Apr 21, 2020 City Council on 2020-04-21 1:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, April the 21st, 2020. It is 1.02. Appreciate everybody being here. I believe Councilmember Armitage will be joining us here shortly. We're going to move through our agenda item. Our first agenda for the work session is citizen comments on consent agenda items. I do not have any indication that there's any citizen comments on consent agenda items queued up or presented with cards. So we'll move on to agenda item number two, which is request for clarification of agenda items listed on this agenda. Any requests for clarification? Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah, I'd like a separate vote on G and I'd also like to have a brief conversation about E, F, and I. Should I just go into them? Yeah, hold on just a second, Council. So you're pulling agenda item G? Yeah. Okay. Okay. And then you just want to talk about you have some questions or comments for E, F, and I? Well, what they have in common is that it's a little bit out of order. What they have in common is that they are meant to go before P and B and it's indicated that that'll be done after the fact. But I believe we're going to talk in work session about, you know, getting, what are we talking about, about, you know, getting back up in business. So I wonder if maybe we ought to do that first and then come back and address those items. You know, really what I want to, you know, discuss is whether we can get P to B back in business virtually or not. And that might have a bearing on, you know, my feeling about voting on it in advance of their review. Mr. City Manager, you have any comments on that? I think either approach is fine. I'm not sure that we've got P to B necessarily teed up yet. I'm not sure there's any harm in going ahead and voting on these and taking them back to P to B. Obviously, it would be ideal to get their input first, but it's really your call. Unless I hear from Tony that there's any reason not to put these back for a couple of weeks, I don't think there's a problem. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, fundamentally my question would be time sensitivity, if there's something very, you know, pressing. But if in fact there's two weeks of, you know, wiggle in there, I would just assume follow the normal process to the best extent we can. Todd, this is Tony. Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, I think that both of these items, certainly item E is related to our dispatch operations at DME. And I think it's critical to have that particular item go forward to be able to service and respond to customer issues. We had previously already reached to this particular vendor and was not agreeable to a renewal. They wanted a longer term contract. As far as F is concerned, that's directly related to our electric metering data. And so I think any inter any potential interruption to any of that data could be detrimental, not just from a revenue standpoint, but certainly our ability to bill our customers correctly. And so my recommendation would be that that does push forward and that we then go back and retroactively discuss that with the with the PV. Are they coming up on a deadline of some kind? I mean, I'm not questioning the underlying need or anything like that, just the process. The answer, the short answer is yes, councilmember, I don't have the specific dates on that. But but yes, both those particular the milsoft, I know that that one had expired and we're kind of working on a kind of a verbal agreement to have that extended. But I think going beyond that may be what would be detrimental for us. And what about the Trilliant? I had the understanding that was a perpetual license, so there wouldn't be any risk of of an interruption. Yeah, I would have to confirm that councilmember, I think at this point, I think I'd rather err on the on the side of caution would be my recommendation to you. Okay. All right. Councilmember Briggs, let me ask Councilmember Meltzer, just one question on G. We're pulling a consent agenda item G. Did you have any questions on that, Councilmember Meltzer or just no staff presentation or anything? I don't need anything separate. Okay, all right. Councilmember Briggs, I think you had your hand up. Yes, I I would like to pull item deadline. Okay, we're getting a little feedback from actually Paul's last comment from a few minutes or a minute or two ago. Has somebody got their mic unmuted that we needed to? Okay, let's go with that. Okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Councilmember. I'd like to pull item in. Okay. And on item K, as far as the Hercules, I think it is opening. Is this the last agreement? Is this the last thing that's needed before we can get the full Hercules opened? It was my understanding that I think we were just waiting on some punch list items. Is that it? Is this a different section of it or the same? Yes, go ahead, Todd. This is a different segment. This is actually, I believe the one that Councilmember Briggs referring to was the segment that's west of Locust Drive. This actually is east of Stewart and connects all the way over to Sherman. Yeah, that's the one. Okay, so once this is complete, then Hercules will go all the way completely through, is what I'm asking. This is the last section that needs to be done. Yes, it needs to be reconstructed. It already exists, but it was in the CIP in the 2014 bond to be reconstructed. Okay. The one that's waiting on a punch list is the item that was missing, is the segment that was missing, and we are just waiting on the last few components before we can open that road. Okay, so is there coordination for when that section opens and this one gets reconstructed? They really aren't connected to each other as far as opening goes. Okay. The segment on the other side of Locust that's closer to the middle school, the Strickland Middle School, that segment was missing and that piece is just waiting on signs and markings. As soon as that piece is complete, then we can turn the road open. The piece that's actually part of this public-private partnership is quite a ways away from the piece that was missing and is now in place just waiting to be opened. It'll be under construction in phases over the next several months. The developer will actually be leading that construction, and they're ready to mobilize immediately. Okay. All right. Thank you for the clarification. We know we've been hearing from neighbors on Hercules to get that open, and I just wanted to make sure that that wasn't going to prohibit that. I do have some questions about item H. Okay. Just for, also for clarification, it lists on the, it lists that it says it's Denton, but in the backup it says Sanger, so I just, I'm curious if that means Denton County and then the city of Sanger or if it was just listed as Denton, Texas. I don't know. You're talking about on H for the place of business for the contractor? Yes. Yeah. Cassie, are you on the phone? So your question is what's the, what is their place of business? Yes. I saw Denton, Texas and Sanger, Texas, so I'm just trying to clarify that. And then while we're waiting, so if I did the math correctly, there's 32 locations and that's 80,000 a year to mow those 32 locations. So it averages about 2500 per location. How many times will that location be hit? We will get the answers and get back to you on that. Okay. I'll ask Tony to do that. Okay. Do I need to pull that item there? Sure. We might be able to get it back in work session. It's whatever your pleasure is. Okay. And there's a message here from council member Armitage that she cannot. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to recognize her. I think she's on the phone after I get through with you. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. Mayor Pro Tem, hold on just a moment. I think council member Armitage is having some difficulties with the video, but I believe she's on the phone. Is that correct? Council member Armitage? Yes. Okay. Thank you, buddy. I will get that worked out. I'm just glad that I'm on. I missed hearing the first couple minutes of the meeting, but I've been able to hear the past, I don't know, seven minutes or so. So it sounds like G has been pulled. Yes. Okay. Excellent. That was my plan to pull G for individual consideration. Okay. All right. Mayor Pro, was that it council member Armitage? Yes. Thank you. And so, I guess since you're on the line, but we can't see you, just, if you have a question, what I may try to do is just call on you to make sure that if you have any questions as we make the rounds, just so that I make sure that I get you in, even though I can't see you. Thank you. And I think, I'm confident I'll get the video set up. I had to change, I had to go to my parents' house, so I'm getting set up over there. Okay. All right. Fantastic. Mayor. Yes. Go ahead. If I could jump in on a couple of things. We've got Cassie Agner and Drew Huffman are on the phone to answer council member Briggs question on H. And then I just wanted to remind you that we are pulling an O and moving that back to the 28th. Oh, okay. Cassie Agner, director of procurement and compliance on council member Briggs question regarding H, the location of the business is in Denton County. The specific city is Sanger. Okay. Thank you. Okay. You're welcome. Go ahead, Cassie. I'm getting a feedback from somebody. Somebody's got maybe their phone on. If we could put the phone on mute, I'm hearing myself, but we're going to move forward. Mayor Pro Tem. All right. Thank you. So my question was regarding D, just general question. Could staff speak to the concern they had and the failing of the existing software and then what their analysis of was the new software? And then lastly, that last segment of it is what the upgrades offer that fixes the problem. Just want to understand the issue, what the shortcoming of the plan and what the site visits produced as issues that then, you know, lastly, what our fix is. Who will be answering that? Will be Scott McDonald. Scott, you're on the phone or on the line. We'll come back to that. Okay. And then I have another question in just in E, are those, I'm assuming it's meters or is it the software? I just want to understand how that's rolled out. Council Member, this is Tony. So that's tied to our dispatch system. And so whenever we have customers that call in, it's just a interactive voice response system that directs them to the various areas that their complaint may be from. So it's really just a way to manage incoming calls. Perfect. Thank you. And then one note. So one other question and then a thought. So item G, the acronym ARO, I think I understand, but can someone walk me through that? Are you talking about consent agenda item G? Yes. In the bids, there's an ARO column there and there's a number associated with it. So just wanted to make sure I was tracking what that accounts for and how that's weighed. I believe it's the time, the response time. Who's on the? So we have Scott getting set up to answer Council Member Huntsman's question. Then Gary Packins here as well to answer the follow-up question on G. Okay. All right. And while you're doing that, I'll just squeeze in my comment. Yes. So I'm excited to see and thanks Todd for Hercules. I know I've talked to him and pre-cham about that. And so excited to see that moving forward. And that helps me fulfill some delayed promises. And it's a great deal to see that parlaying with the development and kind of the benefit of those dollars helping offset those costs. So excited about that. Hi, Mayor Pro Tem. Scott McDonald, Director of Development Services. In response to item D, the software. So we had an RFP that was going out so we could upgrade the software solution that we have. The solution that we have is quite old. It's working off of one of our servers. The vendor has been speaking with us about if we just merely upgrade the versioning that we have, look at going to a software as a service or a SaaS solution which is hosted offsite. As we evaluated the software respondents, we found that we'd have a much greater savings staying with the provider that we have. We'd have a shorter lead time and just in light of the budget, it just made the most sense for us to proceed in this direction. So what was the, so if I'm, how does that affect our customers if you will? What kind of was, what did the software, what was it falling down and what do the upgrades fix? It's multifaceted. But what we have for a software now, we have what is called TrackIt. Our inspectors use an eTrackIt and then we use ProjectDocs for uploading plans. So it's incredibly challenging for an applicant to submit. They will upload plans through ProjectDocs. They will pay fees through TrackIt. So it's, it's, it's a series of steps that someone has to go through. And that's why we were looking for a single solution. TrackIt has now upgraded their solution to where it is that they partner with what is called Bluebeam. Bluebeam is a plan review software that's very popular. Scott, if I, hey Scott, let me interrupt you just for a second. I think someone who's listening on the line is also listening via an ETB or something. So if you could turn down the meeting portion of it because we're getting some feedback. So just wanted to alert everybody to that. I'm sorry, Scott, to interrupt you, go ahead. Oh, no problem at all, Mayor. So Bluebeam is now an integral part of TrackIt. So we would then eliminate using ProjectDocs, we'd have a single portal for our customers to be able to submit plans and make application. The markups would go through all of our various city departments using Bluebeam and that would go back to the customer. So rather than someone having to use two and three software solutions through the city, they'd be using one and it would be much more seamless. And that's what the RFP was for, is to do the very same thing. Perfect. Excellent. Thank you. That's very insightful. Thank you. And then I think we have Drew Huffman's on the line to answer a question and then I think also Gary Packin is available to answer the question. So Drew, if you can hear me, if you'll go ahead and provide the information that you have, that'd be great. Yes, sir. This is Drew Huffman, Park Superintendent. I was going to answer Council Member Briggs' question on item H for the cost for mowing. And those are broken down in groups to where it's either a B cycle or a C cycle. 20 of those sites are B cycles, so that's 20 times a year they'll be mowing. Seven of those are C cycles and those are mowed seven times a year. And so over in the unit price is the column that it costs per mow for those sites. Okay. Council Member Briggs, did you have a follow-up to his information or you're on mute. I did. Thank you. Yeah, that helps. But I noticed that the same company also bid on G and I'm just wondering, did they have an opportunity or does anybody have an opportunity to bid on both of these as a package to get a better deal? Was that, did that occur? Yes, ma'am. That did occur. They did bid on both G and H and through the bid process, being an RFP, they were graded and this was graded higher for classic landscape versus CRC during that evaluation for item H. Okay. Thank you. Gary, I think you were trying to. Mayor, this is Tony. Oh, Tony. Okay. Yeah, I was responding back to Council Member Hutzbed on his question on, I think it was H on ARO. That means after receipt of order. And so that is the response time after they receive the order from the city to mow a specific location and the response time. Perfect. Yeah, that's what I researched but wanted to make sure. And then the number grade, I guess the ones are most, there's a segment of time associated with that versus the other numbers. That's correct. I believe that that's either hours or days that they would respond. Okay. And then we track that on our end. I just want to make sure we hold their feet to the fire. They put ones across the board. Yes, sir. That's part of the project management process. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. The only question I have is on the mowings, both G and H, I'm assuming that if we were to do this in-house, it would be more expensive. I didn't really see that anywhere. I don't think in the, I might have missed it in the backup, but do we have an idea if we, how much we're saving by contracting it out and instead of doing it in-house? Mayor, this is Gary Pack and Director of Parks and Recreation. About six months ago, we did do an analysis of what it would cost us to maintain and mow all of our turf areas. It was substantially more regarding the amount of staff time as well as equipment that we'd have to go out and buy. So we're definitely at this point in time trying to offset as much expenses as we can by mowing what we can internally. But we also are very dependent on the contractors to help us keep up with our mowing efforts. Okay. All right. Okay. Any other clarifications on the agenda? Council Member Armitage, are you still with us? Yes. Thank you for asking. I was trying to get the video set up. Thank you for asking. No, no. I just wanted to make sure because we're going to move on. Just wanted to double check. Yeah. So this has been, so this will come before us as an individual item in the evening meeting. Item G will. I don't believe H has been pulled. I could be wrong. Was H pulled? Did anybody pull H? I don't, Council Member Briggs? No, I was going to, but I believe my answer, my questions were answered. And then Mayor, you asked the follow-up question, which was a main one that I had. So I'm okay with H staying. So I would like, so I'm sorry, I was coupling those in my mind. I would like H pulled for individual consideration as well. Okay. All right. Thank you. You bet. Okay. Anybody else? So I showed that what we'll be pulling for item for individual consideration is agenda item G and agenda item H and that agenda item O and N and then also agenda item O, I believe is postponed till next week. Is that correct? Okay. All right. Fantastic. Mayor, before you move on, are we asking for presentations on those three items or just straight up votes? I think what I've heard was just, they were pulled. We had considerable discussion on a couple of them. So I just, unless somebody speaks up now, we're just going to just go with a separate vote. I don't think it's that. I would like a presentation and discussion as well. On which ones? Council Member Armitage? Oh, G, I'm sorry. All right. So you want that discussion now? Cause we've had some discussion on it. Do you have some questions that you could ask so that staff could be preparing the answer in the meantime? Sure. Yes. And again, apologies for the technical difficulties as I'm scrambling around. Yeah. Can you tell us, doesn't have to be now, could be in the evening meeting, let us know how much the contracted workers are being paid per hour and the number of city staff that we'd be able to possibly prevent from being furloughed or reduced time or something like that versus if we had this done in house. Again, apologies if this was answered while I was getting set up. No, I don't think either one of those were. Okay. Thanks. All right. So that helps staff prepare for the presentation. Council Member Briggs? I would like a small presentation on item N just because it's so much money and just a refresher of what they do for us and why it's needed. And I have a few basic follow-up questions, but just a general recap of why we are hiring this firm. Okay. And your follow-up questions will be in the presentation at the 630 meeting. Yes, sir. Okay. All right. Anybody else? Okay. Then we'll move through, we'll begin our work session reports agenda item 33A is receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding an update to the city of Denton's COVID-19 response. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, Sara Keakler, Chief of Staff. One second while I pull up the presentation. Okay. So this is our standing work session item to provide updates to city council on the city's response to COVID-19. By way of reminder, there are a number of declarations and orders that the city has taken. Our current order for the city of Denton is in effect through April 30th. And we will not be discussing amending or extending that order today. That will be planned for next week, April 28th for a city council meeting on that date. Today, we're just going to provide you with a few general updates. We have been continuing to email and provide information to city council throughout the week as information becomes available, as this is still a rapidly evolving situation. So what we'd like to focus on today is three topics. The first is to just provide a quick overview of the executive orders that Governor Abbott gave last Friday for the state of Texas. The second topic will be focusing on city operations, a couple of aspects from how we're using personal protective equipment for our employees to keep them safe, as well as our outreach enforcement efforts to the businesses that are operating during this time period or that should not be operating during this time period. And then third, we'll give a few updates in regards to some community resources and community programs. So I'll start with the first section of the presentation. And we did provide links in the Friday report to each of these executive orders. So I'm going to try to make this brief, but take any questions that you have as well. So last Friday, Governor Abbott issued three orders. The first is GA 15. And this order related to hospital capacity and personal protective equipment. Essentially, what it did is it keeps in place some of the restrictions that Governor Abbott had for elective surgeries. However, it does loosen it somewhat. Elective surgeries may take place in the state of Texas if it meets the criteria that are listed on the screen. So it has to be any procedure that would not deplete the hospital capacity or the PPE needed to cope with the COVID-19 disaster or any surgery or procedure that is performed in a healthcare facility that is reporting to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and reporting that it will do one of two things. And this should be an or instead of an and, that it would reserve at least 25% of its hospital capacity for the treatment of COVID or that it would not request any PPE from any public source during the duration of the disaster. And so that was kind of a quick summary of the first order that he released. The second order he released was GA 16. And this is in relation to reopening of some select services. So it is made to replace the prior order of GA 14. So this still is a stay at home order for the state of Texas through April 30. But what GA 16 does is it allows for some reopening of services with really the focus being on allowing a retail to go model. So those retailers that were considered non-essential may open and begin to provide services in a delivery model only. So they may not have any customers inside their stores, but they can be delivering items to customers' cars, homes, or other locations. And that will actually be allowed beginning this Friday, April 24th. As part of this order, the governor referenced that the Department of State and Health Services would be coming out with further guidance that the retailers must follow underneath this model. It did distribute that to city council right before this meeting. And we are going to make that public. We'll be posting it on our website. We're actually making some social media graphics and flyers. And then we'll be having a press release probably tomorrow or Thursday that we can release to the public and as well to those businesses that would like to operate under this model to educate them on how they must operate under the model from providing items as they are able to into the trunk of vehicles, as well as wearing masks, as well as educating their employees. There's a number of items that are outlined in that guidance from the state. And then lastly, in GA 16, it also, he also ordered schools to remain closed for the remainder of the school year. And this is all schools from public, private, and higher education institutions. So I know Dentonized D has communicated that to their parents and families as well, that they will be closed for the remainder of the school year. And then lastly, the third executive order created a strike force to open Texas. And this is the governor's initiative to have a team to study how things could be strategically reopened in the state of Texas. This team is nationally recognized, made up of nationally recognized medical experts and private and public leaders. There is more information in regards to how that, the makeup of that team on this website that is shown on the screen, they are to begin providing input on potential additional openings of activities and services in Texas, consistent with guidelines provided by the CDC. And there should be doing that work over last week into this week. And the governor made it clear in his executive order that he expects by April 27th to announce further details of that plan and what may be allowed to reopen under what circumstances and guidance and standards. So we'll be watching closely. That will be a big date to understand how the next steps that the governor may take and next executive orders that may come out on April 27th. And then lastly, the governor also directed that state parks could reopen as of yesterday. However, there are strict guidelines for those who do want to use the state parks in order to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. You can see the three that are listed on the screen. Also just encourage anyone that is interested in visiting those parks to visit the website before they do so to learn if there are any restrictions or limitations or things they should know before visiting one of the parks. And so that is the end of the first section of the presentation. I can keep going or I can take questions on this part. Let's go ahead and see if there's any questions on this particular subset. Any questions on this? Welcome Council Member Armitter. Any particular questions? I have one but I wanted to, yes, Council Member Briggs. So if we have been notified of a business that has contacted their employees about opening their doors to shopping inside, does that not fall within this, within any of these executive orders? It depends upon the business and what services they provide. So if they are essential, they can continue to operate but are encouraged to do so under the social distancing guidelines and best practices. So those are our grocers, retailers, providing essential services. If they are non-essential, they still cannot be open to customers in their store. They can only begin to do the retail to go model on Friday where they may have employees working in the store but they can only deliver items to customers, to their cars or to their homes. Okay, well this one place of business does not have online ordering and they were told that shoppers would be able to come in store. So I guess I can take this offline and ask you more about that but is it possible that they were considered essential and then chose to close on their own but then have recently just decided to reopen? That could be a possibility. I'm happy to look into it further with you. Okay, thank you. Any other questions on this? Yes, Council Member Meltzer. If we've been given any insight at all into a testing strategy and testing quantity and frequency, you know, to be used in conjunction with any kind of sequence of opening up? Unfortunately, not at this time. The governor did address that during his press conference in terms of how he will balance having testing capacity, hospital beds, also a strategically reopening. It was vague at that point. We don't have many details. We're hoping through the next press conference there may be some more information released in regards to that testing strategy or just medical strategy overall. It did say in the governor's press release that he had charged these health experts on the strike force to develop a medical architecture to comprehensively test and trace COVID-19. That's as much detail I have at this point. Any other questions? Council Member Amater? Yes. Will the businesses to go retail be responsible for providing masks for their employees or will employees be expected to bring their own or are cities expected or was that not specified in the order? It was not specified. The guidance from the Department of State Health Services simply states that all employees must wear face coverings in the retail to go model. Thank you. And yeah, that was my impression too. I'm glad for what it's worth that I'm glad that that is a requirement, but I'm concerned if it's left up to the employees and, you know, and I would like to know if the governor has any further comment on that issue and regarding specifications for, you know, what kind of masks does it have to have a filter in it, how often the mask needs to be washed. I'm concerned also because customers won't be seeing everybody who is working there, you know, there's less likelihood of people being members of the public being able to see if people aren't wearing masks. So anyway, I'd be interested in finding out that information and seeing what we can do to kind of to to shore that up to help protect employees at this time. All right. Any other questions? Let me not seeing any. I guess I have one and this is for the city attorney and I we don't I don't see a closed session on it, but just curious with these orders that the governor just issued, is there anything expressly in the order that gives limitations to other municipalities orders? In other words, if the governor's is this an all encompassing orders and therefore we're not able to whether we're a county municipality or whatever political subdivision that has that authority to create any type of order that may be more stringent than as an example, if the governor is saying that these retail to go establishments may be open retail to go is a city or county able to say if you're a non essential business, you must maintain you must stay closed. We'd have to take a look at the order mayor I don't recall any specific language including municipalities, but we would be happy to take a look at it and answer what you know the answer Catherine Clifton is going to answer this question. Okay. All right. Based on what the tenor of the order so far, we would probably be prohibited from restricting anything that he has said would be open and in fact, I think GA 16 actually reads that way currently. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other question on this subset of the presentation seeing no indications for questions. You may proceed with the rest of the presentation. Thank you, Mayor Watts. So going into the second part of the presentation in regards to a couple updates on city operations. The first update is in regards to personal protective equipment. So we have formed a working group in the city and they are charged with developing strategies and procedures to maintain safety for city staff. They are also coordinating getting the supply of PPE that we need and they've developed guidelines for PPE that have been sent out to the entire organization as of yesterday. And this working group is led by the fire department battalion chief and under direction of fires medical director. So those guidelines that we released to the organization yesterday are based on OSHA guidelines that have come out and they help us to categorize by risk to understand by position and function what sort of PPE our city staff should be wearing to maintain their health and safety as well as the health and safety with anyone they might be interacting with. And in addition to that, staff also released an informal staff report in the Friday, April 10th report. They had a little bit more of specifics what each department is doing in regards to strategies for mitigation and social distancing. So I've listed kind of a few commonalities that are on the screen. We continue to evolve these day by day and week as we learn and can adjust our operations and certainly as we adjust staffing as well. So we're limiting access and entry to buildings, including persons per vehicle, regular sanitization of vehicles and facilities, procuring thermometers to check employee temperatures upon arriving to work. And then lastly, provision of various PPE and cleaning supplies available to our staff. And then moving into the second update underneath this part of the presentation is in regards to business outreach and enforcement. So I have provided some updates in the past to council in regards to these efforts. So I'll try to move through them quickly. But just as a reminder, we did initially meet with all of the major retail outlets on March 24th. Development services staff went out and met with those retailers and they distributed copies of flyers and they provided some educational materials. They also learned how they were modifying their operations during this time period. A number of them were taking steps from reducing hours to allow for more cleaning and restocking to take place, increasing just the cleaning schedules they had and installing barriers, whether that be taping lines on floors, installing sneeze guards, a number of things that were taking place. Since that time, we have continued to visit those retail outlets. And we have continued to monitor some of the corporate websites to understand how each industry and different major corporate retailers are putting together their strategies. And we did share that with council in last week's Friday report. This information has been really helpful to our staff. As they go out and visit with different stores, they can make suggestions of what they've seen happen in other like stores. So this is a really a good knowledge sharing tool that we've had as we continue to teach and educate stores about various opportunities and tools available to them for their employees and for their customers. So we're continuing that effort. We also sent a follow-up letter to all of the retail outlets last week. And that's shown on the right hand on the screen. And we're continuing to develop new signage that we can provide to the stores for them to put up in their storefronts. In addition to these education efforts, we've also formed an internal team that has been meeting daily for the past month. This team has representatives from multiple departments and they are reviewing incoming complaints in regards to if a business is essential or non-essential, if a business is not following social distancing protocol, or if there are other concerns that have been reported to us. We are then scheduling follow-up site visits and inspections to go out and meet with those retailers or businesses. And we continue to review the changing regulations through last month. They've continued to change whether that be from the state or county or locally. And so we may have to adjust our strategy or our education reeducation of those businesses. If a resident has a concern in regards to a business and their operations during this time, they can report that through the Engage Denton app or through our website. And actually, the shortcut is engagedenton.com. We have received 130 of those requests from residents or members of the public. And we have responded to those in an average time of less than two days. And then, oops, skipped a slide, sorry. And so this internal team, we've been anticipating with Governor Abbott's announcement of last Friday that we're going to have to continue to work hard through the coming weeks as things may begin to reopen, that we continue our heavy education strategy around best practices and social distancing. And so we're kind of coming up with next steps of what this may look like through the coming weeks. So we're developing a website page where we can centralize all of these business operations best practices from the CDC, OSHA, and so forth, you know, thinking about creating a packet of materials that could be provided to businesses, developing checklists by business type or industry. So for example, we could have a checklist for retailers, we could have a checklist for office, general office space, really trying to get business owners to begin thinking about or begin thinking about what could they implement to help with the safety for their employees and customers. And so that is the end of the second update. Any questions on this portion of the presentation? Any questions? Yes, Councilmember Briggs. For clarification, for the individuals, for the businesses that are going to be opening on Friday with a document you sent us from Health and Human Services, it says all employees must wear face coverings. But the businesses that have been open, they're not required to follow those same guidelines now, which would be all employees wear face coverings? Under the governor's orders, I believe they are not. In regards to essential businesses, the governor's orders, I believe, specify that they should follow social distancing protocols and best practices, but it doesn't specifically say get to that level of detail for face coverings. However, this latest guidance on retail to go does include that. I'm just thinking it might be a little confusing for individuals, I mean, for that. So thank you for that clarification. And I have some more questions, but I'll hold them to the end because it's really things I'd like to know before the next meeting. Okay. All right. Okay. Any other questions on this segment? Let me. Yes, Councilmember Meltzer. You're still muted, Councilmember Meltzer. There it is. First of all, this is some of the comments, some of the massive work that goes on behind the scenes that may or may not be visible to the public that staff is doing. And I'm grateful that you're doing that and keeping us safe by reaching out to all those businesses. Back on PPE, I just wanted to ask if there are any presently any shortages or any projected shortages where the public might play a role, if people express interest in sewing masks and printing face shields and things of that nature, is there a need for that? And is there a path for people to follow if they want to do that? I believe we're accepting donations of cloth masks for general city staff. I don't have the context right now, but I can follow up after and we can push that out publicly. And then the fire department and police departments are still accepting some donations of very specific products that they're looking for as well. Any other questions? Councilmember Armitage? Yes, this is just to piggyback on Councilmember Meltzer's question. I wasn't going to ask about this, but since he asked one thing that has occurred to me, if it turns out that it's unclear who's going to be providing those masks for people in the private sector who want to open up, I was wondering, I don't expect you to be able to answer this now, but if city staff who would otherwise be in a position of possible furlough or reduced work hours be able to help us reduce the curve by making those masks. Again, I realize that that's more of a policy issue, but since Councilmember Meltzer raised the issue, I wanted to mention that that is where my mind is going at this time. All right. Any other questions? Comments? All right. I think you have one more segment of the presentation, is that correct? Yes. And I'll go back to the presentation. So the last section is in regards to a few community resource updates. So first is an update on the COVID relief fund. I did provide more information during the last council work session in regards to how this fund is administered. And this is for providing assistance to those that may be facing a housing crisis as a result of COVID-19. I just want to highlight to the last bullet point here, United Way has been working with the nonprofit agencies that are utilizing this fund to help increase their staffing capacity to take in requests for this fund. So they have two agencies that have taken them up on that offer, and they are providing two staff and seven interns to assist with screening the incoming request, collecting documentation, and entering them into our HMIS system. And then here is the latest funding chart as of yesterday. So you can see the two columns, Denton and Lewisville, and then a third other column for other parts of Denton County. So for Denton, 57 households have been assisted, utilizing $49,000 in funds. There is a current balance of $80,000 available for residents of Denton. Total funds raised of this $130,000, $100,000 is from the city of Denton, and $30,000 was a donation of Peterbilt that was made specifically to Denton residents. There was also donations of Peterbilt through the different columns of Lewisville and Denton County as well. So in total, there is over $300,000 that has been raised throughout Denton County to help provide those assistance to residents in need. I'm happy to answer any questions. Let me get through maybe the remainder of the presentation, and then I'll come back to questions on this part. The other update that we are very excited to announce in partnership with the United Way is we have launched an information and referral service program with United Way. So they have this program that usually helps residents get connected to resources that are available in the community through various nonprofits or community organizations. They've expanded it just in relation to COVID-19 to help residents or business who may need help navigating the many resources that are available, either in the community locally or available through the CARES Act, and really helping guide them in providing those resources necessary. So we began with a soft rollout late last week. Just wanted to understand how we could staff and implement and take these incoming requests and make any adjustments before we did a big push out to the community. We did release a press release today, and we are going to begin to do some of that increased marketing and outreach to let our residents and businesses know that this is a service that is available to them to navigate all of those resources. We understand it is difficult. In addition to United Way staff and City of Denton staff helping with this effort, United Way was able to leverage numerous volunteers and