disaster declaration. So I'm very open to staff's recommendation on how long you feel like this initial declaration needs to be, and then, because we can certainly, just like our other one, revisit it as time goes on, as the situation evolves. To your point, Councilmember Davis, it would probably be my recommendation that we have the declaration go through the end of April, and just agree that, while we're in this pandemic situation, that each time that you convene, we'll give you an update on actions that are being taken, any new information that we have, and if there's any clauses that you want to revisit, we can do it at that time. I just think it's a more prudent use of your time, watching the way this is unfolding and the way our mindset is shifting from week to week. Councilmember Ryan? I also would have a difficult time with a complete prohibition. I think just the recommendation would be fine and follow what the county had. I think for a date, while I understand the end of April, I would almost prefer it be something more like April 8th. Since we're meeting on the 7th, we can update this document at that time, and if we need to change numbers one way or another, that type of a thing is the direction I would go. So the 50 people for the gathering and 10 for those that are high risk, but again, just as a recommendation as opposed to prohibition. We'll go to Councilmember Armitage, and I'm going to have the last say. Councilmember Armitage and then Councilmember Melser. I have a closing remark that is a statement that I wanted to read, so as long as I get to read that, I just have one question for now, and that is have you seen the -- Can I ask you a real quick question? How long do you think your closing statement is that you're reading? I mean, is it -- It's just -- Have a couple of paragraphs. It's a page. It's a list of things I want to see in an ordinance. Is this what was posted on your website, some of that? Some of it. Okay. It's a little more detailed than that, but anyway, let's see. So have you seen the Texas Municipal League's latest notice about council meetings since you mentioned it, that apparently -- and I just -- I saw this last night. I haven't had time to look into it, but they're usually a pretty reliable source about -- they said that Governor Abbott has made some clarifications about councils meeting -- or government bodies in general meeting online. I would -- You actually issued that directive last night. Yeah. Yeah. So I was really pleased to read that. So will we be meeting -- just since that has come up, about our next meeting, can we do that plan that we will just be somehow meeting online? We're investigating two issues right now, as I stated. The first one is how do we allow -- the other part of that was that the public has to be able to participate -- Oh, absolutely. -- in a two-way conversation. So it's not quite so simple as can the council get together. So we're looking at ways that we can have virtual town halls to allow public input on specific agenda items, and we have -- we're actually meeting with the firm tomorrow that can help manage that for us and help the mayor out running the meetings on those items. And then we're also investigating potential tools, you know, to allow the video conferencing and try to sync all that up. So that's why I was not comfortable necessarily knowing if we're going to be meeting again until April 7th, is we're still waiting on that component, what it would take, what it would cost, and how long it would take to put that into effect. So our backup plan is to see if we can get you on the city's Microsoft Teams network, which we're trying to use as well. We just need to test it and make sure that it's not so clunky that it undermines your meeting efficiency. Thank you, and I'm glad that's being done. I just have just a few recommendations in that regard. You know, one is that because, as you said, because it's so crucial to have the public opportunity for comment, that we make sure that whatever we do, that it is ADA accessible, and that we have both a video and a strictly audio, or that we have both an audio visual and a strictly audio option that could somehow come in through the radio, or just for people who don't have, either don't have broadband or don't have reliable broadband. That is really imperative as far as equal access. So are you saying if you can't do that, you don't want to do this methodology? Because I ... I'll get there when we come to it. I'm saying this is what I want us to shoot for and look into, make sure we explore all the possibilities. Thank you. My main issue is to make sure that we can get the public inputting you back online as soon as possible. We will absolutely run down those options, and if it's possible, we'll make it happen. If it isn't possible, we'll let you know why and what we're doing to try to accommodate. Thank you. You want to go ahead and read your statement? Sure. Anybody else? Well, no. I'm going to wrap it up, and we'll have further questions, but if you've got to close the statement, why don't you go ahead. Okay. So I'm just going to list the other measures that I would like to see, and some of these would be in an ordinance, would be in this ordinance. Those would be more a matter of policy, and I'm going to read those. Okay. Can I just read them uninterrupted and then ... No. No. Councilmember Armitage, you basically said that you want to read some that apply to this agenda posting that we're talking about, and then you said you want some others to apply to policy of which we're not necessarily talking about right now. But that are covered under the description of the posting for the meeting. I want you to read the ones that you want included in this agenda item. Okay. So here they are. Having the cap be the federal recommended 10, although it is a second choice. I like what Councilmember Meltzer had mentioned about just stating whatever the CDC recommends which right now is 50, that might change to 10. So I'll say that, I'll say to have that be whatever the CDC recommends, I like that idea. Having expiration date end of April is fine with me, or leaving it open as long as we've got these three weeks covered. I also want moratoriums on rent payments and evictions and utility payments, and as far as eviction goes, look into also a notice to vacate moratorium. Again, utility payments, not just utility shutoffs. I'm thrilled that we're having no utility shutoffs. As I mentioned before, I wanted to see a prohibition on sit down seating full service and to have only delivery takeout curbside drive through. I would like to have something in here about ensuring that our healthcare workers, both private and public healthcare facilities are doing what they can to do, I think of it as sonic style, I don't know the official term for it, but where someone comes up to the car for people who are symptomatic. I know that some are doing it anyway, but I was a little concerned to hear the county officials say, well, some are doing it, some don't have the, aren't able to, I didn't quite understand that. I like Mayor Pro Tem's idea about activating retired licenses, I think, I understand that might not be needed now, but I think that that is something that we would have to get on as far as being prepared more than one step ahead of the game. As far as workers protections, I think we need unemployment insurance citywide, paid sick leave policy citywide, I know that's controversial in Texas. Are you saying in this disaster declaration? Yep, in this disaster declaration for this period, for this period, and then we can go back to this afterwards, go back to the same old way. Paid time off for all, this would include private businesses, and I know that the city has some of these things, that we are ensuring childcare, especially for our most needed workers, our health workers especially, and those workers who are making food, including our local food provider businesses, healthcare and childcare for them. Could you, are you almost finished? About. Okay, let's wrap it up. I would like a recommendation, this would be just a recommendation, that if businesses have business interruption insurance, that they use it to pay their workers, that would be just a recommendation, but I think it's really important for us to make that point, and that we put in here that employers, private employers, should do like what the city is doing and have people work from home whenever possible, and that if it's not possible to work from home, that there be an adherence to a 10 person in a room minimum rule and that it be staggered, and I think the city is being a good model in that, and that we have a commitment to minimize our density in jails and also explore to what extent that juvenile detention and the county jail, which I know are not our jurisdiction. I'm almost done. Okay, please, please be expedient. This is important, but you've had a lot of time to discuss this issue, and we've got some other issues that we need to discuss, because if you'd wrap it up, I would really appreciate it. Okay, so from, I believe that we don't have enough in this ordinance. I'm trying to, you know, restrain myself, but I'm just, I'm thinking like a virus and thinking of how the virus spreads and seeing what's happening in other cities and nations, so anyway, and then, and so to do whatever we can to minimize density in our jail and making sure that all non-violent offenders who are in the city of Denton, including in our juvenile detention and prison, that they be let go on some sort of probationary terms. And then finally, I want, and this is the last thing, I want what I am calling a Denton Coronavirus New Deal by which we can address our health needs and our economic concerns at the same time. Councilmember Armitage. I would like to see this, yes, I would like to see this in here. Councilmember Armitage, you've got 30 seconds, and then we're moving on. I would like to see this in here. I want us to pay, our hotels are struggling, the tourism industry is not happening, thank goodness, because it would be dangerous, but it is bad for our economy, so we've got these brick and mortar spaces, and I want the city to be able to contract with them to be able to house our homeless, because our shelters are going to be at capacity with this 50 person requirement that is probably going to keep going down. I want us to have in here a commitment to contract with food and goods and service providers. Councilmember Armitage, if you could please provide those to the city manager, because you've taken up about five minutes, and we have other council members, including myself, who have a few comments. You've certainly had more time to speak on this issue than any of us have left, so if what you have left, you could please provide to the city manager, who will send a copy to us, and we'll deal with that, okay? And to -- Thank you. And to pay our workers -- Councilmember Armitage -- to provide these services -- I'm going to call a five minute break. -- to look into rearranging staff to provide some of these -- to provide some of these -- Councilmember Davis, if you could be a little bit more concise, I would appreciate it. Other than what I've already said, talking about timeframes and numbers and recommendations, I'm very comfortable with the draft that we have in front of us. I think it addresses what we as a city have the jurisdiction and authority to address. I think staff has been extremely proactive, and I want to thank you all for putting questions in front of us that we didn't even necessarily know that we had. Things that even the people on our Facebook feeds didn't know about. So I appreciate your work. I appreciate what you've done so far, and I'm ready to vote on the order with the recommendations that we've talked about. Okay. Anybody else? Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, I'd still like to hear the CDC language if we found it. I'm confident that our Houses of Worship want to protect the safety of their congregants as much as -- or more than any organization. I think they would, you know, appreciate the guidance. I think there's probably something in between fines and period of things and a mere recommendation. Like, I don't know if there is something in between that, you know, that involves some interaction, you know, to say, hey, here's actually the guidance and here's why. But I'll wait and hear the CDC language if you've got it. Do we have the CDC language? Yes, I do, with a qualifier. So I'm looking at the CDC website, and they have even updated their website yet. So on their website, it says they should cancel mass gatherings that are greater than 250 people or move to smaller groupings. Secondly, on their website, it says to cancel gatherings of more than 10 people for organizations that serve higher risk populations. However, if you look at all the press that came out on Sunday, and this is just from a press source, Sunday, the CDC released further recommendations that no gatherings with 50 people or more take place for the next eight weeks to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The agency, CDC, said these gatherings include conferences, festivals, parades, concerts, sporting events, weddings, and other type of assemblies. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Meltzer. So I'll stand by the recommendation that the language say -- well, actually -- sorry. I'm a little unclear. You talked about the 250 and the 50. Does the 50 supersede the 250? I'm just unclear. Okay. Let me comment on that. Let me comment on that. This is why I'm not going to be able to agree to your proposal simply because I think it's on its face a really good proposal. But what we just heard was the website says one thing, but the press reports say something different. So that's the -- I think the challenge in that. And plus, quite frankly, I want this body to be able to decide some of these things because what the CDC recommends is a recommendation. And it seems like that the county has approved that recommendation currently, and we can do that as well. And if they come out with something different, then we can come back and revisit that recommendation to see exactly -- because some people haven't adopted that recommendation. Some people have adopted less. Some people have adopted more. And plus, I think the recommendation, what I heard, was limited to certain types -- it identified the types of gatherings that were a part of that recommendation. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? So I'm not necessarily disputing what you're saying. Yeah, of course. We both are. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. But it's just the fact that they didn't specifically mention worship services, it's not the reason -- I mean, you know what I'm saying. The issue is the number of people, not what they're doing. So I would still like to just understand -- well, okay, you said the county went with the 50 because that was the CDC recommendation. Well, those are the press reports of that. That is correct. That appears to be the CDC's latest guidance on Sunday. However, they just haven't had an opportunity to even update their website, it appears, because it's changing so quickly. All right. We can look -- I mean, we've got -- we're going to get some direction, so that can be one of those options. Obviously, Council Member Armitage has already expressed an interest in that particular option for the language. Yeah, I mean, I still think it makes sense just because it gives the city the ability to remain nimble. And if we have confidence that 50 is the real number, because we can confirm it on the telephone, you know, then I would go with the 50. Maybe there isn't a fine attached to it, maybe it's some kind of notification, but I think people will want to participate in something that's for protecting their members. Yes, the 50 is the CDC guidance coming as of Sunday. It's through multiple credentialed media and press reports. So my recommendation would be to cite the 50 because it's the credentialed recommendation, but also build in the -- you know what I mean, as it changes. And I don't think we have to pack in every single good idea -- good idea -- into this, you know, ordinance. It doesn't prevent us from, you know, taking them up as needed. Okay. Any other -- okay. So we've got a couple of things. Let's try to take them one at a time. The first one is the number of people. We've heard 10. Who is for 10 being in that blank as far as giving staff direction on that? Okay. Well, it's not so much a vote. We knew yours was the direction, but I don't see any -- go ahead. 10 in what regard? As the prohibition or like -- The gathering of 10 -- You have a prohibition and a recommendation, right? Right. So -- So we might as well, you know, I mean, if -- It's in the first yellow space there. That's this order. We have to decide, number one, is it going to be a prohibition or is it recommendation? I've heard recommendation seems to be the consensus outside of -- I didn't hear you. Yours seemed to be a prohibition. Whatever the number is, I think it should be a prohibition, even though I acknowledge that enforcement -- Okay. Prohibition on 50. Recommendation on 10. Okay. All right. So Councilmember Ryan, yours is recommendation or prohibition? Recommendation. Councilmember Davis? Recommendation. Because that's what the county followed. County or pro tem? All right. All right. Yeah. And I'm good with the recommendation of the gathering of 50 persons, and now we've got the date. I heard a couple of dates, the end of April, and then I heard April 7th. Right? Councilmember Ryan, I think you were -- Yeah. I said April 8th, because if we meet again on the 7th, if we need to make any adjustments, they were extended at that point. Okay. All right. So if we put the 30th, it doesn't prohibit us from doing that, you know, and putting that on the agenda, I guess, is my point. Yeah. I mean, I'd be comfortable with it saying the 30th if it was an item on our agenda on the 7th that had the opportunity to repeal it. Okay. As a placeholder? As a placeholder. Okay. All right. Yes. That makes perfect sense to me. I'm okay with it. Okay. Yeah. All right. So it's pretty much a yes or no or just -- I thought I heard you say to not require utility payments or to freeze utility payments and to freeze rent payments. Could you help me -- what were you asking? Yes. So that means that no matter what your need is, you wouldn't have to pay your utility bill, and no matter what your need is, you wouldn't have to pay your rent? Yes. Okay. All right. Okay. So I think April 30th is there. Now, I do have a -- on the 10 or more people where it says to cancel, reschedule, or not attend events, on this -- this is the one with if they're high risk, I would just take out that number altogether and just say we recommend that you don't attend these, period. I don't think it really is a matter of a number. I think it's -- we're saying if you're a high-risk population, we're recommending that you don't attend any gatherings. I mean, that's going to be up to your decision, but as a recommendation, we're saying, hey, we can't -- we can't -- I mean, I can't say that if you're a high-risk person, that you can attend 10, but you shouldn't attend 50. I'm just going to leave it up to their discretion, that, as a high-risk individual. So that's what I would propose. Is there any discussion on that or -- yes? Yes, so I would recommend that we use the terminology of social distancing or isolation and -- or quarantining. Maybe get the -- you know, have that validated by the public health official, but to say that -- so that we're mirroring the recommendation. In other words, instead of it being a negative recommendation, don't do this. It would be a positive recommendation. Well, but I don't think that the county -- the county was still put in that negative, recommend that high-risk individuals, as defined by the CDC, not attend gatherings greater than three people. Yeah, so I completely understand that, but I think that it's more helpful to people to give people a positive recommendation. Which is what? Which is to -- let's see, so if it were up to me -- I mean, I would -- I would be curious to know the -- a doctor's -- a public health expert's opinion on it, but urges high-risk individuals to isolate themselves. And social distance for two weeks? You're not for my -- you're not for my proposal, sounds like. You don't agree with what I'm recommending? No, no, no. Okay. That's all -- that's all -- that's all I want to know. Yeah, but I was explaining what I would like to see in my rationale. I understand. Councilmember Ryan? Because it mirrors what's -- what the county also did, I'm more comfortable with the 10. I don't -- I mean, how many events are there that are actually an event that are -- more than 10 people -- not more than 10 people? All right. Councilmember Belser? Yeah, I'm fine with the recommendation, although, you know, I do kind of want to connect an earlier comment I made to some of the conversations that's happened now. The reason I brought up the idea of having kind of coordinating meetings, probably working with -- with our partners at the Chamber, you know, with industry groups, with renters, with landlords, with lenders, with, you know, retail, is to address the fact that there is clearly now and coming economic impact, and, you know, I think the community will -- you know, will generate better approaches than we will just sitting here right now, you know, that they may want to voluntarily participate in, just to pull together. You know, we're going to -- we're coming into some tough times. We're in them now, and it's going to become tougher, and I think -- I think our community -- you know, if we can help our community, you know, pull together to figure out how not to precipitate crises, so just -- So you're okay with -- And I'm okay with your recommendation on the -- Okay, but if it's not that, you're okay with the county recommendation? Yes. Okay. All right. Mayor Pro Tem? You know, I think you make a good point on -- and so I would be comfortable removing that and that stipulation of 10 for vulnerable population to leave it, to make it just -- we recommend you give it self-distance or whatever that vernacular -- or just remove it and let it stand. Right. Councilmember Davis? My initial inclination was just like Councilmember Ryan's to mirror the county, but as I'm thinking it through, it's like high-risk folks should just stay at home. There should be no gatherings. So I'm a little disappointed the CDC hasn't made that recommendation. If you're high-risk, no gatherings. Yeah. So I agree with your assessment there. I think that -- I think we have a consensus on that. Now, let me look at the ordinance right quick. Okay. All right. So we've got the end of April is in bullet number one. You've got 50 and blank number two on bullet number two on point number two, paragraph number two. Now we're to definitions. And this -- In paragraph number two, that would be the one we're now -- because that's about the high-risk populations. Oh. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. Strongly urges organizations that serve. Right. Well, I guess my question is that serve high-risk populations -- I don't know what that means by serve. Does that mean that they are -- you know, what if they're serving meals? What if they're -- so I don't -- I mean, that's my only concern about that is are we saying you can't gather people? If we're saying they're high-risk, then they shouldn't be gathering them, and they should find a way to do that differently. Right. Find a way to do it individually. Okay. All right. With you. We have an action item tonight, so if anybody's thinking through this, this isn't a vote. So it's just simply a direction for tonight, and if somebody has a different outlook or different opinion or a change of heart, we certainly have the opportunity to do that. Okay. Then on our particular one, which it's not necessarily defined, I don't think, in the counties, is we define community gathering. All right. And I think that would be the number 50 there and number 4. So let's see what -- go back up to -- go back up to paragraph 2 again. