Mar 31, 2020 City Council on 2020-03-31 1:00 PM (SPECIAL CALLED)

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, March 31, 2020. This is a special call meeting and wanted to let everybody know that we are here via a video conference. I, Mayor Chris Watts, am at City Hall and then we have our other council members who are remote via teleconference. We also have our city attorneys here and we're all practicing social distancing, most of us in many different rooms. So we'll go ahead and get started with our meeting. We do have a quorum, so I will call it to order. Our first item on the agenda is our closed meeting. So at this time, which is 1.04, the City Council will adjourn into closed meeting for deliberations regarding personnel matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.074 and consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071. And so we will now go into closed session. I just want to make sure that DTV, can you hear me? Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is 2 o'clock, we are coming to you from video conferencing. I'm at City Hall and the rest of our council, my colleagues are at various locations throughout the city. We will move through our work session reports and we do have staff in the other room and then if we could during our presentations, you're not going to be able to see the staff making the presentation, but you will see the PowerPoint. I simply ask that we go ahead and let staff finish their presentation and then we'll field questions for that. I think that would make it go a lot smoother because they will be able to go back if there's a slide you want to review again, they'll be able to do that. So our first work session report is agenda item one, which is citizen comments on consent agenda items. I do not see any blue cards, I don't believe. Hold on just a, well, but yeah. So any council members have any comments on consent agenda items? Council member Briggs? I'd like to pull item N. Okay. And I believe, are you wanting to pull that for a full presentation or just pull it? Just vote. Okay. All right. And I believe staff is pulling a consent agenda item M as in Mary, is that correct, Todd? Oh, yeah. Okay. Your mic wasn't unmuted, but I could understand what you said. Okay. All right. So then we will move on then to our work session reports. Any other council members have any clarifications for agenda items? Seeing none. Okay. We'll move on to that. We already did request for clarification. We didn't have any, did you say we had citizen comments for agenda items? These look like items for individual considering. Okay. All right. All right. So we'll move on to our work session report 3A, which is receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction on the temporary amendment of certain provisions of section 2-29 of the code of ordinances, which are the city council rules and procedure to accommodate temporary video conferencing and public comment procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Who's going to be making that presentation? Ryan Adams. Okay. Ryan Adams. I'm sorry. I've got it right here. Sorry about that. Yes, Ryan. Go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. I believe everyone can see the presentation that's been pulled up. This is just an item to suspend several portions of the council rules of procedure. And the purpose of this item is to allow the council an optimum amount of flexibility as we work our way through and meet on different items related to the coronavirus and our disaster declaration. I'm going to see if I can advance to the next slide. Perhaps not. The mouse works. Perfect. Just as a brief overview, section 2-29 of the code of ordinances is the rules of procedure. And it sets forth guidance with respect to a lot of the procedure elements of council and council meetings, whether it's general rules, the different types of meetings, all the way up to how council considers ordinances, resolutions, and motions. The first item that the ordinance you'll consider later on in the individual consideration section of this meeting is the temporary suspension of section 2-29, B-14. This section requires that proposed rules of procedure amendments be introduced at a separate meeting prior to when they're adopted by council. The suspension of this rule would, again, allow flexibility that if in the future during this disaster period, if council needs to make an amendment to the rules or procedure to adapt to the conditions of the disaster period, they would not have to bring that item forward into consecutive meetings. Also being suspended is section C, or pardon me, 2-29C-6 as it relates to video conferencing. And in addition to suspending this section, a couple of other amendments have been included and you have been provided the red line of 2-29. These again are to allow meetings like this to take place more effectively, to allow council to be able to shift to a fully virtual format of meetings. So like today, through the disaster period, city business will be conducted through a Zoom or similar video conference method. And the meetings that are conducted via Zoom will be streamed online, broadcast on DTV, and will be available for on-demand public view. And as today, we intend to have online comment forms and a telephone line available for residents comments. However, in the interest of social distancing, the in-person ability to comment may not be available in future meetings, again, knowing that we might have to adapt to more stringent physical distancing requirements that may be needed at a future time. So again, the ordinance to consider later on in this meeting is to suspend those two provisions, 2-29 B-14 and 2-29 C-6, and then to temporarily adopt several amendments to the rules of procedure. And within the ordinance, it does state that these changes would only be in effect for as long as the disaster period. So whenever the disaster period is terminated or it expires, or the governor sets an expiration to the Texas Open Meetings Act suspensions that he made last month, or probably earlier this month, these changes would then expire as well. And that's my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, if we could go ahead and take the presentation down so I can see all the council members on one screen. Otherwise, I've got to scroll up. There we go. Thank you very much. Okay, want to open up for questions, yes, Council Member Armitter, if you'll be sure and unmute. Thank you. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay. So several questions. One, will be instructions on submitting written comments and calling over the phone for live comments, be included in the posted agenda in the future? Go ahead, Ryan. Sure, sure. Included with the posted agenda, we can include those at the same time the agenda is posted. I don't know as to form how they might look if it is on the agenda itself, but to the extent that we can, I believe we will. And then we'll also make those widely available through our social media, our website, and any other channels that we have at our disposal to make sure people are aware of the different methods that they can provide input into the council meeting. Okay, thanks. I would like to see it on the posted agenda, so it's all in one package. That would be great. Also, I was just wondering, is there anybody who is there at City Hall live now? I think the live option, I mean, members of the public, there was an option to appear live in person at City Hall. In terms of the agenda, we will work with our city attorney to make sure that it's posted properly and he and Rosa can work that out. And in terms of anyone here, I'm not aware of anyone as of about five minutes ago, there was no one here. Okay. I think that's smart for them to have stayed at home, and I would recommend that in the future that we just plan to not have an in-person option for the public. I think that's the most responsible thing right now and I think it will be for the future. We agree with you, Councilmember Armitage. The only reason that we didn't on this meeting is you hadn't yet adopted the new video conferencing rules procedure, so in the future, we'll make that a case. Thank you. Okay, anybody else? Okay, all right. Thank you, Ryan. Appreciate that. Thank you, Mayor. Our next item is receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding an update to the City of Denton's COVID-19 response and that presentation will be made by Sarah Keickler. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council. Hold on one second, just pulling up the presentation. Okay, so over the last two to three weeks, the city has taken significant action in response to COVID-19, as well as the county and the state. As you can see listed on your screen here are the actions that have officially been taken by City Council and Mayor Watts with the first action taken on March 13th for a mayoral declaration and order for a public health emergency and then the last action being taken on March 24th, which was the second mayoral declaration and order for a stay at home order. As far as discussion or extension or amendment of that order, that will be taking place during the individual consideration item. This work session presentation is just to provide council and the public with an update on how the city is responding to COVID-19. We gave prior work sessions on March 17th and March 20th, and so today will be another broad update. We understand that we're not going to be able to provide information on everything you would like to know, but we are trying to do frequent updates to council as well as daily Q&As to council. We're doing a lot of public communications, which I'll touch upon as well. So we'd just like to focus this work session on a few of the major updates that we think council would like information on. So I'll be covering the first six topics that are listed on the screen here, and then Chief Hedges is actually going to be providing that last topic in regards to local medical response and preparedness. So the first topic I'd like to cover is store outreach. During our last work session on March 20th, city council asked if staff could reach out to some several major essential retailers and grocery stores to really learn how they're modifying their operations in response to COVID-19 to keep their employees and the community safe. So on Tuesday, March 24th, a team from development services visited several essential major retailers in town, they provided them with a letter of best practices that they could implement, as well as some flyers and signage that they could post in their stores. They also had discussions with the managers to understand what was being done. And some more of that information was included in your Friday report, but just wanted to touch upon our staff learned that the stores are, they're kind of taking these steps. They've modified their hours to allow for additional cleaning and restocking. Some stores have established special hours for senior citizens and other at risk populations, and more information was provided in your Friday packet for those stores that have established those hours. Most retailers have hired additional cleaning staff. Most retailers are requiring hourly cleaning of all solid surfaces and carts. And then some stores have actually taken additional actions to install additional barriers between staff and customers. And so the team from development services will continue to do their outreach and respond to concerns if there are from the community in regards to these businesses that are providing essential services. Moving on, the next topic update that we wanted to share with council is in regards to the stay at home order implementation. So this was the order from the mayor that was issued last Tuesday and became effective Wednesday, March 25th for seven days. And again, the details of the order and possible extension will be discussed during the individual consideration item. But I did want to share some of the actions that staff took in order to really implement this and educate our community and businesses. So immediately after it took place, we developed several communications from a press release, website, FAQs, flyers, social media posts. Staff from many different departments answered many phone calls, email, social media to try to provide more clarification of what the order meant and what clarified as essential activities for residents or what is an essential business or non-essential business. I think in our social media channels on the day following the order, we answered over 700 messages. Public development took over 100 phone calls. So there was a large volume coming in from our community to seek clarification so that they would comply with the order. And we have maintained constant contact with the county just to make sure that we're in alignment with their order as well and their interpretations of what is essential or non-essential. And so here is an example of some of the flyers and communications that we have put out. We're continuing to adapt these and we'll be continuing to work on next round of communications to help inform the community. If a business has an inquiry to know if they are essential or not, they can reach out directly to the county at businesscovid19@dentoncounty.gov. If a resident is concerned in regards to if a business is following the order, they can report that concern directly to the city through the Engage Denton app or through the city's website. If they do not have access to those, they can call one of the city's main lines and a city staff member can enter it in. And that's so that we have consistent tracking and reporting of any business concerns that we're receiving. That concern will then be reviewed by team that we have put together from legal development services, code enforcement, public affairs, and economic development. This team will also work with Denton County to make sure that we're having those consistent interpretations of the orders. And then we will reach out through code enforcement or development services, the store owners themselves to educate them on the order, whether that be through a site visit or a phone call. And really our priority and our focus will be on education and outreach to these businesses to try to gain compliance. Issuing citations can be done, but that will be the last tool that we would resort to if needed. So I wanted to move on to the next topic, which is in regards to some of the resources and information that's available to businesses. I did touch on this in prior presentations, so I'm not going to go through all of these again, but I just wanted to continue to remind the community and the businesses out there that they should visit this business resource website, cityofdenton.com/covid19business. Economic development is continuing to update it as local, state, and federal information becomes available. So they're encouraged to check it frequently. I do want to share on the SBA, there are two programs that are available, and that is the economic injury disaster loans. The state of Texas is now eligible, so businesses can apply through the SBA for that program, as well as the paycheck protection program, should say paycheck instead of payroll. That program was actually authorized as part of the federal CARES Act, and that program will provide business loans to help small businesses cover short-term operating expenses and provide an incentive for employers to retain their employees. Generally, businesses, nonprofits, and veterans organizations with 500 employees or less will be eligible to apply for this federally insured, partially forgivable loan. There will be more guidance and applications coming out this week in regards to that program as it was just authorized last week by the federal CARES Act. And then there's other information available on this business resource as listed here on the screen. In addition to the website, economic development has been working constantly with our partners to learn about what tools, resources, or other educational materials may be available to help our businesses. And so these are a listing of some of the resources that are out there, some of the webinars that may be taking place. I believe we shared some of that information with you through your update provided last night in regards to the webinars we currently know about. And then economic development is really encouraging any one business with questions about the resources or available programs to please reach out and call their line, 940-349-776. They are not working in the office, they're working remotely. But if you leave a voicemail, someone will get back with that business shortly. So moving on, this is a topic that we had discussed previously as well in terms of the local community's response and what resources might be available to those in need, anywhere from utility assistance, childcare, emergency, housing, food resources, health care, and so forth. So if anyone is looking for information, this site is continuing to be updated as we receive information as well. In addition, it also provides a listing of opportunities if there are individuals or businesses who wish to help, whether that be donating time, money, materials, or otherwise. I'd like to move on at this time and to kind of provide a public update about what we've done in terms of our shelters serving individuals experiencing homelessness. This information has been shared with council, but wanted to provide the brief update publicly. So throughout the last two to three weeks, city staff have maintained constant contact with our Daily Bread, Monsignor King Outreach Center, and the Salvation Army to learn how they were adapting their operations and practices in response to COVID and really caring for their clients. Unfortunately, about a week and a half ago, we learned there were some things taking place where we needed to come up with an alternative shelter arrangement. And really that was due to primarily the nonprofits had lost their essential volunteer forces. These are dedicated, experienced, trained volunteers that have worked with these agencies for a very long time, but unfortunately due to some of their vulnerabilities and other factors could not continue on to providing that volunteer service in order to continue operations at some of the shelters and centers themselves. It was also important to mitigate a potential outbreak in the shelters just due to the space and confinements of those areas, and to protect the health and safety of the clients in the shelters. Many, like I said, the space is limited and many of the clients were not adhering to the social distancing requirements that we are receiving. In addition, if no action was taken, it was feared that the shelters might just have to close and would that have an impact on our public safety resources and hospital resources for those clients then that have nowhere else to go to. And so as we were discussing with the nonprofit agencies, a team of city staff got together and really within a short period of time came up with an alternative shelter arrangement and it took a lot of work from a lot of different departments and we're really grateful for everyone that participated. The plan that was implemented was that the city would temporarily rent rooms at two hotels for 30 days. And so the one hotel has 50 rooms rented and that is primarily serving individuals. And these are individuals that have been placed by MKOC based on being the most vulnerable or most in need. However, at this point, all of the clients that were staying with MKOC have been placed at the hotel and the MKOC shelter is closed until further notice. And that is important because we are needing, there's only two staff members at MKOC and they are very familiar with these clients and knowing how to support them, especially during this time of crisis. And so those MKOC staff members are now at the hotel helping to manage, operate and provide that vital support to their clients. Many of the clients staying at the hotel had to sign rules of conduct that they must abide by otherwise they may forfeit the opportunity and the room may be provided to another individual in need. In addition, there's also security firm that the city has hired that is onsite at the, at the hotel 24/7 and Denton police department patrol is stopping by occasionally as available. So that action took place last week, all of the clients from MKOC were transitioned over to the hotel with the assistance of DCTA and we're very grateful for their help as well. The other hotel, a separate hotel was also rooms were rented from them, a total of 10 rooms, and that is primarily being used for families and Grace Like Rain is helping to manage the operations at that hotel and providing the support to the families there. And then in addition to the two hotels, our daily bread has stopped providing dining service. They still are preparing meals each day and they're handing out meals to those who may come to their facility. And they're also preparing and delivering meals to the two hotels so that the individuals at the hotels have meals as they are being asked to shelter in place at those hotels and not leave unless it's an essential activity consistent with the rest of the community. I do want to highlight that at our daily bread, we do have non-essential city staff who are volunteering to help make those meals, deliver the meals. We also have non-essential staff that are working for other nonprofits right now. One including Grace Like Rain and helping to provide childcare for parents that work in the essential, that work for an essential business that need childcare. In addition to this alternative shelter arrangement that I just summarized, the city has also made available additional services for health and hygiene. The Civic Center pool, showers and restroom are open for public use and this is from Monday to Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. In addition to the showers and restrooms being available, we have also rented a washer dryer unit that was delivered and connected in the parking lot. So that service is available as well. There are three mobile hand washing stations, the water fountains are also on, and the restroom and shower areas are being cleaned twice a day. And then we're also working closely with our daily bread to help get the word out to those that may be living in the community and in need of these services or living unsheltered and in need of these services about what's available. Our daily bread interacts with these individuals often in the provision of meals and also they also employ the street outreach worker who has gotten to know these folks very well. Also want to mention, we did get some questions in regards to if restrooms and parks are still available at this time. We have closed the restrooms and parks as many of the parks amenities have been closed themselves. And we simply cannot