professionals through their network. So whether that be finance professionals or legal resources that may be necessary to help answer some of the questions or provide some guidance to residents or businesses in need. And so here's the flyer that was sent out with the press release, and we'll be continuing to develop various graphics and marketing for this. But there are three ways to find help and utilize this program. You can call the line at 940-566-2688. You can email info@unitedwayofdenton.org, or you can fill out a basic web form at unitedwayofdenton.org/info, and somebody will follow up with you. And this slide I just kind of put in as an example of, you know, all of the numerous communication efforts we are doing to push out local resources, county resources, state resources. But when there's so much information, we understand that can be very complex and challenging and daunting. So although we can push it out one way, this information referral services program allows us to have some of that two-way communication with the help of the United Way in really helping to connect to everything that might be available. And then lastly, I wanted to provide council with an update on our alternative shelter arrangement. So as we've discussed in the past, the city has rooms rented at two hotels. MKOC is managing one hotel, which is primarily for individual clients. Right now we have 57 rooms rented and 70 clients are being assisted and are housed there. Grace like Rain is managing the other hotel, which is primarily for families and that is at ten rooms with seven families currently. And then our Daily Bread has been a critical partner in this in providing meals to both hotels and assisting with case management services and supplies. So through the last few weeks, we've certainly made modifications and improvements in the shelter operations at these hotels, even just learning to have an inventory of some basic supplies that clients might need available right at the hotel to streamlining client requests, all of these things where we're trying to become a little bit more efficient so that we allow our nonprofit staff to spend time doing case management, really providing that wraparound support to the clients and then also working on rapid rehousing that are that is still a primary goal that we want to make sure that we can open up nonprofit staff to be able to work on rehousing folks as we do have rapid rehousing dollars still available right now that was provided by the city of Denton to both MKOC and our Daily Bread. And the rooms are rented until May 10. And so right now staff are working with the nonprofit agencies on various options. Don't have more info to share at this point, but looking from extending or next transition options, we can report back to council in the next couple of weeks with a recommendation of how to move forward with sheltering during this time period. And that is the end of the presentation. Okay, any questions, Councilmember Armitage? Yes, can you speak to what funding sources HUD funding, other kinds of federal and state funding are available that were either in the process of applying for or plan to apply for I know there was the one that either just came out yesterday or I just found out about it yesterday. Several billion in HUD funds available specifically to cities for addressing homelessness under COVID. Sure, so there's a few different sources available and we're still trying to get some further guidance on how those funding sources will be allocated from the state. So we don't have more specifics on some of it. I can let you know, I think we had previously communicated that as far as CDBG, additional CDBG dollars have been made available. Since the city of Denton is an entitlement community, we have been notified that we will receive an additional 618,000 in CDBG funds. Some of the restrictions have been lifted. So where we can normally usually spend the majority of that money on infrastructure or facilities, we now would have the opportunity to potentially spend that on services, public services. So staff right now is trying to evaluate and get further guidance from HUD and really put together options that Council can have a policy discussion around how those dollars should be allocated and still looking at our annual allocation of CDBG dollars for the next program year as well. As far as ESG dollars, emergency solution grant dollars, those are for funding of homelessness solutions. The city of Denton does not receive those funds. There are a couple agencies in the city that have applied and been awarded in the past for those dollars. We, I think our staff are actually participating on a webinar call right now, trying to understand how those ESG dollars will be made available or application of. So if that can be locally, how can we partner? How can we go after those funding dollars or how they'll be allocated? So we hope to have more of that information shortly. Excellent. Thank you. And I had another question. Have staff considered, since there are all these applications coming in for assistance and the rules are changing and I know it takes a lot of time to figure out what the rules are and also to process these applications that we're receiving for the funding we have and applications that we're making for additional sources of funding or helping nonprofits make those applications for additional sources of funding, has staff considered using city workers who might be on a list for possible furlough or reduced hours to train, to help with some of that effort so we can be using our people power to help ease the burden? Because I know our community development staff is working really hard. There are only a certain number of them. Ditto for our nonprofits. At this point, I think we need to receive the guidance first to understand what a strategy could be moving forward and then, you know, what resources we have available or what additional resources or staff we can have to help us with those efforts. I would just add that we have offered to supplement the United Way program with staff right now that has got some additional time. We're also providing volunteer opportunities for our daily bread and the shelter. So anywhere we can find an opportunity for folks that have reduced workload, we're giving them that opportunity to help cover those duties. So that is first and foremost in our mind and we're looking for those anywhere we can. Wonderful. Thank you. And shout out to those staff who are volunteering there and everybody who made it possible. Also shout out to our design staff for condensing so much of that complicated information into this really great graphics. It's helpful to me and helpful to the public. Much better than reading and intimidating long documents. So really, really appreciate it. That's not easy. I did want to mention, I guess I'll ask it as a question, is it had been my understanding that the location of those motels or motel that we're using was confidential information even to counsel. But I think there might have been some changes that public information now. It's not confidential information. However, I just do not want to publicly promote where our most vulnerable individuals may be staying. I'm happy to talk with you offline. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah. And I'd like to double it. There's nothing necessarily secret about it, but remember that some of the folks that are in these shelters are victims of domestic violence. We're trying to, you know, trying to maintain confidentiality as much as possible. So there's those types of issues that we're dealing with. And as we mentioned last time, we'd prefer to just brief you on, you know, what we're spending. If you want to know more in a private briefing, that's fine. But we have already dealt with in the last couple of weeks, two or three different instances where our police have had to get involved because of the folks coming into the shelters or the makeshift shelters. And we just as soon try to respect their privacy as much as we can. Of course. And thank you. I completely support that. I was just wondering because I had heard that that someone had had obtained that information or an organization had obtained it in a public information request and I was confused by that. So thank you. But I do agree that it is very important. Thank you. Well put. Councilmember Briggs. Thank you, Mayor. Two things. Can you go back Sarah or on the on the slide with the number of individuals that have been approved? Yes. Hold on one second. There you go. Yeah, that was it. And so I know that the last time we had this conversation and even the callers that called in, so they were having a little bit of trouble with paperwork and some of the other issues on on getting approved. Do we know in relation to these that have actually been funded? How many have applied or been denied? Like, do we have a do we have a total of the applications received? That would be helpful to know. Sure, I can I can definitely get the information on the total of applications received and follow up with that. In regards to the number of requests or the demand or the need a couple of weeks ago after that last work session worked with the United Way and they tried to collect some that information from the agencies that have been applying. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of hard data to share. At that time they had reported I think there was three agencies that had responded and said that they may have had a hundred inquiries or so. Since that time, we've been following up and the United Way has provided that additional staffing to a couple of those agencies and they've been able to go back through those list of inquiries, reach back out. Some have applied and we're collecting the documentation. Others have said they're no longer in need of that assistance. And so working our way through those those lists, I can say just as an example for one agency, you know, they were they thought they had a long list to call back, you know, they're down to about 10 right now or less. And also can add that the United Way is seeing about 50 record applications per week, countywide. And they're they don't expect that to jump largely week to week however it really depends upon a number of different things in regards to how long this may be prolonged and some of the financial impact to families and individuals as well. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it would just be really helpful to know because I know that there were struggling and I appreciate United Way offering the help. I know the extra help is very welcomed and needed in this situation. But just an idea of how many have, you know, applied or the applications that have been turned in or maybe, you know, some are still in process, but just an idea of how many people out there are are asking for for help at the moment. And I have, we can I can definitely get you some of the numbers. I know generally, I don't think many if any, maybe a few have been denied. If they're, if they're applying for it. Okay, and do you know if, because it says the rent, mortgage and utility, there's the 57. Do you know if the money is that they get can cover all of those or do they have to? Well, I mean, if they have mortgage and utility assistance needed, do they have to apply for those separately? Or is it just funds, maybe one time for both of those? I'm trying to see if I can quickly locate that answer, but I may have to follow up just to be more confident. Okay, yeah, I'm just worried. I'm just can you know, I don't know if they can apply twice and if they later on if the utility becomes an issue, if they can go back if they've already applied once for for the mortgage. So yeah, just some information would be nice to follow up on and on the shelter, since it says that I think you said May 10 is when the contract goes out and that will be 70 individuals and seven families that will no longer be in those rooms if there's no extensions. So at that point, either the Monsignor King will be opened back up, or there will be an extension so that there wouldn't be 70 individuals who have been housed, all of a sudden unhoused on May 11. Is that correct? Yeah, we, we had a meeting on this yesterday afternoon and our intention would be to extend the program for at least another couple weeks, even if Monsignor King's reopened. When you factor in the social distancing, their capacity goes to about a third of what it was. So we are currently in, I've asked our internal team to take a look at different ideas, as far as how we could ensure that those folks are provided that service. The issue of volunteerism and, you know, just staffing multiple sites is a huge issue right now. So we're not supportive at all of breaking this down to two or three different sites, unless we can find the folks to actually do the volunteerism on that. So it's going to be something where we're going to keep you informed over the next two or three weeks what our next steps are going to be. But that is exactly what we're faced with right now is I don't know that that's necessarily answer anymore when you're only able to handle about 25 or 30 people in the shelter. So we will continue to keep you informed. Can I just follow up to that? Cause I was really glad to hear Sarah mentioned rapid rehousing and that's still our goal. And as we have individuals here in a close proximity where they have, I guess, case managers are people accessible to help work with them to get them into a home. I would like to know or follow up out of these individuals that are in the hotels and these families after the process, who is able to move into who's able to be permanently or, you know, housed instead of going back into the shelter system. That would be good information to know. Okay. We can get you that information and we're working closely with the nonprofits. The more we are able to provide volunteers and free up some of that nonprofit staff to work on case management and the housing, the better we'll have as far as outcomes right now. And over the last few weeks we've been scrambling and just really challenged with even keeping the basic shelter operations and totally new facility and totally new operations going. But our hope is over the next few weeks as we can continue to maybe look at, get some volunteers back. Can we use that nonprofit staff for doing that really critical case management and housing? Thank you. Anybody else besides Councilmember Armitage want to see first? Councilmember Meltzer. Sarah, I remember when you provided the excellent summary of the CARES Act that there were a number of pots of grants. One I recall wasn't as big, but it was an arts one, which you might not view as that, you know, essential in a crisis situation where it's potentially income to someone. So my question is, have you already covered kind of most of what's out there in your comments just now, or might you be coming forward with just a review of the grant opportunities in the CARES Act with some options as a future agenda item? We can certainly follow up with more information. There's more to be provided than I had just summarized, but we can do that in an ISR, and then we can always follow up with a work session as well. Great. And if I can ask another mayor. Yes. I'm just wondering, first of all, very pleased to hear that we've got that United Way kind of navigator team helping people connect with resources. I wonder if you have heard from them or otherwise how the state is doing now at answering the calls for unemployment benefits and people getting through the website, checks arriving, where does that all stand? I do not have information to share at this time, but we're working on getting some of that together. I sent something to Jessica Rogers right before this meeting, and so we're trying to gather what we can as an update we can send it to city council by email. I do know that the Texas Workforce Commission has opened to seven days a week of accepting applications, so they have expanded their capacity, but I'm not sure in terms of how the numbers being turned around and the wait time. We'll see if we have some additional information to share. Thank you. Sarah, if I could add to that, I have heard both directly and anecdotally that obviously the checks were coming in as far as the $1,200 and then so much per child, and I've heard that people are beginning to get their unemployment checks and they do include the $600 extra per week for those who are eligible. They're getting that amount, plus they're getting the normal eligible benefits. Truthfully, I've talked to several people who were filing for unemployment that still didn't know that the CARES Act provided those provisions of an additional $600 a week, so I would certainly encourage anyone on this call watching via the airways to just make sure that if you hear someone that's talking about unemployment, that you educate them about that, because I've had some people that weren't that expedient in signing up because they thought that the benefits were so low that, "Well, I'll get to it when I get to it," when in actuality, they're leaving quite a bit on the table as far as time wise. I have heard that they're coming out. Obviously, they're booked up, but those checks are starting to arrive, which I think is a great thing, so whatever that's worth, Councilmember Meltzer. Okay. Anybody else? Any other quick councilmembrometer? Yeah. A question that I had last week, wondering if there's been any change, or rather at the last meeting, I had asked about a triage or priority for the hotels, if there was a system whereby when requests come in, if people who are disabled, seniors, veterans, essential workers, whatever, are prioritized. I think that that's a good idea. I still think it's a good idea. I know the answer last time, I believe, was that there wasn't, but I was wondering if there's any news on that, if that's now in place. Yes. We are working with our nonprofit staff. Our Daily Bread and MKOC have been deciding and recommending who to place into the hotels if a room becomes available based upon some of those factors of vulnerabilities. They are the best to make those decisions and working with those clients, especially our Daily Bread, who does have a street outreach worker who's closely involved with our street outreach team, and understanding what is that person's vulnerabilities to remain unsheltered in comparison to that we are using our resources most effectively and those that are in the most dire need of being placed. Thank you. Then on the subject of the CARES Act, CARES funding, since people were asking about that just now, could you speak to what resources are available at the local level? Is staff considering anything for people who either don't have a social security number, tax payers who have an ITIN, but not social security, or people who are dependents, so don't qualify for care, but are still struggling? Can you speak to what are communications and relief available locally at the county, state, federal, et cetera, for people in that situation? I don't think I'm prepared to answer that right now. As far as the CARES Act funding, the city of Denton is not eligible to receive that direct funding. You have to be over 500,000 to have done that first round of certification and applying for the direct funding to local governments. I'm not sure if that's what you're in reference to. More it's a matter of individuals as far, because I know I've been in conversation with other local elected officials talking about this issue, and also people in the grassroots who are working with undocumented immigrants who are tax payers, but don't have social security, but have the ITIN number, people who are students, who are essentially independent as far as how they live, but they are dependents of their parents for convenience sake, so they don't apply. So we have a number of people who are at risk in this city who don't get CARE funding. I will say one thing that I am aware of- Councilmember Armaker, real quick question and clarification, because we need to move this agenda item along. It sounds like what you're asking is people who aren't qualifying for the CARES Act, what resources are available at the local level? As far as at the state level, we don't have any funding at the state level as far as that I'm aware of that funding comes down through the state organizations. My understanding is the funding that we have available is through the COVID-19 Response Fund that we've set up and the Utility Assistance Fund. So I guess I really just don't want to put staff in the position of having to answer federal questions. So if you could maybe make it specific to what can the city do? Because we've got this whole website up now with United Way to really promote information and where people can gather that information. So I'm not really understanding. I think you're- Go ahead. Thank you. So I understand your point. Yeah. No, my point is as far as communicating information, so for instance, on the United Way page, I would like there to be information for people who are in that situation. And I do want to make an announcement and to say that I myself have donated 23% of my care check, my household care check to the Puente Relief Fund, which is a local fund that donates to people who do not receive benefits under the CARES Act. So it's a new fund, Movimento Cosecha. Okay. If you could provide that information to staff offline and we can get that up somewhere. But we want to make sure that we understand those organizations and provide as much information as we can. So I'd really like to move this agenda item along. So do you have any other- Absolutely. But just because we've got a lot of people who are struggling who are not receiving those care checks and it affects all of us because it- Understand. It's a thank you. Yes. All right. Council Member Meltzer. I understand your desire to move things along. I just want to put some corrective information out. If you were a taxpaying employee, but were not eligible for benefits because of lack of social security or dependent status, your employer can still keep you paid by participating in the Paycheck Protection Program, and a vote is due this afternoon, possibly while we're meeting to replenish those funds. I believe $300 billion is going toward that. So the Paycheck Protection Program, a small business basically is funded by the government to keep people on payroll, whether they've got something to do or not. And that has to do with whatever their payroll was. It's not about each individual applying. So people are in that situation, they're paying taxes, they were employees and are now not employed, should be reaching out to their employers and connecting them up with Paycheck Protection Program. Okay. All right. Any other questions? Council Member Briggs, quickly. Yeah. So this is the questions that I've been holding for the end of the meeting before our next meeting on the COVID, because I think I heard it was going to be on the 28th and the governor will make an announcement on the 27th and ours is going to end on the 30th. So before we meet again, I mean, unless you want me to do this under closing, I had some questions I wanted answered by the next agenda item. Could you do that under concluding items and/or send staff those questions individually? Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions on this agenda item? All right. We will, let's take a quick, about a five to 10 minute break. It's 2 22. We'll come back at 2 30. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council, April 21st, 2020. It is 2 33. We're moving through our work session reports. Agenda item 3B is our next work session reports, receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the existing East Hickory street street police headquarters with a focus on suggestions by city council to the facade alternates. Thank you, mayor. This is Sarah Hensley, assistant city manager. Can everyone hear me okay? We can hear you. All right. So what I want to do is run through these. I'm having trouble clicking here. There we go. I'm going to click through these first little slides here just because they're just a topic and basically what we're looking at, this is follow up from the March 31st meeting that we just recently had in regards to the questions were raised about the facade. Several council members had a concern about the arch, little arch covering there in the picture you see there in the screen. And if we could leave that. So this was the, is the current design. All it shows is your new window covering and the murals, which were local artists. And so we went back to the drawing board and let me just say that Chris Squadra is on the line, which he's from peak performance, as well as Jake Willen, who's with Branstetter Carol, and they're here in case they have, you have some technical questions that I may not be able to answer. And so I'm going to go right into the new recommended design, which is about a half a million dollars less than previous recommendation. This preserves the existing steel canopy. This does continue with our safety opportunities for the headquarter building with various features. We have added an ADA ramp and railing because the current one is, is not in the best shape. And we want to make sure that people with mobility challenges have an opportunity to easily be able to access the police headquarters. It leaves the existing masonry tower, does not put the covering over that. We do use some new stucco and we put in some new planters there. But as you can see, and there's a more technical drawing here that gives you just a little bit better feel of what exactly are we talking about? We are going back and looking at adding a few bits of foliage planters and some trees in there, raised beds, and then some new security fencing. And this is pretty much what, what you see is, is basically what we would get for about $830,000 compared to the 1.3 million, which was presented to you on March the 31st. We did reduce the lineal footage of the facade area and not go all the way down. So you see it goes only about halfway down. And we added just a very small, tiny canopy there, right to the side of the existing canopy that stays. So that is option one. There is an option two. It is not a whole lot different other than it adds a little, a few more other features to it. But for the cost associated, the staff is recommending the option one. And you can see there very clearly has some enhanced security, but it's stucco and some masonry. It is a very good streetscape program with some added foliage. And for $830,000, that's what we would get. If you look at option two, again, it's mostly the masonry, which adds the cost. That's why you see it go up to about $1.1 million. And it has better streetscaping. But for what we need to accomplish, and Chief Dixon also agrees, we're recommending, staff is recommending option one at the cost of $830,000. And that concludes the presentation. Yeah, sorry, I'm on mute. I apologize. Councilmember Briggs, go ahead. And so in the bond that was passed, the $830,000, that fits well within the funds that were approved for this project. Councilmember Briggs, this is Sarah. We hope that that's the case of obviously we have to, this is a design and we would go out, but this is certainly more financially viable as we go out and look at what it's going to cost overall to do it. And it really does achieve some of the same things that we were looking to do with an upgrade of the facade and certainly adding security measures. Okay. I just want to make sure, because I know the inside of that building is horrific and is going to need a lot of changes and help. And so I don't want to get to where we overspend on the outside and have to skimp on the inside to what they actually need for the building and renovation. I certainly don't have the ability to predict things, but I will tell you that with the team that we're working with and the meetings that we're having that are looking at how we accomplish a quality building that meets the needs both internally and externally, I think we're going to be okay. And certainly we'll be coming back to council if we run into an issue. Okay. Just one last question. Sure. And so is it a guarantee that the two large trees are going to come out or one could be saved or are they are looking into that to see if an arborist can prevent the loss of either of those? We are. We're going to look at what trees we have currently that are right there. We are going to either way, if we have to take a tree or two out, we're going to add some trees and foliage there into the planter boxes that are be appropriate. Obviously you can't put a large trees into a planter box because they'll go right out through the bottom. But we are going to be working with a certified arborist that will help us look at the state of the trees and the likelihood of their being sustainable living as we make any improvements there. But we recognize the importance of the shade and reducing the carbon footprint. So we are looking at making sure that it's very appealing to the outside. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. So as councilmember Briggs mentioned, the inside is my biggest concern as a workplace issue. I appreciate the attempt to lower the cost under option one. So thank you. I don't see the need for the planters. So if you could speak to the cost of the planters and why that can be added later. Another exterior cost issue I was wondering about, the exterior façade, what is foundationally underneath whatever the stucco is going on top of in case we wanted to go and this is where I am more inclined to kind of go with a, you know, currently we are going to leave this unfinished on the front until we're in a more economically stable situation if that's possible. So if you could speak to that. I will a little bit. I may ask Chris squatter to come in. There's really two factors here. When you bring in a contractor and a company to do a build out, there's an economy of scale by having them do work while they're on site. So if you're pouring concrete, you're laying rebar, you're putting in all sorts of things, while they're there and they're working on whether it's internal or they're just doing an exterior façade, there's an economies of scale. Coming back and only addressing one portion may be more costly. And as we bid this during this time, actually we may find a better price. The other answer to your question about the planters, we could come back and put planters in. However, once you start with a façade and you hire someone to do partial setup of that, there's probably not going to be any savings, if anything, to come back in and then add on to that because you're bringing someone else in to do work, which may not be the same company to add on to a part versus having a company bid the project for the façade on the outside and maybe the, and then the same work on the inside and that you get one price versus then coming back and doing it. Now there's no guarantees for that fact, but it really does behove us to move forward with, if you're okay with how it looks and see where we are from a cost perspective and then if we're over our cost or we need to look at value engineering, we can certainly come back to council. I think what Sarah's saying is there's a process that needs to be followed here. Once we have an idea that we've got a building concept that is acceptable to the majority of council, we've got the ability to go out and actually do the design drawings to a point where we can get very solid quotes and answer these financial questions until the plans are completed and until we can get out in the market, we can't answer your questions. So, we're giving you our best guesstimates right now. We would not recommend at all piecemealing this project and once we get the bids back in, we'll have a conversation whether or not we're within budget and if you're acceptable with the project, if you are, if you do find the project acceptable, we'll go ahead and get moving, but the design needs to get completed first so we can answer your questions intelligently. Thank you and one more question. Can you speak to why there aren't any benches outside in the new design or maybe I missed that because currently we've got some benches there. There are not necessarily benches, but, you know, people do sit on planter boxes and things like that. I think, you know, I can't speak for the chief, but I think one of the things we don't want to do is have people just sort of hanging out and ordering or not, you know, just physically being around that front area of that building, but we can certainly, you know, like I said, look at other things, but there are planter boxes there and things that have a shelf on it. Just curious. Thank you. Councilmember Davis. Sure. Thank you, Mayor. Can you hear me okay? We can. Thank you. Thank you. First of all, I really appreciate staff's work on this and I especially appreciate the bollards in the front. I kind of wondered why we didn't have those in the first go around as a security measure. That seemed like a good budget option to me. I also appreciate the work in incorporating what's already existing. My questions along those lines and I know this may sound to some as nickel and diming, but every dollar we don't spend on the facade is a dollar we spend inside and this is the second or third renovation of this space. There are going to be unexpected things inside this building that we want to be able to have some wiggle room for. And every dollar we don't spend on the facade is a dollar we don't have to pay back later on after we take out the bond money. So my questions are these. Is it strictly necessary for us to cover perfectly good masonry with stucco, with stucco being kind of a second best option, and then also the kind of the masonry veneer around the existing tower that I'm seeing. And it looks to me like a masonry veneer around the tower. The tower matches I'll call them pilasters or kind of false pillars that are spaced along the rest of the building facade. And then we matched those with the training facility and we built that. So do we strictly need a masonry veneer around that tower? It just kind of seems like we're dressing it up a little bit more than we necessarily need to when we already have good existing masonry. The planter boxes, I like those. I think that's a good touch, especially with the trees coming out. But I'm just really wondering about some of these additional, I guess, veneer treatments that we're putting in that may save us a little bit more cash. Councilmember Davis, I'm going to refer to Chris, but I believe, if I'm not mistaken, or maybe Jay, that we're not recommending to do any kind of wrapping around the tower that we would leave it as the existing masonry. So you're saying why not let the stucco areas match the existing tower? You're muted. You're muted. Sorry. Was it clicking right? Thank you. I'm saying why are we covering existing masonry with stucco? If we kind of agree in some of our other projects that stucco is a second tier trim level, then good masonry. And we have masonry that's in perfectly good shape. It doesn't need, at least I haven't heard from anybody that it needs to be stabilized or covered for restoration purposes or preservation. The tower, if I'm looking at the drawings correctly, the tower looks like it has a veneer on it. It looks like there's a masonry wrap all the way around because that's not, what's in the drawings is not the existing masonry of the tower. Okay. Jay Quinlan, who's with the architecture firm, is going to address your question. Thanks. Yes. Thank you. Jay here. We are proposing the existing masonry tower to remain as is. I apologize if the graphics might be coming through. It might be looking like it's not, but that is the intent is to keep the existing tower as is. I'd like to also bring up the reason we're proposing the stucco in that area is we've got three different size bricks on that corner of the building and they don't line up correctly and we've got a big control joint, a couple of recesses. What I'm getting at is the brick work on the east end of that building is not consistent with the rest of the work as you go to the west where the pilasters are. So the stucco was proposed as a way to, in a way, mask the irregularities on that end with the brick work. Could you give us any kind of, I know these are design numbers, they're not build numbers, but can you kind of give us an estimate of what we'd be shaving off the project if we didn't have stucco in those places? I would have to defer to Chris Squadron on that. I can do that. Councilmember, can you hear me okay? Yes we can, go ahead. The subcontractor's contract amount would be about $20,000 for that. It's 18,048 square feet at 1055 a square foot. So it's about $20,000 for stucco to the sub and by the time you put markups on that you'd be, you know, over, you've got $22,000 roughly is what's in that $830,000 for the stucco. Thank you. My comment there would be, I'd kind of defer to the rest of my colleagues for the aesthetic choice of stucco. The price point doesn't hurt that much at $20,000, $25,000 and I'm glad to hear that the tower, we're not spending extra on wrapping the tower. That just seems like good money after bad. So those are my questions and comments. I've got a couple. Anybody else have a question about this? Could somebody tell me the interior finish, what's the budget for the interior finish of that building? This is Chris Squadra. I would have to dig that up because the interior includes a lot of mechanical, electrical, it's collated together with estimates for the 911 call center. But I would be happy to pull out. No, you don't need to do that. My point being all that combined, the aggregate with the 911, the mechanical and all that, the remodel of that space, what is the budget for that? What's the project amount? Let me pull that up for you. And if you'll move on, I'll come back to you. I've got to dig it out of my computer, but I'll pull it up here in a second. Do we not know? I mean, I thought we had that. I mean, did we not issue bonds on this? Do we not have an idea? The entire budget for that renovation is around 26 million. Okay. So the entire budget is $26 million. No, it's about 36 million, the entire budget. Okay. Yeah. Are you talking about just the police department headquarters or the entire bond? I'm talking about the police department headquarters. I mean, we're talking about a facade and staff, I appreciate you coming back. You did exactly what the council asked you to do. You went back and you looked at how can we save some money off to the facade? You saved half a million dollars. What I'm hearing is what you're needing is just some direction to be able to even put design guidelines together, to even put plans together. And when you get it bid, if it gets bid, it will come back to us. And if we're over somewhere, then we can make the trade-offs at that point. So I'm real okay with moving forward with the facade design understanding that the stucco is only $20,000. I'm not concerned about that, especially if it's an irregularity, if there's some expansion joints that need to have attention. Obviously, that's not a major cost compared to the $26 million. And more importantly, this council is going to have an opportunity or some council is going to have an opportunity once the bids come in to then look at it and say, okay, well, we need to look at this, we need to look at this, we need to move this over here. So this isn't etching this in stone, it's simply just trying to get this thing off the ground so we can begin to move forward in the process. Is that a fairly accurate summary, Mr. Heilman, of what you're looking for? That's exactly right. Okay. I'm okay with it understanding that the facade may change. We may come back and say we don't want stucco, we want something else, fix the brick, make it consistent. It's going to be an aesthetic issue. We might say, hey, find the same brick and make it consistent with the masonry. But we can make those choices once we see what the entire budget is based upon the interior finish out and things such as that. So I'm okay with moving forward with this facade understanding that it may change in the future, along with any type of budgetary constraints or project specifications on the interior of the building. That's correct. So I'm good with that. Anybody object to that? Okay. All right. We'll go ahead and move forward on agenda item 3B. Agenda item 3C, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the budget reduction strategies. Good afternoon, mayor, city council, David Gaines, director of finance. We're going to go through this presentation today for the work session item and talk through the financial applications of the COVID-19 pandemic, what our current forecast are in funds throughout the city and what are our budget strategies are moving forward and get council direction on those. So here's the objectives that we'll go through in this presentation. Start off with the overview of where we stand right now based on our forecast, talk through specific general fund revenue forecast, go through sales tax, property tax, and other revenues within the general fund of where we're seeing them now and how we're forecasting them throughout the rest of the fiscal year and onto FY21. Then we'll go through our cost reduction strategies we've broken them into two phases. This has been a work in progress to get here for how we want to lay this out and how we want to structure our decision making process moving forward. We'll talk about phase one, which are steps that we've already implemented across all funds throughout the city and then have some proposals for phase two, which we would implement here over the next few weeks. If council approves our plan as laid out, talk through the financial impact of those strategies and also the impacts of revenues on all major funds in the city and then touch on our capital project analysis and what we're projecting right now for debt service payments, for our debt service needs next year moving forward in general government projects. So here's an overview of our revenue projections right now just to set the stage for where we stand and what's guiding our decision making process moving forward. In the general fund, we're