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Yeah. And then it does say the city of Benton urges people, doesn't matter who, not to attend nonessential gatherings during the duration. Okay. So we're going to determine -- we're going to talk about community gathering. So that one, I believe, at least from what I've heard from council, would be the number 50. And then here's the definition of gathering. So let's just go ahead and hit this one right up front, because I think it's gotten a lot of press, and we need to address it, and that is -- and we might have addressed it just by our silence, but I want to get a little bit clear -- more clear definition. Because some have prohibited restaurants, you know, dining in, but have allowed takeout and delivery or drive-through. Some -- I believe that was Dallas County. I think Tarrant County has said they're still allowing dining in, but yet they're asking that those establishments cut in half the potential occupancy of their establishment, thus enabling the social distance requirement that is promoted by the CDC. So if you got, you know, 100 capacity, reduce it to 50, spread everything out. So those are very different. And I know Councilmember Armitage has asked for that. I believe it was the prohibiting dining in, but drive-through, delivery, and pick-up -- is that right? >> Yes. And also that in addition to that, that the cities seek out contracts with our local food providers to get food to people. >> Okay. >> And our local workers. >> Okay. So we're dealing with this one right here. Councilmember Pro Tem. I mean, Mayor Pro Tem. Councilmember Pro Tem. That's a new title. >> It's awesome. It's a new name. Yeah. I'm going to put that on my business cards. I think -- I'll wait to hear the group, but I like what Councilmember Davis said in that I found our community to respond well without guidance. I mean, I've been in Sam's, and they just shut down their restaurant area, the companies he listed have responded more stringent than we would. And so I don't know how to capture that sentiment. And I don't think that this is the problematic area, if candidly. I think -- I was in Sam's again today, and people were lined up right next to each other. And so I think we're targeting the wrong group. That's what gives me concern. I don't know -- the restaurants and bars have responded, but the influx of people is in grocery stores, and I've not seen the spacing in that environment. So if we're talking about addressing anything, it's that environment. So I'll wait and hear the room, but I don't know that I see a need to stipulate further this component just because I've seen so much proactive actions taken already more stringent than we could impose. >> Councilmember Davis? >> So in general, I think I agree with the Mayor Pro Tem. The only thing I would say about this section is I think that it's specifically targeting events, the kind of things that we heard from the first CDC piece from the website, you know, parades and festivals and gathering. Most of those, just kind of anecdotally, most of those in the city have already proactively canceled. Political conventions have been canceled or moved. Large gatherings, planned charity events have been canceled or moved or postponed. But as we go forward with this, especially if we're talking about out April the 30th, there are event organizers who are kind of agonizing over this decision. They've spent money, they have people coming from out of town. There are people in town that are going to lose money from this. So I think some of those event organizers still out there are looking to us for guidance and frankly for a little bit of cover from their members or their constituents or whoever. So I think a directive could be helpful for these large mass events that what we had in the original declaration, the 250 I think is good, that these event organizers can look to us and say the city has said this is recommended that it does not take place. We're not canceling it because we don't want to have an event. We're canceling it because the direction now is that we must cancel for public health reasons. So give them a little bit of cover. >> Okay. So you're okay with at least the definition as presented in the ordinance of community gathering. What you're talking about is giving cover to these organizations. >> Right. Things have changed a little bit in the wording because community gathering is similar to what -- the way we have it worded here is similar to what Dallas did. They prohibited community gatherings and then within the definition of a community gathering set the number. What we've done differently now though in the ordinance in the beginning is we were talking about recommendations versus prohibitions and so using this definition of community gathering, the use of it may be different now. So my point is the effect I would like to see is a prohibition on the large gatherings, 250 or more, and a recommendation against the smaller gatherings that we've already had the discussion on. Whether this blank, just filling in a number accomplishes that, I don't think so because of the change that we've made earlier in the ordinance. >> Councilmember Armitage. >> Yes. I want to address the issue Mayor Pro Tem brought up about grocery stores. Councilmember Davis was just mentioning. So I'll start with a question and as I understand it and tell me if I'm correct, maybe it's more of a question for legal, that in this list of examples such as auditorium, theater, stadium, et cetera, that these aren't -- this is not an exclusive list, is that right? It's not saying -- it's just such as means for example, right? >> Correct. >> So that -- and I agree with what Councilmember Hussbets was saying that you do -- that there are -- I have heard reports of people concerned about grocery store lines where, you know, that is not -- people don't think of as a community gathering, but the way that I would put it is because I'm thinking like a virus, virus doesn't care, you know, when there are a bunch of people together elbow to elbow, whether you were there because you're waiting in line for grocery store, because you're praying in church, you know, wedding, whatever. So I would want to use whatever language could make it clear that these are just examples and that we're saying, you know, a group -- and I know we have disagreement on the number, so I don't necessarily want to, you know, have that argument again. I know I'm in a minority, but as far as the wording, that it -- we make clear that it covers a group of people together who are less than, you know, we can mention the six feet distance even, and so that if it gets to a point, for instance, at a grocery store, so they could say, okay, we've got, you know, people are too close together in line. Space it out. You know, we've got too many people in this store, you know, and I mean, I don't know exactly what the wording would be. I would leave that to the lawyers, but when I first looked at this, I thought that that would be covered in that, but now I'm not so sure. So if someone could speak to that. >> Grocery stores were specifically listed as one of the places that people were not generally within farm's length of one another for a extended period of time. >> Yeah, yeah, and that is -- yeah, and when we come to -- and that's the part that I have a problem with, is these -- I wouldn't want to exclude any space, because as Councilmember Meltzer was saying, for instance, in the case of churches, you know, a virus doesn't differentiate. So we're talking about bodies together, no matter what the purpose. I'm kind of wary about these exceptions in B, and I think there's a lot of confusion, contradiction there between B and A. I would just like to get rid of B altogether, except for the, you know, hospitals and medical facilities, but of course they know that they need space too. >> So Councilmember Davis, I want to understand what you're saying, because I don't understand what you're saying. Let's just look at the ordinance as we have it currently. The recommendation is for 50, no more than 50 from these areas. What you're saying is you want a prohibition against some that are larger, all right, of 250 or some number in order to provide some kind of triggering mechanism potentially in a contract or some kinds of things like that for some of these event planners or these events. I guess my question is what do we do with the delta, the difference? If the number was 250, we're going to prohibit gatherings of 250. We're going to recommend that nobody gathers of more than 50. So I guess that delta is covered in the recommendation, the amount that's between 50 and 250. That would be part of that recommendation, that that's the ceiling to the recommendation is whatever number you want to put in there, 250 or 100 or something like that. That's the ceiling to the recommendation. Anything beyond that is a prohibition. >> Correct. And as far as the ordinance as we have it, what I was saying earlier is that this whole definition of community gathering only matters to the ordinance if there's some prohibition in the ordinance. Everything else is a recommendation about gathering. I mean if the only thing we have in here is a recommendation against gatherings over 50, we don't need this definition of community gathering. It doesn't serve a purpose in the ordinance. It exists for the prohibitions just like it does in the Dallas ordinance that I think it's probably modeled after if I can be so bold. And I'll mention also the Dallas ordinance specifically exempts, just like ours does, these places we see listed on the screen, grocery stores, transit stations, all those kind of things for the exact reasons that we list in ours. >> Okay. So what you're saying is that if we have a prohibition against more than 50, we don't need -- or if we even have a recommendation of, you know, against 50 or more, or more than 50, we don't need necessarily the community gathering definition. >> Correct. >> Correct, unless we're looping it into a prohibition. The only reason why that definition of a community gathering is there is because elsewhere in the ordinance we are prohibiting community gatherings over a certain number. So it references itself. If we don't have a prohibition, there's no need for a definition of a community gathering because you don't get into all the exceptions, you don't get into all the -- what kind of spaces are we talking about, all those kind of things. >> Well, I hear what you're saying agree in part, and I don't know if I disagree in part, I'm not sure. Because I think when you talk about prohibiting meetings, I think it says -- what's our number? Because of the -- blah, blah, blah, this order closes a certain city building -- this order, I'm going to say recommends against community gatherings of 50. It says this order prohibits community gatherings of 50. But if you're saying you just can't congregate as 50 people or more, then I think you do need to have some carve out of really what you're talking about. Is it 50 people inside a building that has multiple rooms? Is it 50 people inside a building that is, you know, two acres under air? I think that's why the definition where it talks about for the purpose of this order of community gathering is any indoor or outdoor event or convening subject to the exceptions and clarifications below, in other words, it's saying this is what the event is. Now these are the exceptions to that definition if you have -- if you're in a single room or single -- if it's likely -- that brings together or is likely to bring together, in this case, 50 or more persons at the same time in a single room or other single confined or enclosed space, and it lists some examples, but they're not an exhaustive list, such as an auditorium, theater, stadium, arena, I don't know why this is not telling me -- I don't know why this isn't telling me, I can't see the top of my deal, and it lists some other things. And that's why I think they have to carve out the exceptions to that definition as they did in the Dallas ordinance to say because a grocery store technically is one large building. And I'm going to be very hesitant to say that whatever we craft applies to essentials that our community needs, such as grocery stores, you know, convenience stores that sell, you know, the essentials that sometimes you need that you can't find at a grocery store. Because in the end, we also have to rely upon the common sense of our citizens to say, hey, I don't want to do this. I don't want to expose myself. I don't want to expose someone else. Now, will there be people who don't care? Of course there will. It doesn't matter whether we prohibit it or not. But as people have said with restaurants and things such as that, so this is critically important and we're going to take a five-minute break because we've been going at this a while and we might cancel some more of these agenda items -- where's the city manager -- work session items, because we're rapidly running out of time here. >> Mayor, are you doing one that would really be in your direction on this item B, this project going so it doesn't impact the police departments and the other projects? So we're happy to move the rest of these workshops off. I'd like to have Councilmember Briggs here anyway when we talk about the charging stations, that sort of thing. >> The what? >> The charging stations, that sort of thing. So we just need to be back on the development services building. >> Well, I mean, it's 4 o'clock. I mean, we can still keep -- let's just see how it goes because we've got, I think, three closed session items. >> Three closed session items? >> Let's make the meeting start at 630. >> Yeah. And I would think we could get through item D probably in less than 20 minutes. >> So let's take a five-minute break. Let's all individually try to gather our thoughts on how we want to proceed here because this is -- obviously we need to get this as correct or at least as we want it to say. Yeah, thanks. Welcome back to this meeting of the Dent City Council at 416 p.m. on Tuesday, March the 17th, 2020. We are on agenda item 3A. We're moving through a proposed order of the Council of the City of Denton declaring an emergency and walking through the terms of that. Councilmember Meltzer, I believe you had a comment before we broke. Yes. >> Oh, yeah. My comment was I have the answers. >> Oh, okay. All right. Well. I've heard a couple of very constructive ideas that I think fit. I like the idea that if we've got a consensus that there's a recommendation at one level and you have a prohibition at another, I question whether 250 is the right number for a community our size. I don't know how many organized events -- and by the way, that's the language that might be helpful. Organized events? I don't know how many there are that are greater than 250, I mean maybe you've got, you know, stadium games and things, but maybe the outside limit is something less than 250. I don't know if we've got any, you know, sense from the city because, you know, you provide resources to many events, you might have some idea, but I mean maybe the upper limit is something like 100 just to suggest, you know, what big is in Denton. But the second, I think, really constructive thought from Mayor Pro Tem is that we add an item -- I think this is where you're going -- to specifically call out queuing like in grocery stores and say, you know, that you've got to observe a six-foot distance and queuing. You know, how much you can really police it, I don't know, but at least it tells management that they need to do that. It is intrusive, but for sure that's exposure risk, you know, at Sands and whatever. And if people kind of get used to it that it's going to be spaced out six feet, I think they'll kind of get with the drill after a while. So my gut feel, I'd prefer to have quantitative guidance, is 100 on the provision, you know, twice the recommendation is bad and can be prohibited, and then to add a queuing requirement that's six feet or greater between those who queue. And we can use the examples that are given, grocery store, movie theater, any place where people queue in order to conclude their transaction. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Sure. Just to -- I appreciate that. Just to kind of clarify what I was saying earlier, that's exactly right, a prohibition at a high level, a recommendation at the lower level, and the exceptions and whatnot that we're talking about wouldn't be necessary for the recommendation, just like they're not necessarily in the county's recommendation. The exceptions are necessary for the purpose of enforcement, for -- you only need an exception if you have a rule, right? So as far as the number for that, those large gatherings, I'm a little agnostic, I'm like you, I think I need to hear some guidance on why Dallas set their prohibition for everything at the 50. I'm not willing to do that, but as far as why we choose 250 over 100 or something like that, I'd be interested to hear more discussion on that. The additional item about queuing, lining up, I think that'd have to go in the recommendation category and maybe even be kind of a granulation of what CDC already recommends, you know, social distance, that here we are sitting at our silly little table six feet apart for a reason. So putting that recommendation somewhere in the ordinance, I don't have any particular problem with that. If I could just make one follow-up comment. Yes. You know, that might be an area where it would be helpful for the city in a kind of coordinating and guiding mode to call together, you know, in a video conference perhaps, the major retailers and say, you know, look, this is identified as a risk. Do you agree that this is good to, you know, just to use a little moral suasion on top of the recommendation, you know, just not just leave it to, you know, the fact that there's a recommendation in an ordinance somewhere, but, you know, really try to reach out to them. Sure. Sorry, Councilmember Meltzer, I didn't mean to speak over you there, asking the question. My question is for staff and anybody that can answer, it really could be anybody. At what size gathering do we start to require city approvals for permits and that kind of thing? At what point does the city get involved in a gathering? And really, I guess my question is, what's the smallest gathering outside of like renting out of space or something? What's the smallest size gathering that the city really involves itself in based solely on the size of the gathering? I'm going to try to pause and buy some time and hope that Laura Behrens is still in the building. We do accept special event applications for an organizer that is willing, wants to use our city facilities or is doing it on some public right-of-way street, et cetera. I don't know if there is a number. I know there is a number for a significant amount and here she walks in so I will let her answer the rest of that, but in terms of special events. Laura, did they have to ask you to come or do you know to start running down the hall just from the question? I'm watching so I know to start running. So if I understood the question that's on the table here is under what criteria do we become involved? So there are actually several criteria. One of them is attendance at 200 or more and then whether it's a public event, of course if it's held on city property and then also whether or not there's going to be the service of alcohol or the sale in particular. So those are really the big ones in terms of when we have to go through or it triggers the special event process. Now we do have other events that are held on city property, specifically the civic center because it is an event center that could have a large crowd, could also have alcohol available, but are considered rentals because they are private events. So we're talking about you know wedding receptions, baby showers and so forth. So that's generally what we see. Yes. Sorry very quickly. We're already talking about I mean independent of numbers, we're already talking about not renting out city facilities, not making city facilities available. Yes sir. So do you do you have any particular opinion as to a number if we're going to prohibit community gatherings off-site, does the city have any particular special knowledge or opinion on that or is it just kind of up to medical professionals? Right now we're following not only the current guidelines that are being you know put out by health care professionals, but we're also monitoring what other cities are doing. So at least in terms on the park and recreation side, we try to have some consistency across the board in that. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. It's a question for Laura since you're here. This is a question I've got from the from the from the public. I think I know the answer. I want to check with you. So according to the ordinance, even as it stands now, the emergency ordinance with 250 or more, Jazz Fest, people have been asking about Jazz Fest, Jazz Fest could not happen if it was if it was going to happen today, you know that it could not happen under the ordinance if it as it stands now, is that correct? If it were going to happen today, that is correct. So we've been in constant contact. Actually we've got a list that's prepared of upcoming events that would be impacted and what we did just internally is we were looking at events that were at 100 or more and in that list, we also included rentals that we currently have scheduled. So those events, those special events that are currently in process, as well as rentals that have been scheduled and also some programs that parks and recreation would be hosting. So we do have an idea of what the impact would be. Really the thing that is kind of on hold for us is just the timeline. So we've had one event that has already been impacted and that's storytelling. And so, but there are others that's the biggest special event that has been impacted so far. Thank you. Thank you. And can you clarify if so entities that have already made a deposit, I take it they get a full reimbursement because this is yes, under these circumstances, it's not just events, it's anyone that's registered for a program or a class. Yes, we're offering obviously number one, a refund, if that's what they're looking for. And we're also offering credit. And so we do have a lot of individuals who are choosing just to receive credit so that they can, you know, register for another class or program in the future, resume our operations. And that's a choice up to the individual. That's up to the individual. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. So when we are operating for normal, how frequently do you see events that are 100 or more versus 200 or more? I mean, do we do we know what the tendency is on the events that we that we host or that we facilitate? Yes, we see, you know, I think last year, in terms of co sponsored events, we were a looking at upwards of about 1516 that actually go through the special event process or 200 or more. Yeah. And then and then how about 100, you know, 100 to 200 rough idea, I would say at least two dozen, probably more what we have a lot of smaller events like five case, and so forth that are being held in a park or through a neighborhood and all of those funnel through us as well. Thank you. Okay, we're going to get through this. One thing I also want to just make sure is that I think it's important that we provide or that we are, we don't have to follow it verbatim, but that we're somewhat consistent with sort of the same general philosophy. I mean, the county did issue a statement of declaration. And for us to have something that and I'm not saying that this bifurcation of recommendation verse prohibition is inconsistent. We just want to make sure that we're not sending two totally different messages. So this is what I'm gleaning and this is what I'm hearing. So let me throw this out here and see if if you guys what you think about this. Because what I've heard is, and I'm okay with the bifurcation of prohibition and recommendation. I'm okay with that, and I'm okay with the 50 being that number where the floor for the recommendation. And I've heard a hundred I've heard, you know, different numbers. I think outside of just picking a number out of thin air, I think a hundred which is sort of double is a is a and I think you mentioned that I think that's a good place to start because I think when you start having 250 that's that's a lot of people. I mean, that's a lot of people in one spot. So if we did that, if that's what we did, then what we would be looking at is on the ordinance, we would have one or and this, of course, legal is going to have to draft this before the meeting, you'd have our recommendations similar to the counties. And I think we need to really just the county doesn't distinguish between community gatherings. We have to discuss are you wanting just to exclude a hundred people in one at one space unless they're in different areas, you know, there's different rooms. And you also have some potential exceptions. Waiting for transit office spaces, residential buildings, I mean, obviously, you got apartments that have more than you got apartments have 500 people in the whole building. Yeah, it's right. The grocery stores, shopping malls, and that might be in the in the somewhere in the words, we could put in a recommendation where queuing is is needed through cashiers that management take all precaution to encourage limit whatever they, you know, really give them some guidance on to follow the social distancing recommendations of the of those those those. And then if people don't want to abide by it, then the management is going to have to decide how they deal with that. But in the end, you've got to also rely upon people to. So I think that gets us to where I'm hearing we sort of want to to be to some I'll get to you in just a second customer to where we want to be customer Davis, is that sort of follow the spirit of what you're thinking? Yeah, I think so. And I think in the way that you just described it, it actually makes hopefully legal's job a little bit easier because what we can actually do now is the way the order is currently drafted is in terms of a prohibition. Right. So we can now and some of those blanks were earlier, we said the blanks don't matter. We're taking it out their recommendations in some of those blanks. We can now fill in that hundred if that's going to be the number and then we can just follow that with a you know, we further recommend that you avoid gatherings of more than 50. Right. We can add the recommendation to kind of what's what they're. So maybe we asked legal to jump around a little bit and now we ask them to come back to the original language. Sure. Okay. All right. So then we don't necessarily we can gatherings now we're saying exempt from that prohibition is maybe these exemptions because we still haven't talked about restaurants. We still haven't talked about restaurants because given our definition, as we're talking about it, if they hold less than 100, it would be a recommendation. If they hold more than 100, it's a prohibition. So Councilmember Armitage. Yeah. So about queuing, I would like it if we had some sort of sign template that could be made that would be free on the web that a store could print up just a sheet of paper size that has just a little picture stick figures recommended queuing distance six feet and then maybe a yes and a no and the coronavirus on it, you know, COVID-19, whatever. And also just to make sure that in the ordinance that there be language kind of making it clear that we're not talking we're not being so literal about individual by individual such that if we've got, you know, a parent with two young kids or a family, you know, we're not saying that they -- no, I'm just -- we've got to -- I mean, look, I mean, if they want to put up a sign, I don't want to start talking about signs in that level of detail. I think people understand that when you're talking about queuing, they're going to use their common sense to know they don't expect their child to be six feet behind them. >> But people don't read the ordinances, people will look at a sign, it will help stores, they can just point to the sign. >> And we can leave that to the discretion of the stores. I mean -- >> And that's what I'm saying, but if we can make something available, I think it would be doing a great public service. >> All right. So as far as the recommendation that I proposed, in principle, we don't have the actual language. Where are you on that? >> In principle, about the queuing? >> No. >> On the principle that we just spent 15 minutes discussing about bifurcating recommendation and prohibition. >> I'm still against it. I still -- >> Okay. I appreciate that. >> Want just prohibition. >> All right. Thank you. Councilmember Ryan? >> I'm fine with that. If I might add, looking at bigger -- what we do for bigger places, the -- every building in town has a maximum occupancy rate. So rather than saying the 100, because when you start getting into a big box store, 100 might look like there's hardly anybody in their period, that it would be 50% of their occupancy load or 100, whichever is greater. >> Well, but I think if we're using the -- sort of excluded from the gathering, in other words, these are some -- it says gatherings of people in multiple separate enclosed spaces in a single building, but also exempt from community gatherings, which we don't have the definition of community gatherings, but exempt from that was spaces where persons may be in transit or waiting for transit. I think we need to -- we need to have something in that that says this prohibition has some limitations or has some exclusions. Now we can talk about what they are. One is an office space or residential buildings. They're in separate spaces. Grocery stores. The grocery store issue is more of an issue of queuing than it is the number of people in the space. Shopping malls. People everywhere. I mean, so they're -- I mean, unless you're standing in line, again, it's the queuing that's the issue. Now the only other thing is it says or other retail establishments where a large number of people are present, but it's unusual for them to be within arm's length of one another for extended periods of time. So I think those help us, because it's really in those larger spaces. It's the queuing issue that's really the concern. And so we can certainly provide some recommendations and encouragements, and even if we want to give them some templates or whatever. The only thing is we've not talked about restaurants, all right, or bars. And I know the county did not mention those. So the counties does not include that specifically. I mean, it's only a recommendation, number one. So there's no prohibition in the counties. But the counties doesn't mention specifically that. So you know, I think that the business leaders are looking -- I mean, I've gotten several