Apr 06, 2020 City Council on 2020-04-06 3:00 PM (EMERGENCY MEETING)

All right, we might have had a little bit of technical difficulty on the audio, so. Mayor? Oh yes. Can you hear me now? Okay. I can hear you now. So you can, yeah, place the presentation up and we're ready to go. Let me pull. Sorry about that. No, you're good. Thank you. Mayor, City Council, Sarah Keuchler, Chief of Staff, I'm just going to introduce the presentation today and then as the mayor indicated, we have three different presenters. So this is our standing work session item to provide an update to City Council on the City's COVID-19 response. So just by way of background, this is a slide we had went over last time. There is an item that is later in the agenda, which will be an individual consideration item in order to extend or amend the stay at home order for the City of Denton. This work session item again is just an broad update with some major topics that we'd like to provide to City Council and the public. We're continuing to provide updates to council almost on a daily basis through email or through daily Q and A's, as well as working on extensive public information as the situation evolves and as we acquire more information. So today, this presentation will really cover three main topics and areas. The first will be kind of an overview of the Federal Cares Act, Jessica Rogers, our Economic Development Director will provide that overview. I do want to preface that this is really a high level overview that we're providing to council. There are a lot of details and a lot of guidance still coming out in regards to the Cares Act, but we wanted to provide some perspective and some programs that may be beneficial to our community and our businesses. The second section of the presentation will be an overview of United Way of Denton County's COVID-19 Relief Fund, as well as seeking some council direction on the Barriers Fund and Utilities Assistance, and then we'll end the presentation with an overview from David Gaines of disaster expenditures to date for the city in regards to the COVID-19 response. So I'll turn it over to Jessica Rogers at this point to start with the first section. Good afternoon, Mayor and council. It's good to hear all of your voices and see you. So I'm going to start by going over different provisions of the Cares Act. The first area that I'm going to cover are unemployment benefits. The Cares Act included many changes regarding unemployment benefits, and I'm going to go through each of these. The first was that the Act created a new program called Pandemic Unemployment Insurance. This is a temporary change that allows for individuals who would not traditionally be eligible for unemployment benefits to be eligible. This includes self-employed individuals, independent contractors, those with limited work history, and gig economy workers. To qualify for this program, you have to meet three qualifications. You must be ineligible for any other state or federal unemployment benefit. You must be unemployed, partially unemployed, or cannot work due to COVID-19, and you cannot be eligible to telework or receive paid benefits. The benefits under this program are calculated under each individual state law based on recent earnings with a minimum benefit requirement that is equal to half of the state's average weekly unemployment compensation amount. Benefits on this program are going to be paid retroactively to those who qualify. A key point of this program is that those who can telework for pay and those who are receiving paid sick leave or other paid leave benefits are not eligible. The second provision of the Act is the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation provision. This added a $600 payment to recipients of unemployment insurance or pandemic unemployment insurance for up to four months. That includes all weeks of unemployment between April 5th, 2020 and July 30th, 2020. The Act also created a program called the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation Program. This section provided an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits through December 31st, 2020 for those who remain unemployed after state benefits are exhausted. If an individual is already receiving unemployment benefits, qualifies for unemployment benefits under state law, or is eligible for pandemic unemployment assistance, then that individual will be eligible for the additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits. These benefits will be paid at the same weekly rate the individual is otherwise eligible to receive under law, and they will also include the $600 Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation Payment. So I want to quickly go over what this looks like in terms of a flow chart for Texas filers. So if you are already approved for unemployment benefits, then you are eligible under either the State Unemployment Insurance, that's the UI abbreviation you see, or the Federal Public Unemployment Assistance Program. You're eligible traditionally for the 26 weeks of state unemployment plus the additional 13 weeks of federally supported unemployment. If you're eligible under the regular state program or a non-traditional applicant, you should apply online at, I believe it's ui.texasworkforce.org, it's a little hard to see on my screen. If you have exhausted your benefits, you should wait for notice directly from the Texas Workforce Commission. You do not have to reapply. You'll be eligible either under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance or through the traditional programs for the additional 13 weeks. If at any time during those 13 weeks that those payments are being made between that April 5th and July 31st deadline, you'll also receive the additional $600. I will go over a few examples on the next slide of how this works, but I will say that there are many variables and individual circumstances that filers have, and so filers should contact Texas Workforce Commission for any guidance or questions. And so we put together some scenarios for you to see. There is a very complicated calculation to get to what is considered the base period average weekly wages, but for the sake of simplicity, assume that in these four scenarios that the wages that you see are the $250, the $500, the $750, and the $1,000 are wages that were qualified base period average weekly wages for an applicant. So under the Texas system, you can actually go into the Workforce Commission site and enter this information into what's called the benefit calculator. This calculator goes through that complicated calculation and determines what your estimated benefit would be. So as you see the numbers here, that's what they are. So 130, 260, 390, and I actually can't see the other one, let me minimize you guys, 520. And then any payments that occur between April 5th, 2020, and July 31st, 2020, you will receive the additional federal pandemic unemployment compensation insurance. So your estimated total weekly benefits for each of these scenarios is outlined below between $730 and $1,120. One note I will make is that under the Texas Workforce Commission system, the weekly maximum unemployment benefit is $521. So that means with both of the programs combined, a filer cannot earn more than $1,121. So I know there have been a lot of questions from constituents and from residents about difficulties getting through the Texas Workforce Commission system. And so we wanted to provide you a list and a little bit of an update on what Texas Workforce has been doing. I have some updated information, it says that they on your slide that they hired an additional 100 call center employees that actually has been expanded to 700 call center employees, as well as transferring more than 200 tax auditors from their tax division to assist in taking calls. They've extended call center hours to now include Saturdays. And as you see in the upper right-hand corner, that they've now implemented a area code call based system to limit the calls each day to try and get people served quicker. They've also launched a new virtual assistant chat bot that can answer standard questions through their website. They're also streamlining processes to simplify filing and approvals. Like you saw on that chart means that you don't have to reapply for extension. If your benefits were expiring, you're going to automatically receive notice from TWC. They're going to contact you directly. They're also working daily to update software and hardware of their online filing system and their call system. Many of their call center employees, most of their call center employees are now working remotely. So they've had to do a lot of upgrades to their technology to allow that to occur. And then lastly, they're encouraging claimants to access the online system between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. I know some people have still experienced challenges during that time, but Texas workforce has said that is when volumes are the lowest. And so people are having more success during those times. That is all I have on unemployment. I'm going to also go over the individual economic payment program. There are a lot of specific details related to this program that I'm not going to go over, but I want to get some key concepts out. The first is that payments will be made in the amount of $1,200 for individual filers or $2,400 for joint filers. Filers will receive an additional $500 per qualifying child. And as we provided in the council Q&A before, qualifying children are dependents under the age of 17. These payments will reduce by $5 for every $100 of adjusted gross income above the following limitations, $75,000 for individual filers with no children, $150,000 for joint filers with no children, and $112,500 in the case of a head of household. The limitations for filers with no dependents are $99,000 and $198,000. For payment, if you are above those limits but still have qualifying dependents, that reduction of $5 for every $100 in adjusted gross income will continue. In terms of timing, the IRS has stated that for those filers who have filed their 2019 tax returns, it would be an estimated two weeks for those filers who have elected direct deposit, but it could take up to five months for filers who have requested a paper check. However, the IRS has said it will prioritize lower incomes in processing the checks. Another note on this is that filers without tax liabilities or with incomes entirely from the federal government will receive payments. That means that filers who receive all of their income from Social Security will not have to separately file an income tax to receive the payment. And then the last note on that is that if you owe back taxes or owe taxes to the IRS, you more than likely will get a payment. The exception to that is that those with outstanding child support may have their checks reduced. Next section I'm going to go over are the federal student loan suspensions. The CARES Act provided broad relief for federal student loan borrowers. That included that federal student loans will be placed in administrative forbearance, which allows the borrower to temporarily stop making monthly loan payments. That suspension will end on September 30th, 2020. Borrowers are encouraged to go to studentaid.gov or call 1-800-4-FED-AID if they have questions. And the reason for that is many federal programs are owned by, excuse me, federal loans are owned by commercial lenders and some Perkins loans are owned by institutions that students attended. Those loans may not be eligible for this benefit. So borrowers are encouraged to contact either the federal government through the phone number or website provided or contact their servicers directly. The last section that I'm going to go over are four programs related to business assistance. I'm not going to go over all of them in great detail. I'll quickly go over the bottom three bullet points that you see there. The Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Grant Program or the Idle Program as it's known. The only change that was made in the CARES Act was Congress added an additional $10 billion to that program for $10,000 advanced grants for applicants. The goal was to quickly allow businesses to get $10,000 cash on hand to make payroll. The goal was also to assist 1 million businesses very quickly. For that program, borrowers should apply directly to the SBA. A note on that is that you can apply for both a PPP and an Idle loan, but you cannot use the loans for the same thing. And there are some provisions in the PPP program that I will go over related to that. Under Idle, you can access $2 million in loans with a 30-year maturity. Interest rates will range between 2.75 and 3.75, 2.75 for nonprofits, and 3.75 for private businesses. The Small Business Debt Relief Program actually allows the SBA to make payments on behalf of borrowers who have non-disaster SBA loans. That includes the 7A, 504, and microloan programs. Under this, the SBA will cover all loan payments, principal and interest, and any outstanding fees for six months. And this is also available to any new borrower who takes out a loan within six months of the president signing the bill into law. So that goes until the end of September 2020. The Small Business Tax Assistance Program offer employee retention tax credits in a delay in payment of payroll taxes for eligible businesses. These programs are fairly complicated, and we would encourage businesses to contact accountants or tax attorneys to discuss these programs. But a key provision of the tax deferments are that deferrals and credits are not available for any business who has successfully received a PPP loan. So I'm going to go over the PPP in a little bit more detail. The CARES Act included $349 billion for the PPP. Eligible businesses are those with less than 500 employees. That includes franchise sites and some industries who might have more than 500 employees who are still designated as small businesses under the Small Business Act. It also includes sole proprietorships, independent contractors, and self-employed persons, and we'll talk through that in a little bit when we get to the terms. It also includes private nonprofit organizations under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and veterans' organizations. These loans are going to be given for the lesser of either $10 million or two and a half times the average monthly payroll. Loan payments are deferred for six months, and while interest is accruing during that time, the interest rate was set at 1% with a maturity of two years. Jessica, can you hear me? Yes. I think we heard something, and I can't find Councilmember Armitter. Is Councilmember Armitter on the... Yes. Okay. I don't see your video feed. Oh, sorry. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. And that's okay. I just, I want to make sure you're there because I didn't see you. So, all right. I apologize, Jessica. You bet. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Okay. So, further guidance, PPP loans must be used for payroll costs, and I'll stop there just to say that there is a specific definition of what a payroll cost is in the final interim rule that was issued by SBA, and businesses are encouraged to review that provision as it's different from other SBA programs. They can also use the funds for costs related to group healthcare benefits, mortgage interest payments, rent payments, utility payments, interest payments on other debt obligations incurred before February 15th, 2020, or refinancing of an SBA idle loan. As I mentioned, you can't use both your idle loan and your PPP for the same thing, so if you've received an idle loan and it's been used for payroll, you have to refinance the idle loan into the PPP. 75% of the loan must be used for payroll costs, and forgiveness of the loan is based on an employer maintaining or quickly rehiring employees and maintaining salary levels. Forgiveness will be reduced if the headcount of the employer declines or if salaries or wages are decreased. In the interim final rule that was published on April 2nd, and know that loans started being processed on April 3rd, but in the interim final rule that was released on April 2nd, there were provisions within that rule that stated that the program can be changed administratively, so keep that in mind as the process is going forward, as well as that further guidance on forgiveness and how to calculate the forgiveness of a loan will be given at a later date. The keys for businesses to keep in mind is that your payroll documents will need to be certified by the lender you choose. The lenders include SBA certified banks that were automatically eligible to begin making PPP loans and other federally insured depository institutions and credit unions that elected to participate. As of April 4th, 30,000 additional lenders had been enrolled in the program. The SBA has stated that businesses should contact banks that they have existing relationships with as many banks are processing loans first for those who have existing accounts. If their bank is not a participating bank, banks can provide guidance on preferred lenders as well as the SBA, which has published a list of all certified lenders. We have published that list as well on our business resource web page. I am going to go through now what an example of a PPP looks like for a company. So here we have company A that has an average annual or that has an annual payroll of $500,000. Their average monthly payroll is a simple calculation. Just divide that by 12, $41,667. The maximum PPP loan amount in this case would be $104,167. Now I will say there are a lot of complications that can come into that calculation. So in this case, assume that we didn't have to make any deductions based on other program parameters to get to the maximum loan amount. Again, the lenders will walk through each business on how to get to that calculation. This is a very simplified version. But of that, $104,167 that the company would be eligible for, they must use 75% of that loan amount or $78,000 on payroll expenses. And that if that business maintains that payroll, spends no less than 75% of the loan proceeds on payroll costs, the loan including principal and interest may be forgivable. I will add just at the end that businesses should always consult with banks, CPAs, attorneys on any of the specifics of implementing those programs for their business. But we are here as a resource. We are constantly reviewing and updating our business resource page on our city websites. And we are here answering the phones or calling people back if they leave us a voicemail usually within minutes to go over the key provisions of any of these programs and direct them to where they can get more information. We have links to all of these programs on our business resource page. So businesses don't need to go search each individual agency site on where to get this information. We have it compiled in one area, as well as we have the contact information in the local resource area for the Dallas-Fort Worth district SBA office and the local SBDC, which can provide consultation and guidance on applications on any of the SBA-run programs. And just as a side note, a quick update on the PPP that we received today from the SBA is that one bank alone has received 178,000 applications totaling $33 billion nationwide. As this program is considered a first-come, first-served program, applicants are encouraged to reach out to banks as quickly as possible to discuss their options. And that is all for my section. All right, let's go ahead and pull the presentation down, and then we'll go for questions on this particular subset of the presentation. Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah, I've got several questions, so let me know if you want me to have to break it someplace. Yeah, go ahead and ask them, because there might be some that others have that then we'll go ahead and get them answered as we go. Okay, great. All right, so thank you very much for that presentation, Jessica. On the PPP, do you happen to know if there's any special provision for tipped employees where the wage, the payroll part of the employee's income might be very small as a percentage of their total earnings? So yeah, is there anything to account for that? I'm trying to get to the definition of payroll under the program that I have in front of me, so forgive me if it takes me one second, but I do have that. So I think it comes down to a choice for restaurants in Denton, whether it'd be better for them to let people go and have them file for the more generous unemployment if they can't keep them on, but I think the government would prefer that people stay on payrolls to the extent possible. Sure. So the payroll under the PPP includes salary, wages, commission, similar compensation, cash tips or equivalent based on employer records of tips, or in the absence of such records, a reasonable good faith estimate of tips. Okay, because that becomes a critical question, whether they could use the PPP loan to pay make payment in lieu of tips because they're not operating, they're dine in operation. So maybe offline we might learn a little more about that. I think that'd be very important for Denton businesses, especially. Let me ask you another question about the PPP. When they talk about payroll, and you just read the definition, is there anything that would stand in the way of an employer making payroll that includes people who they previously paid, who don't have social security numbers, and who might be counted as dependents on their parents or some other relatives, income tax? I think those factors are irrelevant, right? It's just whatever the business ordinarily pays. There are some challenges for those that don't have social security numbers. The business must be able to prove payments to those individuals. Usually those are reported in tax documents, either through a tax number that's given to a legal resident or through a social security number. So that could be challenging. But in terms of whether or not the individual is a dependent, no, it's fine for an individual to be claimed on someone else's taxes and to continue to be paid from the PPP. Okay. And we know that many people don't have social security numbers, still pay federal income tax. So that's a very interesting avenue. Are there, well, okay, this may be a broader discussion. I don't necessarily need you to answer this one right away, but let's just say it might be worth thinking about how else the city might reach out to businesses that might be unaware of their opportunity to keep people employed, keep food on the table without a cost to them other than their interest payments that can all be forgiven. So it might be worth thinking about how we could reach out to targeted way to businesses that might not be aware of this. So let me press on with more specific questions on unemployment. Do we have any idea what the status would be or the eligibility would be for employees who are furloughed, but not laid off, where they're temporarily not getting paid and your temporary unemployment, do they qualify? In most cases, yes. In most cases, if you are eligible, if you have reduced work hours as a result of COVID-19 or have been furloughed as a result of COVID-19, you may be eligible. You still must meet all of the eligibility criteria, but reduced hours and furloughs are considered eligible, broadly speaking, again, lots of individuals could change that. And yes, and that information is also available on the COVID-19 page on the Texas Workforce Commission site, and it talks specifically about those cases. That's great. That's cool. With regard to the workforce that's being deployed to get the phone answered and respond to the website increase, I think you mentioned 900 people between redeployed tax folks and new hires. Is your sense that these people are answering the phone now or they're in training? I mean, anecdotally, I'm not hearing that it's solved yet. I'm hearing two-hour waits and 45-minute waits and unending busy signals and all the rest. So how soon do we foresee relief? I can't speak to how many of those 700 are answering the phone today or if that's on a rotation system or anything. I can say that there has been a clear statement from the Texas Workforce Commission that no one will be penalized for the delay. So if you cannot get through, keep trying, submit your application online, and all of the benefits that you qualify for will be backdated. Now let's say someone successfully applies. What is the typical wait from that point until payment is received of a benefit? I would say that there's normal times and there's now. Generally, it's one week. It actually would be two weeks. There's typically a one-week wait period that has been waived. So now it's to the eligibility requirements, but it should be one week from the determination to the receipt of payment. I can't say that that is happening 100% in all cases. I just don't know. Okay. I just got a couple more, Mayor. Okay, sure. Yeah. Do we have any sense of order of magnitude of the number of debt and residents that may be unemployed now? I don't even know how we would know, but maybe you have some idea. Sure. So I know that we provided this to you in the council Q&A within the last few days, is that local unemployment is reported. So the city of Denton, you can actually access our local unemployment rate that's reported. The March numbers will be released. Prior to this, our unemployment rate was about 3.4, 3.5%. What that will be afterwards, I think, is yet to be... We really just don't know. It's just too early to tell. Okay. We don't really know. And I'll just leave it, I guess, with a comment that the delay until everything works through the system and people are answering the phones and then checks arrive, there's no penalty in that the funds will backdate to the date of eligibility. The penalty is people keeping food on the table while they're waiting for the process to work. So that's just something for us to discuss later. Thank you. I don't have any more questions right now, Mayor. Council Member Briggs. Oh, you're mute. You're still on mute. Oh, there you go. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So just to follow up on a few things that I've heard, and I'm glad that Councilor Metzler brought up the issues because I too have heard of the issues. But just for clarification, because there are issues with applying, and I know that you said that they wouldn't be penalized, but isn't it first come, first serve? Did I hear that or no? The PPP program is first come, first serve, and that applications are processed in the order in which they're received by individual institutions. Unemployment claims are not first come, first served. Anyone who is eligible for benefits will receive benefits. Okay. And on that, because I had a few people reach out to me and say that for some reason they're not qualifying. They've been let go because of the COVID and everything, but they're still not qualifying for unemployment benefits. Do we have any suggestions for the individuals that are getting denied? I would say that there are really a large number of reasons that individuals may not be qualified. So I couldn't speak to any specific individual circumstance. I would say that there might have been some individuals who applied prior to the self-employment and independent contractor gig economy provisions of the CARES Act going into effect, know that those didn't go into effect until April 5th. So if they were denied prior to that, they may need to reapply through the system or contact the workforce commission to see if their claim can be reevaluated. Okay. And I know that in the presentation, and we talked about this a little bit about loan forgiveness. And is that just a six month delay on all the loans that are given? And then after that six months, the interest rates that you mentioned will start applying for those who qualify for that forgiveness? So there's a couple of different programs that I talked about. The first being the small business debt relief program. If you have an existing 7A504 or microloan through the SBA, so a non-disaster recovery loan, no idle, no PPP, but the other programs that are in existence, your payments will be made by the SBA for six months. That includes anyone who takes out a loan under those programs for the next six months as well. That's separate from the PPP, which is the forgivable loan program. Okay. So one is guaranteed the six month relief, but after that, both of them are both six months. And so at the end of that, you will need to start paying on your loans with the interest rates that were mentioned. So in the PPP, you could apply, there are six months forbearance, and then you can apply to have it forgiven if you've met those qualifications. The other loans, it's six months that the payments are being made on your behalf, and then you would pick those payments back up after six months. Okay. All right. Thank you for that clarification. And if we could just make sure, because there was a lot of helpful information in the slides, that this is in our backup so that we can, sorry, so that we can see this and share it. Okay. I think we can do that. Thank you. Anybody else have a question on this particular subsection of the presentation? I just have one question of clarification, Jessica. I think it's, I can't pull up this. It's where you give the example of the unemployment figures. If you could pull that slide up, this scenario A, B, C, and D. I have to wait on, I need tech support to get the presentation back up. Okay. No, no. That's fine. I'll just go ahead and talk about it because on your, oh, no. Okay. There we go. It's not letting me go back, though. There we go. Okay. There we go. All right. So the base average weekly wages, that row represents what people may be getting paid just at their employment. Is that correct? Yes. Those would be what under the state regulations would be considered their base period average. That's what gets their base period average weekly wages is what they are being paid. Not currently. It's based on some previous quarter information and it's a complicated way to get to that number but for simplicity sake, assume if you were making the same amount of money for say the last year, yes, that that would represent your qualified wages. Okay. So this column represents something that the State Unemployment Commission calculates based upon the information you send in to get a base figure to then determine what your unemployment benefits would be. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Let's look at this and let's just say, for instance, these are relatively close to what they actually are. So just to make sure I'm understanding what I'm looking at here. So the second row has what you would receive as unemployment benefits. Say we were not in this situation. It was just status quo as it was before the pandemic. Then those would be what your benefits would be giving those base period average weekly wages. Is that correct? Yes. So you would get those base period weekly wages into the Texas Workforce Calculator. So those are the estimated benefits per their calculation. Wonderful. Okay, great. And so then given the additional compensation, unemployment benefits through the CARES Act, where they add the $600 if you're eligible for unemployment, then this estimated total weekly benefits is what your estimated unemployment weekly benefit plus the 600 would be for that 29 weeks or if you have received a payment between, I think it was April 5th and was it July 31st? Is that it? Right. So the estimated UI weekly benefit, that could continue for up to 39 weeks, 26 weeks of the regular unemployment insurance program, and then the additional 13 weeks that's allowed under the pandemic emergency unemployment compensation. So 39 weeks total that $130 in scenario A and across the row there. That $600 would continue to be paid regardless of whether you're in the 26 week regular period or 13 week extension period for any payments that occur between April 5th and July 31st. Okay. All right. And so that $600, it's going to come as one check, not two checks. I believe so. All right. And are these paid weekly or bi-weekly? Do people receive a check every week or every two weeks or do we know just in general? I couldn't say with 100% I believe it's weekly because all of the calculations are done on a weekly basis, but I'm not sure, but I can confirm and get that back to you. Yeah, if you could maybe put that out on the website as well. So I guess in my observation, it looks like someone who does qualify for this program, given that their base period average weekly wages accurately represents close proximity to their true weekly wages, are pretty much made whole with this additional money being added. Like scenario A is 250, the estimated total weekly benefit is 730. Scenario B is 500, estimated total weekly benefit is 860. Base period average weekly raises in scenario C is 750, your estimated total weekly benefits with all the unemployment for Texas and then the CARES Act is 990 and then the other one is 1120. Am I seeing, is that? That's correct. You could actually have benefits in excess of what your base period average weekly wages is. Now, like I said, there's a lot of things that happen to get to that base period average weekly wages. So whether that makes your income, your total income or total benefits packaged the same, I'm not sure. Sure. No. And I appreciate that. Thank you so much for that. You can go ahead and pull that down. The only other question I have is sort of a follow up to Council Member Melser's question to make sure that I understood when he asked the question about tips. So tips can be included either based upon actual records from the restaurant that keeps records as they pay their servers and or a reasonable estimation, good faith estimation. Is that correct? So there doesn't have to be some type of formal documentation that's been delivered over the last six months or a year, but there has to be some good faith attempt for accuracy. Is that my understanding? That's only on the PPP. Right. That's what I mean. Yes, on the PPP. So not for unemployment insurance. The PPP, yes, the rule states that the employer could make a reasonable good faith estimate of such tips. Okay. And that would have to be certified by each individual lender. And I will say that each individual, there is a standard application that is used across lenders. However, the documents that individual lenders are using to verify this information is different. So borrowers should speak to their lenders directly as to what documentation that lender will require to verify that information. Okay. All right. Thank you. See Council Member Armitage. Yeah. So Jessica, can you speak to what lenders in town, if any, are there who would lend somebody money who has been told that they qualify for unemployment benefits, but has a delay in receiving those benefits and a need for the money before that? I haven't heard of anything, you know, any kind of system, private or public, that would give someone an advance or a loan with proof of unemployment benefits expected. Is there anything like that that you're aware of? I don't, but we can certainly ask some of our local lenders if anyone has a program that might be available. Yeah. Thank you. I am going to propose that, you know, because we don't know how long the waits are going to be, that if it turns out that there is no private service like that, that we come up with something public and figure out how we can do that. I'm not sure if it would have to be through a third party, but if we could have some way of, you know, giving people, you know, along with no interest if they have proof that they're going to be receiving an unemployment check. Okay. Anything else, Council Member Armitage? No. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions on this presentation? The subsection of this presentation. Okay. All right. Let's move on to the next portion of the presentation. Mayor, City Council, Sarah Kechler. The next part of the presentation will cover a couple of topics in regards to community resources and assistance. The first update wanted to provide kind of an overview of United Way of Denton County's COVID-19 Relief Fund, and this fund is set up to provide housing assistance to individuals in need and at risk of experiencing homelessness. So this first slide shows the current total in this fund. It is at 104,000. Denton and Lewisville have both contributed monies as well as private donors. The funds that have been contributed by Denton and Lewisville are specific to their residents. So the $50,000 for Denton will only go to Denton residents, and the same with Lewisville. So the way this program works is that applications are filled out, and they must be submitted by a nonprofit agency on behalf of the households. So the individuals do not apply directly to United Way of Denton County. The nonprofit agencies are actually doing that to United Way, and there's about six to eight agencies that are qualified with United Way of Denton County to apply for these funds. The assistance is available for four different categories, from rent or mortgage assistance to utility assistance, or if needed, temporary or extended hotel stays. When an application is made by a nonprofit agency, the nonprofit agency works with the individual, and they must submit the documents as shown on the screen here. So there needs to be verification of the loss of income or job from COVID-19. They also must provide some current financial statements to document that they are in need of these funds, and then there also is documentation for the lease or mortgage requirements and the utility bill if they are seeking utility assistance. So going into some more details, again, as I've talked about, the agency would submit the application on behalf of the individual to United Way of Denton County. United Way of Denton County reviews that application and within 24 hours will approve or deny it. If it is approved, the agency will actually pay the landlord or vendor directly. No payments are made to the individuals themselves. Again, the agency seeks reimbursement from United Way of Denton County, and this is the same process that is used for our Barriers Fund, and it's set up this way so that individuals are reaching out to the various nonprofit agencies to ensure if they need assistance with rent or their mortgage, they likely need some other assistance and may need to be provided and referred to other resources that could be available from food or other health needs or whatever their individual situation may require, we want to make sure that we're providing the best support we can to those individuals in need and that are at the greatest risk in our community of experiencing homelessness and preventing them from doing so. So this next slide is just an overview of how the funds have been spent so far. So for Denton residents, $23,727 has been spent of the $50,000. This has assisted 23 households, and it has assisted the majority with rent. So this 22 that is listed here, that is all for rent assistance. None has been used for mortgage assistance so far, as well one for a temporary hotel stay. And this information was last updated on Friday at 5 p.m. So just some more details, United Way of Denton County is providing some interns to Our Daily Bread. Obviously, Our Daily Bread is providing immense need and services and support to the community right now and are taxed on volunteers and staff and being able to do so. So United Way of Denton County is helping to provide some additional support there, so clients that are in need to access these funds, they can do so and work with the United Way of Denton County interns to apply. Agencies that have accessed the fund through Denton are listed in that second bullet point and include Interfaith, Our Daily Bread, Grace Like Rain, and Denton County Friends of the Family. And as well as their agencies in Louisville and other parts of Denton County. So that's kind of an overview so far of the COVID-19 Relief Fund. The next two slides are actually seeking council direction. The first slide here is direction on the Barriers Fund match. So as you may remember, during this fiscal year, City of Denton decided to contribute $40,000 to the United Way of Denton County Barriers Fund. And this Barriers Fund, much like the COVID-19 Relief Fund, is to prevent and divert individuals and families from homelessness. When it was approved, it was approved as a matching grant. So for every dollar that United Way of Denton County could raise, the city would match that by the exact same dollar amount, so they have raised some matching grant funds, however, there is still a portion that has not been released as the match has not been met. Right now, that currently is estimated at $25,325. So if council directs staff to do so, we can release that match portion and provide that amount to the Barriers Fund immediately to help additional families and individuals. And then the second item that staff is seeking council direction on is a potential increase to the Utilities Assistance Fund. So for the City of Denton, Interfaith administers this program on behalf of the city. They receive an annual appropriation of $125,000. Through March 1, Interfaith has been allocated $65,000 and administered almost all of that. An increase of $50,000 could be possible underneath the current contract. The current contract has authority up to an annual appropriation of $175,000. And if directed to do so, we'll work with Interfaith to get that increase to the contract. And then lastly, we can come back to the item seek council direction on, but just as a reminder for the community, we have created a website page similar to the business resources page that is specific to different resources that may be available to families and individuals in our community. So I encourage the public to visit this if they're looking for different referrals or resources that may be there. If you need assistance, you can always reach out to our Community Development Office. The phone number is listed on the slide here. They can help make referrals to different agencies as well for potential resources that might be available. And that is the end of my presentation. Sorry, Councilmember Briggs, Councilmember Meltzer, and then Councilmember Armitter. Okay, I'm going to unmute. So I have a few questions about the, I'm okay with the release for the match, but I'm curious why it would go to the barriers funds and not the COVID relief. And is that, would that be that the requirement to prove job loss because of the COVID situation would not be required in that? Is that the difference? It could go to either fund and probably be useful in either fund. Both of them are to prevent homelessness from occurring and the COVID-19 fund United Way of Denton County is seeking that job loss or income loss from COVID-19. The barriers fund is a little bit more flexible in terms of just preventing homelessness if they demonstrate the financial need in order to help them from, it could be a little bit more broad than just rent or mortgage assistance. Sometimes a payment is made for a car, an urgent car repair that might be needed that they don't have any savings or funds to rely upon. And that's the one thing that prevents them from becoming homeless. Okay. So would it be whomever is applying, would the agency try to work through that to see which one would be best for the individual to apply for? Yes. And we can work with United Way of Denton County and perhaps it's a split between the funds kind of seek their guidance of how to administer that. I do know that in the barriers fund, I think the update I was given earlier today is that there's only approximately $2,500 left in the barriers fund. Okay. And on the utility assistance, I'm good with that as well. Is that just for residential or is that small business? Can they apply for that utility assistance? That is just for residential assistance underneath our current utility assistance program with Interfaith. Okay. Are we considering anything for small businesses or individual contractors as far as utility assistance? Is there another place we can direct them if they can apply through Interfaith Ministries? We had not at this point. There are some of the other small business programs we were trying to work our way through exactly how much help was going to be there, but it's going to be difficult for Interfaith to assess the ability to pay on a small business, whereas it's quite clear with individuals. But we can certainly look at see what kind of holes might be left in the SBA loan program and continue to bring back ideas to you. Okay. I think that's all for now, Mayor. Okay. Council Member Meltzer? Just first to make a comment before asking my question, if you just work the rough math, just the federal component of the unemployment, the 600 a week over 39 weeks, we don't know how many people are employed, but if we, you know, there's 60,000-ish adults and 10, if we just use as a round number 5,000, I don't know that we're near there yet, but we might be. If 5,000 residents were to take the full 39 weeks of benefits, you're looking at a program in excess of $75 million, and that's not even looking at what might come into the community through PPP, keeping people employed. So given that, you know, to me, that sort of suggests the very strong priority should be making sure we access, you know, those funds whenever possible. Could we conceivably deputize these agencies who are administering the emergency funds to first those who might qualify to get through the system and apply, because people find it daunting, you know, well, just in getting applications, so can we deputize them, people first get through that process, and B, where they've lost income from an employer that may not know about their ability to keep those people employed through PPP, you know, and have that loan forgiven, can they advocate for those two legs, you know, on our behalf, and then also, you know, meet the emergency need, because I think that's, to me, that's the crying need, is to connect people with that vast amount of benefits that are available, and all that takes time, so I don't say that they won't need the emergency assistance, but, you know, if we fail to get people to connect with the bigger pot of benefits, you know, I think we're making a mistake. Okay. Councilmembrometer? Wait. That was a question. Can we deputize them to do that for us? Okay. Well, I just talked with United Way of Denton County this morning, and that's kind of in their next steps of continuing to try to improve this COVID relief fund and the assistance they're providing to the agencies, and that might be a next step in kind of adding to the application, have you applied for unemployment, if so, are they receiving it, just trying to collect that data, if not, is there a reason, do they need assistance, are they not eligible, so that could definitely be a next step for continued service and improvement in the program. Yes, I don't mean to erect it as a barrier, you know, I think people just don't know. I think it was very evident from the discussion last week, people just had no idea that this was even out there for them. So I'm saying, you know, have them proactively, you know, provide that encouragement. But anyway, I heard your comment, so thank you. All right. Councilmember Armitage. Yes. So questions about some of the slides, the $50,000, how was that decided? How was that amount determined? That was the amount that was included in the emergency declaration by City Council. So when that came to us, to council, it was the suggested amount in the presentation. I don't know if anyone can speak to how that amount was determined when it came to council. Are you talking about the initial residential assistance program? Yeah, the initial, the COVID relief fund that now is about halfway. Quite frankly, we were trying to get some assessment of exactly what kind of need was going to be out there. We asked United Way to work with us to structure the program and then get some idea as far as the usage of it as they started moving through it. We never intended that to probably be a last stop, but we wanted to present you with proposals and recommendations based on real data and not just numbers that were being thrown around. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and it's interesting to see that it was, that it was served, and of course that's not necessarily a sign for the kind of help people are going to need. People will continue to need help, we know. I feel pretty confident there will be more need for help, but we don't necessarily know as far as rental help, hotel room help, utilities help, but I do appreciate that data. The question about this law, and you don't have to turn to the slide, just letting you know that that's the order in which I'm going through the slides, regarding the kinds of assistance available for the temporary hotel stay of 14 days, mentions that the 14 days for emergency shelter residents required to quarantine. What happens after the 14 days, and can that be extended, obviously, you know, funding is an issue, but say somebody, you know, say there's funding there, and somebody was just going to be there for the 14 days, and then they would be homeless. What happens then? Sure. The, the intent, I think, of that being set up was that when MKOC was open, as well as the Salvation Army, if somebody was staying in one of those facilities, but had a reason or a need to quarantine, that that could be provided so that they would not risk infecting others in the shelter, and also have the space to care for themselves, and that still may be needed for the Salvation Army right now, who continues to operate at a limited capacity. Okay. Thank you. I see. So that is not, so that 14 days is not applied to people who are staying at the two hotels who are experiencing homelessness, who are, as far as we know, well. Correct. We have some hotel rooms that we have set aside that if someone starts to experience symptoms, that they can be isolated in a room by themselves. So we've accounted for that in our hotel operations scenario. Okay. And those are with the, and I understand you don't want to reveal the name of the hotel, but these are the same? Yes. The same two? Yep. Okay. And so the, and how much have, let's see, so going to the data, so the $50,000, we've got a little more than half left, and so when it says that there's one temporary hotel, that means somebody quarantining, and the, so it might take it, so should I take it to mean that the, that the other people who we have staying at hotels, that's coming from that or that 500,000 city manager discretion? Correct. And we have a slide later in the presentation that David will provide you a review of expenses so far. Great. Okay, great. Yep. So I want to, I'm not going to ask about that. I just, just wanted to clarify that, make sure that I had that distinction. Can you speak to CDBG fund availability to, to go to these, these, these funds, either to the barriers fund or to our, the COVID fund, and also, and I'm going to throw in two other government resources, the, the governor's rainy day fund and the governor's emergency fund, you know, we know that there's a lot of money in that and if you could speak to what the availability is to, to cities in general, but specifically of applying our CD, CDBG funds and applying to the governor for rainy day or emergency funds for this purpose. Sure. I can speak to CDBG. So we did get notification in the cares act that some additional funding would be coming for CDBG to be used for some COVID response activities and services. That's estimated at about 618,000 for the city of Denton. We're still waiting for their guidance from HUD in terms of when we may potentially receive that funding, what are the eligible activities. So I can't confidently answer right now if rent will be one of those eligible activities. We do know that, you know, usually on CDBG dollars, there's a 15% cap for you can only spend on public services. The remaining portion, mostly CDBG must be spent on infrastructure or facilities or so forth. We do know with that 618,000 that they're waived the 15% cap. So we'll have more flexibility to provide for human services or, you know, potentially funding to agencies or maybe reimbursement to the city. There's a lot of different potential options for that funding. We just need to get some further guidance from HUD and we'll be putting together some options and can provide an update to city council on the different options that are available. Thank you. And so that 15%, just to make sure I understand that 15% cap on services has been waived for this? Yes, for the additional funding that will be coming through the cares act for CDBG. So that's just on the 618,000. We still have that 15% cap on our annual allocation of CDBG. Okay. Great. Yeah. We're not, we're not sure just to reiterate Sarah's point, how that's going to work. We're still waiting for the rules on that fund. I have already reached out to the county and offered our staffing assistance as has Louisville city manager to apply for the cares dollars and to do anything we need to support them because it's got to be the county that applies for the funding since we're not 500,000 population yet. So once we, once we understand exactly what those parameters are, we'll be back to council. It looks like it's going to be a reimbursement for some of our costs, but we're not sure how far it's going to go into the actual CDBG. So we don't want to, you know, set any expectations out there that we can't defend. Oh, sure. I'm just going to let me chime in the two different topics. The Todd was referencing the cares act emergency funding that is only available to municipalities or count or counties over 500,000 that the city will get as a entitlement community that receives CDBG funding directly. We will, we are going to get the 618,000 approximately. That's an estimate. We, we do know we'll at least get that additional CDBG funding. In addition to that, there's the opportunity to apply for, I think it's called emergency funding, sorry, stabilization funding, but you have to be able to 500,000. So the county is the only one that could apply for that. And that's what Todd was making reference into your other question about the governor's rainy day fund. He is directing people as you can expect to the cares legislation to go ahead and apply their first exhaust federal dollars that are available. And then they are deploying some of that rainy day fund to help with some of the other pandemic crises around the state of Texas. Okay. So that's a rainy day con and then an emergency fund, there's a two separate, yeah, right, right now they're directing folks. We're not going to be able to apply directly into the state for any dollars right now. They are, they're using those dollars to help stage some of the larger communities right now that are undergoing more severe impacts than we are right now. So he will be directing folks to the cares dollars right now as they continue to understand what the impact is, the Texas budget. Okay. Okay. Thanks. And then about Monsignor King. So the Monsignor King right now is empty. My thing says low battery. I'm going to have to plug it in. I can't see video. Oh, there we go. So Monsignor King right now is an empty building. I'm wondering since we obviously have a lot more people who are homeless now who are living on the street than those who are being put up at hotels, can we just as a temporary measure for COVID response, can we put some money towards staffing towards some staff that our daily bread could train to temporarily reopen Monsignor King and put some people up with adequate spacing for social distancing just as a place to have some extra beds? I don't think that right now it's probably feasible. We've got issues just keeping Monsignor King going given the lack of volunteers. Obviously the pandemic has scared a lot of people and we've lost a lot of volunteers. So it's not a matter of do we have the resources right now financially, it's do we have the ability to staff them with folks that can actually enforce those rules and that's been the biggest issue right now. I've got city employees that are actually standing up our daily bread and helping deliver meals, that sort of thing. So while the building is there, part of the reason that we moved the shelter into the hotels is because the social distancing procedures were not being followed and they did not have enough staff to enforce it in a safe manner. So we were actually requested to move the rest of the folks into the hotels. So right now it's an issue of volunteers, security, and making sure we can enforce the rules. I would encourage anyone that is seeking a hotel room, something like that, to make sure that Monsignor King knows of their need, their interest and we've asked Wendy and our daily bread to help us get the word out right now, but it is just not a commitment we can make right now given what the trending we're seeing with our volunteers. Yeah, and thank you for that and that corroborates with everything that I've heard also from clients of Monsignor King who have been standing there who were themselves concerned. So nobody was surprised that that ended up happening. I guess my question was specifically about, because just as you say, it's a staffing issue. If we could provide money to our daily bread, and I mentioned our daily bread because it's my sense is that most of the work is being done by their staff and our staff, the city staff volunteering, but if the money could go towards them to hire people and basically have Monsignor King temporarily just as a facility with beds, you could think of it like a little hotel that we could take over for a little while, and staff and our daily bread do the training. So Todd, before you answer that, I think there's been some conversation, there's been many conversations about many different solutions, and I think what would be helpful is if staff, as we begin to see the need, we're only into this one or two weeks, and the key is we've got to figure out where can we best meet the need with the limited resources that we have. So I would ask staff to come back, I think our next meeting is the 21st if we need to have something before then, come back with some alternatives that may be viable. The one that Council Member Armitage is mentioning may be one of them. Something may surface later on. We may find that when the federal dollars kick in that we won't need as much money in some of these other funds, and we can redirect those into funds where there's more of a need. So we're still really right in the beginning stages of this, so I just really want to just have us exercise some patience and caution to understand that there's a lot of things going on, a lot of moving parts, and how do we provide the most efficient use of our resources. So thank you, Council Member Armitage. I've heard that suggestion before, and I think that's something that staff can continue to talk with Our Daily Bread. I volunteered with them on Friday and saw some of the city staff there working, which was quite inspiring to see that happen. So Mr. City Manager, if you could maybe take that suggestion, maybe some others that you have or that you've heard, and it may pop up and sort of continue to keep us updated on some of those possibilities, that'd be great. And I will say that Sarah and Danny are in daily contact with Wendy at Our Daily Bread and as well as the folks at MKOC. So as we see this evolve, we can certainly pivot with any new suggestions, but I think as the Mayor's saying, we're not seeing necessarily more beds being requested than we can have to offer right now, and it needs to be kept orderly and within something that we can actually manage and promise folks. I mean, I don't want to be opening up facilities that we cannot come through and promise that we can manage properly. And we thank you for that response and for considering. I do feel that the need is now given the number of homeless people we have. And of course, I don't believe that anyone should be forced into a hotel who doesn't want to be, but I feel that if we just wait for people to come, then it's from a public health point of view, it could be, not could be, but it is increasing the spread and the rate of the spread. So I'd like to see us be more proactive in trying to at this stage as the spread is at this critical moment, put people, connect people to rooms with haste, that is my preference just based on what we're talking about, how it spreads. I'd like you to step in here. We've been going 24 hours a day for three weeks straight. And I understand exactly what you're talking about, but we are having daily conversations about possibly losing staff that are working in these shelters, continuing to find volunteers to stand them up, security issues, policing issues. So it is far more complex than it's being made out here. And we will continue to work with Wendy, our daily bread. But again, we need to be able to put a plan in place that we are absolutely confident with before we move. So we are all over this. We're living it every day. We're getting calls every night and being briefed about what is happening right now. If there's an opportunity and we see our volunteer corps stabilize, we might be able to do something like that. But we're going to need to leave this to Sarah and Wendy and Danny to continue working on. We have some really great people. They're very committed to this and they're living and breathing this issue. So we'll continue to come forward when we can make those promises and we can deliver on them. But right now, we're not confident we can do that given the volunteers and possibly even staffing we're seeing leaving their posts. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Council member Armature, do you have some other questions or comments outside of that? Yeah. Okay. Because we got several council members who want to speak as well. I understand. So embassy suites, so they have tax incentives with the city. Can we, how can we, are we leveraging that? I know that they have laid off, I'm not sure how many of those are laid off, furlough, whatever, but they have lost staffing. Has that been pursued, the embassy suites connection as a place to connect heads with beds in the sense of COVID mitigation? Yes. They have been one of a few of the hotels that have reached out to us early on and are willing to work with us with first responders and folks that actually might need to be quarantined. We've actually been using a couple of hotels, that one in particular, for anyone that we're concerned about, and we've also reached out and facilitated deals with the local hospitals as well to create preferential pricing for their employees as well, given the hours they're putting in. They've been right there at the table. Thank you. And let's see, about our staff who are helping out at Senior King and the, I'm sorry, at our Daily Bread and at the hotels, I take it they have masks, or do they have masks? I think they're offered masks at the, at least where I was, you were offered a mask if you wanted a mask, yes. Yeah, Chief Hedges is working with our employees right now, and anyone that needs training to wear a PPE, but one of the things we've tried to do at our Daily Bread is isolate as many of the volunteers as possible. Probably a week into the crisis, or maybe a little before that, we actually asked Wendy McGee and her staff to come meet with us and asked to switch to more of a brown bag lunch and style when we started seeing some of the volunteerism at Monsignor King and Salvation Army start to falter. She was having some of the same concerns, so we've been working with her on her business model as well and trying to isolate the folks that are volunteering from the public as much as possible. Okay, and thank you, and I really, I appreciate that. I would like to see masks required citywide in public venues, in public indoor venues as part of our ordinance. Okay, are you talking about part of the order? Yes, but I meant- Look, if you could, I mean, you've been going quite a long time, but if we could limit it to this and if you have something you want to make a suggestion for the order, that's great, but we've got several other council members who want to talk. So if you could please wrap up your comments, at least on this particular work session agenda item. Thank you, Mayor. I do understand. I just mentioned that to say that I'm not singling out staff to mention the masks. I believe that it's necessary for everybody. That was all. Okay. All right. Okay, anything else? Not about this. Okay. Council Member Davis? Thank you, Mayor. I'm looking at the slides that Sarah asked for direction on. The first one is the Barriers Fund. The way I see it, that's money that's already been budgeted and allocated. We just had it under the terms of a matching agreement. I'm totally fine with releasing that grant money from the terms of the matching agreement and letting it go straight into the Barriers Fund without the need for a match. According to the slide, that's $25,000 or so. That's an easy one for me because it's already budgeted. Similarly, for the Utility Assistance Fund, we're contract eligible for a total appropriation of $175,000. I'm fine with the additional appropriation that staff is suggesting there. That's another easy one. Then the implied question, let's talk around a little bit, was our initial $50,000 allocation for the COVID Relief Fund. We've talked about barriers, we've talked about utility relief, and then specifically on the COVID Relief Fund, I'm fine with another $50,000 at this point. The old saying is you eat an elephant, a bite at a time. We don't know how big yet this elephant is. I'm okay with eating it a bite at a time. So far, that $50,000 that we put in at the beginning of this has not been depleted. It may be that that $50,000 and the additional $50,000 will be depleted at some point in the future, but I think it's best for ... We're meeting regularly enough and we have emergency meetings available. If that $50,000 is depleted, then we have time to come back and re-up the fund as we need to, and then of course, encourage our partners in other cities and private donors to do that as well. So my direction is yes, release the Barrier Fund without a match, yes, to additionally fund the Utility Assistance, and then another $50,000 for the COVID Relief Fund. Okay. So that would be something that you would raise in our regular work session to be added to that order. Okay. All right. I've got a couple of comments. Does anybody else have any comments that hasn't spoken yet? I know Council Member Briggs, you started out, so ... Yeah, and I don't have any objection to that, to either one of those sentiments expressed by Council Member Davis. I think though, when we started the COVID Relief Fund, this was long before ... The $50,000 was in the original Mayor's Declaration. This was long before we understood what the response was going to be for the federal government. And so when we're talking about rents ... So somebody help me understand how we do this, because I know that in the past, the programs for rent assistance typically required, not that you just said that you were behind on rent, but it required either a notice to vacate or an actual eviction petition being filed in the JP court. Is that still what we're using as that, or what are we using to disperse those funds? What criteria? So for the application itself, they need to demonstrate that there has been a job loss or income as a result of COVID and that they do not have the financial means to pay their upcoming rent or mortgage. So that's part of the documentation that is required to be submitted as part of the application to demonstrate that need, that there is no savings or funding available to pay their obligation for housing and that they're at risk of missing that payment. Okay. I appreciate that. But that raises a question for me, and that is that right now, and it's my understanding the Supreme Court extended the eviction ban to the end of April of this year. Is that correct? I see the city attorney's not gone, but I believe that's correct. They did that this morning. Yeah. And we've had the eviction ban in from the original order from the end of March through April 19th. So currently, nobody's going to be evicted. There's no eviction proceedings that can be filed until the end of this month. So my question becomes, when we have a fund, it's going to be limited in resources. It's going to be limited in resources. We don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to necessarily place into that fund. So it's critical that we provide the most need with the resources that we have. So my question becomes, how are we evaluating that need? And how is it that a need that you can't pay rent, which is I think a lot of people's concern right now, obviously the consequence of that prior to all this was you get a notice to vacate and you could face eviction if you didn't pay the rent or move out. That eviction process has been told. So we're paying out money to landlords based upon someone coming in and demonstrating a need. So it's first come first serve. So then, first of all, I sure hope that if you receive payment from this fund, you only are entitled to one payment from this fund, either over a 30 or 60 day period. Do we know what's the qualification? I mean, is it if you receive payment from this fund, are you able to come back in two weeks and receive another payment or what's the criteria there? I believe it's just one time payment right now and I'll get that answer from United Way here shortly, but just one time payment because I know they are having to prioritize some of these requests and there is prioritization standards from the request coming in as well in this order, households with children, seniors age 65 and older, households with members living with a disability or chronic illness, and then all other households are the next priority. All right. Okay. So that's good. I appreciate that. That's good information. And if you could maybe send out just an email to the council or place it somewhere on the website describing the program, that list of priorities, because I think that's very helpful to understand the priorities as people come in. So that's my only thought is how do we best use this money that really is there for people who have a need that will have an immediate impact on them? Because I don't know if our homelessness population, I mean, I've heard that it was said our homeless population has increased because of this. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't have any facts either way. I do know that right now you cannot be evicted from your place of residence if you're a renter, period. And for many of those folks, and I think it will be, I certainly would ask staffs for some help and indulgence in, if we're able to look at those unemployment figures to be able to determine how many actual unemployment figures people have filed for unemployment in the city of Denton, because I think those numbers are specifically available and I think it would be very helpful to know what those numbers are. As you can tell, what I'm basically saying is I don't have any problem providing the resources that we can, but what I want to make sure is that we're using those resources in a way that's very efficient, that's helping the need that is most critical at the time. And right now the two needs that are most critical at the time are people are scared they can't pay their rent, totally understand it. Some of those people will be receiving unemployment checks with an additional $600 a week that will be able to then most likely pay their rent. People are scared they can't pay their utility bills. They can do the same with that. For those who can't, right now we're not disconnecting and we're not evicting. So in 30 days, somebody may have an issue come before us that has nothing to do with rent or utilities. It may be something else. I just want to make sure that we're not expending our very precious limited resources on situations that already are being considered at other different levels of government that can control it and because we have the utilities, we are making the business decision to not disconnect anyone. So I don't have an issue adding $50,000 to the COVID relief fund at all. I think we need to have a conversation or have some input from United Way of how can we best do that because the people that got the rent paid out of that fund so far, I'd like to know, was that for April rent or was that for March rent? Because I believe the eviction ban was in place and so are we going to continue to pay rent for individuals that are not under either a notice to vacate or under an eviction petition? I think that's a conversation we need to have because if you do, at an average of $800 a shot, you're looking at maybe a thousand people or a thousand dollars, 50 people. You got 100 people you're going to be able to help. We've got to be able to stretch that money further than that. So those are my comments on that. So I don't have a problem releasing it to the Barriers Fund, releasing it to the Utility Assistance Fund. I just want us to be cognizant of the other things that are in place, which we have really no control over, and that is the Supreme Court's eviction ban through the end of April and also this tremendous amount of inflow of money that's going to come to our residents who are unemployed. The business SBA loans, those will come, but it's a little more problematic because there is some caps, there is some first come first serve. For unemployment, there is not. So it's critical that we have how many people have filed for unemployment in the city. Member Briggs, you're muted. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah. And I heard you mentioned the governor's order a couple of times, but you know, that doesn't mean people aren't still required to pay their rent and they're getting noticed to pay it. And then those evictions will come if they don't. And so I see this as a really good opportunity to keep people in their homes so that when that order ends, we don't have hundreds or thousands of people with eviction orders getting ready to get kicked out. Okay. So if I could get some clarification, because you said they're getting notices that they're behind on their rent and what I'm hearing, their rent is due. It's still due, even though, yeah. So that's where I see this fund coming in is to help those individuals whose rent is due. Okay, so let me ask you something, Councilmember Briggs, we've got $75,000 in that fund if we add the $50,000, correct? We got about 25 left and we're adding $50,000 to it. That's $75,000. So if the average rent is $1,000 a month, which it may be, it may be more than that, that's 75 people that we can help and then that fund is exhausted. 75 people is, I mean, that's the amount of a small apartment building. Yes, I've spoken to our organizations and the need is already in excess of 300,000 from what they're getting in their applications already. Well, that's the need right now. What I'm saying is this needs to be a stopgap measure until we figure out what kind of relief the unemployment is providing and that's coming. The city doesn't have a half a million dollars to pay 500 people's rents. To me, that would be an unbelievable misuse of funds. If we can help people pay some of it, if we can talk to the landlords, I mean, we need to be talking to these landlords or these people who are applying. I mean, if we're not trying to do some other interventions besides just writing a check, we're not being very responsible with that money. Well, no, I don't disagree. I'm just trying to help go through the process. If this is a stopgap, then I am definitely in favor of the 50,000 increase as suggested. I know that that might not be enough, but it can help those who are afraid to get evicted and are waiting on their employment checks or payroll checks to come in. I see it as buying a little bit of time for that. I would like for Sarah, my question is, if she can go back to the requests that have been made, that chart. I saw you Council Member Meltzer, we'll get you after Council Member Reed. Sarah, hold on one second. And before, we'll get Mayor Pro Tem before you Council Member Meltzer, sorry, he's been patiently waiting. This chart? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Great. So last week, there were a total of 247 requests, and here I see there was about 44. So that must mean that some people are applying and they're getting denied or they may not have the papers required or... So Mayor, there are some people who are applying for assistance who are not getting it. And so that may be a good question to ask. Where are you getting Council Member Briggs, where are you getting the 247? I reached out to some organizations and asked the applications that have been coming in. Okay. So if we could verify that as well, staff to see exactly what the applications are coming in, that'd be great. Yeah. We do not have that data point, so United Way of Denton County can reach out to the agencies to try to acquire some additional information, but that has not been shared with us. Okay. All right. Okay. And so yeah, no, I appreciate the additions to those funds and I think it could be helpful in the meantime. My next question was that we, the city manager or Sarah mentioned the stabilization funding from the... and that has to come from the county. Do we, as this body, need to discuss that or is that something that you handle, Mayor, or the staff handles to make sure that they're aware of our position? I've already sent a letter requesting conversations on that because I know that's coming down the pipe. And so we're going to need to start having conversations at the staff level and at the elected official level and at the council level to really begin to have those discussions once we determine what an estimated amount of the money is and what our ask may be. So yes, to answer your question. All right. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. There we go. Thank you. Quick questions. What we could do for after the fact, whatever... Okay. Mayor Pro Tem, sorry, we just lost council member Armitage. If she can hear me, I just want to let her know that we've lost her video feed, but go ahead. All right. Yeah. No. So after the fact, I think it's important to have a contingency plan for someone that gets a delay in rent due or finds a different situation and ultimately midnight moves. That's both utilities and the rent due. We need to have a contingency plan to how we backfill those dollars or what our plan is to kind of make ourselves whole on the utility side and maybe offer rent assistance on the backside of that, because I think that may be a very real concern as we get further into this. Then, Sarah, when you're talking about priorities, I would advocate that we add one other level to that that I've not heard anyone talk about, and that's the renter that does not have extended family or connections in the area, because I think that's a person of significant risk. So someone that has a family here, local, Louisville, Sanger, they can reach out to, may have that as a backstop. But if there's a way to kind of identify or in the questioning, prioritize those that have no extended family in the region or in the area, I think that would be important to know as we go through and look at those priorities. Okay. What's that? Okay. Thank you. Yes. I'm going to turn it away on that one. Okay. And to answer your specific question, I agree the various fund is already allocated for that fund. So I agree with Councilmember Davis that that's a good place for that to be to roll those funds there. And let me see. Also, looking forward, I think when we kind of see the other end of this thing, if there's a dent in police staff or didn't fire staff that would need assistance with childcare, either that be cost or and specifically, I guess, if you have a staff member that's both that maybe one works in a fire department, other works in a police department, vice versa, both of them say have a household, both parents are kind of on the front lines down the road. If we go too much further and that becomes a need I'm all for, I just want to say that I'm all for the city manager supporting those families however he sees fit out of that fund that we've allocated. And then I just want to echo what the, look at my notes, what the city manager said. I think it's important that we know the hard work that's been done and the efforts that have been made and I think for every, you know, there's for every ask or consideration or whatever that is, we should, as a body, we shouldn't press, if the city's manager said clear, there's a volunteer issue. And so this body should put forth volunteers. If you know someone that you hear from someone that says how can I help, contact the city and volunteer. If you, you know, that's how we, that's the need, it's, he's made it very clear. It's a, we need volunteers call. So then this body can reach out to their networks and say, hey, if you're willing to volunteer, then please do so, because that's the area of greatest need. And I think we can lead that way. And that's something I'm going to put forward and try to reach out to folks that are willing or able to volunteer and comfortable doing so, to at least ask the question. I may not find anyone, but I think at a, at a respect for the ask, I'm going to share that request with, with my network. Okay. The council member Ryan hasn't spoken. So we're going to go to council member Ryan. And then I noticed that Meltzer, alma mater and Briggs have raised their hands. So we're going to get this part of this presentation wrapped up. We've got another subsection, which is the finance, the budget portion of this, which is as critical as the discussion that we're having now. So council member Ryan, and then we'll go around the horn to the other street real quickly. Thank you, Mary. Yes. I'm an agreement to release the barriers funds without any matching funds required. I know eventually the 50,000 will be needed on the utility funds. But as you pointed out, I think we need to make sure that the, the providers are watching. Oh, John, you just froze up. I think he did this before. I think we're going to have to maybe give him a little bit of time. John, can you hear me? Okay. Council member Ryan, I tell you what, let's take a quick five minute break. We'll come back at five 50. Oh, there he is. You're back. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. Well, I think the last thing I heard was the barriers fund. That was it. Just start over. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. In agreement with releasing the barriers fund, the 50,000 on the utilities, I'm fine with that. But I do think we should be working with our providers to make sure that they're not releasing it today to pay a city bill that's due today, that they're waiting, letting these people check out what is available for them as far as unemployment and other things before they, before we start releasing that money. I think that's the wise way of... Okay. All right. I think I got the last part was the wise way. So we're going to come back to him. Council member Meltzer, go ahead. And then after you speak, if council member Ryan's back, we'll go back to him. Makes sense. Yeah. Actually along similar lines and to the point of how do you prioritize the limited funds? If somebody does have unemployment benefits, is John back? Yeah. Council member Ron, we'll catch you after council member Meltzer. Yeah. Okay. If somebody does have unemployment coming or does have a paycheck coming through PPP, that's not the case where I'd be looking to make a gift out of this fund, because they're going to have their, basically their entire income that they would have had for that amount of time. But you do have a lag issue there, and I actually think council member Armitage had a very constructive suggestion and I'm not quite sure where in the conversation we could take that up. But to the idea of facilitating, just like people get loans for their tax returns, you know it's due, you know the check is coming. So it's a pretty low risk loan. The city probably doesn't have the capital to do it on its own. If it were 2000 people, $1,000, there's $2 million that you'd be putting at risk. But I think the idea of working with local lenders is very sensible. So my point is just this, if someone can get federal resources and just didn't know it and that meets their need, we should be helping them understand that and do that. If they can get it, but they have a short-term need, then I really think we ought to find some programmatic way to let them borrow ahead on that check that we know is coming. And it's really, if you're prioritizing, it's really those who, oh okay, let me go one more step, sorry. Then if you've got someone who's not going to qualify for unemployment, then I believe we should be advocating to their employer who may not be aware of it that they investigate that PPP opportunity to pay their staff and have it forgiven. So really, when you're prioritizing who this pot ought to go to, as a gift with no strings attached, it's somebody who can't get any of those things and who doesn't have a check coming that they could get a loan against. So I think that that ought to be sort of the filter that you go through so that we're really hitting people who just don't have another way to keep body and soul together. - Council Member Ryan. - Let's see if I can stay on for a little bit longer this time. I believe Council Member Meltzer kind of covered most of what I was talking about. The other thing I would say is that we reach out to Interfaith, Grace Like Rain, those types of organizations, and help to educate them on what the federal programs are so that they can get that information down to the people that they're trying to help as well. - Okay. All right. Council Member Briggs. Council Member Briggs? - Yes. - Yes. - Yeah, and so just because I think we're moving on to something that's off of this topic, one thing or two things actually, I had someone in who's watching the meeting live who wants to volunteer and has a suggestion that if we could put volunteer opportunities up on our website or links to those, if that's something we haven't done, if we could do. - I know that there is the county has a volunteer page where they will let people sign up and then they've also got a list of the organizations with the need and they try to match up the volunteers with the needs, so I think they're doing that. I mean, we could provide a link to that or we could do our own, but we certainly want to make it as efficient and streamlined as possible. - So even a link, a link to that link would be helpful if they're coming to the city. The next thing is, last night I was watching the news and saw that California has asked for or applied for FEMA funds for their homeless community. We're actually looking for 15,000 hotel rooms and FEMA has agreed to help fund that. And I don't know if that's something within our power as we're looking to protect our vulnerable population in this category with limited funds, if that's something we could look into doing. - I know on a conference call today, Jody Gonzales with the county mentioned a state declaration number and that that number is the number that would be used and we'll go back and get that, but that's the number that would be used when applying to FEMA for disaster funds. So that ball is sort of continuing to, is starting to get rolling. So we'll make sure we follow up on that, but no, that was just a suggestion that came out this morning. - Thank you. - You bet. Council member Armitage? - Yeah, so I realized that I had not yet commented on the barriers fund match. I do support that. I'd be curious to see, I guess for the next Friday report if possible, just a comparison of a barriers fund and our COVID response emergency fund to see what the differences are for possibilities and the barriers, not to use that word again, but the pros and the cons just to see those differences that Sarah mentioned earlier. I will say that I too had heard what council member Briggs had heard. I was talking to our daily bread a few days ago and I heard something in the mid to upper 200s. I don't know if that was just about our daily bread or the number of requests that they've gotten, but