May 05, 2020 City Council on 2020-05-05 2:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on May the 5th, 2020. It is 2.05 pm. We do have a quorum and we have full attendance. I'll call this meeting to order. Our first item is citizen comments on consent agenda items. I do not believe we have any comments on citizen comments on consent agenda items. I request for clarification on the agenda. Yes, Council Member Meltzer. Two, first I'd like to pull out H for separate vote and I'll recuse on that. And then for I, I just have a request that we get a brief staff report at some point in the future, just showing any major changes to the floodplain, if there are any. Okay, so you're not asking for that to be pulled? No, no. I just, just a request that in the future, you know, we get that learning. Okay. All right. Council Member Briggs. Okay, I have three, three questions on item G for consent. It says that there's to be chemicals sprayed on 150 acres the first year and 250 acres after that. My question is what chemical are we spraying? Is it harmful to humans, animals or pollinators? And then in the next paragraph or sentence, it says that it's to reduce hazardous wildlife population and what does that mean that, and what are we, what populations are we trying to reduce? If I need to pull that item, I can for later. I think we have staff here that can answer that, I think they just got to get to the staff station. Scott Gray should be on. Mayor, members of the council, this is Scott Gray, airport manager. In regards to your questions, Council Member Briggs, the chemicals that are being sprayed are in compliance with the new city's chemical policy, so it is not harmful. It is just to control vegetation and weeds. In regards to the wildlife control, our wildlife management program requires us to keep the grass in the infield areas to a certain height. This spraying mechanism stunts the growth, which basically keeps the small animals from going in and hiding in the grass, which then attracts other wildlife that are hazardous to aircraft operations. Okay, is it possible for you guys or someone to get me the chemicals that we're actually spraying at some point? Certainly, and again, in regards to this particular contract, this will be on an as needed basis. We are currently working with the park staff that we may be doing this internally moving forward, but we can certainly give you a list of the types of chemicals to be used. Okay, thank you. Next one, item H, is this for the basketball courts? And if it is, I know that the summer season is the last week of May, and so do we expect to be playing by then? And if we end up not, is it a lower cost on the contract? Mayor, point of order, we're going to deliberate on that as an item of individual consideration. Well, if you can have those questions ready for the meeting, that would help. We have Laura Barron here who's prepared to answer those. Let's hold that discussion for when we do the item for individual consideration because Councilmember Pelzer is going to have to recuse, or he's chosen to recuse, so instead of having it now and him having to sign off, we'll do it then. Okay, Mayor, last one is item N about the fire station. Is this, when is fire station eight opening, and will this lease expire at that time without penalty? Is that what this extension is for? Yes, I believe Deanna Cody is on this line. Deanna or Chief Hedges? Chief Hedges. Okay. Chief, you might need to unmute your mic. There. Chief Hedges, can you hear me now? We can. Thank you. Okay. I just gave a spill. I guess I was still muted by the organizer. So right now, on schedule to open station eight, January or February of '21, and I will have to refer to Deanna as far as on the terms of the lease agreement, but we want to make sure we had enough months and then with this abatement offered to go ahead and take that as well from Columbia. So we'll have an answer on the lease. This lease is going through the end of July 2021. Is that correct? That's what it looks like. Correct. All right. And fire station is going to be scheduled to be completed when? February, he said February. Okay. So you got March, April, May, June, July. So about four or five months. And this is a, this is how much is the, it looks like the rental agreement is $1,752 per month. Mayor, this is not pertaining to the fire department lease. This is the clinic. And we have, if I recall this one, we actually, it includes both, but this includes basically a two month abatement on the city property. We will double check to make sure that we can end the lease on the fire station property as soon as the building is occupied, but let me go back and check that. So it's actually covering both of these. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, my question was about the fire station part of it. So yeah, we, we will be sure that we've got an answer for that. And I understand exactly what you're saying. So as soon as we're ready to exit the building, the lease will, it will end. So we'll double check with that and I'll let you know if we hear anything before we adopt the consent agenda tonight. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Which, I mean, depending on, for me, depending on when that, if it's one or two months, unless we give them notice right now, I just, I don't think it would be a good practice with, they've been such a good partner to all of a sudden jump up and in March or April say, Oh, by the way, we're not going to pay you the last two months because our fire station is open. I would not feel comfortable doing that. So I think that's, those answers will be important as to when we think it'll be finished and then maybe some continued dialogue with the management or with our partners on that lease just to see if they have a problem with us doing that. So I mean, those are sort of some of my thoughts on it. Council member Briggs. Yeah, to follow up though on the opposite end, if for some reason there, it runs behind schedule if we could extend it. So I'm just trying to figure out if that's a hard, hard date. Just a little bit more information on that. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other? Yes. Council member Armitter. I would like to pull G. I'm going to have to vote no on that. I feel like because that's a, a outside contract, it's harder to get a handle on exactly what the chemicals are. And I realized there wasn't enough time to get that information just over the weekend. So anyway, I apologize, but I'm going to have to vote no to that. And then H, I'm going to have to recuse as well. And so I don't know how to, to, to do that virtually, but I'm sure Larry will arrange that. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we'll, we'll get that figured out. Okay. So right now what I have as far as items pulled are items G and items H. Any other clarification on agenda items? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on then to our work session reports. Our first work session report is agenda item three A. Receive reports, hold discussion and give staff direction on the following with respect to green tree estates. Actions taken, step one, two existing site conditions, co-compliance observations, et cetera. Extension of the declaration of disaster, water infrastructure improvement options, alternative housing solutions for the residents. Just to let everybody know that there is translation that is occurring simultaneously. So if you could, and I'll be the first one to try to practice that because I went through that a little bit too fast is just to realize that and be mindful as you're speaking to speak maybe just a little bit slower than what you might be used to just so that the translators can get it in real time and pass it on to the residents who are listening in Spanish. We are ready for staff presentation. Mayor members of the council, this is Mario Canazares, deputy city manager. As Mayor Watts mentioned, the presentation is being translated in Spanish. So I will speak slowly so that the translator can keep up for the residents. About halfway through the presentation, I will stop and we'll be happy to answer any questions up to that point and then we'll finish the comments, which will be a few additional slides beyond that. And then the last component before I get started in the content is the presentation that was posted online last Friday has changed slightly due to the feedback we received last night after we met with