texts of people asking, did y'all vote to exclude dine-in restaurants. So we really need to provide some guidance for that. Councilmember Davis. I'll be really brief and try to be very clear so we don't have to talk about this a lot. Closing restaurants as a city imperative or a city ordinance is the nuclear option. There may be a point in this crisis where it becomes necessary, but for a city of Denton's density, it's a nuclear option because it has the potential to destroy -- Patriot Sandwiches just opened less than a month ago. They're facing all the same challenges every new business faces, and now to say that the city prohibits you from operating a restaurant in the way that you normally would, that could destroy that business. I use them as an example because they have also already chosen to do that and to take that risk as a new business. Many restaurants are doing this. I don't think it's, one, necessary from the city perspective. Two, we don't have a medical professional's advice that it is necessary. We have not heard from our county experts for this county and for this city that it's necessary yet. That may change. It could change inside a week. It could change inside two weeks. But at this moment, I don't think we need to prohibit or shut down bars, restaurants, and those things. I'll leave it to folks. Well I would agree with that statement, and I would say I've talked to several bar and restaurant owners already, and most of them are already, they're proactive, they're seating every other table to keep the patrons further apart or removing some tables from their establishment and chairs so they can spread things out a little further. Nobody wants to be the one that's on the news of if you were at this place on this date, please get with the health department. They're all taking every precaution possible to keep things clean, keep patrons as far apart as possible. So I don't think it's necessary to address those at this point in time. Okay. Councilmember Armitage? So I do think it's necessary. As I mentioned before, I think what Dallas is doing is a good model, but I think we should be going a step beyond that and going out of our way to contract with our food providers to get food to people who are isolating, especially seniors who are living alone, people with disabilities who can't so easily get to grocery store. I want to ask, does the community gathering, are workplace environments exempt from this? Because this leads into even a restaurant situation. We're talking about, because I feel like we're looking at this from a consumer point of view or a business owner point of view, but from a worker point of view, if you've got a situation and we do have some workplace environments in Denton, production workplace environments where you've got more than 50, 100 people plus hundreds of people, elbow to elbow, does it apply to a workplace environment? I would like to see it apply. It would depend on how the workplace is set up. So offices are excluded because they're divided into separate rooms generally. So it would depend on the specific workplace. Okay. So just to follow up, so if there was a workplace where there were say a hundred, what is the consensus on a number so far? Do we have for gathering? Whatever that number is, it would apply to a workplace if that workplace environment wasn't listed in one of the exemptions, is that correct? So far. But we've got further discussion on that. So I know what you're referring to and no, I will tell you unequivocally, unequivocally, I'm not going to say that that applies to, I'm going to look at the county's guidance on this. It says Denton County is requesting businesses and organizations to follow best practices for social distancing to include as attached. So the restaurants probably could have been captured under that recommendation because it says businesses. So no, I'm not for this city council prohibiting places of manufacturing here in this community, places that are open distribution centers who employ more people than that to all of a sudden start laying people off. I'm going to give the businesses, if they can't work, council member Armature, that's a whole different, I mean, anyway, so we need to make sure we address that. So I'm for, I think this will address the restaurant issue where it says Denton County is requesting businesses and organizations to follow best practices for social distancing to include as attached. If that were reflected in ours, and that covers the queuing issue, it covers in the issue of restaurants, you know, let's make sure that you might reduce your capacity of your occupancy for its businesses who might have 100 workers or 150 workers in there asking them please take into consideration the social distancing requirements and best practices in order to continue to facilitate your business. I don't, I mean, I've not heard any ordinance or declaration that has been passed by anybody in this area saying that it applies to all places of employment. Nobody. >> She seemed to be saying it didn't, doesn't make a difference that it might apply anyway. >> No, no, it only applies if we make sure we don't have an unintended consequence in this language. And I'm saying we put in, because this isn't an approved set of languages yet, that might be what you want, but that's not necessarily what I've heard from this council. So what I'm saying is, in order to avoid that unintended consequence, that we put a sentence in this as well that says Denton County is requesting businesses and organizations to follow best practices for social distances to include as attached. Now if us giving guidance on over 100, if we're saying that that's going to be inconsistent with that message, then we're going to have to define more precisely what we mean by gatherings. Because I mean, that's a good point. If we don't change it, then we're saying anything that has 100 people in it, then therefore, Councilmember Davis. >> So I think specifically to that last point, I think the exceptions that we have in there which look like they track what Dallas did, I think those exceptions to community gatherings that we've already talked about, I think those do the job. I really like what you've just suggested about, because that takes into account the queuing thing we've been talking about, it takes into account some of the other things we're very concerned about, the Denton County social distancing recommendations. And the second reason I like it, not just because it makes good sense for the way we draft an ordinance, it comes from the professionals, it comes from the people who have the expertise and the medical evidence to tell us what we should be doing. We do not have a city health officer like we have Dr. Richardson at the county level. This is what he suggested to his County Commissioner's Court, and I think adopting it would be very prudent. >> Well, but my only question is, if we look at the ordinance as proposed saying that for the purposes of this order, we've got to prohibit 100 people from gathering, are we still using the definition of community gathering for that? >> That's what I understood from our earlier conversation. >> Well, within those exceptions to community gathering, I really don't see businesses like manufacturing businesses, distribution businesses, so we've got to figure out how to also further define what is it we're exactly exempting or prohibiting 100 people from assembling around. That to me is, because you don't want to have an unintended consequence, and I think that's why the county has theirs the way it is, and that is, hey, we don't want there to be over 50 people, we're recommending it, we're not prohibiting it, and oh, by the way, businesses and organizations, please follow best practices of social distancing to include as attached. Because if this council wants to tell the business community, if you have over 100 employees, that you needed any one particular time to complete your task and to run your business, we are prohibiting you from doing that. If they have to be on the ground, in the building, doing that work, and we're saying we're prohibiting you from doing that, there's not enough money in this city, in this state, if that were to be adopted nationwide, to pull everybody out of what's going to happen. So I think we have to rely upon the businesses also to exercise good judgment. So we need to figure out that potential conflict, and I think we're just going to have to lean on staff a little bit. I think you understand what our principles are, at least the direction. I mean, not everybody's in agreement, but I think enough people are in agreement. Yes, Council Member Meltzer. Yeah, I think that piece is straightforwardly addressable by saying places of employment, and that's where you're saying encourage best practices. But for the other things, I think that's just so planned, just would not give enough... Your mic. Yep. Sorry. Do I have to go back to the beginning? Yeah. All right. So I think on that specific issue, I think it's very cleanly addressable by referring to places of employment, and there you can use that language of best practices and so on. But on the other points where people are sort of retreating from more prescriptive language, I just don't think you're helping enough. I think that if we lay some things out, people might do them. I think recommending... I mean, it's not very burdensome to say that you're recommending six feet spacing on queuing. I like the suggestion of... it doesn't have to report the ordinance, but if we can make a nice sign that's easily displayed, I think maybe they'll do it, and you'll save some people from being ill or worse. And then... If we were else, that's gone. I'm still for the queuing. I don't know what you're... I don't know what... Well, I think the sort of drift in the last 10 minutes was, yeah, don't say about the queuing. Just say follow best practices. No, I think I said that as far as queuing goes, you can mention that anyone who has queuing customers need to follow... But why don't we be explicit, like, you know, say what those practices are, that it's six feet. I don't think we need to be afraid to say that. Well, I think that's best practices for social distancing pursuant to the CDC. Well, if you back off from spelling it out, it's not going to... Are you saying it should be a recommendation or an order? Well, I think we already... I'm queuing. I'm realistic enough about the sentiment of the body to recognize that it's going to go... Okay, so you're saying... I'm just saying spell it out. Yeah, recommend in queuing that you have a six foot distance. Yes, yes. And including using... Yeah, okay. I don't want to beat the dead horse. No, no. Okay. All right. Real quick, and then we're going to move on. Yes. I think... And then we'll make sure that y'all have... Wait, I'm sorry. We're going to move on to the next one. Yeah. I personally... I think in all likelihood, they're probably going to be sort of doing this anyway, but I have two thoughts on that. One is I like the idea of having the occupancy limit to... That's an actual bright line thing for the duration of the emergency that we're having their occupancy permitted, and that's to facilitate that social distancing. Two, I'd be interested if we happen to have the data, do we know from other communities, like even in other parts of the world, when one set of protocols was followed, what was the shape of the hump? When the other set of protocols, what was the shape of the hump? I mean, really, that's what we ought to be doing if we have that data. I don't know if we have it. Well, I don't think we have that data. I mean, I think that's... So what I'm hearing you say is what you want is to address specifically dining in restaurants that people can still dine in, but they have to only allow half of what their certificate of occupancy permit allows, according to the fire marshal, how much the full occupancy is allowed. Yes, that's what I'm recommending. I think that'll kind of be instructive and facilitate the good practices. Okay. Council Member Davis. Very briefly, I think we were talking about places of employment, specifically we're worried about places where more than 100 people could work. I think that's pretty clearly addressed in our definition of community gathering. The definition of community gathering is pretty clearly an event or convening and an auditorium or a stadium, and then we go into the exceptions where we talk about offices that are an office tower that's carved up into separate spaces and that kind of stuff. If there's somehow a place of work, a factory floor or something like that, that somehow falls inside this definition by accident, even though we specifically list out conference centers and meeting halls and all these kind of places that we're really trying to address, then it becomes a question of enforcement. And at that point, there's some discretion on behalf of the city to write the citation or not, the city prosecutor to pursue the citation or not. I don't really think that we have an employer in the city that is going to fall inside of this definition, even by accident, and if I'm wrong, I think we don't necessarily have to pursue that enforcement. I just think that's sufficient as it is to carve out those employers that we might be worried about. Can I tell you why I might struggle with that? Because the very end of that sentence says, "or any other confined space." So I mean, when you talk about a confined space, if you have a 250,000 square foot industrial warehouse, which is literally one big box, now, because you have some language in there too about people being -- I would -- if we need to be -- I would rather be more clear and more specific to give some guidance than think that we're going to have to rely upon interpretation for something to fall within. So I don't have a problem with somehow working in those places of employment just -- it may be overkill, but at least it's something that provides some pretty clear direction. Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah. I don't know, and I agree with you. I want to -- and the reason -- I think your point's valid, but I want to distance from what has been proposed here, and because that's -- it's been clearly stipulated that that's out of our jurisdiction, but yet it still is disseminated as though it's a thing, which then creates not panic, but it creates concern. And so if there's a way -- I don't know, Mayor, if there's a way to achieve what you've touched on by saying things that fall under the city's purview or in our jurisdiction or stipulating that private businesses to that extent are not out of our jurisdiction, I don't know somehow that -- but we do -- we have to have something that says we're not going to take these radical actions that have been proposed by some because it's out of our purview, and it quite frankly harms those, because the alternative is exactly what the mayor laid out. If those go in place, people get laid off. I mean, it's just -- it's the business side of the business that somehow has not been grasped, and that's okay. That's not a job to educate people in business, but the fact of the matter is we need some language in their own businesses. I don't know if it's to stipulate what's in our purview or to add language that addresses that. I'll yield to what the majority thinks. Well, and I appreciate that. I think -- I think what will say the best statement about what you're describing is the ordinance that we pass. I think what's in there is what's in there, and what's not in there is what's not in there. And so I don't know -- I would hesitate to put some kind of language in there saying we can't do this, this, and this. I mean, what we can do is what we're passing. That to me is what's important. Somebody's mic wasn't on. It's not mine. Was your mic on? It's been on for a while. It may be stuck. Oh, okay. Or they're really upset. Or maybe I'm turning my head. Maybe I've turned my head where you can't hear me. Councilmember Armitage. I just have a question. I'm genuinely curious for any of my colleagues who don't want to see workers covered in this, why -- I'm curious to know in weighing the risks, the pros and cons of having people so close together for such a period of time and then disseminating out in the public versus a station of production for, say, three weeks, if we could provide protection as far as jobs go to have it, you know, citywide paid time off for those who don't have it, if it would not be a matter of layoffs, which are happening anyway, by the way, I'm sure you've all heard that people are getting laid off anyway. So why is it more important to protect the production than to protect the workers and to mitigate the spread of the virus? And maybe I'm posing that unfairly, but I'd just be curious if anyone would like to comment on that. Mayor Pro Tem. Well, I just want to clarify that I'm not going to speak to that because it's business 101. What I'm going to speak to is that no one here has advocated that we're against business. I think it's quite opposite. I think Councilmember Davis has pointed out and many people have echoed, the businesses are gone further than the city is advocating for. So the businesses have worked diligent to take care of their employees, lucky lose, it has closed, and they're paying their employees. And so the businesses are doing more individually than the city can. And so I just distance from that statement that we're not concerned about workers. We're applauding the business owners and we're advocating for the workers where we can. But it's not to make it's not to make outlandish claims that somehow the city where we're looking at our budget for next year somehow has a mountain of money to then supplement all these wild things. And so I just want to make sure I'm on record is saying as a leader on this body that has to take care of our taxpayer dollars. We're having to make tough decisions looking in the next year because we financially have to be prudent and to then take on unknown amounts of additional cost is not prudent for taxpayers. It's going to be and so that's I just want to distance from that statement to say that I this body is not concerned about workers. We are. We've talked about it several times and that is a mischaracterization and I think it needed to be addressed. Okay I want to also propose maybe a slight modification of one of them where it says all city of Denton utility non-payment shutoffs for residential customers are suspended during the pendency of this order. I would like to just include commercial as well because we have some small businesses that may run into that situation instead of trying to define small businesses. I just think we need you to say during the time limit of this order there will be no utility cutoffs. Now that doesn't mean your bill is not going to accrue and that doesn't mean when this order is expired that there's not going to be a payment plan attempted but you know these aren't forgiveness. This isn't abating. This isn't free utilities. It's not anything like that but it's just trying to treat everybody fairly across the spectrum. All right we're moving on from this. You've got some direction so if you could just get it back to us and we'll have to read through it to make sure it sort of reflects. We may have some of this conversation again but I appreciate your patience in this regard. Thank you. Okay and one thing just to make sure Councilmember Meltzer mentioned the restaurant occupancy about half for dine-in. I'm okay with that to limit it to half of the the but I just want to see where everybody else is. I mean Councilmember Marker. So obviously I've come out saying I don't think that's responsible. However I do you know as a second choice I liked the option that Councilmember Ryan mentioned earlier about I don't think it was particular just to restaurants but about looking both at occupancy or density. I forget how you worded it but I think those two factors I think to me that sounded cleaner. Councilmember Ryan what are your thoughts? I'm fine with 50% I think they're gonna find that that's what they're already doing and just spread it out take some tables out. Yeah okay. All right. Councilmember Davis. I agree that Councilmember Ryan hit right on the head. They're not at 50% occupancy right now. So yeah so for restaurants and bars that it's limited to 50% of their occupancy pursuant to their either certificate of occupancy or the fire marshal designation of how many people can be in there. Is that a recommendation or requirement? Well I'd make that a requirement okay. Again we're not going to enforce that it's a it's a it's a recommendation we're not going to go into Chuy's and count how many people they have there check their certificate and write a ticket in this point of time. Councilmember Davis. I agree with that but having this in place means if it's necessary and a medical professional tells us it's necessary at some future date we have the ordinance language already available to turn it into a prohibition. So so you're saying I'm saying recommendation today okay yes all right yeah recommendation okay prohibition prohibition the only reason I'm going with recommendation is because we're able to make that change I think we're going to have a placeholder on the 7th of April to discuss this and again I really I would like to think that our business owners are just as concerned about their workers and about their customers as we're trying to be here and I truly believe that and I believe they want to do what's right by their customers and by their employees as well. I mean government doesn't necessarily always have to have a heavy hammer if it needs a heavy hammer you can employ it but I just don't know if at this moment you need that now if you have a lot of non-compliance in a week or two guess what you can change that real quick so so the recommendation on that half and at least that gives them some guidance in that regard. Okay that wraps that up we'll move on to our next agenda item which is and you know what let's take five dinners ready so let's go ahead and grab something to eat and then we'll come back with agenda item we might can pull through a couple of these we still got closed session so we'll go through D and then we'll we'll go to closed session. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on March the 17th 2020 it is 10 after 5 before we go on to agenda item D we're going to go back to the consent are there any there were no oh questions of clarification if we could if there's questions for clarification on the agenda outside of maybe the you know public hearing or something let's because we want to be able to release staff so are there any questions of clarification on any of the consent agenda items yes councilmember Armitage. So I had several there were three as I think UVW seemed to possibly apply to events that might not be allowed to happen under this ordinance so under what an emergency declaration but I'm not sure so I just wanted to inquire about that say that one more time so UV and W UV and W on consent I think I've got that that's what I wrote in my notes it's about I think it was about like license to distribute it was about alcohol license it at events and I don't know I was I was honestly just wondering if there's if there's any conflict between that and just past or if it's okay I'm fine not worrying about that I just the question I had so again Laura Barron's assistant director for parks and recreation obviously we had several special events that were already on the agenda for your consideration the request for all three of them are for the sale of alcohol given you know but they were placed on the agenda prior to the situation that we're in now so given those circumstances whether or not those those events will move forward will depend on the action that's taken this evening by council in terms of what those parameters are for events and then all also the date restriction on that so again the which what you have before you is is the approval for a request on the sale of alcohol for some events that are scheduled for mid-april okay awesome and so that's fine with me I just wanted wanted to know you know we're sending him sending a mixed message or if there was any some legal catch that if there's not I'm fine and then for item M I think that's also is that also parks about graffiti abatement yes so I I wanted to ask for that to be removed removed and I wanted to to propose that is it that's for a $75,000 contract for graffiti abatement that we look into employing local artists to who are struggling right now in the coronavirus new economy to do graffiti abatement I was wondering if we could we could do that yes yep yep and if staff had any comment on on that if that's possible because as I understand we haven't that that would be possible well you're just pulling it for now and so we'll have a staff presentation at that okay if that was one to comment now though I'd be curious but all right any other clarifications on yes Council Mayor Pro Tem sorry no problem so item I I just had a quick question it's the so provider clause and I wanted to make sure just confirm that it meets the updated approach to that I know the city auditor's office had given given us some guidance on that and wanted to make sure it was applied to this item nope no presentation needed just want to make sure yes it would and it's works hand in hand with the recent radio upgrade that you approved okay thank you okay Paul is this still where you know you'll be open to discussing sort of yes yeah we are we through with the clarifications of anything on the consent or any others besides maybe the public hearing for sure okay all right Mr. Mayor is that what you needed yes it is okay all right okay yes so yeah clarification or a comment on an agenda item yeah we're sort of on you know the agenda for tonight in my opinion we should be setting an example for the public that and we have the capacity permitted and I suspect coming soon to be able to include the public electronically with 72 hours notice before meeting about how we're going to proceed I'd be personally totally fine with adding a meeting back on March 31st where we don't have one on the calendar now it's a fifth Tuesday so we don't lose overall you know productivity but I really feel that the item we just covered we needed to cover it's an emergency declaration we needed to deal with extending that I would agree that we need to then have the vote on that really pretty much anything else unless I hear you know some compelling reason why something is super time sensitive I'd be inclined to you know push off I mean we could do the closed agenda items or it doesn't involve the public although I also have a concern that I think just by having the meeting now without having you know created that ability to do it electronically we've got members who may feel that they're sort of doing their duty to not self quarantine when they might otherwise choose to and I really don't think we should be creating that pressure so you know really my preference would be we cover the vote on the item that we just reviewed and I would postpone the rest until we have the ability to do it electronically and safely I agree I was going to make the same recommendation I feel very strongly about that well said anybody else that's when excuse me councilman I comment only to say this that I appreciate very much and respect the sentiment that's been raised it's been raised in other quarters as well and I appreciate that I to your point about setting an example though the city's