they're having a hard time staffing and meeting so many needs. I will say I continue to believe that we need to be proactive in helping people to shelter in place because of the public health need. I think if we think of it as helping out individuals, it'll seem like a big expense, but if we see it as helping all of us, which is what it's doing, then I think putting money while we have money, putting it towards this end I think is the best investment. It's investment in public health and then when other funds come in, that'll be great. I continue to recommend a million dollars in rent assistance. If there's a big waterfall of money coming from the federal government, from other sources, we could reimburse that, but I really think we need a lot of padding again for this public health need because there's going to be a huge economic cost if we don't. That was all I think I commented on, on the things that staff needed direction on, Sarah. Yes, you did. Yes. All right. So Paul, Councilmember Meltzer, very, very, very short. Yes. Just want to point out the Barriers Fund is a charity. People can give to it. The matching aspect was originally set up to match contributions. So I'm supportive of going ahead and putting the money in prior to the match, but I make an appeal to those who are able to contribute now. Now is the time to do it. Yes. And I think we've seen already with the COVID fund that we have had some private donations of upwards of $14,000 to $15,000. All right. So it's my understanding that the direction is for the direction requested is to release the remaining balance of the Barriers Fund's budgeted amount to go to the Barriers Fund to increase the utility assistance program to the full contractual amount of $175,000. And the $50,000 addition, we will take that up as formal direction and a vote as we move on to our next agenda item in our next in our regular council meeting. So we've got one more presentation. Let's take a quick break and I'm showing the clock is at 4.57. Let's come back at 5.05. We've got a little bit of a technical problem, but they'll get it worked out here soon. Sure. David Gaines, Director of Finance. I'll go through the slide before you that they expense dashboard. Okay, great. Our cover related expenses thus far. So we'll provide this dashboard update at each of the meetings moving forward just to give to show where we are in relation to the appropriation authority that's been given in the emergency declarations. So thus far, there's been 550,000 in appropriation authority given within those declaration and that that does include 50,000 for United Way assistance. So far, we've spent about close to $105,000 of that 550,000 and we have an additional $240,000 encumbered in contracts that we've entered into. So between this spent amount and those encumbered contracts, we have with spinner encumbered $345,000 thus far, I do want to point out that we have a number of purchasing card expenses for either emergency purchases or just for expedience of getting items more quickly. We don't have a full grasp on what that total is going to be until around April 15th around the middle of the month. We'll have a better idea of that. So that number, the $345,000 could be higher. And once we have a firm number from those purchasing cards, we'll be updating that on the next dashboard. On the right here, we've identified some of those major expenses and contracts into buckets. So you can see what's really making up that total that we've spinner encumbered. The top being a portable decontaminating system for first responders for close to $32,000. We've had various expenses for personal protective equipment for employees throughout the city. So far, we've entered into contracts for $25,000 for PPE, for disinfectant and sanitizer, again, used throughout the city, close to $44,000. We have two different buckets of hotel rooms that we've reserved. I know these have been for conversation the past couple of council meetings, $45,000 there for those public safety hotel rooms really intended for possible quarantines, and then the alternative shelter hotel rooms as well. In total, we've entered into $93,000 for this month for those hotel rooms. And in corresponding, we have the security contract associated with the hotel rooms. And then you can see the $50,000 that we've contributed to the United Way Fund that was discussed earlier. And on the right there, on the right column, have started to anticipate what the future expenses would be on top of what we've already spent. So knowing that we're probably going to spend more on PPE, knowing that we're going to spend more on disinfectant and sanitizer. If we decide to move forward with the alternative shelter rooms for another month, those would be included there. And obviously, making sure we have quarantine rooms if they're necessary. So because we know we have those expenses upcoming, and the conversation earlier on the $50,000, we have included in the draft declaration for consideration an increase of $200,000 to the authority, just anticipating these expenses coming forward and not knowing how soon we'll be able to increase that when necessary. But with that, I'll open it up to any questions on the expense summary. Sorry about that. I was on mute. Thank you. If we could remove the slide, then we'll go open it up for questions. See council member, let me get you full screen. Okay, there we go. Council member Briggs, council member Meltzer, Mayor Pro Tem, was that, did you have questions? Okay, all right. So council member Briggs and Meltzer so far. So on the PPE for employees, is that, is that amount for first responders only or does that also include our other essential workers? I sent a message in about, I think it's our landfill employees street and also DME employees who have to, the social distancing sometimes is not as easy. So does that amount include PPE for them or do we need to increase that to cover to make sure that they have what they need? The PPE has been used throughout the city. I can't speak to the exact degree they've been used in some of those departments outside of public safety, but we can definitely give an update on that in the future. But those are equipment that has been spent throughout multiple departments, primarily public safety though. Okay, so what I'm asking is, do we need to consider an increase in that to make sure that our other essential employees are covered? As I stated over the weekend, we are continuing to try to secure additional PPE. Chief Hedges is working with each of the departments to employ best practices and in fact, he just informed me today that we're testing some technology now that can essentially use UV lights to help possibly extend the life of some of the PPE equipment. So where the PPE equipment is needed, we're making those calls out in the utilities and with the field employees, Chief Hedges is helping us make a determination on where they're needed and what best practices are. So it's just a matter of as we get our hands on it, that's fine, but we did, we are in the process of securing one donation and continuing to put in orders. That our first responders that are dealing with direct contact with the public are going to be our first priority. Right, of course. And so the next question, as far as the security goes, is that over time, are those our normal police officers? No, they're not. Those are security firms that, or a security firm that we hired for MKOC at their request. They wanted a police presence initially in the shelters. We just could not commit to that right now with Chief Dixon's main concern with keeping service levels up. I mean, we actually saw about a 50% call volume increase the first week after we went into shelter in place. So he is managing that contract for us, but it's for an outside security firm. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, I think, excuse me, I think this question might ultimately be for Jessica, but I remember in the overview that you provided before this presentation of all the elements of the CARE Act, there were some pretty generous grant amounts as well. I seem to recall like for community development block grants, there's something like 60% of what you already got as a municipality, you know, you'd qualify for again. Are there some grant elements of the CARES Act that might help us in these areas? I think as far as the emergency response, the, in the numbers that we're looking at right now, the biggest kind of opportunity that we're going to have for reimbursement is just through the FEMA disaster relief fund. We've been, we've already started that process. We were getting guidance from them weekly, almost daily on what they're going to need for us to make sure that we get everything submitted correctly and, you know, it's possible that we get up to 75% of these costs reimbursed through FEMA. So we're doing everything we can to make sure that we go down that route. You know, as far as the CBDG, I think that was kind of the funding that Sarah was talking, talking to earlier with the $600 or so thousand dollars. Okay. Does that answer your question, Councilmember Meltzer? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Anybody else have a Councilmember Armitage? Just about PPE, I agree, you know, first responders, PPE should go to them first. Those, the masks that, that individuals can make, I have made some, I know there are a number of people, sewing collectives who are making some. If there's a shortage for our, our park staff, our volunteers, I think it's essential that, that they have masks and they don't necessarily need to be as, you know, the kind of masks that our firefighters and emergency medical staff used. They can be a very effective homemade mask, as long as it has the right kind of filter in it. So anyway, I'd like to know who in our park staff and any other staff who is volunteering at MKOC, any other staff that has, that meets with the public, what our needs are for masks. And I think we can, we can get volunteers to make masks for them, effective masks, with the filter in it. Okay. Any, I'm getting feedback from somebody. Is that you, Council, Councilmember Armitage, are you still, is your mic, okay. Any response, Mr. City Manager, any comments or clarifications on that? I will certainly ask Sarah to take a look, or to check in with our department directors out there. We've already been discussing this over the weekend. Again, I'm, I'm not real comfortable providing the employees anything that Chief Hedges hasn't signed off on at this point, just from a peer safety perspective. I know that we're seeing people out there with kind of homemade materials, that sort of thing, but I don't want to give our employees any false sense of security. And so I'm going to defer to him as the expert in this area with the, you know, with our health officer in the county and to help us make those determinations and give our employees the best advice possible. So if there's anything that we can do to supply protective equipment to them, we will certainly do that. But I'm, we're going to rely on him to make sure that we're protecting our employees to the extent possible. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. Is there anybody else? Okay. All right. I believe that concludes our work session portion of this city council meeting. And following the completion of the work session, which is now, the city council will convene in a special called emergency meeting to consider the following items. And the time is 5.20 PM on April the 6th, 2020. And item two is items for individual consideration. I believe we have one, yes. Consider an adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, a home rule municipal corporation, superseding and replacing the order of council of the city of Denton issued March 20th on 2020 approved by ordinance 20 dash seven 40 and who's going to be making this presentation? Hi, good afternoon mayor Watts, Sarah Keickler, chief of staff. I'll be taking you through this presentation for the stay at home order. So let me just bring it up real quick. And we'll take, what we'll do is after staff presentation, we'll go ahead and take the public comment and then we'll have council discussion. So wanted to provide a quick overview of the second mayoral declaration of local disaster for public health emergency. This was issued by mayor Watts on March 24th and it was effective for seven days beginning on March 25th. So it actually expired last week and council postponed extending the order as governor Abbott had came out with a statewide order at almost the exact same time and staff wanted to take some time for further analysis and evaluation of the governor's order and what we could still do locally. So for the last week the city of Denton has still been underneath the Denton county order, stay at home order, as well as the statewide order, which has a lot of similarities. So just by quick way of review in mayor Watts second declaration and order, it had the following conditions that all individuals living within Denton must stay at home or at their current place of residence. All businesses except for essential businesses were required to cease all activities at their facilities located within Denton. All public and private gatherings of any number of people occurring outside a single household would be prohibited. And then all restaurants, bars, et cetera, may only provide takeout delivery or drive through services. There was no dine in services. In addition, the order also stipulated that religious and worship services may only be provided by video and teleconference, that elective procedures were prohibited, that due to the increased demand for certain hygiene products, retailers should use common sense in rationing those products that were in a limited supply, that if someone in a household tested positive for COVID, the household would be ordered to isolate at home. And then it also instructed that non-essential visitors could not visit nursing homes, retirement and long-term care facilities. And it authorized the use of all lawfully available enforcement tools found in the Denton city code and chapter nine emergency management or state or federal laws to enforce the mayor's order. So as mentioned, at the same time that city council was considering extending the mayor's order last week, Tuesday, on March 31st, Governor Abbott came out with a statewide executive order and that's labeled as GA-14. In this order, there are a number of things. Wanted to point out the main components of this order. It stated that people shall accept where necessary to provide or obtain essential services, minimize social gatherings and minimize in-person contact. It didn't allow for religious services if they could not be done remotely. And the governor also came out with some additional guidance after he released his order in terms of how those religious services could be provided. Where essential services are necessary and being provided, it encouraged that social distancing must be practiced or sorry, not encouraged, social distancing must be practiced according to CDC guidelines. As far as how the governor's order defined essential services, it listed that essential services shall be anything that is within the guidance on the essential critical infrastructure workforce version 2.0, in other words, it's kind of referred to as the CISA memo. It also gave the Texas Division of Emergency Management the authority to maintain an online listing and that's at the website shown on the screen. If a business thinks that it is essential, it can request clarification from the state, from TDM at that website and request to be added to the list as an essential service. In addition, the state action also included provisions that it would supersede any conflicting order issued by local officials in the areas of essential services or social gatherings. The order is still being analyzed by local governments and when we've been following closely along with all of our associations from Texas Municipal League to others that are available to us and there's still some uncertainty in terms of what that means of being inconsistent that local governments cannot be inconsistent with the governor's order and really that's uncertainty as to whether it is a floor or a ceiling. Based upon the analysis we've done and in talking with other cities and Denton County as well, staff recommends that council consider an order that is closely aligned with the statewide executive order and an order has been prepared for your consideration. I believe that was exhibit three in the backup and it references the TDM essential services list so that businesses could reference that list to know if they are essential and that would be consistent through the city, county and state. The order for consideration would also prevent the local order from being in conflict with the state should state guidance change and this approach as of now would be in alignment with Denton County of how we learn they plan to move forward as well and Denton County actually right now if you contact them to ask if you're an essential business or not they are directing all inquiries to TDM. So for council discussion is to consider amending the prior ordinance that adopted the local disaster declaration and order and to discuss the exhibit three that staff has drafted that is in alignment with the statewide order and as well as what we learned the approach that Denton County may be taking. That's the end of my presentation. Okay and what we'll do is we're going to start public comment at this time. For this item A we had 11 people making comments using our online form. There were eight in support of this item and three against. All these comment forms were emailed to the entire city council and our city secretary to be recorded and will be recorded as part of this meeting. Additionally there were three people that called in to the 349-7800 number to register their position. There were three in support of this item and zero against. And then finally there are 14 who have requested to speak over the phone on this item. Staff is currently loading up the phone lines and we will allow them to speak for up to four minutes so we do have our first caller and I'll be the timekeeper I've got my stopwatch here and it's four minutes. We do have our first caller Mr. Ray Fuller, Mr. Fuller are you there? Mr. Fuller? Just a moment we're going to get this worked out he's it's probably just a matter of pressing a button. Mayor Pro Tem? Yes, quick question. On the last item did we need to take up David's proposal for two hundred thousand dollars additional to that fund or is that going to come back to us? Well we'll probably take it up during this conversation because that could be part of this emergency order. Okay. Yep. One thing from staff just to clarify in that exhibit three there are two items in there one of them sorry the current version exhibit three that would raise the expenditure authority from five hundred thousand to seven hundred fifty thousand. Okay all right yeah Council Member Meltzer I believe we have our caller on the line so I'm going to go ahead and move to the caller. I actually I think my question would help the callers as well. Okay. I understood from the presentation that we could draft something that almost by reference to the governor's order or to what it references would line them up what isn't clear is what things that were in our existing order or prior order would now be excluded. You know what would the resulting changes be? I think that that would be you know important for the callers to know as well. Can you answer that real quickly Sarah? I'm going to actually ask Catherine Clifton with the city attorney's office if there's anything that she can highlight quickly. Yes and yeah because I really could barely hear you Sarah but I think Catherine might be able to hear her a little bit more clear. So basically what I'm understanding is Council Member Meltzer is just asking for a side by side comparison of if we align with the governor's order what is it that will be excluded from our prior order that we asked for but now would not be available. Seeing that in the governor's order he sets out these essential services that really kind of change our terminology so the way what you're seeing in the order that's proposed that's drafted for your review references or kind of defines essential businesses now to reference those essential services that is the terminology that the governor used in GA 14. You also see a change in the way that medical services, elective medical services were prohibited to match the language in GA 09 which was specifically referenced in GA 14 also as still persisting. That's one of the things that gets kind of confusing the number of orders that were affirmed in GA 14 and so the drafted language in the order that you see on your exhibit three attempts to incorporate all current valid gubernatorial orders as well as state law, federal law, and any changes that might happen to those in the immediate future. That doesn't give you a side by side comparison which I think is what you were really asking for. Well yeah I'm really asking for what was it that we didn't allow people to do that under the governor's order they could do or are the things that we did allow them to do but under the governor's order they couldn't do like if you could dumb it down to like things people do. One of the things that one of the significant changes has to do with religious services and how that affects then funerals and that was a specific carve out where he very clearly does not let us regulate in terms of religious services the way that we had. So that's one area where we were pulled back. There were other things that and I'm trying to think there were so many items that we could have specifically prohibited or not included as an essential business that he has set the floor very clearly saying if I've decided if he has said this is an essential service we cannot say it's not. And we can't also say what is an essential service that has to go to the state through an application process am I correct on that we can't we can't say that ex-business would be an essential service if it's not listed in the governor's order pursuant to that CISA list of essential services and businesses. There are several governmental entities that have expanded essential services relative to what the governor has done we do not feel that we have a clear path to do that. Yeah. No. Okay. All right. So we're going to go ahead and go to the caller Ray is solar solar solely oh yes go ahead and let me go ahead and start your time if you'll just state your name and address your time we'll begin okay good evening my name is Ray solar I live at 211 Bryan Street I have recently lost my entire income to to cover 19 I've already applied for unemployment but have not heard anything back I personally know countless other people friends and family that are in the same situation unemployment benefits are simply not the answer to this crisis they lost infrastructure to handle the huge increase in people applying it may take weeks and months for people to start getting checks if they are even eligible to begin with we need to extend the eviction hearing for use past end of the month because come May 1st lamaritz will evict people I can confirm people are already getting eviction notices now despite it being illegal people don't know their rights and they don't have the money to hire a lawyer if that need were to arise even if they don't get removed from their home landlords can refuse to do maintenance and otherwise find loopholes to exploit the situation forcing people to seek housing elsewhere at the risk of public health as someone who has rented their entire adult life I know this to be a fact additionally the fact that only 23 people accounted for almost half the funds directed to the relief was literally no marketing except for what me and about 20 other community volunteers did in less than a week to spread the word makes it apparent that significant increase in funds is needed we also need better marketing to reach people including city support and actually posting about it therefore recognize that $75,000 in rental assistance is not nearly enough we have been trying to inform council that the need is here council just needs to trust those who are actually on the ground people who are literally struggling to survive right now because you're very removed from this no matter how much you might want to care over 25,000 people and then are already struggling to afford rent prior to this pandemic according to poverty statistics in our county thousands more at risk now considering the amount of people even middle class people who live paycheck at a time we understand that you want to release as little money as a time at a time to get a better idea of need but we're just kind of asking you to trust us to know that there is a need now housing is a public necessity and fighting this pandemic and we can't do that without the city's support we understand that this is an extreme ask but these are extreme time please do what you can to keep people in their home thank you okay council member armature yeah and if for the callers if we could make the questions very efficient because we have 14 callers so I don't want there to necessarily be a lot of comments if you have a specific question let's let's make the questions very brief and we can save the comments for when we get through all the callers yeah I just I want to tell the caller I agree with you um and I hope that others heard uh the caller's comments I'm hearing the same also member armature do you have a question for the caller you're going to be able to make those comments I just want to get through the callers do you have a question for the caller to the caller and and tell them I agree okay all right okay thank you I do have a question for for the caller when you and because I don't know how this process works as far as unemployment so when you apply do you get a a letter of notice of eligibility or have you received that or how does that work no okay you I guess you just wait um I just got a confirmation that it went through and that was it okay all right okay that's very helpful I do appreciate that any other questions for the caller okay thank you very much I appreciate it thank you for calling in you were the first one in this new system and I appreciate you doing that okay thank you thank you our next caller is Kristen Fox if you'll hold on just a minute and let me since I'm the timekeeper I sort of can't do two things at once um okay all right Kristen are you there Kristen are you there yeah okay thank you yes if you could turn the however you're listening to the council meeting just turn that down just a little bit because we're getting feedback and then once you state your name and your address well I'll go ahead and start your time and you have four minutes okay thank you go ahead oh you can go ahead and start Kristen okay did we lose Kristen oh oh there you are can you hear me okay yes okay yeah if you'll state your name and address I'll go ahead and start your four minutes okay I'm Kristen Fox I live at 1713 Carlton Street and I'm a teacher as a member of aid network Denton I have fielded over 120 requests for rental assistance we do not have the financial resources to provide rental assistance at this time but it should not be on us I have directed requests for rental assistance to the available funds but the available funds are not sufficient Denton County can access emergency funds for rent and utility assistance and this is an emergency unemployment is not enough May 1st is not enough federal aid is not enough you need to stop worrying about getting sued for halting evictions long term and start worrying about getting sued for not taking action to avoid preventable deaths from the spread of COVID-19 there is no such thing as too many funds or too much aid during a pandemic coupled with an economic crisis additional aid does not conflict with the governor's order we need utility charges suspended we need a 60-day notice on evictions and we need at least $1 million in rental assistance provided directly by the city Denton has approximately 81,600 renters if even a fraction are burdened by rental payment plans when this is over the amount of money circulating in Denton will not be enough to get our economy started again applying for unemployment is a lengthy process and the resources to be gotten are limited we need rental assistance and a freeze on utility payments in addition to the unemployment services available federally most importantly providing rental assistance will save lives landlords are ready to evict as soon as they have the chance and this is a virus that demands that we shelter in place if we are going to contain this we need people in their homes this requires that people have homes our resources for the unhoused are already stretched we should be keeping everyone in their homes instead of evicting them only to have to put them up in hotels we should be giving additional funds to Monsignor King and our daily bread to hire CAID staff necessary for the important roles they are playing in the community at this time it is essential to public health that everyone have a place to stay Dallas County may have the highest number of people with COVID-19 in the state but Denton County has a smaller population than our neighboring county and we have more cases of COVID-19 per capita whether or not that becomes an example of everything that