the community. So the presentation that you have should in your packet now should reflect those comments and you'll be able to see those changes here in a few moments. So today we're going to review the February 4th and February 18th work sessions. We had schedules from resident meetings in March and April. We'll give you an update on the status of the activities at Green Tree for the last number of weeks. We will also briefly talk about the steps that would be necessary to connect to the city's water system. You'll see a graphic here shortly. Then some additional issues to consider and finally recommendations that are being made. In November of last year, the city council declared a disaster to address the water issues at Green Tree Estates. City council set aside $100,000 for the services to be provided at Green Tree, which included providing 275 gallon containers of water and service to those residents three times a week. In February, the city council extended the declaration of disaster by approximately 100 days, which would end this coming month on May 22nd, 2020. The provision also included the provision of potable and non-potable water through May 22nd. The residents would then be responsible for payment of the water starting on May 3rd, excuse me, February 13th through May 22nd. City council also directed staff to offer courtesy inspections that allowed residents to better understand any issues of code compliance. In the code, those courtesy inspections are exactly that. What it does is afforded the residents the opportunity to obtain a list of issues and other non-compliance matters and give the resident the opportunity to address those before any monies are spent on those repairs. Lastly, as part of the declaration and direction from council in February was to address any life safety and health issues with non-occupied structures. One of the issues that we had heard from the residents out at Green Tree was that there was a number of unoccupied buildings, mobile homes that had fallen into disrepair and they were attractive nuisances. So they requested that the city begin code compliance on those on those issues. Going into an update on the status of the activities there at Green Tree. As mentioned before, the city offered courtesy inspections to the residents. However, at this point, none have been requested or performed by the city. However, Habitat for Humanity and the city met in mid February, mid to late February, and discussed how Habitat could potentially help the city in engaging the residents for some of these inspections. Habitat agreed to conduct these inspections in early March. At this time, the details and results of those inspections have not been shared with the city. Those inspections were only offered for owner occupied homes, not the renter occupied homes. While we don't know the details of those inspections, we have been told that the issues that have been identified are relatively minor in nature and that they can be repaired and that the sweat team, which is a volunteer group associated with Denton Bible Church here in Denton, is working with the residents to begin those repairs in May. To date, building inspections has began working on the remediation and removal of the substandard structures out at Green Tree. There have been approximately 13 applications for demolition of those structures, demolition and removal of those structures. Ten of those have been removed and the remaining three are still being worked on between the city and those respective property owners. So progress is being made on those unsightly structures. In early March, the city sent a very extensive packet of information to the residents at Green Tree. The purpose of the information was to provide guidance and other information about connecting to the city's water system. The information was provided both in English and in Spanish, and a copy of that packet is included as an exhibit in your council packet that you have before you. As part of the packet of information, we had requested a face-to-face meeting with residents in mid-to-late March, also with a follow-up meeting in mid-April. Unfortunately, due to the COVID pandemic, the meeting in March and April were both canceled due to the social -- due to the stay-at-home orders, along with the social distancing request and requirements of various health officials. As I mentioned before, the outreach and information was pretty extensive. It covered connection information, septic requirements, FAQs, frequently asked questions that had been brought up over the last many weeks, provided inspection information, and additional information that the residents could be used to, again, follow up and make a connection with the city for water services. Along with the connection -- excuse me, along with the letter, it included this graphic, and what this graphic illustrates is just a very simple means of where the bank of meters would be located, right on the property line, provided information as to the cost for the residents, and how the city would approach the matter as far as the location of the meters and how we would connect to the residents' homes. It was just a means to be able to give them a better understanding of what the city was planning, and again, obviously, the sketch is not drawn to scale, but just as a visual assistance for the residents and the renters there in Green Tree Estates. Along with this information was costs, so as you see on this slide, there is a fixed fee of $6,938, and then there's a variable fee starting at $9,204, and then it goes to a smaller amount based on the number of connections. The information was provided to the residents so they would understand what they would be responsible for. We also received feedback from residents that the variable fee was difficult to plan for because of limited budget available by the residents, funds by the residents to connect to the city's water, and so it was a preference by the residents if they could just plan for the fixed fee and then the $9,204 could be covered through some other funding mechanisms. We will cover that here shortly as a recommendation, but we were trying to provide the residents with an understanding of the cost for connection. The following slide is just a sketch of the subdivision. The boxes that you see shaded in blue and gray are the residents that are being provided services three times a week by the city. Those in gray are the renter-occupied homes, and the ones in blue are owner-occupied homes. There are a total of 14 customers that are being served at the moment. Of the 14, nine are renters, and five are owner-occupied. And as I mentioned before, Habitat for Humanity had conducted back in early March some inspections, and the only residents that they inspected are the owner-occupied homes, so five inspections. By mid-March, things changed with the COVID-19 pandemic. As I mentioned, we had scheduled or we had mailed in early March a large packet of information. We had scheduled a meeting with the residents on March 21st, but due to the pandemic issues facing the region and the state all over the country, those meetings were then canceled. Our employees continued to deliver water and have been this entire time, three days a week. Any inspections that the city could perform or would perform could be done remotely. It could be done on-site with proper social distancing. So the bottom line is while yes, momentum had been lost some because of COVID, the city is ready and able to engage the residents and start water service at the time of payment. But this time, I can stop, answer any questions that the council may have before I go into some staff recommendations. Mario, why don't we just go ahead and go through the staff recommendations, and then we'll go because I think it's one slide, and then we'll have it in sort of in the context of what the staff is recommending, and then we can have questions based upon that. Absolutely. Thank you. You asked to slow down, so I will go even slower. I apologize. Okay. Then I certainly need to slow down. So we will now go into the staff recommendations, and then we will have some other feedback from the residents. So what you have here before you, knowing that momentum was lost because of COVID, our services have been on addressing the pandemic, and the current emergency declaration is set to expire here in the next few weeks. Staff is recommending that there be some additional time added to the