anticipating a 10 to $15 million reduction in general fund revenues and FY20. And again, we'll go through specifics on what makes up that 10 to $15 million reduction and what our thought process is with those major revenue sources in the general fund. We're also anticipating a 10 to $20 million reduction in revenues specifically related to COVID-19 impacts through all of our utility funds. As we tried to forecast those projections and as we talk forward in the presentation, you'll see that really had to use the information that we have to make projections. There's not a lot of hard data right now for coming up with those projections. So we did look back at the previous recession, for example, 2008. But we also know that this is an unprecedented situation that we're in and it's hard to find parallels with previous recessions or times of financial constraint. So what are our goals as we try to deal with the fiscal issue? Well, the first one was to propose a property tax rate next fiscal year that was at the now called the no new taxes tax rate. You're familiar with it. That's the effective tax rate as well on the maintenance and operations side. And then on the debt service side, going into the fiscal year, we knew we were anticipating a debt service tax rate increase as we began the implementation of the 2019 bond election and had a number of other capital projects moving forward. But we know we want to limit that increase to one to two cents as a goal as well. So we'll talk through some of our decision making process with our CIP to meet that goal. A goal throughout all the utilities is no utility rate increases in each of our utility funds to make the best decisions possible to mitigate the loss of revenue and take a good look at our forecast to ensure that we have no rate increases on our on our customers throughout the city. Any of our approaches for budget strategies, we want them to be a phased approach knowing that our projections are going to get more certain as we get more information that things are going to change rapidly as an example, which will point to we won't get sales tax receipts for March and April, which obviously know will be significantly impacted until May and June. So trying to build a system where we can take take additional steps as we get additional information and then a transparent deliberate process, which can be explained obviously to residents of what what we're doing moving forward, but also to employees of the city so that everyone's aware of why we're making decisions and what steps we'll take to get there. We want to view every decision we make over a longer time span than just six months over an 18 to 30 month time span. And given this is normally the time that would be starting our FY 21 budget process, view these discussions as the beginning of the FY 21 budget budget process and really roll a lot of these decisions straight into the FY 21 budget. So we'll start off on the general fund as we go through these slides and talk through the sales tax forecast that we've laid out. The good news is we started the fiscal year ahead of budget with our sales tax receipts through February, we're $745,000 above budget, which obviously gives us some room as we start to anticipate the decline in budgeted and sales tax receipts. You can see there on the second bullet that we're in total anticipating about $8.8 million in sales tax receipts under our fiscal year budget and that equates about to a 40% reduction between March and September compared to 2019. We went industry by industry, sector by sector as we looked at our sales tax and made a number of assumptions to get to that 40%. And that was the end result, but really again, we're making the best forecast we can right now and we'll continue to update that throughout the summer. So here's just a graph of the past number of years of our sales tax receipts. Over the past few years, we saw increases. We had a dip last year that we discussed with council numerous times and then you can see our projection this year coming significantly lower than we had been in previous years. But you can see a dip that we had during the 2008 recession, but obviously the mechanics of this fiscal situation are going to impact sales tax more directly than the situation in 2008. Property tax for this fiscal year, we don't anticipate any change in our property tax revenues, which is good news from a general fund fiscal standpoint, just because those collections have already been made for the most part. As we look to next year, we have lowered our AB assumptions, our assessed value assumptions down to 3% to just take a conservative approach, knowing there's a lot of information that's still to come. There's a lot of decisions that could still be made. We anticipate quite a few protests as we go through the assessed value or the evaluation process with the appraisal district. So this was our best attempt to take a conservative approach before we even start getting those preliminary assessed values, which we should start getting from the appraisal district here in the next few months. But will we continue to keep the council apprised of what that looks like? And obviously any state action or anything of that sort could impact those numbers as well. All of the forecasts that you see, we do keep that maintenance operations tax rate at the effective or no new taxes tax rate as well. So here you can see again, just the history of our assessed value. As we know, the past number of years we've seen significant upticks in our assessed value up to that 12% range last year. I've dropped that down to 3% for our assumptions in the next fiscal year. But you can see, as you look back at the 2008 recession, that property taxes do lag the economy to some degree. So as we get hit, as 2008, 2009, we saw the most significant impacts of the recession appraised values and those valuations really continue to dip for the next couple of years. So as we look out over a five-year forecast, we'll be anticipating something similar, obviously depending on how long or how deep this situation goes. So a few other revenue sources that make up our revenue loss, obviously not as significant as the sales tax reduction that we're showing, but we are anticipating right now a decrease in development fees. Again, this is just a forecast and as we go through the summer, if we don't see a decline in our activity on the development side, then we will readjust that forecast. But to take a conservative approach, our anticipate there will be at least some reduction in development activity. Obviously, we've reduced our mixed beverage sales tax and I think that's an obvious one to do with the closures right now across that industry. A number of other service fees, you know, we have a number of fees throughout the general fund that we've reduced at total $1.5 million. And then our interest earnings, we've reduced that $400,000 to start the fiscal year, though we were getting quite strong interest earnings, which helped us to start the year, but those rates have plummeted. So we're not anticipating a strong return for the rest of the fiscal year. So now we'll get into what the steps that we've taken so far across the entire city have been. So we'll call these our phase one steps. Those actions that have already been implemented or are currently in progress. And the first one was a hiring freeze for city personnel, except for new vacancies in civil service or other essential positions. And this was, you know, putting a pause on a lot of these positions was one of the immediate actions we took because we knew that it would have long-term impacts and it was the sooner we took the action, the more impact it would have. But it is a significant impact on the city. Over 88 full-time positions to this point are included in that. And then when you look at the part-time and seasonals, it's over 300 total positions that we haven't moved forward with. We delayed or reprioritized capital projects. And some of that has been revenue funding capital projects that we funded with a general fund. We've been able to pull back to the general fund to help our FY20 forecast. Cost reduction strategies across the department, which will, across the city in each department, which we'll touch on briefly in the next couple slides. We stopped travel and training programs for the remainder of the fiscal year, unless it's an absolute necessity. We have ceased all merit increases for the rest of the fiscal year beginning April 18th. And those were our kind of, our three women went into the year with a 3% merit increase bucket that was, that was distributed to employees based on their reviews throughout their fiscal, throughout the fiscal year. And those, those who will not go forward for the rest of the fiscal year, we've been analyzing all of our contracts for any cost reductions and elimination of services and obviously renegotiations. And then we've, we haven't done departmental reorganizations yet, but at least started the process of what those might look like just so we have more options available in the future. So a little more detail on those departmental expense reductions to give some insight into what those look like in the process that we went through. A couple of these are our standard, the economic incentive payments. We budget those each year in the general fund. Obviously those are, are highly tied to sales tax receipts. So as, as we've, as we anticipate a reduction in sales tax receipts, we've also reduced our assumptions of what we'll be paying out for those incentive payments and analyze those one by one. We've had software purchases delayed or canceled. And that's from our accounts payable software to the planning software that was discussed briefly earlier in the meeting today. Parks and recreation is a big, a big piece of this on the, on the net operating cost decreases from not having programs to not having facilities open. And on the next page, on the next slide, we'll talk a little bit more about what makes up that $1.9 million net reduction from expenses and revenues on the next slide. And then other, other expense reductions across the city from having our facilities closed or not open to the public. A little more detail on some of those recurring costs. Obviously tech services and our transfers for ongoing maintenance has been a big piece of that on the cost that we've reduced moving forward. Those contract reductions and we know negotiations, the largest one in the general fund being the DATCU lease, having a renegotiation on that contract where we'd be vacating at some point and then other discretionary expenses reduced moving forward. So we wanted to make sure that we broke down the parks and rec and library decreases because obviously they have an impact on our, on, on the residents and on the city in, in, in total. And these are, so these are the assumptions that we use to come up with our revenue and expense forecast. And these are essentially our best guesses right now of what we see for each of these facilities as far as when they're, when they would be reopened. And obviously when they open, it's going to be a direct relation to how much additional expense we have associated with them. So this is an exercise we needed to go to, go forward with to, to come up with our, our forecast. And these are obviously all subject to change as we move forward, but wanted to be transparent about the assumptions that we use in the, in the forecast that you'll see here in the next couple of slides. So as we go, you can go down the list there of an auditorium, assuming opening it as, as DISD needs space, closing some of those rec centers until September, 2020, closing the civic center until having it partially open in October, 2020, senior center, obviously one of the latter ones to open and the new rec center in January, 21, and then not having the pools or the water park open throughout this summer. Similarly with the, with the library have anticipated those remaining closed. We'll, we'll start implementing the curbside service next week. And then even when we open the library in July of 2020, at least as our assumptions stand now, the services may be limited when they open. So that brings us to all the forecasts that we went through and the steps that we've taken so far help us to paint a picture of where we stand right now. So I'll kind of, I know there's a lot of information on this, on this table and we'll have a number of them similar to this. So I'll try to walk through and get it, get an idea of the format that we're looking at here, but we'll start with the assumptions and basically the assumptions that we've talked through. And all of our assumptions are based on a process where the economy starts coming back over the summer, but it's a, you know, a slower recovery and that will give us time to adjust as we get more information over the next few months. We've talked about ourselves, tax reduction of $8.8 million and the 3% assessed value growth that we're projecting in FY21. And then we do, we have plugged in for our FY20 estimate, a million dollars of net COVID expense, expenses, and that's really just a forecasting exercise. We know that we're going to have it, we have already had significant expenses for, for COVID and that they'll continue throughout the fiscal year. And obviously there's going to be a number of opportunities for, from grant opportunities to FEMA reimbursements that will, that we're working diligently to go forward with. I thought it was prudent to at least plug a number here in the forecast to recognize some of those expenses. Then you can see, so essentially our first column is our adopted budget, what we, what we, what we thought we would be when we started the fiscal year. And then just kind of walk through with our thought process, you can see the next column essentially just takes that adopted budget and does it revise just based on, on reducing our revenues. And that really gets us to that target that we were looking at three or four weeks ago when we began this process of seeing a shortfall of between 13 and $14 million. And then this phase one cost reduction, the third column is after implementing the, about $9 million of, of actions we've taken that we just went over, over the, over the past two slides and the, but does show the, the change in fund balance, the, the net loss that we still have after taking that, those actions, not only in FY20, but we're trying to really focus on FY21 as we move forward. So even as we take through those recurring cost savings, we are still looking at a deficit moving into next fiscal year, obviously from a very high level with the steps that we've taken. So that does lend us to start thinking about what are those next steps that we can take. And that would really kind of go into the next conversation of those steps that we want to lay out for council's consideration. So here, this is, this is our, our, our phase two, and this, this is just kind of set the stage for some of the conversations that we're going to have for these stage two actions. But just to kind of to set, to, to lay it out and what we're looking at here, this first column is the phase one scenario that we, what we just saw in the previous, for FY1920, essentially, here's where we are with all the actions that we've taken so far, where we're still sitting at that four to five million dollar net, net loss this fiscal year. And then, and then that, so pulling that over from the, from the previous slide, then we're, then we start to think about what are our next steps, steps that we could take. And then we lay out a phase two scenario where we reduce that, that loss this year, the, the net, that expenses exceeding revenues, and then have a plan to, to get that into a positive over, over in the next fiscal year and moving forward. And so below here, I'll start out at a very high level, highlight what those steps are that we're laying out for phase two. And then we have a couple of slides where we're really getting into the detail of what these look like. The first being a voluntary separation program. And this is something that we have discussed and had some information on that went out in the packet, but definitely going to get into the details of what we're considering for the voluntary separation program. But from a budgetary aspect, at least just want to note the, the reason that we think it makes fiscal sense to move forward with this is that it, while it does have a, ultimately a hit, and we'll talk about why we show a negative here in FY20 as we talk about the details of the program, it does have a negative impact on our budget this fiscal year and the amount of savings that we have next fiscal year, more than make up for that and set us up in a good position and then even allow us to start kind of filling some of those positions back in, in the, in the latter years of the forecast. And the second major recommendation that we're going to have as we move forward is to increase our electric return on investment to 6%. That's currently at 3.5%. So that's essentially the transfer that is made from electric revenues from net electric revenues after their regular revenues and expenses that comes directly to the general fund. And that's at 3.5% this year. And it's been that way for a number of years. We propose to increase that to 6%. And then you can see the resulting revenue increases that we would get over the next few years by doing that. And we would approach this as a, as a 30 month change where for the remainder of this fiscal year, we see what we bring those revenues in at the higher ROI and then for the entirety of FY 21 and 22, bring those additional revenues in. Obviously that has significant impacts on the electric fund. And so later in the presentation, we'll go on into what exactly that means for the electric fund and why we think it's an appropriate recommendation given their fund balances and their fiscal position while still maintaining the goal of not having any rate increases on our utilities. So those, so as we lay out these phase two actions, those are our two recommendations to move forward with and get direction from council on immediately. The next one we have laid out furloughs and work weeks as an option is something that will be implemented to some degree. I think the conversation we want to have on this really is focused on those employees to the city that just right now don't have 40 hours of week to work or at least a full work week as defined by their job. What can we do with those positions moving forward? Obviously up to this point, they've been paid their full salaries, but look at how can we reduce hours or possibly bring a furlough policy forward to address those positions and implement that as soon as March, as May 11th. And then as we'll talk forward with, depending on the results of the voluntary separate separation program, if approved and the electric ROI, if approved, we would then step back as the last option in this phase and see if there are opportunities for reorganizations, which ultimately would result in a reduction in forces and moving forward with those. So here's a detail of our proposed voluntary separation program. And as we go into this discussion, I think it's important to point out that the reason that we feel like this is the most appropriate step to take at this time is that it gives employees the choice as opposed to going straight to something like a rip action or furloughs, or we're putting the decision in the employee's hands knowing that we likely have a fiscal situation that we have to deal with. So the program is laid out would be a offer to all employees who have been with the city for consecutively greater than one year. And the package for them to consider would be a 20-week salary payout, five-month payout incentive, up to 480 hours paid out, a maximum of 320 vacation hours and 166 hours. And those are dependent on lead balances. If they have those accrued lead banks reach the maximum, they would get paid the maximum. If they have less, they would get paid less out. And then we would start that application process tomorrow, start it on April 22nd, have it run through April 30th, and give employees the opportunity to apply for the program. And then obviously the decisions for approval based on business need would be made. And then there would be packages would be contingent on the employee accepting the severance agreement as we laid out. And then obviously the incentive on their side. So at a very high level wanted to talk through what that would look like for us on a budget standpoint and what that looks like as a total payout for the program itself. For these assumptions, we've used a 5% acceptance for all full-time positions in the city. The fund breakdown here on the number of positions is really just for example purposes, for projection purposes only. We don't anticipate that this will be the breakdown of who accepts it within each fund, but just for a comparison sake. So the most appropriate line to look at would probably be the total at the bottom. That's city-wide. So city-wide at 5% of our full-time employees accepted it. It'd be around 75 to 80 employees in total, which are 80 here. And that would result in salary savings this year from not paying them for those last four or so months of the fiscal year of $2.1 million. In total, we'd be paying out to employees $3.3 million under this scenario. Again, a number of assumptions to get there. And so the budget impact across all funds would be a negative $1.2 million this fiscal year. But we really view that as a cost for that savings that we get in FY21 by not paying the full salary and benefits for these positions, a saving of about $7.7 million. So that's the mindset that we're taking as we go into this of looking at FY20 as really a cost to get that benefit in FY21, again, strictly from a fiscal standpoint. And then we do want to show that because that net is so much, and as we look at the forecast, our hope is that by FY22, we start hiring positions back again. Maybe not necessarily the same exact positions but something similar or give us an opportunity to look at the organizational structure and see what makes sense for each department. So the next strategy that we laid out for phase two is the return on investment. And again, we have a couple of slides that get into the detail of a five-year performer for the electric fund. So we'll take that significant time to talk forward what that looks like for the electric fund to increase the ROI, but did want to, again, set a little bit of context of what that means for it to come into the general fund. So over three years, and you saw the year-by-year breakdown on the previous slide, that's a total of $11.7 million estimated if we did it for these next 30 months. And then did want to show in every city's electric that has a municipally owned electric is a little different, and they're going to have different considerations. But you can see our current setup right now, and this goes for the electric and water and wastewater, although we're not proposing this increase for the water and wastewater funds where we have that 3.5% return on investment. And that calculation is based on revenues, but we have some caveats. We cap the amount of ECA revenue that we bring in with that ROI. So it's not the total amount of revenue, but most of the revenue that we bring in annually. And then we also have a 5% franchise fee that gets returned to the city. And that franchise fee really is different than the return on investment. The franchise fee is really intended to be the common franchise fee that you would see if a utility came in that wasn't municipally owned, the franchise fee would be charging. So that's really just viewed as equating it to a private sector or a non-public, a non-city of bitten utility coming to town. We have just a couple of cities here, obviously not all the municipally owned utilities or electric groups in the state, but you can see a number of them and how they vary in those ROI ranges that they offer or that they send back to their general funds right now. Obviously the point of the survey is just to show that, you know, comparatively to other cities, we're not at the high end, we're not below that middle range of what we see. So it seems appropriate, it doesn't seem inappropriate at all to at least consider moving that ROI up to 6%. So taking all those factors into account, the phase one and phase two and the cost and the revenue reductions that we see, again, focusing strictly on the general fund here, in the property tax rate, we feel like we can keep that, again, based on a number of assumptions, but we can keep that maintenance operation rate at the effective, at the no-need tax rate this next fiscal year, which is about a half cent decrease from the previous total tax rate. And then right now, as we'll talk about a little bit later in a couple slides, have our debt service tax rate just increase one cent over our previous tax rates or total tax rate increase, about a half cent over last year with effective M&O rate and just that one cent over on the debt service side as we move forward. So what we're trying to do is just lay out a plan to meet those goals. And this is what, this is one way to get there. How many slides, David, how many slides do you have left before we can ask questions? I just have, we can ask questions after this slide. And I think we're basically done with the general fund itself. And this was just a slide that we've had for the past couple of budget cycles that we've tried to always lay out. Anytime we have a property tax rate, show what that average tax bill is to be transparent about what that looks like. But this is my last slide just on general fund. So I think this is a great time to answer any questions. Okay. Real quick question. I was looking in the backup and so the presentation, did we get that in a separate email? I think we might have, but I'm trying to follow it on my computer instead of having you go back and forth on the slide. Did we get that? When did we get that? We sent it out this morning after we revised it again last night. Is this the 1248 email? I think it's. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. It was a long weekend. No, no, I understand. Okay. All right. So, and we, so we still have the debt service side to work on or to talk about, but we want to ask questions about this particular part of the presentation. So if we could, if you could maybe take the, the presentation off for now so I can see my full council members so I can see who's asking questions. All right. We got council member Meltzer, armature and Briggs. All right. Council member Meltzer. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I haven't fully, you know, digested all of this. So I appreciate, I'm sorry if you already said this, but if we do what you're suggesting as far as the electric fund balance, just is that in addition to reorganization or does that possibly, you know, cover that needs and you wouldn't have to do a reorganization? I think we're approaching it very slowly. The first, the first strategy would be to go ahead and offer the voluntary separation program, pair it with the electric ROI, wait a week or two, see where we're at. Obviously it's going to be this summer before we know whether our projections are accurate, whether we've assumed deep enough cuts or not. So we'd like to go ahead and take a couple of weeks to assess everything where we're at and make a decision probably the week of either the fifth or the fourth or the 11th in terms of whether we need to reduce workload, work hours, whether we meet one of furlough. We've got HR running a number of scenarios right now trying to determine how do we help our employees the most. And, you know, is there, once we have some idea of who's applied from the BSP and we can bake in the ROI numbers, it gives us some idea of whether we can kind of wait through June, July to make some other decisions. So it's our, it's our best approach right now to not run right to furloughs and layoffs. And we're trying to avoid that. Well, I guess, you know, I have to understand how big you would imagine the BSP to be philosophically. I mean, I could get, I understand doing it like a little bit at the margins, but philosophically, I think it's, you know, I'm going to listen and hear your discussion, but I think you probably know where I'm going on this. I think it's a mistake as a large reorganization strategy. So I think it puts the incentive there to lose the people who have the most options elsewhere. Whereas as an alternative, you know, to me, it makes more sense to say our job is to efficiently deliver services in a high quality way. If we have to reorganize to fit the organization into, you know, a smaller scale, what are our priorities? And then, you know, how do we rationally figure out what positions become redundant? And then, you know, yes, you want to be as, you know, fair and helpful making those separations as you can, but I think it's in the city's interest to, for, you know, for us to decide what's the optimal resulting set of people. Yeah, I don't disagree. And that is probably where we started at, to be honest. But we've also heard from employees a couple different things. First of all, as they'd be interested in this kind of a program, you know, and if there's ways to voluntarily allow them to make that decision, if they're going to maybe leave a little early, or if they had, they wanted to switch careers, whatever it may be, would we be open to opening this program up? So we thought it was worthwhile. I mean, I'm more concerned, Paul, with, you know, how do we function as an organization when we're done with this? And have we done everything we possibly can to maintain the culture that we work so hard to build here? And so that's where we came down on, let's go the voluntary route first, we certainly could have gone straight into reorganizations. However, when we've got employees saying, you know, this kind of a program is something we'd like to take advantage of, as well as we've had employees reaching out saying, you know, we would consider different work week schedules, that sort of thing, as well. So we're going to be setting up a team in the interim while this is going on just to sort of discuss what other tools might be on their mind as well. But having been through this, this is my third time going through this process, the minute you go in and start riffing and laying off that sort of thing, it takes an organization a while to bounce back from that just culturally. And that's really what was driving this recommendation. Well, you know, my concerns stand, I think it just depends how far you go. If you've got somebody sort of on the margin where they were maybe going to do it anyway, and you help facilitate that. But I think, you know, well, I don't want to repeat myself, but I think we understand each other. I do. Council Member Armitage? Yes. So I too, I like the idea of starting with anything voluntary first. So I like that. And I am, as I know we all are, you know, very concerned about the possibility of layoff, furlough, and non-voluntary, involuntary reduced work hours. So I have a number of questions, and I also have recommendations, but now is the time for questions, right? And then later in the discussion, we could do, I can make my recommendations clear. Is that correct? You can make your proposals clear. But yeah, if you could keep the questions real concise, because I'm sure we've got a lot of council members want to ask. So if you could just really state the question, and then we can get it answered. So just to understand, so you're saying, so first to state my questions, and then later on in our discussion, state my recommendations or- What your proposals are, yes. Say, okay. Okay. So I'll say those later. So has HR staff considered, or are they considering looking at pay cuts as a possibility for the 200 or so staff we have making six figure salaries, and in terms of what percentage of a temporary reduction would be necessary to avoid people most at risk in the coronavirus era of homelessness if they get reduced hours or laid off furloughed, et cetera. And then at the level of above the median, I believe last I heard median was around 67, 67K. Also, I was wondering if there's been a consideration of rollback of those 3% merit increases. I know there's now a freeze on merit increases, but a rollback for people who are making above the median. Has there been any attempt to, I know that we haven't received anything, but I'm wondering, are they playing, stop playing around with those numbers? If I could to kind of address this line of questioning, I think you're trying to solve a problem before we even know how to define it. So the idea with the voluntary separation program and the ROI would be at least to start getting some more known factors into the game, continue to give ourselves another month or two to assess where we are financially, whether our projections are correct, because what we don't want to do is go in and start cutting salaries, start making those types of decisions, and then to find out it's even worse than we thought. That traumatizes the organization more than you can imagine. So from my perspective, we do this slowly. I'm not going to take kind of this tiered approach right now with the staff. I think we need to get through this first couple of phases of cuts, refine our numbers, and then I want to get the employees to kind of weigh in and see what their suggestions are as we move forward. I think the basic question for the council is this, because you're trying to get there through a different way, and it really is, are we comfortable if we've got, you know, one or two hundred people on the payroll potentially that don't have any work to do? And that is really the thing that we're wrestling with in-house and why we want to take the next two or three weeks and talk to them and see what kind of savings does the voluntary separation program produce? What are we really looking at right now? Can we buy ourselves another month to continue this conversation? Because what we don't want to do is keep coming back and taking. In addition, it doesn't do us any good to open up pay reduction discussions quite yet unless we know exactly what we're working at, because we've got a number of positions in the city. I wouldn't even consider asking them to take pay reductions right now, being our public safety folks, folks that are running water plants, folks that are responding and taking care of the electric lines. By the time you take those folks out of the equation, your universe is down to about a third of your employees. So these are the things that we're kind of working our way through and why we probably won't get into those discussions or wouldn't even recommend getting in those discussions until at least Memorial Day. And thank you. So to respond, I appreciate and I completely agree that now is not the time to start making those decisions. However, since layoffs and furloughs were mentioned as a possibility, I understand just a possibility as a Plan BCD. So those are already being considered. That is what I meant at the level of considering as a eventual place to go area to look. And I know, because I know we've got really good staff who is, you know, more than just one step ahead of us. You know, I know that there are people crunching some kinds of numbers. But I completely agree. I just want to make clear, I'm with you to reiterate what I said before, that the voluntary stuff comes first, and then we see where we're at. But that was my question. Are people kind of crunching the numbers in this area knowing that we really don't know at this point, and we don't want to make these decisions now? All right. All right. Who else? Councilmember Briggs? Councilmember Davis? Thank you. Yeah, just a few questions. So first, I want to, I want to confirm and I sent you this message, City Manager, about the electric ROI and that the amounts that we have fit within our limits are bounds of the charter that that's been reviewed. All right. I can answer that. The charter limits are, it defines that the amount that we can transfer from the utility system is limited to 6% of our net position based on our CAFR, based on audited financials. So that number, you look at 6% of our net position from our most recent CAFR would be total of $44 million for the utility system. That would be our cap on what we could transfer. What we have budgeted this year to transfer from the utility systems is $9.2 million. So there's a wide gap there. So this going up to 6% within VME would not get us close to that cap. Okay. Thank you. And I know that as we do or have gone through all the budget discussions, departments come up and every position that they have or they have asked for has been justified and needed. So this is really hard discussion to have. I'm okay with the voluntary program that's been suggested. I prefer not to go do the furloughs. Have we looked at how this situation is going to affect our, I know we're not, how it's going to affect our first responders or have we looked at the way it's affecting our employee pension program? Are we looking at any of those right now? The answer is we've looked at everything and we will likely cap the number of public safety employees that could participate in the voluntary separation program at three to five at the most. Because where these work is if you don't fill a vast majority, if not all of the positions back. And, you know, we just feel like those police and fire positions are just way too critical and telecommunication, quite frankly, positions are just way too critical to not be back filling those positions. So we're studying those. Our HR department is helping folks kind of work their way through the assessment as well on the HR and the benefits side of the house as well. Okay. That's good to know about the public safety because I was very concerned. I know that we're still behind and lagging in hiring and I wouldn't want to lose a significant amount of individuals right now. And I think to your point, I'm glad you said that because I think to your point, one of the things that I asked David to bake in last night, which is another reason it took him a little while was, you know, if we started back filling some of those public safety positions in the next 18 months, we're assuming it's going to be a 12 to 18 month climb out of this, you know, to get people rehired back into the workforce, competent spending money, that sort of thing. By the 21, 22 budget, we feel like we could probably start beefing those staff up slowly again, but there are still commitments we've made such as opening station eight that we're going to have to budget for this next year. And so all of that has been taken into consideration. Okay. I'm just made just three more questions. One, just a point of clarification, because the DATQ was listed on there as a savings, but from my recollection, if it is not rented, then we're still responsible for paying that. Is that the case or no? No. At our city attorney's suggestion, actually we went out and we are currently working on a negotiated settlement with them. We had a strict interpretation as you probably could have just pulled a non-appropriation clause and walked away from it. But, you know, his advice was, you know, would prefer that you kind of wrap this up a little better than that. So we've, we've, we've gone, we've gone ahead and worked with the owners. We're working on that settlement agreement. We would essentially pay rent there through August 1st. So you, that's why you only see about a $40,000 savings this year and then the full $480,000 next year is that would be kind of a mutual release of claims on that particular lease. So we could count that as that $420 or $520,000 savings. Okay. And one of the things I saw on the chart, one of the charts was that the, the water park or the civic center pool, we're not going to be open this summer. And I'm really concerned about that. And I'm wondering, is that, does that have to do with the virus or is that because of our, our budget? It has nothing to do with the budget. It's, it's more of an issue of two factors. It's the virus and are people going to feel safe going to the pools? And then you've got to figure it's going to take us 30 to 60 days just to even ramp up the season one part-time hiring. And we've put that on hold right now because we have no clue when, when and if the public would feel comfortable even using that amenity this summer. Do we have an idea of how much, how many people have prepaid for those passes and how much money we're going to have to refund? Gary Packins happens to be sitting right here. So we'll ask him to answer that. Mayor, city council, Gary Pack and director of parks and recreation. Unfortunately, throughout this entire process, we've been refunding programs for all of our spring and summer activities on an ongoing basis. We would approach the pools in the same direction. Obviously we have people have purchased just summer programs, which would be refunding and reaching out to them. And then we also have people that purchase year round passes. So we'll be figuring out how we're going to, how we're going to work through that, whether it's extending the timeframe or just giving them a pro rated refund. So once the decision is made on actually officially closing, then we'll start that process. We can share with you an update in regards to our total refunds across the entire department during this entire timeframe in a Friday report. Okay. Well, I mean, it would be nice to have, I know at least maybe the civic center pool costs less to operate and open. So I'm just thinking about all of the kids who count on that during the summer. And if it's not budget, budget related, I mean, I would like to think about maybe seeing what we could do to get that open later on. And the next and last question I have, just because as we were talking about sales tax and assessed values, have we looked at any of the current incentives that we're in and how either of those will affect the rebates or the incentives as we go through this process, as far as their guarantees? We did, we did update our, our, what we anticipate to pay out on our incentives this fiscal year. So that was included in our revised general fund or about $400,000 that we don't anticipate to pay out just based on not hitting those incentives on those property values or sales tax. So that, that, that was how, that was the adjustment that we've made. But I know that economic development staff has gone through each of those agreements and it's keeping tabs on, on where we are. So for right now it's 400,000 that's been adjusted. Correct. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Davis. Sure. Thank you, mayor. I just wanted to take a moment to thank staff for the time they put into this. David mentioned the long weekend and this is not the kind of thing that the city manager signed up for when, when we brought them on a couple of years ago. This is not the crisis he signed up for and certainly not the staff that we've been assembling over the last few years and the culture that he mentioned. So I just want to take a moment to recognize how much I appreciate the tiered approach that you're talking about, the phased approach. And, and I appreciate being given the cold facts upfront. I, you know, I would have been very disappointed if six months into this thing or working on next year's budget, we had come to find out that we needed to have these hard conversations as opposed to telling us now, this is the mindset we need to get into doing the best we can now to get a handle on things. And, and I don't detect any undue concern or panic in staff's voice. I, I detect only professionalism and like I said, giving us the cold hard facts. And I, as the person has to sit in our chairs, I really appreciate that. Appreciate that. Council, Mayor Pro Tem. You're on mute, Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, there you go. I had to work the mouse. I just want to start by saying echoing what Council Member Davis said, I wholeheartedly agree and I wish and I hope our peers that were advocating for as low as a dollar utility bill just two weeks ago. And now all of a sudden we're asking if the top tier of our staff can take a, take a decrease. That's, that's problematic. That, that is the panic that in reactionary steps that we don't need. And I hope that their apologies will be extended, but that's just me hoping and not, obviously I don't have any control over that. My question would be, can you highlight just for the record, Mr. City Manager, the, the, the effect that the debt plays into this? Yeah, I think that was part of the reason that we got more comfortable recommending the adjusted ROI to you is based upon all the forecasts that Tony Puente and Terry Nalte and their staff at DMV have been doing. It, it certainly appears that as they're looking into the ERCOT market this summer, it should pretty, it should pretty easily recover its costs in terms of the debt service, the operation costs. And that is one of the factors, not the only factor, but it is one factor in giving us some confidence to move forward with this phase two plan that we're putting in place to you. Okay. And another question I have regarding DMV and the decisions you made earlier on. So George Merrill's position, is it, is it field or are we covering that other ways? What happened there? Tony Puente is still serving as the general manager at DMV as well as our city's chief financial officer. So it's been a, it's been a huge benefit to us to have him in both those roles. Yeah. And so I want to highlight that for those that are watching. So that's $250,000 round numbers, whatever that number is, savings that was in place early on just by having sound business experience and leadership at the helm versus reactionary. So that, that I appreciate those decisions and want to make sure that's highlighted. And then for Gary in parks department, I think it pains me also the decision about the pools, but I understand it. And I think maybe, and I know Gary's always forward thinking and his department is, and it may be an opportunity for us to add value for our community. So for example, if we do end up and we're looking at 2021, is there an opportunity to buy now in 2020 and hold at a discount? And so maybe that's something we extend to our citizens to say, if the normal rate is 50 bucks in 2020, if it's 25 bucks now, get you a coverage for the year 2021. So maybe if there's some value at there, it gives, you know, buy in and allows those that can to maybe invest early for that savings. And then you've not touched on it, but I'd be curious and want to hear about the approach for the rec centers as far as summer camp care or something to help those employees that are, will be running, returning to work and what can we do? And I'll go out of the box to say there's gyms potentially that may not reopen. So instead of our rec center, if we can temporarily invest in a building that's larger, allows more people central location, then that may be an opportunity path forward to again, help our citizens and at the same time, keep everyone safe and provide as much care as we can, limited space. Mayor city council, Gary pack and director parks and recreation. Appreciate the question. We have obviously been trying to figure out how and when we'd be reopening our facilities and anticipating that we probably wouldn't be able to open them all at one time. Understanding that the budget adjustments that are, that are being proposed as well and trying to balance all of that, as well as government restrictions when they're going to be reduced and then well as social acceptance of being in large gatherings. So that's all things that we're looking at. Now we've, we've projected MLK and North lakes to be open first on a limited basis, most likely with full time staff. Right now we do not have any seasonal staff on board. We do depend on them greatly for our operations from day to day. But anticipating those two rec centers opening first and second, we would staff them a full time staff. If as a plan right now, we wouldn't be open until September, but if the economy opens up sooner, we do have a plan in place to implement a reduced summer camps based off of interest to the community and demand. And then we would work accordingly to that based on any restrictions that we may have in regards to the limit of people inside buildings or all things we'd have to consider. But we are looking at figuring out how we can reopen facilities and planning accordingly. Thank you. Council member Briggs, and then I've got a couple of questions. Go ahead, council member Briggs. Well, I saw that John had his hand up. Oh, I didn't see. John, okay, go ahead, John. Okay, yeah, go ahead, John. Sorry, I didn't see you, John. Thank you. I just want to thank staff for all their hard work. And for those who are worried about the reduction in staff through the voluntary program, if you look at our backup on slide 14, there is these are going to be taken on a case by case basis. The way that I understand it, it's not going to be we're going to allow you most likely, this will not be offered to our police and fire because we can't really afford the loss of them, maybe some in the administration. And even before this all came along, our city manager would talk about trying to change the tires while driving 60 miles an hour down the road. I think now you're trying to change all four at the same time while driving 80 miles down the road, miles an hour down the road. So this is a constantly changing battle. I mean, we're coming up with dates right now as to what we anticipate, dollar amounts that we anticipate. It's going to change on a daily and a weekly basis. Again, it depends on what happens at the state level. It depends on what happens at the national level as well as to where we're going to go with all this. But I think I'm just really happy that our staff has put in the hard work to get us to where we have a pretty good feeling for where we're going. That's all. Council Member Briggs. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I just I wanted to say this is a really hard conversation to have and I know it's painful for everyone that that we're here. And I appreciate all the work that that went into it and the care that that is shown for all the staff that we have here in the city. I just I wanted to ask a comment or make a comment because I know that all the money that's been given to local government so far has only been to respond to the pandemic. And I know that it's it's not to close the revenue gaps or to to cover general budgets, which is the conversation we're having now. But I also know that there's more money. There's a there's a meeting today where more money is going to be allowed and that the president is saying he he's going to support local governments and cities. There's no guarantee on that. But do we have any idea or are we following that closely to see or advocate for funds to come to us to help us in this scenario? Absolutely. We're following it every day. There's been times I've pulled the mayor in and asked him to sign a letter to get it out as soon as we possibly can. And, you know, and I know that you yourself have been advocating. So anything that we can do to to try to identify revenues to come back into the city we're doing so far, I know that we've received about sixty thousand dollars to help us cover some of our fire department costs. And we've got the additional block grant money coming in that we're still trying to figure out exactly how to frame it so you can talk about it. But beyond that, we've got both of our state and federal representatives, as well as Sarah Keekler staff monitoring it every day, looking for opportunities. And we are pre applying everywhere we possibly can to make sure that we're in the queue. You know, it's been a little unfortunate, I think, as you know, last week, we had a number of cities get very excited. And then we found out it was limited to cities of a certain population, that sort of thing. So we're waiting for those dollars to trickle down directly to us. But most of the time, they're coming through the state and the county before they get to us. And that's been somewhat confusing and what we've had to work our way through. Yeah, it was five hundred thousand. Right. Thank you. Well, and I think that's a good segue because, I mean, we did reach out to the county a week or so ago to try to begin to initiate conversations on the how the money is coming to the county. Number one, how much is it number two, how is that going to be apportioned? What is it going to be apportioned for? What are the different categories are going to be available for reimbursement? So I really want to thank staff for what they're doing. But I have to be honest, this doesn't surprise me because staff has done this for the last two or three years. Staff has presented budgets, they presented hard conversations. They've taken the council's direction of to be as fiscally responsible as possible. And it just it it's exciting to hear that when we ask questions of staff, well, have we done this? Have we done that? Have we thought about this? That inevitably nearly every answer that the city has the control of the information, some of the feds, some of the state, of course, we may not have all that information, but what they can control, they are already two or three steps ahead of us. And I appreciate that. A couple of questions on the I'm looking at slides 12 and 13, because those are the the five year looks like five year forecasts for the phase one and phase two. So if I'm just pulling it up on my laptop, if y'all need them to put it up on the screen so you can see if that's fine, but it's it's slide 12 and 14 of the email that we received. So Todd helped me understand because I have to be truthful when I got the information about the ROI increase that came in, I guess it was yesterday or just thinking about that. I was I was a little concerned, and I certainly wanted to see the numbers because I really think that we have to be real careful and keep revenue lines very clean. Because it's so hard once you start doing something to roll it back. Right. And so as I'm looking at this, as I'm looking at this, and secondly, I don't see really what the fund balances are for I might have missed it in the backup for the for the the electric fund where we're going to be taking this obviously out of the fund balance. And if it's contingent upon or if it's one of the major assumptions is the deck, the performance of the deck, in other words, we're not having to subsidize that as much as we thought we might have forecasted. I understand that that's also a fairly large contingency or condition that has yet to really play itself out. So my question is a couple a couple. When I look at these, and I'm using let's say the preliminary 2020-21 budget, and I'm looking at both the phase one after phase one cost recovery, in other words, dealing with 2021. We're looking at an ending fund balance of about $21 million, a shortfall of about five in 2021, and a shortfall of about 4.5 for phase one costs in the in the current budget. So when I look at the phase two of those same categories, I see that in 2020-21, the preliminary shows us with a fund balance increase of $3.7 million. And then in phase two scenario of the current budget, I show that we're only decreasing it looks like $3 million as compared to, you know, if I'm reading this wrong, correct me. In phase one, it's $4.5 million. Right. All right. So my help me understand, because when I look at voluntary separation, y'all are estimating $4 million. And when I look at ROI, you're estimating $5 million for 2021. Right. So my thought is I would have a hard time saying that I'm going to agree to the ROI being paid out for the next 30 months at 6%. I would want that to sort of be an ongoing because we're going to want to be looking at this month by month. I mean, I advocated last time we were here when people were asking for $1 million and all these kinds of things. Wait, let's see how big the problem is before we really start trying to address an issue. So to me, this is a cash flow issue. And my thought is, how can we ensure that, like, if you had to do voluntary separation or ROI as a sort of a, let's say a phase one of phase two, you know, your first phase A of phase two, in other words, how do we use the minimum to address the problem in a maximum way, instead of saying we're going to, we're going to find $3.9 million plus $4.9 million when that's going to create a $4 million surplus. Secondly, when I look at the out years, at some point, it's going to drop off and we are limited, at least for now, and we look at this legally, we can't raise our tax rate. I mean, I know people are saying we're going to keep the tax rate the same, but at some point, unless the economy just returns in a booming fashion that we can't even imagine, it's somewhere there's going to have to be some makeup for what we're doing today, like to replenish the reserve fund to keep the utilities whole, there might have to be a rate increase. We don't have to do it now because we've got enough cash based upon good fiscal management that we're able to, that's why we have a reserve fund. So I just, I'm more inclined, and this is just stylistically, this isn't, this is just my own philosophy of how do we address it at the minimum. I'm not going to have an issue with it. I would have an issue to say if we're making the decision today or at the next budget cycle, we're going to change that ROI to 6% for the next two budget cycles. I would, it would be, it would be difficult for me to do that without really understanding the need. So those are just some comments. So help me understand, if you, if you were looking at phase two, which is a total of nine million dollars, if you didn't need all of that, which one would you think would be something you would want to maybe? Well, I think, I think we're talking about a multiple number of things here. First of all, that phase one budget you saw is just to show you that even with the actions we took today, we're in trouble in two or three years. Oh no, yeah, the fund balance is down to 10%. So that's, so that's just sort of the baseline. Okay. And so when you get into the second phase, you're mixing a couple things. The, the VSP is meant to be more ongoing savings, you know, so you're basically reducing your ongoing costs, your operating costs over the long haul, which helps with the, with the budget situation, even though we start adding staff back in, in about 18 months, about half of them. The, the reason that we chose the ROI strategy that we did was we feel like it's probably going to take a couple of years for our sales tax to snap back. We've had not only the retail industry get hit here, we've had other sectors like oil and gas get really hit here. You know, we took some of that medicine a year ago, but it's going to be much worse this year. So we felt like it was going to be at least two budget years before our sales tax snap back in. And the money in from the electric fund is more of a one-time injection of dollars. It wasn't something we were recommending you rely on past the 20, 22, 23 budget, but it's more of a bridge to get us there. And the way that we were looking at that is, you know, David stopped one slide short of getting into the utility fund balances, and we can answer more of your questions. But the way we were looking at that is right now, we didn't feel that we were putting the electric fund at any risk over the next couple of years by taking this approach because the reserves are so healthy. But, but it's very different. We wouldn't rely on that. I mean, this kind of a strategy, it's like the normal person sitting at home trying to pay their mortgage with their income tax for fun. You just don't do that. And so, but there's an injection until our sales tax base can start catching up and people are back at work. People may disagree with us and say, you know what, it's too conservative, take an 18 month approach, you know, and hopefully the economy is humming by them and you and then you can ration down that ROI. We just felt like it was more of a conservative approach and gave us that bridge to not get into immediately into reductions in staffing, which was our major issue is how do we work through these things we wanted to try to buy ourselves a little bit more time for the organization to think through what our response is going to be in terms of managing the budget, but also it's only a one time revenue injection to your point mayor. The fund balance is going up a little bit. You can basic, if you took the position, say, you know what, I'm not comfortable going to five or going to six, we'll go to five. That's going to take about one to $2 million a year out of that number, one million a year out of that number. And, you know, and provide a little bit of additional buffering the electric fund, but I'm taking the view of it that as long as that electric reserve fund isn't that healthy as it is today, these are all funds owned by our taxpayers. And if we need to sort of do an inter-fund assistance for the next two years in order to not, and I guess the other assumption we were making is that it's going to be untenable politically and just realistically to raise the tax levy this year for O&M. So when you start putting all these variables together, we're just trying to get to the 22, 23 fiscal year, hoping that our sales tax base has bounced back. Well, let me make sure that I clarify. I'm not suggesting we raise the M&O tax rate. Yeah. And also, the reason why I see a difference in line, you said it's all the rate, the taxpayers money, really the electric fund, the utilities are rate payers and not all rate payers are taxpayers. So that's why I really sometimes am cautious on mixing those two types of, I'm going to call them enterprise funds with the general fund because the, but I'm not going to micromanage it to the point I'm saying, I'm not in a negotiation here. I'm not going to do that. It's not. But when I also see that you're projecting a $20 million shortfall in the revenue for DME or for all the utilities, I guess it was, I think it was one of those slides said $20 million revenue shortfall in this fiscal year. Is that correct? We were anticipating revenues to fall about $20 million based on what we knew. And that was, we started seeing immediate trends in solid waste, for instance, when we talk utilities, we're talking solid waste, water, wastewater and electric. So we were seeing an immediate downturn in revenues and solid waste. That's starting to stop a little bit now. And those put or pay agreements, we went back and reanalyzed solid waste budget again this last week and those put or pay agreements have basically stabilized that fund more than we initially had anticipated, even with several of our businesses kind of significantly reducing service. So we've been going back through and looking at the trend analysis. I think that number right now in the utilities is probably down closer to 10 million than 20. After we went, after we spent the weekend re budgeting and going through all of our assumptions again, and the electric, recalculating the electric revenues and the summer look forward was probably the most important factor that we looked at. Okay. You know, with the electric industry, the closer you are to that particular month, the more accurate you are. So when we started this, we were one month, you know, further away than we are today. So I presume that probably then in probably mid, we'll continue to have these updates and conversations as the data comes in, like for the sales tax, if the sales tax comes in more than what we projected, well then we can make some adjustments on the if it comes in less than what we projected in this particular scenario, then we've got to come up with some other alternatives as well. Right. And that's, that's a great point. And it's exactly where we are at this point is we are, we are putting our best foot forward in terms of guessing what we're going to see in June and July. If it's deeper than we think it is, then we're going to have to put some other strategies in place. If it's not quite as bad, maybe we come back and say, you know what, let's ratchet down this program or this expense or whatever and take a different approach, but we're giving you our best advice today. And when would these particular recommendations be implemented? Like the, I know that the voluntary separation program, you're going to, you know, start taking applications and things here shortly, but as far as the, if you get direction from council on the 6% on the ROI, when, when do those start truly getting implemented? Is it, we'd like, we'd like to have an ordinance to you next week and implemented in May. Okay. All right. And let me just say something about the potential closures or things such as that. I mean, and there's nobody on this panel that, you know, would not agree that the first priority for us as a city is to make sure that our residents are safe. And right now, all you have to do is watch the news to understand that there's those types of opinions all over the place, as far as what that constitutes that, as far as, especially with people getting together, especially for recreational activities, because you just can't control that social distancing and those kinds of things as easily as you can sometimes when people are in a more enclosed space. So I certainly support whatever you guys decide to do with, with the factor being that the health and safety of our citizens are the number one priority. Right. Council member Briggs. Do we need to revise any of our ordinances that set the fund that maintain that the fund balance has to be a certain percentage as we draw down from it to allow for that? Not if you make the move with the ROI on the electric fund that will keep us all the utilities are well within policy. In fact, one of the things that we did last year was even start restricting reserves and some of the water wastewater fund, for example, to start putting some dollars together for the major expansions we're going to see in the treatment plan. So we're in really good shape. My concern was the general fund balance. If it goes too far and you start violating bond covenants and bond ratings come into play. And so we just can't let that happen. So I think we're okay. The only policy decision we need from you right now would just be to implement the ROI and change that from three and a half to six. Real quick, Todd, where does or has it played in these calculations? Because I know we have the effective tax rate, but yet our new construction values, those aren't necessary. Those are not calculated in the effective tax rate. In other words, that's sort of additional revenue that we don't count towards that formula. Where does that fall into what we've just looked at as far as these assumptions? Well, I'll let David provide that answer to you specifically. I think the other part of your question is what we're sort of bracing for in these, you know, is what happened in '08 and '09 to Denton is you get your assessed values, that's determined in January, which was before this hit us. And so it's very possible you can see a small increase in the assessed values. So I think he's factored in 3% or so, but going, we're fully expecting as we get into the next year or two for our values to fall a little bit based on what happened in '08. Now we're hoping we're wrong, but we're assuming that. But I'll defer to David on the new construction. Yeah, the new values just is baked into the same assumptions we have with the assessed value. We did show just based on everything, the situation showed it decreasing to some degree for our projections moving forward. But once we start getting those preliminary values from the appraisal district, we'll have a better idea. So right now we do have some new value and it's just baked into the property tax revenue at the M&O rate. Okay, so the 3% assumption includes both pre-existing property assessed increase and also the new construction value. Right, our total projection has been... Okay, right. Thank you. Council Member Meltzer. I thought, did you have a... You're on... Yeah, I'm there. Okay. Just takes me a minute to get on the... Just to press another 10 seconds more on the VSP question. Todd, do you have some kind of recourse or control if you have a concentration of requests from a critical area where maybe you could lose a lieutenant or a captain, but not both? Do you have some way to control that? Yeah. So we're taking a couple... We're working with our legal and HR departments right now to create those boundaries, I guess, for lack of a better word. And in police and fire, we're definitely gonna be limiting the number of people that we'll even consider. But in each department, it's going to ultimately be the call of the department director, how many folks take it where it could negatively impact the operation itself. So that's a definite variable in it that we're gonna be managing for. So I think as the next day or two works its way through, we'll be able to communicate that much more clearly to the directors. But right now, only police and fire have been vetted out with any degree of certainty. Well, knowing that's on your radar as an issue, I feel better about it. Obviously, if you lost, this won't happen. But the top third of finance, that'd be a bad thing. You can just reload, Paul. Okay. They're easy to find. That's right. Yeah. But it's a huge issue to us in terms of how each department head has been working with an internal team with the ACMs, David, Tony, Tiffany, and Ethan Cox to kind of discuss what their reorganization opportunities or plans might be, should that happen? And should they start losing folks? How do they reorganize works? Just to make sure that they've got a plan in place. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. So I've got some notes written down, some of which were before the meeting and just a couple since. So these are my thoughts on this really important issue. And if you could, I mean, we've been going... I understand, but this is extremely important. I appreciate that. But I also know that I think if you can clearly state it and move on to your next point, I think that would be very much appreciated from the panel. Because sometimes we can get into just explaining, explaining, explaining when I think we all understand. I like to talk. So, okay. So thank you for letting me talk. I appreciate that. So I want to say again that I appreciate all of the work people are doing on belt tightening. It is an extremely hard discussion to have, but a necessary one. I think it's important that we have a space here where we can put forward options for this plan B and C and where we not be misunderstood or accused of trying to get rid of people. So even though I am differing in my view from the city manager recommendations in one regard about what the possible plan B or C would be, I would never accuse the city manager or anyone else asking questions about this of trying to get rid of people in order to ask anyone to apologize. So I'm responding because there was a request that I apologize for talking about as a plan B or C possible measure to instead of layoffs or furloughs or work hour reductions. So do you have a plan B or B and C? Sir, yes. I have some points I have to make. Thank you. So my personal priorities are that in belt tightening that we cut only things that are non-essential, and I don't necessarily see any disagreement here on this, in both helping us keep down the curve public safety, which is a top priority, and in maintaining our economy and the safety of our own city employees so that they themselves don't end up at risk of homelessness and exposure to coronavirus, et cetera, because that will end up costing all of us as well. So that is my approach to this whole issue. That is why I'm talking about if it does come to cuts, I prefer to cut from the top instead of from the middle or bottom. Anyway, that is a budgeting approach, and so I totally understand and respect that people differ, but I just want to make it clear that this is what I'm suggesting. I'm not saying let's start now. I do not have an itchy trigger finger on any of this. So going down my list, I believe that we need to start calculating if we haven't already, because I'm still not clear. It sounds like staff is considering so much for plans B and C, but I'm still not sure if they're considering what numerically the result would be if we, for instance, rolled back. If it comes to this, the merit increases for people making $70K or more, for the 200 people making six figures. And to calculate, I would like just as a figure, hopefully we don't have to use it, what percentage reduction would we need to reduce those 206 figure salaries by, and what number we would have to reduce, salaries over 67K, whatever the medium number is now, without putting anyone at risk. That is what I would like to know numerically. I want to know the numbers. I also want us to look into what possible savings would be, and all of this is about avoiding, or at least not assuming, that our plan B would be furloughs, reduced working hours, if we come to that. Cutting discretionary funds, car allowance, food allowance, things like this, temporarily, which hopefully we won't have to use. And I'm almost done, sir. Then I would also like us to look into, for those who are on, or might have to go to reduced work hours, or already are, whose work is either not safe right now, or not essential right now, that we do an honest assessment of what essential needs we have citywide, not just for city employees and government, but for our non-profits, in terms of delivering food to people, delivering medicine to people, making masks for people who work in businesses, whose businesses might not be supplying those masks. I would like that to be explored, so that's something we can consider. I'm exploring it on my own. It seems to me to be a worthwhile way to keep people employed, not only because we don't like to say that we're furloughing or reducing hours, but also because any employee whose pay we limit, we are putting that person, if that person is paying rent, if they are in charge of children, if they are the primary income generator in their household, putting them at risk of not being able to pay their rent, which puts us at risk of not flattening the curve. I will say the fact that we, the city, are looking at the DATCU lease is significant. I'm really pleased that we are, and I think that it's important that members of the public see this as what we're doing is we're looking at a rent situation that we have, and we thought we might have to pay our rent, but we did the right thing. We talked to our landlord, staff, and worked out a deal, so it turns out there is something we can do, so I just wanted to draw that connection between the macrocosm and the microcosm. Finally, and I'm almost done, sir, I would like us also to consider Plan B and Plan C before we even think about furloughs or layouts or anything, which I oppose. What assets do we have that are either not needs or are replaceable, are not one of a kind, that we could possibly consider selling? Not to make a net profit, but to make something in the short term, and that includes if we have made any investments in things that might be a need, that we could sell it at a loss, but still get a little money to help keep people employed and not put them at risk. I would like to see that we have at least looked into that. I'm looking into that myself. I was even looking up to look at Wartsilla used engines on the market to see what the price is on those, and I don't want anyone to say, "Deb is selling our gas plant on Craig's List." I'm not going doing that. This is the kind of questions, just as a family has to make really hard decisions when we are belt tight. I am done, sir, and thank you, as always, for letting me speak. Okay. Now, staff, I guess those are coming from one council member, and I understand that, so you have to decide if that was more than one minute, but unless we have a full consensus of the council looking for those kinds of things at this time, now, those questions may come into play a month or two or three down the road as this plays out, but unless we've got a consensus of council to say, "Hey, yeah, consider all these at the same time you're trying to just keep things going," then I would say move forward with that, but right now, if I don't see that, then I'm going to say take those into consideration. I certainly hope, council member Armitter, that you have put those in writing and sent those to staff so that they're memorialized. I hope that that was done prior to this particular presentation here in public, but if not, if you could get that to them, but I will certainly encourage the city manager to use his professional discretion and his time to understand which one of those that you can really incorporate into your process at this point and which ones you might need to hold in abeyance as another alternative if things don't necessarily go as planned. Thank you. I just want to respond to that very quickly. I purposefully did not ask staff to make those calculations ahead of time for two reasons. Number one, I wanted to propose that to the group. I also didn't propose it publicly. Number two, I didn't want rumors going around that Deb is wanting to cut the salaries of upper management, just as nobody here wants rumors around going around that city manager is laying off people, because this is not what's happening. These are very hard discussions we're having. Number two, I did ask the other day for a complete list of staff salaries, the latest one on the Excel spreadsheet, and I thought that I had had that. Turns out that I just want to finish the one that I have. It's too late to be useful. I still have not gotten that information, but I did actually reach out to the paper, and they sent me the Excel spreadsheet that they use when they wrote their article about city salaries. I actually got that information from the Denton Record Chronicle, so I no longer need it unless there's been a change since that article. Any other comments on this? Mr. City Manager, what exactly are you needing? I know we've got a couple more slides left on the debt service. We're fixing to take a break. If you could, during the break, David, if you could just, as you present the last few slides, then put together the ask and the direction very explicitly what you're needing counsel to help you with today. I think we have a resolution, basically, confirming the voluntary separation program. We'll need to make sure that the ROI issue is dealt with either today or next week, and that's really all we need. The intention would be once we have the ability to get another month under our belt, see where the VSP goes, be sure to recalculate how our numbers look. We'll be back in mid-May probably with another recommendation if we need to do that, but I want to get out, again, I'm not going to just make some decision right now that we're heading this way, we're cutting salaries, we're doing this or that. I mean, it's way too early for that. I am going to reach out and start talking to some employees, just kind of hear what's on their mind because we've got people that want to talk to us, have different ideas, and we'll probably be back to you sometime in May with the next iteration if we need to pull another string. I mean, I just don't know right now, but I at least wanted to be sure you know where we were. So the resolution for the VSP is an action item tonight, I believe. Is that correct? Yes, right. Okay, all right, fantastic. Well, we're going to take about a seven minutes, 425, we're going to come back at 432 and resume with the finalization of this. Council Member Briggs? Yeah, I just wanted to ask if, not right now, if Gary could follow up with us on if those locations are closed during the summer where the summer food programs are, they're usually fed, the kids are, what the alternative for that will be? Okay, all right. All right, we'll come back at about 435. Okay. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on April 21st, 2020. It is 442. We're moving down our work session agenda. I think we're still on the last work session item that we were, we had to finish up that presentation. So David, if you wanted to pick up where you left off with the, I believe it was the debt service fund. Uh-oh. All right. Oh, I can't hear staff. Is staff there? Yes, we're just pulling up the presentation if you can hear me. Yes, okay. Yeah, go ahead. Very well. David Gaines again, Director of Finance. I have a slide here to talk about our general government debt and the touch on the debt service rate. And then I do have slides on each of the utilities to go through with a very high level five-year forecast similar to what we looked at for the general fund. And then you'll be able to see that impact of the return on investment on the electric fund through those slides as well. So this is the general government capital improvement plan for this year. This is our planned debt issuance that we'll be going through this summer. Plan on bringing the notice intent to start that process for the certificates of obligation at our meeting in May. So starting this process very quickly, but we did take this opportunity to go through each of the projects that we were planning on issuing debt for this year to see what we could scale back to try to limit that debt service tax rate increase. We dropped the debt service tax rate coming into this fiscal year by one cent with the new bond election and a number of these other projects that we had anticipated, including closing out the 2014 bond program. We were anticipating an increase in the debt service tax rate. So that combined with starting to think about a lower assessed value assumption than we had previously led us to try to limit the amount that we're issuing this summer to every extent possible. So you can see our efforts to that extent here, and I'll touch on these at a high level and our thought process behind them. On the 2014 bond election, we are moving forward with our street rehab program to attempt to wrap that up from the 2012 and '14 bond elections, which obviously has been a priority over the past two years. So we're still issuing that full amount, over $12 million for our last geo issuances for that street rehab program. But we have shown to scale back the amount we were going to issue for parks acquisition from the 2014 program. So we will plan on issuing that amount next year, and you can see that in the red there combined with the master plan on the bond election 2014 park system improvements. Obviously, we're excited to have our final issuances for 2014 this year, but those were ones that made a lot of sense to push to next year, especially as we're looking for properties and things like that, and trying to limit again how much we're issuing this year to every extent possible. As we go kind of down the chart in front of you, the next section is the 2019 bond election program, and these reductions were largely based on the commercial paper program, which council just approved, which now allows us to issue debt based on cash flow. So we've looked at and we'll continue to tweak these up until we actually issue the debt, but trying to line those up, especially the public safety, property, public safety renovations, we have we're not, we're not suggesting to delay those projects, but just to match up exactly how much we expect to spend between now and September, and only issue that amount versus issuing anything in excess of that, and issuing every everything, everything additional next fiscal year. So you can see that with the decrease in the public safety proposition from 10 million to 4 million, again that's just based on cash flow needs. On the streets proposition within the 2019 bond election, we are holding off on the street lighting. We were initially planning to issue our first two million dollars of the street lighting project on University Drive. Our plan would just be to start that up next year with the first two million dollars of that program, and similar with sidewalks, focus on design this year so that we're ready to roll on that next fiscal year as well. So that's that's the total for our general government for our bond election projects. As we go into our certificates of obligation are those first two projects are ones that we issue every year. We should five-year debt for our fleet replacements and 10-year debt for our facility maintenance of 1.5 million dollars, which is used for repairs and different projects throughout the city for our municipally owned facilities. On the fleet replacements we're continuing and trying to reduce that amount as much as possible. The largest thing reducing that 775,000 you see there is that we finished the year with more funds in the traffic safety fund than we anticipated, and as we went through the budget process we talked about as a goal to spend all of the funds within that traffic safety fund this year knowing that the program is closed. So essentially using all those excess funds for those police vehicles, and on the facility maintenance we have we have excess funds from previous years and just really don't need to issue that 1.5 million dollars. On the CO projects these are projects that obviously council has had quite a bit of discussion on over the past year, a number of presentations and it's familiar with where we are. Fire Station 8 and 3 are obviously going on there's there we need those funds a lot of those funds have already been spent through reimbursement ordinances. The municipal development services building obviously have had a number of discussions on those based on the last council presentation and some of the the option shown and the the updated cost estimates we are right now anticipating to increase that issuance from 10 million dollars to 1 million dollars but again we'll continue to refine that as we lead up to May 19th where we'll bring that first notice of intent for our plan to issue certificates of obligation. And on the City Hall West renovation just given the timeline of where we are right now we're able to focus on the windows and some other projects related to City Hall West and then push off the entire the construction and the the main design of City Hall West renovation to next fiscal year. So that would be our plan again just as a way to reduce our total issuance and then you see the loop 288 project property purchase there obviously that is the item that's for council consideration today on on individual consideration and plug it into this forecast to to show the impact there. So in total we've essentially reduced 25 million dollars from our plan from a from a few months ago then obviously added a couple of those projects that property purchase and increase the development services building and in total we would issue 15 million dollars close to 50 million dollars in general government debt. And we anticipate that's only going to have a one cent tax rate increase as we look at the debt falling off and a number of other factors again with that three percent AV growth if it's higher than that that would change what that debt that service tax rate would increase would look like and part of the way we're able to get there is the the airport fund right now does have a fund balance that accommodates us paying the debt service payment for outstanding airport debt from the airport fund as opposed to the general fund that's been paid for the past number of years. So our plan is for the next couple years I don't it wouldn't be sustainable for the entire time we have left on the airport debt most likely but at least to help with the the debt service tax rate pay that airport debt from the airport fund next fiscal year. So definitely can take any questions on the CIP plan and our approach this fiscal year for what we're planning to issue. Okay questions if we could I can't see all of you at once but with the staff Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you David quick question where does the Legion Hall fall which which budget is that funded through? That project's already funded it had a number of different funding sources so it wouldn't be on this list as an issuance this year but it is a fully funded project and we are moving forward with that project we did we did take a look when and kind of mentioned in the capital prioritizations earlier we did take a look at all of our capital projects that are outstanding that already have funding and we're able to shift around some of the funding but that was one that we did we wanted to lead the funding intact so we could move forward with that project and not have it on any kind of list of changing the priority. Outstanding thank you and then where do I go and forgive me if I'm in the wrong area so just redirect me. Street work that is currently in the works but paused where is that kind of captured in a timeline? Specifically Curly Street. Emma well we can follow up with that exact street it may be part of the one of the street rehab programs where the 2014 street rehab program so it may be in that that bucket up there which we are keeping the funding moving forward but we could definitely get a status update on that specific road. Okay yep thank you. Okay who else? Council Member Briggs. Yeah in in regards to streets so is it if it's not on this list or if it's already in motion say like the the last portion of Hickory Street that that will not be affected it's just so if it's in progress or has been funded those those types of capital programs those those streets will not be affected by by any of the reductions. That's right yeah Hickory Street for sure and in the in terms of the local road projects from the 2012 and 2014 bonds we have kind of treated those as sacred cows that they need to get done. We've got Todd Ess's staff finishing up the design for the rest of those residential streets so we can try to get out to market as soon as possible and get it for you but we really wanted to leave those local streets that are out of those two bond elections intact. Thank you. Okay Council Member Armitter. Yes so I was wondering if you could speak to the measures that we're taking to protect construction workers who contract with the contractors for these projects. With our own contractors or with our own in-house crews we've got PPE requirements that were established with the Fire Chief and a working group. As far as the folks in the field we've been allowing the contractors to deal with their staff on a case-by-case basis that have not been prescriptive in terms of making them wear certain equipment. We certainly could reach out to them and gather that information and I'm sure that they would accommodate us. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah that's really important to me citywide in the private sector and but at least in the public sector that's something we could easily address in the way you mentioned so thank you. I am very concerned about their safety. Thank you so much. Okay anyone else? I guess David and Todd because the 3% AV growth projection I think we've had what 4% over the last few years in for a budget analysis perspective is that right? Yeah 3.5 to 4% as we went through the bond committee process the bond committee recommended 5% so we use that for our projections for the bond program itself but yeah 3.5 to 4%. So and as I mentioned last time when you look at the Denton County Appraisal District's website of course it does mention that all protests will be you know over the phone or online it won't be in person and also that as the city manager mentioned the assessed values are measured as of January 1 and it specifically states that so as you're protesting or coming in to dispute your values that to use this time in our nation's history to try to lower the value that will be something that would be considered next year not this year. So when I look at historically our percentage increases over the last two or three or four years they've averaged what David eight to ten percent and on the conservative side. I'm sorry yes that's correct all right so I'm assuming that if that if the same holds true this year obviously all these projections that we've is there a way to pull down the the slide so I can see all the council members at once thank you then that's definitely going to change a lot of things if it comes in at eight or nine or ten percent I mean right wouldn't you agree so then at that time we can also that's another time where we can reassess to see exactly you know what we have in place given the voluntary separation program the ROI and if it comes into where you're looking at you know a couple million dollars more for AV growth I mean if it came in at ten percent that's three times what what we're using as an assumption for these forecasts and for these initiatives that we're putting in place so that gives us another chance to come back and revisit this to really try to fine-tune it based upon upon that criteria any other questions on this portion of the presentation yes council member Briggs just to follow up on what I just I think I heard you say is that this is just we're looking at this in case and what we're going to do but if if something comes up later or some of those values come in higher then we may be able to go back to that list and say hey can we add city hall renovation or we can do that project by project well I think that's one of the things I think the thrust of my discussion was because that's looking at the debt service component of our tax rate whereas mine was looking at the O&M where you know a lot of these initiatives have been put in place like the ROI increase from the utility funds the voluntary separation program and these other sort of cost-saving measures if you already if you get a doubling or tripling of the assessed values above what you based your projections upon well then it just gives you another opportunity to say okay we have these this additional funding what do we want to do with this you either can support you can fund supplemental packages which that'll that would be an interesting conversation or you go back and you look at do we need to continue to move forward with some of those initiatives put in place based upon the same thing is that the sales tax comes in higher than what we projected so that's why I just want to reiterate that these are great first steps but it's obviously a moving target so to speak and we'll have I think ample opportunity to come back and and make modifications as needed whether it's beneficial for us because we've got more revenue than we thought or the converse can be true that somehow these numbers don't pan out as they were assumed and therefore we have to have some other alternatives to look at some cost-saving measures so yeah any other comments yes councilmembrometer yeah just just one closing remark about the voluntary separation which I am very much in support of offering I think that's a really good idea I myself did not get a salary on city council I chose that because I already have a government job and I can only have have one not two I would like to propose that others who are getting a salary although it's not a very big salary from council that that we consider sacrificing our council salary if we don't need it to support ourselves and our families it's a largely symbolic gesture but I think it would mean a lot to people thanks okay anybody else okay David did you have some other slides I do I do I have a number of slides to go through each of the utilities as well okay everyone's excited I know you'll run right through them they'll be easy to understand I will we did want to and I know that we talked to talk talked about this earlier just the timeline did want to just lay it out for everybody to see what that timeline looks like for for the actions we're considering you can see there the immediate actions obviously would be to go forward with the voluntary separation program and that really kind of cascades into into the next tier as well where we can see what the what the results of that are and and what kind of impact that's really going to have you know even the numbers that we showed on the general fund they're based on assumptions and we really won't know the interest or the or what that looks like by fund especially until we start to get that feedback from from employees and then obviously the the increased electric ROI that we've that we've discussed and then the next steps as we go into next week would be to look at reduced work work schedules and as necessary as necessary look at those employees that just right now don't have a full a full work week in front of them and make and make actions moving forward with those those employees whether it's furloughs or or reducing their their number of hours to work and then we reorganizations and obviously as we've as we've looked at these other these other options they've been the priority but reorganization is is always it's still a possibility on something we can look at as we see where we stand moving forward and we've already had those discussions with each of the departments to see what those could look like and then as far as june through july these just touch on all the pieces we just mentioned as well we're going to continue to revise our estimates and and come up with plans based on additional information as we get it so i i do have one of the five-year forecasts for each of the utility funds so um i we've had we've had a lot of conversation in the utility fund so i won't spend uh too much time going through all the detail on each of these but do want to point out some of the high level pieces and talk through the um the impact of that roi change on the electric fund so this this shows the electric fund as it stands today with a three and a half percent roi and we are projecting a right now a seven million dollar loss from from covet 19 um obviously there's a wide range and there's a number of factors that go go into that um but really across the utility funds when we show a loss from from the the pandemic it's really related to either you know bad debt from not having late payments or shutoffs or just reduce commercials uh commercial usage as commercial fills the strain um most heavily from the economy right now uh and then so that is that's baked into these numbers and again it's the same format that we have for the general fund there are some revenue pieces that are helping the general fund this year one we had um we were anticipating the deck to proceed um exceeded forecast slightly by just a million and a half david if you could hold on just a second i'm getting some feedback uh someone who's listening maybe via phone or something they've got so just wanted to let let the audience and council member know we're aware of that so go ahead i'm sorry we're just hearing you in an echo go ahead that's good i i think when you look at when you look at the electric fund obviously that the most important thing right now at this high level is is that ending fund balance to see where we stand in relation to our working targets which you can see below here the 60 and 75 day targets that we have we we we have a significant reserve right now and that's largely driven by uh when we were going through the budget process and this happens every year with utilities and most notably with electric as we're budgeting before we hit the the heaviest usage months of the year that we had you know really hot august and september a couple weeks in there that drove up um drove up our revenue significantly and the deck performed um a large number of days during that time frame and a couple of other factors and we went through those in detail in december as we did an update but just kind of to rehash at a very high level those last few weeks had us come in uh very strong at the end of the fiscal year and we we came in well above our projected fund balance so that had to start the year with a fund balance much higher than we anticipated um some of that obviously also related to some fund out themselves related to some of the decisions that we made during the year to not defeat some of that the debt that we had talked about and then as we move forward and this this is again that three and a half percent ROI scenario that fund balance continues to grow and remains significantly above our targets out here in the out years fy21 looking at a two million dollar fund balance obviously with a lot of assumptions um but well above those those targets that we have so as we were going through this process and knowing the constraints that we have on the general fund side and getting this update of forecast over this past week really of where we are with electric had us lead to that conversation of what would it look like to do a six percent ROI as opposed to the three and a half percent so um i'll just switch over to this next slide where we where we make that change so you can see this has that six and a half percent ROI for that time frame that we discussed the remainder of this fiscal year and then in 21 fy21 and 22 and we still remain with that that strong fund balance in those out years so so david quick quick question but isn't the fund balance also our rate stabilization fund isn't that sort of function i mean we had the esa rate which we try to keep somewhat somewhat constant but isn't that i mean or am i wrong in that now you're you're correct mayor we have talked about taking a similar approach in the electric fund that we did with the water and wastewater basically restricting some of the fund balance as a rate stabilization fund in case you had a year where the deck didn't run very much we just haven't formally made that accounting change but you'll see it in the water and wastewater we have made that accounting change to try to account for those you know 80 90 million dollar projects we know are coming our way but that is correct and it is why both because we've been taking that approach and trying to set up the fund the stabilization and the fact we didn't pay off that 28 million dollar scrubber debt payment is why you see a reserve that high okay and i think the other point is you can see what our our target policy is i think council member brings us this earlier down below in the 36 to 47 million so we've got the ability right now to go ahead and implement the roi strategy as well as if the council wanted to take a policy position later this summer and create that stabilization fund well and i guess that's my question so with this policy that you're saying the uh this 36 35 35 that's the policy the 60 16 and 21 yes but it's it's the policy uh pre-deck and the the question that you've been asking the last year or two is should there be something set up that sort of as a cushion in case we have a year where the deck doesn't run as much as is as we had anticipated but yeah that policy range is the 16 to 21 percent reserve revenues okay but that you're almost double it yeah but if you were going if you were going to set up a separate rate stabilization fund you i mean so is this 60 days 16 is that including that this is both your working capital and reserve target including your rate stabilization fund or is this all right yeah and it well and that's that's something we've talked about the last couple budget years i mean you can easily make that 20 to 25 percent um just to add that cushion and you're still in good shape okay so then what i'm hearing you say is when i look at this this uh figure over here on adopted budget the beginning fund balance was basically 49 million and that's the current budget we're in so the revised revenue estimate it pops it up almost another 30 million and that's without us going into any issues that we're experiencing today right refresh my memory where that extra 30 million is coming from right so that was at the end at the end of 1819 so essentially the beginning fund balance fund balance that adopted budget we just wanted to be transparent with that column that was the that was where we thought we were going to end the year in 1819 as we were going through the budget process through the summer but as we closed the books and as we finished the fiscal year at the end of last year we had such again we had some really hot weeks and the deck was running quite a bit and the usage was up and we just ended up with a lot more revenue than we anticipated we did get some the tmp at cost revenue just like we're anticipating this year that came in that we that we hadn't budgeted for so some things on the margins as well but really it was largely driven by the the increased uh increased usage based on the based on the temperature so one thing that's not on here that we need to as we move forward begin to really think about uh because it's anyway uh the decommissioning costs for tmpa you know they're still trying to do things there and if they have to decommission that plant of course the city of denton will have its portion of that cost and so that's not necessarily reflected and i'm not saying we have to do that today i'm just saying we need to really begin to put that into perspective uh even though it's not quote unquote on the on the balance sheet on the books per se that still is a liability that that uh we're going to be incurring if if something doesn't happen to where we offload that decommission cost so whereas the fund balance looks pretty strong and so now i do understand why you made the decision to uh pop that roi up to six percent i get that and so in moving forward two questions one is the commissioning of the plant and number two if we've got this such a healthy fund balance over our target then what are we what are we going to do with that additional funds once we get out of this to to you know help with uh either debt service or something like that because you're you're saying you you got almost 30 million dollars above and beyond what you think is a good policy for a reserve fund that's a lot of money so that's that's a talk for another day mayor i will just the decommissioning costs are reflected in this forecast we have uh okay and those numbers came from tmpa the 20 million dollars where is it mission costs are just within those expenditures and they're spread out over a number of years from fy 20 all the way okay so they're in the total expenditures correct great okay uh council member briggs yeah can you um say again what you said about the scrubber debt and was that the 20 was it a 26 million correct that was that was budgeted last year um as we went into the 18 19 budget it was it was included in the budget to pay that debt off entirely but we made that decision came to council with a plan to not pay it off and in discontinue and refinance that debt essentially for another five years and and just pay pay the debt service on it as opposed to drawing fund balance down to pay that debt to pay off that debt well yeah so i was i'm my question was more so was the 30 30 million that we saw extra was that part of what we were saving to pay that scrubber debt off and then decided for cash flow's sake not to do that and then refinance that and is the debt listed in all the the total expenditures here the 18 million for the deck and then the scrubber and then the decommissioning so that's all here spread out it's just not individualized right and we can on may 19th or we're gonna we have another item we could definitely come in and do a more detailed um category line item view of the of the electric budget as well i just did a high level summary at this time okay when i when i see the the deck performance because i looked at the one last the most recent one and it was in in a negative but when it says performance exceeding forecast it means that the forecast was that it was negative million but now it's up so uh we are basically going to break even and we don't have to um get into the the fund to pay that debt is that for the operation is that what i'm seeing yeah yeah i need to look at um i don't have that deck the dashboard in front of me to see exactly where we stand but i can pull that up okay well yeah we don't have to get into that right now in the detail i'm just trying to make sure make sense of what i saw before in the dashboard and what i'm seeing now but i think it it just it's not like we're making an extra it's just that it's pulling it up to what what's basically breaking even what yeah i don't i mean that's not necessarily how i interpret that because the forecast could have been a negative number yeah it was uh yeah the forecast could have been a negative five million or negative six million and uh if i'm seeing deck performance exceeded forecast by a million dollars so if we are anticipating a negative six million dollars that means we only experienced a negative five million not knowing all the terms so i don't think that for me at least the way i read it doesn't indicate that it broke even it's just saying whatever we forecasted it's a million dollars better than what we forecasted if it's a negative number it means it's just a lower negative number okay yeah okay thank you and one more follow-up on the roi because the conversation earlier mayor that you brought up with it being i think it's 20 21 and 22 if we are approving that are we approving it for all of those years at that increase or is that something that um when it comes up for a vote next week that we can talk about we've got an ordinance ready for you tonight and basically it would allow staff to turn on that roi in may and it would essentially sunset um september 30th of 2022 so right before the 2022 2023 budget but that doesn't necessarily mean that if some if things change materially change to where that's not needed that can always be revisited that's correct you can change it anytime yep okay thank you uh councilmember armature uh yeah so uh can you remind me of what the uh mno is planned for the just the deck for uh for for for this uh fiscal year 1920 and and for the next year just the mno i guess um and i appreciate that question um i don't want to necessarily i mean this this agenda item isn't necessarily for an analysis of the deck performance uh if you have that number quickly if not if you could get that to her offline because we're going to be going over that in the budget process but um yeah this you can you can tell me offline that's fine i'll let you know why i'm asking though so so i can show explain how it's related um you know in case you couldn't guess i'm trying to figure out uh what the cost is of of uh keeping it versus looking into as we're belt tightening just like a family would looking at your biggest assets this is a you know 225 million dollar asset it we're putting a lot of money into it so anybody regardless of what you think of of the deck uh you know should be looking into our assets and you know what the cost is to maintain it versus what the cost would be uh to or you know what what would be the pros and cons of of selling for parts right well right now i guess i can answer that pretty quickly there's a roughly 18 million dollar uh principal and interest payment on that deck for the next 28 years so it makes no sense to try to sell it off and the way that it's paid off is it's it's not it's essentially generating at least 25 to 30 million dollars a year and hedges you know these this would be energy we would have to purchase off the grid at a higher price anyway it's it's able to earn that kind of revenue to pay for itself so not right though right not net it's it's about 30 million dollars to pay all of its costs to the debt interest all the costs off anything above and beyond that which is what happened last year um drops into the um fund is a positive revenue so it would make absolutely no sense to sell it at this point uh given the fact that it's breaking even it's it's it's saving us more than it's costing us and going into this summer the same trend that we saw this last year our our experts are estimating could occur in in high probability but obviously they they don't control the weather but they're assuming that we're going to be in a similar condition given the amount of uh power production capacity in iraq right now and i'm sure during the budget budget yeah during the budget process i'm sure we'll go into that in detail yes and we'll be able to go dive in more into your concerns in detail and thank and thank you for that i'll just mention in closing that you know i'm not sure whether you know just breaking just breaking even it's debatable you know whether or not that is um that means that it's not worth looking into but i i i do understand your point thank you okay anybody else i can't really see any other questions on this slide okay all right so we'll go through the other the remainder of the utility funds a water fund we are anticipating right now uh revenue impact of in total 1.6 million dollars uh to the to the water fund again just obviously a wide range but just for this pro forma that that negative impact um and in total reduce revenue in total in addition to that 2.2 million dollars this fiscal year so you can see that reflected as we as we move through the forecast um but but overall overall the picture is pretty good as we look into the the out years a five-year forecast um for the water fund as we had conversations last year uh concerning the water fund specifically we really targeted that uh fy 24 fy 25 uh range knowing that we were going to have a large expansion at lake ray roberts we have been able to do some regulatory upgrades this fiscal year that has allowed us to push that um that expansion at ray roberts out to fy to 25 and have the design a large design cost in fy 24 so it keeps that that picture looks a lot better as we look in the out years of this five-year forecast as far as fund balance compared to our targets from where it from where it was previously and then our restricted reserve is really intended to to allocate some of that reserve restricted in anticipation of the um the expansion so that we could have some some revenue funding of that project as opposed to all debt funding uh so you can see you can see the measures that we've already taken and uh obviously keeping all rates steady throughout this forecast david quick question on this just to understand the the uh slide on the restricted capital reserve i see the six seven eight nine ten and then i see the uh 120 days and 180 days of our of our uh uh target yes the words escaping escaping me when i look at the let's just take the last one 2024 to 25 i look at the fund balance of uh basically 23 and a half million dollars so this 10 million dollars it is part of that restricted or do you have a total of 33 or do you have 23 and 10 of that 23 is restricted we have a total of 33 okay we're in a total of 33 and a total of 30 34 in those out years um but we're just taking that strategy of trying to to to plan for that expansion as we were looking at the 10-year forecast 15-year forecast over the budget year such a large capital expenditure coming oh no yeah no i appreciate that i was just wanting to make sure that i knew that that was the number that was in addition to the 23 5 million in the beginning fund balance or was that part of that and you've answered that that it's it's in addition so that 23 5 is the unrestricted unencumbered part then you have an additional 10 million that's held in reserve uh for this uh capital reserve correct all right correct okay good uh let me get this council members back on um so i can see anybody have any questions on the the water side okay waste water should be able to touch on this one uh pretty quickly obviously a similar story to to water um in in the sense of of what the constraints that we're going to that we see in in the reduced revenues um but i think i think in the story with water and in all you in all the utilities um i think the actions that we've already taken in phase one and obviously these are going to be impacted just like the general fund uh depending on the acceptance rate of the voluntary separation program is just going to make make those impacts even greater as far as reducing expenses but as we look in the out years um we are we are able to keep the forecast strong and still plan for those capital those capital projects here is another large capital project we're having coming up with another plan expansion for the water treatment plan any questions for staff on wastewater okay the solid waste fund uh the revenues on this one are are um more interesting there's more more nuance to them obviously we are still anticipating a revenue decrease from commercial um customers and overall for for uh base rate revenues um but we are anticipating even greater um than budget revenues from uh from the landfill and whole wholesale customer or customers um uh just that increased activity related to those um has been strong and in anticipating more revenue coming in coming in from those and obviously we've had those conversations on the putter pay agreements and the strong position that's put us in with the solid waste fund with revenues moving forward so again they are it is an impact and i i think with all these it it could get it could be worse than we're projecting right now we'll continue to update it um but i think we've been able to with the actions we've taken and the actions we're proposing um kind of mitigate that loss and even have some revenue increases associated with solid waste okay any questions on that for staff yes uh council member breaks uh yeah and and another at another time can we see the um somebody showed me a chart about that or including those um the contracts that were approved in the tonnage and the increased amount um so much more than and the decreased space can we just get a follow-up on on that i know that it looks good here in the numbers but on those other two how that how it affects um the landfill space and the um uh yeah and the tonnage i think i think brian can get that for you quickly okay thank you not not for right now just follow up yeah thank you okay i'll keep moving so it's our final slide just with our next steps obviously um we'll consider the ordinance uh this evening for the budget strategies as outlined um if approved we'll we'll be moving forward those and as we've laid out the timeline that we'll start uh tomorrow with the voluntary separation program uh we're going to be coming back on may 19th with a financial update and i'm sure we'll be pretty continually coming back with these updates throughout throughout the summer as we lead up to the the new fiscal year in october the 2020 debt cell will come back for a conversation on on the debt cell on may 19th and then we'll continue to update the forecast as we as we get more information so that's it for the presentation david real quick when do we typically receive um our sales tax revenue information in the middle of that so in the middle of may may 13th or so we'll get it we'll get the sales tax information for march and so on in june for april so we've already gotten the sales tax information for february that came in april okay right okay all right is that it for this uh work session item yes it is unless there's any questions yes council member armater yeah just a quick question to my colleagues on council is anybody else other than me interested in seeing the data would like to give staff direction to look into the data on presented on just just running possible through possible scenarios for this plan b phase two phase three pay cuts uh and uh merit increase rollbacks for people in the top before looking at at layoffs or furlough or anything like that reduced working hours anybody else interested in seeing those numbers or should i just try to calculate those on my own uh anybody council member riggs what i i believe that um it was a conversation that i i brought up and asked about and was under the impression that all things had had been considered and um were continuing to be considered so i don't i don't know that we have to give direct direction um for that right now so i mean i i feel like all of the stuff that has been proposed or talked about is is on the table depending on uh that it gets down the road okay and yes go ahead just i'll just make a comment that i think you know a hallmark of this administration is a very skillful tightening of the organization in good times uh but you know with an eye to how to uh you know consolidate management and still deliver services better than before so i i'm not interested in uh you know i'm in sort of uh pushing in any particular direction i think they got to work out how to how to as they have year after year how to deliver services excellently you know with increasingly tight constraints is that is that true that staff has looked into it because i got i guess maybe i misunderstood i got the impression that that wasn't looked into but if that is the case i would love to see those numbers definitely can i get an answer on that staff is considered that as an as an option it's not one of the the next options we're looking at and and again i think you're running too fast towards a a goal that we don't quite know yet how bad it is so if we do implement that we're going to bring the organization along and and it's going to be something that will recommend to the council all seven of you at the same time along with um you know a set of recommendations but right now we're not ready to have that discussion we want to see how the next few weeks shakes out and then have a discussion probably in mid-may based on where we are but the the issue in terms of do we get into layoffs reduced hours do we cut salaries that sort of thing it's going to be something that we'll we'll consider carefully as a as a staff and bring forward to you but it's most likely not going to be in a tiered approach and it's not it's most likely not necessary to to take that approach just quite yet when we don't have enough data as we get more data we're we're going to ask we're going to base their decisions on sound rationale business decisions and not how much money somebody's making yep okay part of it okay yep all right okay anybody else all right thank you very much we'll go on to the next agenda item then which is agenda item 3d receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the scheduling of city board commission and committee meetings during the city's declared local disaster related to the covet 19 pandemic thank you mayor ryan adams public affairs we're pulling up the powerpoint right now all right staff has prepared a short presentation on this item for for council discussion and to provide staff direction we do have a recommendation at the end and throughout the presentation i'm happy to answer any questions that the council may have there we go so just a bit of a background the city's disaster declaration that's currently in effect along with the order effective through april 30th this does contain a provision that all city committee commission and board meetings are suspended through the term of the order with one exception and that is for the planning and zoning commission so they can consider applications that have state imposed deadlines such as flats the extension or amendment of that order will be forthcoming to council as it does expire shortly and staff has been evaluating evaluating how to move forward with a board and commission meetings over the next few weeks and that's based on social distancing guidelines and current limitations on in-person meetings the limited staff resources that are available to host meetings and then also just the general requirements and challenges of hosting virtual meetings so this is part one of a two slide we couldn't fit the entire graphic onto one slide but this is a overview of all the 27 different city boards commissions and committees they all have various meeting schedules and requirements various numbers of members some are typically recorded or streamed others are not some have public comment components others do not and this was provided in your backup so i will just shift to the next slide and then keep going although if you'd like me to hold on any one of these i'm happy to so of the 27 boards seven are normally produced and broadcast online and on dtv channels if you look at your backup on that table those are highlighted and i'm colorblind but i'm going to go ahead and guess orange on the left hand column uh the we did inquire but the outsource vendor which is swaget is not able to actually produce virtual meetings because they utilize cameras and equipment such as microphones that are within a physical room and so they could not promulgate that through a zoom framework or zoom platform platform that we currently use for our for virtual meetings normally the remainder of the board and boards and commissions can be viewed by the public in person and of course since in viewing our in person viewing is currently not allowed the meetings would not need probably would need to be held virtually and for transparency public access that would require those meetings to be produced and broadcast out through our channels whether that is the the cable channel stream and be accessible on demand after the fact virtual meetings do require a large amount of staff resources from our dtv staff tech services and our public affairs staff and this is a minimum to ensure it's it's publicly accessible a good bit of that uh that effort on on the part of staff is maintenance of the technology and ensuring that if something goes wrong staff are available to actually address it and uh to also it may seem fairly seamless but toggling back and forth between presentations bringing people in and out of the meetings all that takes a certain degree of staff time to be able to do and staff availability to be able to do so in addition to public access of viewing there are 12 boards that currently have a public comment component for their meetings uh it would be staff's recommendation that if those board meetings were to shift to a virtual platform that the public comment is also included and that any meeting that previously had a public comment comment component continues to do so going forward the public comment involves a substantial amount of staff resources and we have actually outlined that on the following slide we calculated and this is a rough approximation that depending on different factors it could take anywhere from 42 to 56 staff hours to produce a virtual meeting now i'll hold on this slide for just a moment although this is in the ais that was part of the backup for this agenda item staff's recommendation uh is to have a limited scope for virtual meetings at least over the next few weeks knowing that we can come back and revisit this as the environment changes with regard to uh social distancing and stay at home we just want to reaffirm the the