could go wrong is up to you whether or not the growing number of people who die from this continues to grow exponentially is up to you Denton is headed down a very dangerous and tragic trajectory if you don't take the strongest possible action now like right now thank you okay any council member raise do you have a question for the caller you're on mute too yeah I just I missed what organization she worked for I'm sorry did Kristen are you still there I don't think Kristen is no longer I think it was something with the school we'll go back and listen to the tape and re verify that all right thank you all right our next caller is Lauren Lauren Bordigan Lauren are you there Lauren are you there hello Lauren are you there yes I am okay yes you're on the line with the Denton City Council for this agenda item so once you state your name and address your time will begin for your public comment all right my name is Lauren Bordigan and I'm at 21 18th street number six here in Good Old Dunn all right I'm holding it to address the council's concern over rent and utilities assistance I've been hearing a lot of talk from the council council today and at last week's meeting that the city of Denton finds it unnecessary to allocate extra financial resources to Denton citizens because evictions are temporarily halted and because we can apply for unemployment I'd like to remind privilege members of the council that the unemployment process at a much less busy time takes about four weeks to process and get approval especially now with so many people out of work that process takes even longer and people need money for basic necessities now evictions may be temporarily halted but if people can't work and pay their rent for several months we are looking at mass evictions down the line with roughly sixty percent of Denton's population who rent for housing that means huge financial losses for landlords as well considering we don't know how long the severity of COVID-19 will last we need at least one million dollars in rental assistance to be provided directly by the city having watched the meeting in entirety last week and hearing the budgets of certain proposals such as adding trees to our police department leads me to the conclusion that the city has the money to make more fiscally responsible and immediate decisions in response to this international pandemic this increase in rental and utility assistance is important for two reasons one it's mutually beneficial for landlords and those that they rent to who have recently become un or underemployed during this global pandemic and two it provides temporary relief from non-taxable necessities so that when people can safely work again they have the ability to spend money and stimulate our local economy I believe I read that Denton is projected to have an estimated thirty percent revenue loss which could be even worse if people feel pressured by financial hardship to return to work too early and get themselves or others sick and continue the cycle of infection and having a quarantine I know a million dollars does seem like a lot of money but again I want to stress that we don't know how severe the entirety of COVID-19 will be or how long it will last Denton residents need that million dollars in rental and utility assistance to meet our basic needs short term and the needs of our collective economy long term I'm asking you today council please approve at least one million dollars in rent and utilities assistance for Denton and keep our economy and community Texas strong appreciate y'all and God bless thank you all right any questions for the caller thank you Lauren I appreciate you calling in Joe Hargis is it that how you pronounce it Joe are you there is Joe there all right hey Joe are you with us pardon is this is this Joe yes okay yes you're on with the City Council live in City Council meeting for your public comment on this agenda item once you state your name and address then we will start your time all right thank you very much my name is Joe Hargis and I live at 2210 Westwood Drive I'm calling to you as a tenant and as someone who recently lost my entire income due to COVID-19 I worked in retail and due to health concerns I'm no longer being no longer being scheduled and as as a tenant in this situation the question that I see is if rent is continuing to be charged if mortgage payments are continuing to be charged as if things are normal that's going to produce a huge amount of debt when all this is over like we can't we may not be able to be evicted but it's going to create a huge bubble of debt and someone is going to be on the hook for that debt and my question is like should working class tenants vulnerable people be on the hook for providing a return on investment properties in the middle of a crisis like when we have just had our incomes ripped away from us and I think if we don't start thinking about how to protect us protect tenants we're going to see a spike in homelessness when people have the opportunity to get us out of their properties and so it's seems vital to me to make sure that either rent and mortgage payments are funded or suspended it and Mayor you mentioned that it doesn't make sense to you in particular to fund rental payments when we can't be evicted and I agree but I also don't think that we should be expected to shoulder this debt when we have completely lost our incomes and so a clean solution to me would be to suspend rent and mortgage payments. Are you still there Joe? Are you still there Joe? It seems like we might have lost Joe Councilmember Armitter. I had a question for Joe but if Joe is gone then. Okay all right. All right the next caller and it takes a couple of seconds to transfer so when I call the yes caller state your name please. Hi there my name is Wren Bigason. Oh yes Wren go ahead you're you're with the Dent City Council once you start your once you state your name and address your time will start and you have four minutes four minutes for your public comment. Sure my name is Wren Bigason. I'm at 411 Panhandle unit B and I'm coming to you today to just plead you to help our community. It is your responsibility to think ahead at this point and take care of our most vulnerable in our city and the the efforts in this at least in this past week to suppress public comment is very obvious and so I don't feel prepared to be commenting right now so pardon my disorganization in that regard. Thank you for what you have done so far. I genuinely appreciate it but it is not enough I'm sorry to say. I have been personally I've lost my income as well just like everyone else and I've been applying to unemployment I've gotten through and I've received a confirmation and I've also applying for all the aid you're talking about and the the problem I am running into you is you know and if I'm one person in this situation then there are plenty in it that you have to provide a bunch of documentation which I'm not complaining about but can cause a lot of problems whenever you are renting from people for me our property just changed hands and so I'm having trouble getting what I need so I I point all of this out to say that to say that you keep pointing us to resources which is great but there's there's some hurdles that are not being addressed right now and I personally am going through this and I want to let you all know but it is it's clear that you're silencing public input and I don't I don't appreciate it I'm also here to ask for a nine nine hundred fifty thousand dollar increase to the rental assistance fund and a grace period is still necessary I have recommendations for you which is to drop the misogyny the dislike of contempt for or ingrained prejudice against women that's what that is and also I need you to understand your privilege recognize it and understand that it is not a reality of those people you represent a privilege is a special right advantage or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group and there's no no excuses for your inaction when this was brought up by members of your council on March 20th I'm not sure why you're not motivated by a reality that our homeless is about to increase it's possibly because you live in a different reality that's why we're trying in so many ways to get a hold of you and make sure that you understand where your people are I'm on both ends of this trying to provide aid and asking for aid and I feel helpless because no one is no one except for my community members are really stepping up right now I feel so those are my honest comments I don't like to immense words at this point because we're in disaster mode so I thank you for your time today and I hope that you will take some action thank you sure if you'll hold on just just a moment we got a council member I think that wants to ask you a question council member Briggs yeah just for for clarification because I want to understand so on the on the rental assistance is it the is it what you've applied for for the what we are touting is rental assistance for our COVID 19 response I have applied for the the various aid networks and then for our daily bread a lot of the resources that are listed from Sir Denton just a lot of various community efforts and I honestly am not totally sure how it how it relates to y'all's what you're talking about specifically actually okay so I'm I'm just going to guess that if you've applied for or you've applied through them that this is the avenue for funding they're looking to if it has to do with COVID and I think earlier in our presentation I talked about documents and if that was the reason why some people were getting denied and if you could just briefly describe a document issue so that maybe we could maybe address it when we talk to our organizations again yeah let me let me just pull up an email really quick because that's that's where I'm stuck is being able to send an email back to all of these organizations with all of my proof of my you know I'm don't have income anymore my lease my rent payment and my particular situation is just strange because I can't get a hold of my current lease right now and my property is changing hands right now so this is like a personal problem but I'm my point is that it's it's probably causing a lot of problems for other people too okay well thank you for bringing that up I appreciate it and I know that not everybody's situation is is the same but it's good for us to hear hear issues that are that are going on thank you for calling yeah wait one more one more question one more councilmember Armitage question for the caller yeah so it sounds like you're one of the lucky ones who in quotes who got through to unemployment but you're obviously still in need of rental assistance and there I can hear that sense of urgency in your words and your voice can you speak to what you were told about when your unemployment is going to come in and if you could just speak a little bit more about why that is not enough why we should not rest assured that just because somebody happens to succeed in in getting through to unemployment and getting unemployment that that does not negate the need for rental assistance sure yeah absolutely I did get through to unemployment at an odd hour about a week ago I I screen I did a screenshot of what I got after it was done and then that was what I was going to try and use but otherwise I have no other confirmation to show to these agencies that that that I need the assistance sorry I'm brain scrap scrambled but the the unemployment and my point there is that I don't know I used to have zero clues as to when I'm going to get all this money that y'all keep speaking out and that's that's why we need someone else to swoop in at this point because it could be 20 weeks it could be next week so multiply me by whoever and everyone in this city that's that's what that's our point here okay I completely agree I hear that from a lot of people thank you very much I appreciate you calling in thank you thanks okay bye bye all right the next caller who should be joining us here momentarily will be Andrew Bennett we'll give him a couple seconds is this Andrew yes Andrew this you're on with the Denton City Council for this agenda item and public comment once you state your name and address I'll go ahead and start your time which will be four minutes all right so my name is Andrew Bennett I live north of UNT at 1713 Tarleton Street I am a I also work with Aid Network Denton and I'm a warehouse worker as well but at the beginning of the year I had two jobs and I was making just enough money to pay rent and utilities and groceries but now with this crisis that we're in I barely have the one job and we'll soon have to choose between grants utilities or groceries right I am considered an essential employee and I do feel lucky to still have you know some kind of job right now but as this crisis prolongs my situation and that of many others in Denton and across Texas and the US continues to grow more and more precarious that's why we need at minimum at the very least a suspension of all utility charges at least a 60 day grace period for late payments on rent an extension on the suspension for evictions that's already at play we need that at least through May as well and then at least a million dollars for rental assistance in Denton there are currently thousands of renters who are at risk of eviction even with the current halt landlords are still able to post notices to vacate and able to file for evictions online so after this month and after the the this halt and those filings will begin to be processed and then once they go through you'll see I don't know later on and exponential growth of the homeless population and that is not okay an extension on the current eviction suspension is only the minimum we right we do need more sorry I'm just I'm surely nervous and frustrated too just because of this entire process of announcing a meeting with like maybe 24 hours notice at that and then not having the agenda posted until like maybe two right right before all this started so I'm not exactly prepared to come in now I have a lot of anxiety but it's just it is pretty eye-opening though to see that the funds that are at play right now the 50 thousand dollars have only helped about 23 households and is already at half of what it is and it just shows that we actually do need a lot more funding and money put into that into that fund and I mean if it's really all you're really concerned about right now is just sort of a stopgap I think a rent freeze is probably the pretty good starting place right now additionally right so like not everybody has the luxury of exercising patients and buying their time right now in the face of this pandemic what we need is action for me to help the citizens of Denton and I mean to quote you yourself Mayor Watts from last meeting time is an essential commodity we need immediate action in the form of the rental and utilities assistance to avoid exacerbating current crisis okay let me see if we've got questions from the council members so don't hang up yet I don't see any so thank you and oh hold on a second Andrew we've got one from council member Briggs you're on mute council member Briggs I think in the beginning you said you work with a network didn't is that yes and what is what is that really it's just a mutual aid group that we a couple of people started because of the lack of of action from from the government from the state from city council we have been trying to address the immediate needs of people in Denton we're just made up of local citizens who couldn't who couldn't just not do anything if that makes sense it does make sense thank you and I'll look into it a little bit more thank you for calling councilmember Armitage yeah anyway thank you for organizing on that I was wondering if you could share I I'm signed up for updates from y'all can you share with anyone who's listening how to how to get on your list for either eight for for volunteering or for aid yeah so we have a couple of Google forms that we've been sending out we've been posting them through social media on Facebook and Twitter and there's volunteer forms and then there's an aid request form well with the donations that we have currently we've been making and sending out care packages to people yeah so like if you you can search I think we have a Facebook page aid network dental or Twitter we're mostly active on Twitter and yeah we can find that there okay thank you so much all right thank you so much I appreciate it Andrew thank you for calling in all right all right so we'll move on to our next caller our next caller is this Nick Nick are you there yes hello I am yes if you'll go ahead and state your name you're on with the Denton City Council for a public comment on this agenda item if you'll go ahead and state your name and address and I'll start your time and you have four minutes I'm Nick Strider from 1606 East McKinney Street unit 602 Country Park Apartments Country Park is a low-income apartment complex I feel like a lot of our residents here in our immediate area have been hit by it last the last meeting that I watched from the City Council I was kind of shocked that there was a lot of discussion about like what kind of trees to put outside the police station and other things like that I think it would make me and a lot of other residents feel better if we could instead try to focus on dedicating that time and money and energy on things that are really important right now instead of things that could be put off to a later date and I have notes here my handwriting is messy so unemployment takes about 21 days under the best of circumstances and I think it's really important that the eviction freeze be extended to especially with how many people are currently applying there's no way that people are going to be okay and I've heard a lot of landlords have been telling people we can't evict you now but as soon as that time's up we will which is really concerning I'm personally very fortunate to be I'm a freelancer I work from home so I still am working right now but even though my job isn't out of work I've still definitely felt that impact because everyone else is out of work nobody's putting in orders and everyone's feeling this and it weighs on my conscience to know that some of my neighbors might be trying to choose between okay do we keep do we pay do we put aside money for rent to make sure we don't get evicted when that limits up or do we feed our kids I've also tried to get involved with a network of Denton to do what I can to help I would like to ask with the city suspend utilities and give that one million dollars of rental assistance because a large percentage of people living here are renters and I know everyone's struggling right now and it's important to me that the council hear that from us okay let me see if there's any questions I see no more questions for you Nick you still have a little time if you got anything else left to say but if not I appreciate you calling in nope that'll be it for me thank you okay thank you very much okay our next caller will be Dewey Marshall will will I'll bring him in when he when he buzzes in Dewey are you there Dewey are you there can you hear me we can hear you yes yeah you're on with the Denton City Council under this agenda item for public comment once you state your name and address we'll begin your time of four minutes all right well thank you my name is Dewey Marshall I live at 1700 Willowwood Street I work for the North Texas Fair Housing Center and I'm asking the City Council for one million dollars in emergency rents for relief and a $60 mandatory grace period or a 60-day mandatory grace period rent and utility utility assistance should be made available to people who work as independent contractors such as Uber and Lyft drivers this relief would prevent a sizable amount of people from experiencing housing crisis and as someone who has worked with clients experiencing homelessness in Denton I can tell you that the community has rallied behind helping the homeless but it's disconnected from the reality of people at risk of homelessness for example many people would think that eviction would be a landlord's last resort but the reality for tenants in Texas is that eviction is usually a quick process compared to other states and landlords can clear units faster than tenants can that can financially recover from income loss and it is concerning to hear comments saying that emergency rent assistance shouldn't be used for tenants who haven't received a notice to vacate or an eviction notice because in Texas by that time by the time a tenant received such a notice they have little legal protection from eviction and our agency considers them already in housing crisis when somebody gets an eviction notice even if they can pay the full rent the landlord can refuse to accept that money and we refer directly to homeless shelters we would put more pressure on these providers by not extending the amount that we provide for this rental assistance and we have heard you have heard from hundreds of people through emails but that was never mentioned in today's conversation and you've heard information from service providers but that was quickly dismissed without explanation and wanting to hear from landlords would clearly show that policymakers in Denton are detached from the reality of tenants and that city council should consider tenants who miss rent already in housing crisis some landlords in Denton will work with tenants in order to have some type of payment plan but we don't know when life will resume as usual and if tenants were already stretched in financially a payment plan for back rent for some even higher risk of housing crisis and we know that the city relies on sales tax for funding which we would be stifling if we don't provide more emergency rental assistance now we have seen the city pass millions of dollars for subsidies for companies but whenever we need a subsidy for tenants in this city somehow we don't have half a million dollars and that doesn't make sense on any level waiting for people to get receive money from the care act is dangerous for everybody involved and so I think that the city needs to act to extend this grace to have a grace period in the first place for that protection and also to increase the amount of funds available for short-term emergency rental utility assistance okay all right any questions all right thank you Dewey thank you for your comments okay the next caller would be Kelsey Freiman Kelsey are you there yes all right you're on with the Denton City Council for public comment on this agenda item when you state your name and address I'll start your time and you have four minutes sure Kelsey Freiman my address is 701 Fort Worth Drive um obviously we need more assistance for people it's absolutely imperative during a crisis that we assist people it doesn't matter how much money we have to spend if it means that we don't have blood on our hands and that's what we will have on our hands if we make people worried about rent and utilities during this time I have underlying conditions where if I were to go outside and interact with people and even trying to I'm furloughed right now because I work for the YMCA and we obviously can't be open right now to teach kids or work with people because of COVID-19 and even if we were I couldn't do it I have underlying conditions are you willing to tell my mom that I needed to go get another job at a grocery store to try and make ends meet out of fear of not having rent and that's why I got sick and or in the ICU like no I'm willing to but you're not willing to come to that funeral if I have to do that I'm willing to bet that none of that's going to happen so to say that this is even a discussion about money and if we can of course we can we have money going to all sorts of non-essential things I watched us talk about tower height for the new police department if that's so important during a crisis how is people livelihoods like how is that not important so if you're not willing to do a rent freeze and you think that half a million is barely a stop gap put more in actually care for the people that you say that you care for and keep public comments open it just happens to be that I was available during this time to talk to y'all there are plenty of people who had no idea that you were holding this meeting right now who would have loved to comment but of course that's too much thanks let's see do we have any questions for the caller all right seeing none thank you so much for calling in our next speaker will be Emily Nichols Emily are you there hi yes I'm here yes if you'll just uh you're on with the Denton City Council on this public comment portion of this agenda item I want you to state your name and address I will start your time which will you have four minutes okay perfect thank you you bet so you can begin anytime you're ready often my name is Emily Nichols my address is 500 Coronado Drive Denton Texas 76209 and I guess my only thoughts on the matter super quick I was just hoping that maybe we could extend the stay at home orders for at least the next two weeks I feel like people aren't taking it seriously at the week by week basis and maybe by extending it two weeks at a time might maybe kind of jump start people into taking it a little bit more seriously because people are still going out and I guess my second thought is that fast food isn't really essential in my opinion but I do understand the importance of people still having their jobs and maintaining at least a little bit of our economy so I'll leave that up to you guys but those are my two thoughts yeah that's all I got okay hold on just one let me see if there's any questions for you I'm looking to see if any council members have any questions I see no questions at this time but thank you so much for calling in thank you we're just waiting on the next caller Jennifer you there yes I am yeah if you could if you could turn down whatever you're listening to the council meeting on I'm getting some feedback okay yes it's your actual your meeting I'll turn down where right okay yes go ahead once you state your name and address I will we'll start your time and you have four minutes thank you very much yes my name is Jennifer Lane and I'm at 1526 Willowood Street and there may be have been eight or ten of us that are calling today I'm probably the last or near the last 80,000 as noted earlier would have called if they could have neither tenants nor landlords benefit from eviction at this time and what is really the danger is the letters of intent to evict and this is what some of us have been calling for since the very beginning to get the 60-day moratorium to give people a chance to organize their finances to obviously the federal government is helping landlords are in a better position to be able to whether at least a month of this than tenants are they just aren't and no tenant wants to be late at this point in their rent or their bills it's only when they can't avoid it and the reason that people don't want to be late is because it snowballs so badly so quickly and this is such a dangerous time and really the point of the moratorium that everyone is asking for in addition to you know the obvious caring for people who are in need is that the need has to do with the societal need of having people not move around at this time this is something that everyone in this situation needs and the one person mentioned in the comments a quick flow of money will save the day between when the unemployment checks come the federal relief comes the business relief comes etc and it's people are becoming not only are they becoming precarious they're becoming rapidly more precarious and I Jennifer you there I think we lost her you there yes I'm there okay okay good all right thank you go ahead yes not only are people precarious at this time they're becoming rapidly more precarious really rapidly within weeks not months the other thing that I wanted to ask and I wanted to mention that you know as a longtime renter myself now a homeowner I really identify with what's going on lived in New York City for years did we lose you Jennifer somehow you're fading in and out there you are yes having been a renter myself for 40 years ago for many years for 20 years I really identify with what people are going to and understand it very very well please also postpone all non-essential non-pandemic non-basic functions work including public hearings as you can see there are so many people who would be here right now if they could the same goes for any such further hello you there yeah you basically crossed the three-minute mark so yeah I just want to let you know go ahead for a minute yes right postpone all non-essential non-pandemic not or basic functions related work until the city and the public are back to normal don't hold public hearings at this time especially on something like a development the size of Flower Mound we need your full attention on the problems that are at hand people cannot attend the hearing go ahead miss Lane okay I think are you there yes go ahead you got about 20 seconds okay people cannot can not attend the public hearings at this time and as you can see this is extremely glitchy even to try by phone thank you very much thank you okay we've got another caller is this Morgan yes Morgan yes Morgan you're on with the Denton City Council for the public portion public comment portion of this agenda item once you state your name and address I'll start your time of four minutes and you can start whenever you're