declaration. Conditions are beginning to normalize. My understanding based on input from the coordinators of the sweat team, the volunteer group from Denton Bible, that they are willing and able and ready to begin assisting the residents starting in May this month. So they believe that those repairs can be done in the next few weeks, and they're relatively minor in nature. So as a result, staff is recommending extending the declaration to July 31, 2020, that the city would waive the $9,204, the cost of the line extension, if the following items are completed. Number one, that by June 12, the customer service inspections provided by building inspections are completed. By July 3, property owners pay the $6,938 fees due to the city for the water meter. At that time, that would then trigger the waiving of the $9,204 line extension. By July 17, city staff would be able to set the meters for those residents and property owners that have paid the city fees. By July 24, residents are then connected to the city's water system. And then by July 31, the emergency declaration would end, and the temporary water services would end as well. At that time, residents who are connected to the city's water system would become regular water customers. To do so, it would take up to the $100,000 amount. If this is approved, we would have exhausted approximately $80,000 of the $100,000 allotment that was set aside in the original declaration. Mayor, we want me to continue with the others as well. How many more slides do you have? Because if it's the resident feedback, I think we need to hear that before we really start asking questions, because some of the questions may change based upon that. So let's just go ahead and complete the presentation, then we'll stand for questions. Absolutely. So yesterday evening, city staff hosted an online virtual meeting with the residents of Green Tree Estates, along with community advocates. The residents indicated that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have faced severe financial hardships and employment hardships. The residents indicated that they are demonstrating progress by having the inspections done by Habitat for Humanity. The residents also indicated that they need more time to obtain the monies to pay the requisite fees to have the water meters installed. So the residents offered a counter proposal and an alternative timeline to the city's proposition. They requested that the declaration be extended through May 22, 2021, that by September 22 of 2020, the inspections by city staff would be completed. Therefore all the repairs would be completed. By March of 2021, property owners would pay the $6,938 fees for the water meter and impact fee. By April 2021, city staff would be able to install those meters once the city fees have been paid. That same month, residents would also be connected to the city's water system. And then by May 22, 2021, the emergency declaration could then end and our livery of water service would end and then they would become regular water customers. If this recommendation is approved by city council, staff estimates that we would need an additional $45,000 in funds above and beyond the $100,000 that was originally set aside. >> Is that the end of the report? >> No, sir. There's more. I apologize. >> Okay. >> We're getting there. So a third option was offered to the residents during our discussions last evening. Basically the option that's going to be shared here is to try to keep within the existing allotment of funds that have been set aside. So what staff proposed as an option to the residents was for the inspections to be completed in June of 2020, like originally proposed. The differences are that it would allow the residents a few extra weeks to obtain the funds to pay the meter and impact fee for the water meter. By October 5th, they would pay the requisite fees of $6,938. By the end of the month, the meters would be set by city staff for those that have paid the requisite fees. By November the 13th, the residents would be connected to the city's water system. And on that same day, the emergency declaration would end at 1159. And that would be -- this could all be accomplished with the current $100,000 spending authority that the city council designated last November. So in closing and in summary, water service is still being delivered three times a week and is scheduled to do so until May 22nd unless city council extends some additional time. Utility payments are being accepted and they're ongoing. We are not disconnecting water for nonpayment due to the COVID declarations of the disaster, and that's applied across all utility customers, not just Green Tree Estates. The city has and is still addressing the nonoccupied substandard structures out in the subdivision. To date, the city has not requested to inspect any of the occupied structures. The city has a plan for connection, for the water connection, and we're ready to connect at the time that the fees are paid. And then what we're looking for, Mayor, members of the council, is some direction from you all whether or not to do nothing, which would then expire -- the disaster declaration would expire May 22nd, or extend it through July 31st of 2020 as an option. Second option to extend it to November 13th, 2020, or a long-term option that the residents presented yesterday evening to May 22nd, 2021. As I mentioned, that would require some additional funds. To date, we've expended $56,000 of the $100,000. If you extended through July 31st, it shows $69,000. We would need an additional $9,000 for the water extension, so just under $80,000. And if you look at the original $100,000 amount, it would get us through mid-November with the line extension. If you did not do the line extension and just maintain the three days a week service, three times per week service, that $100,000 would be exhausted by mid-December. So we're ready for your direction, your input, and any questions that you may have. >> Okay. If we could maybe pull the presentation down so I can see the grid. Thank you very much. Councilmember Armitage, and we've got a lot of comments on this, so let's keep our comments concise. I would appreciate it from everybody. Thank you. >> So first I wanted to ask, are there people waiting on the line to speak? >> No, this is a work session item, so no. >> Okay, okay. Under participants, it says somebody is caller, so I didn't know, but it must be a staff person or something. So first of all, I support the resident's request, as I did last time, to continue the emergency declaration through May of next year, or at the very least to continue the water supply. I want to thank staff and everybody for working towards this point. I prefer the alternative that staff came up with to the July original recommendation, but I still think that considering that we just postponed an annexation situation until substantially farther into the future, in part because of the uncertainty of the current situation under COVID, I think that they -- I agree that they need additional time to deal with the present situation that we're all dealing with, and to save up money. Right now, it's really hard for anybody to save. It is a struggle to just try to stay housed for everybody, and they're in this situation too. So several questions. One, so they are city utility customers, correct? They had to set up accounts to receive the water? Accounts are set up for water service. Okay. And so as you mentioned, under our state of emergency, there are no utility shutoffs. In July, the city state of emergency under COVID still exists. That would mean that nobody's water could get shut off in July either, correct? Can somebody explain to me how that -- how that July deadline could work with a possible still -- a continued COVID situation in July? I don't think the city council has had the policy discussion on when the utility is going to conclude. So, in fact, David Gaines will be bringing something forward here in the next couple of weeks to get some feedback from the council on that. So that has not been decided yet. Well, Mr. City Manager, let me ask you, when does our current declaration order expire? May 31st? Yeah, May 31st. And our current declaration is the one that has the terminology and the terms of no disconnects during this time. So if the emergency declaration expires and it's not renewed, then we resume our normal policy in the utility system. Is that correct? Yes. I am being told