business must go on and must continue if there's anyone who must meet it's us it's the county commissioners it's the team that the state has in place at an executive level and to your point about the electronic involvement of the community that's not that's not fully baked we don't quite know yet other than what we already have the live stream that we already have we don't yet know that we're going to be able to provide that interactive experience like we do with public hearings so that may very well be the case I agree with you we have the availability of an additional fifth Tuesday if we need to add that meeting in I'm going to be available that Tuesday but for today's purposes I think the city's business has to continue we have to soldier on and do our job to spare I'd like to hear from the city manager whether that option is baked not baked realistic you know a threat to our productivity a boon to our productivity I think the idea is is I don't know if it's baked or not baked but we're definitely looking into the possibility of the telephone town hall concept the video conferencing we know is a possibility I have no idea at this point how long it's going to take us to get that in place and what the lead time is so I can't sit here and make that commitment to you it'll be ready by March 31st or April 7th yet we just won't know for a few days I remember you know very recently being with this very body and a lot of members here were very concerned that public hearings be adequate and that people you know who need to be heard are here to be heard and the public now is being told by the President United States the governor and everybody on down to avoid public gatherings so I think if we want to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy we should move in the direction of facilitating safe public hearings and not you know trying to push things through when people are being told not to come because I don't understand maybe someone can clarify for me everything I've heard says reasonable accommodations which we've made this building's been cleansed we have testing at the door we have a question at the door we have facility for people to be staged so we're there's you can point to no CDC guideline currently that we're not in line with but yet you would purport that we are out of order or not observing the recommendations and so understanding we're observing the recommendations I would then put it back on you to give me a compelling reason that there's no medical reason there's no guidance that speaks against the accommodations we've made so I don't I don't understand it's so I don't understand what body what what guidance you're getting from what authority that stipulates that the accommodations we've made are not in line with everyone's requirements expectations ask recommendations if I may the public is being told not to go to public meetings everything you've described is at the door now it may be that the public would consider that palatable and comforting and encouraging but they weren't told 72 hours before the meeting everything else we do about notifications done 72 hours before if people were here and an issue occurred where let's say there's too many people to fit in a room and we made an accommodation that's different but people being told not to go to gatherings so the fact that there's something at the door is all well and good maybe if they if they were told 72 hours in advance they were told maybe 24 hours so you know let's like are we serious about about being fair to the public in public hearings or not you know do we care about that issue or not do we only care about it for some issues and not for other issues you know I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that there's this feeling that we must rush through things that are not time-sensitive no one said that I mean to respond and can you direct me to who told people not to come to the meeting the president of the United States not to go to gatherings of ten or more have you been watching the news okay all right well okay so no I've been had an opportunity you did you agree well there's been a back and forth I would like to respond real quickly because we're gonna move on we're running out of time go I'm not saying it's a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act but the spirit of the Texas Open Meetings Act which is in the spirit of democracy is has to do with consistency okay we want to be as consistent as possible as open as consistently open as possible I think that this mixed message that we're sending which absolutely as councilmember Meltzer mentioned is following with federal guidelines ten or more we've got it now exactly ten in this room but at alternate times we had 11 from 11 to 13 so it looks really bad not saying it's a violation but I think it's against the spirit of the Texas Open Meetings Act and democracy when we are holding public hearings on an unprecedented private taxing district unprecedented for Denton anyway this is huge it's extremely controversial and when the public if they're thinking of their health they're gonna stay home if they're thinking about their about taxes about the city you know what's gonna happen down the line then they will come I don't want them to have to make that decision I don't think they should have to so I will not I cannot in good conscience attend even take part in that discussion not because I think it's illegal but I think it is just so against the spirit of democracy and will really damage public trust and I don't know if councilmember Meltzer would want to do the same but you know if he would then there wouldn't be a quorum so well first and I have a question no no so I just want to make sure I'm on record as saying that same councilmember that advocated her seat so that she did not hear any discussion from any public official from any citizen that attended a specific a meeting is then telling this body how to then manage talking to people and hearing the public this same I did that in protest well I'm just saying there were there were people there were people that were here to speak to the council that did not get the full body because what this individual decided to advocate her seat in protest and so then that same person is telling me let's make it all right so each councilmember gets to follow their own conscience I think that it's been somewhat of a misrepresentation of facts here however I want to say councilmember Armitage when you talk about following the spirit of Texas Open Meetings and I get an email chain from councilmember Briggs asking to postpone the public hearings that you advocated for to the city manager and you copied councilmember Briggs and councilmember Meltzer on that email you know what do you know that the Texas Open Meetings Act says also that if you know it says or if you're doing something to circumvent the Texas Open Meetings Act but the point is councilmember Armitage so what we had here was for councilmembers that were in deliberation so that was a violation so I would really highly encourage you to not copy councilmembers when you're simply making a statement or a question or request to the city manager you copy councilmember Briggs you copy councilmember Meltzer councilmember Briggs sent me an email you don't understand it's called a rolling form councilmember Armitage we're talking about okay okay fine I will stop and so you can file a complaint with the I'm just I'm not pointing that out to file a complaint per se I'm saying you're here talking about the spirit of open meetings saying that we don't have a violation here and I'm just simply pointing out to you that we may have had a violation about three days ago that's the only reason I'm bringing that up all right it was not about a posted agenda item it was not about it it was about the way that we're not in our meetings no that's that's that's inaccurate I'll let you have the last word that's inaccurate it's just inaccurate so when we talk about consistency and when we councilmember Meltzer you brought up that the public hearing I believe you're referring to the gas well setback that's a whole different set of facts those facts those people were there because they did not receive notice at our first public hearing regarding that they did not and they weren't necessarily legally required to but we as a body decided to do a motion for reconsideration so the agenda item has been properly posted it's been posted since Friday the citizens can come they're able to watch as we've done on many occasions to provide video feeds as we did in that same hearing that you referenced downstairs they're able to provide video feeds here we have a microphone set up here for anybody that wants to come speak to us that can come speak to us so I don't see how we're doing anything different now the process may be a little different it may be that we're in a little bit different configuration but it's wholly consistent with our rules of procedure for public hearings as we have practiced as well in the past we've never been under this state of emergency well people are advised not to go well first of all to public gatherings no no well let's make sure we understand what we're talking about I've heard that the president said you shouldn't gather of ten well you just advocated to put the CDC standard in our in our in our emergency declaration well that standard that standard right now on their website is 250 arguably their standard is 50 we just passed 50 and that's in a single space or we're going to pass we haven't passed it yet that's in a single space so we could talk about this all night as from what I've heard from the other council members we're moving forward with the meeting as posted because the public has an opportunity to come speak to us in fact I believe we also allowed email questions people could send us their comments via email as well as I've received some comments from some people and from a from council member that I've relayed those questions on so would it would it hurt anything if people had 72 hours notice of that of that possibility of doing that what is the rush well first of all I don't know if there's a rush we've been working on some of these agenda items not all what I'm hearing you say is you cancel the whole rest of the meeting except for the closed items that's what I'm hearing you say yeah and and Adam eating I mean I don't think it changes our overall productivity at all and there is no rush the public notice I don't think anybody's rushing anything you y'all may be advocating to postpone it for another two weeks and if someone's saying no we want to move forward with it you're automatically assuming and you're labeling it as a rush that's your that's your that's your right to do it that's your right to label it that way absolutely I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tell you you're right or wrong that's your choice to label it that way I choose to not label it that way so we're going to are there any other questions of clarification on the agenda I mean I haven't heard from everybody here so the rest of the council is there anybody else who wants to postpone the rest of the council meeting except for the closed session items for this evening okay all right so then then we'll move forward all right okay then we'll move on to agenda item D thank you mayor council is that the receive report whole discussion give staff direction regarding the development services center building with a focus on facade public spaces sustainability and budgetary considerations yes sir thank you I'll run through this as rapidly as I can as you're familiar with the property it is located at 401 North Elm Street this is the existing building as it stands this was a conceptual drawing that you had seen once upon a time when we were looking at acquiring the property this was a just a what the budgeted conceptual elevation is this is an enhanced elevation this elevation provides for greater glazing more thermal efficiency a different look to the building and as we talk about how we want to ensure that we have a building that's welcoming to our citizens as well as prospective business owners it really is that a higher design of sustainability as well as that that says that we're world-class just to kind of give you those images in some sort of a context the existing building as it was used that budgeted conceptual drawing as well as this drawing that we're showing to be the enhanced version of that or where it is that we'd have improved features the conceptual floor plan just kind of gives you an idea that we were got a general lobby reception area some what would be our our classrooms as well as meeting rooms and then kind of our work groups this was again just the early renderings and we're working on those concept plans currently what we really need to talk about is the unfunding options one is that of the exterior facade so trying to make an improved both in some of the thermal elements to it as well as is coating the building what we have on the building now is is just a precast wall we would be ultimately power washing that space maybe painting every other every other panel so if you look at that center rendering that would give you an idea of pretty much what we'd be looking at versus cladding that building as well as adding additional foam with thermal resistance we estimate to do several walls which would be the forward-facing would be about 750,000 or at least having the ability to look at that these renderings or drawings or designs would come back before this this council it really is we're at the design phase where we need to be able to include this as we're doing the design work because we're talking about the glazing the opportunity increase glazing and the difference in the design another component to this is the lobby and welcoming area so the public spaces our conference rooms in the lobby whether it's going to be a standard city building or if we want to have something that's a little bit more robust so we add some architectural features those architectural features may be some of the lighting where we might do something that's a little different than the traditional lay down ceiling elevating that space and again more of a welcoming as we have any number of developers or business owners that are prospective clients coming to the city that we're saying hey this is Denton we're world-class but but doing that we would take all of our public spaces and we think that would be an additional seventy five thousand dollars additionally council had asked us to look at some sustainability and energy conservation components to this this building and I'm going to run through those rather quickly the HVAC equipment upgrades would take us what from what we have budgeted which is good to a standpoint of being better or best so we've approximated those costs would be at about two hundred and fifty to five hundred thousand dollars in addition to what we have budgeted ultimately there would be payback on these units it really is just improving the types of units and giving options to the development community or the develop the design professionals as we go through this and it's important that we have our understanding of what we want to do with that now another would be pervious paving which is approximately 1.2 million dollars there is not necessarily a return on investment for that it is that we're doing something that's a little bit more sustainable that previous paving works really well and in some areas for us what we'd have to do is ultimately pipe underneath that and put it into our storm sewer but it wouldn't run over ground and real quick question on that because I know there's a requirement businesses have a requirement commercial developments that so much of their parking is allowed to be non-pervious but then anything above and beyond that is required to be pervious I think that's my understanding there's a couple elements that really we're looking at ice swim so that we're just at least protecting and that's true in some instances yes so does that mean there's not a code on that or well if we're over a maximum we can increase that maximum in certain instances with purpose yes yes yes yes yes that's I appreciate that clarification so in this particular instance the parking that's required that could be pervious that goes up to that max on this project so you're saying making the whole thing pervious correct we have already budgeted for the parking lot at 1.9 million dollars this would be an additional 1.2 million to make the entirety of the parking lot pervious and and so let's say if we didn't approve this but yet you went over your parking is the entire parking standard for that building right now under the maximum where you wouldn't have to put in any pervious or are you none of the parking is being designed as pervious paving now we could come back we could come back to council with a different design that might incorporate some elements no no I guess I'm sorry I'm not being very clear so let me try to think through this so given the space of the building there's a certain amount of parking places that are allowed to be pervious let's say it was a commercial building going it's commercial use private commercial use there's so how many spots are there currently do you know I think that the existing was at 174 okay okay so if given our space if we were to apply our parking codes and regulations to our current space that we're developing what is the maximum parking pervious parking that could be there based upon our code do you know it I don't know specifically but we're going to be right at them at the max on both instances of this meaning that we're going to have probably about 150 employees in there and we're gonna have about 50 fleet vehicles so right but what I'm saying is is that of the hundred and seventy-four spaces how much of those are required to I mean you said that there's a maximum parking within a commercial development before you have to go to pervious correct if you exceed if you exceed the maximum I don't know on this specific okay that's what I'm trying to understand is what's the mac at maximum parking there because if if we're going to have 50 pervious spots anyway that would be some good information to know we didn't we didn't budget for any pervious right which means that you're probably under that max for that parking or otherwise you would have had to correct all right okay all right thanks sorry you bet another component to that was offer of solar so parking canopies with solar array was approximately 2.3 million dollars and and just speaking of the the return on that ultimately the solar those panels typically have about a 10-year life and ultimately we'd have to be replaced which would be close to that same cost so again we wouldn't be able to power the building with this amount of solar we would be able to augment some of the systems within that and not necessarily a huge benefit to the city but again from a sustainability standpoint offering to council and then our third was that of geothermal heat pumps geothermal does have a return on investment there is a risk with that ultimately with geothermal if if that fails it's just a failed system and you have nothing so it can have its benefit but it does come with great real we're not necessarily advocating for we think that we get a better bang for the buck if we were to work through the HVAC upgrades and ultimately that 250 to 500 thousand dollar number where we improve the equipment that we have in place and that's really the basis for that for the conversation the biggest pieces in this and some of this really is to give you that whole picture we can do more detailed estimates or calculations if council wishes to proceed but it was trying to get this the the entirety of what it is that we would be looking at in a very crude fashion meaning on pervious parking parking canopies and the geothermal but we do definitely need the discussion and a decision on the direction that we need for the exterior facade the welcoming space as well as the HVAC equipment upgrades the geothermal would ultimately set us back because we'd have to put the design and before we could put the parking lot in we would have to put the geothermal in. Can you speak to the money for all these unfunded options where would it be coming from? We have about four hundred thousand dollars in cash that we had planned for some other parking lot work that we can redirect immediately the balance of it we all have to go through other capital projects or potentially issue a little bit more COs so we'd probably counsel you to not go too much over the seven fifty to a million dollars if you wanted to add something to the building you know our initial impression was that the exterior facade work and the lobby work were probably the highest on your on your list at this point but we've been able to find some additional dollars to bring some of the costs down but right now we've got about four hundred thousand towards these. And so so you had mentioned earlier that so there I know there are a number of other capital projects and buildings that have been canceled but not this one. Right. Can you can you can you speak to why that is? Certainly there's a couple reasons first one is that we're trying to we've got to give about a year's head notice to break our current lease out of the building development services is currently in this facility is also crucial to us from a couple different paths could be needed to help us a little bit with the police department move in the logistics and we're also moving some folks out of other parts of City Hall East for instance and possibly the service center over this building as well so it's a key building right now in terms of creating a domino effect for two or three other two or three of our other buildings that are under construction. So you know we just need to be able to finalize the design and it's going to result in a much different staffing lineup and where we are currently. So it'll be able to help space out staff more putting out I'm picturing the police station on Hickory. Yeah yeah yeah no that's good in some areas the idea long term is that that will turn more into a justice center with police courts that sort of thing as we're continuing to find other sites to move the departments in there for instance parks CIS we're looking at relocating out of that facility so police can take over a little bit more as we grow so yeah it's a real it's a strategic building for us from that regard as we continue to add population. Okay and thank you and you can probably tell from my questions that I'm weighing you know in this new time with this new coronavirus economy coronavirus concerns every decision I make about spending I'll be thinking about because money doesn't go on trees is this right you know should we do this now because I imagine we all are and yeah so you know if you could speak to whether if so say and what did you say you recommend the cap would be the seven I wouldn't exceed 750 to a million without it having a super good we can continue coming through the budget looking for the cash for this but we just need to know what to design to yeah and so after that you feel like we'd have to go to CEOs I do rates are extremely low but I really don't want to be taking on any more in depth than we need to right now yeah yeah so do you have direction no well I had a just just another question because I'm just trying to figure this out for myself I'm still not quite quite I'm gonna go to you while you're deliberating I'm gonna go to Councilmember Davis okay I just want I just want to ask well let him get his questions in so that he can think and then we'll come back to you Councilmember Davis thank you is it possible to separate out those portions of the exterior facade upgrade that are about you mentioned thermal upgrades and improving the overall quality of the building and the bones of the structure and those that are more aesthetic maybe for a good purpose but more aesthetic and I'll take how we're going with this and why I ask is I'm a little reluctant to do the aesthetic upgrades if they're not somehow tied to you know this is adjacent to historic area this is a if it's just kind of putting forth a best foot forward and kind of a business-to-business way I'm a little unpersuaded by that creating a world-class building because we want developers to know we're world-class I see the I see the reasoning behind that but if we're having to dip into CEOs and swipe the credit card to do that I'm a little unpersuaded so can you kind of break out for us what parts of that facade 750 are thermal upgrades or improvements to the overall building and which parts are more aesthetic I don't know that I can give you too many specific specifics we were we were really working with some linear footage but I will tell you that it does upgrade the glass so a part of that is is that it increases the the thermal envelope so increasing the density of the foam really by two so that would be doubling that it also has some components that's going to allow more natural light into the space so it was elevating that lobby and treating that differently so that you kind of get into that aesthetic but there's also some some elements where it is that that glazing is going to be better than everything that we have done to date or by budget is to meet the minimum standard so the bit the building as it is we can construct it as it is and meet the minimum standard these improvements provide energy efficiency as well as an aesthetic component so I don't know that I can break that out per se but we can show you probably more as we come back with what those renderings would look like rather than the conceptual drawings we have today if that helps it helps thank you. Councilman Meltzer and then Councilman Warrantor I had a follow-up yeah on the individual items under sustainability and energy conservation do we have any kind of a payback for each of them? No the geothermal we can provide that we weren't we weren't getting too deep into this we're moving very rapidly because we need to keep the police department moving rapidly. Well I can see where I'm going obviously if there's a payback that's very different than just extra money. The previous parking does not provide a payback the solar array will not provide the payback it provides a benefit but it's not going to pay for itself so it's not the geothermal could come close but there's a greater risk with doing that because again if it fails then you've lost that you can't go back in and put the geothermal back in and you're going to pull up a parking lot to do it so that that's where those pieces lie. What about the HVAC equipment upgrades? That one's relatively simple so it's increasing this year it's just going to be more efficient equipment costs a little more money but but but you get to pay back on that absolutely you do. Thank you. Councilmember Dr. I'm just going to ask if just following along on those questions with for the City Manager Councilmember Davis addressed some of it but you know if you could if you would feel comfortable kind of speaking to making a case for why at this time given how limited money is and that we might need in fact in my opinion we would definitely need to have a significant reserve of cash on hand in case there's an overflow in hospitals and all of the scenarios that we've seen play out you know nationwide can you make the case for that that we could do this now and still have cash on hand to be prepared for a situation like that? Oh remember you've already issued the COs for this