investment of staff time and uh staff resources that go into these meetings the technological components that are very challenging to to maintain and would be difficult for say a committee or a commission or a board chair to do in addition to being attentive to the business at hand for their meeting so on the next slide we'll go a little bit more into detail on the recommendation but we do want to point out that this can be adjusted uh based on any state or local orders uh guidelines that change or any additional efficiencies that we find through hosting additional virtual meetings so what staff is recommending is that we continue to hold virtual meetings for the city council which is roughly two per month plus any emergency meetings we continue to hold meetings for planning and zoning which is again an anticipated two meetings per month we hold virtual meetings for the pub the public utilities board which is an anticipated one meeting a month and that as other special meetings come up that are time sensitive or have critical needs based on for instance the budget we go ahead and hold those meetings as well and some examples are the hotel occupancy occupancy tax and sponsorship committee civil service commission bond oversight committee and the community development advisory committee and that is the end of the presentation so i'll actually revert back to the recommendation slide i'm happy to answer any questions that the council may have okay if we could uh pull the uh presentation down so i can see there we go okay councilmembrometer uh yeah so i i would like uh members of these uh boards and commissions to be asked just an email sent from staff to ask if they're they believe that there are any special needs under covid that apply to this to their committee that they're concerned about uh just not necessarily to have a meeting based on that but maybe some of the concerns that come up are that you know they that they would like a meeting um i would be curious to know i do know just to name one example that i heard from only one person on the disabilities committee and they were more just kind of asking me you know why aren't we meeting um but i know that uh people with disabilities are experiencing stay at home in ways that those of us who are able-bodied are not and so i would be curious to know if they see the need to have a meeting just to discuss people with disabilities in denton under under covid okay yeah anybody else councilmember briggs so we we recently approved a contract with um the other company to host all the other meetings and i will we get a refund on that since we're not hosting all those extra meetings and they're not we're not required requiring them to record and post councilmember just as a clarification are you referring to uh the swagit remote production meetings yes uh we are uh we we're given a set amount uh for an entire year and so we we have asked them and of course not knowing how many meetings we will have for the entire year and not knowing uh how many uh or how long this stay at home order how long we would be producing virtual meetings we've not engaged them in that discussion although i can tell you that we we will and if there's an opportunity to either receive a refund or apply those uh i'll call them meeting credits to additional meetings say in future years uh we will find that out we can report that back to council yes sure of course the swagit do you online hosting like this they they do not they do not okay okay anybody else councilmember melser and then councilmember davis yeah i just want to make a comment that i think somehow the way we're thinking about it must be making it too complicated i just i i'm on zoom meetings i don't know it seems like every other day uh and you know and i hear people talk about everything from you know multinational companies operating through zoom meetings and religious services and you know it just it just doesn't seem frankly that hard and i think we're making we're doing something that's making it harder than it needs to be uh because there are lots of people who are running them on the fly uh you know and publishing it as a matter of publishing the zoom address i mean maybe i'm missing something but everyone else seems to be able to figure out how to do this in some way that's less burdensome it doesn't seem to take 42 hours i was at a you know i've attended two uh council members town halls and i don't think it required 40 or 50 hours maybe they can tell me different so i i would just ask is there's what are we doing that's making it so much harder for us to do it that it's you know kind of creating this anxiety councilmember melzer it's go ahead no go ahead i didn't know if jesse i didn't know councilmember davis had a response to councilmember melzer if he was just waiting so if you had a response you're certainly welcome to to weigh in now or if you had a different comment we'll let uh staff answer that question i'll let sarah weigh in first and then i as part of my comments i'll okay back on what i've got all right eric keichler chief of staff i just wanted to to weigh in and we try to describe all of the complexities and the challenges to really running these meetings in a productive professional effective manner and there are just a lot of parts involved i can't describe to you the amounts of staff needed to make sure that we can do this effectively but one of the major things that we really want to make sure we have dtv or tech services involved with almost any meeting that is held virtually is the security um and making sure that we manage that appropriately we have heard from other cities holding town halls and council meetings where um you know other uninvited participants are getting in and they're actually bringing up on the screen some images or other content that should not be shown publicly and so we want to control for those things very closely and we for public participation if you do it through these platforms you also risk that happening as well and so that's why we've had that very thoughtful it's more staff involved process in terms of how we bring callers online and then bring them up individually to speak to the council or the various boards is so that we're controlling for some of those factors we really we certainly understand the need to want to meet more and we're trying to come up with more efficiencies as we become more experienced and you know we have more confidence in how we're holding these meetings but we don't want to rush it forward where we're over promising what we can do and then risking that some of these things may occur and maybe then we're undermining the public trust and confidence that we can help hold these meetings effectively so we're trying to balance these all of these factors um certainly in a few weeks from now as we go through more of these we might have gained a lot of efficiencies and maybe we can train more staff and it's possible to do more of these virtual meetings we just kind of want to bite it off in chunks and make sure that we have the confidence to do it effectively well i'm glad i see a plan to scale up and gain experience you know we're not the only ones facing this i'm i'll be interested to hear council member davis's comments because uh the one that he ran i attended there it was invaded it was disrupted uh there had to disconnect three times i recall but ultimately we had the meeting or he had the meeting i think it was about two and a half hours long and i think people felt it was worth having had so the idea of not having it because there's a problem well you know i think it's better to my opinion to have the meeting even though you might you might experience a problem that you have to address well and we stuff there i just want to address i did send an article to council just to provide some examples of what could happen i mean we've heard pornographic images coming up online once that is out there and online and broadcasted that cannot be taken back um so it's not just somebody you know maybe causing a scene or or somebody that we can have kick out but it's potentially something more serious that could be broadcast online over our channels that we we'll need to make sure we're controlling for people can make public comments that we don't control it could be anything you know i mean and to just sort of not have your government process because someone might say something or do something well i'm just repeating myself but i i'll stop that we'll continue to discuss ways of bringing more boards of commissions online well that's that's that's one opinion let's let's hear the rest of the council i think i think we want to be i think to sarah's point we want to do it safely right now we've got billy controlling things very carefully and so we so we and we've been successful at kind of avoiding some of these pitfalls but we'll continue to see if there's other ways of possibly expanding it right now we're not hearing a lot back from the boards and commissions that there's a lot of workload to take on so that's been fortunate for us but we'll continue to kick ideas around internally council member davis well first let me comment on what what todd just said i think workload is a big part of it i mean a lot of these boards and commissions they may have a pretty steady workload during normal times but they may not have the same the same amount of stuff coming through the pipeline uh the reason why we kept pnz kind of online was because they did have uh things coming through the pipeline there were things with the with the statutory requirements on them uh to council member melzer's comment about the town hall that i hosted um it was invaded twice the only reason why and i had all the settings correctly i had read all the articles had all the settings correctly uh all the check boxes all the security measures taken but for transparency's sake i chose to publish the zoom address and not just you know uh send it an email to some folks and i think the only reason why it stopped being invaded is because i think it was somebody local doing it uh who had something to say about the topic and um i think they just stopped i think if a a it's at such a smaller scale you know one council member's town hall is it's such a lower scale it's not out there on google it's not you know just random pranksters throughout the internet trying to find some city to troll it was just one person trying to troll one council member about a particular topic um some of these uh some of these multinational groups that you're talking about paul they may or may not have the toma requirements that we do they may or may not have the public comment requirements that we do they even with the governor's easing things we still have to be compliant with toma and i think the best way we'd do that is is the way our staff has it set up you've got staff monitoring minute by minute they can mute us all the touch of a button if they need to um if something if one of us were to do something inappropriate and um to use your analogy of an in-person meeting the fact that somebody you know could do something untoward at an in-person meeting i mean the likelihood of somebody doing that we've seen the crazy things people do in meetings we've seen the the things they do in other in other cities that's so rare compared to the number of these high-profile zoom meetings that get trolled because it's just so much easier to do with anonymity as opposed to right there in a council chambers with a couple police officers standing nearby you know i i'm very comfortable with staff's plan going forward if there's work to be done on these boards and commissions because there's work in the pipeline um you know i'm fine subbing in the ones like kind of like ryan said the um as needed when work comes up or when a commission needs to meet otherwise i think we've got it right i think the formula is right as they've presented it council member armater yeah i think both both paul uh council member melzer and council member davis made some good points and i i do think that a good middle ground would be to just see what boards and commissions feel um i i agree with the list that we have up there i agree especially with you know human services our our boards and commissions that relate to our community development department we're dealing with hud funds but you know there are issues that those people who are on those committees might be aware of ideas they have not uh that that staff might not consider pressing needs until they hear from them so i would like to hear from them i i would also like to say to council member melzer uh that i'm concerned that he's been standing out there for hours now and i don't think he's wearing sunscreen and he is standing up uh so that's a liability and we don't have the hospital beds for you council member melzer so i hope you've got a chair next time and some sunscreen yeah i'm comfortable with it and i mean i have to be truthful uh councilman melzer i appreciate your comments i think um they sort of have a tone of that somehow staff is not trying to figure out how to get things done and i'm going to just tell you a council member's town hall meeting is way different than a city council meeting i look in this room y'all are off in your places of wherever you are i'm here at city hall running the meeting and i've got probably no less than you know eight or nine people uh more than that in the building scattered out so that ten aren't together uh that are having to be supportive and you have the recording requirements you have the toma requirements so i'm very confident that our staff is more than capable of doing what they need to do but right now we're trying to find out what do we where do we need to put our resources first and what's the most productive and i've not been receiving a ton of emails saying that people aren't meeting at some of these other committee meetings and i presume staff hasn't been getting a bunch of emails from us the council members and the committees that we're on asking that those committees are always meeting so i appreciate the input but i think staff is doing a as probably as good a job as they can right now given the circumstances and given the intensity of what we're trying to do so i feel also confident that as we get used to it and as we figure out what is our capacity that we just hired a company to do the recordings of all these additional meetings because we are interested in transparency so we didn't staff up to be able to do all those we hired somebody and they don't have the capacity so you know it just it just sort of as a little i understand your opinion and i appreciate that and respect it i just hope it doesn't send the wrong message to staff that's all i'm saying so i'm okay with the way it's going with what staff's recommendations i think you i feel confident you will pull back together the meetings that are critical i think if there was a critical issue that a constituent had that had to have a meeting in order to move a project forward i feel confident staff would would do what they need to do to to see that that happens any other comments questions that are i mean uh regarding the recommendation for staff Mr. City Attorney yes if you're all moving in that direction to allow the boards and the recommended boards and commissions have their meetings we'll bring back uh or include that in your declaration in order for next tuesday because that's where the restriction is uh located okay all right good deal okay uh that concludes that agenda item we'll move on to uh agenda item three e which is receive report hold a discussion to give staff direction on pending city council requests for consideration of a resolution regarding coven 19 voter access and safety requesting that all registered voters in texas be considered eligible for mail-in ballot and then the second one is requesting information regarding the number of potential developments that qualify under the previous tree code and i forgot to uh staff um rachel did did we decide who's going to keep time on this i believe you did say that oh okay yeah all right i'm just kidding i'm getting getting feedback from somebody uh if somebody's listening that uh okay i think that took care of it okay all right uh if you're ready you can go ahead and make the presentation there we are hello everyone hello thank you okay rachel ball through mendelssohn assistant to the city manager i'm here today to present to y'all the pending request for information just as a little background for those that might not be as familiar up to seven requests will be reviewed per meeting one per staff member or excuse me one per council member and i'll introduce each request and the official that made the request will have up to one minute to describe and justify the request and the remaining officials will then have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support and will respond to all requests where consensus of council is established the first one here is from council member armenter consideration of a resolution regarding covet 19 voter access and safety requesting that all registered voters in texas be considered eligible for a mail-in ballot and we have um all of this information here for you that was also provided in your backup and council member armenter whenever we get the timer is ready for mayor i'm ready whenever you start speaking i'll start the i'll start the clock okay yep so i am requesting that in in the name of democracy and making sure that democracy does not fall victim to covet that we join the league of women voters aclu and most importantly our constituents and democracy people who need voting access to ask the the governor the secretary of state to either call upon the texas state legislature or to use the their governor's emergency powers to have mail-in ballots for all i think this is very important and i think we send a really positive message to our constituents that were even having this conversation that is no excuse mail-in ballots for all for november or september whenever we end out having our elections we don't know what the date is going to be yet and we don't know what the covet situation will be but it's best to be prepared and right now only seniors okay yeah time's up all right okay if we could pull down item one staff presentation so that i can see the full panel of the council because we're going to have to anybody wants to speak do the timing as well okay uh who's uh who's up to speak council member melzer um yeah i'm very concerned that we've got you know elections coming up that we're still trying to control the spread um i understand they had a surge in cases in wisconsin after they it didn't allow mail-in ballots there uh i think it just makes perfect sense i'm definitely interested i mean i would just go straight to the resolution i think uh that that it's controlled by the legislature not by the governor so it could be even an amendment to the resolution we already passed asking for a special session for items to do with coronavirus uh you know to to deal with this issue i don't know how the heck they're gonna run the elections frankly with you know the volunteer staff are frequently people over 16 frankly you know who don't necessarily want to be interacting with hundreds of members of the public so anyway i'm supportive okay all right council member davis so i i'm generally supportive of the idea that we want to ensure the best possible voter turnout um however like some other things we've talked about during this crisis this is ultimately something where i don't think a resolution from the city of denton city council is going to move the needle one way or the other there are lawsuits with some heavy heavy organizations already involved um you already mentioned league of women voters aclu i believe have some some actions pending around the country related to this um i just don't i don't see where the city of denton adds anything to this debate one way or the other the other thing it possibly has the potential to do you talked about you know sending the right message to our voters and i think we've done that just by having this conversation that we're willing to have the conversation but uh the other thing it does is sends a signal to our county elections administrator that we really don't care how much extra work he has to do how many extra people have to sort through all those mail-in ballots or how many processes have to get okay completely shifted around time yep all right anybody else council member briggs i i'm in favor okay all right anybody else i'll just make a comment i mean i share the sentiments of council member uh davis but also i think i don't think it should be missed that there was a district judge in austin that uh has ruled on that injunction or some type of the case where it's talking about people can mail in ballots with a disability uh now that's probably going to be appealed and there's already a letter from the attorney general but it's well in the court system so i just assume let it play out there and see where it's going to go because ultimately it's going to be the legislative uh bodies texas legislative body that makes that decision so i would encourage anyone who's listening to this and for the constituents who concerned to write their legislative delegation and to begin to also lobby them uh for this as well because that other than the court system that's where that change is going to be made so all right it doesn't seem like we have four on that so we'll move on to the next agenda item requesting information regarding the number of potential developments that qualify under the previous tree code okay council member briggs is requesting information regarding the number of potential developments that qualify under the previous tree code as the mayor just said i'll bring that down for you thank you if we could there we go uh council member riggs whenever you start talking i'll start the timer okay thank you mayor um so this is just uh for a staff report it's what i'm requesting for and i received an email not too long ago um from an individual who was very concerned and there were hundreds of 100 year old oak trees that were just piled up and and torn down uh for a development and they were very concerned and so i sent it in to see what was going on and it was um developed under the old uh tree ordinance and so it prompted me to um which which was um actually no preservation and only mitigation um and so it was hundreds of 100 year old oaks um and then we have our new tree ordinance which requires a 30 preservation so my asking of this question and for this information is for data um how do we know that we're going to be able to reach our goal of our 30 canopy if we have more developments under the old member yeah time's up okay yep all right council member barometer i strongly support this i think it's a really important discussion for us to have the public is really concerned about it okay um who else council member davis i don't want to just be mr mr no today but um i put this in the category of interesting information to have but not vitally necessary to tree preservation um some of these parcels that are currently under the old code they may or may not develop now they may or may not develop in the way that we expect them to they may not ever develop um they may be things that come to us uh through the pnz process and we do kind of some orchestrating like we've done before and we get them under our current code so to just kind of identify you know these uh these danger zones throughout the city where somebody we think can come through and clear cut the trees that's not really that's not really telling us anything it's not really giving us any information that we can use it's just kind of letting us know that there are places out there where they're under the old tree code it doesn't change that they're under the old tree code it doesn't fix anything it just kind of gives us places to be worried and to complain about so um i don't think it's helpful i don't think it's a good use staff's time okay council member melzer here we go uh critical part of tree preservation is planning and a critical part of planning is goals if we don't actually understand what constraints we have can't set goals accurately so i think it is a vital part of the input can things change sure anytime we do planning things can change but in terms of formulating goals knowing uh you know kind of what the starting point is uh i think it'd be very helpful to understand how much acreage is under uh what set of rules you know would help us uh develop appropriate goals so i'm for it okay anybody else okay all right uh seems like we do not reach the four member consensus on that all right i believe that concludes our open meeting and we will now uh adjourn into a closed session pursuant to texas government code 551.074 texas government code 551.071 and i believe it's those two and it is 604 so back to this meeting of the denton city council on april 21st 2020 it is 726 apologize for our closed session and work session going over our 6 30 meeting time we will go ahead and get started we do have a quorum i believe we have everybody online except council member melzer and armature i expect them to join us here shortly uh and there they are right there thank you very much right on cue all right so we've got our first item on the agenda or is the consent agenda yes council member briggs i move approval except for items n g and h which are going to be pulled and oh which will um be on the next agenda which we're removing completely okay all right looking for a second council member davis second all right we have a motion and a second for the consent agenda except for items g h and n which will be pulled for items for individual consideration and then consent agenda item o is being postponed till i believe the next meeting is that correct all right okay uh we'll go ahead and take a vote now uh council member riggs how i say you yes council member davis yes council member armature yes council member melzer yes mayor protem aye council member ryan yes uh mayor watts is an aye so the consent agenda passes unanimously say for those three items we pulled we will now take up those matters individually as items for individual consideration we'll take them up in alphabetical order we'll move on to agenda item 2g which is considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton texas a home rural municipal corporation authorizing the city manager executed contract with crc lawn care and landscape i believe council member armature you had some questions about that about that agenda item yeah well i wanted to see if there was a presentation okay sure there's a brief presentation being pulled up so good evening mayor council members this is drew huffman park superintendent we're going to go over we combine both items g and h for the mowing contracts great okay sorry so this what we did here is we have our contract services for contract g and h totals that's 260 not to exceed over two years it comes out to three hundred and eighty thousand dollars on the annual not to exceed that covers 576 acres uh there there were some questions on employee pay rates for their for their employees for those contractors that was 12 hours or 12 dollars an hour for crew hands up to 20 dollars an hour for crew supervisors for item g and item h was 15 to 18 dollars an hour based on their position position uh we had a isr that went out in september of 2019 where we went through a program to look at what it would cost for us to mow all of our acreage in house and so we compared this in the matter amount of amount of time that we had for the in-house performance with an initial cost of 1.8 million that included fte's one-time equipment purchase and then we also have our annual maintenance of equipment and the annual the ongoing cost for the 700 acres is 1.5 million dollars versus the annual cost of the 576 acres with a contract of 380 thousand dollars it comes out to roughly 600 and i believe it was 79 dollars an acre for this 300 for the contracts and city base was around 16 a little over 1660 an acre okay with these contracts of proposed contracts they're just replacing the terminated contracts so going back to mayor proten's comment are we holding those contractors accountable yes we are we terminated two contractors last year due to them not being able to meet the requirements of the contract so the contract the new contracts represent a 70 000 savings from the old contracts that were terminated and our proposed contracts have no impact impact on current staffing levels but we do have athletics personnel right now we have them temporarily assigned temporarily assigned to park maintenance to assist with projects and maintenance during closures and suspension of programs so in the world we are going to continue to additionally alter their work assignments for them as needed okay all right uh questions for staff let me pull up sorry if we could go ahead and pull that there you go council member breaks and then council member armator thanks truth so so what i think i heard you say is that um there's no there's not going to be any staffing changes with these contracts so we're not um laying people off so that we can hire um someone to do to to do these contracts no ma'am we are not correct okay council member i'm oh i'm sorry go ahead well yeah and just on the opposite end of that if do we do not currently have the staff in place to do all the work required for all of these uh locations no ma'am we don't we do not for us to be able to handle all those locations we went back and looked and it's going to take almost 25 full-time employees to cover all those locations if we pulled staff from other areas then we would we would have other service levels decreases and that includes you know all our the illegal dumping that we take care of on our right of ways or even to go to our playground maintenance that we do so eventually when we have those playgrounds open back up they can be as safe as possible thank you council member armator so thank you for the presentation and can you go back to the slide that has the comparison of the in-house versus contracted out yes ma'am thanks or the one that had like see there was one that was more detailed that was a side by side turned it off so we can just stick with that one if you're having trouble finding it that the other one was just more detailed okay that one thanks thank you okay so i will state my um opinion on this that that comes with a question um so if we don't have the the staff available to do this to do all of the work then i would want to see however many staff we have who will either be and i realize we don't know presently uh you know what the near future is going to hold but as we look at staff who are not able to do their job under the current state of emergency and uh who might in the foreseeable future also have to possibly go to reduce working hours i want as far as i'm concerned i would rather have those staff members doing the work so my question being do we know how many staff members we have currently who are at home or you know being paid to do other work who are at risk or whatever we want to call it of possibly in in the future being put on reduced hours or something like that in parks do you have the numbers on that as far as park maintenance it goes ma'am that we have every one of our staff members back working full-time uh they're they are spread out throughout the city at different parks that way they're they're they're reduced numbers so where they're less than 10 so we've also put them in each vehicle and as far as being able to accomplish all the mowing in-house we would still have to have the equipment purchased because we're maxed out on equipment for everything that we're taking care of yes and thank you and i do understand that i'm thinking not just parks maintenance staff but any park staff who would you know normally be doing activities that they can't do right now um so you know my recommendation and i will vote no to contract to the contract uh unless anybody is interested in amending it in the following way which i would like as i see it um the cost is higher to uh go to to contract out in the following sense that uh the reason why staff why it costs more to do it in-house is because we pay people benefits uh and yes we don't have the equipment but under covid if we have park staff who are getting benefits that these contracted workers you know we don't know what their benefit situation is our park staff are getting paid more than than their lower level what was it 12 dollars in an hour um where is it oh anyway our staff has benefits at least we know and there are staff so if they're not working and i realize that it's all hypothetical but i'm doing a risk analysis in my mind uh then then they are at risk of not being able to pay their rent uh which puts them at risk for covid which puts all of us at risk so i see it as an investment not only in our staff but also in public health uh to do whatever we can with just a seventy thousand dollar difference in the investment in that sense it costs more but in terms of the risks to us uh i i believe that the the overall risk is more if if if we contract it out i think this is work that some of our staff could possibly be doing even if they can't uh take even if we don't have the numbers to take on all of it i hope that makes sense okay any other comments on this we're going to vote on these separately but i think the presentation was together um we could remove the presentation down and see if there's any other questions council member husbeth yeah no mayor pro tem excuse me so i'm going to move approval and then fair warning if there's more discussion i'm going to call the question okay all right uh we have a motion do we have a second on and this is for agenda item g is that correct council mayor pro tem yes sir that is correct so so people since people's jobs people i know that park staff are worried about their job call a question mayor okay well i i would like to hear what other people have to think i think it is respectful council member armaker we got a question called and i believe you have to have a second and i believe it takes three quarters of the council to vote on a call to the question is that correct so council member ryan i believe i saw your hand first yes i'll second second which one he called the question which that means we've got to have a uh a second i believe is that correct mr city attorney for the call to the question or is it just uh just the call and then there's a three quarter vote we're looking that up i think you need a second on the motion and then another second on calling the question okay so i was basically seconding the motion itself all right so if i need you i can second the call the question as well so we have a motion in a second and we do have a call on the question um you need to vote on i'm sorry go ahead council you would need to vote on the call the question first right yes if we get a second do if we get a second is that correct that's correct yeah all right is there a second on the call of the question council member ryan i'll second all right so we have a second on the call the question so it takes a i believe a supermajority is that six out of uh seven for that to prevail mr city attorney oh you're muted it takes two thirds mayor which is what it's going to be practically six okay so six i think we've always said it was i think we always say to six all right council member uh mayor pro tem house say you on the call to the question all right uh council member ryan aye council member davis aye council member melzer no council member briggs council member armature no no uh mayor watts is is an i but it fails four to three it needed six all right council member davis is this discussion on a motion this discussion on the motion okay um so the reason why i voted to go ahead and move on there's a reason why this was on the consent agenda of course it was pulled and that's any member's prerogative to pull it but the reason it was on the consent agenda is because it's not really up for the kind of debate that council member armature is is proposing here she's asking for a very convoluted and complex moving of staff that's that's not really contemplated when we sent this contract out she's asking us to have folks who are normally working at desks or doing inside jobs to do what a lot of people think of as unskilled labor well send a guy who's been doing landscaping for a long time out to do your lawn and then send somebody who normally works inside and just mows their own lawn and see who gets it done faster see who gets it done more efficiently and see who gets it done without damaging the equipment so i think staff has done the the best job possible of finding us a good contract uh the reason why we contract these things out is apparent to anybody watching um i think we need to move forward with what we've got okay all right okay any other comments all right we have a motion and a second for agenda item 2g uh count mayor protem has saved all right council member ryan aye council member davis aye council member melzer no council member briggs oh council member briggs didn't hear you um no but that's only because i think that it should have gone to the local company okay uh council member armature no uh mayor watts is an i so the motion passes four to three um we then had a presentation for 2h so which was in the same presentation mayor protem provoked 2h all right we have a motion council member davis second all right uh any discussion mayor protem has saved all right council member davis aye council member ryan aye council member armature no council member briggs yes council member melzer yes all right mayor watts is a yes so the motion carries uh six to one if i'm correct uh and and as a i'm going to go back i i failed to call the public comment portion i'm not sure if we have any callers but i still need to go back and call that so we'll call that after we go through agenda item in um which uh did we have a request a presentation on 2n or was it just a separate vote who pulled 2n council member briggs you just we have a small presentation okay all right okay all right agenda item 2n is considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton texas a home rule municipal corporation authorizing the approval of a second amendment to the professional services agreement between the city of denton and hr green can't can't hear you oh there you go let's try it again i see the presentation but can't hear the presenter good evening mayor and council christine taylor with development review engineering our presentation tonight is on the contract for development review engineering with hr green so the background on this is development review engineering is focused on the review of private development construction which includes plans plots easements permits and other department development applications as it pertain to public infrastructure the purpose of this review is to ensure that private development projects that are constructing new public infrastructure or connecting to existing infrastructure in infrastructure are developed reviewed and constructed safely in accordance with the city of denton development code design criteria and minimum specifications okay in 2018 the city entered into a one-year agreement to contract a portion of the private development review to augment existing city staff that was performing these reviews in 2019 the city expanded the contracted services to perform all private review plans and extended services in the fall for six months to allow to perform a formal rfq for a multi-year agreement in march 2020 the rfq was placed on hold and we decided to bring forward a second amendment to the existing agreement proposed to continue services at the current level through the remainder of the fiscal year as we monitor private development application volume so the 2019 budget was based on a full recovery cost model and current year to date through march we are 100 cost recovery they've brought in 449 thousand dollars worth of revenue and the expenses related to development review engineering are 538 thousand highlights in the agreement include that it is scalable based on application volume which is important to the agreement so if applications are not coming in and volume decreases that expense is does not incur and is not paid out on the contract components of this agreement include we have two on-site engineering facilitators that conduct reviews and assist applicants through the process including pre-application conferences plan and plat review troubleshooting pre-construction meetings any field changes that happen after they've gone to construction and reviewing and approving any alternative materials for public infrastructure so again that this is a scalable agreement and off-site reviewers are based on the number of applications received each submission here's just a snapshot of what the application volume has looked like in the past month it's been very heavy on new applications and resubmittals and a big portion of this agreement we want to highlight is that we've developed a detailed training plan in the fall of 2019 to provide our contracted vendor the tools and necessary information to succeed and parts of that include review shadowing with utility departments and other disciplines process overview discussions guidance documents we've updated gis maps updated development checklist the land development page development and implementation of standard operating procedures engagement with city liaisons weekly meetings with the city engineer and weekly meetings with the development assistance team which is composed of multiple disciplines across the city okay any questions council member briggs thank you yes i pulled this because my main concern is kind of what i think council member omerchuk's concern was in the other one i just wanted to make sure that we don't have capable planners in our department that we're going to be letting go who can be doing this job for the 1.8 million i just i just want to confirm that before i i voted yes that um we weren't contracting work that could be done in house out and that we would this is this is a much different strategy um we brought each our green in last year to try to