that was actually the order. Okay. All right. Okay. I'm sorry, Councilmember Armitage. I just wanted to -- Okay. So I understand that, but as I understand it, we're still going to be dealing with COVID in some way or another by that point. And so people will still need -- citywide will still benefit by not having their water shut off. So I -- That's a council policy -- I understand -- -- that we have not made a decision on. So I just want to caution people listening that not to expect that come July 31st that that will be the same policy in place. The council has not made a determination of that policy. I do understand, but we have consistently had that from the beginning. And so I am keeping this in mind. It's a related issue. So I wanted to ask for clarification on that. Then about the additional $45,000, if they continue to receive water and be allowed to continue saving, preparing for their next steps, whether they choose to stay or go, that 45K will -- is what the cost will be through May of next year, what the additional cost would be? That's correct. Okay. And so that would be -- that's not money that would be required up front. That's just an estimate as to what it might be based on what we've already seen, minus one-time expenses, just looking at on a monthly basis. Is that correct? Correct. So it's based on trending, based on the cost per week or per month of staff time and water costs to deliver. The cost of delivery. So I would think that if it would be necessary to raise the rate of water, my guess would be that people would rather pay a little more for water and have the water delivery extended. Councilmember Armitage, we're not talking about that. The residents haven't talked about that. Have you asked your question yet? So I made my recommendation, I asked some questions and now based on the answers I get, I'm requesting that if this $45,000 is such a big deal that it would put us in a situation where we would cut off people's water in July. Councilmember Armitage, I don't think anybody said the $45,000 is a big deal. Please, we've got several council members wanting to talk, please make your comments and wrap them up. We'll give you another time to be able to speak on this matter, but we can't let you take up five or 10 minutes in the beginning of this conversation. I would appreciate your cooperation in this. So okay, I don't understand why I can't have the time to ask. I thought that it was a big deal and that that $45,000 was the difference. I was going nobody classified that as a big deal. He's simply presenting the facts to us. Okay. Okay. So if that's the case then, then I especially don't understand why we would not extend it for another year if that $45,000 is not a big deal. But if in case it is to anybody, I wanted to propose that we look in at the possibility of possibly raising the cost of the water if cost is a factor for anyone on council. I think it's very manageable cost and very reasonable. And I think that it's important because of the COVID situation that we not end this prematurely and that we give them the time to normalize. Somebody mentioned that... Councilmember Armitter, the translator is asking us to speak slowly. So I would appreciate that. And if you could please wrap your comments up on this round because we have several other council members wanting to comment. And you've been talking for 10 minutes and we all understand your position and we appreciate your recommendations. Now, please let council be able to respond with their own comments. Okay. So finally, in closing, I want to say that if it's true that conditions are beginning to normalize at Green Tree, then that would make them the only community in the city of Denton for which conditions are beginning to normalize. So I find it unbelievable that things are normal anywhere in Denton right now. And I ask that my fellow council members consider that may as a possibility. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. All right. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, sir. I have a couple of three questions and then I'll make my comments. My first question for staff is, I understand we've had no requests for city inspections and that HAPCAP has been doing these inspections, but do we have any indication or assurance that these "minor repairs" are going to make these homes up to code to connect City Water to? And if so, whose assurances are these if city staff is not actually doing the inspections? Staff is relying upon the inspections that were conducted by Habitat. They actually signed confidentiality agreements. We've not had access to the information that they've put together at this point. I don't believe Scott McDonald's team has been able to verify that at this point, but your point is a good one. And I think that's why Mario laid out that one of those next steps needs to be our confirmation of that information. Okay, so that's a new piece of information for me. I knew that we asked Habitat to get involved because they could help us develop relationships there and maybe break through some barriers, but you're telling me there are actually confidentiality agreements so that the city can't know the conditions of these homes before we're supposed to spend money to extend a water line? That has been what was communicated to staff, yes. So we have not been able to independently confirm the seriousness of it or whether they're minor repairs or not. If they are, I would have to defer to Scott and his team as far as what needs to actually be done to bring it into conformance with the updated codes. My next question is about, we've talked quite a bit, I don't know that the residents have talked so much about this, but we've talked about easements for where these water lines are supposed to go, once the meters are dropped, how folks are supposed to get the water to their homes. Have we gotten any kind of clarity from them or from their legal representatives about how they're going to legally run water lines from their homes to the city meters? The answer is no. I guess my last question before I offer some commentary is about the attendance at the meeting last night. My question is about, we have five owner occupied homes and nine that are owned by other people and are being rented out to the folks we're hearing from. What was the attendance like at this meeting? Was it mostly people who are renting out their properties to other people? Was it people who own their homes? Was it people who rent from someone else who's not there on site? I'd just like some more clarity on who we're hearing from when we're being asked to send this declaration a full year. Councilmember, there were approximately two of the owners of the properties that were on the line last night, some renters, some community advocates, representative of the sweat team was on there as well. So it was a mixture of all. We actually had one of the owners who's a landlord who is based in Oklahoma or lives in Oklahoma and she was on the line and she had indicated that she's interested in participating in connecting to the city's water system. Okay. That's about what I expected and I'll offer my comments and direction at this point. My concern with what you just told us, Mario, is who we are actually benefiting if we spend city funds, about $10,000 to extend a water line and hold it out there hoping that someone's going to tie into it at some point. Who we're actually helping are not the people who live there now because they've given us no indication that they have the legal ability or the financial ability today or a year in the future to connect to this water line. We're helping Mr. Roddy and his family, the people who put us in this position in the first place because it makes that land much more attractive to sell. We're helping the landlord in Oklahoma who apparently we've been helping that person rent out their slum by delivering water on a regular basis. So we're spending $10,000 of city money to help the first slum lord and then help the current slum lord keep their substandard housing occupied. That's unconscionable. This is a business I was never comfortable with us getting into in the first place. And now, for the folks who have signed confidentiality agreements that we cannot know the status of their homes or the condition, for them to now come to us and ask us to extend this by another year, I have to say it's very frustrating to me. We are not being dealt with candidly and come to