commit to keeping them sanitized and monitored enough during this time. Okay, so switching into the next topic update of city operations, and we kind of kind of provided some information in previous work sessions in regards to how the city is managing the COVID-19 response. The primary vehicle through which this is done is the Emergency Operations Center. We have many staff throughout the city who are working to coordinate the various functions, whether that be from public safety response to tracking finances to purchasing logistics. Many different functions are taking place in addition to daily calls with all of the different agencies around the county and the state and the nation to make sure that we're getting all the information up to date as we can. From the city's essential services, they are continuing to be provided from public safety, utility operations, infrastructure and maintenance and construction. All departments where possible for non-essential services have deployed remote working procedures, and that's to be in compliance with the stay-at-home order. To be creative and how to continue to provide services remotely, departments are coming up with different ideas on how to provide service, a lot of good things coming out of our departments to continue to provide services to the community, especially in libraries and parks and recreation where they're actually developing new remote programming and services. And as I touched upon previously, some of our non-essential staff are also helping to supplement volunteer shifts at various nonprofits. Continuing on, one of our important functions right now is the distribution of public information, especially as things continue to rapidly evolve through this response and as COVID-19 continues to change and our response continues to change. So you've seen a lot of the information we've put out through various communication channels, but I just wanted to provide some quick perspective of really what that means. In two weeks' time frame, we had over 630,000 impressions on just our main city social media channels, and really what that means is the number of time people saw our posts. We've had over 1,800 comments and messages received, and I'm very proud of our team to share that on average through Facebook, those have been responded to within 11 minutes for the private messages. So really trying to continue to provide that top-notch customer service and help our community understand what these various orders and information mean. In addition, our website page that is dedicated to coronavirus has had a total of almost 60,000 page views, which is very significant in terms of what we usually see as website traffic coming through. And then lastly, for city operations, we did share some information with council in the Friday report last week of what city management and leadership is doing to begin to prepare for a drop in revenues and the impact to the city's budget of COVID-19. In the Friday report, it was shared that an internal executive team is beginning to work with all the directors on cost reduction and cost containment recommendations. We are projecting shortfalls in the general fund and utility fund budgets that will need to be offset in order to sustain basic essential services in the city, as well as mitigate the need to raise property taxes and utility fees. And this is a very initial outlook. I know this information is going to change often, but an initial figure is that we're anticipating the need to reduce general fund expenditures by anywhere from $6 million to $12 million this fiscal year with additional reductions in the utility funds. And so again, more information to come, but wanted to inform council that there is a team that is working directly on this, as we understand it will be an important topic and that we need to start as quickly as possible on this. And at this time, I'm going to turn it over to Chief Hedges, who's going to provide some update to you in terms of the local medical response and preparedness. Thank you, Sarah. Yeah, yeah, Council Member Briggs, you had had a, you sort of raised your hand. Would you like to unmute? You've got a question. Just for clarification, if we had any follow ups for Sarah, should we just wait till everything's done and then go back? That's a good question. Chief, does your presentation sort of weave in and out of that, or are these pretty distinct presentations? If they are, we'll go ahead and take questions on Sarah's portion now and then get yours when those questions are over. What are your comments on that? I would say mine's more distinct on mercy, preparedness, and response. Okay. Why don't we go ahead and then just field questions for Sarah's portion of the presentation. Sarah, if you wouldn't mind, go ahead and make yourself available for questions. And if we could, go ahead and pull the presentation down so I can see the council members. And then if there's a particular slide that needs to be brought back up, we can do that as well. All right. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Meltzer, and then Council Member Briggs. Yeah, on the public information side, I get the impression that just based on the volume of mail that I'm receiving, that there's not a lot of understanding out there about the very substantial resources from the CARE Act that people can access if they become unemployed. By my rough estimation, something like $50 million would be coming into Denton if people actually act on it. And is it outside of what the city can do since this is federal money executed, implemented through the state, but would it be appropriate for the city to help with that public communication effort to just guide people so they know what to do? I'm seeing people requesting that we have to have a million dollars in rental assistance when there's something like $50 million ready to go to people exactly to meet their income shortfalls so that they can take care of the rent and their other basic needs. They obviously aren't getting that information. Yeah, that's a very good question. And that will be a priority for staff is how do we continue to share the resources that are available and at least direct individuals in need to either the websites, webinars, different agencies, if we can provide them assistance as well. We will be working on more of those public messaging. Just the information has come so rapidly and especially with the CARES Act just passing on Friday, needing a little time and also wanting to share the official source, you know, if a state agency or federal agency is putting out information, we would just like to re-share that so we're not trying to summarize in our own words as well. Yeah, I know, you know, I know it's out there in websites but people don't know to look. And I'll just say briefly twc.texas.gov and I'll yield to other questions. Okay, Councilmember Briggs? You're muted. There you go. Okay. Can you hear me okay? Yes. All right. Sarah, I have my first question is about the store outreach. Yes. Because I've been to a few and some have the flyers taped and they have, they're limiting the number of people that are coming in, they have tape on the floor, they're doing all the things that are recommended with the social distancing and then there's some that are not. Is there a way we're trying to unify or does everybody have to abide by the same rules or do they just take them and apply it however they want? We've shared best practices with them. For some stores they may adapt them differently just to paste based upon their store layout or what services they're providing as well as how many people they may be letting into the store at one time. But if there are concerns from the community, we are asking, you know, to report those things through Engage Denton, we will have staff go out and revisit with the stores to see if there are additional measures that could be put into place to ensure the health and safety of the customers as well as the employees that work there. But I can tell you that Development Services, when they went out and visited last week, the visits were well received. A lot of the corporate entities themselves have passed along these practices and so we'll continue to work with them. They are very much open to our visits. Okay. Mayor, may I just have a few more? Of course, of course. The next couple of questions are about the shelter. So are we getting a discounted rate through the hotels or is it a full price? Do we know? I mean, is it? And is that coming out of the emergency funding? The answer is yes, it is coming out of the emergency funding and we had our staff reach out to almost all the hotels that showed interest in potentially partnering opportunities. We had two of them only willing to work with us, so we negotiated the best deal that we could. Okay. And so I guess so then my next question is that we recently in this last year's budget passed a significant amount from Monsignor King to be open for seven days. Is that what happened to that? Is that still for them to carry over or is that being applied in a different way now that it's closed? Anything that is left over that allocation, we're going to be drawing down first and they will also be using the emergency funding as well. So we're going to end up reconciling everything probably this summer. Okay. And the last one is I know that it said that there was 10 rooms for families and that Grace Lechraine is kind of managing those, but is the Wheeler House still open or was that to supplement the Wheeler House or is that in addition to families that can stay there? I do not have an answer to that right now, but we can follow up with you. I do not believe the Wheeler House is open, but I do want to verify that before providing that answer. Okay. Thank you. And Mayor, just a process question. Any other thing we want to describe in detail for the order or any changes would be in the item under individual consideration, correct? That's correct. That's my understanding from what staff was requesting. Yes. Thank you. Yep. All right. Any other questions for this portion of the presentation? Council Member Armitter. Yes. I had some questions about the shelter slides too or the slide about the shelter and the health and hygiene slide. Okay. So one, has there been outside of the point in time count, has there been a census done of who is living out on the street right now and how many more hotel rooms we would need to ensure that we do not have people living out on the street to help flatten the curve? No, there has not. And that always is a challenge in terms of knowing how many individuals are living unsheltered in the community. And that is the reason for the point in time count and trying to do that annual census as they're often dispersed throughout the county or the community as well. But we know there are individuals living unsheltered in various encampments throughout the city. That was prior to COVID-19 as well. Our street outreach team has been working with them and will continue to let them know what services and resources are available during this time as well. And just to check on their health and wellbeing as they do now on a weekly basis or prior to COVID-19 on a weekly basis. And is there a kind of a triage priority list in place whereby we temporarily house new people when new hotel rooms, for instance, people with disabilities, seniors, essential emergency workers, until recently a Kroger worker was homeless. I was able to find a friend who was able to put him up. I know somebody, a young woman with disabilities and a service dog, who hasn't been put up. So I was wondering, is there a priority list? We are not keeping a list at this time. However, I would encourage anyone to reach out to our Daily Bread, MKOC or the Salvation Army. Their Salvation Army is still open as well with limited beds at this time. However, working directly with those agencies, they'll be able to help us prioritize should a room become available who is most vulnerable, most at risk that needs to be placed into that room. Thank you. And we considered utilizing public buildings for the city buildings or would that take too much time? Are the hotels the more ready and available at this time? In our early discussions, the hotels were seen as the most preferable way of handling it simply because we've got a couple of buildings that we're keeping in abeyance. One of them does not have the proper HVAC systems that we felt comfortable with, but it was still keeping it as an emergency site, but the hotels were the easiest way from our perspective to move the shelter that had the council's policy and direction behind it and the easiest way to manage for those staffers who were quite frankly getting pretty worn out. Yeah. And actually, and that's another question. Has there been any attempt to use some of the funding to try to either have the city hire new workers that are Daily Bread or Men's Senior King could help train or to give money to our Daily Bread or Men's Senior King to hire workers because with two, what is it, two full time at MKOC and I know there's some more full time at ODB, but they're strapped. And right now we've got an increasing unemployment, really hungry workforce. We put that new available workforce to use for this essential end. The answer to that is no. We've got non-essential workers which are being paid by the city currently and staying at home. So we've been asking for volunteers since they are on the payroll, knowing that we've got a substantial deficit that we're having to deal with. It didn't make sense to us right now to go out and hire additional folks when we know that we're going to be cutting anywhere from $6 to $12 million in the next few months. So we do have the folks that have been willing, that are on the city payroll, that are getting paid anyway, willing to take those shifts. And by working with our Daily Bread to sort of change their business model to more of a delivery type service, we've been able to keep them fairly well staffed up. So that's how it was approached at this point, just trying to manage those expenses as tightly as we can. But don't the hotels need more staffing? Not at this point. We agreed with the one larger hotel that we moved MKOC largely into that we would provide security staffing at night, which we've done, along with some pass throughs by our police department as they get the downtime. And this was not a program to go out and hire any more folks we needed. We're really concerned about making sure we could stand the ODB and the shelters up so they can get through this. But as long as we have folks on the city payroll that are at home and willing to volunteer to take these shifts, that's probably the best way to get through this and manage our budget at that point. And please count me in as a volunteer as well when I'm available. What two hotels are we using and what's the cost per room and how can members of the public donate if they want to donate to help put people up at these hotels? For the privacy of the clients, I do not want to publicly share the names of the two hotels, especially if they're the most vulnerable. I don't want to publicly be promoting where those hotels are located at. As far as the second question, it was on price? Yes. Yeah. Cost per hotel room. And then how could members of the public listening now if they wanted to donate some money to help put people up at a hotel, if I wanted to donate? Yeah. The rooms are in the $59 to $65 range, I believe is correct in double checking that. And in many rooms, we're doubling people up just in asking them to respect the social distancing to the extent possible. If they wanted to donate, I would encourage the council to direct them to either ODB or MKOC directly and help them out. And your other question, Council Member Armitage about our daily bread, well, we've been working closely with them to sort of alter their delivery options during the day to try to adhere to social distancing and, quite frankly, ensure that they had the volunteerism that they needed. We have also assured them that if they get low on cash and need assistance with commodities for the next couple of months, that we'll be there to work through that with them using our Benny Keith distributor. Okay, good, good. That was another thing I was going to ask about because we're meeting remotely now and we've got less staff on site, our food budget is not being used for meetings. So if that could be donated to our daily bread or for food at the hotels or in some way. So that's all for now for that slide, the slide after that about health and hygiene. Council Member Armitage, do you have, because I've got some other council member, I think Council Member Briggs had another question, do you have just a couple of questions on that? If not, we can swing back around to you because I know we've been going about five or eight minutes just with your segment. So do you have some real quick questions on that or we can circle back around to you? Yeah, I have a quick question about the health and hygiene slide, but then I had some other questions about the flyer, so maybe for those latter questions. Yeah, we'll swing back around, we'll see if we can't get, see if there's anybody else that wants to talk for the first time and then we can swing back around. Go ahead and ask your health and hygiene question and we'll come back on the flyer question on the second go around. Okay, so I had heard from people experiencing homelessness that the shower is cold and I know staff had mentioned that the shower is actually lukewarm and you didn't want to make it hot because people would get scalded. I haven't taken a shower there myself, but when I responded to the people who communicated to me, there were two individuals and they both said that shower is cold. So if that could be checked on, I know hot and cold is subjective, but these are people who are not all that picky. Thank you for reporting that to us, I know our park staff were out there yesterday seeing how they could adjust the temperatures to maybe increase that temperature with still having it be safe. I know with those older systems, it's a little difficult to fine tune it, but they were definitely trying to work on it. Thank you, and shout out to our wonderful park staff for going and doing that. And then, though I had asked about soap, I know that ODB gives people soap to bring around with them. Not everybody, I have heard, takes the soap, and they're also limited in soap, and by the way, if anyone wants to donate soap to our daily bread, as I understand it, they're taking soap donations. Is there any reason for there not to be soap at the Civic Center pool shower, that one restroom? I know that there's not soap there, but if we could put soap there, I feel like that would be a very low cost, a way to help try to flatten the... Our daily bread does provide some of those health and hygiene essentials, and I know that they had a stock of them, so of course they'll take more donations, but they were still providing those out to individuals in need. We can reach out to our daily bread and have a conversation to see if we can do anything alternatively in terms of maybe having a few available at the Civic Center in case someone was unable to reach our daily bread. I think that would be a good idea. Okay. I know Council Member Briggs, you had indicated another question, but I want to see if any of the council members had questions moving forward before we come back around the second time around the horn. Mayor Pro Tem. Okay, just to pick up where you just left off, Sarah, I would be concerned about the touch point of soap being left there for multiple people to utilize. I don't know what the science is behind that, but... Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Let me clarify. They're usually single serve handouts that hotels or others, businesses donate where they could just...where our staff maybe wouldn't have to interact besides handing over a bag of the shampoo or soap, and then that could just be taken or disposed of by the individual after they're done with their use. Yes. Okay. Then I'm tracking with you there. And then... Thank you, Mayor Watson. But one other point. Do we want to speak to, or I don't want to put staff in this position, so I'll speak to it and you can speak if you want. I want to pick up on Paul's point. I think he makes a good point regarding the $1 million ask, but we have a member of this body that's advocating that via social media. That's the approach. And so I think the key is for us as a body to disseminate valuable information that can be better, that puts people in the best position to be successful in weather this storm. I think when you hear differing points from this body, it causes confusion and delays support for our residents. So I don't know how that's managed, just speaking to the fact that I agree with Council Member Meltzer that we need to have good information that puts residents in the best position to weather the storm as a body. That's just the responsible thing, I believe, for us to do to have a consistent message, no different than we sync up with the county on our messaging and requirements, that sort of thing. So I don't expect staff to speak on that. If they want to, they can, but really just wanted to share that point that this body shouldn't send conflicting messages to the residents because it causes confusion. Yeah, I appreciate that, Council Mayor Pro Tem. I think that's going to be the important part is to disseminate the information based upon the CARE Act. There's a couple of new articles summarizing it, but I hesitate to summarize those here because of not knowing exactly, putting my eyeballs on the actual statute, but we do have our people in Washington that are also preparing, I believe, a summary of the legislation that they can pass out. And from what I'm understanding is it's quite substantial as far as both the individual need that it can provide and also the need for businesses and even for communities such as counties and cities. So we will await that to see exactly specifically what's there, but as soon as we get that and we can disseminate good, reliable information, I think that's a great idea, is that we need to make sure that we provide every opportunity in order to do that. Council Member Briggs, you had a question. Oh, Council Member Meltzer, I saw you. Go ahead and then we'll come back to Council Member Briggs. Well, just on this point, I had just an individual communication, so I'm just putting this out there with United Way about the idea that perhaps the people that, or others, but the people that would in this time of year ordinarily be helping people file income tax, you know, people of low income, that that would be a very similar skill set to what might be helpful to have a group who are able to help people file for unemployment. You know, it might be a more pressing need right now. And I think he's interested in that and they're evaluating that, so just sharing that. Good. Council Member Briggs, you had, I think, a comment or a question, I thought you had raised your hand. Yeah, just one comment and question, because we were talking about our daily bread. They are still feeding around a hundred people a day, plus the individuals that are in the hotel room. So for anyone who wants to volunteer or donate, that's still in need. That was my comment. My question would be for, I guess, Sarah, or anyone that would know, for individuals that are staying in the hotels, are we having issues with them following protocols or the shelter in place? And if that is happening, what is the solution for that? I think the first couple nights of the hotel operation with it being new, I think some of the clients were understanding, you know, what would be enforced or how would it be monitored. I think there was some, some of it was not being adhered to. However, we have had MKOC staff there more regularly since we closed the shelter at MKOC. And really with them already knowing the clients and understanding and how to communicate and work with them, I definitely think we've had better compliance of what I've heard over the last few days. And that will continue to be a priority, is to really utilize those trained staff and case managers to make sure that the clients there are staying in compliance with the rules. Okay. But they, do they, do they get so many chances? Okay. Is that the process, how that works? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Seeing no others, Council Member Armitage, you had some questions about, I believe, the flyer. Oh, you're muted, Council Member Armitage. Council Member Armitage, I think we just, okay. You need to hit, there you go. Okay. You're back. All right. Okay. So yeah, question about the flyer, also about protections for emergency workers. Well, we can, yeah, we can address that with Chief Hedge's presentation. So yeah. Sorry. Go ahead, Council Member Armitage. Okay, so about the flyer, first of all, I want to respond to what Mayor Pro Tem said about the CARE Act. The reason why I haven't spoken about that is because I'm still not sure, much like what Mayor said about exactly what that entails, I don't want to give anybody any false hope. I'm very pleased with what I've heard about it so far, but in responding to Council Member Meltzer also, I don't see any contradiction between the possibility of incoming resources from the CARE Act and us as a city. Oh, my, I'm sorry. Did you lose me? I lost. No, we can hear you. We just lost your video feed. Okay. Okay. Okay. I need to plug in my iPad, I think. So anyway, but in a moment. So I don't see a contradiction in possible incoming funds from the CARE Act and us committing to add a million dollars. Council Member Armitage, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that might be one of your requests in the citizen reports or something, or I don't want to, I mean, we're going to go over all this in the item for individual consideration where people talk about what they may or may want not to add to the order. So I don't, I mean, I think time is an essential commodity here. So if you could just address, appreciate your comments on your response to Mayor Pro Tem, if you could address the flyer issue and what your questions are on that, I'd appreciate that. So on the flyer, so if you could actually put up the, if you could put up the flyer, if that's okay, so that the public. Let me see if I can bring the presentation back. Are you referencing the essential business? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Because there are two, by the way, I love that we've got a flyer now. It mentions, so while you're doing that, I will, I will speak to it. It says, this is a brief list of essential businesses. Let's see what numbers line that is. It's coming up. There we go. Yeah. So this is the one on the right, the businesses is a brief list of essential businesses. They're not all covered. I was wondering if, you know, you could speak to why I know that there's a big kind of a carve out for manufacturing. It says under infrastructure manufacturing in any of these essential categories, plus anything else that can maintain social distancing as best as they can or something. I was wondering why that's not included in there. And then under retail, I noticed that retail gun stores are included in the ordinance. I didn't see that listed here. And I wanted to ask also, as far as restaurants go, if there has been any attempt to distinguish between food suppliers that provide say, you know, 60 to 70% or more of the food they supply is a savory, relatively nutritious food versus say a frozen yogurt shop or an ice cream shop, a cupcake or doughnut store, you know, to me, the latter should not be operating sweet shops as much as I love sweets. But I was wondering if there's been an attempt to distinguish and if not, if there could be. So if we could, Sarah, if you could pull that slide down just for a second so I can see all the count. Thank you. One second. Sure. I think that's going to be a discussion for the order, because what I'm hearing you say is there's some things you may want to be added or deleted or some clarification. And I think when we get to that item for individual consideration, that's we're going to be able to go over all that. So I don't want to, I don't want to go over these things twice. We can do that all once we start considering the order. This is more just an information presentation on what the city's doing. There have been some questions for clarification on some of the presented information, but anything particular to the order, the expiration date, who's in it, who's not, I would like to save that for the item for individual consideration. So could then, could staff speak to current why or could, could in the next iteration of this flyer, could there be, could it have all of the essential businesses listed because there really aren't that many more? Well that's something, that's something, that's something that we can discuss in the order during the order discussion, because we want to be careful that we don't present it as an exhaustive list of businesses, you know, we have an order that's, that's out there that people can read. We want to give them some, we don't give them as much direction as we can, but I also just don't want to have to go down to each individual, like you pointed out, specific type of restaurants who provide or don't provide nutritious meals or something like that. So I want to save that for the discussion in items for individual consideration. So if you have any more comments about her presentation, other than what we can discuss on the particular order and the contents thereof, certainly would ask you to go ahead and present those. No. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Any more questions for Sarah's presentation? Mayor, just one thing I wanted to clarify, I got more information on the Wheeler house is still open. So the hotel is being used as additional rooms for families. I just wanted to clarify that. All right. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. All right. Any other questions for Sarah's portion of the presentation? Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council members. I do have just one slide, but I have quite a bit of information on this. So all the bullet points you see are just specifically talking points. So let me start off just briefly on more specific fire department response, and let me actually just make one comment. We know we're in unprecedented time, so no amount of planning could ever prepare for an event like this. So right now I feel like everybody is in information overload. So we're trying to take in as much information, process it, filter it, and send it out to our public safety responders. And that's coming from every different entity. I mean, we primarily focus on CDC, as they are really the drivers behind this. So I want to kind of preempt everybody with that, that we appreciate everybody's comments, suggestions, everything, and to the point that we've even developed a research group in the EOC where we're using some staff that does not have assignments and even some light duty personnel to just take some of these emails and suggestions and try to do more research on them as well. So with that, you're going to bear with me. I'm going to try to share as much information as I've got, and I'm expected to walk away with here probably more questions, and I'm probably going to give you answers. So fire department right now, last time we did a presentation, I told you that we had put in two units for specifically COVID EMS calls. One unit was a transport. One was just a primary response vehicle to transport. We have since converted that primary response to a second ambulance. So we have two ambulances 24 hours a day that specifically run COVID calls. These are non-acuity calls. So just the normal cough, shortness of breath, and fever. So we have seen an increase in those, and we expect the increase to continue as well. Overall, though, I can report there's a, in the fireside, there's a decrease in calls or service. So what we're actually seeing is people that used to request 911 service to be transferred to the hospital have actually filtered and are looking for different emergency options, and it really is coded as a non-emergent call. So broken hands, feet, various things of that nature. People are taking it upon themselves to kind of self-police on whether or not they need to go to the hospital emergency department or actually look for an alternative care site, which is these freestanding facilities or other type of positions. So that's actually a good positive for our response model as we prepare for obviously an increase in calls as we move through this. One thing I want to mention that we constantly review and modify our non-emergency services. So what the fire department does for the citizens in the community. One thing I want to share is we have just recently discontinued a non-emergency service and it's called a lift assist, and it's only in facilities that are staffed with personnel, specifically medical personnel. So nursing homes, assisted living centers, and historically in the past, if they had a resident that would slip and fall and needed movement assistance or just needed help up off the ground, even though they had staff, they would still call 911. We'd send a unit, no lights or sirens, and assist in lifting that person uninjured. So we can communicate with all the services last week that until further notice, we're discontinuing that service. So that's just actually twofold. That is to reduce, I'm sorry, reduce the amount of call loads and also keep our personnel out of environments that they could actually be exposed to COVID at a higher rate as well. So we communicate that email and we gave them a phone number to call up, call and follow up on that as well. So that's it on fire department responses and I'll have more as with this event unfolds as well as we expect to probably have to increase our amount of COVID units. So let's move on to Denton State Support Living Center update. I have some information that honestly, I feel that it's more positive note. So everybody knows the amount of testing has been occurring out there by the Denton County Public Health Department. So as of today, the current numbers are 437 residents have been tested. There are 49 positives, so that is up four positives from yesterday. And there's still two that they were not able to test for unknown reasons, we were not able to determine that reason whether they have been pulled off that site. Staff that is employed there, I have 72 people that were tested came back negative and 20 that have came back positive. And these numbers are as precise as we can get to this date as well. And we will be refining those and obviously Denton County Health Department will be pushing those out as well. But that was public knowledge as of this morning. Let me give you some other activities that has occurred at Denton State Support Living Center. So last March 27th, we brought in state assets were mobilized and they arrived on site to do an overall assessment called MIST, Medical Instance Support Team. It was a two person team that is trained infectious disease. They came in and started working with the Denton State School and actually the first responders, local first responders as well. I can tell you these two gentlemen have done an amazing job on working with the state school and looking at their plan and really refining their plan for this type of pandemic. Based on the recommendations by the evening of March 27th, all 911 services to state school was no longer being handled by Denton Fire Department. So they had positioned four outside ambulances to manage the call responses from state school specifically. One of those ambulances is a critical care ambulance. So actually has been later on board and they are prepared to escalate that plan if need be as well. Since then, they also added a four person instant management team that was a requisition up to the state. So there's four members out there that's coordinating logistics and resources to try to manage the events specifically at the state school as well. The plan was developed by the MIST representatives along with instant management and then this past Saturday, I believe, I'm sorry, dates are getting fuzzy, a unified command was established in which that command is structured around representatives from Dent State School, Dent Fire Department, Dent Police Department, a county representative, and then the state assets on site up there. So with this, we're having daily briefing calls. We meet every morning at nine o'clock to give an update on what has transpired and what the needs are for the next 24 hours. I can share also that we were obviously in communication with the local hospitals and kind of the premise behind this was a potential surge on the hospitals with just the residents at the state school. The plan has been developed and pushed up through the state to the point that they have a access of 30 plus hospitals across the region that they are able to physically transport any resident from state school to balance that surge load across the region versus here locally. That's, that's all I have for state school. Do we want to take any questions individually in each one of these? I didn't know if anybody had them. Just wait until the final presentation. Yeah, just go ahead and move through them, and then we'll ask questions on the back end. Yep. So next, I wanted to talk about what we're doing here on a local basis working with the local hospitals with just this week, we developed a small working group with representatives from the city of Denton, didn't County medical city, Denton hospital, Texas health resources didn't as well. And this is just kind of start having conversation about future planning and what the needs might be. I'm not going to speak on behalf of the hospitals, but I can speak on what they have shared with me that they have search plans, obviously, same like everybody else. They had been assessing those and refining them as well. I know there's been some conversations about what's the potential of a stand up hospital within the city of Denton. And I do have some information from the County that I would like to share. So quite a bit, let me just kind of go through this. So COVID beds. So I know there's some questions. Well, how many beds do we have locally? I have that number from a state statewide. So right now they have identified 16,000 COVID beds available statewide. So due to non elective surgeries being canceled, they have doubled didn't counting statewide capacity just by that one decision. And the governor also has waived the requirement and allows two beds per room in the hospitals, therefore increasing the capacity. So you see on the news about the temporary hospitals being stood up, specifically the one in Dallas, that is a regional hospital, it's not just for the County of Dallas. So the U.S. Corps of Engineers, the Texas state guards working on identifying facilities in all of North Texas, the convention center in Dallas is setting up with a 250 bed capacity right now, but it will be able to be increased up to 1400 beds if need be. And to be clear, this is going to be operated by the U.S. Navy hospital system. So I think that's a big thing to point out here is your local hospitals, they do not have the staffing or the equipment to stand up anything outside their walls. So as we talk about this, we want to look at our state for any type of assistance, which they're proactively working on it now. So the Navy hospital system will be working that standalone hospital at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center, but will be using local processes for security, pharmacies, and other non-medical logistics. Some of the other actions that was passed along, the governor just passed, is the fact that requiring all public and private test labs to submit to state and county all positive and negative test results. So you've always heard that we've always hear back on pauses. So it's very hard to quantify that number as far as where we add as far as trending on the spread of the virus. Now with the new governor's orders, you'll be able to quantify that in an easier manner. So when we kind of drill down further to Denton County, talk about actually COVID testing. So right now there are five major hospitals within the county primarily testing only in patients or their employees. Private doctors or clinics can send tests to private labs and that number is unknown. What I just reiterated is only positive test results come back from private labs, but with the governor's executive order, now they'll start receiving negatives. And this is from the Denton County Health Department and it was underlined. So I want to emphasize, this is a quote from them. I have been requesting this information for a week now and I'm happy to see that this order of the governor will finally give us information that is important in determining if the virus spread is increasing or decreasing. So I think that's very positive step on actually just tracking the escalation and de-escalation of COVID. A little bit more on testing. Currently right now, there's three types of testing and it's a local health department. There's a FEMA drive-through testing, which is in Dallas only for all of North Texas. And of course, private hospitals and doctors offices are testing as well. As of Sunday, March 29th, total tests statewide, there's a little bit under 26,000 tests that have been administered. Out of those giving, less than 10% of the testing has came back positive. Out of that 10% of positive tests, only 10% also are actually hospitalized for the COVID signs and symptoms as well. So that's a quick run-through on the working groups and my intent to develop this group is just to have this open line of communication and use institutional knowledge and resources from this group to look at contingency planning. Obviously, we're going to rely on our county officials up to the state, but we need to have a seat at the table, and I feel we do now, along with the hospitals to communicate our needs and concerns for the citizens in Denton. Hospitals daily. When we talk about number of beds, we also talk about your ventilators as well. It's really critical care resources. What do they need to manage a critical patient? So the bed and the ventilator is just one of the components. So they have different agencies they had to report daily. So both hospitals, MCD and Texas Health Resources, they had to report daily to North Texas Trauma Regional Advisory Council, and that is an ongoing thing that has been going on for years. So the local RAC, and then just recently, and my slideshow was actually off one, based on an executive order by the vice president as well as the governor, now they have to report to the National Health Safety Network daily as well as number of beds and ventilators. So there's numerous different ways the hospitals are having to report up through their chain of command. So this information is being captured and logged in preparation in case there is obviously a surge in patients in the local area. That's really, that's it I have on the working group. And like I said, definitely when we get to the end, I'm sure you have more questions that we'll take, and I actually take back to the group and try to get more of a collaborative answer as well. So the last thing I was going to talk about is PPE for the local first responders. This is probably the most worrisome thing right now that we have on the horizon as to how do we maintain current stock and then how do we acquire additional PPE to protect both police and fire. So we have a PPE working group that was established, and this is their main focus. So it's a two to three person group that they're constantly looking at new ways, FDA approved items. What is the latest coming down from CDC as far as how do we preserve, how do we clean, usage guidelines on PPE. Without giving specifics right now, in public safety, I'd say we're good for now. I mean, that's a loose term as well, but we've implemented new reuse procedures that will keep our employees safe, but also preserve our stock. We continually put in a star request, which is just a requisition form to the state of Texas through our county, and it goes up to the state level for disbursement of PPE. Ten days ago, approximately, we did receive 540 N95 masks from a star request from the strategic stockpile, and we have submitted three to four more star requests, which have went unfilled at this point. So we're working closely with the police department this time to make sure we have shared resources. We're sharing any information we have with them also as to protect what limited resources we currently have. Some of the work that this group has done, this PPE working group, they have contacted over 30 to 50 vendors out in not just the nation, they've actually been reaching overseas to try to develop a new supply chain. They have five, they then have a lot of success with, and they will hopefully within the next two to three weeks, as you see shipments start to come in. We've also partnered with a group of 21 other fire departments on trying to order from overseas stock. Their issue there is the minimum unit order is usually a million plus, so as we build these larger groups, when we look at other supply chains, we have options to order from overseas. And then the last thing, as I mentioned, is we did last week advertise a donation drive going on by your didn't put first responders, and that was just kind of to add to our current stock. It doesn't mean that we are out now. I want to share that with everybody. We have plenty of PPE to protect our workers, to keep them healthy. We are just planning for this for the next two, three, four weeks. We don't know how long the sun go. So we're not doing our due diligence if we're not planning ahead. With that, that's all I have at this point. Take questions. Good. If we could clear the screen. And Council Member Davis, then Council Member Meltzer, I'm going to go and then Council Member Briggs. So I'll have to try to remember that. Council Member Davis, and then Meltzer and then Briggs. Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Okay. Chief, I want to thank you for that presentation and Sarah as well. Chief Hedges, at the beginning of your presentation, you said something along the lines of there's no way to completely plan for every contingency. I just want to kind of point out for folks at home, we do have a city emergency management plan that is what's in part been activated by some of the orders that we've gone through. And honestly, between your response, Chief, and the entire city staff, you've stood up an entirely different kind of operation than we've ever had to do here in the city of Denton in a very short amount of time. So I just want to express appreciation from all of us sheltering in place, only going out when we have to, that there's a lot of folks out there still carrying on the business of the city. And it's not an easy thing to do. So I just want to express appreciation for that. Okay, Council Member Meltzer? Yeah, first I'll express a point of view that kind of frames my questions. I know that hospitals have been taken a stance that they're reluctant to kind of express their actual numerical shortfalls, and I know that's not true everywhere. And I would just express the point of view that I think if the public were very clear and if we're very transparent about what the actual shortfalls may be, that that would stiffen our resolve as residents to abide by these protocols and avoid the spread. If you know that you don't generally want to be infected, but you really don't want to be infected at a time when there aren't resources to look after you. So I would hope that we get a little transparent to let people realize this is really a bad time to take risks of infection. So with that as background, I don't know how much you can say, Chief, but you mentioned 17,000 COVID beds as a statewide number. I don't know if you can take it down to county or city, but just what's the projected number of beds needed at peak? Do we have any insight into that? Are we projecting a gap? That's kind of obviously a very challenging question. I don't think anybody here can make that prediction. I don't have the number of local beds, and I think that's up to each hospital. Their policies, their procedure, and how they release that, I just wanted to communicate that they're communicating to their national, state and national partners daily, and sometimes they're even important every four hours, and that's a moving target as well. So what beds they may have at 8 a.m. may be different than what they have at 12. So I don't know if you could actually quantify what is going to be a shortfall, because you don't know what it's going to be, if it's even going to be a shortfall as well. Would you agree with the sentiment that this is, if you're going to be infected, now wouldn't be a good time? I would agree with, don't be infected. I mean, if we're going to do that, honestly, I mean, follow all the control measures out there currently in place. I mean, I think that's the simplest thing I can reiterate back. If I can ask a little more about the PPE and also the ventilators, things that we are currently needing to buy. Obviously, when we want to buy these things, we're competing with every municipality, every state, every country in the world. So it's kind of an amazing system, but it strikes me that if there is any opportunity for local production, whether through volunteers or whatever, our means of local production is that that might be helpful. Is there a possibility, for instance, on masks under supervision with guidelines for there to be local production? And I asked the same question, not so much on the volunteer fund, but regarding ventilators, if there are injection molding companies and 3D printing resources where we could source our own production that's not in competition with the rest of the world, do you see any opportunities like that? I think there are always opportunities. I think it won't just focus on PPE because I'm more knowledgeable there. I'm not going to be able to really respond on the ventilators, and I don't want to have one as manufacturer. Obviously, the FDA approval is going to be the biggest thing. So to get that tooled up and production locally, you're still going to go through the FDA approval process. So for clarification, the ambulances in Dent do not use ventilators. I know some cities do, but we manually ventilate the patient as well. So on the PPE, yes, all those options that we've heard out there as far as people, we have plenty of people in this donation drive actually willing to sell masks. I can just tell you, though, those masks are probably our last ditch effort between that and just wearing nothing. They're not that effective. I appreciate everybody's support. The working group on this, the PPE working group, they have that weigh down on our tier list that if it gets to this level and we exhaust all supplies, we'll enact that as well. It's keeping a long list of resources. It's having numerous plans in place, and we hope the new plan of proper use, different ways to decontaminate. We're even looking at the latest thing is UV lighting. We have ordered some systems to maybe be able to decontaminate using UV lighting where you don't have any type of moisture. Probably the biggest thing for Denton's first responders is the N95 mask. So they're looking at different ways to really preserve that and make those have a longer life. Yeah. Mayor, I've got one more, but I'm willing to sort of wait if you want to go around first. No, no, if you've got one more, go ahead. Yeah. Well, my question is just is anyone, and this could be city, hospital level, county level, is anyone looking after just the mental health and comfort of the frontline medical people? I mean, they've got to be just pushing themselves beyond, you know, to the extremes. And I know, you know, our police and fire do that sort of all the time, but now even more so. You know, is there anything that could be done or should be done to just provide mental health and comfort support for them so they can keep going? I think it's a good point as far as our essential services citywide. I mean, we do have a system in place, but I would probably, you know, point that out to our Human Resources Department to maybe push that some more information as far as really just advertise what all resources are out there and available. But you're correct between public safety, police, and fire, and we're incorporating our public safety dispatchers as well. We have very specialized resources, and we're communicating with our departments. I'm communicating two times a week with the video recording just to give them an update and just to kind of check in and make sure everybody's going, ask any questions out there. Just that FaceTime is still a big thing that we're losing right now. And things to add on to Chief Hedges, we have talked to, or we are in conversation with both the hospital CEOs pretty regularly about their needs on the supply and commodity side of the house, you know, they remind us that they're both part of a little bit larger systems and are able to try to leverage that to get supplies into them on a more regular basis, more dependable basis. So that activity in addition to what Chief Hedges is doing is also going out at the hospital level. One of the things that's kind of a small thing that we tried to do to work with the hospitals is we were actually getting calls from some of the employees, spouses, family members, that sort of thing. They've gone out and collected and negotiated deals with all of our local hotels if they live out of the area or don't want to drive home or whatever, trying to get a little bit more rest. There's discounted rates, that sort of thing. But we're sort of learning as we go right now and both of our local CEOs have access to us 24 hours a day if they need anything. Well, okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chief, for all that the whole force is doing right now. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs? Yeah. So I have a few questions and a couple of them are kind of what Councilmember Metzler talked about as far as our local hospitals because I remember the first declaration, one of the things I asked was about our local beds and ventilators and is it just that we can't know? Is it confidential? I think it's important for us to know as we make policy decisions going forward what we have locally. And I know that the Chief said that they are sending in updates and reports. Are we privy to those reports? I would actually have to get back with the hospital's representatives and see, I mean, this is the new order that the governor just issued as well. And that's really going to be based on each facility and what their, I said, what their standard protocol and what legal orders they have to stand by. So I mean, I hate to say I don't have an answer for you right now, but I cannot answer that. But we'll look into that. But they are being required to submit in their number of ventilators available, beds taken, that sort of thing. It's a moving target and I know why we're looking at this parochially. They do not look at it that way. They're looking at it as kind of a regional system in terms of how they would utilize the bed supplies, ventilators, that sort of thing. So it's being coordinated and we are privy to calls generally on a weekly basis through the County Health Department who's collecting and kind of administering that information. Chief Hedges, both Mayor Watson and I were pretty vocal in him needing a seat at the table and they've included him there. So he's at least got that information coming to us and being able to plan a little bit. I don't know that given we're talking about federal resources and the need to make decisions, that's where I'm still not sure at what point we're going to be allowed to share that publicly if we are, but it is being actively managed in more of a system wide perspective. Well, even count, even shared with council. I mean, so there was a conversation earlier about, you know, at one point we're going to have to maybe transfer people to different counties. I have no idea how far away we are from that and that would be really helpful. And I think that's councilmember Ratzler was talking about earlier. You know, these are just things that would be very helpful for us to know what we have locally and what we can do that would that's all on that for now. I have a couple of more things for the chief, just to clarify, because we did see the request go out on Facebook for supplies and I emailed on February 28th and was told that we were good and the chief just reiterated that we are still good. So I just wanted him to kind of just clarify that for right now we are okay for our first responders with supplies that that was just for future for future use. You're absolutely correct. So with the supply chain broken now and national worldwide backorder, we have no idea when we'll get replenished on our stock. So as we think about plans to prepare for 30, 60, 90 days out, this was just one item we saw other jurisdictions use to maybe contact those construction companies, the civilians out there that for whatever they may use it for the stock of N95 gowns, gloves, goggles as well. And really the four primary things we need to protect our employees. So yeah, I want to reiterate, we are good technically right now. So your, you know, your police and fire are protected and they will be, but we also would not be doing our job if we weren't preparing further out. When you just said, I'm sorry, Mayor, may I can, of course, but when you just said for right now, like, what is your, your foreseeable date on for right now with supplies? I cannot supply that today. I will have that answer actually Friday. So since we implemented these new procedures last week, we're looking at a seven day burn rate. So we're calculating exactly in seven days, how much PP are we actually using then lastly just multiply that out with the current stock. Okay. And then this kind of may be a question for the city manager whose responsibility, where does that fall upon to make sure that we order and receive the supplies? Is that the city, the county or the state? It will be a combination of all. We are actively working with both our county and state officials trying to get secure those orders. We're not alone in this. You know, the hospitals are doing the same exercise and every major city in Texas right now is going through this exact exercise. So she, both chiefs have orders in for the next round of N95 supplies and we'll try to get them here as soon as we possibly can, but, and we'll continue keeping the dialogue open with the hospitals as well. But ultimately it's going to fall on chief hedges to work with the county and state officials to make sure that they know what our needs are and up to the state officials, quite frankly, to help us keep the pipeline opened into Texas. I have two more questions, mayor. Okay. Okay. The last one is, is there a way to test all of our first responders are those tests available to make sure that as they're going out, that they are not infected just for the safety of themselves and the community, I would, I'd like to see this as a priority. So currently right now we do not even propose a test unless we can confirm a potential exposure and then they show signs and symptoms. I mean, it's no good to waste a test and it comes back negative. So we have different trigger points and I can tell you, we are having five people tested today and it's through the health department. So when the need arises where we have a potential exposure, I can communicate that we are in our getting tests for employees and we are getting results back quickly. My question just comes from the situation in Louisiana, listening to their, their chief there who individuals had, they didn't know that they were exposed and then, you know, the situation kind of spiral and now they're without some of their first responders. So I'd like to comment on that. So the protective measures we've implemented internally and fired specifically, uh, with the two COVID units, especially responding to these calls where there are using PPE. We have decreased what you're seeing other departments experience. We're not experiencing that here. So that's a very positive thing. That means our control measures are working to point where we only have one employee in PPE go up and ask to make assessment or patient. We don't send five to six employees up at one time. That just increases our burn rate. So there's been numerous different control measures we have implemented and so far as they're successful. Okay. And then the last question I, um, for the, the, um, the state, the state school, I know that you had, um, numbers for the test, but do you have a percentage total of resident and staff that, that have actually been tested? No, I don't have that percentage right now. I just have numbers from the unified command meeting this morning. I can tell you the, uh, residents was about half, um, they may have tested more with the employees. Um, probably one to 200 out of the 1400. So even with our first responders at this point, and I think it's, I think you're bringing up some good points because we get a lot of questions about this. We don't have direct control over the decision flow as far as who gets tested and who doesn't. Um, what we have is kind of agreement from our, um, county health official who has the access to, to the testing if needed, that if there's any suspicion that our employees have been in contact with someone or their exhibit, those signs, he is working with both chiefs to make sure that they get tested, but they're essentially going through. And that's sort of where they can get in line in front of other folks because they're providing that service. But these rules are not being, they're being set from the state and administer through the county on us at this point. And they're, they're still short tests where we don't have exactly the number of what that means. And that's why you're seeing that prioritization, but they've been very clear with us that that's how it's going to continue working for a little while. I will say that Dr. Richardson's been, uh, great, uh, with both of our police and fire chiefs. It's basically safe. If there's any concern, any suspicions, we'll get them in there and get them tested, but they are going through a very similar process to the rest of this public chief. I have a question. Uh, you'd mentioned the total number of tests on the residents that were reported to you. Uh, was that this morning? Yes, sir. And how many tests was that? 437 residents have been tested. Okay. Now it's my understanding that, uh, at least in all the information I've been given and information I've seen that there's between 440 and 450 residents out there. So if that's the, if that's the number 437, then what you have is most of the residents out there have, they have been tested. If that's, and I'm just going by what you're sharing. So if that is actually the number of 437, then I would say the majority, the vast majority, if not most of those residents had been tested based upon the data that, that we received, uh, both in our conversations, as far as the number of residents and some of the press releases that we've seen, as far as the number of residents that are out there, not employees, but the number of residents. So I wanted to give council member Briggs that, uh, that update. I have one question and this may just be, um, it may not be the appropriate slide or, um, but if, if there is someone who, um, I'll just, I'll hold this question for, for another item and I don't think it's appropriate here. And I will, I will add to if, if Dr. Richardson were on this, this panel, I think he would say that, you know, for us to be cautious and just understand that a negative test is a negative test at that point in time, that doesn't mean that a person could test negatively and then somehow some other way, uh, come in contact with the virus. And at some later point in time, uh, test positive. So I think he would, I think he would want that information to be disseminated. And I've heard that many times in our briefing. So I just wanted to make sure that I add that, that piece of data to, to the conversation. Uh, council member Armitage and then after council member Armitage, we're going to take a quick break. So a few things, so thank you, thank you, chief and for all, um, uh, that your department is doing, um, risking their lives for, uh, lives of others, which I know is just business as usual for you all, but really amped up under this new situation, uh, you mentioned just now that, uh, you're going to be looking for a week to see how much PPE you use to assess the need. Did I understand that? Correct. Yeah. That's called a burn rate. So we're looking at a seven day burn rate on usage. Okay. Um, and what I would recommend, and you're probably, uh, planning on doing this already is, uh, looking at the projections, uh, for the, for the, for these, the, the numbers for the areas that, uh, that you serve and multiplying accordingly. If you know what I mean, coming up with some sort of algorithm that, that doesn't assume that each week is going to be constant because, uh, there's going to be, uh, you know, there's, there's a curve and, uh, so just, just putting that out there, I'm sure you're thinking of that already. Um, so, so I appreciated the, the, the call for, uh, PPE equipment on, on Twitter. And I was wondering if, um, if you could add to that, uh, photos or links so that if people want to, uh, make, make a purchase or an order and donate to make sure that they're not getting the wrong thing. Because when we see that, you know, the names of these things, especially for something like the fire department, you know, and make sure that if people are donating that they're donating the right things to some sort of picture, something like that would be great. Um, wanted to know, um, if there has been an assessment, uh, and I don't, I don't want to know, uh, this, uh, personal information about employees. I just want to know if it's been asked of, of, uh, firefighters, if any of our firefighters are immune compromised or have immune compromised family members at home. Again, I'm not asking for that data myself, uh, but I think it's important, uh, for, uh, for either you or for HR to know. And I'm curious to know, this might be more of a question for the city manager, uh, about our sick leave policy in this regard. You know, does it enable, uh, you know, people who are under the situation in this situation to be able to take time off, not only if they're immune compromised, but if they have family members at home to, to mitigate the spread? Well, I would respond that we have a very strong and newly developed, uh, exposure isolation policy that is specific for just COVID. I mean, with the new data come from CDC, the 14 day requirement, self-isolation. So we developed that almost two weeks ago. Um, it's been formalized. We have not had to use the, use it in its extent now, but all that has been taken into consideration by fire administration. We have numerous different contingency plans ready to go if we need to as well. It's a, almost a day to day evolving event here and it will continue as well. So I can tell you everything you mentioned, we've already considered as well, but thank you so that monitors more than just exposure, but also, uh, to the extent to which individuals are immune compromised and their family members at home. Correct. Yes. Okay. Um, and then did you, and then about, and then finally about, uh, actually two more questions, um, about state school staff. I'm trying to remember if you had mentioned what the latest information is about how, how many state school staff have, have been tested. Uh, what I reported earlier was 72 negatives, 20 positives. And then they did report this morning, there was 12 that could potentially process, but these are not, these were not tested by the health department. These were tested by the personal physicians. So they're just call in saying that they have COVID. So those are unconfirmed at this point. So you have about a hundred. Okay. And thank, thanks for repeating that. Um, and then finally, uh, I read about, I, I recently learned that, uh, private urgent care facilities in state of Texas are not regulated by the state. I had not been aware of that. Um, and there was an article, I forget, I think it's Texas Tribune. I forget where, I forget where it was, uh, about how, how workers and some of these facilities are at risk because they don't, they, they aren't, uh, trained to at, at some of them, uh, are not necessarily trained to administer tests, but they receive tests. Uh, I, I was wondering, uh, if they're, and this might not be a question for you, it might be more for, for a city attorney, city manager, what can be done at the, at the city level to raise the bar on the regulation of these facilities to protect their workers? Um, this question actually came up yesterday in a briefing with the county health official and the state actually does regulate them. The, there's a state medical board that, that regulates those folks. And so you've got, they can, the employees can have the opportunity to inform the county health, uh, official through the line that's been set up. They can call OSHA, uh, or go to the medical standards board and I, we can put all that on the, uh, the website at some point, but those are the three venues for deal, if we're dealing with complaint in those particular areas. And it also applies to, uh, private testing facilities as well. Okay. Well, that's, that is great to hear. Uh, so that was some, I guess some false information that was circulating again. I, I, I forget. Um, I don't know if anybody else saw that, that article, it was in Texas Tribune, one of the major ones, um, and they regulate actual facilities, not just individual care providers. Right. Okay. Because they have to apply to get their medical licensing. So that's where the, um, the hammer is. Okay. So I'd be, it'd be great to, uh, to find out more about that, about how often, you know, uh, what the regulation process is. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? All right. It is three 44. We're going to have to decide a hard time to come back. So we will come back at three. It's three 45. Now we're going to come back at three 55. So we will be signing back on at three 55. We'll take a break until then. Thank you. Now he's ready. Welcome back to this meeting of the Dent city council on what's the date? March 31st, 2020. Uh, it is three 59. I apologize for being just a few minutes late. Uh, we do have a core. The quorum has returned. Everybody's online and we are streaming live. I do want to make just sort of a heads up announcement to the public and also to the council. We have been delivered to us, which we will be looking over, um, a new executive order by the governor of the state of Texas, uh, governor Abbott, which, uh, is based upon at least a cursory reading could, could alter the state of, uh, emergency declarations for any political subdivision in the, in the, in the state. So we're going to probably schedule a closed session, which we can go into closed session on specific items, uh, prior to our agenda item, individual consideration agenda item two D, which is the discussion. Oh, no, that's not it. Which one are we discussing the, um, the order on, uh, C is that it? Yes. See, so we'll go into closed session after two B before two C to get an idea of exactly what we believe from our legal staff. This order says is available and what's not available. So, um, I've read through some of it, but just wanted to give a heads up to that and the community, because I understand we have some people queued up to speak on that agenda item and just want to make sure that, uh, they have the most up to date information as possible. Once we come back from the closed session. So we'll pick back up on our work session reports, which are agenda item three, uh, C receive report, hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the public safety substation and firing range with a focus on facade, sustainability and budget considerations and council. I want to make sure you can hear me. This is Sarah Hensley, assistant city manager. We can hear you. All right. This is, as you mentioned, the update in regards to the police department headquarters, the substation and the firing range, um, we'll be covering, um, several items, one of which is returning to you to talk a little bit about your questions that you raised in our previous meeting. And so, um, before we do that, I do want to share with you one of the items that staff is recommending, um, move forward, which is the original, um, frontage of the current headquarters for the police department, as you see in front of you. And you all should have received about 30 to 45 minutes ago, an updated PowerPoint, um, with some extra information, a little more detail. And so before you now is the actual original proposed facade staff asked the architects to go back and look at a little bit of changes that would upgrade how it looks. And, um, the one that's up now is the alternate view. There is an additional cost of 1.3 million. However, it's important to note that there are things placed here for security reasons, I E bulletproof glass. Uh, there are some art features as you'll see the new murals by local artists. The stone is there to serve as a purpose, certainly as a facade upgrade, but more importantly, it is also there as a deterrent, um, to having cars or other vehicles that might drive into the building. It also adds to, and you can't see this part, but in the previous PowerPoint, there was the fencing and other upgrades to windows around the other part of the building. And those are the costs that are associated with, um, making these upgrades. If you go back here to the original, you can see that it's different, a lot of different looking. And then here's a lot cleaner looking. There is one thing I would like to share with you. And that is we, those trees that are in front of the building are, they are ash. They're, uh, um, I'm sorry, they're red Oaks and, um, they have a couple of them, maybe more than two actually have grown into a portion of the building around the bottom border area. So as a part of the new design and actual renovation work of the police headquarters, we may have to remove a couple of trees, maybe two to three trees because of where they are in the disjointed nature of the sidewalk that it's causing for mobility purposes. In addition, the acorns, um, and the material that's falling from the trees are making it difficult for people to, um, who have mobility issues to maneuver on that sidewalk. So there's several reasons. One is the growth that goes underneath the building. And two is mobility challenges that it brings forward. Staff is recommending the upgrades on a 1.3 million due to the clean nature of it, but more importantly, the safety features and also mobility, um, issues around that building there. This is not just in this front venue that you see, it's also in the other portions of the windows as well as the fencing, um, and then the prefabricated fabricated canopy. Now I'd like to move on to the questions that were raised at our last meeting when we shared with you and the architect was here and we talked about the substation in the firing range. What you see before you now is the original proposed vintage street view of the police substation. That is what, um, there were several questions in regards to that. And you ask us about if you reduce the height of the tower and if you didn't use the stone on, on the building there. So we went back with the architects and looked at what was the cost of the tower and if we reduced it and if you use stucco instead of masonry and, um, there's your savings, uh, very minimal savings, 65,000 of initial savings and then operational costs. Staff is recommending because we, um, after the public meeting, when we talked to several citizens who liked the design and liked the fact that it kind of meshed with the other features there with the fire station, that it stay consistent so that it looks, um, consistent in the whole scheme of things from a public safety venue. So staff is recommending leaving the masonry and the tower heights. And if you look then, the other question that was raised was the firing range. This is the original view. You see the signage there that kind of gives you a, this is where you are in the Dillon, Denton police department. And then you look at the actual stone, the small amount of stone veneer. And then the building behind that was the aluminum window system. Those were the things that we looked at from the questions that were raised by council. And here's the savings from that. You have your stucco instead of your rock. You have the height behind that on the aluminum window system that was reduced and we reduced the arch. The total savings of the build out on that is $185,000. It's important to note though, $141,000 of that is just the signage and staff is recommending due to the fact that the ongoing savings for all of that is $275 that we recommend leaving the masonry and the tower height and the arch. One, because the masonry then matches the substation that we recommended. Two, the same thing with the tower height and it gives more sense of place. And three, the arch gives it a sense of you have arrived at the public safety facility there for the police department. We also said that we would come back and talk to you a little bit about some alternates as it relates to sustainability. Sarah, let me interrupt you just for a moment. I got a note. If we could take the presentation down just for a second. I understand that maybe some council members are having trouble with their feed. So I want to sort of poll them to see if everybody can hear okay. Is there anybody, if you cannot hear okay, press your mute button and speak. But Council Member Ryan? Yeah, probably about every 15, 20 minutes, I get about a five or 10 second pause, but it just breathes on me. Then the conversation picks up after that. So I'm missing that little segment. It's not a big deal. But my concern is if we're switching from one item to another, if somebody had an additional question and anybody else would get increases, that we're able to do a poll between those before you move on to the next one. Everybody just do a quick thumbs up. A thumbs up of what now? That they've gotten all their questions answered on that item. If they're in a free position, then you're not going to see them give the thumbs up. Okay. All right. We'll make that change. And if I don't make that change, please remind me. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, Sarah. I appreciate your accommodation in that interruption. Absolutely. And if we need to go back, we will. Okay. Thank you. So again, now I wanted to share with you the work that has been undertaken in regards to sustainability alternates. We looked at headquarters, we looked at the substation, and we looked at the firing range. Under the headquarters, it all relates to the amount of work that's going to be conducted in this building. And if you recall, it's not a complete teardown. So there will be a lot of some parts of the building that stay in place. So right now we're recommending the tankless water heaters so that there are actual water heaters placed in different sections of the building that would meet the needs of the various areas that are working with a sink, a toilet, or even a shower. So staff is recommending that. You'll see the cost for one tankless water heater, and then you see the payback time. It's important to note that we looked at a 50-year payback on all of these items. Because as you know, with the city of Denton and the buildings that we have, a lot of our buildings are older than 50 years, but we took an average of 50 years to look at would the investment of that item be able to be paid back over time by having it there? And we used 50 years. So tankless water heaters is recommended as an item to be placed in the headquarters. These are the items that the staff working with the consultant, and they did the work looking at everything from HVAC upgrade, which is the variable refrigerant flow units. You see the cost there and the payback over 50 years. Geothermal heat pumps, and there are associated pictures to each of those numbers. The geothermal heat pumps are $2.8 million with the payback will not be there over 50 years. Pervious pavement costs 1.6 million payback. No, not over 50 years. And then the solar panel canopy over parking stalls. The cost is $500,000, but the payback over 50 years would not reach that point. Again, there are pictures associated with the majority of these, so you can see what they are. The last one is the HVAC upgrade to higher efficiency units. I double checked on this one today thinking that this one might be a really viable option, but the truth is this would not. And honestly, for us to be able to have better heating and cooling in those various rooms that the officers may need, it would be better to do thermostats in some of those rooms than to expend the cost of the $544,822. Again, no payback there over 50 years. Moving on to the substation, there are several items that we're recommending that are viable alternates that would be recommended to add, one of which is the closed cell spray foam, which would be 2.5 inches thick and 6 inches of bat, which I knew what it was and it slipped my mind, but if you need to know that, I can have Chris tell you. The payback is 7 years, but it's well worth the money. Internal daylight harvesting solar tubes to give it a little more of a brighter look inside. Again, you see the cost there and the payback, and it should be time, not time. And then the tankless hot water heaters. There'll be more than one. You can see the cost there based on size of the facility. So you may go back and look at the headquarters and say, well, it's different in cost, but the size of the facility at the substation is smaller than headquarters. Therefore, the cost is a little bit smaller, but the payback there as well, and it's recommended. All three of these items are recommended to be placed into the substation. Here are the items that they looked at, but based on the cost and 50 year out, it's not recommended at this time or in doing the development of the building. That's the solar panel canopy. Again, the solar shading devices upgrading, which you see in the picture there, it's not viable. The green roof and the solar farm. We looked at the opportunity of putting some type of solar farm on the site, but again, the cost was cost prohibitive based on a 50 year timeline. Here are some more. Again, it's some of the same information you saw from the actual headquarters, which is this geothermal heat pumps or purpose parking, solar shading devices, and then the upgrade on the refrigerant flow units. Solar collector, which you see here, which is basically a wall where the air can come through and go up and back. The upgrade to higher efficiency units, and then upgrade on the glazing. Upgrade on the glazing is on the glass for three plane units, for the panes of glass that are in the building. The reason you see more items on the substation versus the headquarters is that you're building a brand new building on the substation, and on the headquarters, it is a renovation, and therefore in some areas, some of the things would not be able to be added. On the alternates for the range, it's important to note that because it's not a 24/7 operation, it's very hard to determine the actual cost savings, but I wanted you to know that the building will be built as environmentally responsible and sustainable as a design is possible, and because of the new guidelines, as it relates to a lot of the things that used to be items under the LEED certification, are now standard practices when you build buildings. And so the building for the firing range is going to be a very technologically high tech building. It will also have its own different type of air system because of the firing of the guns, and it will be a very nice state of the art facility. So to wrap this up, to kind of give you an outline of what you saw, the staff is recommending that we move forward on the substation, leaving that masonry there and the tower, and letting it be consistent with the other buildings there. The firing range, leaving the masonry there, leaving the tower there, and leaving that entry gateway so that it sort of sets it up as this is the police department here, and it kind of gives it a sense of place. You can see where the total cost for that, it's right there, is a little over $250,000, I believe. It's covered up. But so those are some recommendations of the original design. That money is in the design already. Those were questions that were raised about what if we didn't do these. So that money is not extra money. It's when you get to this page that staff is recommending these enhancements. We're recommending that we do make and do make the changes in the headquarters for the facade. It really does improve the look of the building, and it actually creates a sense of that it is a police headquarters and it's a building. We also recommend the sustainability alternates for the tankless water heaters under the headquarters, and we also recommend those items under the substation as well. And that comes to a total cost of $1,465,211. I have Chris Squadra on the line with me if you have specific technical questions, or if there's questions I can also answer, that concludes the presentation. I do have a question real quick, and then I'll go with Councilmember Briggs. If we could, we can go ahead and pull that off for now. The presentation, my question is pretty simple. On the spray foam, the two and a half inches of spray foam, then the six inch bat insulation, that's a total of eight and a half inches of a wall cavity space. Those walls, I mean, that would be a two by 10 wall, or just a little less. Help me understand, because my understanding is, especially on residential construction, if you spray foam, your ceiling rafters, or your stud cavities on your exterior walls, that you don't have to add any bat insulation. So is that, are we saying those are going to be added together or you're going to go with the two and a half inch foam insulation and no six inch, or help me understand that. Even though it's a very small cost, I'm just trying to understand it from a technical perspective. I'm going to let Chris answer that question. Sure. Thank you, Sarah. So it's basically a thicker wall cavity, absolutely, but it is a combination of six inch bat over two and a half inches of foam. It's taking the building to a Yeti cooler model from a Coleman cooler model, if you will. And the two inches is what would have gone into the building without this adder. As you know, bat insulation is not very expensive. And we don't pretend to know exactly what the energy savings would be. But we did have the mechanical and electrical engineers actually run an energy savings model on how much money we would save every year. So it is cumulative and I don't have the R value at my fingertips right now, but it was very significant increase in R value. Okay. All right. That's helpful. But I presume on these buildings, I know on commercial buildings, it's not a res check, but the commercial equivalent of a energy report based upon the design. I presume we do those as well on city of Denton buildings. Yes, that's a code requirement and the two inches of spray foam insulation, it would meet the current code. And as Sarah mentioned, it was substantially beefier than the code from three years ago. But yes, we do the energy check and that's a requirement. Okay. All right. Good deal. Thank you. All right. Councilmember Briggs, did you have a question? I thought I saw your hand. Yeah. Yes. So just comments too, right? Sure. Yes. Yes. All right. So on the on the facade for the current one, I'm not necessarily in favor of that. But I do understand the need for more protection. So my question is, could the windows or the glass just be replaced with a higher quality or bulletproof glass? I know that there was mention of issues with the trees, but for me, the design that's currently there is I prefer it as well. So is there a way to just how much would it be just to do the windows and the glass as opposed to the whole thing for $1.3 million? We would have to figure that out. We could do that. We could take that down. But just so you know, even if we left those trees there, we're still going to have to go back in and do something because it's starting to peel up the outside the inside of that building and the and the floor molding around it. So eventually we would have to make some kind of adjustments there. And most likely the the tree roots are not going to survive either because they're running into concrete areas. Well, I was personally my my preference is, I mean, on everything else, that's it's just the alternate view. I don't like it. I don't think it looks good. The the proposed I'm okay with with it with all the other proposals for the substations and the the other recommendations. It's just that one that it may just be a personal thing. I just don't like the way it looks. I like the the current one better. I have two other questions. Was rooftop solar considered on any of these? I did see the I did see the other type of solar but I never saw rooftop solar being considered. Well, I'll let I'll let Chris chime in but I know that when we discuss rooftop solar for the existing headquarters that you would not want to do because of the age of the building and going in and putting in fixtures on top of that structure on the new buildings. A lot of times they've now started looking at more of solar sort of a solar farm or solar covered parking and those kinds of things. And that's why we looked at that. But I'll let Chris chime in there. Yeah, you want me to to address that? I think your facilities department has made a wide wise decision to not put any solar panels on roofs. They are in line with conventional facilities management thinking across the country that solar panels on roofs create maintenance problems, not just for the panels themselves, but also accessing other refrigerant lines and everything else on the roof, as well as increasing the replacement cost of the roof itself and creating potential leaks. So the conventional wisdom is if you're going to do solar panels, they should be solar canopies or a standalone solar farm where we can prevent them from interfering with other exterior envelope and HVAC systems. Okay. All right. You had another question Councilmember Briggs? Yeah. So on the on the different paybacks, what what was the calculation included in that was did we take in how was that figured? There were there were three ongoing costs considered as well as the capital replacement cost. So though the preventative maintenance, the ongoing repairs and the energy costs were combined into an annual cost. And then the capital replacement of various systems based on their expected useful life, the replacement cost was then calculated as the cost side of the equation. And that was balanced against the energy savings that the engineers provided us from making the change. And the those were monetized from kilowatt hours and BTUs of gas saved turned into dollars per year. And the net present value talk was pretty easy to do from that point. So so and those were fairly simple calculations. If there's any system that you really want us to do a deep dive into and take a few weeks to do we could but I think you'll find these conclusions will be the same. Okay. All right. Any other questions Councilmember Riggs? Councilmember Meltzer and then Councilmember Davis. Yeah, just to follow up on the payback out. It sounded like you said you wanted to calculate in the replacement cost as well. Are you double burdening each of might sound like you might be double burdening the cost side with both with both the investment cost and then to replace it. Shouldn't you just be looking at whether the annual you know net benefit pays back the initial investment and then when you get to replacement time. That's another new calculation. Yeah, that's a great question. So yes, of course, there's a first cost. And if you're comparing two different systems that have different lot of different lifespans over the course of the 50 year lifecycle. One system might last for 15 years or 20 years and another system might last for 25 years or in the case of a standalone solar system. If the panels expected useful life is 15 or 18 years. And you have a payback in terms of dollars in your hand. You have to over a 50 year lifecycle. Look at the the ongoing cost as well as the cost in the future for what you're going to have to spend to replace it. So if some systems last for 15 years and other systems last for 25, you have to take the durability of each system into account and burden its calculation with that. Okay, go ahead. Well, I guess I sort of see that it depends if you've got, you know, if you're ending up putting like a big replacement cost at the end without its future, you know, stream of benefits, right, that that would that wouldn't be correct. Yeah, that's absolutely. That's absolutely correct. And so we, we use a net present value calculation to anticipate what it would cost to put if you have the time value of money to the city is two and a half percent a year or one, one and a half percent a year or whatever. We look at how much money you would need today to replace that system the second time at 50 years out. And yes, you can warp these models by picking a 30 year life cycle analysis or a 35 year life cycle analysis or 40 year life cycle analysis. You can skew the results by picking the duration, especially on large capital replacements that take place a long time in the future. So it's not a perfect science. And again, we were we did these very quickly and there's another layer of study that we could do to get really concrete numbers on any of these systems. If that's the council's desire, I'm not worried about it being like, you know, super, super concrete. I guess I'd be interested in receiving offline the simple cash flows, you know, for each of these items. Just what just the pluses and minuses for the 50 years on each of the items could just be a spreadsheet. Okay, I don't need all the detail under it really. Just I would like to see just the patterns of the cash flows. Any other questions or comments, Councilmember Meltzer? Not at this time. Councilmember Davis. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I agree with Councilmember Briggs on the facade, the East Hickory facade. I had the same question just if we had looked at making the security enhancements only and not changing the metal arch that we've got and some of the more expensive items on the outside. I agree. I mean, it's all going to be relatively subjective, you know, which facade appearance we prefer. But I do personally prefer the existing appearance over the proposed. If there's a way to build in the security enhancements without making alterations to the exterior facade, I'd prefer to do that and potentially have some cost savings there as well. On the trees, I mean, I understand that if they've got to go, they've got to go. I'd like to maybe see some additional landscaping elsewhere on the property maybe that we can make some, you know, adhere to our own tree code and make up those caliber inches somewhere else. On the substation, I think I'm generally okay with all of the staff recommendations there. I was the one that originally asked for some of the price breakouts on masonry and some of the other items that seem more aesthetic than practical. But seeing the numbers, I'm okay with those. The only one that still kind of lingers with me, though, is that covered walkway arch. It's still kind of the highest dollar item out of that breakout that we asked for. And I certainly understand the benefit of good signage and good wayfinding and announcing and branding and all that kind of stuff. But $141,000 for a big sign over a driveway. That just seems steep to me. Okay. Anybody else? Mayor Potem? All right. Yeah, no, just a couple of things. I'm for staff's recommendations across the board. I do want to point out that when I researched this further, we've built at least two or three fire stations and all of them look exactly like what's proposed, the taller kind of segment. And we've had none of these discussions. And so I think, one, it's equitable to treat the first responders the same. But two, from a financial aspect, it's not right to treat them differently in the requirements. And so I'm okay with staff's recommendations. I think looking at the building without the signage, I understand the price point, but it's already budgeted. So that's one thing. And then two, yeah, there's no signage there absent that fence. And I think once you start going into reworking and redesigning, you're going to burn up just as much money as you would on the sign as it's originally planned. And so fiscally, I think to go back and rework a lot of plans and figure out if we can carve this out or that out, you end up spending more than we're trying to save. I'm going to trust the staff and the police department and their analysis to say what they need and not kind of sit here from my perspective of having never worked in law enforcement or analyze what makes a safe building and say aesthetics outweigh safety. I trust Chief Dixon to be fiscally responsible. I trusted Chief Howe before that to be fiscally responsible. As a matter of fact, if you look at the earlier bond presentation, Chief Howe brought us in under a million dollars and did a ton of things. And so this department has been great about saving money. The walkup to this current facility is difficult. The steps are gapped to a larger size from memory. So it's hard to get up those steps. And then the side steps, it's difficult as well. So just functionality wise, I'm going to trust that the police department are being fiscally responsible and they're requesting things that they need and not loading up a bunch of wants. And so I'm going to not inject my personal preferences and defer to their expertise and knowledge base. All right, Council Member Armitage. Can you remind me when construction is planned to start? Excuse me. I believe we're planning to start construction in 2021. Thanks. We still have to do complete design. So that's going to take some time. Okay. Anybody else? Council Member Ryan? Yeah. I kind of like the look of the current facade, but I understand the need for the upgrade for security purposes. So I'd like to just kind of see what the numbers were, even if we replaced it with what's there already, because I know you're going to have to parallel that stuff out, just put the security columns in there. But all the other recommendations I'm good with. Council Member Meltzer? I guess I'd like to understand, this might be a question for staff, if you could help us understand the threat assessment that is involved in the facade. Because it sort of sounds like in the presentation, like this is a new design, this is an aesthetic upgrade, and by the way, it has some security features. Or is it really, there's a very significant security need, this is meeting, and by the way, this is what it looks like. I really would need to understand how you're looking at that. So again, obviously, there are the bulletproof, I don't know exactly the terminology, but there's the bulletproof windows that are throughout there for security purposes. Another part of the, there is still the ramp there, but it's a stone ramp with painted steel. There's brick veneer. And then of course, we're keeping existing concrete foundation. But when you look at some of the stone that's being replaced there, those stone areas are, excuse me, a little bit more out there in front to kind of deter what might be potential threats. So it's not all safety at all. No, I don't want to mislead you, but it is, there are safety features. And certainly we can go back and look at, if that's the desire of council, we can look at looking at the existing facade, but adding in, I mean, the safety windows and all would go in anyway with the glazing and the murals were in the existing one as well. It's a complete new window system in that lobby area anyway, to make sure that it's safe. But we could certainly go back and look at what that would be like if that's the desire of those majority desire of council. It was to try to clean up a little bit of the front of the building and give it more of a sense of place. But obviously we did not do that well for some of you. Well, you know, I guess just my position would be if it's a million dollars for an aesthetic choice and people might just differ on that, I'd be less compelled. And if it's 300,000 for safety improvements that there's a strong threat assessment behind that you feel are needed, then obviously I'm going to want to support that. And I also think that the price is a little steep for the arch over the driveway on the other building. I think you could do a great sign for, you know, $10,000. But the other recommendation, so I'm fine with a sort of asterisk bet. I am interested in the payback calcs on some of those items. It just feels like it might be, you know, that it might be an overly heavily burdened analysis. But given the information today, I would say question mark on the facade, you know, based on how much is aesthetics, how much is driven by threat assessment, not really particularly supportive of the $140,000 sign. Fine with the other recommendations. Okay. Councilmember Armitage, real quick. Yeah, I just wanted to weigh in on the cost. I concur. I'm against anything that is simply aesthetic at this moment. I'm for whatever safety measures need to be done. But I think we really need to be showing the public that we'd be okay with a more utilitarian look right now, given our other needs. All right. Well, I appreciate that comment. I think I heard from Sarah that the construction on this isn't until 2021. Is that correct? That's correct. All right. So that's a that's a year from now almost six months to a year. So I think by that time we will hopefully have moved through this process and through these challenging times. Secondly, I just I'm just stunned, quite frankly, that people are worrying about $165,000 archway sign on a facility and a bond program that was voted on by the voters for $60 million or so for public safety. And the police department has never had a brand new facility at all, period. Secondly, on the facade. Now, what would be helpful to me on the facade, because when you look at the facade, when you look at the before and after pictures, there's not a whole lot of difference. You've got an archway. It's basically that entranceway that seems to be redone. Then it looks like you're keeping a lot of the brick. You've got some of the stone down there at the bottom. You got that little stone. What is that called? Pilaster color to type off to the right side there of the of the picture. Then you got the column with the Texas star logo at the top. So I think what would be helpful is if we had a breakdown of the cost for that facade. Look, there's no one that I'm looking at on this screen that has been any more bearish about costs for city facilities than I have been. All you got to do is go back and look at the conversations with the fire stations, with the restrooms, and all those kinds of things. So I understand about the need to make sure that our costs are in line and that we're not going to do something that's overly burdensome. But we have spent $4 to $5 million per fire station rebuilding three fire stations. Now we're adding a new one. The police department has not had a new facility since it's I can't even remember when since probably the first one was done. This building, by the way, used to be the old Moore's Business Forms manufacturing facility. All right. So this this wasn't necessarily some building that's been in the city. I mean, it was an old manufacturing facility that we reconfigured to put our police department in here. So what I'm hearing a consensus on excluding the facade, some have asked a few objections on the sign, the archway, but I'm not hearing more than three people who are stating an objection to the hundred and forty-five or hundred and sixty-five thousand dollar sign. I heard Councilmember Melser express reservation. I heard Councilmember Armitage express reservation. I can't remember Councilmember Briggs, if you express reservation over the sign or not. OK, so the sign's in. And what I've heard is everything that has been recommendations outside of the facade, given only the clarification that Councilmember Melser has asked for, as far as just a better understanding of how that lifespan or what kind of payback there would be, would be influential to his decision on which items we might or might not include in the sustainability portion. But I'm hearing that for the most part, the staff recommendations outside of the facade. And we've already settled the sign issue. I think we have four people at least that are in agreement with those those issues. All right, I'm not seeing anybody jumping up and down on the screen. So it sounds like our outstanding issue is the facade, which it would be helpful to have a breakdown of, you know, what is that glass? Also, the stone that you're putting in the front, if that's also going to be some type of safety feature that provides a little bit more resistance to anybody who tries to enter that building via means other than on foot. Yes. And then just a breakdown of what each one of those components costs, because in the end, if it's that, as Councilmember Melser said, the safety features are 80 percent, then that's something we need to know or vice versa. Also, if people seem to like the metal arch that's currently there on the facade, what would it be to also maybe include that back in the original? I mean, in the in the modified plan? I just think it's important that and I don't know how important the facade is necessary to the police department. We all did receive a memo, I think today, expressing some thoughts from the Dent Police Association. So I just simply first of all, I support everybody and thank you for agreeing to leave most everything as staff recommended the consensus of you, except for the facade, which we can work through that because I think it's important to send a message to our our police department that we stand behind you and we're not going to we're not going to do anything that's overly burdensome financially to the citizens. We know we're in a tough time. We're going to get through this time. We've also seen things that have been asked for this city to do that we number one don't have the authority to do the by law or we don't have the finances to do. But this project was voted on by the voters. The budget was voted on by the voters. And so it's up to us to figure out how we do that specifically. So staff, do you have sufficient direction on that moving forward? Yes, Mayor, we're going to go back and we're going to break down the cost of the facade for the headquarters and look at that. In addition to that, we'll break it all out based on safety items and others. Right. And then we'll also give you sort of a price if we were to add back in the metal archway roofing area there instead of what's there on the recommended facade. Yeah. And if on that facade, I mean, what would be very helpful is on your your slide, you're showing different things that will be added like the stone column, like the murals, like the the different things. If you put a specific price beside each one of those components. Yes, we'll do that. That that would be very, very helpful. Happy to do it. Okay. All right. I appreciate that. We're going to move on then to our next agenda item, which is agenda item 3D, which is receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction on pending City Council requests for and staff ready for that. Whenever you're ready, you can you can proceed. One second. You bet. And I well, I'll save it for my one minute. Mayor City Council, Sarah Keuchler, Chief of Staff. This is our pending work session item for pending requests for information from City Council members. Just one second until it can proceed through. All right, there we go. So just as a quick reminder, the staff will introduce the request. We have one for today. The elected official making the request will have one minute to describe their requests, and then the remaining elected officials will each have one minute to respond. So the item and the request that we have for today comes from Council member Armitter. She was requesting to pass an ordinance issuing a 60 day right to cure period for owed rent for residents and small businesses. Legal did provide City Council with some more information through a legal status report on Friday. So at this time, I will pass it over to Council member Armitter to make her one minute pitch. Okay, yeah. If we could go ahead and pull the pull the the slide off so I can see everybody because somehow my boards doing something weird. I'm going to go ahead and start. Go ahead Council member Armitter, go ahead and then I'll hit start once you start. Oh, you need you need to unmute Council member Armitter. Okay, Council members, 60% of your constituents are at risk of homelessness once the coronavirus eviction suspensions lift. I'm proposing an emergency ordinance like the one that Austin just passed and Dallas is about to consider tomorrow that would require landlords to give notice at least 60 days before issuing notices to vacate notices to vacate are not judicial unlike eviction. So this is not a problem of separation of powers at all. We have nothing in place like other cities have to stop evictions from being referred. There are a lot of things that we could be doing that we're not doing for 60% of our constituents are very dangerous for the week ending March 21st jobless claims in Denton sorry in Texas showed more than 860% and if the swamp phone lines of Texas unemployment offices or any indicator, you can see those numbers raise even more landlords have been granted mortgage grades by the federal government Councilman Councilmember that was your that was your time. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yep. That's okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Council member Briggs. Oh, wait, hold on. Let me go ahead. Yeah, go ahead and start Council member Briggs and I'll show you that we started the timer. Okay, well, I don't think I'm going to need everything. I just know that we've had a lot of public requests. I don't even know how many emails, but we've had several emails and so I would be in favor of just a work session to hear more about what this entails so that we can allow the public to see what it is and what it isn't and what it entails. Okay. Okay. Anybody else Councilmember Davis. I think I'll be pretty quick. Also, I'm I'm firmly of the opinion that Texas cities even under the emergency situation do not have the legal authority to enter into this area. I think what we've seen since the governor's first emergency declaration and then the municipal declarations that have rolled out the attorney general has had to stepped in on numerous occasions and said what cities are allowed to do and what they're not because we've seen cities stepping outside of their lane and into an area that we are completely apart from. I've seen some of the back and forth with Council members questions with the city attorney. I agree with what the city attorney has put out thus far and I've been out there talking to tenants and I've been out there talking to landlords. Most landlords in the city of Denton are not big apartment complexes. Most people who rent in Denton rent from folks who have not a giant apartment complex. They may have one or two homes. They may rent grandma's old home. They may rent their first starter home and those are the folks I've been talking to and there is no mortgage relief. Councilmember Davis that was that was your time. Thank you. All right. Anybody else Councilmember Hutzbeth. Thank you. And so yeah no I might ask one I want to note that the city attorney did provide a legal reply in our in our notice and that and so absent from this pitch are the laws that was a that would subvert what he provided. So there's been no understanding that was the case. I was looking for some legal kind of insight from the from the person making the pitch to then why those laws are an error. And then to I would point everyone to the Dallas overreach that has been pointed out by the federal courts that stayed one of their decisions and now put their employees in in a really tough spot thinking that was going to roll out and it was it was prohibited. So I don't want to give the citizens bad information. I want to understand the legal rights. And so my ask that I'm allowed to have it would be that legal be allowed to publish that information so that the residents get OK. Times up. Anybody else. Councilmember Meltzer. Hold on just a moment. All right. Go ahead. If it's not legal for us to do it I don't really see a whole lot of point us taking time to talk about it. But the more importantly the underlying issue is unemployment. People not having income to pay their rent. The CARES Act the CARE Act is specifically designed to replace the full income of average income workers. So what you know the energy that we're putting into these things that aren't even legal for us to do that should all be focused on helping people apply for their unemployment so that they'll have their income. They should not be moving. There are no evictions through April 19th. So people should not be moving. They should be applying for their unemployment and getting their income replaced for rent for food for Netflix accounts. Whatever that that's the core issue. And that's what's that's what's needed. I'm really unhappy about the energy that should be going into that that's going into distractions. OK. That's it. And anybody else. I'll