Apr 07, 2020 City Council on 2020-04-07 5:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday, April the 7th, 2020. It is 5.04 p.m. Our first item for this five o'clock meeting is a closed meeting. We have two closed meeting items. One is for legal questions regarding the Hunter and Cole Ranch discussions we're going to have later on this evening and the other one is deliberation regarding personal matters. Are there anyone, is there anyone that needs, that has some legal questions about the Cole Hunter Ranch project that we would need to go into closed session about? Just want to give Billy a heads up. Not seeing anybody raise their hand. All right. So we will, we will not be hearing then that closed session item agenda 1A. So we will now convene in closed session at 5.05 for deliberations regarding personal matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.074. So I ask that any staff that's not necessary or needed for this particular item to please exit and so we can have a private conversation. Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on April the 7th, 2020. It is 6.04. We are in our work session portion of our city council meeting. We've got most council members are remote and I'm here at City Hall conducting the meeting. Our first work session is citizen comments on consent agenda items. We don't have any citizens wanting to speak on consent agenda items. Request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda. Any requests for any, yes council member Briggs. Sorry, I have first I need to pull item H for a recusal from consent agenda. Okay. I've gotten that form and I sent it in. Okay, so you don't we don't need a presentation or anything that's just set for a separate vote. Okay. All right. And then I have a few questions. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes. On E are there I know that when the EMS does a transport and I think this is what this is is for there's a charge that sometimes isn't or most likely isn't covered by insurance and is that so my question is if that's the case and there are coded transportations is there. Have we talked about that or would this be the contract where to include those so that those patients wouldn't be responsible since there was a federal statement about not having to pay for care I might not be the right contract but I'm just wondering if because there's another contract there's three of them or two of them here that I kind of have questions about the the way that COVID affects affects them. Anybody available to answer that question. We'll need to talk to their Tony point a or David gains on this. Okay. Tony is on to the officer. Did you hear the question Tony I did and Councilmember Briggs this particular this particular contract is for miscellaneous accounts billed by fire EMS for fire alarms and such a wouldn't it doesn't cover those items that you're talking about us through a separate contract but we can certainly take a look at that and and and provide a response back to you. Okay well I saw credit systems and I just wanted to make sure that we weren't something wasn't falling through the cracks there if that was somebody was going to get a bad credit for not paying for a COVID transport that they weren't aware of so if that's not included here then that's not a worry that that's correct ma'am okay okay on item F it's kind of the same thing because it's a municipal court fines I I'm just curious and if somebody could talk to the public right now about how those fines work and how how this contract is going to correlate with the the process right now with the court system without paying fines and fees so again this is a Tony Puente Chief Financial Officer so right now the only fines that are being worked with fines that were outstanding prior to this health crisis any any any tickets that are currently owed or that somebody receives are actually being deferred to a later date and so we're not sending any any additional fines to collection during this crisis as a result of the court being shut down okay and so if this is approved so that that date and time period will be an exception for these fines just within this contract so that they can't go back and and try to to collect those that that's correct okay and then the last one I have mayor is item M it's it's about the the windows for City Hall West I just I looked and I saw I saw the sorry I've lost my notes did the ad hot committee get to review the windows and the replacement style was this part of that presentation that we saw I don't I don't remember seeing any pictures and did this pass through the historical committee for the windows the replacement I believe so but I need to defer to Sarah Hensley on that okay well I looked at the history and then it was just about the creation of ad hoc committee and the meetings that they had I didn't see where any of this went through so I was just curious it is Sarah on or okay can't can barely hear you is is okay if we could there sounds some like someone's talking in the background I can't hear I don't know if that's just a conversation that we're going to come back to this we're going to come back to this issue Councilmember Briggs when we can get it sort of squared away so if we could just get someone on that could answer her question and we'll just when it whenever they are Mr. City Manager if you could just sort of wave me in and we'll we'll sort of wrap up what we're talking about and then come back in to answer Councilmember Briggs question and we still have some other items for clarification so that we may be able to do it at the same time a councilmember armature was sorry for not remembering was and one of the ones that was just pulled or for for questioning or consideration no no the only one that we have pulled right now is agenda item H okay so I had a question about agenda item N about the charter bus contract okay and that is just is there a way to wait to restart the conch I'm assuming the answer is no but I want to ask anyway if there's a way to wait to restart that contract until we know that charter buses for these kind of programs will be able to to happen the answer the answer to your question is that that is a pay as you use it a contract so we did not want to rebid it since you're not actually spending any dollars unless you use the service okay thank you thank you okay so still waiting on I guess the clarification for consent agenda item M so we'll come back to that as soon as we have that answer do we have any more clarifications of agenda agenda items from the council mayor pro tem thank you so just want first item a I just want to share my excitement about that because I use them individually as well civic plus and so I'm excited to see parks and rec take advantage of that platform they do really good work and I've used them for a number of years so excited to see them coming on board I hope there's more opportunities to work with them in different departments then I have a request for our question about D if I could get a just a better understanding our summary of the red flag program just not sure I'm tracking with with what it does council this is Krista foster customer service and with the red flag program it's actually was a set of rules that was enacted by the FCC in like 2011 and one of the requirements in it is that the basic program which defines some of the high level steps that say we have identified what type of identity fraud flags we would look for would be passed through our governing body and when we were doing some review on some of our internal policies several months ago what we discovered was the policy or the practice itself the program had actually been presented to council but had never been formalized so there was no record of it this is simply a technicality of making sure that we have something that is formalized and on record that says we are responsible for maintaining uh responsible records for customer identity and checking on it got it thank you you're very welcome and then my mayor my other question um is around item e I know we talked about it but my question is a little different what what when are the um debts sent for collection is there a time period is there a mount what's kind of the trigger for that again this is Krista foster with customer service as it relates to any of the utility bills we typically send those out at 90 days under the current declaration of disaster we have suspended sending anything through to the collections agency so no new accounts will be sent at this time and we'll be looking to try to work with uh customers as best we can before we resume that practice got it and then the other is that the I thought there were other debts captured in item e but is it only related to utilities no there are other groups but that's the part that's relative to the customer service department got it so the other departments is there a we have uh Tony are you still on I am can you can you repeat that again yes sir so uh hey Tony just curious when uh so for your I guess your component would be utilities one of those uh or I don't know what your component is you wear so many hats but the question is uh when are the debts transferred to collection what is the trigger for that um well I think it's Krista mentioned after after 90 days of them being delinquent that's when we send them over to collection but right now none of those none of those accounts are being sent to collection under the declaration sure so I mean but does that cover ambulance as well if there's the ambulance bill unpaid after 90 days traditionally it would be it would be sent to collection um the the the ambulance bills are are separate from this contract I'm actually in the process of emailing the chief that we can provide a response back to now your question also council member Briggs um this this pertains to miscellaneous accounts that are billed by our customer service department those ambulance ems um billings are not done through the customer services to a separate contract okay so then orient me customer service handles utilities water yes they also handle miscellaneous accounts like airport tie downs um you know fire alarms uh any code enforcement uh billings for mowings and and those kind of miscellaneous um um accounts that um um that are throughout the city excellent okay that's helpful and across the board across all those uh specifics and miscellaneous it's the trigger is traditionally 90 days yes sir got it thank you any other questions of clarification mayor i'm here this is sarah to answer the question on city hall west window yes go ahead uh council council member Briggs uh the um the windows are being replaced and we have a approval from the texas historic commission we have a letter that allows us to go go forward and do this um and uh to do this we obviously want to get it done because of the nature of the existing windows and the um the leakage that's occurring council member Briggs yeah good thank you okay all right okay so we have uh any more items for agenda items for clarification okay all right then we'll move on to our next agenda item for the work session which is work session reports 3a receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding a resolution to petition the governor for a special election date for the purpose of electing city council members to place five and six a mayor to place seven and to fill vacancies in district one and two for the unexpired term may 2021 to move the election from the uniform date of november the third 2020 to an earlier date uh good evening mayor city council sarah kechler chief of staff i'll show you to try to make this presentation brief um this is to seek city council direction on a petition to the governor on alternative election dates um so just by way of background the city and the state have taken a number of actions in response to covet 19 um the one relevant to this discussion is the governor's uh issued a proclamation proclamation on march 18th as part of that proclamation he allowed he waived or suspended sections of the texas election code allowing political subdivisions to move their general and special elections from may 2nd to november 3rd um in order for uh municipality to do so the governing body had to adopt an ordinance to move their election date uh so the city council um considered such an ordinance on march 20th um actually two ordinances one for the general election for mayor place five place six and then a second ordinance for the special elections um to fill the vacancies for district one and district two um city council adopted uh those ordinances which postponed the may election to november 3rd however those ordinances also included a provision that authorized the city manager to petition the governor for an alternative election date and it specified further that to request a date prior to november 3rd um that we should staff should coordinate with other municipalities where possible and that if we are not successful by may 31st in achieving an alternative election date then to cease the efforts and continue with the november election date and so what staff was looking for some direction from council on is possible dates to include in that petition to the governor um there's some dates listed on the right side of your screen it could include some or all of the dates to the right and that's from previous council discussion for dates in august or september we have continued our discussions with other municipalities while there was interest shown at first um to seek an alternative date um in further discussions uh we will leave most of them as municipalities will continue with a november date and we have not learned any that are undergoing the same actions um or considering however that doesn't mean that they may do the same actions in the coming months um to seek an alternative election date as well um and then we also have reached out to denton county elections administration office um to see if they would be willing to administer an alternative election date and their initial indication is that they would perform that function on behalf of the city if paid for so um requesting that direction from council so that staff can draft a resolution that could be brought forward to city council on april 21st and then if approved by council we would share that with other municipalities and submit to governor avid and that ends staff presentation council member davis go ahead sure so there's been a lot of talk about this in the community since we um had our conversation our last conversation uh when we passed the ordinance moving the election um i think probably somewhere in the the latter half of september is is probably where the consensus is is kind of drawn up the way that i read it um uh we we are in a college town we're in a place where a lot of people take extended vacations in the august time frame um probably sometime and the latter half of september is where i'd like to see this fall i do i'm not terribly optimistic that the governor's gonna um take it upon himself to give us another election date i think we probably need to kind of prepare ourselves for a november election as we have already started doing but i prefer something those last two weeks in september i think it was the 19th and the 26th okay thank you thank you for that uh who we've got queued up we've got we're going to go to mayor pro tem then council member armature then council member briggs uh mayor pro tem thank you mayor yeah so i i agree with uh council member davis but i do think um i'm encouraged that the the governor has heard uh the concern and then it's obviously up to him to decide if he's going to respond to that but i feel good about uh this being heard and reviewed that being said i make a motion to uh move to to approve all the dates listed by staff and leave those no i'm sorry go ahead finish it because i think the city attorney needs to jump in here but go uh do you need to get jumped in before he finishes this isn't an action item this is just to get your feedback and direction i mean i would probably if um what mayor pro tem is trying to tell you all that this is what he's recommending for staff to come back with a a final product that reflects whatever dates that you're seeking yeah this is yeah this is just a work session so it's just getting the feedback to craft the resolution so go ahead mayor pro tem then uh i prefer all the dates as we talked about before uh that gives the the flexibility uh for the governor should he decide to take up action then we we've left it open you mean the ones that were listed uh in the staff presentation all of them correct that's on the fifth slide there okay all right okay thank you mayor pro tem councilor armature just to reiterate uh i still find it uh unfortunate that that we're not able to have a universal mail-in ballot option in time for the may election that would have been my first choice and i realized that was not entirely up to us uh but uh but because we don't have that uh my my second choice and my first choice given the options today is to have the november third election because even though it it extends the date further it is a date that people plan to vote anyway and there will be additional cost and less voter turnout if we have a special alternate date of those alternate dates listed um i i am most opposed to any dates that are before the universities are back in session uh so november third is my absolute first choice but of the options that i'm opposed to i especially don't like the any ones that are before uh september and and i will also add to this that i think it's important when we're talking about whatever election date is going to be that we lobby to have a a wide or uh mail-in ballot option and ac aclu has has recently uh recently joined a a lawsuit saying that uh under texas law all registered voters qualify should qualify to request a mail-in ballot as a result of the covet 19 public health crisis aclu website so okay all right okay so uh appreciate it any any other input on the resolution council member armature oh no okay yeah council member riggs uh yeah so i am i am leaning towards the end of september uh the last date and i'm not in favor of listing all the dates because i think the august dates are um not wise i am in favor of keeping our elections as non-partisan as as possible and i think allowing it in september um it allows the people to to be here and um vacations are over school has started hopefully we can get back to normal and uh people can vote in our municipal elections and know the candidates and know um who they're voting for uh and i also think that when um the governor chose november he didn't realize how likely run-offs would be for municipal elections so making sure that that's highlighted in our our resolution um of course the fallback at that end of september and i i want to make sure that we have a date and not just for him to choose um a random date uh in in our resolution if if the council can can agree on one yeah all right uh council member ryan any comments yes mayor i kind of fall somewhere in between i'm good with i'm good with any of the dates but i do think we need to narrow it down further to uh list in there the september 19th and september 26 date and and probably put a line in there that says or other date that the governor sees fit and that way we're covering we're covering our bases on those other dates but uh yeah the the idea of run-offs uh will push us way out there and i don't think i think that needs to be listed in there as well because we would be the only election that would end up with a run-off in a november election okay uh council member melzer any comments i concur on september 19th and september 26th uh and i'm opposed to saying or listing other dates uh and i uh if if we end up having a special session legislature uh since it would require that uh oh i'm back uh i concur with the idea that since we don't really know what our status will be was that interesting was that entertaining to watch the phone flicker um yes since we don't know what the world will look like at that point i think uh you know uh asking for a universal mail-in balance uh through that session all right uh any other council members beside myself who have not weighed in um so what i'm hearing is uh we've got several at least uh well we got probably already four for the 19th or 26th of september the only difference is council member ryan wanted to add the or any date that the governor sees fit i i mean i don't necessarily need that in there because i think if we're the only ones petitioning for this and we don't have a collection of municipalities who work together with a strong voice to ask for some date and then that can be discussed it's it's probably not going to be the probability of that being done is is highly unlikely because this would be a date for the entire state so i'm okay with the 19th and 26th um and i don't think we need the the language in there or any other date the governor chooses i think the governor can choose whatever date he wants based upon the information and the feedback that he receives from various municipalities other than ourselves council member armature real quick real quick so just yeah question question for my colleagues so i've heard one uh one other mention uh one other voice in support of uh mail-in ballot option under covet 19 is any anyone else willing to lead that up to this if there's a special session i'm gonna leave that up to the state legislators to figure that out i mean if y'all want to send letters or have a campaign i think that's certainly if we want to send something different but we're trying to pile on on these different resolutions like we saw in the previous one and this one we're just simply asking for a date so uh council member briggs hold on just sorry just just to finish um and then there was and then i had another question as well um uh so just to finish um it is it is directly related because it's about how to you know when is the best time for voting uh for our constituents and so the issue of voting access is directly related i should also say leak of women voters texas is also a plaintiff in this lawsuit okay well i'm not sure what lawsuits you're talking about but we're we're gonna we're gonna move on on the comments we've got your your request noted and you've asked for the council colleagues to make a statement on that so that's what we're gonna do right now council member briggs yeah i i'm in favor of uh melon voting and however that needs to be i don't know if it would need to be if you're asking for it to go in this resolution as well as as an option or a call to the governor to allow um i think melon voting is something that would be very beneficial especially if um hopefully this has uh run its course but if it hasn't it would be something to consider um i i did have a question about if for some reason our date does not get accepted and it goes to november can somebody help me will the run-offs be pushed to december is that can i'm just looking for because if that's the case then that needs to be a point made i think i think that was going to be something in the resolution that we're talking about today that would be specifically addressed and put into the resolution the letting them know that there's a grave concern with the november third date also because of the run-off we've got four candidates in one particular race and mayor yes sorry to interrupt we did have a draft resolution i believe as part of the backup um we're we'll fill in these dates that are provided by city council but we do have a whereas clause drafted that does touch upon the need for a potential run-off election and how um if that was needed and a run-off election would fall sometime likely between thanksgiving and christmas 2020 okay speaking to the difficulty of administering that at that time council member melzer yeah um i have a question for the city attorney uh i had the impression from so exchanges we've had that the governor could only suspend laws or provisions of laws and could not write laws uh but based on your earlier and that's why you know because we've gone back and forth a little bit about mail and ballots that's why the impression that that was something that would have to be legislative action but based on some comments you made earlier i'm wondering if that's an actual restriction on his emergency powers or just a preference he's expressed the this is not being submitted as part of the governor's emergency powers under the emergency management statute which is what we had discussed earlier in our emergency meeting this is being submitted under a special provision in the election code that allows an event and such as a disaster to be able to make a request for a different date and so we're pursuing the election code and in there the governor does have the authority to approve that that's how we're proceeding in this matter so that's there's a difference it's not the same well my point is does he have the power to approve universal mail-in ballots no no he doesn't because mail-in ballots are specifically provided uh in another chapter of the election code and there's only certain individuals who are authorized to receive a mail-in ballot okay so we have to go through the legislature that that that's a point that part would but i would like to point out that there's now been two lawsuits that have been filed against the state of texas regarding the mail-in ballot issue so there may be a remedy there that may be settled as part of the litigation so but that would either there's a result of litigation or legislative change that's how that needs to be fixed okay okay yeah all right so it sounds like we have the mail-in ballot language in the the resolution as the draft resolution as whereas the dates seem to be this 19th and the 26th um sorry yes we do not currently have that language oh i thought you said you did we have it for the runoff election that's right i'm sorry challenges of holding a runoff election okay all right uh okay so we've got uh so we got to decide do we want that in this resolution or we're going to just let the lawsuits play themselves out and councilmember davis i just really i know they're related because we're talking about elections and making special provisions but i really see them as totally separate