find out there are people who are signing agreements not to deal with us candidly. I am not in favor of waiving the fee. I said back in February, granted, before the COVID crisis that I was not looking forward to a May conversation to talk about how much longer we were going to continue this. I'm open to a conversation about giving them another couple of months, the staff recommendation minus the waiving of the $9,000. It's not about the money. It's about the fact that we had a roadmap for success, and the residents have not done anything to help us down that road to connection. We talked about it, you know, the crisis was in November when the water got turned off. It's not a crisis anymore. It's a situation, it's a dilemma, but we've given folks a way forward, and we are not being dealt with fairly here. It's not a situation of our creation, and we've done everything we can to help. And unless I hear something else about residents allowing city inspections, residents showing some ability to tie in, I'm not sure if anybody else on the council has lived in a mobile home. I have. I'm not sure if anyone else on the council has been responsible for the maintenance of a mobile home. It's very difficult. And I would be very surprised if any of those structures are currently, or even with some minor repairs, able to be legally tied into city water. I've seen nothing so far in this entire situation to give me any confidence that we're going to have connections to city water in those homes. So I can't support either the current staff recommendation or the request from the residents. So Councilmember Davis, for clarification, what you're saying is just to keep the status quo and the termination of the current declaration for, I think it was the end of May or sometime in May. That's correct. I'm astounded the people who are renting, who are paying money to live there on a monthly basis to those landlords who are currently offering substandard housing with no running water. Those are landlords offering those. Any other landlord in the city, we would have shut that down a long time ago, and here we are trying to prop it up. So yes, I'm ready for this to expire. Okay, all right. Any other comments, questions? Councilmember Briggs and then Councilmember Melser. Just a few comments. I think our questions, I think Jesse asked one of the questions. Mine was about the nine renter occupied if the owners of those had been spoken to in their interest in this. The next thing I wanted to say was that you mentioned the sweat team and I know that they are extremely reliable and they do great work and I trust that when they say it's minor, that it will be minor and I trust that if they say they will fix it, they will definitely fix it. So that's where I'm coming from when I look at this and I believe that was the communication that has been had. If I'm speaking incorrectly, please let me know about that situation. My other question or next question is, it said 10 out of the 13 structures have been demolished and that we were still working on three. Are those three working to be fixed or are they working to be demolished and where does that cost come out of when a structure is demolished? They are in the process of being demolished and the owners fronts those costs. Okay. Okay. I'll just, I'll hold the rest of my comments and direction until I hear, until somebody else can speak. Councilmember Meltzer. Did the sweat team go in? Did they draw their conclusions based on their own view of the conditions? That is my understanding. Yeah. I'm inclined to accept that as well. This is a sort of complicated question, but let me just try it out here. It seems very evident to me that at least from one point of view, this is an issue of financing. That you've got people who want to do something and it's just beyond their means to immediately come up with the cash to do it. I know that Sir Benton did bring in one potential kind of community lending organization, but that their limits are $2,000 per loan and you're in the $7,000 range. So I'm sorry, I'm getting a message for people to slow down please on the comments. Yeah. Just so the trans yeah. I apologize. But yeah, that was the instruction. Yep. Thanks. Yeah. So yeah, so to backtrack just a little, the issue seems from one perspective to be one of financing that people want to move forward, but it's difficult to have all the money in advance and if there were a financing solution that maybe might take some time to put together that that could also get the situation resolved. I understand that Sir Denton found a community lender, but that by policy only makes loans up to $2,000 and these are more like $7,000. So what I'm wondering is if in the additional community development block grant money that's coming to Denton, if there might be the ability to create through a partner, say through United Way or someone affiliated with United Way to create a community lending operation. This is the only one of several Councilman Melcer, if you might could slow it down just a little. Yeah, just a little. Yes. Thank you. Sorry. Sorry. Sure. So the question is whether with new funding that's coming to Denton from the CARES Act, if there might be the ability to create a community lending operation with a partner that could make loans to high risk individuals like this where we'd be out of the gifting business, which I frankly wonder whether legal is okay with the gifting components of what's been proposed. But anyway, I'll stop there for reaction. If we went with some longer period of time, because this couldn't be done immediately, could we potentially explore setting up a partner with a lending operation? Todd, I guess the question for me is on those CDBG funds, my understanding is that currently let's exclude the new CDBG funds coming in as a COVID-19 response. The current CDBG funds, we've looked at that and that this property is located in a census track that does not qualify it for current CDBG funding. Is that correct? That is correct, and there's another wrinkle with regarding to the CDBG dollars. We looked at this again yesterday anticipating this might come up and that has to do it. Todd, be aware of just the translation. We have looked at this again as recently as yesterday. The other wrinkle in this is these programs require that folks be naturalized citizens, so that's going to be the other issue. We were told early on that many of these homeowners would not submit themselves to those types of questions, so that's as honest as we can be with that. Okay, I understand. Well, let me make just one further comment that... Translation, yes. One further comment. With the coronavirus response, most things are not happening in the normal course of business, so the fact that we had an agreement set up previously and then the coronavirus response came in suggests that at a minimum, it would be reasonable to stop the clock at the beginning of that declaration and that you would insert an amount of time from then until whenever that declaration ends. We don't know when that will end, but some delay seems entirely appropriate. I'll stop for now. Okay. Anyone else? Council Member Ryan. Translation is in effect, so if you could be mindful of that. I will try my best. Thank you. A question I'd asked at several of the previous meetings that I don't see any answers to is easements for the residents to be able to install these lines. Have we gotten any further information on that? No. That's all I had. Anyone else? Let me see if there's any other first responders, Council Member Meltzer, and I'm going to hold my comments for just a moment. Go ahead, Council Member Meltzer. Is there any particular math to the community request of May next year, or is it just a year? Do we know that that is an amount of time that, based on their ability to save, is it just sort of magically one year, or that's how long it takes to save that amount of money? What drives that date versus any other date? Council Member, the input that they provided yesterday evening was just that, an extra year of time to give them, give the residents as much time as possible to potentially save money to pay the fees. That was the extent. Council Member Briggs? Mario, did they have any comments on the alternative plan that we threw out, which gave them an extra three months to come up with the money? Yes, ma'am. What they stated, while they would prefer additional time, that they would be happy with any time the city would give them. So if it was through mid-November, they would try to make it work. Okay. That was the extent. Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you, Mayor. A couple of questions, I guess to whomever staff, do we know who's on this confidentiality agreement and when did we find out about this? Mayor Pro Tem, I'm not aware who's on the confidentiality agreement. All I know is in visiting with a board member of Habitat, when I had requested a follow-up on how their inspections went from early March, they had indicated in a follow-up email that they couldn't disclose it because of confidentiality agreements that they had signed with each resident. Got it. What was the timing on that? What date, round numbers? Towards the middle latter part of March is when I made my ask of the follow-up. Thank you. And then who on staff, Mr. City Manager, would be best to speak to the point Councilmember Davis raised? What is the city's position on rental units that don't supply water? Our rental, our property owners that don't supply water to the renters. You're not, yeah. And translation as well, Mr. City Manager. Yeah. Thank you. And you, Mayor Pro Tem as well. Yeah, Scott McDonald will answer that question. Good afternoon. Ultimately any dwelling unit in the City of Denton is required to have potable water, heat to be considered habitable as well as sanitary sewage. Okay. And what is the city's action if that's not the case? Well similar to some of the cases that Councils has heard before, it would go through the Health and Building Standards Commission. The Health and Building Standards Commission would hold a public meeting. They would hear the facts on both sides. The city would present and owners may present. That commission would then make a determination if it is a substandard or dangerous structure and order next steps. Okay. And then lastly, how is that process initiated? Ultimately is initiated through code compliance. So we would be citing property owners that do not meet our minimum standards. Those minimum standards would go through and we'd send an order and then failure to rectify or correct any of the deficiencies would result and then it going before HABSCO, the Health and Building Standards Commission. Thank you. Very helpful. And then Mario, have you or staff done an analysis on what it would cost to provide water to the Green Tree Estates residents at no cost to the other citizens? So meaning to recover all costs, have we done an analysis to understand what we would have to recover to... Mayor Pro Tem, we have done that calculation. It's been... So I'm sorry. Let me back up. Slow down. Mayor Pro Tem, we have done that calculation. It's been a while since I've seen that number. The costs that are incurred for the residents currently residents are charged. If you have one container, they are charged $20.59 a month. If you have two containers, they're charged $37.75 a month. Those costs really only reflect the cost of water. It doesn't reflect the cost of labor, the equipment, those costs. It's really just the cost of the water. Okay. So it would be higher if you calculated labor and the equipment cost to deliver the water. Okay. And then last question. Is there anything the sweat team needs from the city to execute the repairs? Meaning can they execute the repairs independent of our decisions? That's what they have indicated to us that those repairs can be made. They typically do not do repairs that require a licensed professional electrical plumbing, those kinds of things. But they can do everything up to that point. Thank you. And Mayor Watts, I'm sorry. One last question for legal. Yeah. And slowly, please. Yes, sir. Yep. Legal. My question is, and I have serious concern about the definition of the emergency order because absent significant changes, and it's been cited here most frequently, the COVID-19 emergency as the deciding factor, but we're operating under a emergency order for lack of water. I just, I wonder in my question, and I'm seeking direction on legal's comfort level with terming this an emergency regarding water when I don't think that's true in every sense of the word going forward. Let me make sure I understand what you're asking about. First we have two orders in place. We have the COVID-19 order, and then we have the declaration of disaster which predated the COVID-19 order. And Larry, if you could just be mindful of the translation in progress as well. It's my understanding on the COVID-19 order that utilities will not be disconnected for non-payment during the time that order is in place. Is that what you're speaking to? No. I guess put it more succinct. I think the original disaster declaration. And let me also give a little, receive some communication. If you could stop between your sentences as well. Just pause between sentences for the translation. That would be very helpful. Thank you, Mayor. Yes. Larry, so I think the original disaster declaration would normally have ended where we set for May 22nd. We're now looking to extend that disaster declaration. My question is, is that legally defensible? Is what legally defensible? The extension of the original disaster declaration. And also, I want to be mindful if we're going to start receiving legal advice, I mean, if we need to go into a closed session, certainly we can do that. But I want us to be careful about talking about some legal issues before the council's had a full chance to possibly vet that out. So we can, as a council, go into closed session on any particular agenda item pursuant to our postings, I believe. And if that's something we need to do, I'm happy to do that. Mayor, we're also posted for a closed session discussion on this. Okay. All right. So we can address that at that time as well. Is that satisfactory to you, Mayor Pro Tem? Yes, sir. Because I would like to pursue that in a little more detail. Okay. We've got Councilmember Briggs, Armitage, and Meltzer. I want you to, I haven't spoken yet, so I'm going to speak at the end. We've got to give staff direction. I want us to keep our comments brief and to the point so we can get this matter wrapped up so we can move on down the agenda. I think we've had a lot of comments, and we're going to need to give staff direction here in a few moments. Councilmember Briggs. This is my staff direction, but I also just wanted to address that and have a little bit of facts here that the confidentiality agreements were preliminary and that the city can and do those inspections in June. It's not that they're still prohibiting the city inspections and five owner occupied and one rental were all inspected, and the sweat team said that they feel like they can manage the lift. Councilmember Briggs, if you could slow down a little and just pause between your sentences, I'm getting some instruction to maybe share that comment. Okay, sorry. I apologize. Should I start over? If you would like, and just, yes. So I wanted to address some comments made by Councilmember Davis regarding slumlords. Five of those homes that were inspected were owner occupied and one was a rental. The list from Habitat went to the sweat team and they felt like they could accomplish everything there. I am in favor of the alternative solution, which meets in the middle. It allows three months extra time. I have complete confidence in Habitat's list and the sweat team to do what is needed. So that green tree can finally have water on a permanent basis. So you're Councilmember Briggs, you're in support of the staff alternative proposal of November, what was it, the 30th and the associated timelines? It's where our complete spending authority, yes, where we don't have to come up with the extra funds. Okay. All right. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. Yes, I would like to respond to some points that have been made. Councilmember Briggs just addressed part of one and I appreciate that response. It is true also that last night at the meeting, there were three owners and only one renter. So we're really talking about primarily owners now. This is not a slumlord situation. The slumlord is the well owner, Roddy, and his properties have been taken care of. Easements, it's true that there is a lot that is not known about easements. However, I wanted to point out that easements are for the protection of the property owner. I wanted to point out that about the confidentiality agreements, as Councilmember Briggs mentioned, it does in no way prevent the city from doing inspections. It is preliminary. I wanted to add to that that when the city offered to do inspections as a courtesy, a kind of a pre-inspection, courtesy inspection is what they were called, the city also let the residents know that this would be private information and that they would not use that information to determine code enforcement or any such thing. So the city was offering something very similar. So I don't understand why that is so controversial. And your direction is? So I wanted to add that however long we can delay this, under COVID, we are preventing people from being homeless. That is critical. People have water now. So nobody's in a situation without water. People are in homes that whatever repairs they need are minor. So they are not in a dangerous living situation. It only becomes dangerous when the access to the water gets taken away. My direction is, as before, I prefer May, but as a second choice, I am all for November. So I am going to make my request today for November, knowing that people need as much time as they can, and having heard from my fellow council members that cost is not so much of an issue as is the principle of the thing. I think as a matter of principle, this is the way to go. Councilmember Meltzer. I'm inclined to November, but there's another possibility, and I have a question. What is driving the timing or the timing sensitivity? Is it the fact that the provision of water is being subsidized, or is it something else? And before I take that answer, if it is just the sort of principle of the service being subsidized, as Councilmember Armentor and Mayor Portem alluded, I wonder if it were fully costed, so it wasn't taking anything from other city resources, would we care really about the timing, or is there another factor driving that? Well, I think there's a couple of things. We had been directed to come back to you in April to come up with the updated status of this particular case. We ended up moving that back a few weeks so we could deal with our own budgetary issues and didn't feel like it was a huge issue given the fact that we had an emergency order covering the situation through the end of May. You're talking pretty fast, Todd. Yes, I am. Pause between sentences. You're okay. The initial recommendation was to try to keep the project in as close of a timeline as possible. It's costing the city rate payers about $385 to $400 a week to provide water out into that area. And that was a question that continues to come up from the Council. The residents asked for an additional year past the original November, I'm sorry, May deadline, I think Mario tried to craft a middle ground solution in order to try to get this resolved to the Council's satisfaction and also help the residents with their cash flow. I think the important thing with the November, there's two points that need to be made here, though there's two points with the November 13th, 2020 deadline, that assumes that city inspections are completed in June. That has not taken place yet and we're not in any way disregarding the SWAT team's efforts or the work they do, but it is unfair to put Scott and his team on, you know, in a position of answering your questions about the health and safety code compliance in that area when our experts haven't been able to take a look at it. No, just a moment, somebody's got the meeting on, if they could, okay, either turn the meeting down. Mayor, you and there we go. Okay. So, you want me to go now? Yes, go ahead, Todd. Okay. So, that was what was driving it. I just wanted to point out that June 2020 deadline, which is really driving this entire conversation, but it is critical to get Scott's team out there. I realized it was voluntary and we're trying to, I guess we're splitting some hairs about whether they were invited in or not. We had left that last meeting stating that it would be purely voluntary to invite Scott's team, which did not happen, but his team has to be able to take a look at this situation, the electric, plumbing, see exactly what kind of work needs to be done, make sure that our water and wastewater folks are also in agreement before he can answer your questions and provide any budgetary certainty at all. It may be worse than we're looking at right now. We just don't know. It could be a situation where there's a worst case scenario out there or there may be more work than we're anticipating to meet code, but I just wanted to, you know, this is a great conversation. I don't envy any of you, but until our experts can get out there and get the information back to you and verify these numbers, it's a very challenging situation. So that June date is very critical just in terms of everybody coming to a common sense of what needs to be done. Okay. Council Member Davis. Thank you, sir. Just very brief. Wait a minute. Can I sort of? Oh, yes. Sure. I'm sorry, Council Member Meltzer. Hold on just a moment. Council Member Davis. Yes. Go ahead, Council Member Meltzer. So I completely understand and concur that the city inspections and that timing are important, critical to our understanding of the prospects going forward, but my question was about timing on the overall process. Is there anything particularly driving the timing other than our own having, our having made dates, if it were fully not subsidized, if it were fully costed, and it wasn't taking, you know, net resources from the city, is there anything driving the timing? I'll just walk the line a little bit to defer to Larry later, but we have not allowed this situation to occur anywhere else in the city, and if the same set of facts occurred anywhere else in the city, we would shut down the development. So in order to try to put a complete plan together as soon as possible that's reasonable and empathetic, we're trying to get a timeline where very clear deadlines can be met, progress evidenced, and also I think the easements, you know, are the critical other issue that several of you have voiced is we've got to see some progress in all these particular areas or else we're putting you in a very precarious legal situation, and Larry can go into a bit more detail later. So provisionally, I'm supporting November, but I feel that we should have the closed session before we give final direction. Let me say that if we get a consensus of four in the direction here, well, then we're still going to go into the closed session, but that will still be the direction less changed by council, the four who concurred in the closed session. So we can give direction here. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, sir. I'll be very brief because I had a chance to speak a moment ago. I just want to be clear that I don't have anything negative at all to say about the sweat teams or Habitat for Humanity, but their job is not to inspect homes for the suitability for connection to city services. The sweat team specifically does not perform licensed work. They can't, they can't legally do licensed work without engaging a licensed plumber or a licensed electrician. They did not go in there to inspect those homes for connection to city services. That's something that only a city employee can do, and a homeowner happens frequently that they disagree with. They or their contractor disagree with the permitting body, us, about the adequacy of their situation. It happens all the time. So we could have a very different opinion as our city staff could than the sweat teams, and it's a perfectly reasonable disagreement to have, ultimately the city has to do those inspections or like Todd said, we have no idea about the ability to connect. The thing that gets me frustrated is that we have offered those inspections on a voluntary basis for six months and not one of those homeowners, much less the landlords, have taken us up on that. We've done everything we can to make that available and no one has taken us up on it. It becomes suspicious to me after six months of not being allowed to inspect that these homes are not going to be suitable for connection to city services and a few minor repairs are not going to do the trick. I also want to mention, since my slumlord comments were taken just a little bit out of context, I am not in favor of any extension of anything that involves the nine renter occupied homes. Those are landlords who have responsibilities, property owners who have responsibilities that should have stepped in long before this or let those folks out of their leases. I'm