ready all righty my name is Morgan Morrison I am at 2210 Westwood in Denton Texas I'm from the Denny a neighborhood I am a teacher and a coach here in Denton County I agree and I echo other callers as well I think that we need to have at least a million dollars in assistance what we have so far is completely inadequate for assessing the needs of people I also want to highlight how organizations like aid network Denton are filling in the gap that the city is trying to provide and the city is not communicating about resources that can be distributed equitably equitably across the county there are only few organizations that are on those lists and it does not cover everybody we are getting calls from people all over who are falling in between the gaps and that's just the beginning of this pandemic and so it is urgent already the need is here based off of the callers that have already reached this really but the need is there and if we continue to talk about reasons why we should not get money now versus later there will be more blood on our hands than what is already there so there's that already I want to echo the sentiments of a 60-day grace period for late payments and rent of course this process is very precarious of getting evicted and there are notices that notify you to notify you to notify you but the process will come and end up in an eviction and there is not enough education for people to know the difference and the wording in these are very tricky and weird and not able to easily digest in layman's terms and so I think that absolutely there should be a 60-day grace period to already help the people who are falling between the cracks what else that is all that I have for the moment okay Karen we do have a question from council member Briggs I'm sorry Morgan Morgan we have a question for council member Briggs for you um yes sir yes ma'am yeah I think I heard you say something about funds not being applied equally throughout the county I'm just I'm wondering if you if you meant that directly regarding our funds because those go directly to the citizen residents of the city of Denton or did I did I I'm just trying to understand your comment there about the equity for Denton county yeah absolutely so there are organizations nonprofits that are stepping up but I am drawing attention to the fact that these nonprofits are not able to cover the need yeah you know nonprofits like United Way our daily bread they're already being flooded and so grassroots organizations that are not 501 c3s like aid network Denton are having to come up and fill those gaps that are already growing because there hasn't been enough communication about aid where to get it or to have organizations participate that aren't hand selected by the city it needs to be opened up to more more organizations as well as more money coming in so that coming into the city so that we can have more organizations there I'm speaking to basically the the need for the funds and the lack of infrastructure that we have to distribute those funds and how it needs to be distributed more equitably okay all right thank you for clarifying that great comment thank you okay anybody else all right see no other questions thank you so much Morgan for calling in wait I also want to say that I very much appreciate council member Briggs and council member Armitage I think our comments are extremely necessary and relevant and so far from attending these two city council meetings on these issues they have not been given their due diligence and have been pushed off to the side and it is extremely frustrating to see especially as someone who identifies as a woman they can't help but notice that the two women on the council are met with contempt and are blown over by bureaucracy so I just appreciate their presence I appreciate what they're trying to do who they're trying to speak up for even if their comments don't go in the appropriate box of where they're supposed to be speaking so I just wanted to thank those council members I appreciate their work thank you very much I appreciate that okay we'll go on to our next caller which is Karen back councilmember Armitage the last speaker sign off I believe so yes yes yes Karen this is Mayor Watts you are on the line with the Dent City Council in the public comment portion of this agenda item so once you state your name and address your time will begin and you will have four minutes thank you very much first off my name is Karen Bach and I live at 1626 Nightingale Lane and I want to thank you for all your hard work I can't imagine the stress all you guys are under so thank you very much first all I want to say I'm not a professional caller I'm actually just a resident I have listened to all the comments and it seems like everyone is super polished and super professional and wants a million dollars the good news is I don't want a million dollars what I really want is for you to stop April 30th the quarantine and have us all go back to work we are I am married I have five kids my husband's hours just got cut to 20 I feel thankful he has 20 my daughter who is an esthetician by trade has no job and my other daughter who is a senior has zero activities for the rest of the year might not even actually officially graduate walk down the walk down the thing that she's worked years for so I'm sure you can imagine that if you have kids so the reason I think that y'all need to stop the quarantine is because first of all social distancing is working people are responding to the malaria drug the death rate does not warrant all this crap of what's coming down the pipe so that is what I really want to say is I want y'all to relook at the numbers not add more money to it but look at ways of stopping this so that we can all get back to work I know my daughter who's 20 she wants to work my husband wants to work my daughter wants to graduate with her class so that's really all I wanted to say was with all this talk about I want a million dollars it's like good lord so what I do want to know though from Denton County is how much money do y'all get if at all for each coronavirus person that gets either technically diagnosed or you get an incentive at all for saying we have 30 cases or we have one case or we have zero cases no I don't believe that's the case so y'all there's no incentive for Denton County or anybody in the United States I can't speak for anybody in the United States but for the city of Denton I can speak I know of no such program and can probably know because you can understand all the the gossip and everything that's going around so it would almost be a conflict of interest that if there was a kickback for the state of Texas to have coronavirus patients so anyway I really appreciate you taking my call I'm asking you to stop the quarantine on April 30th I think that is the best plan as opposed to throwing money at everything so all right thank you very much looking for any questions I see no questions thank you Karen okay absolutely thank you bye-bye yes and we have the next caller is George Ferry we'll give him a couple of seconds to come on the line George are you there yes okay if you I'm getting some feedback or if you're listening to something in the background would you mind turning it down just a tad thank you yes and then once you state your name and your address I'll start your time and you have four minutes thank you okay are you ready yeah okay hi can you hear me I can't hear you anytime you're ready yes yeah hi go ahead your name and address and then you hear me I can hear you yes okay sorry yes thank you okay hi my name is George Ferry I live at 2932 Stockton Street here in Denton Texas I I'm a little upset I'm upset because I didn't know this meeting was happening until about two o'clock when I saw a post from Keely on Facebook I'm upset that I didn't have a chance to see what this was going to be like be about I'm set that while working I had to figure out a way to get into and having to run home from work to educate myself about what was going to be discussed tonight so that I could comment on it when we had a set day to meet tomorrow all under the guise of it being an emergency situation and I believe it's been an emergency for weeks now so we could have discussed this weeks ago when we called it an emergency I'm further upset that we continue to rely on nonprofits to shoulder the majority of the weight for work you have monsignor came with two employees our daily bread switching to take out grace like rain shouldering the weight of families at a hotel united way was 50 grand to help 83,000 plus renters in this we're strapped for people and help and yet the burden still falls on nonprofits and me on the board of three nonprofits and on the board of that mainstream association seeing people suffer seeing the inability to do the jobs that we want to do because we don't have the help for the funding it's frustrating we're strapped the ISD has now canceled volunteers to hound out lunches and breakfast to kids where they were getting over 160 they are now getting zero and relying solely on their own employees and cafeteria workers to give food out to tens of thousands of children I'm frustrated I have heard in a town hall that Jesse Davis felt thankfully that two ideas came up one was a hotline for the mistreatment or the harassment of landlords about invictions right now is the last time anyone should be worrying or stressing themselves out about choosing between food or rent which we do every day and have since this started rent is already past due for most of us and we're still trying to decide if we're going to give them what little money we have left or save that for food since we do not see an end in sight we need a hotline for resources but people can call into the city and ask what it is they are trying to seek whether it be mental health resources whether it be grocery stores whether it be xyz the city should be helping people find it I am hearing from people that they are terrified we don't trust the government we have no faith I have applied for the protection program loan which you have mentioned it has changed since the day it opened on Friday applications three times asking for new material each and every day so I haven't actually personally applied for it yet because every day I'm having to add more things find new documents create file out more applications to apply for one thing of funding I've applied for the ideal loan I've never received an email saying they've received it I've applied for any ideal grant same thing I have done everything you have said a small business owner should do and yet I've heard nothing back from these channels so I'm asking my local government the people I see and the people I serve every day for help you talk about how when we make comments on large you know chicken companies and large gas stations that we're talking about people's lives I am one of the most vulnerable in our population and I am asking you to care about our lives it sounds from the way no one asks questions that your minds have been made up aside from councilmember Briggs and councilmember Arvindor I am tired of having to listen to these meetings time and time again with five people sitting there asking no questions about things they don't experience I'm I'm begging you to hear us and to help us increase the money that United Way has to a million to give grant to give agency and advocacy to people who are seeking help with utilities and rent I'm asking for a 60-day stay of evictions to help ease people's minds we're all anxiety fueled human beings right now cooped up in our homes waiting for the day Orlando is going to call us and throw us out of our houses I think you need to understand what the everyday person is sitting in and thinking about all day every day I'm frustrated this is a frustrating day and you only made it more frustrating by the surprise meeting and that's all I have to say and I will wait for questions okay any questions councilmember Briggs just to follow up on the the payment I think the payment protection you you applied or you said that the application keeps changing yes ma'am that's correct I've been notified by my banker two separate times since Friday that the application has changed and I have been given the updated application along with the necessary documentation they need more of I have now submitted over 25 separate documents and two applications for the PPP and that started on Friday and today is Monday the second business day and they're still still not done or complete yes ma'am that is correct and I am making here local mm-hmm thank you and also just so you know to your your ask about banks Bank of America is only applying people for the PPP to my knowledge if you hold a commercial loan through them yeah okay well thank you okay anybody else all right seeing none thank you George appreciate you calling in yep okay I believe that was our last caller so we are going to take a quick break it is 633 let's come back at 640 and then we'll start our deliberation welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on April the 6th 2020 it is 648 p.m. we've had our staff presentation on agenda item 2a in our special called meeting and now we'll open it up for council discussion councilmember Briggs okay so I have a few questions and a few comments so in regards to to our discussion on this item do we know do we know how many churches I know that we can't we can't address churches because of the declaration but do we know if any of our churches are still gathering in the city I'm just curious we have not received any concerns or complaints at this time I I know that most of them had stopped see services and I haven't heard that any are going to start back up underneath the governor's order but that's really hard to know with any confidence okay and then also what we the governor discusses essential services and he discusses gatherings but the whole the stay at home issue is not or has not been in my mind settled or I'm not even sure if that's something we can do I know that Dallas extended theirs and I know the county's going to bring it up tomorrow maybe but is that have we thought about the stay at home part of our order as being separate from what the governor has done since there's no mention of it in his hit his is in essence a stay at home order it doesn't have that language and he did not want to refer to that but you cannot leave your home unless it's for essential services so you have to be going to the grocery store or you have to be employed with an essential business so yeah it's more or less you need to be at home unless you are engaging one of those essential activities so it's not suggested anymore it's more of a mandate Aaron do you want to chime in on this trying to figure out where we're starting from okay this is deputy city attorney Trey Lansford we answered your question right where we're coming from is trying to be consistent with the governor's order and so it's no longer just a suggestion it is a under the governor's order you may you may he worded it you may leave your home to provide or receive essential services and so our order even though we use quote unquote stay at home language is consistent with the governor's order okay okay well that that helps I just wanted to make sure that if if we were consistent and those words were not in our order that that would still be that people would still be under the impression that it was a stay at home and that it was not changing right right right now that those words are still in the draft order for your consideration this evening okay and so I have I have some other questions from what the callers brought up earlier is now the appropriate time to to ask or talk about those sure basically this is the time if you're wanting something to be considered in the order that's not in the order currently this is the time to start to discuss it okay um well that's a bigger conversation so there's things that I'm wondering about right now so last last meeting I asked if there was anything that the city could do or if anything is done when a place of business has a known worker who has tested positive and the response was there's not really anything that is required for them to be done as far as notification to the people shopping or using that business is that that's correct is there something that we can do in our order to require or request that a business do some sort of notification to the customers that enter or have used the facility erin would you like to weigh in on that yes I'm deferring to deputy city attorney katharine clifton okay looked into this issue okay as to the issue of what we could do with a business that's something that's actually um covered under chapter 81 of the health and safety code and it's a state provision that really would give that authority to the local health authority which we are not um and so I think we might be facing a preemption issue there if we wanted to mandate that they had to provide some notice okay so let me let me just ask you this so what if and this is all hypothetical I there's an employee who works in the fast food service or in a grocery store who works with the handles the food is that not with and they test positive and the notifications go to the family members and maybe the employees but nobody who has come across or purchased the food but is it is it not because we have we also have people who go into the health department not necessarily the county health department but who make sure that the proper things are being done I'm just I had somebody pose a question to me um about how come if a business has somebody who has a known employee who has the virus they don't have to notify anyone else around so I'm I'm just trying to get an answer on um if there's a way for the city inspections or to make sure that that's being held or done something's being done appropriately to keep infections from spreading under chapter 81 I'm sorry this is Katherine Clifton again from the city attorney's office under chapter 81 there are a list of people who have responsibility to report that to the local health authority and then it is the local health authority's responsibility to do whatever they're permitted to do under the law to take whatever action they are authorized to take under chapter 81 okay so in this we're talking about the local health authority would be the Denton county public health department that's yes that's who that would be and who would need to be contacted if if there was an issue yes okay all right um the next question I have is as in the the our old declaration there was a language that says um that the in for the enforcement that's from the mayor's order and I had this conversation earlier but I just want to bring it up and make sure that if there's a non-essential business operating um and and it's non-essential um service I guess because of the governor's order and it's also a non-essential service in the governor's order do we as the city of Denton have the appropriate authority to enforce that business close or do we need to give that authority in our order or is it in already in the governor's order it's it's not necessarily in the governor's order right now if it's if it's a business that's not listed on that on the emergency management website what we can do and this is something that we've discussed internally is to once that complaint comes to the city we would investigate it and we would note if we did verify that they're not on the list what we can do is ask the business given about a week to apply to the state to see if they can be included on their list show us proof of that application and if they are accepted then we will make a note of it as well if they're not accepted and they're turned down by the state as a non-essential business at that point then we can go forward and enforce to to close them but in the meantime while we're waiting are they allowed to stay open pending the application we would allow them to stay open if we shut them down and then get their authorization from the state that they are an essential business you know they're going to come back to us and want us the city to reimburse them for any lost profits that they incurred while they were waiting for the application to be approved okay so what you're saying is there's a non-essential business it's actually listed in the order and we know that it's not supposed to be open they still have to stay open while they're applying to become essential are you there's some businesses that are expressly stated in the governor's order that are not supposed to be open gyms salons there's a few others that's a different story and those have been those we can do our enforcement authority to to enforce and close them down okay so it's the ones that are kind of more in the gray area that you're talking about okay yes so thank you for that clarification so we don't really need to add those and anything else into this order we're talking about right now now since we've referred to the governor's ga 14 order we that's what we've been used to enforce those businesses that are expressly prohibited from operating okay i'm going to go ahead and let others ask questions about the order and then we'll come back to um the uh the conversations we had earlier okay council member armature so you mentioned that so this is the time uh to speak to the the governor's order but also to to mention what we would like in our yes yes that's correct so i'll say so i don't have any questions about uh the the governor's order um i i would have liked from him uh better language in describing what is essentially a stay at home order as is that sarah speaking i couldn't see who it was who was speaking but as a staff member who who presented mentioned so i agree on that um i it seems to me pretty clear that what it is giving us is a floor and not a ceiling and in fact i was trying to look um look up to see where i heard uh governor abbott heard or read i don't remember governor abbott uh say that where his ordinance is silent i'm pretty sure he used that word silent that localities can uh can fill in the blanks that inconsistency is really a matter of if there's something that is in his ordinance uh that our ordinance contradicts uh but where there's silence we can do what we want uh and i'm not seeing that contradicted uh by the opinion um that that i read in our uh backup for today uh so i i think that the cautious approach is not the best approach uh for an emergency i think we really need to do uh what it takes to to treat this emergency so with that said i'll mention the additional things that i would like to see uh i still want a 60-day rent grace i would actually prefer rent freeze i know that we had a majority uh didn't want rent grace period last time uh but things are changing every day i don't know if you all have changed your minds and if not i would really like us to be able to strategize and deliberate together on what we can do about rent without expecting a windfall to come in any time soon from unemployment from the state or from the feds maybe some something where we could where if a landlord uh was concerned about their mortgage we could pay their mortgage payment if they agreed to give their tenant a month of um sorry two months 60 days of a rent freeze non-payment on rent uh so something like that i'm i want to hear what alternatives there are uh from y'all because i'm i'm open to whatever it takes to solve this this crisis but it is a crisis and shelter in places is what's essential and you can't do that if you don't have shelter um 60-day uh utilities freeze uh it's a public utility owned by the people and that would really help and there are things that we could do afterwards in our in our rate structure uh to ensure that that rates don't go up for uh for the resident for for our residents and small businesses uh like i said one million dollars in assistance uh the time is now i agree with our callers uh and you know if you look at most mainstream media and you know read stories about what's happening uh this is real and the time is now and i feel like it's fiscally responsible uh to wait for a windfall to come from the state uh the feds from from unemployment uh again um i want us to so i i agree that uh our nonprofits are scrapped i don't agree that it's a volunteer problem i see it as a staffing problem and uh volunteerism is one way you get staffing but when that's not working and if we need staffing if this is essential work we need to pay people to do that work and i'm still i i still don't understand why we're not doing that when we're acknowledging that there is what i would call a staffing need not a volunteer need again volunteer is just unpaid staffing is still staffing um i want us to require masks for people in indoor spaces out in public not in private spaces we were walking in the park fine but i want us to require masks and to accept those you know homemade masks and we can even put some there are some good tutorials uh that show how to do more than than just simply uh uh breathable cotton uh those blue shop towels uh from they that you get in a in a big container uh can be used as filters you can use an old t-shirt wrap around it uh people are doing that i think we should require it the science is out that that really helps um and all these things end up saving us money in the long run not just lives i want to mandate i think it's time seeing how the spread is going that we mandate that for grocery stores uh the groceries be brought to the car um they do it this way in some other cities where you you have and our big grocery stores they have big parking lots and you sit and you wait out in your car and someone brings you your groceries um you can call ahead you can order there uh and it is safer for everybody it will help to flatten the curve it will save us money and it's also safer for the workers um something that i haven't i haven't seen uh but maybe it's happening in other cities that i'm concerned about is gas um gas uh gas stations uh i would like to see and i i don't know if this is preempted i know that it talks about i know that gas in terms of gas infrastructure is um uh a uh protected protected category but as far as actually filling up people's cars with gas i'm concerned that people have their hands keep putting their hands on the nozzle and unless you're driving around with hand sanitizer which of course you know people should be doing but if you're not there's going to be a lot of hands touching that so if we could um uh do something about that if that's not preempted and mandate that uh that gas stations have attendance uh put put the gas in uh i think that that would be safer for everybody um and if it's just the attendant touching it and they have gloves then it would be okay uh for them and they don't have to do as much interaction face to face um and then let's see uh i would like uh council member i wonder how much time how many how many do you have left because we've got some people wanting to speak i'm just just checking in um well this next one is more of a confirmation about the a meetings um i would like to see what clarity we could put in there to underscore and i appreciated the comments on that um uh that that the according to the governor's ordinance as i understand it they can meet if they can't uh meet online and i don't understand why they can't meet online i've heard that there are some at least one a a meeting group that is meeting and i'm concerned about that there are people who have been associated with that group who have expressed concern um and i want to see uh more in in our uh uh ordinance to provide i want to echo what uh what mayor pro tem hudspeth said about child care but not just for our first responders but for all of our essential workers okay what else um that is all i i had a question that didn't really fit in any of the categories so far but i would like it answered about the state school and why we don't count those numbers in our city numbers i'm still still confused about that the uh the residents of the state school why when we look up on debt and record chronicle to see uh the numbers of people who have tested positive why state school residents who are living in debt and whether or not among those numbers if staff could if somebody could explain that okay all right okay um other council members comments there's three outside of the requests that were just made as far as additional items into the order and i think council member briggs has some more comments the things that i'm aware of that we need to resolve or we need to discuss are basically four things uh in addition to if there's discussion on these other additional items one is what i heard from our discussion earlier was that there seemed to be a consensus or we're going to need to take a vote or see if there's a consensus for the additional fifty thousand dollars to the utility assistance program which fully funds the contractual amount of a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars i heard also direction that we can go ahead and release the balance of the barriers fund to go to the barriers fund that's still being sequestered for the batching grant where in which it was originally set up for but we can go ahead and release that then i also heard from council member davis and i think this was in addition in addition additional fifty thousand dollars to be added to the covid 19 response fund so that would have been uh the fifty thousand before an additional fifty thousand was a total of one hundred thousand for that and then finally in