issues they're both issues of voter access but um we already have two pending lawsuits um that councilmember our mentor already mentioned city attorneys told us about the they come from two different sections of the election code we're asking the governor to do something under one section mail-in ballots would be a change under another section or uh uh if the lawsuits were successful a different interpretation of of a different section and who who that applies to so i'd rather keep it clean and make our request very simple like i said earlier i'm not terribly optimistic i think we start throwing in extra stuff and extra asks uh our chances of success are that much slimmer okay all right okay any other questions comments staff do you have sufficient uh direction yes we do okay all right thank you okay i believe uh those are all the work session items that we have uh it is 6 37 we're going to take a five minute break to sort of get uh things reoriented so we'll come back at 642 to start the regular council meeting regularly scheduled for 6 30 welcome everybody to this meeting of the denton city council on april the 7th 2020 the time is 6 45 we do have a quorum so i'll call this meeting to order we're moving through our normally regularly scheduled at 6 30 council meeting our first item on the agenda this presentation or comments from members of the public do we have any presentation or comments from members of the public at least on agenda item one which is scheduled citizens reports or open mic reports and i see none we'll move on to the consent agenda council member armator just a question about that um and i know this has been we've been doing making up so much on the fly but i couldn't really find online a written process for how to do open mic and scheduled citizen report so i've just been telling people just call the city secretary or email the city secretary but it looks like that hasn't been happening so if they're i'm not sure if we would need to have a discussion later but if that's if if that's close enough to you know what's already up there if that could be tweaked okay all right if staff could make a note of that and to make sure that the procedures are clear for someone who wants obviously if you schedule a citizens report well then you will have to contact the city secretary to get on the agenda but let's make sure that those processes are are clear for those wishing to participate in that regard thank you council member armator consent agenda council member ryan move approval the consent agenda with the accession of item h okay council member davis second all right so we have a a motion and second for approval of the consent agenda items consent agenda item excuse me except for agenda item h which will be pulled for an item of individual consideration we'll take a voice vote on that council member ryan aye council member davis aye mayor protem aye okay yeah council member briggs aye council member armator aye council member melzer aye and mayor chris watts is an i so the motion carries unanimously as sort of a housekeeping measure i think when they put the agenda together we're going to need to to reverse the public hearings and the items for individual consideration because the agreements really need to be taken first because if the agreements don't pass then there's no reason for the zoning so we're going to do agenda item four items for individual consideration when we get to after we consider agenda item 2h and then we'll take up the public hearings after that and that that people have been calling in to give public comment have been they've shared with them that that that alteration and that change okay so we're going to take up agenda item h oh and also just for your information for the viewing public's information i probably may eat a little dinner while we're doing this so i may go off video but i'll still be there in audio i just didn't want to be eating on screen and nobody wants to be a participant in that so just to let you know if that's that's what happens i've not gone anywhere uh we'll still be good and i think that still complies with the texas open meetings act uh mr city attorney in that regard is that correct yes okay all right so we'll move on to agenda item uh 2h uh and i believe council member briggs is going to uh recuse herself is that correct yep okay she just left um or she turned off her her audio uh considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager to execute a funding agreement between the city and fair oaks of denton incorporated to provide home investment partnership program funds for public improvement of fair oak senior complex costs for the purchase and installation of 25 hvac units of the community village in denton authorizing expenditure funds not to exceed 105 338 dollars i don't believe we have a presentation on that there wasn't a presentation requested mayor protem move approval great program all right we have a motion council member ryan i'll second all right we have a second uh mayor protem how say you all right council member davis aye council member ryan aye council member armature aye council member melzer aye and mayor chris watts is an aye so the motion carries six to zero so here's where we will uh now take up the items for individual consideration which will start with agenda item uh for a uh considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the execution of an operating agreement with coal ranch improvement district number one of denton county texas relative to funding uh ownership maintenance and repair of public improvements just to alert the council in the public we do have a speaker wishing to speak on this so we will take public comment after we've had staff presentation and then any questions that council has of staff but before deliberation we'll hear the public comment before deliberation council member armature now when we're in the council chambers we can press a button to line up to make a motion can i uh press the button now you have the floor if you have a motion you want to make i would suggest make it now uh if not we're just going to go in the order of which people have requested to speak so that's i'm trying to do it the best way i can by hand vote so yeah great so um i want to hear the public comment no matter what but i want to make a motion uh to postpone until this there are emergency pandemic situation okay all right um there's a motion to postpone if we have to have that's that's a a motion of precedence so that's the motion that would be considered on the floor first so before we start any staff presentation and quite frankly before we hear the public comment we've got to uh we've got to decide on the motion to postpone so do we so sorry so um you would need to just we would need to decide on that now yes you made a motion and so i need a second if there is a second and then we'll take a vote if there is a second i'm sorry we can still have the public comment afterwards uh well if the motion to postpone passes uh that's not how we did it in the past if we moved it then we haven't had public comment if the motion to postpone passes which means this agenda item will not be heard okay well then in that case then i will withdraw my motion because what i was trying to say was i was trying to get in the queue to be the first to to make a motion after the public comment but i did want to hear the public comment so i'll withdraw my motion okay so okay thank you all right uh yes so we're ready for staff presentation good afternoon mayor members of the city council this is ethan cox director of public works uh this presentation that you're going to be seeing this evening uh probably looks awfully familiar as a matter of fact i think i forgot to change the date on the bottom left hand corner but this is really just a summary of several of the work sessions that we've had on this topic over the last several months uh today's presentation i'll be handling the majority of it but i am going to hand it off to david gains our director of finance in just a moment to go over the fiscal analysis ethan if i could interrupt you just for a moment um it looks like the caption on these other than the party involved uh are we going to just have a presentation on these each one after the other or were you going is your presentation going to be pretty much a a presentation on all of them and then we vote separately how have y'all planned on doing this yes that's a good question let me clarify that so the the presentation that david and i will be giving is really for items 4a through 4f there's also an item 4e that's for the conservation easement related to pilot knob for hillwood so for that i believe gary pack and our director of parks and recreation will be doing a separate presentation for just that item but this presentation will be for 4a through 4f so so then let me go ahead and call all these items okay and then you can make your presentation and then we'll go into an item 4e and then also then uh we'll have if there's any questions we'll take those but then before we go into deliberation on any of these items or obviously for a vote or a motion we'll go ahead and uh you know recognize those wishing to speak so just there's no sense and if it's going to be a corporate presentation then we'll just go ahead and call the items and then we'll we'll take the public comment and then vote on them separately or have discussion on them separately all right so um let me call these right quick agenda item 4b consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the execution of a project agreement with slf to coal properties relative to funding ownership maintenance and repair of public improvements serving properties located within the coal ranch improvements improvement district number one of denton county uh 4c is consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton texas consenting to the creation of coal ranch improvement district number one of denton county and the inclusion of land therein 4a is considered adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the execution of an operating agreement with hunter ranch improvement district number one of denton county relative texas excuse me relative to the funding ownership maintenance and repair of public improvement serving property located with the hunter within the hunter ranch improvement district number one agenda item 4e is consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the execution of a project agreement with petrus investment lp relative to funding ownership maintenance and repair of public improvement serving property located within the hunter ranch improvement district number one and then agenda item 4f is consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton consulting consenting to the creation of hunter ranch improvement district number one of denton county texas and the inclusion thereof and then so you said g is the one that will be the park park one is that correct that is correct mayor we'll just go ahead and wait and we'll do g separately since it's at the end and it's it's somewhat separate but we'll go ahead and just wait to call on g okay you may begin your presentation thank you again mayor so again ethan cox director of public works for the city of denton i mentioned that david gains our director of finance will be presenting portion of this presentation also we do have some staff on the line when we do get into questions and answers that we we can dial up if need be as well we have brian carlock of hillwood and oc vest of stratford land they're also on the line along with some consultants so if there are questions at the end of the presentation for the developers they are certainly available to field those so getting into the presentation just as a reminder to council the the property and the developments that we're discussing are hunter and coal ranch it's approximately combined 6,400 acre master plan community on the southwest side of denton we have some figures here for the number of single-family homes multifamily units as well as commercial and industrial acreage is being considered as you all recall that the creation of a municipal management district was approved by the state enabling legislation legislation on june 24th of 2019 and two of the items that you have before you are consent resolutions that are required for the respective developers to be activated in order for the municipal management district not to sunset on december 31st 2020 okay at this time i'm going to give you just a heads up that we did have four different studies performed for these developments in addition to staff analysis david gains is going to walk you through a highlight of the fiscal analysis in just a moment and then i'll return to walk you through the roadways the water and wastewater analysis as well as the facilities analysis that was performed so at this time i'm going to ask david gains to take the microphone and walk you through the fiscal analysis david gains director of finance and as ethan mentioned i will walk through the fiscal analysis obviously similar to the conversation we had during the the work session previously so the goal of the fiscal analysis was to look at the development over a four over the 40 year uh time over a 40 year time frame and look at the impact to the city's finances throughout the multiple funds in the city what what is the the impact to the city both on the expense and revenue side and does it make fiscal sense for the city itself so you can see a high level summary before you on this slide showing that impact to our major funds from general government funds to our four utility to the four utility funds you see there in total we're showing eight hundred and sixty seven million dollar positive impact when we take revenues and expenses into consideration obviously it's important to point out as we look at that those will be individual decisions each year on whether a surplus goes comes to the city how we spend any any surplus that we have or how they appropriately reduce rates or property taxes one of the considerations that we have talked uh talked talked through and worked out with the developers was a contract tax so i'll talk a little bit about the what what brought that um what brought that that conversation up and and the the goal of a contract tax for the city we we looked at we tried to identify any risk that the city had obviously as we saw on the slide before at the very high level as with the developers assumptions both on values and growth see that significantly positive impact to the city but there are some opportunities for risk to the city one of those was capital projects especially on the water wastewater and roadway side funds within those funds there's a possibility that we could put in a capital project that is intended to at least partially serve the development and then after we and rely on impact fees from the development and as that project goes in the ground we start paying debt service we have this fixed cost associated the development either stalls out or goes slower than anticipated and we don't bring in the impact fee revenues that we anticipated to pay the debt service for those projects so to mitigate that risk we implemented a contract tax which will be paid by the residents within the mmd be part of their property tax rate that will come to the city and go into a fund to be used on those projects and give us a diversification of funding sources for the projects that is a steady source of revenue that we can plan for as opposed to being reliant on the impact fees for those projects you can see them at a high level listed there 14 total projects six in water one in wastewater and seven for roadway so that was a very high level view of the fiscal analysis and i'll hand it back over to ethan so as i mentioned a moment ago one of the other studies that staff had commissioned was an evaluation of the roadway infrastructure and so as negotiations began with the developers one of the things that they had brought to the table is essentially a proposed roadway network so really the scope and the purpose of the roadway study was to verify the appropriateness of the proposed roadways and also understanding what is the developer's responsibility what is the city's responsibility it is worth noting that the analysis did not really factor in the neighborhood roadways this is really focused on what we would define as major infrastructure so as you can see depicted on this picture here we have principal arterials secondary arterials and collectors at the end of that analysis both staff and the developer as well as our consultants agreed the appropriateness of the network looked excellent in addition we also had uh excuse me the consultant divide up that infrastructure in between on-site roadway infrastructure which is going to be fully funded by the developers themselves that's depicted on the the picture that you see there to the right and the kind of orange shade and then we also had them break out the off-site roadway infrastructure which is the blue that you see on the bottom right hand corner for off-site roadway infrastructure there was basically some of those roadways that the development did have a disproportionate share of impact on there in terms of utilization and so the developer will be funding their proportionate share and as david mentioned that is kind of backstopped with both the the impact fees as well as that contract tax in the event of a development slowdown the water and wastewater analysis was very similar there were about 20 water and wastewater projects that are the responsibility for the developer in some instances those do extend beyond the boundaries of the on-site development just so that the developer can tie into existing infrastructure there are also 14 off-site city projects again the developer is responsible for paying their proportionate share through impact fees and with the contract tax and we do have a little bit of detail down here in terms of just those types of projects that would be needed to provide water and wastewater services to this development i do not have a slide on the facility study i'm going to hit that in a later slide however those consultants did recommend that with the size and the scope of this development they did recommend having satellite facilities in close proximity to hunter and cole ranch most notably a service center annex for which the developers have provided some funding as well as some land donations to to accomplish in terms of the the agreements and the parties i would like to just kind of revisit that so you kind of have an understanding of how all this works together so there's essentially three parties at play here obviously the city of denton we also have the developers which are hillwood stratford and then we also have the districts themselves or the mnds for hunter and cole ranch so between the city and the developer we are going to be considering a project agreement this evening that is for just those developer obligations and so when we talk about land donations or conveyances funding mechanisms things like that you'll find those in the project agreement when we're talking about the district however there's there's two different items that you have in front of you this evening one is the consent resolution consenting to the formation or the activation of the mnds and then there's also an operating agreement between the district and the city of denton that outlines the district's obligations for maintenance as well as some other items one of the interesting things about mnds it's a little bit different than maybe some other districts is the ability for the developer to front cost to the district with the development of this size you do have some some rather large infrastructure i'll show you that in a slide in a moment but essentially the the nuts and bolts of this agreement is that the developer will front the money for those infrastructure and improvements and then the district will have the ability to not only levy taxes but also issue bonds to reimburse the developer and so that is accomplished through that reimbursement agreement the last thing that's not in in front of you today but do you want to make a point of it is each of these districts both hunter and cole ranch have the ability to subdivide into four other districts and each of those subdivided districts then becomes a party to the operating and consent resolution via the joinder agreement so that's essentially the the framework from which all of the agreements are working on this slide really what i want to show you is just the improvement projects that are really tied together in those agreements just kind of reading left to right here these are subdivided into off-site and on-site as we defined a little bit earlier you also have a few other things in here such as amenities like your park system the private amenities like your club houses and things of that nature there's also those land and funding conveyances that we talked about as well as maintenance and operation the district does have some mno costs tied up in the operation just to administer the mnds and then you also have additional costs related to all the projects up above such as developer interest and contingency and inflation i'm not sure if david mentioned it but all of the projections provided by tishler bias as well as these dollar amounts here are free of inflation and so there does need to be some contingency there so going left to right beyond project type you you do have your services broken out here you also have the total cost which is really a combination of the next two columns which are the major infrastructure that the city is putting into the ground as well as the developer's major infrastructure it is worth noting on the the city of denton major infrastructure that is funded through that impact fee and contract tax as david mentioned the goal there is to make sure that this development is self-supporting the next column over is developer major infrastructure you can see out of the 1.5 billion of develop of cost most of that is borne by the developer and then the developer does have the ability as i mentioned earlier to seek reimbursement through the mnd that being said there are provisions within the project agreement that limits each developer to a max of 350 million dollars in reimbursement so basically those two aggregated together gets you that 700 million dollars there in the bottom right hand corner if the developer incurs costs less than 700 million they are only able to seek reimbursement for the actual costs that are incurred and obviously if they go over that 700 million the the limit for reimbursement is strictly at 700 million dollars i'm going to go through these fairly quickly because again these are repeats or refresher on what we've already discussed in the operating agreement a few provisions that are worth noting regarding bond issuance and reimbursement we've talked about the reimbursement cap similar to that because there is some cost for issuing bonds the cap for that is a little bit more at 395 million per developer in terms of bond issuance that the districts are restricted that the bonds may not issued may not exceed 10 of the assessed value of the district at that time and then lastly they can only seek reimbursement for projects that are 95 complete in terms of construction and so the reimbursements are not eligible to be claimed until that stage of the project in terms of tax rates and assessments there are two different terms in the operating agreement that i want to point out the first one is the benchmark tax rate that is the total district ad valorem tax rate of 49 cents per 100 dollars of assessed value what that consists of is the the tax rate necessary to meet the annual debt service requirements of those bonds as well as the mno tax necessary to maintain and operate the districts as david mentioned the contract tax is six cents per 100 dollars in assessed value and that is really just that diversified revenue stream to offset the city's exposure should an economic downturn occur after we put assets into the ground switching over to the project agreement there are a few things that the development has willingly put in there for being held as an obligation first one of those is building material standards if you'll recall the state did restrict the local powers on that so the both districts have agreed to adhere to material standards by those private restrictions contained in the project agreement i believe council brought up concerns about single-family detached in close proximity to some of those tax dot roadways that go through the development so they do have some restrictions there to ensure that doesn't happen and then the last two bullet points they have agreed to increase tree preservation as well as increasing landscaping requirements and actually taking some of that responsibility on so that parks and recreation does not have that operating expense in terms of the major roadways we have agreed with the developer to construct those roadways particularly those impacted by the construction taking place in the development to a more sturdy build it's basically a tax dot spec that will prevent premature deterioration and premature maintenance on those roadways during the life of the project during our work session items there was quite a bit of discussion about e.s.a. preservations there are a number of e.s.a.s and upland habitats contained within the two developments you'll see those depicted on the picture there to your right and then in the table we have these broken down into upland habitat a b c and d the one that drew the most conversation was was pilot knob gary pack and director of parks will be talking about the conservationism in just a moment but essentially what the the developers have agreed to do is to maintain the 2008 mpc preservation standards in aggregate that's 58 preservation more than the 30 or 50 percent that's required but you can see by those upland areas kind of how those are broken out for pilot knob we talked about a conservation easement that's essentially going to happen in two steps the first step is preservation of the knob itself which will be considered by council on agenda item g the second step will be taken up whenever the first platting occurs that conservation secondary