project this is the homework you asked us to bring back to you we've got a $450,000 a year commitment we're trying to get out of with the old DATCU building and so the quicker we can get this building up and standing get a police department running the quicker we can eliminate that $450,000 a year expense so it's really not an option of whether we need to move forward it's just which of these options you want to add to it. I would suggest at a minimum the lobby and welcoming area upgrades take place I think Scott's right with the HVAC equipment upgrades it's going to make some quite a bit of sense and quite frankly the exterior facades I'm ambivalent on it it really gets down to you know of the three that's probably where I would put that last given the dollars but so that's kind of where we're standing at this point we can balance this budget do some minimal exterior facade improvements I don't know that it needs to be to this extent of those three. Got it and also just for the record thank you for presenting that so well for me personally you know unfortunately I don't support any of these just for right now given this new situation that didn't exist when or we weren't aware of how much a threat that it was at the time when we voted to go ahead with the project. Thank you mayor. On the exterior facade is that a full wrap all the way around the building or is that just the two or three sides that are visible from the streets? That is the three sides would be the north south and east facing so okay not the back of the building. I can I think we could possibly get away with two sides or I would be more comfortable with a little bit less of a budget number maybe we can do almost that much but we will get some return from the additional insulation on it I'm fine with the HVAC upgrades and the lobby and welcoming area. And I might add and we've had those conversations come to you and this number has been reduced already the designers had come back with roughly about a million dollars we scaled that back and this is not necessarily spending the money this is that you're willing to design to this and if we have to peel this back we can so to your point of it being two sides versus three I think is absolutely fine and it doesn't mean that we couldn't come back and do some retrofitting to match after the fact or when we're a little less lean. Councilmember Meltzer. Should I fully get it I think I might you could maybe sort me out there's some part of the façade work that's functional that might have a payback and the more sort of aesthetic component of it could be something we do in some future time in a fat year. I think some some doing it by sides I don't know that we would be able to do it if we took IE the front elevation because then we start talking about glazing and then how we're treating the wall and then what we're doing with that I think anything's possible I guess I'll retract that I'll retract that and say anything's possible it would just cost more now is the time to do it when we're doing the windows and we're making those changes some of this is those elements of taking in an interior and trying to get more natural light into the space less less energy uses etc. So what's the you know the the lower number that just sort of has the functional elements of the façade improvement I mean ish. You know I guess if I if I go to if I go to Todd's rationale I don't know that I disagree with that where this could be the total of of you know if we looked at the HVAC the exterior façade and the welcoming area you're at a hundred and twenty yeah a million excuse me yeah a million two hundred fifty thousand three hundred twenty five if if we were to take the exterior façade down to five hundred thousand. The HVAC on the low end of that range sorry maybe the HVAC ends up on the low end of that range or sure well and again maybe if if we just cap all of this and say we want to make some improvements that don't exceed a million dollars but not necessarily to spend a million dollars again we'll be working with the design team to make sure that we're as frugal as we can be but try to get the best bang for the buck yeah I mean all of this would come back before council before we do this and I'm comfortable with that direction with the you know sort of added note of emphasizing the things that will increase efficiency and payback correct couple questions oh sorry somebody oh I'm sorry go ahead thank you no just I just pick up on that conversation yes I think that's that's prudent the the one million dollars I really would like to understand real quick though the previous parking that is downhill but have we done any looks at what that's going to do I mean it's been pavement already so I'm just curious is there any issues would run off currently that we're aware of I know we did some sidewalk repair I'm assuming there's some gutter repair yeah we would be rebuilding the entire to that that parking lot and the drainage for that so that's why it's a one point nine million dollar number today because of the improvements we have to make it would just cost if we changed it to pervious paving material it would just it would truly change what we're laying it would be a million two more so all it would do is just be pervious rather than any runoff got it okay and so that's appeal obviously I get it the the pricing changes but that's appealing to me because I think it adds value but also is there anything we can do for the parking companion canopies that may be pre-wiring something like that I really like that idea just because I look forward this is going to be a great location for citizens to park and if we had that well lit and then just if at a minimum those canopies powered that parking lot lighting so that you know people can enjoy that in the evenings and it's kind of self-sustaining that's appealing to me just from a usage for the for the building one and then two for the citizens at night but absent that those are just kind of my thoughts if there's a way to do that but I think that's all wrapped in my my recommendation would be the one million dollar cap and leave it to staff to to kind of find value and obviously there's value in HVAC I mean that's you know you you start getting efficient there and that really is a big number or can be a big number of savings so that's my recommendation million dollar not to exceed the staff and city manager can work with the design team and come back and in that way they're not boxed in. Okay SEER rating what's the original design SEER rating on the HVAC equipment and what is this upgrade going to? I will tell you it was the minimum code so we were going to the minimum 2015 international code. Is that 14 or is that 14 SEER? I don't want to I don't want to speak to that because we weren't necessarily talking in SEER okay so but because we were looking at this from a comm check standpoint the overall building design this would just be improving the equipment or the systems and depending on the type of systems that we elected to use so I would have to know more information about those because I've certainly gone from 14 to 16 or 17 SEER and once you get over certain SEER rating I've heard that you don't necessarily get and if you're doing installation upgrades on your exterior and if you're putting in energy efficient windows and things such as that it helps reduce the need for that hire so I'm okay with the million dollars I do think the facade whether it's one side or two sides I think it's important I mean you know we don't have to have something that looks you know like a Class A office building but I think it's important that you know we we present a building that to our customers if we're going to have the opportunity to and when you'll lease the DATQ building you're not going to put all that money into it so I think a million dollars and if you're going to come back and talk to us before then hopefully some of the circumstances and the uncertainty that we're facing today both just from a health perspective and also from a financial perspective we may have a little bit more clarity on where that's going and that will help us further define that decision but you know to say a million moving forward however before you start spending all that be sure to come back to us so we can reassess just like we're doing with some of these other items and to your point mayor that absolutely and why it is that this is kind of broken out the way that it is is you've got those variables if if if we didn't take an option of improving the exterior facade and some of the energy enhancements that we would benefit from then we might be spending more on the HVAC to try to compensate where it is that if we have a greater efficiency on the envelope then we may be able to reduce what that right what we're doing with the equipment so absolutely and all that would come forward okay all right so just just to recap mayor we're going to try to work with a million dollar budget we're going to we owe you answers on the the exterior facade i've heard several of you and where if we reduce that down where there could be some efficiencies and i guess the efficiency payback on the HVAC equipment upgrades is that correct and we're going to focus on the lobby yes okay we'll be back to you again and we have those answers for you all right so we are able to now on agenda item c which was talk about the board of ethics recommendations apparently there was a memo that went out uh on monday saying that the presenters scheduled to be here would not be able to make it and they asked for a postponement and i do know that there was one public speaker who had signed up and was going to be here but when they saw the discussion they decided to go ahead and and not attend because they thought is going to be put off so i think we just need to put that off as well i know in their letter they had said we could still hear it without their presentation based upon at least our backup but we need to we need to reschedule that just for the for the citizen who's going to speak and then you're saying we can on agenda item b we can put that off and the rest of them we can okay and we'll reschedule the holder report give staff direction on pending city council requests for yes okay all right okay well then that uh that covers our work session items we will now convene in closed session at 5 58 pm on march the 17th 2020 we're going to take one out of order we've got an attorney here on agenda item b so we're going to go ahead and hear uh agenda closed session agenda item b if everybody could turn your microphones off welcome everybody to this meeting of the denton city council it is 6 39 pm we do have a quorum i will call this meeting to order our first item on the agenda is our pledge allegiance to the us and texas flag if you're if you'll stand if you're able we'll start with the us flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god one liberty justice for all i'll get them to honor the texas flag pledge allegiance to be texas one state under god one indivisible all right our next item on the agenda is proclamations and presentations we have a sexual assault awareness month they're out there yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes we've got a proclamation for sexual assault awareness month and if you could just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what this proclamation represents thank you my name is cassandra berry and i am a community educator with denton county friends of the family and on behalf of denton county friends of the family under the leadership of executive director tony johnson simpson we appreciate the city of denton mayor chris watson city of counts city council members and all who supported the issuance of this proclamation the proclamation acknowledges april 1st as start by believing day and april as sexual assault awareness month this year 2020 denton county friends of the family celebrates 40 years of providing free services to those impacted by sexual abuse and domestic violence we recognize that what we do and continue to do is possible due to our collaboration with and support from the city of denton so we appreciate you sexual assault awareness month teal represents the color of sexual assault so that's my shirt and so we appreciate this proclamation and you're acknowledging the work that we do in ending and working toward the end of sexual assault thank you absolutely well the organization has done great work over the decades to really protect women and children and thank you so much for your work and your service and also for all of those who've come before you and sort of maintaining this legacy so it's with honor that i read this proclamation it's a proclamation by the mayor of the city of denton texas whereas april is sexual assault awareness month and is observed to draw attention to the prevalence of sexual violence in every community and the public health implications from this and whereas the city of denton texas share a critical concern for victims of sexual violence and a desire to support their needs for justice and healing and whereas in 2019 denton county friends of the family responded to a total of 221 calls to the survivors advocacy team a group dedicated to supporting victims by meeting and accompanying them to one of four denton county hospitals for a forensic exam or other medical treatment and whereas this recognition will help raise awareness for the need to further educate our community as well as find ways to prevent sexual assault and support survivors of these types of crimes now therefore i chris watts mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby declare and proclaim the month of april of april 2020 as sexual assault awareness month in the city of denton and encourage all citizens to learn more about the effects of sexual assault and how to support survivors thank you so much just making sure the speakers we do have okay that's was our agenda item two which is proclamations and presentations now we'll go for the presentation from members of the public uh we're not going to review the procedures because we're in this but i'm going to read them uh so instead of having the video i'll just read them the denton city council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members these rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum here's a brief review of the rules that apply to citizens reports citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report there will be an electronic bell but we'll have to keep the timekeeper up here instead of the bell uh when time has expired if the remarks are not concluded by that time the citizen will be asked to stop speaking if the citizen does not cease and a second request is made the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chambers citizens are asked not to approach the dais if a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council please let the city secretary know in advance for scheduled citizen reports the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report for non-scheduled open mic citizen reports the council may listen to citizen speak however because of no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance the texas open meeting act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place by the council or you can place a proposal the item on a future agenda or a statement of factual policy or a resuscitation of existing policy citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member please refrain from making abusive personal impertinent profane or slanderous remarks anyone who violates this council rule procedure may be immediately removed from the council chambers thank you in advance copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary so our next item on the agenda three we've reviewed the procedures for addressing the city council and then we have reports from members of the public we have the scheduled citizen reports pre-registration we have david zoltner regarding conflicts of interest and ethics codes i believe mr zoltner forwarded to the city secretary a email stating that he would not be in attendance simply because the item had been postponed in the work session that he was going to speak to so we will be rescheduling that and also notifying him of that schedule so he can come and speak we do have i believe one open mic make sure yes one open mic from mr paul le bonn i believe and we will invite him in as they okay i just want to make sure this door is unlocked so that we don't we just we just we just unlock it i mean that's what we're doing okay all right do you want to read the next speaker how are you doing sir good evening my dog maverick likes to make a grand entrance oh that's okay that's all right um what if you don't mind if you'll state your name and address and you have four minutes to address the council now this is open mic so we're unable to dialogue with you due to open meetings requirements and then uh we usually have a bell but what we've got is a clock here and if if you reach the four minutes i'll just sort of raise my hand or something but you just be able you'll have time to finish your remarks open mic can i do comedy if you so desire yes sir good evening my name is paul lebon i live at 24 20 east mckinney i've lived here for all of three months my first night in my bedroom in denton i felt like joe pesci and my cousin vinnie with the train whistles going on off all night long i lived in highland village for 25 years back in 2005 i came home from a business trip in miami with information from mike uh levitt the city manager on how to eliminate train whistles in the city today there are no train whistles being blown anywhere and from uh chinchapel from copper canyon all the way to i-35 um there's a there's a if you google quiet zone railroad crossings you get all this information and i've got the uh the rule here says the final rule provides an opportunity for localities nationwide to mitigate the effects of train horn noise by establishing quote unquote new quiet zones in a quiet zone railroads have been directed to cease the routine sounding their horns when approaching public highway rail grade crossings train horns may still be used in emergency situation locale here's where you go here's where you all come in localities desiring to establish a quiet zone are first required to mitigate the increased risk caused by the absence of a horn what that means basically if i can get my hands free here is now at a railroad crossing you have like one come down on the west side and one come down on the east side well you need to have two on each side and the train doesn't blow its whistle uh corinth did that with the uh the crossing right in front of the quick trip on swisher road so if you go out and buy some extra there's also there's a there's several versions you can you can buy or invest in i guess the arms that come down or you have the one that looks like a drawbridge that comes down the whole thing but that's more much more expensive but i think i mean god the train whistle in this city are incredible so if you certainly could make life better improve the quality of life around the community second item how am i doing on time you've got uh two minutes left oh good a little bit more i had a lifetime uh second item this town of flower mound has put on all their traffic islands they've put this plastic it's brown and reflective alternate alternate so when you're turning and coming out of a driveway turning an intersection it's got that reflector stuff it's screwed into this bolted into the the island i'd recommend you go to send your traffic people to go down and look at that um i have early onset alzheimer's and i'm not supposed to be out at night but when i am and i come home on loop 288 and when i turn onto east mckinney i always hit that island there because it's just black i just can't see it so if you had that kind of um reflection reflector there flower mound has it in every every every intersection every every island wherever that island is uh lastly last friday morning at 650 i got a flat tire on mayhill road in the pouring rain just before the railroad tracks and i got more one finger salutes than i had ever imagined in my life i limped to uh the quick trip and as i was walking to the quick trip this this vision this african-american vision in a long yellow trench coat came walking out and that trench components reflective coats it was officer chris riley he tended to me my dog he called the wrecker when the wrecker won 175 dollars that told me from there a discount tire officer riley said he'd give give us a ride home in his cruiser and he did and today's saint pastor's day i want to come go give him a gift to the police station but he's off today i'll bring him something tomorrow for a good irishman so thank you on behalf of me on behalf of me uh please extend my thanks to the uh to the officer in the police department thank you very much how am i doing for how am i doing for time you got uh about 20 seconds left okay i'll tell you a quick joke a quick joke alzheimer's joke we're finally we're finally mainstream they're telling jokes about us now okay doctor goes into the patient's room says i got two pieces of bad news for you he's okay what is he says you have prostate cancer in his terminal yes oh man that's terrible it's terrible he's what's the other piece of bad news you got um like me all you've got alzheimer's with short-term memory deficiency he said it could be worse and i said how can it be worse i got a prostate cancer it could be terminal thank you thank you is this broadcast around the city yes it's youtube and everything so did you have i mean yeah i have a statement of factual policy uh and it's a factual policy that uh this council has given direction to pursue quiet zones for some time now mitigated by the uh ability of the railroads to get it done yep you know respond back to us yep all right thank you very much talk to my talk to mike lever down in highland village he did it yep yep you bet thank you thank you all very much thank you you bet uh-huh his predecessor was brady and he had a bad uh that's what said paul's wingman uh okay all right we're going to go ahead and move on to our consent agenda we've got a consent agenda chair would entertain motion councilmember ryan move to approve except for item m all right we have a motion do we have a second councilmember davis second we have a motion and a second for approval of the consent agenda except for consent agenda item 4m which we will consider as an item for individual consideration so let's vote on the board please for the consent agenda except for agenda item m oh do what oh yeah yeah okay let's do it everybody approving the consent agenda pulling item m please signify by raising your right hand motion carries 6 to 0 we'll move on to agenda item m now as an item for individual consideration consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas a home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager execute contract with frank j. connor for graffiti abatement public private property are we going to have a presentation on this or councilmember armature you're the one that pulled this so so i i i don't necessarily need a presentation okay um but my question is and i i assume that the answer is if if i was to make a proposal to change this in any way so it wouldn't be a contract with this entity that would be outside off posting uh is my understanding that sorry exactly is that correct mr city attorney oh todd or somebody before we head down that path i just i'll ask danny to clarify but this item was you know properly bid uh awarded to it is proposed to be awarded to a small business owner in denton with a couple of employees so i want to be real careful that are we switching out one small business owner for another we can always set up another program down the road and encourage um you know local artists to do other types of projects but i just want to kind of be council be a little bit careful about the precedent we're setting here yeah and so and thank you for mentioning that yeah so i was going to also ask i i i didn't research the company i wanted to ask about if you could speak to if you could tell me about the company because as much in case any members of the the public are watching it in the work session when i asked to have this pulled it was because um is a seventy five thousand dollar or up to seventy five thousand dollar three-year contract for graffiti abatement and i thought that in this uh these unusual economic times uh could could that money be spent to have local artists do the same job uh so yeah if you could if you could characterize the company speak to yeah danny shaw community services uh mr connor is a local business owner with two employees a small business he's been doing our abatement work for graffiti for a while now this is a bid for three years for seventy five thousand dollars okay great all right anything else specific yeah anything else so basically this agenda item is just for approval of awarding this contract so chair would entertain council member ryan move approval council member davis second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 4m all in favor please signify by raising your right hand motion carries six to zero we will move to our items for individual consideration continue that agenda item 5a consider a local declaration of local disaster for public health emergency regarding the sars cov 2 which causes the disease cove at 19 pursuant to the mayoral proclamation of march 13th 2020 do we have a draft of the ordinance have you okay okay okay i've got okay all right yeah whoever's making the presentation thank you and we do have one speaker um which we will take those comments after the presentation right yep well mayor and council i don't have any slides prepared but based on the several hours discussion we had this afternoon we have revised both the approval ordinance and the attached order that would go with it based on council's discussion and the consensus we believe we saw from council you have um you have electronically you have a red line version of that so you can see the changes we made to the draft that we were working on then and you also have a clean copy so that if the red lines are getting too intermingled you can see what the clean copy would be we are happy to stand for any questions you have at this time okay um questions for just give us just a moment to review this okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay questions comments council member davis i may have missed a change in the conversation but i thought we are going to also incorporate by reference the uh the guidelines from the county the the social distancing guidelines um we had talked about that during the conversation about um queuing in the grocery store and maybe maybe i missed a turn that we took in consensus there but i kind of expected to see that right okay all right right we did add the reference to the queuing in line in the uh section b under the definition section of the order um it was our understanding that the the denton county's social distancing guidelines came from the cdc that's what the theirs were based on and so we've referenced that higher up in the order but if you'd like to call it out separately we can add that okay all right if you could i'm looking for it but i'm not finding it um uh because i know that we said we wanted to bifurcate the order into a recommendation and a prohibition yes sir so where i see the recommendation of the 50 right strongly urges but so the the prohibition