the last presentation by david gains was an additional two hundred thousand dollars be added to the amount of expenditures for the city manager because of we saw how much has been encumbered three hundred forty four thousand dollars has been encumbered so we have about 160,000 left and then giving all the associated needs so mayor protem thank you uh to go to your points uh initially uh yes i'm okay with the city manager for the additional it's additional 250,000 i do believe to bring it to 750 okay then 50k for the utility funds i'm okay with that i'm okay with the 50k to the covid response fund or united way um and then i have a question about uh essential business i guess this would be a erin question and i guess my hypothetical would be there's a office that needs to check their mail uh they don't want to really want to have to go through the they're not open to the public it's a commercial building but they're not open to the public and need to go check the mail make sure there's no water leaks one person in the building at a time uh do we have any issues there in that scenario in that kind of scenario i don't see an issue if they're just checking up on the on the property that they either own or lease okay very good just wanted to make sure and then i think mayor watts what's going to help me because i'm willing to discuss anything but what i'm not willing to discuss is uh nothing without parameters and so uh i need to hear council member armatar at some point speak to so i listed the things she she listed but what i'm missing is the the city attorney's office very clearly said that the rent free the rent pardon me the eviction freeze is preemptive we don't have the authority to freeze rents and we don't it's a utility i didn't hear any detail on how we would freeze utilities because it's a rate payer based system so i need to understand what that mechanism is the details in that and i here's the number that's missing everyone's throwing out one million dollars i've heard no one say what a rent freeze costs so i'd love to hear someone that's advocating for rent freeze put a number to it say hey i want to allocate this much money so that we can cover the rent freeze because absent that there's nothing to decide because there's no detail there's no detail in how we as a rate payer system uh utility how how do we overcome that so that's missing the one million dollars in assistance if we use the same trajectory that's 100 people right is my math off uh a thousand people thousand people a thousand people that were helping so is that enough and so if it's not how many people are you trying to help and then we'll multiply that by uh one thousand and see what that number is uh and then uh i'm going to defer to the city manager who's having these conversations daily uh and hourly if he says it's a volunteer issue then i'm going to echo his sentiments because i'm not there every day too and i'm going to step up my volunteerism and so the call has been made i'm going to reach out to my network and i'm going to step up myself then um i i just the other things are not as pressing i don't see those as being um actionable either but really those those are the primary figures 60-day rent freeze how much does that cost 60-day utility freeze how do we do that with a rate payer based system one million dollars in assistance that's one thousand people that we're going to help and then we'll turn what i don't i just want to make sure i understand that's what that's what she's advocating for one million dollars average one thousand per people so she's advocating us help one thousand people and then call it quits okay well before we before we go down that road i want to take the things one thing i learned in training mediation training and negotiation training you try to get the agreements that you can agree to out of the way early so is there anybody that objects to the barriers fund uh being fully funded from the remaining match that we have the 50 000 additional to the covet 19 fund the 50 000 to fully fund the utility plus one uh assistance of an additional 50 000 was it 50 or 25 is 50 okay uh and then the additional i thought it was 200 was it 250 that david gains asked for in addition or was it was it 250 or 200 it was 200 and it was 550 to 750 okay so it's 550 to start out with okay so the 200 000 so is there anybody that objects and those are things that are uh that touch our own locale our own local ordinances in our own city that really stands apart from the governor's order that we we can do is anybody have an objection to those one two three four items in that regard councilmember briggs we're not voting yet i'm just trying to get it if we have a consensus on that go ahead right no i i'm in agreement with that i i also am um i also am under the belief that the the covet assistance needs to be increased more i'm willing to accept what the majority of the council is willing to do today because it can help that many more but my question is when we meet again will this still be up for we can still bring this up for discussion okay well um i think we might i think that's obviously can certainly be something that we can do um i want to but what i'm hearing you say is you're okay with the 50 but you want it to be more but you're okay with doing it that and then if we have further discussion on it to see if there's a appetite or if there's a consensus to increase it as we move down the line in time that you want to have those discussions right but but i also want to talk about um yeah yes but i also have some other requirements for that for that for that money other requirements for the 50 000 well yes like i i don't think there should be an eviction notice like there's some things that i i'd like to talk about and i don't know if that's sure go in this conversation or if that's um in another conversation no we can have that in this conversation uh but outside of that which we're gonna have we're gonna have that conversation outside of that are there objections to what have just been stated because we could be here all night talking about all these different things i want to make sure that the essential things that have been asked for by staff that we can agree to that we at least give them some direction in that regard are there any objections to those all right i don't see any okay all right so um okay councilmember briggs go ahead all right so um i'd like to know and we brought it up a little bit before the not the actual number of applicants uh that are all of our um non-profits are getting so the awards that they're making um versus those who are applying um and we heard about documentation issues if they could follow up with us on on some of those and what they're seeing uh the issues being so that maybe we can have a discussion um on on the requirements i i want to make sure that an eviction notice is not in hand for those who are applying for the the rental relief um the covid funds to get um if that wants to we want to keep that for that's something a barriers fund is required for that those can stay the same so councilmember briggs let me ask you on that and eviction notices they're not going to be able to give eviction notices uh if you're talking about the notice to vacate all right so let me ask you a question if somebody if two people come in and one has a notice to vacate that their landlord gave them and the other one does not how do you decide who to give that money who is who is most at risk well um earlier we heard a conversation on a caller saying that once that notice to vacate there's no guarantee that that person will remain in their home so well but that that's one caller's opinion i also know just from my own experience in the business that that's not necessarily the case at all i mean sometimes when people get those notices they they my point being you're saying that you don't want to have some kind of way to gauge what is the the exact need of the person seeking the housing assistance if all they have to do is come and say here's my my bank statements here's i can't pay the rent and here's the proof if there's someone else who has a greater need because some action has been taken that hasn't been taken with the other applicant you're saying those are equal well i'm saying that if if somebody deserves to they're either going to be at the beginning of that stage getting the eviction at the beginning or at the end either way they have to pay their rent um i'll add an eviction notice isn't required um it may help with the prioritization of the urgency of who's most in need of the funds when they're trying to prioritize between clients but it is not required it is not one of the required documents um the required documents or the four that i had listed before in terms of trying to again see who's most at need um at risk of becoming homelessness and they use those documents to make sure the need is there as well as to help them prioritize um funding so i'm not i'm not i'm not saying that i think it should be requirement i'm saying we've got to figure out and maybe they've already done it how do we put the policies and procedures in place that objectively equally and fairly analyze the need of each applicant because it doesn't matter whether we give a million dollars five hundred thousand dollars most likely depending on how we do it that money's going to run out so there's going to be people left out and i'm trying to say what are the policies in place that say that this is how we're looking at the applicants that come in to assess who is the most at need and what i'm hearing is there's a priority there's documents that are being asked for and there's a policy and a process by which those applications are analyzed is that what i'm understanding sarah that's correct okay all right go ahead councilmember uh briggs i'm sorry i just needed to get some clarification on that because i don't want people to walk out here saying that i'm saying that should be a requirement that's not what i'm saying what i'm saying is i want to make sure that we have a way to assess the need on an equitable but equitable basis well i don't want to change the policies that are in place that they have okay all right um on on that that uh sarah mentioned um and so when we do come back and we do uh talk about or we are going to maybe need to talk about increasing that um the number of applicants the the barriers in place um the we talked about stop gap so we're not talking about um we may be talking about individuals not having any money for 21 to maybe 30 days and so i mean i can understand the um the desperation in the people's voices when they called on the phone we knew before even this virus happened that there were thousands away um from one paycheck from being homeless and so this is just showing us that extent to which that was um that was true um so i i understand i'm so i'm sitting in my home and i've been called privileged and i understand where that comment's coming from but that doesn't mean that i don't feel for those who have no idea where their rent or their money for rent food utility bills or anything is coming from like that is that's a legitimate feeling and people are scared and we need to we need to understand that um and and i know that we are doing all that we can and i know i don't i'm in agreement i don't know that saying we'll do a million dollars that that's going to help and but i will tell you that every time this comes up and if more money is needed i'm willing to to listen to um what the needs are of our community okay so help me um just to summarize were you asking for you were saying keep the policy of evaluations the same for the covet 19 fund so that an eviction notice is not needed yes right and i think that and i think they said that that's not that's not a requirement but was there anything that you wanted in this order that is not there i didn't hear you really ask for any additional item at least right now or was right well i also wanted to say that the utility freeze that's been asked for it's my understanding that it's not allowed by charter because then that would be um that we would need to have a charter election to change that so i just want to get the facts out there if that's the if that's the case okay all right uh is that is that is that where can we confirm that it's in our charter that we can't provide free utility services and that's for all the utilities okay but we can continue to increase the utility assistance as those who are in need need to help pay their bills that is correct that is why we asked for the additional 50 000 we we were trying to figure out a way to get you there yeah if i could ask councilmember briggs are you asking um for just a sort of documentation if anyone's turned away the reasons why is that really what you're asking for so we can see if there's something else in there well yeah i mean we saw on the list there was like 44 people that have been funded and last week i knew i had heard we were over 250 so i know that it's more than that so i'm wondering if the applications just haven't caught up because our nonprofits are overwhelmed um if that's something we need to address or um if people are getting denied because a certain documentation i think i'm we need we need to know more about um like i'm i'm willing to do a lot more but i also want to know a lot more data on on the process we'll ask gary to start collecting all that for us thank you yes we can get some additional data um collected and shared councilmember melzer yeah i i don't know how it's in the public interest to uh sort of cast doubt on the idea that losing your income is addressed by having your income replaced this idea that it's a windfall or maybe it'll never happen or you know that that isn't helping anything the people having their full income replaced in fact in all the examples that we saw it was more than their full income uh was replaced it does address that the problem is they need it now not at some point in the future and i think uh you know the game is not to see you know if we can give people more money than they used to make before by giving them money now and then they get it later too the game is is to get people the money that they need that is what they are uh will rightfully expect so i very much liked uh what councilmember armantor said early in the discussion uh in the work session about uh creating a way and maybe it requires a public private partnership and we have to do this all fast but creating a way for people to basically borrow ahead on uh the the benefits that they expect to receive and it's and uh i'm fine with by the way with all the recommendations for supplementing the the fund because we just don't know how many people won't qualify for benefits at all and it won't be sort of any expectation we just don't know um and and i'm willing as councilmember davis said to kind of you know do it a bit at a time and see as we go but the the large majority of people who i don't know why they've been coached to sort of think that's a meaningless thing that their felincum will be replaced but the the people are calling in and are distressed about that we need a way for them to get their benefits now and i i forced i could envision two ways to do it i'd take whatever's the fastest uh one would be and i think this will be the slow one uh would be to petition the governor for the authority and the funding uh to get people their first month of the federal portion you know through the municipality and if if we can get that you know we'll know who got it uh and you know uh and we can provide the data back and that gets people the funding they need now alternatively uh if there is some way for us to arrange for people to borrow against the funds that they are expecting i i think if we ignore that looming already here problem that that their full income will be replaced but they don't have it now i i don't think we've done the job okay all right uh councilmember davis so um you know the the callers that i've heard tonight and the folks i talked to in my town hall last thursday um i i hear what councilmember briggs is talking about i hear the frustration in their voices i hear the the near panic from some of them and i think that's like councilmember brig said that's that's all completely legitimate at this point there is nobody out there who has all the answers to the situation that we're in um but like councilmember melzer i'm disappointed that there's a lot of um coaching and misinformation and you know instead of being kind of the voice of calm and reason stability right now we've got certain council members that are out there kind of sowing distrust uh everyone's afraid they're going to get evicted because someone's telling them don't talk to your landlord call your city council and ask them to put a million dollars in a fund that hasn't fully been fleshed out yet um i think councilmember melzer from the beginning has been has been telling us uh the back of the cocktail napkin math on uh income replacement that people are going to have most people are going to have the ability to take care of their obligations to feed their families based on the assistance the assistance that's coming but then we get this additional request that we need to fill the gap between in the three weeks the four weeks the six weeks whatever it is until that federal assistance and that state assistance comes in the texas workforce commission that has been in this business for years is having difficulty standing up for the numbers that they've that they've experienced the uh the work that united way has done to create this covet fund and be able to to staff it and process those applications in a short amount of time has been herculean the idea that the city of denton could create a million dollar fund that is somehow going to get money into people's pockets faster than their unemployment and then in the course of three four six weeks we're going to be able to kind of wave a wand and create a program a direct payment safety net that the city of denton has never done before um at any kind of scale i mean folks um i mean even if we were going to try to create some sort of public private partnership for for lending again that's an enormous uh that's a highly regulated area that's an enormous undertaking for a city now if our some of our local lending institutions want to undertake something like that if they could be assured that someone benefits are coming in they want to lend against those i mean more power to them whether the city has a role in that or not i'm just highly skeptical i think it should happen it'd be helpful because i know that there are a lot of people right now who are uh i mean the payday lenders have to be um just in high cotton right now unfortunately but um i think the best thing we can do is to continue to give people the stability and direction and confidence that we can from the city's role which is what we're doing now um supporting our non-profits doing the best we can to get people through until those benefits come in from the entities that are set up to provide those benefits to do that job um once that money comes in for most people then they will feel a lot of that pressure gone um we don't know when uh when the end of this crisis is going to come about we don't know how much more we're going to have to continue having these conversations about sheltering in place and who can go to work and who can't go to work for now we know that there are trillions of dollars coming from the federal government down to uh large municipalities to counties to individuals and we just have to have time for that to take place and unfortunately we're not going to be able to do anything from our chairs to make that happen any faster and we don't have the wherewithal to fill that gap any better than what we're talking about right now with our most disadvantaged folks uh hold on council member melzer let me see if there's anybody else who hadn't spoken first that wants to speak uh uh council member ryan or council member husbeth any comments uh uh council member ryan you haven't spoken do you have any comments yeah let's see if i can get through this without being cut off um yeah i'm in agreement with council member davis that you're trying to set up that system and i can tell you that the local banks would love to help but you know we had crisis in the in the 80s and 90s and lending rules have completely changed there's no no such thing as a signature loan anymore um and i said in the beginning that this is the federal government is the only government entity that's not required to balance their budget and this can have an extreme impact on our budget and so we need to be extremely cautious we help where we need to but we need to be reserved and and not put out money that we don't need to be putting out right now uh that money will come in if we need to set up a hotline to help tenants that are dealing with landlords we can you know have someone that that negotiates with with them on both sides and works it out says hey here's what's coming down just kind of a mediator type situation i'm all for that i just don't know that we've got the proper staffing for that but if we do and if that's something the city manager thinks would work well to help get us through this um i think it will but when you start talking about you know rent uh moratoriums stopping rent delaying rent you got to remember that those companies oh he just froze up again john you just froze up so uh we're gonna let you come back and here when we when we come back i'm gonna go with uh council member armature but council member armature if he comes back i'm gonna go ahead and recognize him uh so that he can have his say he'll there he goes there he is okay yeah go ahead no no john john just came back yeah you're talking about the companies john you're talking about uh you know there are companies and sound like you're saying something about bills to pay etc right right the the property management companies the the independent owners of of rental property they have employees themselves that they have to pay and you know they are considering an essential service or probably we're coming back on ours but we're still paying full time if if you start all you're gonna do is move the needle to someplace else that's going to create more problems down the road and so we help where we can we we negotiate where we can but we can't afford to pay everybody's rent out there and and i think everybody understands that i mean but we would have to raise the taxes to to to do a million dollars there's not a taxpayer out there that wants that and the taxes go up rent goes up so that's it's it's a trickle trickle down trickle up however you want to call it it's it's not the proper way to do it it just everybody needs to understand it's going to take some time and just remain calm and try and work your way through this council member armature responding to several things and i'm gonna need when i get to mayor protem's questions mayor protem i'm gonna need you to repeat some of them if you wouldn't mind kind of one one by one um because i i think i only remember a couple um so just to clarify what uh council member davis had said about you know me recommending that people don't talk to landlords um i i just want to clarify i think it's it is very important that people do try to work something out with their landlord but i've been been trying to say which is advice that i get from texas tenants union you know anything that you read about about rent says get it in writing uh so i tell people get it in writing and i am also telling people to please uh uh ask city council tell us what you want us to do um and people pay taxes and they have the right to do that and uh so uh but but i i def i just wanted to make clear that i i definitely think it's a good idea to talk to landlord just make sure to to get it in writing an oral agreement doesn't count um let's see about uh utilities freeze so i should probably called it um changing the rate to a dollar a penny whatever uh council can has the power to determine rates and so i understand that we can't say free utilities for everyone but we can change the rate such that it would be totally affordable next to nothing for everyone that is possible uh because we set rates as a legislative body and this is an emergency um you know to the mentions of you uh you know that that we should be creating a sense of of calm and whatnot you know we this is a pandemic um and that's a scary word uh we've declared this a state of emergency it's a state of uh a statewide emergency um even at the federal level now they're acknowledging that so i think it creates panic when we are not treating an emergency like an emergency um i see it as the house is on fire and i see it i all over the nation we've seen it in other countries so we know what happens and i'm trying to very calmly ask for uh the the resources that that we need that i know that we have monetarily um to apply them to put out this fire the idea that it would take raising taxes to put out a million dollars we spend we spend millions a lot i i really don't understand why this million because we're actually spending it on you know people who really need it uh in in our community in an emergency why it's so hard to find so i would encourage members of public to look through our budget and to help uh help us um to budget better and better reallocate funds uh for this emergency just like we do in our our our family financing uh if there's an emergency and your kid needs a major operation you're going to get real creative about what you what you scale back on uh so now i'm at the point of answering councilmember hudson's question i think the um utility freeze one i believe that was one of yours i mentioned that you you asked about you said um that we can't control rents um if you go to um and i can send you the link uh the the state if you go to statutes.capitol.texas.gov uh section uh 214.902 of the state code rent control the governing body of a municipality made by ordinance established rent control if one the governing body of a municipal sorry if one the governing body finds that a housing emergency exists due to a disaster as defined by section 418.004 of the governor of the government code and this is what is is now controlled by governor abbott and as has already been said there's nothing in our definition of that emergency that conflicts with there that is inconsistent with what the governor's definition is except for with churches so uh number uh then b i'm sorry two the governor approves the ordinance b the governing body shall continue or discontinue rent control in the same manner that the governor continues or discontinues a state of disaster under this section 418.014 so as long as the state considers this a declared emergency we do have that power to control rents and it's so important at a time when our local control is being preempted and taken away that we know what powers we still have and that we're not sending misleading information to the public to say we're powerless when we're really powerful okay if you could first of all your your your video is frozen i just want to let you know that your video is frozen we're hearing your audio okay okay there you go yeah the audio is not okay no no the audio is fine you were just your video was frozen but we could hear you perfectly so we didn't miss anything that you that you just said um so if you uh i see council member uh okay this is what i want to do here guys um we're not going to spend the rest of the evening debating our philosophical kind of differences if we can't come to some consensus on some actual hard core concrete policies because we could talk about this literally all night and the point is we've had some council members that have made some requests uh that we include in this order and you know we need to take those up all right um and if if we don't move on that if we don't agree to them tonight that's okay they were brought up last time we didn't agree so the council member obviously council member armatory is bringing some of these up is certainly welcome to continue to bring those forward but we i think we've we've all we're starting to repeat ourselves over a couple of meetings and so what i want to do is make sure we get down to the heart of the matter and that is we're charged with crafting policy as a governing body and that's what i want to start doing so my understanding is for our current order we have those four items that we have a consensus on to include we do not have i'm getting feedback from somebody is that you council member armature are you yeah i might be getting some feedback um um so uh i'm going to i think i wrote these down let me look okay well i wrote them down but i can't find them right quick um oh here we go yeah so council member armature we're just i'm just going to try to go through this list and you can help me where i leave some off and we're going to just see what the direction is on the ones that you've proposed can i just um i i believe it the council that uh mayor protem had some questions and i i kind of feel like when when when one council member has question of another council member it's important for the reason that you said for the legend so that we can legislate and find out where we agree that we'd be able to have a discussion so you don't have to continue mayor protem but i just want to make sure uh that we can have that discussion and and that we're not just kind of one way each saying something but we're actually having a discussion