conservation easement around the knob will need to be in hand by that point last thing that we have on the project agreement is just kind of a a summary of all the land and capital contributions that the developers have agreed to in terms of land conveyance there's approximately 145 acres under consideration there city parks comprise the large majority of that but you also have some opportunities there with dme substations and water storage tanks as well as two fire departments one for each district in terms of capital contributions there's five million dollars from each developer going into funding the construction or upgrade of police and fire facilities to serve the district there is also an upfront conveyance of capital for the water treatment plant design that will kick in once the city hires the consulting firm to design that plant and you also have the lane or the funding conveyance for the service center annex a solid waste transfer station as well as water and wastewater sites for booster pump and lift stations you'll notice a few asterisks on these figures here those with a single asterisk indicate that the developer that is a reimbursable expense through the mmd pending approval by tceq and as it relates to wastewater the water treatment plant design that is reimbursable through impact fees the last thing that we have here is both developers have agreed to contribute 1.5 million dollars each to the city's affordable housing fund last slide i have is just a summary of the parks facilities i do know that during our work sessions quite a bit of discussion was centered around you know what what are those facilities will be open to the public so as you can see on this table here we have two city parks neighborhood parks dog parks pocket parks trails and lakes as well as the upland habitat and pilot knob all of those will be open to the public two of those will be owned by the city but the district will be responsible for maintenance for all of those facilities the only amenity that will be restricted to private access is the amenity centers it's my understanding that there's one of those each for each of the districts so i know that's a lot of information but i think it was a lot of stuff that you've seen and heard before at this time we're happy to entertain any questions that council might have council member davis thank you mayor i'm gonna i have a number of questions but i'm trying to limit it to one at a time because i know some of my colleagues have additional questions so if we could all do that i'll move pretty quick i think my first question is when we're talking about the project and operating agreements i know staff has been really hard at work negotiating these things back and forth and getting a lot of council feedback as opposed to the zoning situation where we've got you know remedies by ordinance of zoning if the zoning ordinances is not complied with what is the city's remedy if you know the developer or the district is in one of these agreements with us project or operating agreement and something doesn't happen the way that we negotiated it for whatever reason something is not complied with what is the city's remedy regarding that question jesse i'll take the first stab at it and then i may call in legal just to kind of provide some additional context but there there are default provisions within both the project and operating agreements it really depends on the type of default that we're talking about one area that we negotiated during the agreement was a default of the developer there may be an opportunity for us to have multiple developers out there working in the district at any given time in the event of default the developer does have provisions in that they need to show that they're taking steps to cure and in the event that they are not taking those steps there are ramifications and so it looks like mac ryan one the assistant city attorney is here to provide some additional context so if it's okay i'll hand it off to mac yeah good evening mayor and council this is mac ryan one with city attorney's office i think ethan handled it pretty well i think in addition i'll just give you specifics in section 718 of the operating agreements as well as 11.5 and 11.6 of the project agreements the city has after we've given them an opportunity to cure if they are still in breach we have the opportunity to bring any type of action under law or equity including specific performance mandamus and injunctive relief that said there is no option for the city if there is a default to terminate the agreement so it would just be a matter of seeking specific performance to make the developers comply and bring their projects into compliance council member davis sure so um just make sure i'm hearing that correctly we we'd essentially be suing to enforce the existing contract there's not a um there's not any kind of specified or liquidated um remedy within the project or or operating agreements we'd be uh we'd be seeking probably injunctive relief first and then some other kind of relief to enforce the existing agreements am i hearing that correctly that is correct that's in addition to just under other options allowed under the agreements for example um if they're not in compliance we as a city can prevent them from issuing further debt and bonds there's other options like that we can exercise but if it came down to just uh curing a breach yes we would have to take action in in court or in equity to allow that to bring them into compliance by specific specific performance thank you okay council member davis you want to go ahead and ask your additional questions sure i can do that now or i can i can wait and no i haven't seen a lot of people uh weighing in to questions so go ahead yeah i think they're they're pretty quick um ethan you mentioned the higher roadway standard and you kind of summarize that as text dot standard can can you put it in lay terms for us you know what does that mean as far as uh how often we have to replace roads or what we would expect and and why that's of benefit to the city to have a different roadway standard out there i will give you the layman's terms because that's that's pretty much my understanding but i believe our deputy city engineer is is on the line as well so uh essentially the spec that we're talking about is text dot super pave spec um it's the type of roadway that you drive on that has heavy uh traffic with large trucks things of that nature and so uh in discussing this with both the city engineer and the deputy city engineer it really comes down to uh eliminating the need for maintenance while construction is going on during the life of the project uh outside of that uh pre-tem dashmook our assistant director of capital projects pre-tem are you on the line do you want to provide some additional color to that yes uh this is pre-tem dashmook uh deputy city engineer um ethan started the conversation yes it is a ticker section there are two sections essentially in a pavement the base uh is a the base layer was typically 12 inches thick and then you have actual pavement which is around 12 inches for some of these arterials what we're essentially doing is going for a super pave which is much more thicker pavement structure so the bottom would most likely be 18 to 20 inches and the top surface itself would be 12 to 18 inches uh does that make sense as far as the actual pickings that makes it much more bulkier to withstand some of the truck traffic during construction yeah that that makes good sense uh do you have any any guidance you can give us on on replacement life or or the the use life of those roads when they're built to the different standard i can get that statistics i don't have it on top of my head okay uh we've got a i believe council member armature and briggs do you have any more questions council member davis um it's a very high level question i'm happy to wait to hear some from some other folks all right you bet okay council member armature uh yeah for it's for uh pre-tem uh about about the impact fees uh can you speak to what kind of impact fees they'll that they will be be paying if it's uh if it's light industrial uh and if so can you remind or regardless of what what level of impact fees they're they're paying if you could remind us of what the changes are on on that level of impact fees currently uh we are not proposing any changes in the impact fees whatever was adopted back in 2015 is still viable uh we are moving forward with the mobility plan update which will be followed by the roadway impact fee update so that will come back to the council uh as a later discussion to look at the impact fees well and thank you for for reminding me of that on letting the public know that so this should be under the 215 impact fees it falls under what category of impact fees so 2015 adapted the roadway impact fees for a slew of um land uses including light industrial industrial single-family housing and it has a specific rate and a calculator that goes with the amount of land use and the type of land use yeah so and and we have when we had a presentation on that last when that came to council last is my understanding that that those were uh currently kind of out of date and that people were being under charge for the for the impact in in those higher categories of impact pretend i can answer that yeah we have not updated the impact fees at this point what we've agreed with all the building permit fees all the impact fees is the developer will pay their fair share of whatever the impact fee is at the time that they pull permits so that's been an issue with other subdivisions where we kind of frozen um standards fees that sort of thing based on when they came in this development is going to be paying those fees that are current at the time that they actually pull permits so it's going to be up to the council to decide how much the impact fees ultimately they want to pay for these major roadway projects right now our impact fees cover about 15 to 20 percent of any residential development so that's more of a broader policy discussion for the city as a whole yeah so and thank you and i understand that and thank you for reminding me of that 15 to 20 percent so i'm obviously concerned about the impact that that taxpayers will be paying for that but thank you okay council member bricks so my question i think jesse kind of covered it but i had a few follow-up questions on the on the roadways because of the standards for all my question was what does that mean you kind of explain that but is that for all the roads because we heard in the presentation that um that's not necessarily focused on neighborhood roadways uh and so i i'm trying to understand does the the higher standards does that fall on every road within the um what that's built within the agreement um as i understand it and ethan correct me if i'm uh wrong but most of the arterial roadways will be conducted uh using the super paved standard the reason being these arterials will be the main access road to these subdivisions while the subdivision itself the residential roadways will be city of stanton standard and that's that's correct and and just to kind of go one further on that the neighborhood roadways as my understanding will be constructed with concrete and it does meet or exceed the the current spec that we have but did but did i hear that um the inflation wasn't built in uh to this analysis well the the roadway analysis there are some dollar amounts in there those do not have inflation built in um and so and that and that basically carries across every analysis that was performed rate as well as inflation were not factored in okay and so for that i mean as well so we have to worry about the the maintenance on the neighborhood roadways even though they're built to a better standard and then the roadway impact fees since that was the roadway impact fees were listed in the agreement but you're saying that what they were listed as in the fiscal analysis um isn't really valid because that changes when the permits are pulled i don't think we said that they weren't valid i think sorry yeah i think yeah i think what we said was that they've agreed to wherever the city council sets the impact fees what those rates are at the time they pull building permits will be what they're charged so it's really going to be a policy decision it's not just for coal hunter ranch is for the city of dent as a whole how how do you want to calculate how those impact fees are are devised and so whatever they are the developer will pay in addition there's been there's been roadways external to the subdivision that serve the subdivision that we've identified that are calculated in the contract tax as well so there's an extra layer of security there that if there's not adequate impact fees to upgrade any of those roads the contract tax will be pulled and utilized if necessary to to construct those roads but this this development is exactly you know so that's how it'll be handled but it's really the same as any other residential development in dentin you know no no purely residential subdivision in the city of dentin or really in any city generates enough property taxes to fund future capital replacement which is why dentin has historically relied on bond programs throughout the city to upgrade those roads so it's really not being treated any differently with the exception that they're bringing a much higher standard to their base roads which should in theory have them last quite a bit longer than we're used to right i just wanted to make sure because those road the impact fees were mentioned in the agreement that i thought we just saw that we weren't being held to that if if they changed down the road and i think you you answered that um i have a couple of other high level questions i can wait on but i just want to make sure on the esa did i see that it was 58 percent that was being preserved of the hundred percent of the esa of both colin hunter so backing up to that slide there were really a couple of different options that the council considered during the the work sessions i believe that the 2019 was basically just taking a flat percentage across each of those areas and i think during the council discussions a lot of the focus was really on on pilot knob and preserving those upland habitats and so the developer did revert back to the 2008 mpc which increases the preservation up to 58 but it's not equal across each of these esas pilot knob as well as esa area b which i believe is right here those are preserved at a higher level whereas uh upland habitat a which is right here is preserved at 41 so that's really the only esa area that is not at least 50 most of those exceed those by several percentage points okay um thank you and just the last last question so december 31st 2020 is the sunset date and so does that just mean that the agreement has to be approved by by then uh it's not necessarily the agreement it's the consent resolution that activates the mnds that would sunset and so my understanding and i'll just kind of make eye contact with legal is if that does occur then essentially they would need to lobby the state once again to uh reenact uh that that authorization and then council would need to reconsider a consent resolution after that date okay but this december 31st 2020 is it gives enough that's the time that we're allowed to continue to work on it without having to go back and start the process over you are correct okay thank you okay if we could have the presentation uh pulled down momentarily yes sir thank you okay any other question council member davis she said you had a high level question yeah and this is mainly because i'm pretty sure i know the answer but it's mainly because i'm getting questions about it out in the public um you know what one of the things i've said from the the beginning of us considering this and even before i was on the council was it's not about do they get to build uh large residential subdivisions out there it's how do they get to build them so um and we've also had the mpc agreement come through unanimously from pnz am i understanding the dynamic correctly here that some of these major concessions that we got in the mpc i mean everything from gas wells down to road standards and then some of the major concessions that we got in the uh operating agreement and program agreement excuse me project agreement that those things go hand in hand that if if the districts are not created to to do this financial arrangement that the developers are asking for that we don't get the concessions that we asked for in the mpc and in the operating agreement yes that's correct thank you okay any other question mayor pro tem got it well i have a question generally for staff once when we met on this and discussed it i was asking staff to create something that made it more punitive to not call in for dick test was that ever uh solidified i know i talked to staff separately as well but trying to see where we are on that topic that was not something that was able to get negotiated in primarily because we believe that the construction the big tests are going to be self-controlling out there you've got green space essentially so there's not the infrastructure worries that we would have such as in the inner city of dentin where you've got old utilities inaccurate maps that sort of thing out there there's probably uh most likely no real risk to that happening with buried forgotten about infrastructure um in the there's really not an enforcement mechanism outside of what we currently deal with right now and if you don't work your way through the jewelry locates okay yeah no and i and i agree currently i just again i i take your point uh but as we go forward i think that's my concern so what i think it's forward looking and i don't know what that mechanism mechanism is to trigger that but to your point once that infrastructure is put in place uh there's to to have the mapping and kind of pinpoint accuracy we have technology wise in 2020 uh looking forward 2025 2026 there's no reason uh to have uh repair done and hit a line for me i mean and so i think forward looking uh doesn't have to be nailed down today but i'm going to continue to explore options to make that uh more punitive because this is a blank landscape and we are able to document to to the to such a degree that i think it it it warrants it to be more punitive going forward well i'd remind the council that cuts both ways um the city also hits uh utilities so basically the way that the utilities work uh we we hit a uh cable line yesterday and we've heard plenty about that you know and the way that works is human error is going to get in the way sometimes maps are inaccurate um you know and the utilities generally work it out with each other and try to use that professional courtesy as possible if we have a uh subcontractor that is tending to do that quite often we will actually go right to the franchise utility and ask them to be pulled or or deal with on that in that vein but we all sort of work with a gentleman's handshake um knowing that note that there's imperfections in every system okay all right any other questions for staff all right we'll go ahead and move to public comment on this agenda item 4a we had five people make comments using our online form there were zero in support of this item five against all these comment forms were emailed to the entire city council additionally there was one person who called in to register the position and they were against we have one i think we've got two people four four people wishing to speak on on this item the first one up will be jennifer lane she'll join us here in just a moment jennifer are you there yes sir okay if you uh if thank you for turning down the background noise okay uh let me get the timer set now uh my understanding is you signed up for each one of these uh agenda items is that correct yes okay so what we'll do is we'll we'll just take your time for this one uh and if there's any other speakers on this one we'll take it we'll vote on it we'll move down to the next one okay thank you all right uh hold on just a moment okay i'll start your time once you state your name and address yes hi jennifer lane um 1526 willowwood street denton texas um i want to i'm sorry that you had to go through all of this but it's probably worthwhile that it is on the record the proposal and the staff report um i wouldn't have minded if councilwoman armatuer had gone right ahead and suggested postponement but since there are a few of us a tiny handful of us that are contacting the city and one myself who's calling um i would like to thank you for presenting the item and for hearing us uh i think that the most the most important issue um regarding the timeline here is postponement and i would uh really strongly request that you postpone because does the public know that a development the size of flower mound the size of flower mound is being discussed and potentially uh voted on soon the answer is no virtually no one knows right at the moment the public is concerned with toilet paper acquisition unemployment filing mortgage relief ailing friends and relatives how to get groceries safely how to educate their kids and grieving the loss of opportunity if they're lucky enough to be grieving this to see friends and enjoy denton's culture those who are providing denton's culture are stressed beyond description i'd like to thank jesse davis for also pointing out that every time under the current uh way this is described that this this develop developer excuse me um uh would breach the arrangement with the city the city would have to file suit to deal with it that sounds dreadful um and i'm wondering what this project offers that can't wait further why does a public hearing i think it's fine that the council is discussing it a work session on it you know a public work session on it seems fine but a public hearing should wait until the public can share their thoughts anything this big that's pushed through this quickly at a time like this will surprise a lot of people like 130 000 or more people and this kind of pressure just doesn't smell right thank you very much for postponing from march 17th when i came to beg you to postpone council chamber was empty that night i sent photographs to the press to show this tonight how many have called they're written a tiny handful five have written and one caller and those five likely are notified because uh i noticed this item was on the agenda and contacted them please slow this down hear it later in the public hearing when the impact can be properly debated with full public engagement this could easily be a too good to be true scenario in terms of sustainability we have no idea what the final impact of covet 19 will be and how that might impact such a large development as council member keely griggs pointed out december 31st 2020 is the sunset on the current uh situation but it can be renewed there is a process whereby to renew how does this get built if it gets built do they get to be to build it questions have been raised in the community about all sorts of things that really need to be looked at all kinds of unanticipated consequences about whether a special taxation district for example has to follow city regulations such as the prohibition on the use of glyphosate etc so many things the gas calls all of it this really needs public input it needs a lot of public input it needs debate public debate not just a few people calling in and writing and not just the city council quickly pushing it through what would be the value of that thank you all right thank you all right our next speaker is mr kin gold mr gold are you there i am yes sir but you'll state this is uh your on public comment on this agenda item with the density council if you'll state your name and address your time will begin you have four minutes okay thank you thank you mayor my name is kin gold my address is 2512 natchez trace here in town i'll be very brief this is an experience for me as it is from you it's very strange not sure i really like it but i'll be very brief on this uh hunter coal development i just lump all the items together the uncertainty we're experiencing locally and internationally suggest this is not the time for long-term giant deals at this scale please postpone at least tonight is not the night thank you all right thank you kin you're welcome our next caller will be eric pruett he'll join us here mr prude are you there eric are you there okay not yet mr prude are you there yes all right thank you for joining us you're on public comment for this agenda item with the density council once you state your name and address we'll begin your time and you'll have four minutes thank you this is eric pruett 21 and 11 westwood drive let me be clear i'm not against development if anything i want developers to make more money i want development to sustain the necessary infrastructure and services in perpetuity including life cycle replacement when we plot a home we are committing to not abandon that family we implicitly promise to reconstruct their road when it reaches end of life we owe it to them and our existing taxpayers to ensure we can afford that so we do not make false promises or have to raise taxes in the future here is what we know the fiscal analysis does not include replacement costs it only considers the first 40 years the projected private valuation is 5.85 billion dollars the infrastructure costs are roughly 1.35 billion dollars after adding local infrastructure which was not included in the analysis therefore the private to public investment ratio is roughly 4.3 to 1 another dfw suburb fate texas uses this private to public investment ratio metric to evaluate development applications below their target of 20 to 1 they state the following to their planning and zoning commission and city council this development is fiscally is not fiscally sustainable and will degrade the financial condition of the city in its second lifestyle life cycle reinvestment is not a choice if it is to remain viable should utility and general fund fund allocations not be made the infrastructure will degrade and likely cause a corresponding degradation in property and cultural values i have heard it said that as long as the assessed value of homes in this development is higher than the average intent