streamline our processes this was an area of significant complaints and concern from the development community in the past uh several years since we've brought them on board the number of complaints has dramatically decreased in terms of our staff um tod and pre tem have actually reached out to engineering companies and we're actually pulling work away from them bringing it back in house doing design work in project management so we took a very different approach there where we've gone down and started scaling back outsourced engineering contracts to make sure that our folks were kept busy and so that's how this works so we've got them primarily on the project management and design area and we've got hr green handling the development review and it's working great okay thank you and and hearing that it was scaled to project because i was afraid of the slowing down and since that can be uh billed i'm i'm okay with it so thank you mayor pro tem and then council member melzer mayor pro tem did you have a question oh move approval i'm sorry is that what she's i apologize council member melzer second all right so we have a motion and a second for agenda item two in uh mayor pro tem how how you vote uh aye council member melzer yay council member briggs yes council member armator no council member ryan aye council member davis aye mayor watts is an aye the ayes have it six to one so i'm going to go back to uh on the agenda let me get it pulled up uh presentation from members of the public uh review procedures for addressing the city council if we don't have anyone who signed up for we didn't have anybody sign up for uh reports from members of the public who were scheduled uh pre-registration but i didn't know if we had any open mic um caller so we have no open mic callers as well so there's no reason to uh review the procedures for addressing the city council on 1a so we have no speakers pursuant to agenda items one b one or two so we'll move on down to our i believe that concludes all our consent agenda items and those pulled to be considered for items for individual consideration so we'll move on to our items for individual consideration agenda which is agenda item three 3a is considered adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager is designated to execute an amendment to an advanced funding agreement with the texas department of transportation give me a second all right and we do have one public speaker on that so we'll take the public comment after uh we have the staff presentation good evening mr mayor uh members of the council i'm pre-tem day schmuck deputy city engineer and i will be talking about the mayhill road advanced funding agreement so um here's the limits of the project just a quick um glance of the two different phases phase one uh is currently under construction we're wrapping up as you can see in the video we are almost done um we're doing the punch list items um that phase um it will be wrapping up shortly the second phase is the bridge over dcta tracks and that is scheduled to begin construction as soon as this funding agreement agreement happens we're about 90 in design for the second phase um and the total project cost for both phases is the 75 million that's shown up here on the slide here's a quick look at what the amendment is the original agreement for the project was a total of fixed 56 million dollars uh 80 contributed by uh rtr funded tech stop um cog um the north and north central texas government of uh association of governments contributed 45 million for the project our city match was 20 11 million once the second phase which is the dcta bridge was added the limits of the project were extended and as part of this um amendment we are we will be able to complete that second phase so the total project cost at the end of everything will be 75 million with the new um agreement the city's contribution will be 15 million and 60 million is the external funding that we're receiving so at this point staff recommends moving forward and approving the or adopting the ordinance for approval of this advanced funding agreement this is the funding that we need to finish this project the second phase and put that dcta bridge and make the final connection for mayhill road any questions at this point yeah let me um okay if you could uh if we could here you go thank you uh questions on this before we take public comment council member amater can you explain that that the bridge again how that works yes so um actually where mayhill road i don't know if you looked at the final piece so mayhill road currently ends to the south side of the solid waste of the landfill area so quail creek is a smaller road that's where the current mayhill phase one construction ended and we transition into an existing mayhill road it currently curves around and goes over the railroad tracks there is a signal edward road it is a at grade crossing as as we move forward we are currently designing a project that would go continue mayhill straight go over the railroad tracks and directly connect to the other portion of mayhill at colorado so that would eliminate the intersection the um signal and the at grade road crossing at edwards road and mayhill thank you any other questions before public comment council member briggs is this agreement um to increase our funding as well as accept the increased funding from text dot or is it is it both uh it is uh it is a combination of both but we had over matched our share from the city side on the previous phase of this project so we do have funding that is committed already on the project and that will take care of our match as far as the city's 20 on the overall project so the overall project will be matched with city dollars which is already contributed and committed to this project okay mayor just one more question sure um the last time we talked about this um i remember we were talking about drainage and stuff in the flood in the flood area and um there wasn't necessarily a design yet has there been a design completed no so as part of this project i said 90 of the design for mayhill project the actual bridge design is completed um as we're going through this um scenario of bringing some of the design in house as uh the city manager mentioned that we talked to our engineering firms and we're picking out projects that can be brought in house the design of this drainage and the storm water prevention uh for this particular area will be done in house and will that come to us as a as a vote or is that just part of of the project that will come to you once that project is ready and will be uh funded for construction at this point we don't have funding for construction for that project thank you any other questions all right we'll go to the caller mr donnelly are you on the line they're they're getting him in there he is mr donnelly yes yes you're you're on with the density council for the public portion comment of agenda item 3a once you state your name and address then we'll start your four minutes so any when you're ready to go okay my name is robert donnelly i live at 3900 quail creek road benton texas 76208 and i probably know as much about the mayhill road project as any citizen and especially as it relates to this section of the project i believe you have four options today on this item option one is to vote no and return to the plan that was good enough you funded it with 36 million dollars as the mayhill road project it was not a great plan but obviously one you could live with as hard as it is to say no to money with these emergency conditions it may be the plan we should live with and it is certainly the prudent thing to do at this time this would save the city millions of dollars that could be used to assist the citizens in this time of need option two is to vote yes with the caveat that all the money be used for only the mayhill road project to stop the current project creek the city auditor should first audit the project and then all payments for the project should go through his office if you do this and you use the original plans for the mayhill road project that are 90 to 100 complete you may be able to complete the project with the 15 million dollars you're approving this is a better plan than option one but it turns a 57 million dollar plan into a 77 million dollar plan due to mismanagement and bad decisions in the past option three is to continue on the path you are on the path the county did not seem to want to engage in vote yes and get the 15 million dollars for a 24 and a half million dollar project as stated on november the 4th of 2019 that is not feasible and meant to cure a problem that does not seem to exist to make it feasible will cost millions more to follow this path turns a 57 million dollar project into up to 80 to 100 million dollar boondoggle between value engineering given the city has scaled down second rate project for 50 to 75 percent more money and spending millions on flood control not even associated with the project and where no incidents of flooding have been reported will make the solid waste mining venture and the buying of propane vehicles with no way to fuel them seem like good decisions to do this if the city gets flooding reports just due to heavy rains not 100 year floods as stated in the march 20th friday staff report would be a bad decision under normal conditions but under these emergency conditions that are present as you vote i believe this would violate your duty and responsibility to the citizens of it option four is to postpone a decision until you have good information and hard facts i only added this option because i believe it's better to make no decision than to make a bad one please do not make a bad decision just to make a decision i noticed in the ais that it says that and i quote value engineering is underway with plan to construct four lane bridge and roadway by close of 2021 end of quote i hope that does not mean the value engineering you're going to construct a four lane bridge for a six lane project mr ryan asked about the bridge previously in a work session and i believe the entire project was constructed to accommodate a six lane roadway not a four lane roadway please consider all this very careful as so many people in this city need so much help now and yeah that's that's uh that's great timing um so questions for the speaker yes council member armature has a question so uh so you mentioned uh the suggestion to have capital projects run by or at least this project run by the city auditor i just wanted to ask if if you knew if you were aware that our our city auditor is is retiring and he's now in in an advisory capacity we're hiring for a new city auditor but going to be without city auditor for the immediate future i didn't know if you were aware of that but i wanted to ask no i was not aware basically uh the auditor seen the person just someone to make sure that the funds are spent for the mayhill road widening project and nothing else yeah yeah and and thank you i i really appreciate that suggestion um i'm i'm i'm concerned concerned too thank you okay any other questions for the speaker council member briggs oh i thought you uh okay uh anybody else for mr donnelly robert thank you so much for calling in appreciate it all right thank you thank you okay uh i don't see any more callers for this item we had zero people making comments online and we also had zero people who called in to the 349 7800 to register to position we only had the one caller mr donnelly uh who had uh requested to speak on this item uh yes council member briggs yeah mike i have a couple of questions for staff um the caller mentioned a four lane bridge and the six lane road can can staff uh speak to that the size of the bridge and how that uh correlates with the widening of the the road so um the where we're value engineering this currently the current mayhill that's already constructed um has a capacity to widen in the middle as a six lane but currently it's a four lane divided facility we are trying to value engineering the bridge to follow the same configuration currently and get the uh get that bridge over uh and connect it to colorado intersection uh what would what that would do is we're trying to uh fit in the project within the existing available funding that we have is it is it likely that it will um need a budget increase for that i mean if it doesn't fit in then the the goal then it will just be four lane bridge and that's the way it's going to be correct but if you look at the current mayhill that's already constructed as a four lane divided any widening to move to the six lane for the rest of the mayhill also will require budget amendment and more construction cost will be incurred and we'll look at this particular segment of mayhill when we get to that phase that traffic is it attains or gets to that level where a six lane facility is required as to opposed to a four lane facility right now the capacities are enough to support and sustain it for quite a few years and may i follow up sure of course and so do we know the intersection at mayhill and 35 that's actually going to be connection is that going to be six lane correct that particular interchange is currently uh wrapping up design it it is in the right-of-way acquisition phase for a tech stop project that particular interchange will be 12 lane under the bridge itself it's going to be bigger than the loop interchange so yes that's currently underway as a tech stop project and will be under construction soon okay last last question mayor that's a funding question the caller mentioned that it be specified or designated to go to the mayhill road project only is it so if we approve this agreement and those funds come in from text dot would they be allowed to go to other projects no they will not they will be specifically channelized or they will be used for the construction of this particular mayhill project we are working on the design for the stormwater or the storm control and that's a separate piece but these particular 15 million dollar funds that are received coming in will be only allocated to the mayhill widening project or the dct bridge project thank you okay any other questions seeing none chair would entertain action on this item mayor protem i'll move approval all right we have a motion for approval on agenda item three uh a do i have a second council member ryan i'll second all right uh all right we'll go ahead and vote mayor protem uh yeah i i will um i'll just have a quick statement to say that the history of this project is quite storied and i don't i i hear the caller's concern and i weigh those but i also weigh those against the consternation that he himself has caused in the extra expense he's caused single-handedly so i i weigh that against this decision i think we've made a commitment uh to text dot and uh we need to fulfill that and uh that we had a pedestrian hit by the dca dcta dcta train uh and this at this very intersection it is absolutely dangerous and and i look forward to getting it corrected okay so uh i didn't so you're a you're a yes on that yes council member armature we're taking uh yes and nays now that's correct uh no okay council member ryan i council member briggs um i'm gonna say no uh because of the difference in the the bridge and the um connection okay uh council member melzer yes council member davis yes uh mayor watts is a yes uh we the motion carries five to two we'll move on to our next agenda item which i've lost my agenda so i'll pull it up right here hold on just a moment okay agenda item 3b is considered option of the city of ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing uh the execution of a contract of sale between the city as buyer and saranthan corporation a texas seller for the purchase of 909 uh north loop 288 for the purchase price of 5.2 million dollars authorizing expenditure of funds therefore including the cash amount of 3.395 accepting the donation value of the property from seller of 1.805 good evening mayor and council diana cody deputy director of capital projects real estate uh this evening we're here to discuss the acquisition of 909 north loop 288 council expressed an interest in working toward finding a location for a combined day center and shelter day center model so that individuals experiencing homelessness had a place to be during the day to receive meals safely rest work with case managers and receive various services as such a center is not currently available in support of initiatives relating to the housing housing crisis response system and to provide public assistance to individuals experiencing homelessness staff was directed to pursue acquisition of this property at 909 north loop 288 following negotiations the owner has agreed to accept the negotiated cash amount of 3.395 million dollars to be paid by the city and the city will agree to accept the donation value of 1 million 805 thousand for the property upon a receipt of a favorable motion and approval of this item the city manager or his designee will be authorized to execute the contract and complete the purchase so property details the property is located between university or 380 and mckinney it's an approximate 34 000 square foot building on five acres of land adjacent to city owned property there are approximately 84 parking spaces currently on site the building has been renovated to include features such as security phone and video systems the roof was recently repaired in 2014 2015 there are two courtyards on site there are multiple showers on the site and there is a multi-purpose room that's available for use on site that would be all all right um any we do have a public speaker uh that we have queued up um but wanted to see if there's any questions for staff i've got one but any other questions for staff yes council member armitter yes i just i just want to thank thank you diana and thanks to staff who have worked really hard on this behind the scenes there's a great need for this uh especially now on under covid and so y'all are not just doing real estate but helping to uh save people's lives in fact that that is what real estate means now putting putting people you know heads on beds um is not just about hot funds now it's about saving lives so um anyway thank you for all the work that that you've done to make this happen i know it wasn't easy and it took a lot of skill so thanks council member melzer you're still muted council member melzer thank you um not sure who's in the best position to answer this question but uh as far as the financing of this uh is is the set of there's a set of forecasts that we were taken through today as we consider the economic impact of the current environment to take into account potentially bearing the carry cost for this purchase you know how how would it affect our outlook uh in terms of our our forecast in general david gains director of finance in the the presentation earlier earlier today as we went over that one slide with our current debt issuance we had we did include this in that in that figure the 3.4 million so that was in that kind of far column with our with our revised debt issuance so it was part of that analysis and would be consistent with the the one cent increase on the debt service tax rate uh next year and then we would have a read if approved we'll have we have another item on the agenda following this for reimbursement ordinance to move forward with the project okay and are there any partners in the purchase that we can talk about at this point yeah we did get permission to share that we have been working with the county judge's office on partnering with this we still need to nail down the exact terms of that of their contribution the one time and ongoing but i don't i would expect that to occur over the summer and so they can have it budgeted to make their contribution next fiscal year so we've been we've been in discussions with them for about a year on this yeah i know it's been you know a long-term uh goal really to have the county be more engaged in addressing this issue and i think that's uh fantastic that something this tangible that i just want to underscore i don't know if that became if it was clear enough in the presentation that this is taking potentially monsignor king and our daily bread uh and other services and transitional housing in one location and day center uh not having you know so having unhoused people have a place to go and not requiring them to traipse through the square to get food and sleep there and so on so in terms of setting debt and up to be better when we come out of the current situation uh you know i think it does that and it also gets ahead of a you know a problem that we can foresee 39 weeks from now when unemployment checks run out so thank you and and and and thank you to uh to judge eats for stepping up to be part of this effort councilmember briggs um so we're asking questions now can we ask questions after the caller of course okay i'll go ahead and listen the caller and hold my question all right anybody else for the caller all right we do have a we've had two people that have made comments using our online form uh those two were in support we've had zero that have called the 349 7800 number to register their position via phone uh we do have one person requesting to speak pam gutierrez uh and she will be on the line here momentarily pammy on the line i sure am how are you doing well you're on the public portion comment of our agenda item 3b and so once you state your name and address we'll start your time and you have four minutes thank you mayor my name is pam gutierrez and my address is 2519 scripture denton texas 76201 i'm the executive director of denton county in maytumor sure go ahead thank you sir i wanted to call in and talk about my support for the purchase of the building um on loop 288 denton housing project and i wanted to um call your attention i was looking back over um at the monsignor king establishment and i'm sure all of you all know but i just wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things that have been said about the monsignor king and these are people that use the establishment right now an amazing place wonderful women with a good heart caring great staff greatest shelter i've ever been in very safe and clean pets are welcome trade dupe with dignity and respect and i realize this is the worst possible time that this could be requested of you all because of what's going on with covid 19 and the budget that you all are facing however i think this is something that you have to take consideration of and look at and as a center we would be happy to look at grants um housing and urban development grants block grants we would work with you on and so i just wanted to offer my support and our staff to look at various grants alongside you alongside with you and offer up any support that we could so i wanted to call in tonight and just bring that to your attention and i i do absolutely realize like i said this is the worst possible time but we have people out there that are homeless and are struggling and so this is very near and dear to my heart as as i know it is to yours mayor and i think that if there's anything we can do to help i would like to i would like to see that happen thank you very much for listening to me sure we we have probably a question or two for you pam if you'll hold on just a moment council member armature i believe has a question or comment so hi pam thank you for all you do uh at denton county mhmr it is wonderful to hear your voice the nice surprise uh that i shouldn't have been surprised wonderful to hear from you um i was wondering if you were aware that uh that uh hud has just recently i think or at least i just heard about it yesterday it might have been within the past few days um come out with some new cdpg funds that they've made available to cities and our staff is looking into it right now i i had asked about it and i think the answer i got was staff's already on it already looking into it uh so yes i am aware oh good sorry no no no no you go yes ma'am and that's um part of the reason i wanted to call in tonight because i felt like that was an opportunity um for you all and for us possibly to partner um we've just received a second housing grant that we just received notification on so we're able to serve um additional 20 individuals in one housing one um family excuse me for our housing project and um we will be we would be happy to go after this grant any other grants um and work with you on this thank you i'm so happy to hear that by the way about the additional housing you've gotten that was wonderful directly related to this i was also wondering if you knew i assume the answer is yes but even if you are aware i know that a lot of people in the public are not aware that monsoon your king is now non-operational i take it you're aware i no i was not aware um i actually heard that i just heard that and that is so sad to me um so you know i think that's something that we're willing to work with you all to make monsoon your team up king operational again because that can happen i mean the need is tremendous well and and then my final question is you know i don't actually this yeah i i will phrase this as a question um but i i take it you're probably not aware that i have also asked if we could use um monsoon your king the building uh just just as a temporary heads-on-bed solution for the time being uh so you know that that is something that i have inquired about uh but i wasn't aware i don't know if you were aware of that because i haven't been public about i don't remember if i had mentioned it to you you know to you or not i think um you will have to be extremely careful with the virus um absolutely under and i i should say that was one of the reasons right that yeah they had to shut they had to shut down they were already so yeah absolutely our people are thank you very much for for uh mentioning that and bless you thank you right okay um all right any other questions for for pam pam thank you so much for all that you do for the community and and your your clients you make a tremendous difference in their lives and i appreciate you calling in to support this project thank you mary and if you need anything else from me please let me know you bet thank you very much thank you you all take care stay safe yes yeah okay so we uh that's our only caller uh i need to i think i need to maybe clarify something mon senior king did is not sheltering people in their shelter because of the distancing requirements but they have been a partner in helping us to place those individuals in the hotel so i think to say that mon king you're seeing king has shut down i think that's a little uh misleading uh they have just changed the way that they uh they do their business so exactly exactly that's how things get out and and so thank you i i corrected myself i meant the building just a lot of some people don't don't know that um well i understand but uh it words are important council member briggs a couple of questions um so have we done have we done the the math on the square footage for monsignor king are they going to be able to house as many individuals in this new space as they um are in their in their current space it appears to have more capacity and um because if we mark off their current space with social distancing right now i think they have the capacity to service about 90 people if we mark it off for social distancing it goes down to about 30 people so there's definitely more capacity in a new facility i think one thing that's important for to for council to um kind of temper the expectations while we work on it the next month is we we went into the purchase uh because you know obviously we had a uh a very good deal here in a willing seller but the idea has always been now is to be able to bring all the parties together and figure out how we can best utilize the building what needs to be done to it um and and also kind of work continue work with the county to make sure that we had the budget to get rolling so i'm not seeing this as an immediate something we could immediately flip flip the switch on but it definitely gives us the ability now to start laying plans out but i think council member brings to your point absolutely provides a little a little bit more space to manage the issue in okay yeah go ahead yeah well i just because i know that our daily bread is running out of space and so i know that this would be um more room for them i just wanted to make sure as far as monsignor king that it was going to be an upgrade as far as housing that we weren't going to um reduce the number of beds um by by making this purchase for individuals that that needed shelter the idea the idea we've reached out to both there's definitely interest in in combining um um and there's services on the site which we found attractive i know the council did as well we just have not been able to get into a planning phase with them we do believe that there's the ability to especially now with the social distancing requirements again to handle more clients than we could with their current facility which is important from a management perspective and a volunteer management perspective but we really need to sit down once we have controlled the building and lay it out and and bring them both in be part of the solution and then we can give you the i think a little bit more harder answers that you're asking for okay and as far as zoning goes is this zoned because i do know that there is a neighborhood in the back and um not too far away so would there be public input for this process or is it is it zoned for the use that is being discussed right now that's a great question i'm going to need to talk to uh richard and can only and get back to you on that i can't give you that answer specifically right now okay well i will yeah i'll just say because um i'm in favor of this and i'm going to be voting to to go forward with the with the purchase of this building but i would like to make sure that we have some public's weigh in and i know that there is another proposed shelter just a few blocks away down the street which i shared as a concern in in the area so just a little bit more information will be great on square footage and utility cost and who's going to pay those those ongoing costs as as this conversation moves forward council member melzer um mr city manager would it be fair to say that the potential of falling real estate values is already priced into this purchase price yeah i think so uh we've our recent appraisal indicates that we're able to acquire the property for about 600,000 under appraised value so i think i think we we feel like we've made the best that we can right now on the property um you know there's the the timing is unfortunate we've accounted for it in our in our borrowings but i'm just not sure that there's much else to say on it right now we've got a willing seller and we feel like we've got a good we've got a good deal on behalf of our taxpayers i can if i could ask one more of course yep uh so uh there was some discussion about new money for community development block grants that's come along with the cares act about how much money uh might there be out there that could be potentially used in connection with this with this project well right now that we know we that we were going to be eligible for an additional and get six hundred eighteen thousand dollars but we're still working our way through what that means how much of that could be redirected into the project uh to pay for staffing costs building costs that sort of thing so we should have an answer a better answer for you in may what that looks like and give you some possibilities okay council member armature yeah i just i just wanted to make a few a few points uh about some assets to uh to this project that at least i haven't mentioned i think paul alluded to one and that is uh the downtown situation right now um i have had not not only uh business owners in the downtown area but actually uh people two people who are who are currently experiencing homelessness uh have expressed to me concern about the situation downtown and in quaker town park they're concerned about their own safety that is people experiencing homelessness themselves so this i i i mentioned that because as paul mentioned uh you know the one solution and there is no silver bullet solve all but a critical uh gap in our infrastructure is having some place for people to go during the day after our daily bread closes having a place for them to hang out so they don't have to move from place to place to place and sleep on and sleep on a bench so this will make a big difference in in filling that need and it should do quite a lot to lower the number of people who are just hanging out downtown because there's nowhere else to go i also wanted to mention that uh even though you know property values are understandably predicted to decline uh property especially prime real estate in a prime location like this in general in the long term generally increases and it's one of the uh investments one of the few investments that generally speaking gets greater over time so this is something that is also an investment that the city is making and it does a lot to even though the timing is on the one hand unfortunate it is also the perfect timing because we now have these funding opportunities and this directly addresses the covid crisis even though it will take a while to get this rolled out it will help to address the fallout which will be around for us even after we've got a cure for for covid okay uh thank you mayor pro tem so i i just want to again thank staff for their hard work and again uh given some good data to drive a decision i i do want to dissent a bit on on some of the comments because i think if if all things being equal people will be able to be working uh and and i take i take the example from uh solutions north texas that even uh when those people are off work they're up and dressed and and in the living room and and and so i think i i really want to take that approach i i do take the measure and tempered approach to it that that uh the city manager uh ask us to i i'm respectful of that and wanting to make sure uh we perceive uh proceed decent and in order and not rushing anything uh to make sure we we have all parties on board and and are able to be uh successful as possible and be prudent with the tax dollars and have an enforcement mechanism that again drives people i think it's important that that is a focal point for me is where we need people uh give them the support they need to be successful back working back in in apartments homes whatever town homes whatever they desire uh and so i think it's a holistic approach i like the service approach that the staff's been working on before this outbreak and i think that work continues and we see a number we start reporting numbers success stories and less stories of places for people to to sleep during the day but but we have success stories to report of uh people that have come through this and and and have a testimony to give so with that i i'm going to move approval to to continue this process right before i recognize a second i've got a few comments um and i appreciate everybody's support i think this is a great example of not withstanding this particular timing but this is a great example that the city still has to do business i mean we're approving a 3.4 million dollar project in the midst of one of the greatest budget crisis in the in this city's history and probably one of the greatest economic crisis but as many projects that have come before us during this time and as many projects that's going to come after us during this time it's just an example of we have to continue to move forward in doing the business of the city and i want to manage expectations this purchase and then the partnerships and everything the remodel and everything to get that's needed to put this facility uh fully online is a ways away so i don't want people to begin to think that in three months people are going to be moving in to this facility so it's it's important that we understand that because there may be some some times where it depending on how monsignor king operates the shelter once we get past this uh social distancing requirement how that's going to work so i i'm in support of the project but i also just want people to understand uh in the in the public that it's going to take some time and typically i wouldn't support a project like this i'm going to tell you why we don't have any use for it we don't have any agreements with the partners our uh our funding partner which is the county which i really appreciate the county's help and the county's cooperation but also want people to understand that the county hasn't committed to a specific budget amount and we're going to be working hard with them in that in that regard so i didn't understand i didn't know the answer this question was not known so i really need to have the understanding of this question what is this property zone is it zoned for the use that we're looking at because i would think that would be one of the first things that we would they would we would know it's zoned suburban corridor and i've already reached out to uh richard to uh let us know what the process is to ensure that uh this use is um can move forward okay well that might require a zoning change okay but it's also my understanding that this particular property is surrounded by other city-owned property i believe on each of the directions other than the frontage is that correct the west north and south is that correct yeah that was that was the attractiveness of the property there's uh i think dme owns most of the property that is around this particular site and there's really no neighbors at this point it's it's fairly walled off there's and there's a a bus stop right there as well so it has a lot going for it in terms of its ability to sort of be screened and planned okay good um and so that easement that i think is a transmission line easement runs on the west side of the property which is sort of a buffer to that neighborhood that's west of of that so i'm in support of the project and i think one of the reasons why i'm able to trust that the partnerships will materialize and to trust that the funding will materialize number one because i have tremendous amount of confidence in city staff and their ability to pull these partners together and their willingness and their ability to not take uh no for an answer so that's that's that's a large degree of my confidence in moving forward i will say i'm confused about something and that is in the uh caption it says that the purchase price is 5.2 million dollars but when i read the contract it says 3.395 million dollars so if someone could help me understand that because um i understand that this donation but this donation i don't believe is going to show up on the settlement statement as a we're not we don't have a purchase price of 5.2 million dollars with a with a cash payback at closing of uh 1.8 million dollars is that correct yeah we're gonna have trey lanceford answer that question okay no mayor it won't be a cash pay a payback it'll be the the cash amount will be the the three million and and you know the exact amount that's shown in the contract basically it's that the um the contract set up so that the seller is getting the the donation value of the the remainder from what the cash payment from the city is going to be to the appraised amount of the property and so that's why the purchase price itself is the entire amount it's just that the city's cash contribution will only be the three million all right could you show me in the contract where it mentions the 5.2 million and the the cash donation i mean the uh the donation amount and that our cash portion is is the net of that we're gonna see if we can pull that up mayor okay because i'm looking at the i'm looking at the purchase price and the purchase price says three million three hundred and ninety five thousand which is what i think we have all understood what the contract price was for this property the website can i get to the website and my reason for saying this is i don't want the city to be involved in something that i mean if if we're to say that we're recognizing a 1.8 million dollar donation to a municipality i don't understand all the the potential legal ramifications for that if it's something that the seller needs for whatever reason he needs that's fine but i'm just trying to understand what is it that we're going to be listing as the purchase price for this property which my understanding is it's the 3.395 yeah because if that's the case if it's the 5.2 well then i mean now i understand what um what may be attempted to be done i just need go ahead yeah mayor what happened was the staff had agreed to the um the cash price for the city which would have sorry we're trying to bring it up now for you okay staff had agreed to the to the 3.3 million dollars the cash price um and the seller wanted the rest of what he considered the you know the appraised value to be considered um a donated amount to the city we didn't have his appraisal at the time the the contract was entered into so once we got the appraisal in hand we added an amendment to the contract and that's what's before you now and it's also attached to the ordinance under consideration tonight as exhibit b is that is that the warranty deed no sir it's um further down i don't know i can't tell what page of the pdf it is but it's exhibit b to the ordinance itself at um at the top of the page it should be showing on the screen now amendment to the contract for sale page 30 okay um where now that we had the appraised the appraisal in hand we went back to make sure that that was that was captured in as part of the the written contract deal so in this amendment to the contract for sale it sets out that section 2.1 was deleted as an entirety and then replaced with the following where it talks about the purchase price is now 5.2 million dollars with 3.395 as the cash and the 1.805 uh to be the donation part from the seller okay so um i'm struggling with this guys i'm just going to be honest with you um i i have no problem with the 3.395 um i don't even know if i mean obviously i i don't know what the tax implications are for this obviously this is something that's for the seller this doesn't benefit