and legislating together i don't i don't mind debate well no i don't i don't mind debate i don't mind debate but when we start repeating ourselves over and over and over again that's no longer debating because nobody i mean i haven't heard too many people that are agreeing to be convinced by anyone else who's having a discussion here tonight so if y'all want to keep talking we talk to we hours of the evening it doesn't matter to me but what we need to do is make sure that by the end of the evening we have an order that the people can rely upon here in the city of denton so council mayor protem if you want your questions answered go ahead and ask them again and then mayor protem i mean uh council member armature if you could answer them very succinctly but let's get some efficiency into this discussion no and i think i take your point and you're absolutely spot on so i'll be i'll be succinct as possible i asked this last week i'm asking for us to take the somehow release the city attorney's office to then provide legal information to the public i don't i don't care what that looks like but the fact that a matter is just look councillor armatures i i'll take i'll read what you what you cited but i don't have to read it i read the legal update that said that the uh the uh state attorney the uh city attorney no no the state attorney uh the attorney general there we go sorry i'm flustered the attorney general came out with an opinion and said if you didn't have the powers before this emergency you don't have them during this emergency he's already we haven't though like i'm reading you state law which which which is okay well we're not going to resolve a legal question here tonight my point is that we need to release some way i don't care what it looks like but at least i want to i want to poll i want to whatever that is i want to have that conversation and if i lose on that that's fine but i really want to release the city attorney to give his opinion his department's opinion on some of these things because they're misrepresented well we can we can discuss we can discuss that at a different meeting because that's i mean that's something really it's somewhat related so uh you know mr city attorney the uh councilmember armature has cited a state code in reference so if you could just provide us sort of a white paper or a memorandum on that statute what it what invokes it i'm sorry i think right i think you did comment on it already or or refer to it erin correct i'd actually the i want to make sure i understand the provisions you were citing in the emergency management code are you talking about the uh provision that allows cities to uh basically enact certain provisions that will in address wage price rent controls and other economic stabilization methods in the event of a disaster that's in the and i i don't remember if i've wrote to you separately yeah i'm sorry you said a 214.902 and that's in the government code you're talking about yeah obviously yeah okay i can tell you i mean what i've what i've mentioned before in fact dallas county enacted a provision under state law under the government not the government code but the um emergency management code and basically they have enacted a price control in in their county and and the way i've seen these used along the coast that have hurricanes and tropical storms that hit it is to freeze prices so that price gouging won't won't occur after a disaster declaration has been issued so whatever the price was the day before the declaration of disaster was issued okay that price remains the same and so erin yes i appreciate you citing those statutes uh i'll go home and look at those as well give us a if you haven't addressed that give us just a write-up because if it's an emergency management code the governor has suspended some of those codes as far as the authority given to local governments we need to understand what but then i also heard you say that the ordinance has to be approved by the governor so this isn't something that the city can act on unilaterally that's what you that's what you read you said that as long as the ordinance is approved by the governor well so the city can't act on that unilaterally and i don't see i don't see forward something forward we need to we need to have a consensus that people want to even consider that i don't even know what rent freeze means what i've heard people say is it means you don't have to pay your rent and it's forgiven because i heard the callers talk about the accumulation of debt well if you freeze rents or if you give a 60-day grace notice that rent is still accruing if you you know we're not shutting off utilities utilities are still accruing i have no idea why everybody is so bent on trying to find a solution to a problem that we have no idea how big it is right now people are not getting evicted their rents are accruing absolutely their rents are accruing whether it's a 60-day grace period or it's a 60-day eviction those rents are going to accrue the utilities are going to accrue what you have to do also is when you're at the end of that period you also then look at the totality of the circumstances and the size of the problem and you figure out a way to tackle it to try to what what i'm saying is we're trying to solve a problem that we we have no idea what it is nope i've not heard anybody say they're agreeing to provide a million dollars in the covid fund right now will it eventually get up to that it very well may be i have no idea but i've not heard a majority of the council members say that that's somewhere they're wanting to go tonight and that's all that's what i'm trying to do is get us through this meeting tonight so aaron if you could just provide us an update on that ordinance that was cited because i don't want people to go out here and start thinking that the city council can freeze rents and and freeze rents means the rents are still the same doesn't mean you don't owe any rent so i need to make sure that we get good information out there now we had nine callers who won a million dollars that's fine i understand that and for people to say that the city of denton is not doing enough and we're not being proactive is shameful it's absolutely shameful if you knew what people were doing behind the scenes if you'd have seen the people i was working with at our daily bread and the city of denton employees who were there to try to say that we're not being proactive and for people to say we're not doing enough council member i'm talking council member armator you've had plenty of time to talk i've not said much tonight at all but it's shameful to say that the city of denton is not it'll never be enough for some people it will never be enough i am more than willing more than willing to do what we can to meet the immediate needs now to alleviate some of those fears folks it's embarrassing when people accuse others of being privileged without even knowing them without even knowing how they grew up without even knowing the struggle that they had in their family it's unconscionable and quite frankly i dismiss people's comments who make those kind of comments with no knowledge whatsoever so if we want to pick sides and if we want to have these fights we can do that but right now we're trying to govern and meet the needs of our community the best that this body can do and as long as we continue to bicker about these kinds of things we can have legitimate debates and disagreements but it is a such a waste of time and it's quite frankly an embarrassment for us to be deliberating in this fashion we've had some really good ideas set on the table council member armator you had one of them you've got council member melzer and council member davis who said hey is there a way that we can try to figure this out well we need to work on that but do you know how hard it is to get banks to loan people money because then you have to get them to sign their benefits then you have legal documents that you have to sign that's not a that's not an overcomeable hurdle it can be done and that's a good place to start so let's try to get something done here number one we are the city our order is superseded by the county and our order is superseded by the governor in areas that are inconsistent and to say that rent control or rent freeze is not inconsistent the state of texas and the governor has taken much action on many different occasions to address what he believes is overreach among local municipalities i'm not saying i agree i'm not saying i disagree i'm just saying it's very clear that that is what has happened on many many different occasions so we've got some items on the table that we agree to we've got council member armator asked for a million dollars to be added to this covid fund so i want to ask who is in favor of adding an additional nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the covid fund and above and beyond with the 50,000 we've done we can get into all the different types of options and the lendings and the banks and the stop gaps which we can have that conversation but unless you're willing to remove that request council member armator that's what we need to talk about so i'm asking the council members who's in favor of adding an additional nine hundred fifty thousand dollars to the covid fund at this moment in time tonight for our order that we have on the agenda all i need is a raised hand i'm just asking for a consensus or just a comment okay all right the rent for the utility freeze who is in favor of freezing the utilities and i don't even know what that means i guess it means okay so let's call it we'll reduce utilities to a dollar a month okay who's in favor of reducing all utilities in the city of denton to a dollar a month for us for 60 days for 60 days is there anybody in favor of that i mean i assume you are council member armator yeah okay all right okay and what were a couple of the other ones council member armator you had a list i'm going to give you the benefit of we're going to go through the list so i mean i have it here so i so that you can have them so you've touched on the rent freeze you've touched on a utility freeze you've touched on the million dollars left our staff needs uh i don't know that's not a thing one is the requirement of masks yeah mask required mandate groceries to be brought out mandate for gas stations to turn the full service and child care for all essential staff okay so let me take those one at a time okay so i'm assuming council member armature that what you meant by mass being required you're talking about by everybody in the community if they're out in public in a enclosed space yes okay yes which okay go ahead just suggest that that is a smart thing to do okay so well now it are you asking for a suggestion or are you asking for an order that requires it requirement because of what we're seeing in the numbers the way we're seeing the curve go up okay all right so who's in favor of requiring all citizens including employees of the city of denton to wear masks in public spaces that are enclosed not necessarily if you're out walking in the park or bicycling down the street or things such as that okay the next one is gross uh gas stations to require now so correct me if i'm wrong council member armature i'm assuming these are things that you want to order to be done that it's not a suggestion it's not a recommendation these are what you want the city to require these activities so uh who's in favor of requiring all uh gasoline facilities facilities or businesses that have gasoline facilities to uh have those attended full time to where those attendants will pump the uh gas into uh the cars but just a question how do we how do you handle the payment aspect because i mean it has some appeal right the idea that you know not everyone's touching the handle all the time but you're still interacting with with the payment you could do you could do venmo online you could do online you could get the swipe you know and they can have gloves to to handle cash can i can i make a suggestion i mean look um first of all there is thing there is something called personal responsibility that we as people in this city we all also have a sense of personal responsibility and accountability for our own health and what i heard you say was those handles are being touched a lot and if people don't have hand sanitizer in their car then that's a problem well why can't we just say hey i mean i was out at one of them and i saw the attendants wiping them off they were sanitizing them um so i'm not in favor of that i'll just tell you out front so council member briggs well you kind of got to my isn't isn't there something in our order or someone's order that um they if it's an essential then they are supposed to do certain cleanings um i know that we talked about adding it um at at one point for like a 24-hour thing but i thought after the governor's order came out and we went to grocery stores there's some kind of um requirement for to do certain cleanings and i think i heard you talking about i've seen um like grocery stores wiping handles down i've seen gas attendants coming i mean aren't they doing that i mean they are doing it and that's my point they're they're they're doing it um many of them are doing it voluntarily i don't know if it's in the actual order uh but the point is you could unless you're wiping down a handle or a cart or a shelf or a touch pad or anything else that someone comes in contact with every single time literally so even if you're only required to go wash the go sanitize the gas pump handles every 10 minutes certainly it's better than nothing but it also doesn't mean that well what happens within those 10 minutes so that's why i'm saying at some point we have to also know that our citizens are taking responsibility for their own health and safety and we can do what we can to promote that and i believe the businesses are doing what they can to promote that in fact i've heard of grocery stores now limiting the number of people who come into their store i've heard of uh retailers who are bringing things out but as a requirement to say we're going to require grocery stores to collect all the groceries and then bring them out to the cars to save lives and to save lives okay is there anybody required for requiring grocery stores to have people sack the groceries and bring them out to the cars that becomes mandatory i don't know what you mean by workers the people who work at the grocery store they have less less contact with the public sure okay yes okay anybody in favor of that okay um i think there was one um something about petitioning oh uh there's something about a a meetings um but i think that was why are they allowed to meet if they can't meet online i if i'm not mistaken on the governor's order the governor's order said to follow cdc recommendations now unless it's changed today cdc recommendations said you can't have more than 10 people at a gathering do we have a very for a no i'm talking about in general yeah yeah but for the note we got there it was a mention of 50 that's why i was well okay whether if there's a violation of it that's one thing but it's not saying that people if they don't have a way to meet electronically um that therefore they shouldn't meet that i think it was clear that the governor's order was to follow cdc recommendations which is social distancing and not more than 10 people our order was stricter our order said you can't meet at all with more than one person and we might still be able to do that um but there was so sorry sorry to interrupt mr mayor but there was a in the backup for today um which i didn't again i've been teaching till two i didn't have a lot of time to read it but i did see something about a that said something about the 50 people and we can have those conversations i don't need that in the ordinance i don't need that in the ordinance for now but i do uh i i am concerned about that okay so uh uh mr city attorney back to the a well we said in the in the uh exhibit three of the work session item was that there is an argument for an a group to to petition the texas division of emergency management under the medical section of cissa to be able to conduct those meetings in person if of course they they follow social social distancing guidelines even though even though there it's even though it's peer support and it's not a medical service and it's i mean oh oh oh let me tell you that uh yeah let's let's back let's walk that comment back no no no no that's a huge that's a huge service to the to our community we made in our lives please let me please please let the city attorney finish thank you we made we made an argument and this is what an example one of those gray areas is not clearly defined in the cissa memo but you know we made an argument that an a group provided it follows cdc guidelines it could be able to meet of course that a group would have to apply to the state to confirm that so we think they can fall under the cissa memo but they would have to petition the state okay all right that wasn't that was just an inquiry you had council member armature i just saw it on my sheet and it wasn't necessarily a regulation so is there anything i've left out all right so i mentioned about child care but you know i don't think i've got any takers on that either so okay uh anything else i left out well can we go back to the first thing see if we can get to a conclusion about about how to get you know uh people's expected benefits sooner i know he ran into some you know it's thorny right it's a difficult thing to to do but maybe worth discussing and that was on council member armatores sure as well well i don't think i don't and i don't mind discussing it but i don't think we have enough facts to understand what the the laws that are currently in place that regulate that because you're talking about some kind of either unsecured lending or some kind of title lending or some kind of sequestration of benefits lending i don't know anything about that and to have that conversation right now i think we would just sort of be talking into the wind so i would certainly request that we get a staff report and a legal update on okay if we were to try to create something either in a public private or encourage the private sector to do it what would that look like um let me suggest something going going in the same vein as you know where you're headed i think uh you know i thought we made a lot of progress in a previous meeting doing something that didn't become part of the ordinance but where staff met with uh the you know the grocers and you know i i see it what they did what i would suggest is that this is a perfect opportunity uh to organize you know a little a little round table among local lenders i think they'll they'll know a lot more about this than than we might guess even you know with our legal staff just how might that be approached sure and i will certainly volunteer my time and my physicality to meet with any banker or any group of bankers or anybody at the chamber of commerce if we want to have a facebook live if we want to have around i'm perfectly willing to have that discussion perfectly willing to have that discussion and bring back uh number one the still resources we need from the regulatory aspect what are the regulations surrounding this what are the laws surrounding this because i will tell you the city cannot be an unsecured lender there's not enough money we would be i wouldn't actually would be yeah and and and you know councilmember armature herself initially said sorry to keep on talking about your third person uh you know said that this would be something that lenders would do but maybe the city plays a role as a guarantor based on our ability to collect through utilities or you know maybe there's some mechanism where we help it we help it but we're not the lenders so so look i think the city is going to do what we can to help but i do not think and i say this unequivocally i do not think it's the city's job to take on a situation where if someone has agreed to pay and they don't pay that the city is a guarantor of that that's just a shifting of the burden and personal accountability and responsibility and if we want to find a way to help them where it mitigates that down to zero that's fine but that burden should not be shifted from the individual or all of that shifted to a municipality we have responsibility and we have a fiduciary to all of the citizens in this city well all of them in the spirit of identifying where we can agree let's let's let's go after that round table to see what the banking community can come up with you know if they see an opportunity so mr city manager i mean is that something that you guys have enough capacity right now or do you need uh you know us to sort of pick up the mantle i mean that's that's you know additional work and i know that you guys are working just unbelievably hard and and committed to this process and i just don't want to put too much of a burden on city staff when maybe we need to start taking some of that up ourselves as i've done in the past with some other issues we can certainly um arrange at least a round table to kick it around i'm not sure if any of this is even possible as uh council member ryan was saying earlier given some of the handcuffs that are on the banks right now and and and whether or not we could actually even back someone up so i'm happy to at least have the conversation to see how realistic it is and and how it would if it would even be possible to administer something like that well i would just go ahead paul i'm sorry yeah i would just you know as a kind of conversation starter uh suggest as an analogy loans that are made against expected tax refunds i think you know that's done and i think that there might be a model there okay all right um okay anything else okay so we've got from what i understand we've got four issues that we seem to have an agreement on and that is and do did staff ever send us the revised ordinance with those changes oh council member davis and then council member briggs yeah yes sir to your to your point at at 649 we got a revised ordinance and at this time i'd like to move adoption of the ordinance as revised and what we received in our uh in our email and if somebody wants to follow the procedure and make amendments or something like that but at this time i'd move adoption of what we got through email at 649 and those include the four items correct everything that we've agreed on tonight is in that draft okay all right council member briggs um so in that draft of the on the utilities uh interest interest um and late fees are they not accruing they're they're basically waived right they are on hold until the order is lifted which means they're not accruing correct okay for for the utilities i just want to make sure that transfer over to this one i believe we used march 1st is our date to freeze the late payments and interest accumulation so until the order is lifted march 1 will be the date okay okay when it started yes okay all right so we have a motion for approval of the ordinance as uh delivered uh to our emails with the revised draft uh chair would entertain a second council member ryan i'll second all right so we're going to then uh go around the horn for a voice vote uh council member davis hasayu aye council member ryan hasayu aye council member armature hasayu nay mayor protem hasayu mayor uh mayor council member melser how how say you i can't hear you i can't hear you paul you're muted sorry i'd like to offer a friendly amendment okay it'll take a little while to spell it out and it'll sound a little outlandish at first but follow me please um uh there there is a a problem i argue at least a perception that that there's a problem uh that after the the uh you know the moratorium on on eviction proceedings that late payments won't be accepted and they'll be used as a reason to effect now as a practical matter i don't actually see why landlords would be eager to evict in an environment where there aren't people to to come in and replace them but that's a concern people have that they can't make late payments and have it and have it be accepted for that for us to change that governor can't do it legislature has to do it is my understanding so my amendment would be uh just within the order that we call on the governor to to ask to convene a special session of the legislature which at their choice can be convened electronically to take up matters related to the emergency and that among these matters would be allowing the opportunity to cure default in other words allow renters the opportunity to make late payments and have them accepted uh if their benefits have been delayed so i know it's a long road do you understand do you see where i'm going i do but can i ask you a question on that as well sure um because i i don't think i have a disagreement with that in the form of a resolution i mean as part of this as part of this emergency order i mean i just think it i mean if if they accept a friendly amendment we'll vote on it but i will just tell you up front i have no issue with that uh whether it's being a resolution or something like that absolutely not uh councilmember davis uh you kind of took the words out of my mouth um i don't necessarily disagree with the spirit of that it's um what you're asking for calling a special session and petitioning the governor just an enormously complex um you know thing to take on its own uh i i would welcome the opportunity to look at that as a resolution but i think tonight what i prefer is uh i'll call it a clean bill and just the things that we have agreement on and not needing to have to draft another paragraph and word smith what exactly we're asking the governor to do and and all of those things i think there's plenty of fodder for a special session if he calls one but whether or not we're prepared to get that together tonight i don't i don't think so so no i'm sorry i can't accept your amendment okay all right um okay are you are you uh did you want to present that amendment to the body to vote on or you were drawing it because it wasn't accepted as a friendly amendment is there is there an opportunity within you know we're having an emergency meeting not one that was given 72 hours notice which you know we heard a little bit about from the public uh would we have the ability under our emergency meeting to take up uh a resolution as a separate item after this counsel uh attorney yes and a later day it could be tomorrow it could be then be the next day any day this week as long as you provide one hour's notice if it's an emergency okay we'll follow the 72 hour rule right well it pertains to you know an emergency situation i'd like to ask that it be added to the agenda on emergency basis for tomorrow can that be can that be done uh mr city attorney it can be done if the council there's four of you the uh consensus if you wanted to go in that direction yeah yeah i'm okay with that uh council member davis i think we've got four but um sure sure are we the question is are we adding that as an emergency item for tomorrow's regularly called meeting is that that's the question uh and that is correct it'll be posted separately to begin before the schedule start time at 5 pm tomorrow's no the the the closed session that's that's scheduled for five tomorrow three three p.m so it'll have to be sometime before three p.m um okay you're asking i'm sorry go ahead as i say we could arrange something at two o'clock tomorrow if you want i would just ask that two things um if we could get something uh an email from um council member melzer talking about exactly what he wants to do um and and then is this a standalone resolution uh or are you wanting to incorporate it in the emergency declaration well my my my point is if we can agree to take it up in a separate emergency session tomorrow then i i won't ask for uh for it as uh to be voted on as an amendment tonight okay so question and clarification i've got it looking at an agenda for tomorrow that says the meeting starts at five o'clock somebody want to that's correct i rosa gave me that information it starts at five okay i want to make sure that i'm where i need to be all right okay so we have a second i mean we have a motion and a second uh and we've we stopped i guess it was uh we've had an eye from council member davis an eye from council member ryan a name from council member amateur an eye from mayor protem and we left off with you council member melzer yeah it's an eye okay council member briggs so um it's not perfect but we were able to increase 50 000 for utilities and 50 000 for rental assistance and for today that's that's okay with me um we are going to need more but for now i'm a yes okay uh mayor watts is a yes as well so the motion carries a six to one i believe that is our last agenda item i don't believe we have any concluding items we do not so we will stand adjourned at 8 17 oh oh wait sorry i i had i had one we don't have any concluding item i don't think it's posted no but it's for this not a concluding item okay what what it's for what the the last agenda item yes okay go ahead close it yes um so i'm wondering if we can put out a press release of this and the resources included we had a a caller mentioned that they um resources that we have for rental assistance and utility assistance is not um prevalent or it's really hard to find so can we make sure after this meeting and do some kind of push so that people are aware certainly thank you okay all right we'll stand adjourned now then at 8 18 thank you all