it should be a net positive impact for this to be true two assumptions must be made all housing units in the city cost about the same in public funds to serve and the average house in the city today generates enough tax revenue to pay for all of its public costs if those are not true what we're saying it seems is our fiscal ship is sinking we have many two inch holes and water is pouring in we are trying to save our ship by drilling a lot more smaller one inch holes does that make sense development can be made fiscally sustainable the recent maple leaf town homes addition had a private to public investment ratio it seems of over 100 to one for relatively affordable humble town homes what could we do to make hunter coal more sustainable reduce the width and length of roads necessary make the streets private probabilities sustained by the development instead of by the city tax dollars increase the amount of private development value to maximize the use of the planned infrastructure plan key high value walkable places and zone them with the mixed use downtown designation ensure parcels can adapt and intensify as time goes on remember this will be going for many decades the current agreement would do none of those even after build out a major amendment would be required to allow gradual incremental growth past the arbitrary limits set on number of units in floor space the long-term fiscal stability of this development is questionable it seems to me we're likely entering a recession and we are contractually obligating the developer to keep the development static so that it may not be able to pay for all the costs public costs it will incur we can do better than this if you demand it when i came before you last summer at the tax rate hearing i said that it is policy decisions that determine our future tax rates through the promises we make this is a big one a desire for low taxes necessitates a desire for development with a higher private to public investment ratio than this development provides thank you uh thank you mr pruett thank you uh council member briggs erik you still there yes i am okay council member brings you have a question real quick yeah just if you could clarify the um the current by his estimate public private ratio this development has and then the one that's recommended uh yes so i computed that at 4.3 to 1 approximately that was assuming a 200 million dollar uh local street uh cost and uh what fate texas uses is a benchmark of 20 to 1 okay all right go ahead did you is it fate f-a-t-e yes it's a it's a suburb out east of dallas f-a-t-e that's correct thank you okay all right anybody else okay um all right i don't see that we have any more callers on this agenda item um so uh council member armater yeah i want to make my motion to postpone okay all right is there a second on that motion to postpone council member briggs i will i will second all right okay we have a motion to postpone mr city attorney do we need a date certain or an event certain or what do we need to do there either one okay council member armater yeah i would like to postpone to a date certain and that is the end of the uh extended emergency uh covid 19 emergency meaning not to the end of this april 30th but assuming it will go on okay all right council member briggs do you concur with that yeah when the declarations are over yes okay all right uh so we'll take the vote council member armater yeah so i'll just say i'll say first my primary reason why uh is because of the cost the cost issue and not knowing what the cost for this uh this current pandemic is going to be so i i think that it is for the cost primarily uh that we should hold off on this and i'll say just to be clear that even though i've been pretty open about being opposed to the idea of a private taxing district to begin with um my my reason for wanting to postpone are the same reason why i have also i have voted no since the pandemic began to some other items that i might have voted yes to under other circumstances okay all right thank you uh we're going to start the polling with you council member armater how do you say on the post moment uh motion postpone council member briggs yes council member melzer i think the pandemic uh issue weighs very heavily on uh the deliberation but uh you know i don't see that i don't see that that we can't uh do that deliberation now and the public does have the ability to uh to participate so i i'm a no on postponing mayor protem well i wanted discussion on on so between this so a motion second but i want a discussion on this to give staff or the applicant an opportunity to speak to that ratio that was cited well uh mayor city attorney would you like to weigh in on this because right now we're deliberating on the motion to postpone so help me understand how we place parameters around the topics of discussion for the motion to postpone motion postpone is simply based on the reasoning that was put forward by the movement which was to basically solely postpone this base for these reasons any discussion related to that motion to postpone focuses on that not on any other issues that may have come up during the presentation so the the reasons were given were the the uh the pandemic and um some general discussion of opposition but is primarily to get past this this time period okay and so then orient me the i thought the initial motion was to a date certain no it was to an event certain an event certain okay now i'm tracking with you yeah then no okay uh council member davis no council member ryan no uh and the mayor is a no so the motion to postpone fails uh two to five okay now we can uh discussion on the uh substantive uh discussion mayor pro tem yes uh so i thank you i i would like to hear from either the applicant or staff regarding the ratio and future cost i've had my own private conversation but i want to hear uh their response today or whether it's just one moment david gains is coming to the microphone david gains director of finance um in in regards to the ratio i i'll have just i'll spend some time looking into more detail on how um mr prerick calculated that ratio and what what kind of the background of that is so could definitely follow up uh specifically with the ratio um in regards to kind of the more overarching piece of what is the cost past the 40 years past the the length of the um the analysis that we did um you know i would say obviously past that 40 years we would fund any maintenance in the way that we do now um through property taxes through um other means either in the debt service or the operations side you know there's always the opportunity as well if if there is a concern with maintenance to set a policy to set up a maintenance fund to say we're gonna transfer a certain percentage of property tax revenue or a certain percentage of sales tax revenue to a maintenance fund so that's always a possibility for council we could definitely bring a policy like that back to council for consideration um as we move forward uh but i just don't have any more specifics pertaining to exactly what the maintenance would be in year 41 through through 80 or so of this development so if if we could uh because we'd be going for about an hour and a half almost could we could council member or mayor pro tem could you hold your next question let's take about a uh six minute break at 751 we'll come back at about 757 758 all right thank you welcome back to this meeting of the didn't city council on april the 7th 2020 is 8 0 3 p.m we are on agenda item uh 4a discussion we've had our public comment i believe mayor pro tem uh you had the floor at the time of the break so the floor is back to you no i'm good that they answered my question thank you okay all right any other questions council member briggs i have a few questions so on the um the contract tax we heard at the beginning that that's um for an economic downturn did did we plan that um for it to start out in that way in an economic downturn but you're you're you're muted todd it's essentially an insurance policy for the city budget so it doesn't matter when the recession would occur what we had initially planned that there would be at least a couple of recessions during the term of this development and that fund would build up the dollars necessary to pay any debt service that was necessary to service the development with those 14 one of those 14 projects when they became necessary so if the impact fees didn't cover it there weren't wasn't enough building to cover the debt service the contract tax would so from the city's perspective it's basically held harmless may i have a few more sure yeah just go ahead and finish all your questions yeah so what you're saying is because a big big concern for me is um where we are today and not knowing where we will be when this ends financially in the city and just in the nation honestly um so what you're saying is that your fiscal analysis and everything done with this agreement and development is at ease that all of that has been built into this i have no concerns um we were not even intending on them building in a strong economy for at least four years out so it's going to be several years before those major projects would be triggered from the time that they started building that have been identified and backed up by the contract tax so i really don't feel any different today regarding where we are versus down the road eventually their their construction is going to either generate enough impact fees to fund those projects or the contract tax will but the city taxpayers will not be on the hook well i mean is there any amplified risk to the developers it's completely their call when they decide to build um and remember as as they start creating enough um density that starts driving some of those larger projects so they completely drive the majority of those 14 projects we're not driving that cip at all yeah and i know i'm just i'm thinking about to razor ranch and when that happened in our community last time the last recession and i know this is a different project and it's you know it's a different time but i mean it could be um a lot worse um financially for a lot of people um so is there anything that we can reference to learn in terms of um highlighting or mitigating some risk in this project as it looks at a challenging time um on down the road in the future i think we have uh we have taken lessons learned from the ropes and ranch projects we've taken lessons learned from razor ranch there is no subsidies in this development at all and this development is completely self they are constructing the infrastructure they're they're paying through the taxes um and being reimbursed for the developments this is completely different from razor ranch where there's 380 agreements out there reimbursements from the city coffers this is completely allowing them to reimburse themselves so completely different situation much more insulated from risk than than any than razor ranch okay i'm still concerned about the public private ratio and i know that um mayor pro tem hudspeth said he had private conversations but i didn't have those private conversations so i don't know what the answers are on that um my last question mayor is in the in the presentation we saw the land conveyance and i know that it's part of our obligation the city to build those municipal um facilities and i think i saw that they had 11 million dollars to go into that to help out but we're building a build one one facility now that's over 11 million dollars and i think i counted at least five to start with that we're supposed to build out there how um how do we make sure that we do that the city will have the land donated uh to for each of those sites there are some contributions towards the police of first fire station and police substation expansions those are the most immediate needs so they're covering that and then future revenues will if we need to put a transfer station out there or other public works facilities we're going to have to build those facilities you're talking about an enormous net impact to the tax base though to help provide those fees down the road and the caller made an interesting thing i just want to clarify because i don't think there's a understanding of municipal finance with these ratios i know people are kind of holding on to those that is not how there is not a residential subdivision built that stands on its own zero and the point the point with this particular development it's just the fact their eav is going to be so much higher than the rest of the city what will happen is unless the city sequesters their tax revenue as if it was a tiff district deters it's going to end up benefiting and lowering the tax burden and allowing capital projects and services outside of the taxing district one of the things that we're recommending to and we will be recommending to the council if this gets approved is to start sequestering at least a portion of the property taxes from day one when they start pulling building permits and we start getting eav in and treating it as if it is a tiff district to start planning for those capital projects we can't you know the only weakness in that system is it's going to be very easy for a future council to change that policy it you know if it starts aggregating too much money and using it to offset the city tax rates but it is possible to do that there is no other development in the city where we've got that ability to do to to take that approach right but just last comment is that the the tax burden is going to fall on the people who buy the homes out there i mean that is right i mean it's falling on someone you're absolutely correct and that is the crux of this whole decision well i feel like we've done as good of a job as we possibly could have and in in terms of indemnifying the city coffers itself folks that go out they're going to have to have their eyes wide open because there is another layer of a taxing district on it and they're going to have to weigh that choice is this a special enough place is it going to one of my property values be protected enough and potentially grow enough to buy out here and pay that extra tax but you are exactly right that is a decision they're going to have to make i feel like we've tried to ensure that that we've protected the taxpayers based on lessons learned from some of these other subdivisions but that calculation and that that decision on whether to take that additional tax burden on is going to be the crux for anyone that buys out there okay i'm done mayor thank you okay council member davis it's kind of following on that conversation for a little bit of context the tax rates that we're talking about in conjunction with our current city and school district tax rates buying house out there today if it were there you'd be taxed about the same rate as if you bought a house in lantana or a little bit more than if you bought a house out in union park one of their other properties so it's one of those things that some some buyers are very sophisticated they they break down every dollar that they're spending on the house every bit of interest they're going to pay over time some not so much but there is a legal obligation and it's also in our agreements i believe but there's a legal obligation that they make known to those buyers what that they're in a special district and that they that they're what they're buying and you know some people are going to hard pass they don't want to pay the extra taxes they don't want to live anywhere near some of these amenities i don't live in an hoa i don't want to other people are going to look at it and it's going to be worth every penny to them so i think that part doesn't doesn't raise as much concern for me as it might for some other folks because i think the buyers are going to have a lot of information available to them okay councilmember armature yeah so it is to speak to that comment the information that they would be given upon buying would be what they're going to be taxed at the beginning but the the entity that controls their tax rate with their tax rate that's unique to this private taxing district is not anybody who the whole city is electing or special districts it is who it is this this private entity and for quite some time and i know it's going to change i know they have a big plan without getting too much into it but how their plan for representation a kind of a pseudo government within this district how that's going to work but it's still as i see it a kind of a taxation with that without representation so i'm concerned for that and the ability of their their taxes to increase without having the same kind of ability to vote out the people who are raising their taxes i know that they've got some electing power but it's it's different than what we have i was wondering about those impact fees um so uh can can you remind me mr howman you said uh about 10 15 to 20 percent is where their their impact fee level is set at from the 2015 that's the general rule of thumb for residential development is we're keeping about 15 cents on the dollar today yeah so and that for me i i define that as a burden to all of the taxpayers because we are going to be making up that extra cost so that's just that's how i see that and i'm i'm very concerned i already stated my previous concern but i wanted to make sure to mention the impact fee that to talk about that aspect of the taxes i i also am wondering about the affordable housing uh contribution uh that it and what exactly uh you know when would that materialize could that be pushed forward uh to materialize sooner rather than later and what exactly does that constitute who does that go to you know could some of that money be used for for rental assistance uh for for housing the for housing homeless i'm curious to know now about the details of that so let me let me step in here for a second i don't think we have those details on that that's not been something that uh i mean this council has heard this project and we've known about that for quite some time and for the first time that question to come up at this at this final hour i can understand why we don't have that information but we can certainly get you that information and i want to make it clear this council had a discussion on impact fees i don't know if council member davis was there or not this council had a discussion on impact fees and it was determined that we would leave them because the way they were because they have to be reviewed every five years and that five years is coming up i think in the next year to correct me mr city manager if i'm wrong and part of the argument uh for leaving them there was because there was such a large ask from staff for the residential for all the impact fees especially the residential impact fees because they do not carry their weight that there was sort of an outcry that well no that's going to that's going to hurt housing affordability so i just want to put that whole impact fee discussion into a context yes so let me let me respond to that so please make it very quickly thank you yes go ahead um so at the time uh i was uh in favor of raising impact fees on everything except individual uh well actually there were a number of different categories i won't go that in too much into detail but for new but for big new developments like this i wanted to take that out step apart from uh looking at impact fees on individual homes that are not fair enough the council as a body i'm just did not decide i know i know i understand but i'm just saying i'm being as far as me i'm being consistent in my feelings that nobody's accusing you of being inconsistent in my view i'm being consistent so you think i'm being no i said nobody is accusing you of being inconsistent i'm just simply saying for the context of the conversation i didn't say you were being inconsistent okay so sorry okay so sorry i didn't i didn't i misheard that uh but anyway i have i have consistently uh opposed keeping the impact fees at this low level for okay what other questions do you have about what other questions do you have about this so but about affordable housing the reason why i hadn't raised the issue before uh was because it was not immediately before us we were not in the middle of a big crisis and i was already against it against this this against having a private taxing uh district to begin with now that it looks like this might happen i think this might be a good time to get in there some language where we can really ensure that we can use this affordable housing we i think we will we will talk about that as a council i'm not we're not going to all of a sudden start renegotiating these terms mayor if i could if i could answer this very quickly if the council member armator the city manager has a comment council member armator the city council the city manager has a statement the way this will work is that each time there's a reimbursement um the bond issuance to the developers there will be a portion of that bond issue that goes into the public safety fund for the police and fire facilities and also into the affordable housing fund you have ample time to set up exactly how those funds are going to be used because there's not even going to be any money starting to get deposited until they start reimbursing themselves so you're likely going to be four or five years down the road before funds really start getting dropped into these these pots so it'll get filled up over probably a decade i would imagine and you're going to have you're going to have the ability to decide at that time where you want to spend it so it's not something that needed to be necessarily decided tonight you'll be able to put a policy in place well in advance of that well and thank you thank you for that and that is that answers my question about when this could be put to use so it turns out i'm glad to know that the terms are in there i i'm i'm disappointed that it but it i mean it makes sense that that's how it's going to be but it's disappointing to me at a time when we need uh affordable housing and rental assistance now more than ever that we won't be able to use it for a number of years out so i just want to make that clear to anyone who's listening who might think that this affordable housing contribution could be used to address our current crisis that's not going to be able to happen so thank you for answering that question for me about the timing okay anybody else council member ryan yeah i've got a question in regards to the order in which we are taking these because items c and f are for the creation of the districts and yet we are authorizing an a and d before we would take up a vote on creating creating the district we are authorizing the execution of an operating agreement with those districts which don't exist until after we vote on them uh in a later item mr city attorney yeah i've got mac ryan one who's coming up to answer that question okay your council it's a fair point all three of these do need to be approved under the legislation there has to be a consent resolution as well as a project agreement and operating agreement all approved um so it doesn't make tremendous amount of difference which order we take them in because all three will need to be done and that's why we brought them on the same evening um but if you wanted to technically take them in the order that the legislature lays out you could do the consent resolution first before the agreements but it's an all or nothing all three of them should be either approved or denied okay council member ryan that's fine with with me i just kind of questioned uh i i guess my preference would be to take up item c and then a and b and then f followed by d and e just so that we have actually okay consented to it okay all right so we're going to finish the discussion on this and then we'll go because they prevented a unified discussion on all a through f that was my understanding with staff presentation was a through f we don't have any other callers signed up to speak on these so we're once we wrap up the discussion on a we'll move into the voting on c and and so forth yep okay council member melzer first of all i have to agree with the sentiment that uh staff could not have done a better job of negotiating this and i and i agree that from a kind of hermetic point of view that the city is insulated uh but we're you know the world has changed in ways that we don't yet know and the developer doesn't yet know um and i you know it's a moment where we need to step back and say when your environment has changed that much is your strategy still right um a lot of this the whole premise here is based on the idea that they're going to be there's going to be demand for this high ev product plus a tax on top of it uh and that that you know that that becomes a net benefit to the city uh you know i think we're entering into potentially a very different economy i don't pretend to know exactly what will happen any more than anybody else knows but for sure uh i i i don't have a lot a lot of confidence in economic projections that were done before you know this very sharp change uh if i could say a little more about that so when i when i sit back and say is this good for debt and to enter into now to add something beside and housing the size of lewisville with the size of flower mountain at this time to add a huge stock of inventory that will be subsidized won't be subsidized by the city that'll be subsidized by the future occupants you know who would have to be willing to sort of pay this you know this extra tax rate yep yep um you know that all that property is going to be at a time when we may be in a contraction competing with all the other developers or local developers who are doing infill projects um you know and who have to cover their own uh you know their own infrastructure without that that extra uh tax component i i think if we took a step back we might say the thing that would that would help us in the future might be the industrial components you know having the ability to expand beyond the area around the airport that you know might provide some potential for economic growth but adding this massive amount of housing stock based on you know projections it feels it does feel a lot like the razor ranch moment to me so uh i'm i'm i move uh that we deny uh that we do not adopt the ordinance