against the 100 i'm seeing it uh the prohibition itself is in paragraph one but it's being prohibited and then community gatherings isn't defined in paragraph four as 100 or more okay all right all right thank you yes sir anybody else council member armature so this be the time for for comments are we still in the questions for staff uh well it's questions for staff and comments we did spend about three hours on this in the work session so whatever comments i would appreciate if they're brief because we've had a lot of period for comment on that and if you certainly have a question so i don't have any questions but i just have a comment uh as to why i'm going to be voting no um i'm going to be voting no to this um well i i do think that it is well intentioned uh i'm concerned that it's not doing enough uh to mitigate community spread given what we know about this this virus and the way it works um i had as the mayor mentioned i did have a number of uh recommendations that i wanted to see in this ordinance um but i i did not feel that it was an all or nothing um so i i could have voted yes to something that didn't include in any number of them but holistically speaking uh i don't like and i'm just going to mention just a few of my concerns uh i will not make it too long um one i don't like that the way community gathering is defined is focused um on on consumers and that it has uh exemptions uh for jails and detention facilities and places of employment not otherwise generally open to the public i think just given the way this the virus works we need to make sure uh that jails and detention facilities within the city of denton and places of employment where workers are working uh elbow to elbow are covered too uh because um these will be um breeding grounds for the virus and everybody will be affected i don't like the the bifurcation uh between the the urging 50 uh and you know versus um mandating 100 i i think that's it's confusing i think we need to uh have a a strong prohibition um i would have liked 10 um but i would have settled for for 50 um and uh you know i'll also mention that you know in my opinion um you know this does not cover a lot of the key issues that i'm hearing from tenants and workers especially uh regarding and and also homeowners property owners uh having to do with rent eviction utilities forgiveness uh child care for crucial health care workers and i think that the the 50,000 dollars and having to go through united way is is too limited i'm i'm glad that that a dollar amount can be added to but anyway that's that's why i am voting no okay thank you mayor pro tem oh and then we'll come to council member i have a question we didn't discuss it uh earlier but um what what's the council's thoughts on uh hotels a number of events have been cancelled those are i think when you look at kind of large facilities that can that can segregate uh accordingly to meet this statute do they fall does this cover that i guess is my question for the council such that if they reorganize a an event such that it falls under these parameters does it fit in this uh guidance or or not that's what i'm trying to better understand well i i mean um well first of all i want to address a comment that council member armature made that that jails are excluded from the definition of community gatherings and they are not excluded what that list of people but that those lists of either places are saying that that does not include these community gatherings does not include this list uh so long as visitors are generally not within arm's length of one another for for extended periods and of course then you have a list of their in jail and detention facilities are on there so this this isn't an absolute exclusion this is saying that if you are able to meet this criteria then um you're you're okay so as far as the hotels when i see um specifically excluded from the definition of community gatherings of course hotels and really honestly specific business types are not included in any of these lists um except retail very generic but it says gathering of people in multiple separate closed spaces in a single building such as a multiplex movie theater school church or office building so long as 100 people are not present in any single space at the same time i mean if you're looking at taking the analysis to a movie theater you know you might have eight theaters and if each theater has 20 or 25 people in it but there's separate individual theaters with 25 separate people then according to this ordinance that would be okay so i would liken that to if you had a hotel that had several types of meeting spaces available as long as those meeting spaces are under that threshold and those different meeting spaces don't congregate to create an aggregate that would violate that so i mean there has to be that separate that's how i read it um because it specifically says uh separated in closed spaces in a single building such as um so i don't think it's a matter of how many people are in a certain building is how many people are in an open space as defined up in uh paragraph four council member uh melton and mayor pro tem will come back if you have a question yeah i agree that covers the hotel thing my impression was that there was agreement maybe there wasn't it's just a small point that in uh b3 it talks about queuing that we would explicitly say uh city of denton strongly urges said businesses to enforce enforce social distancing of six feet or more in line or queue areas i know it might be substantively the same it might be referred to elsewhere but i think it'd be more instructive it might you know end up with a better result if we said that explicitly i don't have to offer that as an amendment or no no i don't have it i don't have an issue i mean it it says it in the guidelines but yet it's okay i mean i think it's uh i like it to be as specific as possible and so i'm okay with you're saying add um business enforce yeah uh after the word distancing yes okay all right yes council member armature i just want to mention uh just about hotels that i hope uh that my colleagues on council will consider uh at some point in the future what i had proposed today was that uh if and when we we reached a point uh where our our shelters are crowded uh that we contract with hotels that which which will struggle anyway no matter even if we didn't have a cap the tourism industry for obvious reasons is struggling and so i i hope that people will be be open to the possibility well yeah contracting with them to i think we're a little off posting on that well no it was on posting when we talked about the work session so that's because we were talking about the ordinance um deciding council member ryan thank you mayor got a question on nine h on page three the last bullet point we've got an open dollar amount there yes sir that'd be something for council to decide if they want this provision or to set what that limit is okay and what exactly are we have any recommendations are we well if somebody could share the genesis of that i mean that's sort of new right so if the city manager wants to address that uh that'd be great and if he has any recommendation or thoughts about how to fill that in i'll let todd give his recommendation i will say the genesis of this is in the procurement manual the city manager is given purchasing authority up to 100 000 under under the emergency provisions in the city of denton code we can change that during the pendency of the emergency so that's just part of the provision there that it's up to council to decide okay initially we had had 500 000 in there uh just in case we got hit with the worst case scenario it's sort of a and i don't since we've decided we're going to come back and meet april 7th i don't see the need to change that um the fact of the matter is is if we is we're in an emergency state if something really goes wrong and we exceed that i'm going to be asking for your permission and forgiveness anyway so we might as well i'm okay leaving the 500 000 but we're going to do what we need to do to keep the city going so i i fight with your initial declaration mayor without without paragraph h we put in 50 000 do you not away but i don't oh i'm sorry i'm sorry i thought we were talking about the overall i wasn't uh sorry for clarity there are two whole there are two dollar amount blanks that we need council to fill in one is the total expenditure amount and the other would be the individual purchase amount and the purchasing manual the city manager is authorized to sign off on purchases up to 100 000 council can change that during independency of the emergency so that he can without coming back to council spend more than 100 000 for a individual purchase we need that decision made by council and then i'll alongside that we need council to give us a dollar amount that is it is authorizing for total expenditure during this emergency or at least until we come back to council where's the first where's the first uh number you're looking at the first number would be in the ordinance mayor okay so that's that's new as well i mean it was that in there was that was it was a blank in the draft earlier this afternoon we just didn't we didn't talk about that time yeah we didn't talk about it all right um uh so in the section four of the ordinance that's for one expenditure or no four of the ordinance is the total expenditure okay and then the order one is the individual yes sir h in the order is the individual purchase amount okay well well h look i don't really h says for general expenditure i thought you said for one expenditure but right h says for expenditures which include fees professional services but you're saying for one up to one expenditure for any of these categories right yes sir uh individual purchases up to um what what what do you think mr city manager i think it's an academic exercise um if we get into a situation where we end up paying a lot of overtime having to house people in hotels we can blow by the hundred thousand very fast uh again it we're in an emergency situation if that happens we would notify you immediately where we are and i would likely ask the mayor to do some kind of an interim on declaration if we had to do that but we initially had five hundred thousand dollars in there for the period that we're talking about i don't see any way that we're going to hit that um and i think as long as the council is comfortable that if absolutely comes down to it we need to exceed that amount and come back for retroactive approval i'm fine with that the idea would be to report back to you at any time we get we we hit expenses that we're not anticipating but at least it gives me the statutory authority to spend the money to deal with what we need to so from my perspective it it really doesn't matter if you want if you want to leave it if you want to cut it down to 250,000 or leave it at 500,000 that's fine i just don't know what we're going to be up against if we start losing staff and having to house them um and paying a significant amount of overtime to public safety down the road practically speaking we're two and a half weeks for our next council meeting whether we'd actually rack up that kind of dollar amount or not i don't know but i think it's just something that um legal is trying to cover our backside that we have that authority up front it's really up to you as long as i have you know significant uh number of you saying that look as long as you're keeping us in the loop if you exceed whatever that number is that you're comfortable with just let us know i'm fine okay councilman um i understand how economic it is uh just to be more specific though i think what legal is asking us and that we're asking you is how much do you think any one individual check might be right that's the question that's one of the questions it's almost it's i know it doesn't really matter i prefer to not deal with it in that way i prefer to have more of a budget uh during the crisis that we can review meeting to meeting primarily because i have no idea where the expenses would come if it's going to be a fuel overtime uh housing folks you just don't know is there a rule that we have to have an item that specifies how much any individual check can be or can we you have you currently have a limit on what the city manager can sign enter into an agreement for basically or enter a contract for it's up to one hundred thousand dollars so that provision in 9h is to change that hundred thousand dollar limit for a single purchase the portion that's in the ordinance is kind of an aggregate amount for emergent for procurement or for expenditures in the course of this emergency things that are not already budgeted well then just just to sort of not kill too much time on this why don't we make both of them five hundred thousand so in other words there's a five hundred thousand dollar budget and you can't spend more than all of it in one check the you have also included in here the fifty thousand dollars for united way so the aggregate expenditure in the caption you might want to make five hundred and fifty thousand to include that i accept that correction comment um i understand the i understand the circumstances but also know that we can call an emergency meeting within an hour to decide something if it's really that bad i mean putting up people in hotels and things such as that that's going to be expensive but it's going to be expensive over a extended period of time so i nothing against the city manager i've just five hundred thousand or five fifty seems to me uh i sort of am challenged by that but if the rest of the council wants to do that i'm fine with that i just i just needed to express my my thoughts so we got five hundred and fifty which is including the fifty thousand for united way any objection to that okay all right so we've got it sounds like three amendments to the ordinance we're going to add into uh line in the order itself and be three of six feet or more after the word distancing and then we're going to put five hundred thousand dollars in or five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in each of those blanks uh in the ordinance you know i'm sorry mayor protein yes no i was just circling back to um the hotels and asking if accepting your answer but if i look at under definitions for so page two uh c triple i would a private event at a hotel fall into a place of employment not otherwise generally open to the public that's probably a legal question but on my first blush i'd probably say it probably would not that'd be a huge stretch okay and so my question then is when we're talking about the single room you i heard you say 25 per room but my understanding is it's 100 per room right no yeah i was just using yeah i was just using that well our recommendation is less than is no more than 50 our prohibition is 100 i was just using that example to try to not hit the hit the probe so so worst case 100 is the the max per room 99 yes 99 in a hotel right anywhere anywhere yeah perfect yeah okay thank you okay and so we've got those three changes mr city manager okay with all those okay all right mayor one clarification the 550 is going in the ordinance and the three blanks in the ordinance back to h on the third page of the order where it's an individual purchase y'all had mentioned adding the word individual approve individual purchases up to is that one you still want in there i think what i heard council member melzer say that it didn't matter if it was just one purchase or essentially so that you could put the the 500 there right okay yeah so h i think could be omitted and it still gives him the authority to do what he needs to do okay it's just not limiting it we're not putting a an additional parameter of one single person purchase has to be less than 550 i mean it's really 500 because we've already utilized 50 000 of that right united way funding so yeah i think we can eliminate h altogether okay well well h h would be the one that would actually supersede the current process in place so why why do we have different blanks meaning different things one in the ordinance and one in the order because that's what i'm trying to understand one is the authorization of the spending of unbudgeted funds during the entire emergency and h is to specifically supersede the current policy and procedure manual saying that he can only approve specific individual purchases up to a hundred thousand dollars spending limit okay sir his his individual spending limit that's that section 252 002 022 right yeah okay all right all right so that's the 550 right and then the other that would be the 500 because the 50 is going to united right so 500 in the blank in the order yes and then the other blanks on the ordinance which are in section four and in section or the whereas i guess it's the same in the whereas yes sir okay all right okay fantastic yes councilmember armature so were there any members of the public who yeah we got we got a speaker yes the microphone i can i can clean it off or is there one more process is there some process for wiping down the microphone somebody could just sort of spray that down that's fine all right the name is nix that's the only name i have is for agenda item 5a which is the order okay hello yeah if if you'll state your name and address time will begin i believe you have four minutes is that correct yes yes okay um can y'all hear me okay i just know it's like way above my mouth yeah yeah yeah there you go there you go my name is nix i live in the rockston apartments right off of loop 288 um i wanted to speak up on eviction bans for this time period as you know um dallas shut down most of the restaurants bars and stuff like that and i do know a good portion of us in denton do commute from dallas a lot of us do work in deep bellum um so right now we're kind of up in the airs of if we're going to be able to pay rent some of us are also parents and as y'all found out today denton isd is closed until april 3rd which is when most people's rent are due um so in that time period we're trying to find new jobs everybody's rushing for the unemployment today i tried to file for unemployment uh but their lines were too busy and that's the only way that i could get through to them right now um so i have no clue of how i'm going to pay it yes y'all allotted uh fifty thousand dollars to help with rent right now but that could be about less than 50 people's rent because rent's anywhere between a thousand dollars i do know there is landlords currently right now working on eviction bans for their tenants personally where they're going to be helping out i would like to see as a whole not just for residential uh landlords and stuff like that but for commercial too because as denton is we are small business that's what we pride ourselves in we pride ourselves in music arts and stuff like that and because of events closing left and right there is so many of us that are without um 60 60 percent of us are renters and that doesn't include those of us that do rent for small businesses too um and i believe this is the first step in order to protect our citizens and then maybe taking the next step to talking with the banks and protecting our landlords because landlords are part of our community too and our things so i would like us to work out a way where we can protect not just our not just the renters but the landlords and small businesses yes councilmember robert i just wanted to thank you next for speaking out and i completely understand what you're saying i want to let you know um i advocate really hard for all of those things we're saying including child care it's not able to get that in there this time around but i hope in the future uh very very soon that um it'll become pretty apparent how much that is needed because like you said people like yourself there's 60 percent of dentin residents and just from a public health and safety point of view alone uh well you know we know we know what that means so anyway i hear you uh do i still have time to speak uh yes you do okay so i would like to add to that um i'm also part of dentin moms which is a facebook group um moms are panicking left and right people are willing to have random strangers come in to their homes to watch their kids people are offering up their teenagers to watch other people's kids which is great and all in a sense of community but the fact that we're supposed to be social distancing ourselves and you don't know where these people have been exposed i think it kind of also counteracts what dentin isd is trying to do as well because of it um and we've also have businesses closing left and right right now to protect their staff and i think right now people are going to facebook to turn to help um for community outreach but because of facebook's recent policies uh they're actually banning and taking down post as of this evening because they're trying to work through the um factual information not their algorithm has actually taken down a lot of people's fundraisers right now so i just wanted to bring that up too and that's all councilmember davis you had a question or a comment yeah very quick comment uh echoing councilmember armenter thank you very much for being here you're not just speaking for yourself you're speaking for a lot of people who are in a similar situation i would encourage you and other folks in your situation to go back and watch our earlier work session uh we spent a long time talking about how best to respond to this situation and one of the things we learned today from our city attorney is that a city a municipality in the state of texas has no legal authority whatsoever to enact or enforce an eviction ban or to stop landlords from collecting rent commercial or residential it's 100 governed by the property code and by the individual lease contracts maybe the governor can do something but at a city level we have no legal or statutory authority of any kind to stop evictions to uh anything like that okay and then to that i would like to ask all the landlords that are currently watching to think about all of us yes i would like y'all to dig deep in your hearts and maybe give us a little bit of a lean i mean i'm sure people could put things together but right now there's people panicking left to right which is causing people to panic at our stores because they're thinking this is the last time they're going to be able to get food for a while this is the last time they're going to be able to get toilet paper or hand sanitizer or soap or other things necessary for their kids so that's all thank you thank you very much appreciate did you have a question or comment yeah just a comment that um it's in everybody's interest not just the people who are renting but the people who rent to them uh and the people who lend to the people who are renters uh to have debt and keep going as a going concern and uh i fully expect that even though you don't have legislative authority that we're that it will make an effort to coordinate the goodwill of of all parts of the dentin community that need us to like i said keep going as a going concern thanks for for coming forward thank you thank you very much we have one other speaker uh mr george fairy if somebody could retrieve mr fairy mr fairy yeah he may be uh oh yeah is it yeah if we could uh we're good we're good we're good i don't want to be here should be at home social distancing but i feel compelled to speak um i am a local small business owner here in town i've been in the service industry for 15 years almost half my life i have spent um working in an industry that has made me money to pay my bills to pay my rent to pay for vacations to pay when i'm sick to pay for my entire livelihood as an adult i've done nothing but work in bars and restaurants my whole adult life and as someone standing before you with all of this experience in that industry i know we will do whatever it takes to continue to work if we are given the option which is why i'm asking you to not give us that option i have spoken with many business owners many people in this industry we are all poor we are all living paycheck to paycheck and i'm still asking you to take the decision away as the city and and limit us to to go curbside delivery and delivery only we need to get ahead of this thing and be smart and get ahead of the curve we see what's happening in italy we see what's happening in other countries again i've spoken with several other local business owners who all agree with me that if we have the decision we're going to give our employees the opportunity to make money but we also don't want to require them to show up to work because they're endangering themselves and others and they can't file for unemployment until we close so we need you to give us that opportunity to give them i understand nix just spoke and i respect them and i'm glad that they spoke up people are hurting we're we're we're all very scared but we know that this is for the betterment of everyone that we need to step back and close our doors for a few weeks and figure out where we are at the end of it um i know it's tough to to use uh as it was called the hammer of power but sometimes it's needed and especially in times like this you know relief packages are coming out things are things are happening over the next two week with the government that are releasing incentives packages and um heart of hearts that this is the right thing to do and i hope that you realize that we will put ourselves in danger because we know we have bills to pay and that we need food on our table so i'm just here advocating and hoping that you hear what i'm saying and that you understand that this is a big deal and that we should all be social distancing and staying home right now thank you thank you uh councilmember davis thank you so you you probably tuned in that sounds like to the conversation we had earlier today the the work session we had uh and different council members at different times highlighted a number of businesses in town that are taking measures uh tell us about your business and the measures y'all are taking to uh enforce social distancing sure great question thank you my name uh i own wine squared it's a local wine bar on the downtown square here uh and i have closed as of yesterday for the remainder of the month and i am as of today i have spent all day on my computer learning and putting my entire uh store online so that people can order online and come to my store uh in their vehicle and i can hand them their order uh this keeps me from coming into any contact with customers as little as possible and also keeps me making income in the meantime uh my employees are either off on their honeymoon or uh not working for the remainder of the month so that i can help give them a sense of income in this time i am very fortunate that i have few employees there are other places that cannot afford to pay their employees without work for the next two weeks but also if this pandemic continues it could be till july so what they're asking now is us to take pre-emptive steps so that in the next two weeks this curve doesn't swing high and we see even larger fallout which then puts us at an even higher risk of not continuing our business i don't know if wine squared can continue through july if this is how it's going to be in fact i know it won't i know i will be out of a job and so will the people that depend on an income from me employing them okay all right council member armature uh thank you and i i hear you i'm with you and um i hope that people will see real soon uh the truth and what you're saying um and we've seen it in other cities uh i