get Councilman Ryan did you. I didn't see a hand. So go ahead. Start your time. I agree with Councilmember Meltzer that our energy needs to be going elsewhere. I've spoken with numerous property owners. All are working on a case by case basis. Some have gone through their through their tenants and contacted them to see who is in trouble. They're all working with it. You know everyone knows that I'm in property management myself. We've actually set up a credit card system where they can tell us when they when they want to pay it. They can put it on a card. We're waiving late fees. We're doing everything possible that we can because we have bills to pay as well. Our maintenance man is staying 40 hours a week but he's working about free because that's all the necessary maintenance that has to be done. So everybody's in a hard time right now. This is not a necessary conversation at this point. All right. I guess I'll go ahead and and take my minute. We've all right minutes started. We've received numerous emails because there's been a member of our body advocating for people to do that. I'm just going to read you from the governor's executive order that we have that we'll discuss in close section. I hereby suspend section four eighteen point one oh one five B and four eighteen one oh eight of the state Texas government code chapter eighty one and any other relevant statutes to the extent necessary to ensure that local officials do not impose restrictions inconsistent with this executive order provided that local officials may enforce this order executive order as well as local restrictions that are consistent with this executive order. Those two statutes that he mentioned is the one that states that the mayor or the governing official of the elected body is sort of a de facto representative of the governor in a management which means now the mayor is stripped from making executive orders and then one oh eight is also part of that as well. So this is all a mute conversation. We need to put our resources into helping people find those federal resources that they need. Thank you. All right. That will end that particular agenda item. I believe that concludes our work session reports. What I would like to do since I read part of the governor's executive order is the first order of business I'd like to do is go ahead and convene in the closed session to talk about that so that when we come back we have people who may be waiting on the can we do that. Councilman Mr. City Attorney. Yes you can. Okay. Because I'd like to give an update to those folks who will be waiting on the line to give input on that because if the notion is we can't have an executive order that's not consistent with the governor's and the governor's order is pretty specific on the things that he lays out then we as a council need to know that and the public needs to know that as well. So at this time which is four fifty five I will now convene councilmember Ryan. Can we get staff to email that yes. Yeah we're going to take a 10 minute break to get all this resolved. But so I'm going to go ahead and call the closed session and then we will move into a hard break. I will now convene the closed session at four fifty five we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section five five one point oh seven one in regards to agenda item. I believe it is on our regular council work session to see. But before I do that I would do want to go ahead and call us into the special called council meeting at March 31st 2020 having completed our work session reports we'll move into a special called meeting immediately and we will open that meeting at four fifty five and at the same time adjourn the open meeting at such time as we complete the closed session that we're calling at four fifty five. So let's come back and meet at five ten for our closed session. Thank you. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on March the 31st 2020. It is six 13 p.m. We are now moving through we've completed our work session or closed session excuse me on agenda item to see what now we're moving back to the regular portion of our special called meeting. We've got our consent agenda. Chair would entertain action just raise council member Davis. I'd move adoption of the consent agenda with the exception of item N. OK and I think we're pulling M as well. M as well. So yeah we're pulling M off the agenda but N will be considered as an item for individual consideration. So then I change my motion to be with the exception of N and M both. OK. All right. Do I have a second. Council member Ryan. Oh sorry. Council member Briggs. I'll second. All right. So the way we're going to do this is just by a show of hands. So the motion is approval of the consent agenda except for agenda items M and N. All in favor please mayor. I have the city secretary wanting to say something to you. Oh OK. I think what she was suggesting is that you do an individual voice vote. Oh a polling vote. Yes. Yeah I agree with that. OK. All right. All right. So we'll go ahead and do that. I'll start up at the top with council member Briggs. Oh, we need a voice vote. Yeah. Yeah. Yay. Okay. Yes. Councilmember Ryan. Yes. Councilmember Armitter. Yes. Councilmember Melzer. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. Councilmember Davis. Yes. And I'm a yes. So the consent agenda item passes unanimously and we pulled items M and N. M is going to be postponed to a subsequent agenda. So we will take up agenda item one N as an item for individual consideration. I will call that item, read the caption, consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing expenditure of 100,000 and previously budgeted funds for outside council and other trial expenses and the litigation style city of Denton versus Robert P Donnelly pending in the Denton County Probate Court, Denton County, Texas. All right. I don't think there was any presentation requested on that. So I just need a motion and we'll take a vote. Councilmember Ryan. Move approval. Do I have a second? Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem, you second? Second. All right. So we have a motion and a second for agenda item N. We'll go ahead and have another voice vote. We'll go circular the other opposite direction this time. Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. Councilmember Melzer. Yes. Councilmember Armitter. No. Councilmember Ryan. Yes. Councilmember Briggs. No. Councilmember Davis. Yes. And Mayor Watts is a yes. I believe it passes five to two, if my math is correct. All right. We'll move on then to agenda items for individual consideration. Agenda item two A, which is considered adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton confirming the suspension of city of Denton code of ordinances section two dash two nine B fourteen and two dash two C six in accordance with the city of Denton code of ordinances two dash twenty nine B thirteen, temporarily amending code section two dash twenty nine. I believe we had a work session on this. Is staff gonna have a presentation on this, Mr. City Manager? Mayor, this is Ryan Adams, deputy director of public affairs. We don't have a separate presentation for this item. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. Yes. Councilmember Briggs. Because it says the declaration of the state of emergency, does anything that the governor passed earlier that we went over, does that have any issue or bearing on any of these two items that we're considering right now? I'll defer to our city attorney on that. No, these are procedural rules and they were not impacted by today's order. Okay. Motion to approve. All right. We have a motion to approve. Do we have a second? Councilmember Davis. Second. All right. So we'll go ahead and take a voice vote. We'll go ahead and start with the movement in the second. I think that's what I'll do in subsequent agenda items. Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Councilmember Davis? Yes. Councilmember Ryan? Yes. Councilmember Armitter? Yes. Councilmember Meltzer? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem? Yes. Mayor Watts is a yes. So the agenda item passes unanimously. Agenda item two B is conduct the second of two readings and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas annexing approximately 131.94 acres of land, generally south of Allred Road and west of Fort Worth Drive to the city of Denton County, Texas, described in exhibit A and depicted on exhibit B, providing for a correction to the city map. It's in Richard Canone. He'll be presenting here in a moment. All right. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Okay. And I do have one comment, one comment that was made, and I will, I will state that after we have staff presentation. Good evening, Mayor and Councilor Richard Canone, Development Services. This is the second of two readings for an annexation of approximately 132 acres as shown on the map. Just to put a little more context, you may recall, this is part of a larger 146 acre tract just south of Allred, west of Fort Worth Drive. 14 acres was previously annexed by the city, involuntary annexation, I think, in 1969. And this will complete that annexation of that entire parcel, the remaining 132 acres. Just to kind of go over, recap how we got to where we are today. If you recall, we did a work session on this annexation and this proposal early in the year. And then on February 18th, we had the first reading of this annexation ordinance, the public hearing, as well as a service agreement. I know there was some confusion. I know we had had some inquiries there. Some one or two individuals actually thought that the ordinance was approved at that February 18th meeting. The ordinance that was approved was the ordinance that approved the service agreement that needed to be part of the annexation. So I just wanted to clarify that. And so the last component of the annexation would be that second reading and then adoption this evening. Just to give a little more context of what's being proposed, it's approximately 491 single family units. This is located essentially in an enclave. If you look at the zoning map to the right, you can see the areas is essentially surrounded by the city. In addition, as I mentioned, the 14 acres, you can see that area of R6 here, which is part of their property that was zoned once we had annexed that. Again, 1969, I believe when that was done. So this isn't the last time, if this annexation is approved, that you would see this. They would be seeking APD zoning. So again, this would have to go through both Planning and Zoning Commission and then ultimately back to council for consideration. I wanted to provide this. We had a fiscal impact study prepared and submitted early on, and I don't want to get into all of the numbers, but at least wanted to hit some high points. If you look at the kind of in the upper left, just in property tax revenue, currently we get about $377 from that 14 acres. Their estimated tax revenue is just under a million. And then their estimated incremental tax revenue would be just over $87,000. And again, that's a net number. So if you look at the table just to the right of that, that shows you that annual reoccurring city revenue, which is at property tax, annual costs for new population, and then that estimated incremental. So that's that net increase, and that's on an annual basis. And then cumulative, you can see as it goes down. There were some additional numbers that they provided. Again, they're looking at this being an eight-year project. So just for permit inspection and impact fees, currently they're estimating that at $8.4 million. And then local sales tax, again, over an eight-year period. This is based on, again, on the construction, not necessarily the residents living there. They're estimating that at $1.2. And so one thing I want to mention, particularly on the impact fees, they're using 2019 numbers. So whether those impact fees ultimately increase, they will be subject to those as that moves forward. While we gave some quantitative impacts, also I think it's important to bring up some of the qualitative impacts that will result if this annexation is approved. They did. They actually already started and completed the plugging of a gas well in the northwest corner of the site. They will be, again, if approved, they'll be dedicating and constructing a portion of Brush Creek that runs through the property. Again, this was a right-of-way designated on the city's mobility plan. In conjunction with that dedication construction, they'll be improving the railroad crossing at 377 by eliminating the crossing at Bonnie Bray. And so that will then get moved down to Brush Creek. So it'll create a much safer railroad crossing once that is completed. In addition, there would be dedicating some parkland, providing for trails that would interconnect both into the city's plan to the east, as well as those trails planned to the west in through Hunter and Cole, as well as providing some flood plain conservation and protection. That's really it for the presentation. With the annexation, I know we have to read the title in, which I'll go ahead and do at that time. At this time, an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, annexing approximately 131.94 acres of land, generally south of Allred and west of Fort Worth Drive to the city of Denton. Denton County, Texas, described in Exhibit A and depicted in Exhibit B, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annexed land and providing for a savings clause and an effective date. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. All right. If we could, Council Member Riggs, go ahead. And if we could pull the council members back up. Okay. So I just have a few questions. So the gas well, was it an active gas well? It was up until they plugged that. Okay. And the infrastructure, will there be, is there infrastructure available, electric, water, wastewater, is that? There is, electric is available, water is available to the north. They will be required to extend the sanitary line down Brush Creek where it ends today. And so they've already sort of started working with some of the property owners to garner easements to extend that line. And then I do know they have also had some preliminary conversations with the railroad because that line will eventually have to, they'll have to bore under the railroad tracks. Okay. And the last one is just for clarification, because we did see an image of what it's supposed to look like. This is just strictly for the annexation. It's not approval of the plat or the zoning or the PD, correct? That is correct. So if this annexation is approved, they'll get the default zoning designation of RR, which permits one unit per five acres for residential. Again, they do have that small, the 14 acres zoned R6, but any change would come in front of council for consideration. Just for clarification though, I mean, just because that image was put in with this presentation, it doesn't mean that they are under the impression that that's part of it, correct? Correct. That will have to be looked at and viewed when analyzed and when that PD is brought in front of council for consideration. Thank you. Anyone else? Any other questions? All right. We did have for this item B, agenda two B, we had one person making a comment using our online form. There were zero in support of this item and one against. And all of these comments formed were emailed to the entire city council. Additionally, there were zero people that called into the 940349 7800 to register their position. So I wanted to read that into the record in that form will be made a part of the record as well. Okay. So we've had staff presentation, public comment, council member Armitter. Can you read the written comment? I just did. Yeah, there was no, I mean, no, it's, yeah, yeah. Well, it's an email. So, you know, I'm not going to read the people that register those comments are like blue cards or white cards and we don't read all those into the record, but they are going to be made a part of the record. That email is going to be part of the record of this meeting. And I read in how many were opposed and how many were not. So, Oh, I thought, so I'm, I'm sorry. So I misunderstood. I thought that the written comments were going to get read at the meeting like, because sometimes you do read those. I haven't read the, if I read anything, it was the name and address, but when we have blue cards or white cards, I don't read those comments, especially since they have an opportunity to call in and, and make a comment publicly, even though they don't, they're not here physically. They still have that opportunity as if for an item of individual consideration, they can still fill out a blue card and come down to speak to us. So that, that's all right. Any other questions on this item council member Davis? Sure. I just wanted to point out, I did receive that comment by email and I reviewed it prior to us taking up this item tonight and consider it as part of my decision. All right. Thank you. Anybody else? Chair would entertain action on this item. Do we have to take action on this item, Aaron? Okay. Yes. All right. Yes. Okay. Council member Davis. Oh, I thought you, I did. I move approval. Council member Briggs. Oh, you're mute. I'll second. All right. So we have a motion and a second. We'll take a voice vote. Council member Davis. Aye. Council member Briggs. Yes. Council member Ryan. Yes. Council member Armitter. No. Council member Meltzer. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. Mayor Watts is an aye. So the motion carries six to one. We'll move on to our next agenda item, which is agenda item two C, which is considered option of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, a home rule municipal corporation amending ordinance number 20 dash seven 40 regarding the first amendment to the declaration of emergency, amending the order of council of the city of Denton issued March 17th, 2020 approved by ordinance number 20 dash 721 authorizing the expenditure of funds and providing an effective date. Council member Meltzer. Okay. So I'll just share that, you know, as you mentioned before, mayor, that we just received a new order from the governor that has bearing on to what extent we can, we can have different provisions in our own order. So, uh, and it's, it's unclear, I suggest to council down to the very particular level, what, what we can and can't do yet. We need, uh, fairly detailed advice from council. So I move that we postpone this item to an event certain and that event would be our legal staff being prepared to, uh, uh, give us guidance on what we can and can't, uh, regulate within our own order. Okay. Uh, council member Davis. I'll second that motion. All right. Council member Armitter. Uh, yeah. So there are people who are waiting on the waiting on the line. Is that correct? Uh, I'm not sure if they're waiting on the line. I think we would be calling them back if we were going to have them provide input in a queue. So, um, one, uh, one thing that, that we'll need to discuss is will, should we allow the times when, when people come out for an event, for, for an item that gets postponed, they're given the opportunity to speak, uh, should we, shouldn't we have a discussion as to, uh, whether people want to speak in favor of, of allowing people to speak who want to speak and then those who would rather wait, uh, until the postponement if we do vote for the moment. So can we, um, I'm not quite sure how that would work. If I could maybe add that as a amendment, uh, or would we be able to discuss that afterwards? I'm worried that afterwards, after we know we can discuss that. Uh, but also, I mean, I've got some, some thoughts on that, but, uh, I mean, we can discuss it before we take a vote. There's no question about that. But, um, so yeah. And council member Briggs, I think was, had a question. Well, I mean, is this for, are we, are we discussing what's, uh, the motion or can we, can we comment at this point? Sure. Okay. Um, yeah. And so we did, we did receive, um, a message earlier and I think everyone did about the governor's order, um, which we just lost it. We just, did we just lose somebody? Um, I guess not. Okay. The cameras moved on me. All right. It basically took away the power of local officials, um, to some degree. And so, um, that's why the discussion about postponement is, is on the table now, but it is my understanding that there were some things that are still within our power as far as, um, um, emergency funding and things like that, that we can discuss. Um, and I would, I would, I would like to still have those conversations if, if possible. Well, we're going to take a council vote on that because if we're going to be considering this in a couple of days, I just did soon wait to have the public input. The practice has been, if there's been a public hearing that's been posted that we would, uh, if people wanted to, once we opened the public hearing, if people wanted to speak, they could. But on items for individual consideration, I don't recall necessarily having that practice because if we're postponing this, we don't know what we can and can't do. And I mean, my position is we need to have all this discussion at once, uh, when we have a little bit better guidance from our legal authorities to know what we can and can't do. And yes, there may be some things that we can, but we don't know what we can do. We don't know if we can issue emergency funding. We don't know if we can do abatements. We don't know what we can do on many of those things. So that's why I think it would be best instead of bifurcating this discussion, uh, is to say, okay, we're going to have the substantive discussion the next time we meet. But that's my position. Obviously people can have a different opinion than that. So council member Briggs, you're saying you want to have some discussion right now. Council member Armitage saying she wants to have some discussion right now. So need to council member arm to go ahead. Oh yeah. Uh, so members of the public, presumably some of them anyway, have had an opportunity to read this ordinance, you know, maybe if they want to share with us, uh, their thoughts on it too. So I don't think that the public's going to have a chance to speak. It's just a matter of whether this council wants to take the time to hear that tonight when we'd have really no guidance on what we can include and what we can include. Um, and so I'm just asking the council members for their input. So, no, I mean, I mean, members of the public might have, might want to share, uh, their understanding of, of the ordinance. I realize it's not the same thing as, as legal advice from the attorney, but I just say council member Briggs. Yeah. So I just wanted to, um, one of the things that, that we have been, um, advocating and giving to the community as a solution, because there's not a lot that we can do