well um okay well we're not going to take a we're going to take uh c which these are all sort of together so if you're going to move to deny one you're probably going to move to deny or not going to vote on any of them so we're just going to go ahead and take up c so you make a motion to deny uh 4c yes okay council member armature i second that motion okay all right uh we'll go ahead and take a poll so this is a motion to deny agenda item 4c council member melzer i'll say you uh i vote i on the denial right yes yes means no right council member armature aye council member briggs uh yes okay council member davis nay is there going to be discussion on that motion uh on on the motion to deny right i imagine there there will be in a subsequent motion they'll probably get okay discussion council member ryan no mayor pro tem no uh and mayor watts is a no so the motion to deny fails three to four uh so we're uh i believe we've finished the discussion on 4a so we're basically going to go down through uh the the agenda items for voting we've already taken a motion to deny on 4c which failed uh this is the order in which we're taking them up for item 4c for a and 4b and then for f and then for d and for e council member davis i thought you wanted some discussion yeah the only thing i was going to add was that um i don't think council member melzer is wrong that we don't have a full grip on on what the current crisis is going to mean for us but kind of going back what the city manager said the the risk of things not being built out there are very different than the risk of things not being built at razor ranch where we had these these subsidies and these development agreements in place uh economic development agreements the risk out at this development is born and almost i mean completely by the developer if they don't build we don't have cost of service if they don't build rooftops we don't have to send police and fire if they don't build roads we don't have to maintain them at a future date and and frankly with all due respect to the the firm we hired to um at their expense by the way to do our fiscal analysis i think these developers have a better handle on how much money they're willing to spend and how much risk they're willing to take in this current economic climate than than we do and um to to kind of gain say how many houses we think they're going to be able to sell out there or build out there or um you know we're talking about a 40 year time period at in best case or worst case scenario they're talking about a 40 year build out um i i think the risk is borne by the developer i'm not as concerned about the impact of this current economic situation because it just it doesn't affect the calculus for us uh okay um let's have some brief comments because we we've had we've basically said we've taken our positions and we're going to start voting on these so council member briggs real quickly then council member armature well yeah my my question was well what happens if um it it doesn't get built out as quickly or there's two or three houses maybe 10 and that's it for a while what is the city's obligation in terms of um library uh any any kind of park facility i mean what what are we obligated to um okay before before you answer that mr city manager i mean colleagues i mean let's let's try to be realistic in our examples we're talking about a developer who 15 miles down the road has one of the largest developments industrial and residential probably in this area so they're not going to build just five and ten houses these are business people that have been doing this for a long time if you're not for the project that's fine i understand that but let's i have the floor council member armature so let's try to keep the discussion to something that's that has some at least reasonableness to it and the people that we're dealing with the develop if you're against it that's fine we're going to have all opportunities to vote against this i apologize my question was not up to your standard it was an honest question that i had so council member briggs you think that they're going to build five or ten houses out there and stop my my question was what is our obligation so it's it's way out it's not in the city um i don't know what's going to happen mayor i really don't know council member armature i'm chairing this meeting mr city manager you want to answer that question what is the city's obligation if they build five or ten houses out there we'll still provide basic police and fire service which is part of the reason that we push so hard to have the substation expanded down the road because it will service this particular area we still got the ropes and ranch fire station the one that's argyle north lake is contributing to so i think those are probably the two services that would be most directly affected remember they're taking on the park landscape maintenance that sort of thing early on so there's really not those obligations i think one thing i wanted to just kind of say that council member melzer that you know we we've had those conversations with the developer about the market they still feel very comfortable about where they're they're heading i'm not here to sell their development and they certainly wouldn't view me as an advocate for their side of the development agreement but but what i what i will say is that the council needs to put into some perspective here the benefit moving forward of this deal is there's no public dollars involved right now we have completely reset the baseline this council has had tons of discussion over the last several months about gas well setbacks that sort of thing we've negotiated all that you had no right to impose those setbacks on them under their old mpc ordinance none there was a hundred foot setback we've been able to negotiate the 500 foot setback reset that discussion uh kept the city the budget largely um held harmless in this particular uh discussion so and not only that the the reason it got through the planning commission unanimously folks is that we reduced density out there by 50 so there if you if you go ahead and move forward on this development tonight i don't care what you do but if you do move forward on this development tonight you have completely reset the baseline for the next round of negotiations if they want to come in and change the plans and that is a huge strategic advantage versus where we started so i just think this needs to be kept in some perspective in terms of looking out for this the city of debt and taxpayer because we were not in nearly as good of a position as you are today if this gets approved mr city manager i have a quick question for you um in order to build five or ten houses or 50 homes out there what is the level of infrastructure that is going to be required they're going to have to put large transmission water lines out they're going to have to get sewer they're going to have to get roads they're going to have to remove their ag exemptions from the the land that they're developing which we're getting basically no money on whatsoever right now right so before they could even build one house the amount of infrastructure that they're going to have to put in out there is in the millions is that is that not an accurate it's absolutely true there might be one small section down near crofford that that they would have some limited services to with the roadway and sewer lines we've got some ability for them to to tap in there but beyond that you're absolutely correct it's going to take tens of millions of dollars of infrastructure to start constructing out there okay council member armater yeah so just just to speak to the idea about the the public and taxpayer not paying for it again it's just a matter of how one looks at it as i see it the taxpayers who will be living there who are paying city taxes plus the coal hunter ranch private taxing district taxes that is what their extra taxes are are paying for so again i'm not saying that that was an untruthful it's just another way of looking at it but that is how how i see it and also in terms of impact as i mentioned before and i would also like to say that you know i don't see it was mentioned earlier that this is more of a risk for them than for the city i don't see any risk to the developer man maybe the developer will you know like to explain that contradict me on that but to me it seems like a pretty brilliant deal on their end in addition to getting the profits that a developer will usually get when they have when they're selling homes they also have a taxing entity to pay for it so this is why they're so successful financially and that why they have so much liquidity on you know whatever whatever risk that there is if there is risk which i can't figure out so from their end i don't see the risk i only see it from our end okay uh i'm going to make a motion to approve agenda item uh is that uh 4c i'm going to make a motion to approve agenda item 4c council member ryan i'll second all right have a motion and a second council member melser real quick you're muted yeah yeah uh yeah i just want to uh respond a little bit uh first of all to the city manager i started by saying couldn't have been negotiated better fully appreciate the accomplishments in terms of gas well setbacks contribution affordable housing you know many other aspects i'd still say i still say to all of us you just have to say at this moment is this a great idea for dentin right now we don't know how i understand that we're protected on downsides but is this a good strategy for dentin right now you may think it is um i would say we probably don't know what the build out will really look out look like the developer is going to be having to make their own judgments about their pace we don't know what what it will really end up what will really end up happening we do know that we'll be losing over 40 percent uh of the uh upland habitat environmentally sensitive areas and you know that's a long-term loss uh you know that we can't get back okay we have a motion and a second council member ryan how say you aye mayor watts is an aye council member davis aye council member briggs yeah i will i will just add that robes and ranch covered the infrastructure on their own for that small of a development to begin with but i i'm a no council member armater a definite no mayor protem aye council member uh melzer no okay so the motion carries uh four to three um all right we're moving on we were going to take these in order of four c a and b chair would entertain action on four a mayor protem move approval uh for a council member ryan a second all right uh we have a motion and a second uh mayor protem how say you all right council member ryan how say you aye council member davis aye council member briggs if you could okay thank you uh council member armater i'm sorry you're muted there you go say it one more time okay thank you uh council member melzer no uh mayor watts says aye uh the motion carries four to three moving on to agenda item four b chair would entertain action on agenda item four b council member ryan move approval council member davis second all right council member ryan how say you on the motion and a second for approval of agenda item four b aye council member davis aye council member briggs no council member armater nay mayor protem aye council member melzer no uh mayor watts is an eye so agenda item 4b carries four to three we'll move on to agenda item 4f which is uh consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton texas consenting to the creation of hunter ranch improvement district number one of denton texas chair would entertain motion on agenda item 4f council member ryan move approval council member davis second we have a motion and a second for agenda item for approval of agenda item 4f uh council member uh ryan how say you aye council member davis aye council member briggs no council member armater no mayor protem all right council member melzer no uh mayor watts is an i so that the i is carried it's gets approved agenda item 4f is approved move on to agenda item 4d as in david chair wouldn't entertain action on that council uh mayor protem move approval we have a second council member ryan a second uh mayor protem how say you on agenda item 4d aye council member ryan aye council member davis aye council member briggs no okay council member armater no council member melzer no uh mayor watts is an i motion carries uh four to three for agenda item 4d agenda item 4e chair would entertain action on agenda item 4e council member davis move approval we have a motion for approval on agenda item 4e do i have a second council member mayor protem a second all right we have a motion a second for agenda item 4e council member davis aye mayor protem aye council member ryan aye council member briggs no council member armater no council member melzer no mayor watts is an i motion carries four uh four to three for agenda item 4e we are now to a separate presentation for agenda item 4g mayor city council gary pack and director of parks and recreation uh this evening i'd like to present to you a consideration acceptance of a conservation easement from petrus investment um next few slides you've seen before in prior presentations from staff this is a summary of all the park space uh that has been discussed with the development group uh both owned by the city in the future as part of our land dedication and development ordinance as well as uh park land that was that will be developed by the district in the hoa they'll also be maintained by the district or their hoa on all these parcels um so and you can see highlighted in red is the pilot knob area and that is additional 150 acres of land um and specifically we'll be talking about the pilot knob one that would be open to the public item c which is if you can see my cursor is this area this is pilot knob here as highlighted it's a total of 70 i'm sorry 98 acres uh which which will eventually be 73 percent 74 percent preserved step one preserving the entirety of pilot knob would be 29 acres that's the area highlighted in blue which i'll just kind of circle with my cursor here this is the area that has the highest elevation there's approximately 100 foot elevation change between the top and the bottom of that blue uh blue area this would be recorded if approved within 180 days with denton county step two would be the additional 44 acres it's a little hard to see with the hatched area but it is this area here which is proposed it's not 100 percent in regards to a survey completed yet but that would be an additional 44 acres at a later date and that would be required prior to the first plat some highlights of the pilot knob conservation easement it remains in place in perpetuity public has perpetual access to the future trail system that will be covering that area there would be no clearing or cutting of vegetation vegetation unless diseased dead or invasive species are present no change in topography such as surface mining grading excavation filling unless unless there's a trail construction which is proposed and repair no signage would be placed such billboards other than park and trail related signage no construction of a building mobile home or towers no mineral exploration or extraction from the surface landowner would restore land if there was a natural disaster that would impact the land for erosion for example the city has a right to inspect the property as desired and the city as well as third parties have a right to enforce the conservation easement that's a brief presentation and i'm willing to take questions okay if we could restore the screen to the participants grid council member breaks so on the second phase which was the 44 acres i think um it said that it won't go into effect until before the first plat is that what i heard that is correct okay and and within that time will there be um clearing anything will that be allowed before that no that would not be the case okay so even though it's not part of the first step it still falls under those restrictions of things that can't happen that's correct yes okay yes okay um and i saw that i i've driven by a couple of times and saw that there's some things going on out there already like there's some piles of are they just removing dead dead trees or ill trees from my understanding those are trees that had died a while ago and they were just clearing those and do you know have have we been out there to look to see um i can do a tree count or a tree survey there if you look in the um conservation easement there is an attachment of of a number of photos there hasn't been a specific tree survey done on every single tree what do we do we plan to do that or it just i mean do we plan to get a better idea of of what kind of trees are out there and how many we certainly could do that thank you councilmember davis a comment and then a question i just want to point this out as another major win for city staff if y'all were following along the last conversation we had at a council meeting about this the developer was adamantly opposed to a conservation easement they wanted to do a different vehicle they wanted to get kind of legally creative and i had to give them props for the legal legal creativity but it did not give the city the same kind of rights that we're now securing through the conservation easement so it preserved pilot knob but not nearly to the extent that really this council wanted to see so could could legal uh whoever's best qualified give us a brief rundown of why a conservation easement is the preferred mechanism here from a city's perspective and what kind of extra rights we get that we would not have gotten just under a kind of a contract contractual agreement larry collister city attorney's office the conservation easement unlike what was proposed gives the benefit to the city of all the rights that are set out in the easement that that you would not get i mean what we have done is through this conservation easement is to place really the city the public and the developer to to place that property right it's going to be maintained in its status quo in perpetuity and the document the conservation easement was the only way to get there without giving up any of those rights the property can be sold um but it's still going to be sold subject to the conservation easement that will never go away and one thing i want to point out that um gary pointed out is the developer gave rights to the public to access the conservation easement property by virtue of trails that is not typically required in that and that's often not done does that answer some of the questions you had or no it does i mean that that's my understanding exactly and i appreciate you um advocating for this and i appreciate you um lining that out for us um it just if i can kind of conclude my own comments this is a no-brainer no matter how you feel about the the ultimate development or how it happens i mean surely everybody on this council can get behind preserving pilot knob and a conservation easement for future generations in denton okay council member davis i think one thing i'd want to point out to you and i had this discussion with sir hensley and gary pack and as the conservation easement and placing that out there will outlive everybody here and that will remain as it is today in perpetuity well and i think it's it's where they're pointing out that that was uh one of the major concessions that they gave to the city council and if if it's clear that if the projects had been denied this item would not be before us tonight they'd either pull it or they it wouldn't be here i mean they're not going to approve a conservation easement on a piece of property that they don't have an understanding and some entitlements that they'll be able to do some other things that will help them uh recoup some of that uh contribution of that land into a conservation easement okay any other questions on this item chair would entertain uh oh we got uh we got one uh one public speaker uh jennifer lane is cued up so we'll wait until she joins us miss lane are you there okay all right yes all right if you'll state your name and address uh i will start your time okay jennifer lane 1526 willowwood street denton texas so i'm calling back because you had five white cards i believe you said and three callers but the white cards were never read before you took the vote and denton as i pointed out before when i called is not able to be engaged with this people are so concerned about the fact that the council is engaging in this and not with the needs of the people who are living here right now it's to the extent that they wish and uh the many many points that eric pruett pointed out about the future and the cost and the fiscal analysis weren't really engaged with i i would have thought he would have been asked at least a few questions at least that alone would have given pause to step back and look at the situation here and whether or not really it is time to go forward with this it's impossible to have a public hearing without the public present these plans were made at a larger scale earlier today if you can't access something even if you're technically allowed to do it it isn't possible to do it so you have gone ahead and voted for um an enormous project the size of flower mound on denton's west side without complete thinking i know there's been a lot of thinking but it isn't complete and it's been gone through without public engagement three callers and five white cards which weren't even read i don't understand this can someone explain it to me i yield my time for that okay yeah you've got about you got a minute 30 you got a minute 30 that you've used so you got two and a half minutes left yeah and maybe i could use those two and a half minutes for an exchange about my question why is this going forward um when the public can't engage well i'm going to wait till your time expires and then i will answer one of your questions okay there's that one and then how is this really going to work financially given all the questions that eric currently that are now part of the public record and can be sure there's going to be an aftershock i mean after the shock reaction as people come to know what's happened here tonight they're going to wonder why you didn't want them there and your answer is going to be likely well we did make it possible for people to phone in we did make it possible for people to comment online but we didn't read their comments and we didn't wait until people could actually deal with it you know it was a lot of scramble i don't understand why the city council wants to do things where it matters why not have people involved i know i know you've all been looking at it for a while but there's so much input that you need there's too many unpredicted consequences and things like that but not necessarily i know that you're looking on not making the same mistakes and so on and so forth but there are people here who fought ahead of that what's the next round of mistakes looks like they're going to be there because one of them oh i'm sorry i couldn't hear that these are my questions why are you not engaging the public at this time in a public hearing why is the public hearing rushed what's to be gained by rushing this why did you do that any more comments miss lane it's uh you got about 20 seconds i'm asking to know why you did that why did you rush this as opposed to waiting to do what the public had to say okay in large numbers five white cards that weren't red okay uh your time's up uh there there were two people that called in against this item and all the white cards have been sent to all of the council members the only thing that was read was a summary it wasn't the reading in of the white cards those have been sent to all the council members okay i think i believe council member armature has a question for you yes oh yeah i just wanted to say um i that i have been wondering the same question i don't have an answer for you i share that question uh and i i too was disappointed to learn when we started doing this that the white cards uh weren't going to be read that's not just for coal hunter ranch vote but for all uh online meetings uh so i because we can't have the public here in person i i share your uh preference to having them all read aloud i just wanted to mention that okay all right miss lane i'm sorry your time is expired if there's a question for you then i'll certainly entertain that but i don't see a question at this time okay all right uh thank you okay i don't see any other callers for this agenda item so any more questions for this agenda item council member melzer you're you're you need to unmute yourself yeah i don't have a question but are you only calling for questions or or comments oh either one either one i mean yeah no of course this is a discussion period so either one okay so um i i don't think uh having agreed to destroy 26 percent of pilot snob is anything to celebrate of course i'm going to vote to preserve what's left okay all right council member davis a brief reply to that under the code that they're under right now without the agreements without the new npc without the concessions that we've that we've exacted from these developers they would have to preserve much much less we'd be relying on tree code that no one on this council voted for uh decades old preservation standards what we're doing today is not you know letting go of another 26 percent it's fighting tooth and nail and getting the 74 and when we talk about pilot knob esa we're not talking about the entire elevation we're talking about all the trees around it all the way out to where it goes completely flat pilot knob as we commonly talk about it is the elevation what gary showed us it's in the blue on the slide so i i take a little bit of objection to characterizing things that way and and as i said i i really hope for a unanimous vote on this okay any other questions just council member armature yeah this is just a comment so i'm going to vote yes in approval because it's it's the way to conserve what we can now but i do share council member melzer's reading of it and i think it's just two different ways of looking at the same issue it is a you know glasses half full with trees versus glasses half empty property and i i do mourn those trees lost uh but