completely support what you're saying i think it is the just general wisdom and i'm just really surprised um that that we're not doing these things now i i hope we will later but i'm really really sorry and i want to just quickly note that i'm going to get a lot of flak right i'm a small business owner asking you to take away my right to open or close my business i'm being shamed for showing up in public when i should be at home social distancing from everyone um however business owners and folk know that this is important and this is a decision that has to be made and unfortunately it's on your table to make thank you okay thank you appreciate it thank you all right so we've got uh that was the last card to speak for that agenda item for agenda item 5a any discussion council discussion questions all right council member davis i move adoption of the ordinance uh with the dollar amounts that we've discussed and the amendments that you've noted already council member ryan a second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 5a together with the amendments that were discussed uh to be made to be changed yes sir do you need me to outline those uh it was the adding the six feet uh distance of at least six feet in queuing as proposed by council member melzer and then the 500 and then 550 000 to be put in the appropriate places with the word individual on that last yes yes yes all right so we have a motion to second for agenda out in 5a all in favor please signify by raising your right hand oh sorry yes i'm sorry discussion yeah sure sure yeah just wanted to make a quick statement very brief i i just want to want to thank the two speakers like my my my peers did and and uh i just want to reassure that that message is received and uh but i think there's steps to that process and but i don't think anyone here takes these decisions uh lightly and understands the um the significance of the decisions the repercussions of the decisions and you try to make those measured uh and so that's i i plan to uh support this but i i did want to make it clear that that it's not something that we we take uh for granted we are uh prominently been here for a number of years uh i'm personally born and raised here jesse's been in a while i mean so we all get it and so to see our community hurt hurting hurts us all uh and trying to do what we can uh reasonably with everyone's tax dollars to to be equitable okay any other comments all right agenda item 5a we've had a motion in a second all in favor please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign motion carries five to one moving on to agenda item 5b consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas the texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager execute an interlocal cooperation agreement denton county texas mr mayor yes i just let for the record i'm recusing from this item okay all right okay is that on b yes sir okay all right excuse me mayor yes this might get annoying but i feel compelled to move that we postpone this item until there's 72 hours of a uh notice of a safe way for the public to participate okay so all right council member armature and i second that motion all right we have a motion uh let me i think i need to get uh council member uh i mean he's recusing but i guess he's recused so we don't he doesn't need to get hit on this all right so we have a motion and a second for postponement of agenda item 5b all in favor please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign uh motion fails so we'll move on to agenda item 5b yes go ahead yep good evening mr mayor members of the council this is uh pretend they smoke i'm the deputy city engineer i'll quickly talk about bonnie bray interlocal agreement so just a quick snapshot uh we are talking about the uh bonnie bray that's um on the south side this is this consists of three phases phase one is the one that you see in yellow it's already almost um completed it's in the last phases the construction will be completed next month the second phase is this blue that you can see it's primarily vintage road and a little piece of bonnie bray and then phase three is north all the way to 35e the total cost of this project is 64 million you see majority the funding is coming from um rtr funds which are total revenue funds a small portion of this was funded by the county and this is the agreement uh in front of council this uh evening it is the it is for the amount of 5.75 million according to the agreement um there was a match from the city side of 8.7 million as you can see we're well over that we have funded close a little over 12 million from the city side from our uh co's and gos for the street funds so based on um this agreement we will receive from precinct three we'll four we will receive funding for this particular project so that's a recommendation from staff we recommend moving forward with yes councilmember melser yeah is there any special reason why why that's the number uh that was the original number that was uh drafted when this uh project was um originally envisioned so this is the cost estimates that was developed back in the day by the engineers and the county decided to pick up a portion of that and that was the number okay any other questions councilmember ryan move approval we have a motion for approval on agenda item 5b mayor pro tem is second motion and a second on 5b all in favor please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign motion carries four to one if somebody could retrieve councilmember davis that'd be great i believe there he is right there all right agenda item 5c consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas a home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager execute a contract with reliant emissions testing for the supply of engine emissions performance testing services for the electric generating equipment at the denton energy center sorry yeah we've called the uh caption so you're up so good evening good evening mr mayor council jason brown plant manager of the denton energy center um as as you were aware um we uh we're doing a whole lot of work on the denton energy center trying to get uh ready for some outages and stuff so the next item uh we'll be going over that but this one is the stack emissions testing um i have a very short uh presentation here that you all weren't provided i'm sorry um but uh i'll pull it up and let y'all see it uh so the denton energy center as you all know we have a operating permit uh that was filed before we went yes sir i'm sorry can you click the to make a full size i know that's coming sorry about that yep thank you uh so our our operating permit that we're currently operating under has uh has some requirements for continuing testing so every two years we're required to do uh um some some permit testing for um uh nox and co and then in three years we're testing for nox co and o2 um we tested um originally during construction and and at the end of end of construction before we went operational um and this is reoccurring testing that we testing that we have to do to maintain our permit um we went out for bids uh we we opened up a ifb went out for bids uh had several bidders come back um we had five different companies and low bid was reliant emissions testing um ifb we're looking at uh approval for a three year with a with an opportunity to extend for another three years uh for a not to exceed amount of seventy two thousand dollars so um so i looked up reliant i wanted to see about this company and it was the website's not really working and um they've got a facebook page but their last post was 2013 you know i was wondering if you could just speak to what you know about the company i was just trying to get a sense of their history i guess they're based in lubbock i i can't speak to the facebook i don't have it um the website i've never really gone to their website i have used uh reliant emissions testing at three other facilities that i've been at um they're a good company a reputable company a state certified company they're also certified in new mexico um they're they're just as good as any other certified company they have to follow the regulations and the guidelines and the method the methodology for testing that the state or the epa mandates and um uh i would well yeah i guess that that that was my only question okay there were comments so just for counsel okay all right any other questions comments all right looking for direction uh looking for approval yes sir approval council member ryan council member davis second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 5c all in favor please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by lax sign motion carries five to one agenda item 5d consider an ordinance of the city of denton texas a home room this corporation authorizing city manager execute a contract with abb ink for the supply of abb turbo charger cartridges for the electric generating equipment at the denton energy center sorry that's tongue twister yeah um so as we brought to you uh a little bit over a month ago um we have begun preparing for uh short-term long-term outages outages major overhauls um that kind of stuff we went out for bids on items that we could not or could purchase from other vendors for the ward sale equipment uh the turbo charger cartridges uh were the the two items that we were able to outsource we went out for bids on on this item um there were two bidders that came back one being uh warts illa one being abb um we're looking at going um with low bid in the amount of four hundred and eighteen thousand dollars and sixty one or sixty cents um we mentioned these turbos in the previous presentation these turbo charger cartridges in the in the previous presentation it was not part of that purchase uh so these these are needing approval at this time chair looking for a direction mayor pro tem i move approval council member ryan second we have a motion to second approve for approval for agenda item 5d uh all in approval all who approve please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign five to one carries agenda item 5e thank you oh thank you very much appreciate it thank you consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton at texas home real municipal corporation authorizing the approval of change order number four to the contract between the city of denton and ragel inc for the construction of south bonnie great street widening and improvements project phase one good evening mr mayor again uh pre time day schmuck deputy city engineer uh there are a couple change orders uh this evening in front of the council um the first one is for phase one this is the segment that um i've discussed in the previous section as you can see that the segment just north of uh vintage all the way to rose lawn um majority of this construction has been completed ragel is currently working on fixing some of the uh issues or defective areas that they had constructed uh part of this project also included working with endlink which is a gas um utility franchise utility uh there were two locations where we had to relocate endlink uh when this contract was awarded endlink um delayed the project or that particular segment there's a location here where endlink crosses and there's one in north side both those locations resulted in where uh ragel could not move in and complete these sections you can see on the north side there's some construction that they began and they could not move forward and can provide a continuous pavement similar things happened on the south and it took a long time for endlink to get their agreements in place design in place and actually lower their gas line what this uh change order entails is uh there was a lot of work around that the contractor had to do in order to um remobilize and demobilize uh pavement um sections in this area where endlink was and also there was some drainage um concerns that were found out after the fact after the construction began so that that's part of this change order the total change order is um $246,000 and the total contract amount uh would be the original was 11.81 uh the new contract with all the change orders together would be 12.68 we're well within the uh 10 percent that typically is um reasonable in projects that and that are this size so i just wanted to point that out staff recommends moving forward with change order number four um this is wrapping the project up um as i mentioned we are uh planning on wrapping this project fairly shortly uh by next month any questions for staff mayor pro tem could you just speak to i know you touched on generally what the change orders entailed but uh is there anything you would some that you would identify as predictable or that we could have known before getting to this phase of the project or is it all kind of as we get we we proceeded in the project issues avail themselves so for this particular one endlink was an unknown until after the project we had started construction and it was difficult to get on their schedule so they had we started working around it uh and we gave them as much as time as we could until the point where uh we could no longer provide that time and that's why uh this one was particular uh because of the franchise utility delaying their design and construction thank you thanks all right this is agenda item five e any other questions chair seeks direction mayor pro tem i move approval council member ryan second all in favor of agen oh all in favor agenda item 6e please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign motion carries five to one agenda item f consider adoption of an order of the city of denton the texas home real municipal corporation authorizing the approval of a change order number two to the contract between the city of denton and ddm construction uh corporation so this is bonnie ray phase four a this is the round of our project and um this changer is for little over a hundred thousand dollars as you can see uh part of it almost uh 35 to 40 percent of it was related to uh a franchise utility there are a couple of franchise utilities that were unknown mci um which has a line there was an unknown entity uh staff was not aware that it existed even during the design time even during uh pot holing and subsurface until we hit it we did not know about it also frontier delayed their relocation so that was part of this change order um and then uh the other piece the 76 000 dollars is uh the first change order that we brought forward to council uh that added water lines underneath this particular intersection we had to take some of the uh original items under the original contract like the stamp concrete and the median we had to take that out in order to accommodate now that we've done with that work we know we feel that we can put some of the um work back into the change order so it's not a new item that's been predicted um so that's that 76 000 so total change order is uh 116 000 for this particular ask uh this is one of the ones that we're also wrapping up uh once this change order goes through or if it goes through the tonight the contractor is ready to come in start working tomorrow and uh get this project wrapped up by the end of april that's another project that we're planning on wrapping up the total contract amount is 3.6 after the all the change orders councilmember melzer i apologize i should have asked this question in advance you could have looked it up but maybe you remember rough orders of magnitude even with the change orders uh can you remind us roughly how much less this is that it would have cost to have turn lanes and a light signal there so um with typically light signals cost uh around half a million but with the turn lanes the added expansion and one of the primary criteria for this was not cost as more of the safety concern so the safety aspect i can't really put a price tag on that but the safety aspect for slowing people down that go through the intersection was a primary reason that we went with this particular design as opposed to a uh stop sign with turn lanes i seem to remember it's a lot cheaper too yes okay real quick we know we still have landscaping to do correct is that going to be a change order is that included in the project we're just waiting for the weather to clear up there are a couple things the uh inside of the roundabout will be sought currently and that will be picked up uh with the mechanic park landscaping because it needs to match some of the pallets needs to match in so we are currently under design for mechanic park the entire park on the corner and the trail systems that are um going to happen so as part of this particular project we're going to wrap it up with just sought in the middle of the uh island itself okay so i guess my question is going to be with mckenna park if you're saying we're going to wait to finish it is there a way to remove i mean if the landscaping is the only thing left and nobody's working there help me understand why the traffic barrels are still there when it's all been completed yeah one of the major items remaining here was signage signs and markings was lacking and we have we have in this um contractors coming in tomorrow to move that item forward so they've done with the street lighting one of the lag the lead time on the poles was higher so street lights came in late they're now installed now the next step is getting the signage and marking in place once that's done then we'll completely open it so when when will we do we have an estimate when the traffic barrels will be removed even if the landscaping is not completed uh the traffic barrels in other words the whole roundabout is is fully functional yes one of the items in the change order is stamped concrete that is on the medians of the approach mediums have stamped concrete so once that is done and uh we're planning on wrapping that up by the end of next month by the end of april okay um any other questions comments yes councilmember a question about fire trucks so fire truck can uh so have you had the chance to see you know a fire truck go around it i i haven't but when i drive it i try to imagine that kind of can you speak to so uh i have briefly talked uh to the fire department and this doesn't seem to be an issue especially this intersection it's two lanes on bonnie bray and one lane on scripture so the fire trucks can easily maneuver around it it also has an apron area for the back of the truck to go over the apron so it's typically not allowed for vehicles to travel over it but some of these larger and longer trucks including fire trucks can actually drag their uh rear wheels over the apron and which is the can you point to the the apron i think so this is the the outer ring is the apron oh okay and typically it is about two inches high it's not completely six inch high curb so trucks can actually go over it is uh marked differently uh it's not typical drivable lanes but there are truck aprons for longer vehicles okay okay thank you all right any other questions comments all right agenda item seven f let's vote on the vote count mayor pro tem i move approval councilman ryan i'll second uh item five f all right uh all in favor of agenda item six f as it's been motioned and seconded please signify by five f five f sorry i'm looking for five f please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign motion carries five to one on five f let's take a real quick break on before we start public hearings take a five minute break welcome back to this meeting of the dent city council on march 17th 2020 it is 8 0 7 p.m uh before before we get started on the public hearings i just wanted to read a comment but for council member brig she did send me this and i told her i'd read it so what it says to postpone the public hearings portion of the meeting all council members should be there for such a big decision all financials are wrong with new reality i should have been offered video conferencing and it was not offered so i wanted to read that into the record for her okay we will go on to agenda item 6a hold a public hearing and consider approval of a resolution adopting the city of denton's policy for tax abatement incentives all right good evening mayor and council jessica rogers director of economic development i have a very brief presentation it's almost identical to what you've seen before so i'll go through it very very quickly and so the purpose of tonight is to hold the public hearing and consider approval of a resolution adopting the policy for tax abatement and incentives as we went over on the work session on march 3rd and chapter 312 of the texas tax code requires adoption of a policy guiding abatements and incentives every two years the city's current policy expires on march 20th 2020 and so today will be the last council meeting to consider adoption of the policy prior to the expiration of the existing policy and as we discussed in the work session staff recommends only minor changes to the current policy on the basis of that significant revisions were made in 2018 the policy has been effective and it's currently being evaluated as part of the strategic planning process as well as recommendations as part of the strategic planning process are also taking into consideration the audit recommendations and so if we did want to come back and reevaluate the policy in the near future we would do so with the entirety of recommendations from those two studies so the few brief changes that we're recommending is the clarification of the goal to increase jobs paying more than seventy five thousand and the addition of the average definition or word average to the consideration of how we look at wages that matches what we do in practice regardless of what the policy says we consider average and median a clarification of what constitutes a complete application updating the qualified census tract map to be the most recent map and then certainly just corrections of errors and typos that we found in the policy the economic development partnership board recommended approval 11-0 and then on the council work session on March 3rd council made no additional changes to staff's recommendations and that's all I have. Okay. Council Member Mouser. Just I'll make a couple of comments this is more or less just a formal proceedings we're not really getting into substantive matters of incentives which we will do soon and there is a timer on this so you know despite the fact that I asked for the public's forgiveness that I don't view these public hearings today as being held under proper circumstances in that public doesn't have 72 hours notice of a safe way to participate but again this is a formal matter and it's got a fuse on it I'm you know going to move approval of it. Okay. Alright. Council Member Arger. So I want to make a motion to postpone until we have a full council and until we can take public comment video and audio and have our whole council meeting online. Okay. Point of order Council Member Armitter's motion is not in order the motion is on the floor awaiting a second. Well I think she made a motion to postpone this particular agenda item yeah so is that correct? Yeah. You added a lot to it which is irrelevant but yeah you're making a motion to postpone this. Yeah to postpone till the date till an event certain I guess you're talking about agenda item 6A. All right. So we have a motion on the floor to postpone to an event certain is there a second. Council Member Meltzer seconded that motion all in favor of that motion please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign motion fails can't count four to two. All right. So we go back to Council Member Meltzer's motion that was on the table for approval I believe of 6A is that correct or were you withdrawing your motion? No. Okay. Okay. And this is a public hearing so we do have to. Okay. Yes. Okay. Got you. Never mind. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. That's fine. All right. Yeah. I just want to withdraw my motion since we haven't heard from the public. Sure. You bet. That's my mistake. I apologize. Okay. So this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak can come and talk with the council. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. All right. So I'll pass that to the people who are waiting in I believe the council chambers. If we could. Mr. Cityman. Have I been called? No. This is agenda item 6A. I believe I'm signed up for that. 6A? I think you were signed up for. 8? Well you can speak on this one. Yeah. I think you were signed up for 6B but. All right. Yeah. But you can speak on this one. You can speak on all of them. It's a public hearing. Okay. Come on up. And yeah it's the microphone there behind you. Yes. All right. And if you'll start if you could stand behind the microphone and state your name and address your time will begin. I certainly will. Thank you. Is there a camera on? Yes. There's three cameras in here. Thank you. I have just passed through Seattle. So you all love me for what I'm doing right now and for the way that I'm dressed. I traveled through Seattle both directions to go to Alaska which at the time that I got there had no instances confirmed. Now all 50 states have it. I also took pictures of the usual city council chamber to show that for a public hearing there is no one there. And also a picture of myself how I am currently dressed and why. And I've sent them to the Denton Record Chronicle. I'm calling upon you to postpone this public hearing so that the public can attend. I just saw that you voted not to postpone it. This is inconceivable unless you can't see the room that you normally meet in. I'm assuming that you can. Oh and by the way, Jennifer Lane, 1526 Willowood Street, Denton, Texas and my time may begin. I strongly suggest that you hold a public hearing through a virtual means and actually have a public hearing and not a kangaroo court like this. It's absolutely shameful that three out of you voted not to postpone and it will be remembered and noted by the public and the public will be able to see that no one came because people are not comfortable with the situation regarding a disease that's very dangerous and is in all 50 states now confirmed with not enough tests to determine how much. So really and truly, let us have our public hearings on these things and don't pretend to have them. There's no one out there. There may be four people and that photograph has been sent. Okay? That's what I have to say. Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Good night. You were posted for agenda item 6B, which is the next one as well. I'm opposed to any public hearing taking place tonight. Thank you. All right. I think she has a question for me. If you filled out a card, does that mean you won't be speaking or do you want me to just go ahead and call your name when it comes up? You have it covered for now. Okay. All right. Thank you. But I believe your colleague has a question. Yes. Yes. So just about the procedural aspect that you mentioned, do you remember when under a former city council, there was somebody, one council member, I think someone from district one who was out of town and was able to, I don't know if it was skype in, but yeah, so that one, that was what I just learned just now, I didn't know that council member Briggs had requested that. I'm not sure that -- For a different council member than herself, I imagine. I don't think that was the case, but go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that's what you were saying. No, she was never asked. She's not the council member for district one. Oh, no, I know, but she had said that she, am I right, that she had said that she had asked to, if she could video conference in? That's not, just make your comment, please. Okay, anyway, so sorry, I thought that's what I heard you read in her comments, so I hadn't heard from her, so I might have misunderstood that. I apologize if I misunderstood that. I'm on the UNT faculty senate and we too have bylaws. Okay, excuse me. That control whether we meet in person. Ms. Lane, excuse me. Your question was what? Oh, I was just wanting to ask if she had remembered that, but I guess it's a moot point if I misunderstood Councilwoman Briggs' email that you read. Okay. I don't know about a recent situation. Any other questions? All right. Thank you very much, Ms. Lane, appreciate it. Other governing bodies. Ms. Lane, please. I'm going to virtual remote. Ms. Lane, please, your time is up. Thank you so much. Postpone these public hearings. Thank you so much. All right. So anybody else wishing to speak? We'll give it just a second, see if somebody else comes to speak on this public hearing. Just give it another minute or so. Anybody wishing to speak on this public hearing? Agenda item 6A. Okay. Now close the public hearing. The Chair would entertain action on agenda item 6A. Councilmember Armitage. I just want to say with a very heavy heart, I am going to leave because I just don't feel comfortable holding a public hearing with the public very wisely staying away. But I will say that I would have voted yes. This is actually something that I approve. I think there have been some really positive changes and I don't want to vote no or yes right now. So I'm going to be stepping out. Okay. Thank you. All right. Mayor Pro Tem. Move approval and yeah, I'll move approval and I have comments after the second. Yes, Councilmember Ryan. I'll second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. I was going to, but we'll just keep it moving. It's fine. Okay. All right. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries 5 to 0. All right. We'll move on to agenda item 6B. Proposal to public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas May I, if I can countenance this, I'm going to withdraw it as well. Okay. I feel that proceedings are illegitimate. All right. And let's have a conversation about this, if you will, because I am reading and I think we need to have a serious discussion about this. I'm reading the in the Texas Tribune, which I haven't seen until just now about Governor Abbott suspending a part of the Texas Open Meetings Act, which guarantees the public access and participation in government meetings. And there's a quote says, while social distancing practices are in place, governmental bodies like city councils and school boards are expected to conduct meetings by phone or video conference. Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. So I have to be truthful. Having read that, that came out, I believe, yesterday, I think we need to reconsider. And I know I'm making a very popular stand here. But if we are able to do video conferencing in this regard, because I'm fully comfortable with how we got it set up. I'm fully comfortable with how we have it set up. Having read this, which I believe came out when was this Texas Tribune article? It's today, six hours ago. It's clear that there may be an expectation. So I just want to have the conversation. And I know that that's not been the position that has been held. But I think given what I've just read and the circumstances, and we just discussed that, so I want to ask the city manager, if there is a guarantee that we can hear this, and we can at least, because I don't mind as a council member showing up to a meeting here at City Hall. And if there's an opportunity for the public to participate via video call or video conference, I'm real okay. And if there's four of us that show up, that's up to each individual council member. We can make decisions for our own health. But when we're making decisions for the public's health, I think we need to be very careful about that. And having read this statement, where the Attorney General has come out and they suspended the Texas Open Meetings Act for that very purpose, I think for us to move forward in these public hearings would be problematic, to be quite frank. And that's not frank with you. It's not frank with my council members. It's just saying I think that we're able to hear whatever public hearings we have left. And I don't think either that anybody else that who's on the agenda to speak, I don't know if they would want to feel like they're part of a process that could be construed as either heavy handed or something like that. So I'm going to, I guess, I'm going to make a motion, I guess, to postpone the other public hearings to a date certain. And I would like that date certain to be, we can call a council meeting, I'd like that date certain to be before April 7th. If we can have it prior to that, today's the 17th, when's our next meeting scheduled? We had one scheduled for the 24th, but I was not comfortable based on the feedback I was getting from the council of holding that until I had a video solution in place. I think we can get the telephone, it's called the telephone town hall system set up pretty quickly. I don't think we can get the video conferencing set up that fast. I can't make that commitment yet, our tech services director's still researching exactly what that's going to take. So I can't make that commitment to you now that it would be any time before the end of the month. >> And I'm discussing my motion to postpone, so I'm not off posting, I'm just trying to get some clarification. >> I just wanted to remind because this type of item is not related to an emergency that you pass the declaration of disaster for, it would have to be posted 72 hours in advance. >> Right. And that's okay. >> And that's okay. But the new paradigm or processes that have been under the Texas opening back that allows for a participation other than in person. >> And that would be correct. We would still have to post the agenda to reflect that type of meeting as being held. >> Yes. Yes. >> But yes, that is correct. >> Okay. All right. >> So Mayor, just kind of taking off on your comment, I'll probably know by the end of the week, you know, what our options look like for both the telephonic town hall as well as video conferencing, I would hope by Friday I can at least get a preliminary plan to you and some dates. But that's about all I can commit to right now. >> Okay. All right. Councilmember Melton, then Councilmember Davis. >> Yeah. You know, you happen to pick the end of the month as what you're saying you couldn't commit to at this point in time, but I wonder how strongly your feeling is about that specific line just given that we have that fifth Tuesday with no meeting scheduled, which is March 31st, and I wonder if, you know, we might tentatively target that to kind of keep us on track. But, you know, if you really can't commit to that, then I think we would have to make it to an event certain but no later than a date certain, something like that. >> If the goal, if the council would like us to try to shoot for the 31st, we will do what we can to get that in place. I'll keep you informed over the next week or so. I just need to give Melissa some opportunities to make sure that everything can work appropriately. The worst thing to do would be to make that commitment to you get in here and not have the technology work as functioning and then we've got a whole other problem. So if you could give us a few days, we can give you a hard date. >> And if you could, send out a request to council for feedback. >> Okay. >> On meetings moving forward. If council members are okay with meeting here in the correct social distancing protocol and we can view video conference or audio conference, I don't know how that works, but if that's available, we need to know that as well because I think if everybody wants to try to sit wherever they are as a council and that may be more problematic and I certainly don't have an issue with being here, that doesn't mean anybody else, they can do what they want. I think we need to have some of that as well. If we need to plan for the worst case where everybody is off site, that's fine, too, but I just want to make a commitment to the public that we are not going to stop city business. But I'm really -- I'm concerned about what I read in moving forward. >> If the council is okay with this kind of a set up. >> And we're going to get to your comments. >> And where we can broadcast and people can call in or e-mail in their questions for each agenda item, I can make that commitment pretty quick. If you're -- what I've been hearing from some of the council members, though, is they want to be able to video in as well to conference in just from ratcheting up that safety one more level. So it's really up to you what your comfort level is. I mean, I'm not sure where we're going to be in a week. >> Yep. Okay. All right. Council Member Davis and then Mayor Portman. >> So the original motion as I heard it, if you're offering that as a motion, I'd very much like to second. I'm not sure if that's right yet or if you had intended to make that motion or if you're still waiting for some feedback on that. If you are waiting for feedback on date certain or event certain, my feedback there would be that we make it a date certain because the criticism that we've heard here tonight is twofold. It's one that we're having public hearings at all. But it's two that we didn't give adequate notice for the public hearings and the way in which they were going to be conducted, that people needed to know how to prepare themselves and to prepare their commentary. We have two council members that are absent, they're absent for very different reasons. The video conferencing comes into play for different reasons. One left in protest, I don't think she needs the video conferencing. The other, as I understand it, is not here because she didn't feel adequate time had passed since her travel. So I don't know that video conferencing would be necessary there either. So my preference is for the 31st if we can commit, the 7th if we don't feel comfortable committing to the 31st. I would prefer a date certain so people know. >> And I would prefer that as well. Mayor Pro Tem, go ahead. >> Yeah, no, I've heard no one raise the issue about us being here. So I would take issue with new arguments being made that after the fact are being offered up. I just think, you know, it's hard to hit a moving target. But then I think the, with respect to the date, we already have other decisions that need to be made on the 7th. There's no reason to go back to back like that. Let's give staff the time they need. We have hard decisions. We have to make on the 7th anyway to extend the emergency, et cetera, et cetera. So it should just be rightfully so. It should fall in line with the kind of plan meeting to extend the emergency, et cetera, et cetera. It all just kind of falls there if we're going to go there anyway. >> And so, yeah, I'll make a motion before I do. I just want to emphasize the council just gave you authority, Mr. City Manager, for half a million dollars in emergency spending. And if that's what it takes to pull this together, you know, I would just say whatever it takes to pull it together within your authority. And if not, then I would anticipate a request for an emergency meeting which is allowed under the emergency declaration for maybe just one agenda item such as that to look at additional funding to provide that video conference which seems to be -- I don't think there would be much opposition to that, if any. So the reason I'm saying that is by April 7th, I would hope and I know you do, too, that we will have in place much sooner than then so we all can learn and get what we need in order to do that and we can educate the public on that. Because April the 7th, if it's at all -- I mean, that's to me the date's certain I'm going to make my motion. So I'm going to make a motion to postpone the public hearings portion of this agenda and we don't have another hearing, right, another council meeting. >> We have one scheduled on the 24th. I just don't feel comfortable committing to you yet. I'm comfortable committing to either the 31st that we'll have a solution in place or April 7th if you don't want to come back twice. It just means April 7th is going to be a long day for you. But it's up to you, and I think the other thing, procedurally, Mayor, is my understanding is that we've got to open up every public hearing on the agenda and postpone them. >> Okay. That's fine. You bet. All right. So Councilmember Meltzer and then Councilmember Davis. >> A couple observations. One is that there are a number of items for individual consideration that follow the public hearings that are linked. >> Yes. >> No, no. Yeah. We've got to -- >> Got to take them together, right? >> Yes. We've got to postpone those. And everybody's talking about public hearings, public hearings. >> Yeah. >> But people can -- all those items of individual consideration we just approved. The public had a right to speak there, but I didn't hear the same kind of excitement and robust discussion about how we're keeping the people from voting where they had an opportunity to speak. So, no, we have to take those as well. >> Yeah. Well, I beg to differ a bit on that. I spoke on the first item. I chose not to just repeat it every item just because I felt, you know, the point had been made. But be that as it may, I think we're on the same page here. So -- and particularly address the matter of the later items. I would say that it is difficult to hit a moving target. Unfortunately, that's the world we're in. And I sincerely pray for the sake of those who are here and for the sake of those they will come in contact with, that there is no need for anybody here to self-quarantine. But that could emerge between now and April 7th. So if in the course of your investigation you land on a way that enables council members who are self-quarantining to participate, great. And I hope it doesn't cost the whole $500,000. >> We'll figure it out. >> Okay. >> And I second the motion. >> Well, I don't know if I've made the motion yet fully. Any other comments? All right. So we're going to have to take these one at a time. So I'll make a motion to postpone agenda item 6B until a date certain of April 7th. I do have one question before I finish that motion. If you're able to do it by the 31st and we can get all the public hearing notices out in time and all those things that would satisfy, are we able to do that or do we have to go with the 7th? >> I'll defer to Aaron. >> Yeah. >> It really depends on when our publication is actually published in the newspaper. >> No, but what I'm saying is if the motion is for a date certain of April 7th, if we're able to do it sooner, can we do it sooner? >> Yes, assuming we meet publication deadlines. >> Right, yes, yes. >> And we can get the equipment. >> All the requirements and educate and provide those kind of things. >> My publication, you're talking about the 72 hours? >> No. >> Okay. >> That's the publication under zoning, the zoning statute. >> Sorry. >> The 15 days. So we wouldn't meet the -- >> So we wouldn't meet the 31st? >> We wouldn't meet it because we would have a publication issue. >> Okay, good. So we'll make it -- so then we'll have April 7th and we'll publish the necessary publications that are required for the zoning changes, which is I think you said 14 or 15 days prior. Okay, good. All right. So then I'll make a motion on agenda item 6B to postpone to a date certain of April 7th. 6A, we already voted on that. We approved that. Yeah. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Mayor, I second your motion and if I can just -- very brief commentary. >> Absolutely. >> I appreciate your leadership on this. You're eating a little bit of crow by postponing these. I want to be there to eat that crow with you. I've been out there advocating for the methods that we have in place. I believe they're adequate. I think we did the right thing by having our meeting today. I likewise think you're doing the right thing with changing information and ultimately this will be the right decision. So I second your motion. >> Any other discussion? Mayor Pro Tem? >> Yeah. Can I at least understand -- Aaron, I mean, we're all on the spot, so come on in. The water's great. Can we pull up -- I can text you the link. Can we pull up the Texas Tribune and put it on the screen or did you have a chance to review it? >> I reviewed it and the statement is there. >> Okay. But give me -- I mean, not your legal opinion because it's a public meeting, but give me your thoughts. >> You know, I read the article and I -- further down, you know, it -- the expectation is there, but as in that article later down, it does also say that there are publication requirements that we have, you know, there's other TOMA requirements that we would have to meet to have an audio conference call or a video conference which would be posted on the agenda that this is the method that is being used. This will be the location where members of the public can listen or if it's a video conference and where they can chime in. Those are still additional TOMA requirements we have to comply with, so I know the statement was made at 2 p.m. We started meeting at 1 p.m. We were fully prepared for to have everything today, but I understand the concern that's expressed today, so whatever the council chooses to do, we will follow it. >> All right. And then one other thing. Looking forward. Sorry. We're all in this together. Looking forward, what are your concerns or suggestions? So assuming a council member is not present in the room, there's concerns about, you know, who's in the room with them? What are your thoughts on what that environment needs to be like to protect the process? >> I think it's something that we're going to have to -- I can't give you a definitive answer. We're going to have to talk about how you're going to have the meeting because, you know, since the requirements were dispensed -- oh, I'm sorry. Quorum requirements in one physical location were dispensed. I can't tell you right now how many of you are going to choose to call in or not. >> Yeah. And those are details that will have to be worked out, and I'm sure they're going to work feverishly to figure those out because we've got three weeks, but we'll get it done. I mean, we'll get it done. Council Member Ryan? >> Yeah. >> I just wanted to make sure because we're still on the posting for the public hearing, so as far as these kind of details, I just -- yes, go ahead. >> Right. >> And a motion was made and seconded. Go ahead. >> And this is just as far as the notification process. I thought in the past that we've been able to postpone for one week as long as we have a date certain and the public hearing has been opened and we allowed anyone who has filled out a blue card to speak at that point that we wouldn't have to re-notify. >> That's the key. You just mentioned when we can do what you proposed is when the public hearing was opened and then continued to a date certain. >> Right. So we could open the -- all these public hearings and then motion to postpone to the 31st because I'm just looking at we're going to have what we have left here today plus what we wouldn't get to on the 24th plus what we would normally have on the 7th, all on the 7th, and I would rather do back to back weeks on the 31st than to try and squeeze three council meetings or two and a half council meetings into one. >> I've not followed at all what you just said. >> As long as we open the public hearing and if you have any cards to speak or we call from the public, we can postpone that public hearing to a date certain and we do not have to re-notify in the paper. >> And I understand that, but I don't think the notification is the problem. We've got plenty of time for the notification. The problem in doing that is we would still need to go through a full presentation because we can't -- I mean, if we're just going to have public comment based upon the lack of a presentation, I mean, these first impression times, I'll use a legal term, these are times of first impression. We've not dealt with this. So I know that we're going to try to figure out what's going on, but I think we need to make sure that we do it and we do it in a way that provides integrity to not just the public, the council, and quite frankly, the applicants. They probably want to hear it today, but I do not want there to be some type of asterisk or some other kind of mark on this process when we have an alternative. So that's why I'm hesitant to open the public hearings because if the only thing we're saving is the notification, then I think we've got plenty of time to notify. That's my only thought. I mean, we're not really saving any time because we haven't even heard the presentation here. We spent most of our time talking about this. >> If I may add, I think, you know, as listening to the conversation and your statement, this is a case of first impression, or given that the method of how you're going to conduct the meeting, whether it's the 31st or the 7th, is going to be different than what you have here, I would think that I would recommend to err on the side of caution and republish the notification so that we do it all according to whatever method of meeting that you're choosing to have rather than open up here and then change the method of communication in the day. >> No, I agree. Okay. Okay. We're going to move forward. Real quick. I was kind of ready to call the question, but a thought occurred to me to John's point. If we postpone these to the 7th, but between now and then, let's say a solution falls into place, could we conceivably call a meeting on the 31st to cover other items? >> And I think this was Councilmember Ryan was going to, so I think I understand now what you were going to. We could, except we're outside of posting. But what we could do is if there's items that the Council could consider on the 31st to offload, you know, if we get that process in place, then we can offload some of those to the 31st and maybe the 7th is just all public hearings or things such as that. So it gives us a little bit of flexibility. >> I'll work with the staff tomorrow to try to rebalance, if you're willing to meet the 31st, I'll work with the staff tomorrow to rebalance the 31st and the 7th. >> And I just want to reiterate the point, you know, the perception of this thing, obviously we're in strange times, but I did get questions all weekend and I want to be real clear about this because I don't appreciate the comments I've heard and the tone about trying to sneak something through. >> I understand. >> And I really want to make sure that we all have the context and that the public has the context. When we published this last Friday, we had absolutely zero guidance from the governor, from the AG's office about how we were going to do business. Over the weekend, I actually made the comments to several residents and council members that I'm shocked we hadn't gotten any guidance on this and it came out yesterday, one day before our council meeting. So while people may want to see conspiracy, quite frankly, we didn't get the clarification and the rules loosened up on us until 24 hours before this meeting. And I think that's important that the public understand that. We thought they would. Aaron and I were having this discussion last week wondering why we hadn't gotten that ability since people were being concerned. But I think that's very important to get on the record that that's sort of how this unfolded. We're happy to republish and for the April 7th meeting, I think it's the right thing to do to do the process properly. If there's things we can pull up to the 31st to lighten your workload, we'll do it. And we'll make it happen. And I'm going to have to defer to Richard in terms of I believe we have to open up every one of these items, give you direction to repost tomorrow or? We'll meet the advertising. We'll get it in tomorrow for the 7th. So I think we don't necessarily have to open it if we're going to redo this. Is that correct? Right, too. Okay. That is correct. We'll repost it. But he said we don't have to open up each one of these items and postpone them on a motion. But you're saying we have to open each item up and then postpone it and call for a vote. Is that correct? Right. But that was based on a reverse course. I would not recommend that approach. I would recommend -- Okay. So we can -- Can we -- Can I do this? Make a motion to postpone agenda item 6B, C, D, agenda item 7A, B, C, D, E, and F to a date certain of April the 7th. Can I do that all in one motion? Yes, you can, Mayor. Okay. All right. Yes, Councilmember Davis. Sorry. I was just being proactive. I was trying to second that motion. Oh. Okay. Well, that's my motion. I'll say it again. Motion to postpone agenda item 6B, C, D and agenda item 7A, B, C, D, E, and F to a date certain of April 7th, 2020. We have a second by Councilmember Davis. Second. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. Is this -- Aaron, is this still a public item, right, so people can speak? The mayor hasn't opened the public hearing yet. Okay. Okay. Number one. All right. Number one. All right. And I do want to say before we take a vote, I want to reiterate because I agree with you. The notion that some councilmembers will accuse their colleagues of pushing things through is unbelievable, number one. And number two, especially when -- before all of this took place, before the governor suspended some of the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act, he did not suspend the rolling quorum provision of the Texas Open Meetings Act as far as I can tell. That is correct. So I still will say again, I hope that councilmembers will quit copying two other councilmembers on every email, and I hope that the two councilmembers they're copying will ask that they not do that because what will happen is exactly what happened this time. One of those councilmembers sent me an email requesting the very thing that was in the original email. That's a problem. So unfortunately, the person who did that, neither one of them are here, but I really hope and encourage them to not do that. Or don't send them to me. All right. Send them to the city manager. Okay. So we've got a motion and a second. All in the favor? Councilmember -- For the road. I mean, I'm going to go -- again, much to my sure grin, I'm going to support because I think valid points have been made, and it's -- I'm duty bound to be responsive. But I will tell you, if -- if it gets weaponized on Facebook, that, you know, if we get -- I just -- I just -- I'm just saying. I understand. Yeah. All right. Let's -- yeah, let's -- let's keep it to the posting. Yep. You bet. All right. So we have a motion and a second for the motion made. I think we have that enough on record. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. We will now -- Thank you, Mayor. -- concluding items. When we have two closed sessions, concluding items -- you know, let's just suspend concluding items for now. Concluding items, send it to the -- send it to the city manager. Let's take a five-minute break. But before that, I'm going to go ahead and say we're going to convene into closed session at 847 pursuant to -- hold on just a second. I've got to get back to it -- pursuant to deliberations with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071, deliberations with attorneys again under 551.071. Let's take a five-minute break.