as a, um, a local government is the, um, the funding, the, the emergency funding of 50,000 that we have put out. And, um, I received information that there's been over 250 requests, um, for those organizations so far. And a lot of those are new clients. And so, um, I just want to make sure that, um, that is front and center as, as we're discussing this conversation to make sure that, um, if, if that is the only thing we have to offer that we are still, um, considering that that is going to meet, need to be raised from 50,000, um, at some point. Okay. All right. Any other council comments? Mayor Pro Tem? Uh, yes. Uh, I would like to ask the city attorney in addition to his, uh, due diligence, he's going to do generally to add to that list and that due diligence, the, a review or kind of his summary of the federal ruling against Dallas's, uh, the city of Dallas's action, because it specifically mentions overreach. And so I think it is important and imperative for this council to understand one with that overreach, with that decision entailed, given, uh, our legal department's analysis. And I also would like to, uh, ask the legal department to, uh, reach out to contacts there and understand the cost associated with that hearing and, and, and those sort of things. And so there's a cost associated with going to federal court to argue against those things. And that, because I think it's important we can then lay, I can then layer my analysis to understand what the state, uh, is statement is or position with respect to governor Abbott. But then again, also the federal government is in play now. And so it's important to understand both those. We could be fighting a war on both fronts if we're not careful. Okay. All right. Council member Davis? A couple of things real quickly. Um, one, another small request of the city attorney, as we're looking at this research, I've gotten just over the course of this meeting, probably 15 emails about golf courses. Um, and if we could have just a little bit of carve out in your, in your memo to us for where golf courses fit into the governor's order, um, and then as well as ours, I kind of know where it is on ours, but the, the new landscape, um, as far as, uh, what we discussed tonight, you know, the motion on the floor right now is, is postponement. So I think that's what we have to take up first, uh, not other, other issues. And then also to public comment, I'd ask the city attorney, I'm, I'm aware of what our prior practice has been before the legislature changed some of the public comment laws about we postpone the agenda item. Uh, you know, we postponed the comments along with it, but, uh, are we required if there's somebody sitting on the line or somebody who's filled out a virtual white card or virtual blue card are we required to hear from them? Even if we postpone the item, the answer is no, because you're not taking action on final action on the item. Okay. Thanks. Council member Briggs. Uh, yeah, just, just to add to the, um, the, the golf course. And if, if there is a section where we're going to have, um, the attorney right on it, it's that I think the difference is, is that it's not going, it's not a public golf course anymore. That it would just be considered private with only, um, residents and maybe no employees. So, um, that, that would be the difference between a regular public golf course. And then what's being asked of us at this point, I think. Okay. Uh, council member Ryan. Thank you, mayor. Um, I just want to remind the public that the, that the county did pass, uh, the same ordinance as what we're looking at, um, as far as the restrictions earlier today. And we're just, since the governor's decree came down after that, that's the reason why we are postponing this to give our legal department a chance to look through it. It doesn't make a lot of sense to, to take public input until the, the final draft of what we're going to do comes out. Cause that could change quite a bit between now and, and whenever it comes back to us. Okay. Um, mayor pro tem. Yeah, I didn't speak to that. So let me speak to the comment section. Can someone tell me if they, do they get to speak twice or is it you get one opportunity to speak? I understand that there's the, the history we've not had that opportunity, but I just want to understand, uh, kind of at a different level before I make my comment. City attorney. To answer your question, the citizens are allowed under household 28 40, which was, um, past this past legislative session to allow to be able to comment on your item. There is no indication in that statute that requires more to speak on the item more than once in the event that it's postponed. And so something like that, as long as you give them the opportunity to speak, even if it's just once, I think you have met the intent of the law. Okay. So that, and that's my position. They can speak once if they want to speak before we have all the facts and, uh, then I welcome that. But then once we have all the facts and we lay it out, then I don't, uh, support that opportunity to speak twice where the citizens aren't afforded that opportunity. So that's where I follow you at one time that speak. You can either reserve that and speak when we have clear direction and where we're going, or if you want to speak for, we, uh, make have before you have clear direction, that's their product council member breaks. Um, yeah. So I have, I have a few things here, um, because before we take a vote, I want to make sure and put these on the table so that, um, it gives staff something that when we come back, if we do, uh, to, to, for us to consider their questions that I had even before this, uh, order came down from the governor and I would like, uh, to, to ask at some point. And so, um, I'm just going to go ahead and put these out now. I would like to know, um, how much financial assistance is left from the, um, from the funds that we've allocated. Um, and I, I asked before, um, how, how many people in the city do not have access to broadband, um, uh, Wi-Fi infrastructure, uh, and a clarification, um, does subs and as we're reading the governor's thing, does, is an AA meeting exempt? Does that fall under substance abuse, um, a provider or does it fall under a group meeting? Um, that's was a clarification that I had asked and I, I'm not sure of. And the last thing I'd like to know is if there's a business within the city of Denton and there is an individual who works there that tests positive, um, what is the, the protocol for that? Do they put up a sign as notification or, um, how do the people that shop in that location, how do they become aware if, if they may or may not have, uh, come in contact? Okay. All right. Any other comment? Yeah, I think on the public comment, Mayor Pro Tem, uh, I'm not sure how we could, um, if you're saying you only want the person to speak once, the practice has been within public meetings, especially on public hearings. We've just said, Hey, if we have a public hearing and you want to speak, you can, uh, if we've closed it, they can speak if they come back just because it's just too difficult to enforce. Now on these call ends, I think that's, that's different. But the point being, we're not really talking about anything substantive tonight. I mean, we've had questions to be asked to be included in the discussion, uh, when it comes up next. Uh, so, uh, we've got, I think at least three for sure who've expressed an interest to just go ahead and hear the public, uh, substantively, the next time we meet on this substantive issue, when it's actually one that we're going to debate the substantive aspect of the ordinance or the order instead of just the postponement, uh, the motion to postpone. So, uh, who hasn't spoken on that part of the public comment council member Meltzer. Yeah. You know, I always like to hear people speak when they've got something to say, but I would just like to advise that for me to even, um, understand what I can do with that information, it's going to be a lot more productive for me as a council member. I'm speaking to the public. You know, if I hear you knowing what I can act on what I can't. So, uh, you know, uh, my preference would be to know what we can act on and hear the public in that context. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, I think we've got at least a consensus to say, Hey, we're not, we're not saying you're not going to be able to speak on this item. You're not going to, that we're going to say, let's speak on this item when we can actually take action on this item substantively. Uh, so we're going to wrap this discussion up real quick. Council member Briggs real fast. Well, I wondered if there was somebody in there in person to speak on it or someone on the line who you could ask that question to who you normally would ask the question to what question, um, would you like to speak now or would you like to speak later on items of individual consideration? I've really never, I've rarely done that public hearings. I know I've done that for items of individual consideration. Um, because there's nothing, I mean, public hearing has been posted, you know, uh, it had to be posted 14 days prior to the meeting, I believe. Uh, so a council member, uh, armature, did you, did you have a, so I, I, I understand that it, it's at your discretion at the mayor's discretion. As I understand it, I would just make the case that everything we're doing now, we've never done before, uh, you know, having a virtual meeting, you know, tomorrow, uh, being the day when people's, uh, rent is due, uh, people really worried. Uh, so, you know, maybe, maybe nobody want who, uh, maybe nobody wants to speak, but I'm here to, to listen. Uh, and maybe they, maybe they have advice about what we're, what we're doing now. Uh, anything they want to tell us, I'm, I'm here to listen. So well, uh, first of all, it's, I mean, it may be in the discretion of the mayor. I haven't made that unilateral decision. I've heard four people express a sentiment that they would prefer to hear the comment that they want to hear the comment when we can actually take action. So that's going to be the direction that we move. Uh, so we've got a, we've got, if there's any more comment about the motion on the table to postpone, uh, this agenda item, is there any more discussion on that? All right. So we had a motion to postpone by council member Meltzer. It was seconded by, was it council member Davis? Okay. Okay. Uh, all right. We'll start with you all on the polling of the vote, voice vote council member Meltzer. Yes. Council member Davis. Yes. Council member Briggs. I know. Uh, council member, uh, armature. Nope. Council member Ryan. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. Uh, mayor watch is a yes. Uh, so the motion carries five to two. All right. We'll move on to our next agenda item, which is agenda item two D consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton authorizing the mayor to execute a separation release and waiver agreement with Holly Fox authorizing expenditures and providing an effective date. Do we have a presentation on this? Oh, I can't hear you. Can't hear you Trey. Nope. Can't hear you. How about now? Yes. We've lost somebody too. Was that the city manager that, that got off, um, the camera? Um, I believe so. Yes, sir. Okay. All right. Uh, council member Briggs, did you have a question? Oh, I couldn't hear you. Just a motion. Oh, okay. Do we need a presentation? I guess. Um, how long is your presentation, Trey? Oh, no, we don't have a presentation. Okay. You're just there for questions. Yes, sir. We're here for questions if necessary. All right. So we have a motion, uh, by council member Briggs and, and, uh, I'm sorry, council member Briggs, what was the motion? Uh, to approve. All right. We have a motion to approve. Council member Davis. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve agenda item two D. Uh, council member Briggs, how say you? I say yes. Council member Davis. I say yes, but I see the mayor pro tem has a hand up. Oh, sorry. Okay. Mayor pro tem. Sorry. I didn't see you. Yes. No, I just want to make a statement that, that I am, uh, this is the, this option is, uh, two bad options in my opinion. Uh, but I think it's fiscally responsible for the citizens, but, uh, personally, I have some different feelings about it and, and I've, I've expressed those to, to y'all. So you understand that, uh, just wanted to have a clear record that, that I am, uh, uh, conflicted for sure. And I'll reserve my other statements out of, uh, an abundance of caution. Okay. Thank you. Uh, council member, uh, Meltzer. I'm yes. Mayor pro tem. Yes. Council member Armitter. No. Uh, council member Ryan. Council member Ryan. Did we lose you? You're frozen out. Okay. Council member Ryan looks like he's there. Yes. There you are. Okay. All right. Yep. I'm back. Yeah. I'm a yay. And if you're polling, I was just on one of those freezes. Okay. So the motion was to approve agenda. Item two D. So you're, you heard that and you understand the issue. So you're, you're a yes on that. Yes. Okay. Uh, mayor Watts is a yes on that. It looks like if I, my math's correct, the motion carries six to one. Is that correct? I only remember seeing one, a nay vote. Yes, sir. That matches what I have. Okay. Thank you. All right. Then we'll go on to, I believe it's concluding items. Council member Briggs. Mute. I want to wish you a happy birthday. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Today's your birthday. Remember? Yes, I do. Remember? Yes, I do. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Council member Meltzer. Was this how you intended to celebrate your birthday? Uh, not really, but that's okay. I always enjoy to serve. Well, I was just, well, yes. So the, so I hope you weren't having fun then. Um, I would just like to, uh, reiterate a couple of things I've commented on previously, but I know some people, you know, joined since, uh, the, the challenge in addition to the virus itself, uh, that we're facing is the unemployment. Uh, and I, and I absolutely hear the, uh, fear, especially that people have who are renting related to their unemployment. And the answer is to apply for unemployment immediately. The website is twc.texas.gov. The new rules, as I understand them, are intended to replace substantially all of the income of an average worker. And that doesn't mean just somebody who's got a job, you know, it can also mean if you're a gig worker, if you're an Uber driver, if you're self-employed, if you're, if your income is substantially gone because of our state home order, because businesses are closed, you can file for unemployment. Uh, and the, the benefits are, are, as I said, meant to replace the income that you had before for four months. So that's to pay rent, to buy food, whatever your utilities, whatever it was you were able to afford before, you should, if you're an average income, uh, employee or self-employed person, you should be able to afford after. There are no evictions, uh, eviction proceedings in the state of Texas through April 19th. And that may be extended. I don't know that it will or won't, but my, my strong urging is that if you are unemployed, apply for unemployment now, you can do it online. All right. Thank you. Uh, anyone else? Council member Armitage. Yeah. So I'll say, um, yeah, uh, happy birthday. And, um, I know that, uh, people are having a hard time getting through on the unemployment line. So, uh, it'd be nice to have if there's anything that, that we could do as a city, uh, to, uh, to, to facilitate that, that would be great. Cause I keep hearing people are having a really hard time getting through on that. Uh, it's, it's, it's not quite as simple, um, as sometimes people make it sound. I just want to say that, um, I know that the care act, it, it sounds really wonderful. This is a message to, to, to the public, um, look and see, uh, who it, who it doesn't apply to as well. Um, it does not apply to anyone who is a, who doesn't have a social security number. So these are taxpayers who have an ITIN that enables them to do all kinds of things. This is about, um, 14%, uh, or sorry, 12.5% of, uh, city of Denton residents, uh, at, uh, Denton independent school district, uh, about 14% are, uh, English learners. Uh, so that, that is some indication as to people who, uh, as to the percentage and numbers of people we have, we will not be getting a stipend through that. Also our students, our college students, tens of thousands of them, uh, many of them are, are dependents just because they have to be, and they are not covered either. And, and they are, are renters and, uh, they're very, very, uh, concerned that they're going to be out on the street, uh, on the 19th. Um, and I, I cannot assure them that, that the answer is no. Uh, so, uh, and then of course, for those who are homeless, uh, we don't have enough hotel rooms. So I, I look forward to, to adding, adding more, uh, public money to this, this greater public good, because we've got a lot in need right now. Um, and we've got a very hungry workforce and we've got a lot of work that needs to be done. And, and I think we should also invest in doing some of the hiring ourselves. Okay. Anybody else? Mayor Pro Tem? Yes, sir. Thank you very much. A couple of things. So I want to first highlight and, and thank staff one for the trips to the grocery stores and those other stores and the list about the senior orders, they, hours they put together, greatly appreciated. And that's, I've been disseminating that and that's been a hit. Uh, then also they coordinated the round table with the chamber and a couple of other groups, uh, and help get some information out there for small businesses. And that was very productive. I, I sat in, sat in on that and it's, it's, everything's changing dynamically, but they've done a great job, uh, disseminating information where they can. So I'm grateful for that. Uh, and then for staff stepping up where volunteers are unable to fill those gaps is really big. So put that in perspective, our community is, is, uh, in a situation where we can't volunteer or it's not wise to volunteer and filling that gap as a city of Denton staff. And so that's, that's pretty cool and pretty amazing for our community and in our, it's reflective of our leadership. And then I thank you mayor for your leadership on the police department. I couldn't agree more. Uh, here's a department that has served us tirelessly and, and I'm excited to have that underway to, uh, at least give them a facility, uh, that for the most part, uh, hopefully a hundred percent that they're requesting. So I'm excited about that. Uh, uh, thank you. I mean, I didn't know it was your birthday. I don't, I don't keep up with that, but a happy birthday by the way. And I'll, I'll send you to a Stevie wonder version of happy birthday later. I'll leave you a voice message. Thank you. And then I appreciate that. And the community appreciates that as well. And then, um, the, um, I just want to, it's important in our position that we be careful about what we say. No one's getting evicted on the 19th. The process in theory is set to kick back up on the 19th. That's not instant. That's just saying it's back in process. And that doesn't say that it's going to be extended. So it's just important that we get good information out there. And, and, and so that's just not correct. No one's getting evicted the day of the 19th. That's not what the order said. That's the state Supreme court. It's the highest law in the state. And so please people avail yourself of information. Uh, the city's put out resources, so please, uh, don't get all your information from Facebook. Go to the source documents, uh, please, so that you can be, uh, thank you, uh, council member Melzer for putting out that website and other information that that's tried and true. And we'll give, uh, actionable information. And then, um, lastly, mr city manager, I would like to ask, uh, whenever it's appropriate that, uh, the economic development, uh, department let us know when it's time to start, uh, planning or reconfiguring what life looks like after this. Right. So once we're at a point where we can see beyond the immediate, I would like to start planning our bounce back and businesses that we want to target and so that we can get after it and make those pitches to those companies to help our community, uh, snap back. Anybody else? You know, I would also encourage the small businesses, uh, in any business to look at the care act because there are provisions that will provide for some relief, uh, to keep people on the payroll. I don't know exactly what all those specifics are. That, uh, legislation was in the hundreds of pages. So people were frantically trying to look through that to be able to find good accurate information, uh, to those that, that it's trying to help. So I certainly would encourage to, you know, watch the websites. We'll try to put up as much accurate, verifiable information as we can and get you to the right places that, that have accurate information, uh, because really information is key. If you don't have information, you're behind and you're not going to get everything that you're entitled to. So please be as informed as you can based upon the information from those departments, those, uh, governmental agencies that put that out so that you can understand what your rights are. And if you don't seem like you're getting anything, then you also will know that information and you can, you can then, uh, you know, lobby us, you can lobby other organizations to help, to help you in this time of need. Uh, we're going to have a good robust discussion. I'm sure the next time we meet on what we can and can't do on the order. So I certainly look forward to that. I look forward to the public input on that. Substantively. Uh, and I want to again, say thank you to all my colleagues, my council members who were so gracious in doing this the first time. I think it went very smoothly. I appreciate everybody's courtesy and respect. I appreciate staff who worked tirelessly prior to this training, all of us getting us all ready to try to get this done and to go off as smoothly as possible. And quite honestly, it went off much better than what I would have anticipated. And it's a good way to see what we need to do better and what we can, uh, what we're doing well based upon our next agenda, either with the special call meeting to consider the ordinance or our agenda on the seventh, which is a pretty robust agenda. So I appreciate everybody's help and cooperation that, and if you have any glitches like the frozen screen council member Ryan that you experienced, let's make sure that we at least try to figure out how that's happening so we can, we can mitigate these issues as much as we can in the future. So with that, uh, I will go ahead and adjourn this meeting on March the 31st, 2020. It is seven oh two PM. Thank you all very much.