i want to commend staff uh for working on this uh really hard and really raising the bar the bar has been raised a lot um ditto for those other aspects of coal hunter ranch uh that i that i voted no to so the bar has been raised a lot kudos to staff for that um but my personal bar is still even higher and um that than than what's on the table before us today but for practical reasons i am going to vote yes to to this conservation because it's it's how to save what's what more of what's left member breaks uh yeah so i um i'm i'm glad that this item is here i'm thankful that council voted on putting conservation easements into our tree ordinance and i hope that more developers take um take advantage of this tool i do know from hearing the presentations that the developers know the importance of pilot knob and how important it is to their development i i would have liked to have seen more preservation um in the original agreement i know what they could have done but i know that um it could have been a little more but this is great the way that it is um so i'm definitely going to be uh voting yes to the uh preservation that's left and for the conservation easement any other questions or comments chair what accounts mayor pro tem i have a question for staff i i know you made the statement i just want to better understand it uh is there someone from staff that could put forward an answer the question is do the staff see this as a as a total project meaning the housing component makes it possible for the um the uh this this agenda item g that we're getting ready to vote on that conservation effort do those go together or do staff see those as uh separate uh actions or does one benefit the other or make the other possible better said i think it's part of a holistic deal um it was some it was very helpful for the city council during the last workshop or maybe two workshops ago to really stake out their position let it be known exactly what you wanted and exactly how you wanted it handled so it was just part of the overall deal you know to get this done okay thank you i agree uh i will uh with that while i have the floor i i will move approval council member davis second all right so we have a motion and second for agenda item uh 4g i believe uh mayor protem hasayu all right council member davis hasayu all right council member briggs yes council member armature yes council member melzer aye council member ryan aye mayor watts is an aye or a yes motion carries unanimously let's take about a five minute break it is 901 we'll come back about 906 or seven welcome everybody back to this meeting of the denton city council on april 7th 2020 the time is 9 13 we're moving on to our public hearing portion of the agenda agenda items and staff correct me if i'm wrong agenda items a and b have been postponed so we will not be taking those up today is or tonight is that correct correct all right so that means we'll move on to our next item which is agenda item 3c which is hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton adopting standards of care for recreational care programs administered by denton's parks and recreations department pursuant to texas human resources code section 42041b and just to let the council know in the public know we do have a speaker who has signed up to speak for this item so we'll hear that public speaker before we have deliberation we'll ask if council has questions for staff we'll take those first but after that we'll do public comment so agenda item 3c mayor gary pack mayor city council gary pack and director parks and recreation uh today i present to you i do not have a powerpoint for you um but this is an adoption of standards of care this is a process that we go through every year that covers our summer camps obviously with the covid situation going on we're not sure if and when our camps will take place uh if we do have the opportunity to offer summer camps this summer this will put us in the position that we're prepared and ready to move forward um we do have every year we go through this process and make changes we've had some minimal changes in the the actual standards of care themselves we updated camp names uh and we added a section on use of use of volunteers okay uh council member was that the conclusion of your presentation gary yes okay council member briggs uh yes thank you gary um was there i i appreciate the standards of care and and read them every year this this year's a little different as you mentioned with the covid um did we put anything regarding pandemics in the standard of care for us to um consider there is not something specific related to this challenge uh that that's ongoing um but that's that's something we did not address okay thanks council member armature yes so i was going to ask uh that question so thank you for asking that council member briggs um and also are there plans in place to do a kind of a virtual uh summer camp if this this pandemic continues the way it it appears it it will be continuing if if there's still stay at home order etc are there plans to do virtual virtual camp activities that was one of my questions and then i had another one i can ask the other one now or wait for the answer gary go ahead sure uh that that's a great question we are actually working on creating a virtual recreation center uh website that we're we're going to be promoting uh everything from we're doing a virtual easter egg hunt right now because we couldn't have our easter egg activity we're uh going to do a virtual meet at the park some virtual park online things we're working on right now and even like a virtual dog park so we have a number of things we're working on and then also some some tips and programs that we can do from staff from videos so we're trying to ramp up as best we can uh and kind of changing the way we offer our business um so it's taking a little bit of time but we're we're going to be launching that uh if it's not out right now it'll be out the next day or so councilman armature i'm sorry let me just go into council member melzer because his phone never mind he just corrected it okay thank you uh go ahead council member armature so i was just going to say anyway thank you that that makes me really happy um i hope to be uh a participant in some of that um anyway thank you for your creativity on that uh and i wonder even if you know after this whole pandemic is over if some of these uh virtual activities that people end up making because we're in such a pinch might end up continuing uh because people like them i mean you don't have to answer that right now that was just a thought for a future time um but i i did want to ask also if there has been any thought to and this is something i've talked about before regarding summer camp but i think the need is that much greater as i see it for city staff to get some sort of a discount on summer camp activities because it's a real issue for child care during the summer for everybody you know but especially you know city staff numbers city staff end up giving a part of their significant part of their paycheck to pay for their kids to do summer camp so i was wondering if there's been any consideration of that given the the economic situation we're in now with the pandemic it's that is that um it sounds like it's off topic okay all right that's certainly a good question that i think we can we can take up at some other time but i think it might be a little off posting from what i understand the city attorney is trying to communicate okay then okay okay uh any other questions for gary council member briggs i move approval oh i'm sorry mayor pro tem didn't see you had a question yes sir for for gary quickly because uh i think it would add some clarity i saw the virtual egg hunt but i didn't know how it works uh so could you kind of give some direction for those that want to participate in that and then i want to cast my uh full support behind the fake digital gary we need more of him that's a little awkward for me to respond to um so the virtual egg hunt is basically uh where we've we've put the easter bunny out in the the city and you have to figure out where he's at so you're trying to find him uh virtually instead of going out and literally picking up eggs uh so that that's on our parks and rec website it'll be on social it's on our social media platforms as well so if you go to our facebook page you'll be able to get to that point or dentonparks.com great thank you i see him right behind jesse in that dark room yeah and and uh before we take a second on the motion thank you council member breaks for that motion we're i'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing and then we've got one speaker who's wanting to speak and we'll uh bring that caller in at this time miss lane are you there yep hi all right yeah if you'll state your name and address now hold on let me get the stopwatch um reset before we take a second okay if you could if you would mind turning off your or turning down uh your wherever you're listening to the meeting on because there's a delay okay all right thank you okay anytime you want to begin your name and address please yes jennifer lane 1526 willowwood street denton texas um thank you for all the work that you're doing on the parks it's really going to make a great difference for people during this really rough time um i it made me think however about the wonderful decision to remove uh glycopates from um the um is there are the glyphosate i can never remember which aspirin comes first um from the city's use of chemicals and i wanted to know whether or not or just put out there whether or not a special taxation district has to follow those same regulations maybe someone can answer that um this is the kinds of things that i wonder if they are really have been properly thought through or that the public has had a chance to bring forward to the city council before voting goes zipping along on some of these major major big projects there's always some unintended stuff so perhaps you could um answer that if uh with proper preparation i'm sure i and members of the public like eric crew and more of us could really do some decent thinking but having to think on the fly because everything's sped along um when we least can pay attention to it makes it a little harder but you know now that the now these votes have occurred there will be tons and tons of response and lots and lots of after the fact suddenly realizations um which is unfortunate but you know who knows so if you could maybe just pick that one up um and talk about it a little bit thank you thank you mr city attorney uh is that a question that would be within posting just basically i think what the question was is uh in these tax development districts such as the one at least in the last agenda items that seemed to pass and they're providing some city park land with the with discussing or just answering that question of do those regulations apply to those city park lands is that part of this posting or do we need to get that out into uh separately with with and just want to make sure i'm clear with respect to the standards of care that gary is talking about whether that would apply to future parks within the coal hunter ranch developments is that correct well i think her question pertain to glass of faith yeah that's that works okay okay all right yeah she she's still on the line so yeah your has you posted question yeah yeah yeah one thing i know that you've done lately is classified so i who knows first for city parks that the answer is yes with respect to the i know that the the actual parks that are maintained they are a separate governmental entity they're not part of the city system so just uh in answering your question right now my opinion would be that no they wouldn't apply to the parks that are being uh maintained yeah the bh way great the size of flower mound folks so that's just one tiny little unintended have a good night thank you you bet all right uh i do not see any other callers uh that are in the queue and see no other cards so i will close the public hearing any comments discussion chair would entertain uh action on this item council member briggs yeah i already uh motion you made a motion yes council member armator i second all right so we have an emotion and second for approval of agenda item uh three c council member briggs how say you yes council member armator yes council member davis yes mayor protem yes council member ryan yes council member melzer is it yes yay or i either one will be fine okay all right uh mayor says aye uh motion carries unanimously for agenda item three c we'll move on to agenda item 3d uh hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving a major amendment to the hunter ranch master plan community it's my understanding that staff is going to uh present a consolidated uh presentation is that correct that is correct items d e and f okay i'm going to go ahead and call those but we will hold the public hearing separately and vote on them separately uh agenda item d e is hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving a change in the zoning district for the mixed use mn zoning district use and classification of approximately 35.66 acres of land to hunter ranch master plan community uh that was three e three f is hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton approving a major amendment to the coal ranch master plan community uh district to supersede repeal and replace ordinance number 2008-030 on approximately 3169.4 acres of land described on exhibit a what i'll do is i'm just going to go ahead and open the public hearing on all four of them because i know i'll probably forget so i'm going to open the public hearing on all four of them but we will take them uh we'll have a consolidated presentation and take the discussion and any public comment uh individually uh staff you may proceed mayor just a quick right there's only three public hearings not four so what did i say four so we just wanted to be sure that we were on oh yeah yeah e d and f yes right okay yes right yes okay sorry good evening mayor council richard canoni development services i just want to give a little background on uh on master plan communities uh these aren't anything that's new uh they've been around um for some time now uh the city currently has four um the two that are being considered tonight uh hunter ranch coal ranch and then there's also the hills of denton and hills of denton north uh the the two items that we're considering tonight uh coal ranch was approved in february of 2008 hunter ranch was approved in november of 2008 uh in addition there were some land that was rezoned uh out of the um out of the mpc and then in 2010 there was an amendment that was done with respect to their with respect to their gas well requirements and so just quickly uh i know there's been a lot of discussion on this already this evening um but they do have two approved mpcs currently um so these are their existing approvals um the first is um is hunter ranch and you can see they have a um the total acreage as well as uh broke broken down by sub districts uh same for same for coal ranch again so these this isn't a new a new zoning case or new mpc this is an amendment to to existing mpcs uh the way i broke out this presentation uh is sort of into two parts the first part is is um updating what that bit what those changes were to that base development code so really this will focus on um major changes if you will from um those 2008 versions of the 2002 ddc to what the 2019 ddc um is and then part two is uh will focus on what those alternative zoning and development standards are with respect to what they're requesting to be modified under the 2019 ddc i would say the lion's share of those you have seen already through the various um workshops that we've had um there has been some tweaks that i'll go over um but there was also a a what i what i'm calling is kind of a part three uh supplemental modifications if you recall back in march we had eight clarifications or minor edits uh that were done in between planning and zoning to um to the to the evening to the meeting this evening uh the ordinance that is uh provided does include those those those those minor clarifications or edits and so this is just a overall summary uh kind of some from two for both hunter and coal uh with with respect to sub-districts residential units uh you see the uh the substantial change uh in in reduction of overall overall residential units one thing to point out um parks and open space um the prior dd the prior mpcs did not include a park plan with their mpc amendment this this version does in addition there is a overall reduction at least for hunter with respect to the total number of gas wells and there is some additional land that's being that's being added to to hunter that is item item e and so this is just a comparison of the development plan what's currently on the books versus what's being proposed you could see the the breakdown with respect to districts and acres as well as the current versus proposed if you recall this was this was presented back back in december again i just wanted to have it for some for some background same with hunter ranch as i mentioned item item e will expand the boundary of the hunter ranch mpc and it's really two two areas there's some small areas right next to i-35 these two triangles that still retained an old pd for whatever reason they were not brought in when the mpc was initially done and then there's a almost 36 acre parcel to the south that was never brought into the mpc when it was first adopted i don't know the reasons why behind that in 2008 but it but it is under all common ownership but but that is one item that's that's being requested this evening to give you another idea just of the the comparison from hunter from hunter ranch obviously a a little bit more of a focus on on mixed use as opposed to 84 residential which is where they're at today what i what i've done here is just broke out some highlights sort of those significant changes from from 2008 to 2019 increased minimum tree preservation increased easter preservation there was a the ability to allow for a 25 reduction exclusive upland habitat without the need to do an alternative easter that's no longer no longer able to do that the easter cannot count towards tree preservation they've increased the number of street trees increased buffer increased the overall minimum canopy requirement requiring one tree per single family lot increased the gas well setbacks increased i'm sorry reduced the number of gas well sites for hunter inclusion of the park plan commitment to build private amenities that limitation of single family detached adjacent to i-35 in the loop they've increased the minimum lot size for single family more so for coal to some extent increased the the townhouse minimum lot size and then obviously the increased residential parking requirements that we currently have in the 2019 ddc to briefly again this is you may recall we we went over this back in december but this these are the the existing gas wells for for coal ranch they have 15 existing they're not proposing any new but what is being brought up is the reverse setback of 500 feet from where they are from where they are today which is 100 feet from the well head to a residential structure same for same for hunter ranch the only difference here they have the ability to do 19 existing pad sites they've agreed to reduce that down to 14 and so four of those sites they have a slightly different reverse setback 750 from the wellhead or 500 with written approval or five i'm sorry with 500 from the pad site whichever is greater and then again for these reverse setbacks they would follow again that 500 foot and the new well well sites a thousand foot for those five or 500 with written approval so again this is the same that that was presented back in back in december what this map does is provides for those locations of those five pad sites just to to clarify the the red circle is not the reverse setback it's just merely highlighting those those five sites one that i did want to want to want to point out if you recall pad site s which is here when we initially looked at this it was much closer to the our our southwest park they have agreed to move that pad site so that we would not be affected or the city would not be affected by a reverse setback and being limited to what we can do within that park part two these are the changes from the from the 2019 ddc again these are the residential sub districts that that are being proposed for both both cole and hunter unlike hunter where they're at with the current mpc they created their own zoning districts they are following what is what is on the books in in our 2019 ddc some other changes with respect to sub chapter three if you recall the allowance for zero lot line with the with the inclusion of that graphic with the four foot maintenance easement as well as allowing 40 of the land area designated as r7 to be developed with single family detached minimum width of 40 feet the square footage of 5000 would still remain there were some additional requests for height you may recall none of this has changed since we initially discussed it allowing maximum height of 100 in mn and allowing for maximum height of 200 in in mr with increased separation distances if you recall council had requested a sort of a highway buffer zone for detached single family around or budding i-35 as well as loop 288 when we looked at this we we we drilled down a little bit further knowing that text art is in the process now of acquiring land doing the design for access roads as well as widening that portion of i-35 and so we asked the we asked the applicants if they would be willing to take that buffer from the future right of way as identified in those in their current plans and so what i'll quickly do is just give you an idea again these are the text dot plans for these for the various intersections so you could see the existing right of way line which is this if you could see it on the screen which is this pink line and this will be the future right of way based upon the widening and access roads and so that's where that that highway buffer will be taken from this new from this new right of way line same here you just see the difference in the in the proposed intersections again this is these are already in in the works with with text dot but it was merely to show that that difference in where that where that buffer will start one other item that came up this is something that was not presented at at a work session but in response to a number of letters of opposition that that we had received when we mailed the notices the representatives from hunter ranch went and contacted almost all i think all of the residents who who expressed a concern and what that concern really had to do is one this this area was originally planned to be mn as well as they had the flood plain here that if they wanted to to reclaim that there's obviously the ability to do that through the ddc in fact i believe this development here actually did that for their portion of the development in response to that what the what they what they've agreed to do is change that now to r7 and then put in place a a buffer that starts at for that essentially a no build other than park and open space improvements starting at 500 feet tapering down to 250 and then joining where the existing subdivision has a a an open space area and so that was something that that they that they agreed to do in response to the concerns from the residents we did have i want to say eight speakers or so at the pnz hearing seven were in opposition and i want to say almost all at least six if not all seven that spoken opposition were from were from this neighborhood and their biggest concern was having the mn and the ability for for multifamily there were some additional modifications with respect to uses again these these have not changed since the since they were initially presented to council at the december work session again allowing multifamily and r7 without the sgp allowing single family and mr subject to the to the r7 but then limiting that to 60 percent of the net development acreage and then there was some prohibitions to manufactured housing in r4 r6 and r7 allowing for heliport helipad with an sup in mn and mr these are new uses allowing for solar collection and as a principle as well as wind energy conversion systems with an sup and then there were some limitations on accessory they've they've reduced the number of bedrooms currently that that we are allow now down to one bedroom or less for an accessory dwelling outdoor storage would be permitted in mr with specific standards and then there were some additional temporary uses that would be allowed one thing that they put in into place assuming there would be multiple commercial tenants is making sure that everything was done succinctly and that the seasonal sales that could be done would be applied for by the property owners association there were some additional changes with respect to to isa in sub chapter seven as i mentioned previously under 744 isa's cannot count towards parkland dedication where they where they can anywhere else in the city and then there were some additional the placement of trails as well as culverts and bridges allowed in that riparian or water related habitat isis the 7.4.8 the cross timbers upland habitat i believe they had already gone over this in a as part of that previous presentation again nothing nothing changed than than what was currently presented one thing i will mention as part of the allowance of permitting that the the trails and walkways if you start to look at their their parks plan that's that's included there is a trail system that will essentially kind of link between these between these upland habitat areas some additional items that rather than asking for decreases that they've actually gone up than what our standard is in the current code they've increased the number they've increased the minimum tree preservation by five percent and then increase the tree replacement rate for heritage trees from 2.5 to three increase the minimum tree caliper for new trees from two to three and then they've increased the number of yard trees from one to two for single family in r4 and r6 