the city any and that's fine um i just want to make sure so legal you're saying this is all above board i mean this is this is so because what i'm hearing is we got the what i heard was council member melzer said well we've got depressed market values and yes we got it for so much money less than our appraisal but then i see that we're paying in essence the appraisal price of of the seller's appraisal at least from what i'm hearing and i just like these things to be clean and i know that we're just paying for the 3.395 that's all we're out that's all we're having to pay and i have no objection to that whatsoever 100 zero objection to that my concern is that this is how we're there's this is how we're structuring it mayor larry colister i've worked with the seller's attorney on this and it's it's a tax-motivated transaction on their part to the extent of the 1.8 million and the city again like you've acknowledged someone paying 3.4 cash and accepting a donation of 1.8 whether or not he's successful with his tax motivated portion is with the rs it's completely up to them and there isn't there's an affirmative representation in here an obligation of the seller that um we have no obligation to pay him any amount of the 1.8 million i understand so no it's it's allowed under the rs code he's represented by council on this it's it's completely above board okay well i didn't think that it was under board but i just i wanted to the public to make sure that we had that explanation because we hear we've heard a lot of different things about um you know appraisals and purchase prices and lower property values and things such as that and this is not necessarily how this is being structured i know it's probably for some type of tax issue i guess though for the purposes of the city uh if it's placed on its books as an asset what will be the amount that is placed as the asset value for this property i mean because i know we have to keep uh book values and things such as that with and so what will this be entered in as as far as value on the city books we're looking to david okay okay most likely would be the purchase price listed as the asset value which is what what amount we'd probably have to add to give an accurate answer probably have to look at that a little closer as far as whether it's the 5.2 or the 3.4 i would imagine is it's 5.2 but okay a little closer okay all right well i i just want us to i understand but i mean if the if this addendum to the contract and i can't uh could you scroll down uh that where it shows the the first on the no i'm sorry scroll up to the the right there yeah it says addendum amendment to contract of sale this amendment is basically pursuant to the contract of sale that we have and it's saying is deleted in its entirety article 2 section 2.1 and it's an entirely in place with the following purchase price so this is the paragraph that's controlling in this contract am i correct when it comes to purchase price yes okay all right okay um as i said i support this i just wanted to to make sure that uh i brought to the attention that just this because when you read the contract on its face it's 3.395 and then we have an amendment here if we could go ahead and pull that down and then we'll uh i'll go ahead and entertain because we do have a motion uh mayor pro tem and uh council member davis yeah i'm i'm gonna second the motion and very briefly comment a couple of the council members already stated some of the reasons why i'm in support of the project but also it was it was called a success story a little while ago it's really a success story if you look at it if you've been past that piece of property for any length of time uh in the same way that the animal shelter was a success story for the city's real estate holdings and probably will continue to be when we're able to to spend that property off to somebody else uh it's the property we're talking about on the loop is vastly underutilized its highest and best use has not been used has not been found yet i think we're doing that now since it ceased to be an assisted living center um it's just been kind of in a revolving door and most of the time it's been vacant so um it's it's really a i think a boon for that area that we're not going to have this vacant this vacant uh you know halfway office space halfway living space we're going to be able to put it to very good use and hopefully partner with others in the area including the church that owns property just to the south of the parcel we're talking about okay so we have a motion in a second council member melzer i just want to underscore something that council member davis alluded to which is if my senior king relocates to this property the property that they currently use it's a lease from the city i think at a dollar a year but it's city property that could conceivably you know be sold and contribute to that your ability to to fund this okay all right we have a motion in a second any other comment we'll start with you mayor pro tem all right council member davis aye council member ryan aye council member armature aye council member briggs aye yes council member melzer yes mayor watts is an i motion carries unanimously seven to zero we'll move on to our agenda item three c which is considered oh uh considered option of an ordinance um establishing the city event strategy in response to economic impacts on the covet 19 pandemic and we do have uh two people wishing to speak on that item so staff presentation on agenda item c so uh uh good evening david gaines director of finance uh this item is to adopt the ordinance uh in conjunction with our our conversation earlier today in the work session for the budget budget strategies as outlined in that presentation we do have a revised ordinance from the one that was in the in the on the agenda based on the discussion um this earlier this afternoon so the two primary piece uh strategies that that are outlined in the the ordinance are related to the volunteer separation program and the uh change in our roi transfer from dme to from the from elect the electric fund to the general fund the first uh being the the voluntary separation program this same slide that we saw earlier today laying out the program a 20 week salary payout for eligible employees who accept the severance agreement along with up to 480 hours of of leave balance uh payout with 300 max of 320 hours for vacation 160 hours of sick we would uh move forward with this with this process tomorrow if approved and begin uh offering employees the the opportunity to submit applications tomorrow through April 30th the other piece of the the revised ordinance is the uh increase in the roi the return investment from from the electric fund to the general fund increasing that from three and a half percent to six percent as discussed in the work session earlier and again that would be for the remainder of this fiscal year through fy for through fiscal year 2021 22 so approximately 30 so approximately 30 months and that's that is outlined in the revised ordinance to to limit that time that we would be at the increased rate and the over our right now with our projections as we laid them out that would equate to about 11.7 million dollars over the entirety of that span so we have any questions i did email out an updated ordinance and um i believe we can work on getting one pulled up here in a second as well if there are any questions any questions or comments on this uh we do have some a couple public speakers as i'd mentioned before so we'll take a few questions and then we'll listen to public comment any questions for staff okay we'll go ahead then and take the public comments so if we could queue up the callers that'd be great and we did have um one person make a comment on our online form who was against this uh ordinance and uh recommendation and there were zero who called in at the 349 7800 to register their position is this mr billy stevens yes mr stevens this chris watts mayor here you are on with the city council live for agenda item 3c for public comment so once you state your name and address we'll start your time and you have four minutes to speak okay my name is billy steven excuse me my name is billy stevens i live at 2100 libra cell in flower mound texas mr stevens i'm getting a feedback are you listening to the meeting as well um uh if you if you are yeah if you could turn that down just a moment we'll pause your time we'll give you some extra time okay all right i'm sorry we'll just go ahead and start all over again if you don't mind my name is billy stevens i live at 2100 lava shale and flower mound um i'm talking today um i own that i am the owner of the datq building uh that is leased to the city and it's located on the southwest corner of town square and within 50 feet of our location there's several restaurants bars uh small businesses that rely on our um rely on you being there because of the free parking that um we give to the city there's over 200 parking spaces at this time and if the city is to move and i have no rents coming in it leaves me no choice but to take them from free to um having to uh have the citizens pay to park so that we can pay our taxes and and our other uh costs that we have for that for that space um the space actually has 200 plus parking spots it's used by the patrons in downtown over the weekend and visitors and it's also used by your city staff during the day to eat at all the restaurants and things like that um and it's real important that we keep this uh going uh during this trying time so when these restaurants and all these other businesses are finally able to reopen you know these parking spots are have they won't have to be paid you know uh for the citizens we appreciate that these are unprecedented times the call we got last week and the painful decisions we had to make were hard and we'll have a material financial impact on my partner and me we're just two guys we're not a big corporation we invested in the city that we love and we uh spend a lot of time in um we put a lot of money in the buildings out of our own pockets new hvac systems new roofs all of this at no extra cost to the city um we've taken care of it we've made capital improvements uh on the promise that you uh the city was going to be there to 2023 last thursday um i get a phone call that's excuse me last tuesday i got a phone call and i had i was told that the city would stop paying rents immediately and there was really nothing i could do um that's um pretty big decision to be made on what uh what kind of rebuttal we could make to that so basically we they gave us about 48 hours to come up with their what we thought would what they thought would be a reply and um so looks like they're going to give us five months um with basically um no advance notice other than uh 48 hours um i know that we're in the uh financial hard times for everyone and we're prepared to do whatever we need to do to take care of our property um however um we need to help downtown recover we feel like we're a very vital part of downtown and we just been great partners with the city and um we you know we have to figure it out just like many other folks we hope to we hope that the city of denton recognizes what we are having to go through and will work with us in the future as key land and business building owners regardless of who holds a council seat okay um let's see if we have any questions uh council member armature he'll just need to turn down the um if you can listen on no if you can listen on your phone to the questions that that that would be helpful yes you should be able to i'm ready okay go ahead council member armature thank you uh anyway so thank thank you for for speaking out and i know these are hard times for for everybody um so i i happen to support um the uh leaving the datq building however you know i'm very interested in what you have to say because uh i i had heard at least as i understood it a kind of a different description of the way the events went down and since i wasn't involved in the in the transaction um i'd be curious to know i guess we've heard your side of the story as i understand it you know what i had heard from staff um was that an agreement was was worked out but i did not know that the city i did not hear that that the city had said that they would not pay rent so i'm just curious uh you know to know what what really happened and i and i think the public should know too i was wondering if staff either you had to comment further if staff could respond to to your um explanation of the way this happened yes ma'am um well basically i got an email from scott mcdonald and then to call him which i called him within a few minutes of getting the email and he immediately said that obviously it didn't during these hard times they have decided that they were no longer going to pay their lease on the building effective immediately um and of course i was dumbfounded didn't really have a response to that um after speaking with him for about 20 to 30 minutes and this and um i said well is there anything we can do and he goes well you can take it to council but you you only have till thursday and you know we can we can take it to them can't guarantee anything's going to happen with it but we can take it to them and that was how the meeting went well well thank you you know i would i would be interested in in seeing that email if you feel comfortable sharing i guess if it's from staff it's a public i will say thank you to council and again i still support and i'm very sorry for the owner in their building i understand their perspective but i still support um this agreement had that had been worked out uh but i will say that you know at a time where we have tenants uh who are residential tenants who are struggling to pay rent um and as we're telling them as as we should make sure to talk to your landlord you know don't just stop paying uh it's it's it's interesting to me that that now we're that we may have done the same thing so i would hope that if that turns out to be true that we would be more sympathetic to tenants in a situation like this that that's my comment on on this and i just want to know what the truth is of what happened thank you uh i appreciate that any other questions for the any other questions for the caller all right thank you sir appreciate you calling in thank you our next caller will be joseph meeks and he'll be on the line here shortly mr meeks are you there yes okay yes you're on with the density council live for agenda item 3c the public portion comment of this agenda item so once you state your name and address your time will begin and you have four minutes all right so my name is joseph meeks and my address is 1201 cleveland street then texas 76201 and um and just thank you again for uh taking the time to hear my comments and my thoughts about this issue and uh saying that my thoughts and prayers are going for all that have been affected by the coven 19 virus but my concern for today is about college students living in denton i myself and my sophomore at the university of north texas and i live at a student uh living apartment called gateway and this time has been very trying and difficult for my family as um as you know we have switched to online learning at unt and also for tw and um just to practice social distancing and uh decrease the amount of people who are affected by this virus um the universities have been closed and i was doing work study with a program called high school career connect where i was speaking to high school and middle school students helping them plan out their career path um no longer to work because of what's been going on and um a lot of students have been out of work whether it be work study or just normal jobs they can no longer work just because um they're not considered as essential businesses and in addition to that we still have to pay rent and that has become an increased issue not only for us but for our families as well our parents are in a similar situation with um with my parents specifically they can't work at this moment because of the coronavirus they if they're you know their job was not considered as an essential business they're out of work right now as well and um while the government did give stimulus checks to um people the the citizens that file their taxes that has helped but it's still difficult to be able to pay for rent as a college student whenever you're not working and it's just a it's a difficult time and so my my concern was and just asking um if there's anything that the city can do that the people can do to work with the apartment complexes whether they're student living or not in regards to um maybe having an option for uh those that you know want to return home and be with their families and quarantine during this time if they can have that option to end their leases early um if you do not know that most leases at least the student living ones they last until july 31st and with those um with school not uh you know we can't have summer school in-person classes unt and tw and other campuses already announced that they will be having online summer courses so because of that and the inability to be able to work it would be very beneficial for students and just everybody in the den community if we had an opportunity to uh end our leases early and be able to be with our families in this troubling time and not have to worry about making enough money to pay for rent i do understand that people cannot be evicted during this time um but it's still having that financial burden of having to eventually pay the rent for your lease is just something that i don't think is beneficial during this time and that's that was my main concern and just wondering if there's anything that the city could do or um if there's anything that we could do to work with the apartments okay um any questions for the speaker mr meeks council member armature uh thank you for speaking and thank you for your ideas and my heart really goes out to uh to you and uh all everybody right now uh renters have it really bad um i was wondering if you're aware that uh that there's a a provision a state provision that says that uh texas cities under state of emergency uh can uh enact rent control measures on uh under certain kinds of limitations and there's debate on council about what those are and also i was wondering if you knew were aware um that uh at least uh some of us on council have tried to put forward a number of different kinds of proposals i will uh put forward your idea you had a slightly different rewording of a way of looking at the situation that i liked um but i was wondering if you were aware of any of this if not i'd be happy to follow up with you and point to you this provision for a while i was not aware of those but yes i would definitely love and appreciate a follow-up about that information um and yeah the yeah the main essential idea that i had just because i it's already difficult how um again most students leaving uh living apartments they have their leases and in july 31st and um typically every university it ends you know uh finals week is about in the the first week of may so just typically that's already difficult for students that are you know living at home they still have to pay for rent even though they're not living in that apartment and just with all that's going on with this virus it definitely is just making it more difficult um living if this to me basic needs for families right now so um just wondering if there was anything that we could do uh together as a community to kind of give people the option i do understand that some people they live in den full time they're not just here as students so um but just making the opportunity for students that do want to go back home and quarantine with their families uh making that available to them where they don't have to feel as if you know they have to pay rent still and also um get their money's worth because they're paying rent you know they're paying six hundred dollars per month and then they're not even living in that apartment that just just eliminating that problem so mr meeks couple questions for you i appreciate you calling in and sharing your story i think you said you had been working with the university of north texas were you uh is that correct yes um this is a program called high school career connect and um what we do as i said earlier we go to high schools and middle schools and this is actually even another problem for me um not only that the university is closed but uh the whole aspect of my job was i was connecting with high schoolers and middle schoolers helping them plan out their career paths whether it be going to a four-year university trade school whatever it was we were there to be that extra resource to them to let them know what was out there and not keep their minds limited so and also prepare them for their um their career paths because a lot of students they go to school not knowing what they want to do and that just causes student debt and other issues so but um because not only that you and t is closed down i can't work there but also um you know middle schools and high schools they're closed down too i'm really left uh i i don't have an option to work with there and trying to find another job is difficult just because of how many other people are out of work and um if i did find another job it would just expose me and my family to the virus okay all right well i also want to tell you i mean i i i mean there's a lot of things about state statutes and all those kinds of things that you know uh are still uh people still trying to figure that but i can tell you one thing that we have done uh and that is we've contributed uh a hundred thousand dollars to the united way covid 19 relief fund so if you don't mind we'll try to get uh i think we've got your contact information so we'll make sure that we get you some information on what you can actually do instead of wondering what's on the state statutes or things such as that where we can get you to an agency to see if you qualify for that kind of assistance and then my final question is because you work for the university of north texas it does that make you ineligible for unemployment or are you eligible for unemployment or do you know i do not know yet okay what i would suggest i'm sorry go ahead i'm sorry yeah i was saying that's something that i need to look into yeah i would i would encourage you to do that because right now with the federal stimulus program if you're eligible for unemployment you'll receive the state unemployment benefits plus i believe an additional six hundred dollars a week added to those unemployment benefits not withstanding what you need to work out with your landlord i think if you're eligible that certainly would provide you some relief i think that that you might need so wanted to pass that along and i think you can look at our city website to see how you can access the texas workforce commission uh either via online or during a phone call you know to call them and they'll give hours and things such as that so uh certainly visit our our website uh www.cityofdenton.com and look for covid 19 and you should be able to find some links and some phone numbers to help you determine the answer to that question and the new united way resource so i appreciate you calling in thank you so much and i appreciate your ideas and your willingness to call thank you so much for just taking the time to listen to all of us and just still being faithful to your jobs during this trying time i appreciate that thank you sir so much all right i believe that's all the callers that we have um i think i already read how many uh had written on okay so councilmember briggs we're still on agenda item 3c could you remind me um the monthly payment uh for the rent at dacub it's a little over 40 000 a month what 40 000 40 000 yeah and i want to i want to just take a minute to hold on yeah just yeah yeah go ahead councilmember riggs and then i i want to say something as well yeah so um thank you for for reminding us of of that um i'm out and on the parking how many parking spaces will be at the the new um building that will be available for i don't know offhand i want to say it's close to a couple hundred okay all right thank you yeah so i've got a couple questions uh todd or if somebody there can answer and then i'll give you an opportunity to to share um let's just sort of step out of this current situation you know we're still in a lease everything's going fine we're not under this sort of historic pandemic what were the termination notices that were just um part of the agreement in that particular contract do you recall yeah for the next year so it was about a 12 month notice and then as we got uh further into the lease i think it was 2021 or 2022 it was a six month notice so um okay we were able to work out this four four month notice hundreds yeah go ahead well so what i'm hearing you say is there was something in the current lease that provided determination that would not have been considered a breach uh even though you might not have been fulfilling the the full term of the lease is that correct or am i wrong in that no you're correct okay and so i just want to say that i appreciated uh mr stevens i believe calling in and and sharing sharing his story uh but let's make no mistake uh whatever happened in an email when somebody calls up and says hey we need to talk about this we have an issue what happened was apparently there's some agreement to pay an additional four or five months on the rent so we can go back and rehash how this all started but in the end uh there's an additional either 160 or 200 000 that the city has agreed to pay uh on that lease am i am i correct on that yes and does it give does does that next five months give them an opportunity to try to lease that building or does that so it gives them so they're going to get paid the five months and they and if they rent that building within that time does that relieve us of those additional months that are when it's being rented we have not got the agreement signed yet or fully negotiated we just actually came to broad terms yesterday okay all right so this has been an ongoing discussion yes i i just got a a note from one of the assistant city managers sarah hensley who's on the couple of the first calls with scott and completely uh challenged and disputed the way those calls went that um each of our directors in the last couple weeks have been given assignments to take a look at all of our contracts professional services uh contracts such as this with non-appropriation clauses which he you may not have understood the city technically we we include in our lease agreements non-appropriation clauses because if a council doesn't want to fund something through the legislative process we can't be forced to do that so one of the things that we had discussed with back who was just exercising the non-appropriation clause and after kicking around with the and so scott apparently gave them a call to give them a heads up that we were going to be recommending not continuing the lease i can tell you that over the last week it's been it's gone from acrimonious lawsuits being threatened to the last few days as of yesterday morning i gave the final go ahead to negotiate the uh the settlement on this to actually try to work with them and get and put a few months uh right in their pockets even though we technically didn't have to in order to try to walk away from this shaking hands so i don't really appreciate the way that was categorized i don't really appreciate the uh you know calling our staff into question like that they're these these directors are all going through an extremely stressful time right now tides and pre-town have been going back to every engineering firm basically saying we want you to lower your rates and we're going to remove some work from you and every one of them has done that you know and so what these folks are going through sarah hensley went through and renegotiated our contract with our architect firm on the police department building so it's not been pleasant for them but the end goal was we have a serious budget crisis and we're trying to save jobs so you know he might not have liked the fact that that we decided to get out a little bit early but i can tell you that you know paying another hundred and sixty thousand dollars and trying to be a good neighbor at a time when we're in a in a difficult position as you've all been dealing with this afternoon it's really what these directors been faced with and they've all done an admirable job of being professional i don't really appreciate this categorization um you know and yesterday because i i knew early on larry colister and i have been knee-deep in this with scott and i think it larry's larry and erin's help we've been able to negotiate a really good middle ground here but this is not fun and there's a lot of emotions involved when you end a lease early but you all have been part of our conversations this afternoon understanding what we're dealing with some people take it better than others but this is about preserving our workforce in our in our services okay all right council member armature real quick yeah just yeah thank you for that explanation tod thank you for the caller you know it's um it's i again i'll just say it's a good example of what goes on in uh negotiations like this at the individual level between tenants and landlords um and it's difficult for everybody uh and these kinds of leases are complicated so thank you i i i think it's it's it's good to have this conversation although not pleasant we'll all come out of this knowing our rights as respective tenants and landlords and city members of the public a lot a lot better so thank you right well i sure hope and would encourage my colleagues that as we hear stories like this to not automatically assume that not that they're not not necessarily telling the truth but there's always two sides to a story and sometimes the actual truth of the story lies somewhere in the middle so i sure hope we can reserve our comments and our implications for different activities until we hear everything to compare this to renters and landlords as we've talked about to bolster certain requests what was actually done is a renter said i'm going to pay rent and i want to figure out how we can walk away from this in a way that meets both of our interests so uh let's just try to be a little bit more discerning when we hear stories to understand that maybe we want to hear the other side first before necessarily uh commenting so uh i don't see any more questions um i don't think we've had a motion on this councilmember briggs a motion to approve but just for logistics did did we find out where the planning and development services is going to move and when yeah we're going to largely work virtually and there's going to be an intake office basically a front door a front office to planning in work in the offices downstairs where repo graphics used to be at city hall so we'll have a small contingent of staff there in order to interface with the public but most most of the work is going to be handled virtually until we're in the new facility and we'll be able to share conference rooms at city hall if needed once we get the uh everything lifted from the covid right okay thank you for member armater i second okay so we have a motion to second and i'm assuming it's with the revised ordinance that was delivered to uh the council members is that correct uh okay and i see you mayor pro tem let me just make sure that this uh approval or this motion and second is based upon the revised ordinance that was handed to council yes yes council member armater is your second for the revised ordinance yes okay mayor pro tem yeah i just want to echo uh kind of what you just touched on during this discussion phase i mean it pains me i understand uh generally mr steven's points but i also understand he it's it's it's biased to a degree he's playing on the parking fears of our citizens uh and and that's his prerogative to do but really when he starts painting staff in a way uh that and and we as a council start adopting that second-hand information versus chart waiting for the first-hand uh conversation for another half of the story it just it's it's problematic for me that mr steven didn't reach out to either you mayor watts or or and obviously he's been in conversation with the city managers and have a conversation privately versus calling in and and having a discussion here and live there's no time to research there's no time to really give us time to react to what he's requesting and i did not hear a request really to come out of all that uh that conversation so uh even if you were to lay out a number that says meet me here so that i can uh continue to provide free parking so really it was it was problematic for me um and in that it was you know just kind of how it was delivered how it was managed and seems a little um we all understand it's a challenging time it's a it's a first and hopefully the last time we have to have these conversations and i just wish it would have been handled better but i do appreciate staff and it did not sound like uh scott who's been over backwards for for all of us a number of times uh and even if it was it's a it's a challenging time and so sometimes uh that may get that may bubble up but with that okay all right thank you you bet so we've got a motion and a second for approval with the revised ordinance as delivered uh council member briggs yes council member armator second oh sorry yes okay council member ryan yes council member melzer yes council member davis yes mayor protem all right uh and mayor watts is a yes so the motion carries seven zero uh passes unanimously we'll move on to agenda item three three d uh is this a fairly mr city manager is this a fairly quick presentation because i know we haven't taken a break in a while so we might just move through this pretty quickly is that i'll go ahead and call the item um i noticed that the screen got really blank once i said that i didn't really get everybody's facial expressions on that but everybody else did oh there we go now we're good uh agenda item 3d consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas to declare the intent to reimburse capital program expenditures of the general government 3.423 million dollars with tax preferred obligations certificate of obligations and general obligation bonds with an aggregate maximum principal amount not to exceed 3.423 million and providing an effective date uh can't can't hear you're not on david yeah you're not on and and while you're getting on i just will report uh for this item we had zero people making comments on our online forum we had zero people calling in to 349 7800 to register their position and finally there we have zero who have requested to speak over the phone on this on this item so you may proceed this is a very short presentation and really just to follow up to uh agenda item 3b uh a reimbursement ordinance related to the property purchase that was discussed this is this will be our third reimbursement ordinance this fiscal year and as noted here the federal law requires that we have this formal documentation that we're going to move forward with this project before we actually issue the debt and in this in in regards to this project the certificate of obligation so that's simply what the what the ordinance allows us to do okay all right chair would oh are we going back through this okay okay all right oh i'm not i'm not hearing uh staff on that um i'm not hearing i'm seeing the slide but i'm not hearing staff that this is our this is uh just our next steps right now our tentative next steps um we'll come back on may 19th with our notice of intent at aim intention for uh all of our the projects that we uh that we listed for certificate obligations on the prior slide and okay all right and that's you were just showing that where that fit into that particular uh cost analysis or uh list of funds correct yes okay all right if we could pull the presentation down so i can see the full panel that would be great uh council mayor pro tem did you have your hand up yes sir i was going to move approval there's no speakers okay yeah we don't have any speakers uh council member melzer on second all right uh any question discussion all right uh mayor pro tem has say you on the motion to approve all right uh council member melzer aye council member ryan aye council member armature aye council member briggs yes council member davis aye uh mayor wass's an aye motion carries unanimously that brings us to our concluding items um concluding items council member briggs so these are some of the comments i had earlier um that i would like to to ask our for staff to look into before our next meeting on the the covid um because i i know that as the governor comes on the 27th i think we're going to hear about more about reopening and so um there's been a lot of questions on testing and i know that since i've asked the city itself cannot purchase test um and i know that there's a certain amount required um according to a formula to keep the the the trend downward i'm i'm wondering if when we come back if we know the number of tests per capita that will be needed here in denton if we figured out that formula um if we can do that because the the burden is definitely shifting and it's going to be our responsibility locally um to make sure that we keep the uh the trend downward the next thing that i want to know is um council member briggs i'm sorry could i'm not staff do you understand i'm trying to understand what you're what you're asking so you're asking for a formula to do what the number of tests so so for i guess the state of texas to open there's a number of positives per capita that it needs to stay at um i don't know what that would be for denton county so my question would be so as we reopen so yesterday to today there's five new cases of covid in the county there's 21 so what would be that oh crap number that we get in test where we would start reducing our phases back so um would that number come from okay okay so and and to know that we're going to make sure that we need the testing and so um just a just a follow-up when we have that information for the next meeting a little bit more information about who gets the test how we can make sure we have enough what safeguards are in place and um what number we would need to see as a community or as a city where we start rolling back those um the phases so when you say rolling back the phases do you mean do you mean if we've opened up to where if all of a sudden something happens and we see a resurgence what would cause that to make us sort of go back to revert to the social distancing and this sort of the stricter standards that's what you're asking that's what i'm asking and if that's not set if that's not set by the governor is it something we can set as a city okay all right okay anything else no okay uh councilmember armature oh yes so this is just a request that i'd be happy to follow up in writing i had mentioned something similar uh during our discussion in the work session about the budget and my request to look at our assets to see if there's anything that we have that's a big asset that can in a time of need be sold at at no uh no significant loss in of need to the city to meet our immediate needs and during one of the breaks of the evening meeting uh i i heard there was there was just some some chatter going on and in the background and i i heard uh the mayor say something about estimating uh that that the deck might be worth 50% of its value i no no no no no no i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna if you're gonna bring that up we're gonna we're gonna talk about what was really said what was said was i was commenting on your comment saying that we could sell the deck for parts and i'm saying that that would be half of the value of the deck based upon your proposal if not less than that so that's what that comment was about exactly exactly and so that it it surprised me i actually would have thought um that it would not have that much value as 50 but well who knows but we've got to be careful not to get into deliberation so if you could make your request known because this is well this is but my my request is i would like to know so i don't know if that was just speculation on your part um i haven't even speculated at a number the speculation is council member armature that you don't take a 250 million dollar asset and make a suggestion that you part it out that's only two or three years old i have no idea what it would be worth but i will tell you right now it's not going to be worth near the idea to do this shouldn't be deliberate we shouldn't be deliberating now i understand then move on with your concluding items please point of order i think this no no no i am making a request for information which is perfectly reasonable it is not i think we owe it to the public to look at our asset that is all okay that is all i just would like to know what the worth what it would be worth council member on craigslist what do you haven't even made a request you've made a general request and plus i would like to know what the value is what something like that of of the gas plant parts okay so you're specifically and there are any other assets that we have okay well first of all that request that request if it takes over two hours that will become a one-minute request that you can bring back to the council so we'll have the city manager make that determination that's how this process works exactly so what else what else do you have okay anybody else concluding items mayor pro tem concluding items mayor pro tem yes according to our policy that we agreed upon i have a couple of events i'd like to talk about during this yes and i'll submit any substantive things via email like we talked about so the flint conference is coming up at stoke and that's april 29th and that's via zoom and so i want to advocate for that and i want to there's a birthday coming up this week for a friend of mine jennifer vermilion so i wanted to wish her a happy birthday and those are the two community things that i wanted to talk about during concluding items okay all right anybody else okay all right we will stand adjourned at 9 32 thank you all very much