so under the current mpc there's none that are required under the new two will be required for single family lots they've increased the buffer from zero to 15 feet as well as increase the buffer points from zero i'm sorry from 10 to 15 for all single family detached when adjacent to multi-family or town home commercial and industrial institutional industrial that's not a requirement in the current code in addition to really promote and and offer credit for that trail system we also added into that buffer point table five additional points for the inclusion of a improved connecting trail again making sure that those single-family multi-family town home residential neighborhoods are all linked together through the through the plan 58 miles of trails for walls fences and screening they have prohibited chain link and coded chain link fences and then any perimeter fence adjacent to inferring public right of way are limited to masonry and wrought iron or a combination of the two so there would be no wood wood perimeter fences in any of these subdivisions fronting public rights of way or or adjacent to public rights away some other some other additions 788 requiring that the tia be submitted at the time of preliminary plat one thing that we did add that once that level once that roadway falls below level service of c the ultimate on-site roadway buildout shall be required to be constructed as part of the next plat for the adjacent roadway so again this this kind of hinges back to to what the city manager had discussed earlier and so we wanted to make sure that all of these were linked together and all of these improvements were being done succinctly the 7.9.6 off-street parking and layout design if you recall we had gone over this back in december where we created sort of these parking rooms what the code does is if essentially requires almost an out parcel even for an office building looking at that it really doesn't necessarily make sense i think that's something we're going to ultimately bring back citywide and look at but but that was something that they proposed as well as included the graphic as to what was what was intended 7.9.7 including included loading area drive-through facility standards increase the i'm sorry the transparency and window limitation of 70 there's an exemption that they had requested for upper floors of mixed use and office buildings allowing for more more windows if you recall we talked about building height in transition areas and so we did increase that separation from single family and then updated the graphic based upon those new heights of of 100 and 200 and mn and mr being allowed by right increase the minimum mason requirement from 25 to 50 50 percent and again while while we're restricted through house bill 2439 they they have still agreed to do this as well as include those as part of the the project project agreement for plotting requirements allow the the ability for them to construct eight model homes instead of four prior to the acceptance of the public improvements 8.3.4 some additional modifications with respect to cluster subdivision one being not requiring pd's and then the supplemental modifications that i talked about of of the eight that were done three related to clarifications with respect to r7 and then five were clarifications that were needed as a result of of some final changes to the project to the project agreements that had to do with utility extensions adequate water supply as well as pro radon oversized participation nothing nothing that was out of the ordinary just again clarification and syncing that language up for my excuse me for major amendments to the mpc's the ddc requires that both p and z and council there's five findings that need to be made i won't read read those five but they are here in front of you finding one i'll kind of hit highlights of these again if there's any question i'll be happy to go back and provide a more detailed answer the first is that development a proposed furthers the goals of the dent plan policy 2.11.1 establish a process to facilitate revisions to the land use land use mix and design of the approved and future mpc's and so that's exactly what we believe this is doing we prefer growth concept encouraged a shift towards a more mixed use development we believe that this balance that that they've kind of reallocated or reshuffled gets us there in addition by offering the cluster subdivision some smaller lots we we believe it provides for that mix of housing types as as requested in that policy appropriate siting of schools civics buildings and community amenities as well as the adjacency to existing transportation infrastructure i think that that what we've done with this with this mpc as well as these project agreements was was taking a much more holistic approach i think what's helped is looking at these both at the same time as opposed to two different two different opportunities back in 2008 when these were done making sure that the roadways do all connect as well as parks and trails and again looking at those public civic amenities as being one for two different developments increasing the isa preservation tree preservation trails again using the 29 2019 ddc again we believe incorporates that compact mix use and walkable development patterns again allowing for the trails and then the developmental acreages in balance with the overall development of the city again we've they've actually decreased the overall density and intensity allowed for more commercial and again we believe that that this plan does does further those goals finding number two in the case of proposed residential that the development will promote compatible buildings and uses be compatible with the character of the surrounding area again using the 2019 ddc definitely gets us there in addition they've had compatible those compatibility buffers with respect to i-35 loop 288 the new one that they put in place at country country lakes carnegie ridge and then there was a an additional compatibility buffer that that carried over from the initial mpc with ropes and ranch that's included that the provision of public facilities schools fire law enforcement water wastewater streets public service and parks are adequate to serve the anticipated population within the mpc i'm not going to go through all of these these are already covered as part of that previous presentation but wanted to include these to make sure that they are included as part of the record as well i won't go again i think you've seen these in the prior presentation i think david hit on a lot of these as well as ethan similar with finding number five that the development is fiscally sound again i'm not going to go through all of these david did go over this presentation i believe at a work session as well as earlier this evening but again putting it in the record it is the exact same information that was presented previously just a recap of the planning and zoning commission meeting on february 27th they took three separate votes the boundary extension which is e the major amendment which is d on this evening's agenda both of those were approved unanimously six zero and then the major amendment to the coal ranch mpc was also approved unanimously six zero just to touch base quickly on the notification and response map we did not receive any from coal that's why we don't have it here we did have some responses with respect to hunter again these are kind of broken into two parts because just the sheer size of it but there were some letters of opposition around the ropes and ranch and then around that the country lakes carnegie ridge we had both support and in opposition overall for for hunter i think we had less than one percent in opposition i think it was 0.79 and just over four percent total in in support for for hunter ranch and so again staff and pnz recommend approval of the major amendment for hunter ranch again two separate votes based upon those based upon the following findings of fact i won't read those but we have provided them for the record the second second recommendation from both staff and pnz is approval of the major amendment for coal again based upon the five findings of fact presented here in and then again the requested action just to assist item e would need to be approved first item d item e is that is that addition of the land d is the major amendment and then for coal item f the major amendment without be happy to answer any any questions if we could have the presentation there we go all right council member davis i have opened the public hearing and we do have public comments so we'll take some staff questions and then before we have deliberation we'll hear the public comment council member davis so uh let me know if this question is kind of too broad and vague to to get a good answer that's fine but we've heard in in previous council discussions and then some of the public comment already about the dentin 2030 plan and how that intersects with staff's analysis can you kind of speak to that i mean can you tell us kind of what use it is to have a plan a comprehensive plan that already needs updating when you're talking about the 6 000 acre additional development are you are you kind of stuck with the recommendations of the plan does the plan inform the thinking or is something of that size kind of its own animal that has to be considered in a different way how does staff slice that up to be quite honest i think again we're looking at the comp plan now something to this magnitude especially especially with an mpc i think even if you if you recall when we discussed this even at the end of last year i provided a comparison from the the previous comp plan versus today and to be quite honest i think it was a little bit more in sync to what it should be the what the current plan did quite honestly was just took the zoning the existing zoning sub-districts not even the zoning district which is an mpc and so it based a land use plan on sub-districts to a to a zoning district which really is an ideal but i think rather than what it did do a good job in is recognize that and i think that's where that policy 2.11 one came into play recognizing that these mpcs do need to be need to be looked at need to be addressed and provided kind of those those that that guidance that i just went went through and so we believe that it is consistent we believe that the policies support the amendment to this mpc again the the current future land use is based upon sub-districts of a zoning district which really is not not the best thing to do when you're doing a comprehensive plan councilmember davis any any further question or comment yeah just i mean help me uh help with the staff perspective here from where i'm sitting and some of the things we talk about we talk about these individual smaller projects that come through the other zoning cases you know we're we're up on the dais horse trading tree preservation and isa's and all sorts of things it seems to me from where i'm sitting i mean density even we're constantly talking about density and and transitioning to neighboring areas and all that kind of stuff it seems to me like we got everything we asked for in this new mpc and we kind of talked about that some with the mmd conversation earlier but am i missing something are we getting major concessions in this mpc that we otherwise couldn't have ever hoped for i i believe honestly we're getting um i think that they they listened um to to you i say that as a as a collective body um they were very um through those work sessions um but also uh through the negotiations and discussions with staff we talked uh quite quite quite at length about the increased in height and whether or not we can support it we had some concerns initially but when we really looked at what what's being done where they want to push that height kind of their long-term vision but then building in that additional preservation the additional landscaping the additional tree canopy the trail system and then adding in you know that the the additional buffer points just making sure that we can kind of sync this all together quite honestly i think i think we have i think we have a really good at least in my my humble opinion a much better a much better uh mpc than than what we have today and i think that the two that that we ultimately probably will look at in the future i think this sets a a a great mold in in moving forward with with such large developments in in uh in the years to come maybe need to unmute okay there we go sorry about that something happened a council member armature and then council member briggs so i had two questions the first one was actually asked by council member davis it's going to be about the how it matches up with the 2030 plan and i have to admit uh so richard i'm sure you did a wonderful job of explaining and i tried really hard to understand but i think if i'm the only one who doesn't understand with the subdivisions i'm sure that it's my fault they're not understanding so so you can explain that to me at a later time but uh my my other question was something that was raised by a member of the public about the uh the responsibility for care of the lands that are dedicated to parks and specifically and i know that we went over you know quite a bit of this in the work sessions but what this person was asking specifically about how this applies uh to our our glyphosate ban and our ipm the parks ipm in general and to that uh because this is uh it's it's parks land that they're dedicating you know does it where does it fall under of course i would prefer for the glyphosate ban to apply there as well but it's kind of a gray area so i'm curious to know i think i let me make i think i maybe gary can can jump in the land that they will be required they're still required to follow the existing park dedication ordinance and i think that's where you see that that 124 acres what what parks did in coming up with that number they took the proposed residential units that that that are included as part of that the mpc and that was the um that was the basis for coming up with that number richard uh mayor watts here uh i think it seems that this is a sort of a follow-up to a question that was raised at one of the last agenda items and that is that this particular these mpcs and if this gets approved uh the park dedication that it's made up of two primary components one is they're going to have their own private parks that will be allowed that the public will have access to and then they actually are going to dedicate parkland that will be official city parks am i correct in that that that is correct and so i think the question is obviously to the city parks our pest management and glyphosate uh policies apply to these city parks how do they apply if any to the private parks that will have uh public access the public can access those private parks there i'm going to have have gary answer that it's a little more um best to come from him okay mayor city council gary pack and director parks integration um the the parks that will eventually be turned over to the city as city property uh we will definitely be using our ipm program practices and philosophy on those parcels uh we certainly could work with the developer uh in regards to uh requesting that they use our you know no glyphosate policy as well uh and work with them to uh continue that practice on the parcels that we're having access to through access easements and thank you thank you thank you for answering that um and for making that distinction mayor wants and uh yeah i would that would be wonderful i don't know how the rest of council feels but i think that would be really good especially uh you know since since these the land is is all uh you know underneath the soil is all connected so um i i think it would be it would be really healthier and if that's something others would want to do i think it'd be it would be wonderful council member breaks um richard i know in the presentation and prior before but you went over it again about the the gas wells and the the pad sites actually there was a screen or presentation with the pad sites my question is because i know that they're allowed to be drilled again do we know how many wells are on going to be on each site on the on the five new we we do not um that would that would go through that the permitting process um the the ones that that we currently have uh gas well plats or gas well uh site plans for i don't have the numbers in front of me um but the the ones that are currently existing uh the pads we do have those numbers um the the five new ones that that that could be could be drilled uh we we do not uh we do not know what what those would be because i just want to make a difference because when we when we talk about the pad sites being five that doesn't sound like very many but within each site there could be several wells so i just i wasn't sure on the new ones if we had any idea or not we we don't at this point okay thank you any other questions for staff before we open public comment councilmember armater yeah so and speaking of the the gas well so just to confirm i know we had discussed uh the the buffer zones and whether or not uh recreational activity would be prohibited in those buffer zones am i right in remembering that that was the case that is correct it cannot be any uh a city park or uh or any recreation i i know it was discussed i believe it at p and z at one point if somebody wanted to um do a go out and throw a football or or baseball or um again if that was just a someone doing a pickup game um it's not really a a sanctioned uh sanctioned park or or sanctioned um uh little league or soccer league or something like that that could not occur so so a pickup game would be prohibited as well you're saying um i no i think a pickup game could i don't know how how that would be able to be enforced okay yeah because that was something i was i was and you know and remained concerned about uh you know even if there was some signage um put up there i feel like you know somebody was going to throw a ball around with the kid um would would do so in in the buffer zone if there was no signage but if there was then uh i'm guessing that they would appreciate that and prefer to go somewhere else okay any other comments questions before we open up for public comment because i have already opened the public hearing for all three of these items hold on just a moment okay all right we're going to go to our first caller uh john holman we'll wait for him to come on hello john are you there yes sir all right you're on with the dent city council and the public portion public hearing portion of of agenda items uh please state your name and address and when you do i will start the stop clock and you'll have four minutes thank you john homan 3212 holly creek street um i had to be pushy to speak tonight because i already filled out white cards that weren't read even though the website city website indicates they will um so i hope they're going to be read in future or maybe remove that option if they're not um so another question is when is public comment going to be organized it's been fairly glitchy um any taxing district as far as the hunter coal should have to follow city policy creating 6000 acres of essentially rogue sections of the city where we have a financial burden seems irresponsible to me i understand 35 west corridor is going to be developed for miles and miles and uh but i don't know why we can't follow the dent plan 2030 um regarding it some of the verbiage of the 2030 plans words like uh sustainable development low impact development green infrastructure uh i can't find any of those words and anything related to hunter coal i'll follow here with reading my op-ed that i hope gets i was hoping to get published before this meeting but um brian laneley former dent and deputy city manager told nbc news it's very important to take a slow and deliberate process to make sure everybody gets what they need during this coronavirus crisis i especially agree with his statement can we heed his sage advice i guess it's too late because things have been voted on i don't know if there's any more votes but um i thought we should have waited um for more opportune time he also stated we have a lot of opportunities to do something really unique and really interesting and that's what we have to do through this process have you all checked this development out and does it look really unique and interesting to you uh maybe denton and the developers could use some extra time to ask themselves the same question again i guess it's too late one of my questions i was asking was what is 6 000 acres of hoa really one of the two developers strafford lands website declares at the top their landing page that they're not interested in being good at a lot of things we're interested in being great at one they're not shy about it that one thing is making money i like to make money too but i'm also vested with a concern for the actual people who will live on the land and how they'll relate with their environment and their neighbors is strafford is the city of denton leadership when you look to the other developer hillwood and you click the communities tab on our site see this lush green thickly treed areas and gardens with kids holding tomatoes up to the camera and impressions of friendly energy saving green sustainability saying things like their hood is for people who believe that nature is essential to human nature where you can make more connections to the land and live smart while enjoying farm to table country living then that got my interest looked so i looked up more of this environmentally friendly attitude that we'd be subjected to a fixed out 6 000 acre five thumb or hoa excuse me if you or i moved there well solar panels are not encouraged but must be approved and of course no one guarantees they'll approve of them they have to be approved on a case-by-case basis then all members are required to cover their front yard in pesticides proven toxic to children and expectant mothers and animals where they're not allowed to grow food or anything over six inches and all those toxins go straight to the groundwater straight to the drinking water one required pesticide is actually one of the famous neonicotides neonicotides it's hard to say so you'd be required to kill bees and monarch butterflies in our bee city and our monarch city usa that's a requirement for their hoa for the 6 000 acres is to use you must you look in their paperwork use these things that kill the bees and monarch so i click the investment tab and i see it very different but more true to the hoa policy scene acres of lifeless and treeless bare soil kind of like a meteor crater surely hillwood means the meteor crater part happens after the gardening but it makes me consider development in general is it being done sustainably or isn't it and if it is not can we afford that nature doesn't mean anything until it's all gone i guess mr mr homer that was i'm sorry that was the that was the four minute mark if you had a comment a sentence or two that you wanted to wrap it up uh just my last short one um we need what if especially in times like this what if we incorporate reasonable and responsible ideas into city planning like value per acre is another huge thing to consider value per acre thank you so much thank you very much uh we have a question for you sir if you yeah hold on just a moment uh councilmember armature yeah well it was it was a follow-up and as to so first thank you for your comments and i'm wondering if we could hear the uh developer someone from the developer kind of speak to address uh that issue about the glyphosate and neone you know nick toys uh use in the hoa uh plan and also why if they could speak to why the uh why solar panels are not encouraged if it and and but we have a caller do you have a question for the caller if not we'll go ahead and release the caller and then i wanted to mention that now okay all right thank you john i appreciate that thank you thank you all right um we have another caller uh miss lane yes hi there yes if you'll uh state your name and address your time will begin uh jennifer lane and it's 1526 willowwood street thank you hello yes go ahead yeah you're yes you're live okay yes uh i was uh following um uh mr homon's uh off ad which hopefully will be published soon and trying to follow the question and answer from the developer about some of the issues that he raised uh involving the requirements to use social things that would be harmful to um leaves and butterflies and other children plants all that stuff and i imagine all these questions can be answered but i think that i'm going to take my time here to reread what he wrote regarding the hunter coal ranch development brian langley denton deputy city manager told nbc news quote it's very important to take a flow and deliberate process to make sure everybody gets what they need and quote during this coronavirus crisis i especially agree with this statement can we be decided by some postpone the vote until we resume some novelty especially as regards making public input more available as we still experience glitches with this process uh going on maybe denton and the developers could use some extra time to ask themselves the same question what is a 6 000 acre of hoa what is that going to be at one of the two developers strapped lands website declares at the top of their landing page that they're not interested in being good at a lot of things we're interested in being great at one um that one thing is making money uh we all like to make money but we are vested with concerns for the actual people who will live in the land and how they relate with their environment and their neighbors when you look to the other developer hillwood and you click on the communities tab on their site you'll see lush green particularly treeed areas and gardens with kids holding tomatoes up to the camera and impressions of friendly energy saving green sustainability uh for people who believe that nature is essential to human nature where you can make more connections to the land and live smart while enjoying farm to table country living so are there going to be uh solar panels are encouraged but must be approved um what are the what are the hoa considerations going to be here um what can be grown what can be used to um uh as pesticides so under investment i see a very different but more true to the hoa policy scene acres of lifeless and treeless bare soil like a meteor crater surely hillwood means the meteor crater part happens before the gardening but let's hope that they're considering development in general is it being done sustainably or not and if it's not can we afford it we are going to come out of the current crisis in a very serious situation health wise financially you name it green infrastructure and low impact development can give us cleaner air and water things that actually make developers more money while enriching our community's quality of life and benefiting our native flora and fauna please demand that this be part of this development if it's going to be passed which it seems to have been thank you okay thank you i don't believe we have any more callers queued up all right um yes councilmember barmiter did we lose uh council member melzer no he's there i see him yeah you see him oh yeah okay yeah i can't see him for some reason as long as he's there though just says staff in the upper right uh seeing no more callers um uh we'll go ahead and the summary for the the cards uh we had five cards on agenda item e that were against two people called who were against we had three speakers but uh the other third one has dropped off or could not be reached d we had 11 people making comments that were against two called the 349 7800 who were against the same three callers uh the third one could not be reached after several attempts uh agenda item f seven people with seven against two called in to register their opposition and then three callers again the same individual could not be reached after several tries all right so i'll close the public hearing i believe uh council member armature you had some questions uh and do we have a representative from the developer either strafford or hillwood that would like to answer uh those questions on the line and if you are you might need to unmute yes yes this is uh this is brian harlock with uh hillwood uh yeah we would be happy to to address these questions i think mayor with the question that you're referring to around the uh kind of commitment to the environment uh environmental practices sustainability practices yeah the glass of fate and the hoa's and solar panels sort of what the last caller uh or the first caller raised and then what council member armature and arm council member armature if you'd like to repeat uh those specific questions you certainly uh you know feel free to go ahead and do that yeah no i mean you pretty much summed it up it's just about um the policy you know uh your policy on uh your your ipm on on glyphosate and neo nickenoids i think i've got that right um and you know what the rationale is for that if you've considered uh other kinds of more sustainable uh practices and what what and why uh there's a barrier for solar panels yeah happy happy to try to address uh most of those i mean i'll start with the fact that we are 100 fully committed to environmental stewardship that means a lot of things to a lot of people but you know we have standards that start at the building and homes in terms of requirements for uh different material types from from from that actually insulation the uh air system the plant material that is allowed to be planted that would be sustainable the irrigation systems that they be underground and not spray all these things are proven to be uh positive um environmental measures regarding chemicals and chemical types i can't say that i am fully versed to be able to tell you uh the correct policy on what chemical uh is you know prohibited or allowed i will tell you that we meet every standard i'm sure in terms of using those chemicals that are best for the atmosphere and the uh the environment happy to visit clearly with any specifical chemical standards that the city of denton has to be able to talk about those and make sure that we're in alignment but i'm positive that if you all have a requirement that ours are probably actually a higher standard brian brian excuse me if you could if you could maybe get a little closer to it sounds like a speakerphone uh i just got a just a text from the control room uh making sure that we can get that that sound and the feed out so yeah i'm sorry go ahead that we could hear you but it just would make it a lot more clear okay uh just as a test is that any better yes yes oh well and and thank you for uh for answering that that question um it would be great if uh y'all could could meet with our park staff and if if y'all were interested in being more um in line with our uh ipm now it sounds like that was interesting what you said about irrigation did i are you talking about a drip drip irrigation that you're requiring drip irrigation and no above ground sprinkler or just or you're saying in an underground sprinkler system oh you there brian we might have lost them okay yeah yeah well they'll come back when they come back we'll we'll uh bring him back in on oh you there brian go ahead yes sir sorry about that had a little technical difficulty on our end sorry about that but i wanted to be able to talk about solar panels while solar panels are certainly not prohibited uh we we want to be able to fall in compliance both us as an hoa and the consumer or the business that's putting a solar panel in that they're following all guidelines not just the association's guidelines but all state and local guidelines so it is definitely not discouraged but we need to make sure that before somebody goes and puts the solar panels in either on the roof in their backyard in their front yard that it's in compliance so uh the fact that the hoa needs to approve such a thing shouldn't be interpreted as that we discourage things like solar power well and thank you thank you um it's my understanding that um that when you have solar panels installed you know that there needs to be some sort of inspection anyway uh whether you're in an hoa or not to make sure that it complies with with the law so uh you know unless anyone contradict me on that that that's my understanding that that wouldn't be the hoa's job uh to have to be responsible for that can you can you speak to the the uh the irrigation issue i i wasn't sure whether you were talking about drip irrigation or just uh which is a really great practice or if you were just talking about an in-ground sprinkler system no it's it's drip yeah it's the we we specify what uh plant material and grass materials largely looking at drought tolerant materials in addition to that we require the drip irrigation so that we're not you know obviously wasting water through through spray those are just sorry to interrupt yeah that's okay that did that answer your question yeah and anyway thank you that that is something where i think that that city of denton um could borrow a page from y'all in that uh so i'll be curious to uh to see um you know where where that is is written uh and you know bring that before before council so thank you okay any other comments questions uh council member melzer we didn't have the uh opportunity i didn't realize if we did have the opportunity to speak to brian earlier uh i'd like to ask him a couple broad questions if i may of course uh naturally brian i'm very curious to know uh given the deployment in the market and the unprecedented unemployment claims and all that if that has affected uh your company's strategy or your or any or giving you any uh thoughts about any alterations to the pace of the development you know just what what impact has the change in the environment had on your thinking yes sir great great question a lot of smart people are trying to answer that same question i think you know right now um you know as far as hillwood um and strapper really but as far as hillwood's concerned we've been at this for maybe now three three decades we have a very long-term perspective so from a long-term perspective i wouldn't change i wouldn't say this situation that we're in um changes anything about our long-term perspective uh clearly we have everybody has these short-term challenges that were clearly you know unexpected but as far as a project that's 30 or 40 years long like like this one is and we've never as the city manager mentioned we've never presented a business case that said we're ready to start tomorrow um this has been three or four years to be starting our first phase we're really optimistic given the economy that we're in in texas specifically the economy of north texas that in that three or four-year window we will be back to a very vibrant um you know economy uh the next six months 12 months are clearly uncertain but that sixth or 12 month uncertainty period doesn't really affect at all our our long-term business plan with a with a project like this but we're we're all concerned uh short-term about about many things thanks for sharing your perspective on that if i could just ask uh one more uh you know i appreciate all the flexibility that your firm has shown in interacting with the city and uh you're moving considerably from where you were and i'm just wondering if you know uh if you think there's any chance that in in actuality you might exceed the commitments you've already made uh i mean these are minimum commitments but so any actuality is there any possibility you might actually preserve more of the upland habitat uh environmentally sensitive areas than than you've committed to so far you know really all that is driven by planning i will just tell you that our objective is to preserve as much as practical of all these things all these things that we can hear and we understand are important to both you and the rest of council the city of ben are important to us as a development company and more importantly we know they're important that all those people are going to make decisions to live in our community so we are more motivated than anyone uh to preserve as much as we can my expectation is that we will exceed these standards uh by how much i don't know i mean a lot of it will be based on field investigation how many trees do we really have on the property um so yeah my guess is we will exceed we typically exceed standards that we set um as most people would be i hope that the city is pleased with even these minimum standards that we have agreed to establish that they really far exceed your city minimum standards i appreciate your taking the questions thank you okay any any any other questions from council for either staff or the african council member council member briggs i couldn't tell if you were if yeah go ahead i'm going to recognize council member briggs yes go ahead yeah i just i have a question about the process um because i i did read some of the comments and i would i would consider them blue cards for these items and normally in a public hearing i know when items for individual consideration we don't read the comments but um is that going to be is that the new normal for us not to read the uh blue cards for the items on the public hearing as well who's that addressed to um any anyone that will answer it i don't recall uh i mean on blue cards i might read the name and address but i don't recall reading the comments into the record oh well no because they come up to speak for themselves i i apologize for the yeah so on the on the blue cards the process is so we call them and then they come up to speak so the only way for someone to i just i just want to make sure that we get it clarified because now the only way for someone to be heard is to call not if if anybody does a form online you're just going to be a number i just want to get that straight right now okay well we can certainly continue to refine that and have some conversation about that but if you have a blue card that means you're going to come up and speak at the dais which is the same as someone calling in and saying they want to speak and then we call them back and we put them in the queue and then they're allowed to speak so um i just think there's been some misunderstanding and miscommunication about what what is what in this process so we may want to okay sure we will certainly look at it and make sure we refine that as much as we can to to mitigate that confusion thank you council member davis yeah real quickly before i'm sitting i think some of the confusion is people keep talking about reading out the white cards the white cards are just registering where you're at on something that's we don't why would we read out a white card you want to be heard you do the blue card you come and you speak or you get on the phone so and just to assure anybody who's listening at home i've read every single one of the emails that comes across as a virtual white card each one of those has been registered and it's kept in the record so i don't want anybody to feel like just because they didn't hear their email read out loud that we didn't get it or didn't hear it it's part of it's part of the deliberation okay all right and we've we've said we will continue to refine that any other questions for staff yes councilmember barmiter well it's just uh somebody just sent me it was actually the uh caller one of the callers john he just sent me something that is saying that um there's a rule that says that solar uh panels can't be seen by the from the street this is a screenshot of the rules about irrigation he points out that it doesn't mention anything about councilmember armature councilmember armature seems to imply councilmember armature please excuse me you're reading comments from someone who had a chance to speak publicly oh no no no no i'm sorry i'm he he sent me um this is either from the backup or um from a previous backup i'm reading from the uh hoa the coal hunter ranch hoa rules okay i think i think what clarification on that it because the the issue of the solar panels being seen from the street that is certainly nothing that's a requirement of uh state uh or local law and we as a city we don't have that requirement um well and and about the drip irrigation i i don't see where it says uh drip irrigation so if we could be sent that that would be great because drip irrigation is wonderful but it doesn't seem to me to say that here what are you asking to be sent to you where it talks about drip irrigation um okay in their their guidelines i don't i don't see that in what was just sent to me about irrigation and and then i i guess if you could speak to the issue of the solar panels not being seen from the street well when you say just sent to you when did you receive that uh just i let's see when there's no when is the time i guess just now um okay if the applicant could just briefly address that but we we have a we we have a uh uh procedure for public input and i don't think it includes people sending emails and then getting those emails read because that's additional public input i think that's been raised that that question has been asked and answered and so so what you're reading his words i was reading it was a screenshot from but it was sent to it but it was sent to you anyway i'm not we're not gonna i'm not going to belabor that uh brian are you there and can you get information um you know the next day or two that uh shows some documentation of what uh what you've described as far as yes go ahead yes oh you're there brian yes sir am i uh am i live yes you are live go ahead okay good yeah i'm really not i'm not 100 clear what the person who emailed that to the council member it has kind of screenshot but it is actually in the ddc for example the solar panels there's a section that's in your ddc that talks about um some provisions on the different standards we're trying to pull it up right now um i'm sorry we're looking at it i guess too um you know we're asking these questions go ahead go ahead brian well i was just going to say it's actually in your ddc the language that kind of guides the location of solar panels so that idea that it can be seen from the street your guidelines in your ddc talk about minimizing the visibility from collectors and public street that's that's not necessarily our guidelines but i would tell you we do support the idea that we really want people to be able to have solar panel capabilities but if you can do it in a manner that apparently the authors of your ddc also agreed with it if you can do it in a manner that is less visible from the street and also achieve the benefits of the solar orientation that's that's really our objective so this is from our current development code i didn't realize it still subject for five uh paragraph e solar collector um i'm sure i'm sure richard can can probably identify that for you but i'm just reading from it uh we just pulled it up real quick thank you i will look that up i had not realize that was still in there okay thank you thank you brian any other questions questions for staff if not uh chair would we've got three agenda items to vote on we'll vote on those separately and we'll vote on them in an order of agenda item uh three e three d and three f mayor pro tem i'm going to move approval and the comment is that i i watched the the p and z hearings on on these and it's a rare animal to have a six oh vote i appreciate staff's presentation and i'm impressed by staff's presentation of this item especially at the p and z level to answer all the questions uh independently shows me a breadth of knowledge and understanding of what they're supporting they're not just putting forward what what they think it says they they manage the presentation beginning to end just like they did here uh fielded the majority of the questions uh and so i think this and having visited the projects uh that are most that are closest to us there's three um and and i'll just highlight one thing that we're fighting with on a on a on a internet issue uh in our city you can go into the middle of nowhere where they're there i say nowhere no disrespect but their pecan square has gigabit internet and it's in a it's a remote location and so they are their buying power if you will uh is significant and it's going in their ability to produce and the energy efficiency that they're going to produce to the homeowners it's just dynamic so i appreciate them going above and beyond i'm happy to produce this i'm happy for their answer and i think it and i just want to tell brian thank you and and i and and it's unfortunate that we would uh raise issues that we then mandate that's that's unfortunate so uh i i i understand uh we have to go through these things and we have to vet these things but i just wish we would um be more efficient in in in those leveling those those uh statements so thank you all right so we have a motion for agenda item 3e uh council member davis i'm going to second and i'll make my comment as brief as possible so i don't have to make it during discussion um a second some what the mayor pro tem said i was i was floored when we had a unanimous pnz vote on this i think it speaks to the preparation staff put into it and it speaks to the concessions made by the developer and the concessions that were made were exactly the things that we are constantly asking from developers in our smaller projects better preservation come up to our code our current code um everything that we've asked for in this npc we've gotten and i think that's why pnz recommended it unanimously think what you will about a taxing district even though they're tied together from a planning perspective um this is this is phenomenal and i'll be frank with y'all i expect the unanimous vote on this as well we get everything we could have asked for out of this developer all right that's second so we have a motion in a second council member melzer um i certainly praise uh staff and you know the process for really getting the most that could be gotten out of this i i simply can't agree with the basic principle that this fulfills the goals of the 2030 plan in terms of our objective of compact development emphasizing infill you know growth at the margins this is very different from that so i'm a no vote despite the fact that i appreciate many of the gains that it represents okay anybody else all right uh mayor pro tem has say you aye council member davis aye council member melzer no council member briggs i'm just going to comment on on our solar those are those are suggested guidelines they're not rules we updated our code so that it would be much easier for people to install solar um just so that everyone is that's what i remember in our 2019 okay how say you on the motion i'm a no thank you okay council member armature i'm no as well okay uh council member ryan yes uh mayor watts is a yes so that uh agenda item three e uh passes four to three uh moving on to agenda item four d chair would entertain action on that item as well council member davis move approval all right we have a motion mayor pro tem second we have a motion in a second all right we'll go ahead and take the voice vote uh council member davis how how do you vote aye mayor pro tem all right council member melzer no council member briggs okay council member armature no council member ryan yes mayor watts votes yes motion carries four to three uh our last agenda item for the public hearing is agenda item three f chair would entertain action on three f council member ryan move approval we have a motion council member davis second all right we'll take a voice vote council member ryan yes council member davis aye mayor pro tem all right council member melzer no council member briggs no it's okay i don't know okay council member armature no uh mayor watts is a yes motion carries four to three i believe that concludes our public hearing items and i believe the only agenda item left on this agenda this evening are concluding items uh okay we're gonna okay uh we'll start down here with council member melzer yeah just uh for those who observe uh wishing a meaningful and happy easter and Passover as people deal with uh celebrating in new and different ways thank you thank you uh council member briggs do you have your hand up yeah so i i am along the lines as council member mensler i agree with that but i also want to take my this time to wish amelia a a um a wonderful sweet girl in our neighborhood turned 11 years old today and did not um she was not able to have the typical birthday party um because of the virus and i just want to wish her a very happy birthday okay thank you birthday amelia council member armature happy birthday amelia too uh and um to all the the kids who have made the sack made sacrifices um thank you all on behalf of the adults uh thank you kids okay anyone else any other council member davis yeah just real briefly i want to apologize to all of our regular viewers uh as this goes on longer my haircut is somehow getting more and more dorky um so if y'all will uh um i know i intend to to keep paying my barber we intend to keep paying the nail salons and the the folks who would normally be doing services for us i hope everybody at home does that as well even if your your hair is getting shaggier and shaggier um and if anybody knows how to use clippers effectively maybe send me youtube video or something all right okay thank you all and i do want to say yeah my i thought about that my hair is gonna i might bring a picture of when i was a senior in high school with hair probably longer than council member briggs probably by about three or four inches so um but i really do want to first of all just thank all of our citizens for all the work they're doing and helping one another during this just unprecedented time i certainly want to thank you for practicing social distancing for sheltering in place the more we comply with those recommendations and those orders now through the governor uh the faster we'll get through this and we will get through this and we will we will recover uh and i just really appreciate everybody's heartfelt thoughts and just how they help this community and also wish everybody a happy is during the holiday that they're celebrating council and amelia i wish amelia a very happy birthday and a great celebration once everybody's able to get out she will have many many friends that help celebrate her 11th birthday council member ryan well i'm going to yield to mayor pro tem he's had his hand up a little longer sorry about that mayor pro tem you're you're you're back there in the distance and i can't you know it's it's hard to make out go ahead well you could have had the last word but now you're going to get the next to the last word go ahead top of the world ma no uh so uh yes i did want to i wanted to say uh how much i appreciate the denton parks foundation we're all having to adjust they adjusted their easter egg planning they have their home hop egg drop and so they're delivering eggs to people's home i was happy to support that i think that is fantastic uh to those that do celebrate easter or recognize easter i do uh it's a it's a significant holy week for those and so i i recognize that uh amelia and others for for their birthdays that are having to celebrate this way i absolutely look forward to everyone else being able to get back out and celebrate those proper but but happy birthday on those things uh and to all the parents that are uh pulling double duty working at home and filling in for teachers and the teachers that are putting together lessons plans etc etc uh we've done a great job i believe and likewise mayor i would ask everyone to continue to stay safe uh exercise social distancing and i'm grateful for all the uh i mean i go in store after store and they're and they're taking precautions on their own uh and i'm just really impressed by our community and all we do all right council member ryan yeah i want to echo the the same sentiments and also uh uh let people know that the denton community food center uh located out by serve denton is now a drop-off location on mondays and wednesdays from noon to three for personal protective equipment so organizations that are that have that have the uh n95 masks that want to figure out a place to give them to get them to our firefighters or or other first responders or just other areas of the public that may need them they are a centralized drop-off point for those items now okay all right thank you all right thank you all very much we will stand adjourned at 10 45