open to further conversations about those five owner occupied homes, those property owners who would like to invite the city in to do inspections. I'm open to a conversation about giving them till the end of June or something like that for the five owner occupied homes, but I'm done bending over backwards for people who continue to rent to folks homes that are in this situation. Okay now Councilmember Briggs, I'm going to have to close the discussion. I've not made my comments, I'm going to make my comments. I think it's really easy to forget how we are here because it seems like as I've listened to the conversations, it's evolved from the city was doing something that was the right thing to do, help someone that was put in a position that they had no control over to now it's become our job because there's no development in this city. If somebody tried to put 13 mobile homes on this land, and I will slow down, to put 13 mobile homes on this land with no water access and people moved in and somehow they trucked water in the same way we're doing, the city would not be, that would not be acceptable to the city at all. I'm disappointed that I still get emails from alleged housing advocates threatening to sue us when it seems like there was probably some suggestion by advocates to issue, to require confidentiality agreements with Habitat for Humanity during the inspections. If I remember correctly, that meeting, the city allowed Habitat to do that at the request of the residents, understanding that we would be able to see the list so we could give guidance on what needs to be done. I don't know how many of you here on this panel have ever built anything in this city and had to pull a permit and had to go through code compliance, whether it be new construction, modification or a simple repair like the replacement of a hot water heater. If you have not, you do not understand the nuances, the changes, the technicalities and the expertise required in order to perform some of those tasks. Now, I don't know what that inspection showed, but I almost can guarantee you that if our city inspectors went in to almost any home in this community, they would find probably issues that were not in compliance with the code. I can almost guarantee you if they go out and inspect those homes as they would looking for code compliance to hook up to utilities, which requires that the home be brought up to current code standards. They would probably find inconsistencies in things that need to be repaired. That's why it's critical, not so that big government can lord it over people who don't have any power, but it's the city's responsibility to ensure the health and safety of our residents through code compliance. I'm really disturbed and very disappointed about the confidentiality agreements. If someone would have shared with staff or contacted counsel or legal to share what the reasons for that or why those might be needed, we might could have worked out a way to facilitate to where we could meet their interests as well as meet our interests. I'm also concerned that the owners of those nine rental properties, except for the one that was mentioned here today, have not made any attempt to contact the city. So we're asking renters who say they need time to save up money to spend $6,000 or $7,000 on improving the land of a private property owner who at any time can ask them to move if their lease is up. That's what's unconscionable to me. Secondly, I'm not in favor of the November extension or the May of 2021 extension. This isn't about cost. This is about the city doing something that the city would not do for anyone else in this community. No developer could be in this situation and the city provide, I think, the accommodation, the mitigation and the accommodation that we have provided to the residents. Unfortunately, from my opinion, it seems like there's not been much of an effort to help the city to help the residents. Understanding that if we weren't in the midst of this pandemic, which just as an aside, first of all, staff did not say that things were returning to normal. Staff said things seemed to be normalizing and they are certainly different today than they were last week. And the governor just stated in a press conference that salons will be open, I believe, on May 8th and gyms, I believe, on May 18th. So things are returning to something that is different than we were last week. So I'm going to make a proposal that we extend the deadline to August 31st, that we keep the timeline of the original staff proposition of July 31st, that we keep the timeline of those events, the dates of the inspection, the signing up for service, and that we can have a meeting at the end of July. I'm not for extending this out another six months. I don't have any issue extending it some to take an account, as Councilmember Meltzer, I believe, said about tolling because of the pandemic. Because if today were to happen without us having experienced the last month and a half, I would not be in favor of any extension because we've had no help from the residents and these advocates to help the city obtain what they need to continue to move forward. And I've seen, we've all received the emails. Find a permanent solution. Folks, we have a permanent solution. Staff has just recommended a permanent solution, and that is the installation of a meter bank that costs the city, I think it was at $9,600 or $10,000, something to that effect, a meter bank, which then becomes the responsibility of each private property owner of the 13 understanding that that meter bank is not to provide water to the entire community, which we have not discussed yet, to these lots that aren't part of this discussion. But it is a permanent solution. The residents would then have the opportunity within their control to connect that meter to their residents. Now, there are things they have to do. They have to acquire easements and they have to pay the fees. Those two requirements have been a requirement from day one. Those questions have been questions from day one. There comes a point when the city has to do its job, when we're saying, "Let's help them," and I believe we have, and we are offering a permanent solution. So I don't want there to be any misunderstanding. If people's definition of a permanent solution is the city running private water lines on private land to private residents, that is not a permanent solution that the city can do. The city is providing a permanent solution. They've laid it out very meticulously. I'm very disappointed that on the call last night, there were only three or four owner occupied units and one renter. That's less than half of the people that we're talking about. And as far as people being homeless, we don't know if people are going to be homeless. And there's one other issue that really concerns me. This is why I'm very frustrated, because it seems like we're getting mixed messages from the residents. We decided back in November of last year, December, to extend this and to allow them, and we even advocated for the school district, to allow these children in this development, no matter what happened, to stay in their attendance zone. That's why I'm choosing the date of August the 31st, because if we go out through November 31st, we're going to hear the same discussion, and that is, we need to let the kids stay in the schools in which they're in. I think we've given plenty of opportunity. We've certainly given plenty of direction. In fact, if you read the letter that was sent to the residents in March, very comprehensive. Even to the point of asking, if you have a backflow preventer, do you still require a city inspection? If I asked everybody on this panel if they knew what a backflow preventer would be, we'd probably about have, y'all might know what that is, but it's to prevent a bad water system that someone's tying into with public water to flow back into the Denton water system. Let's not lose track of how we got here. We got here because someone shut the water off, which apparently they had the legal right to do. We had a legal annexation agreement which spelled out, particularly with specificity, what was needed to hook up to city water. None of that occurred, and the city has worked tirelessly to try to figure out a way to provide a permanent solution. We have now proposed a permanent solution, and so I'm going to propose, and if we don't want to agree to August, then I'll agree to the July date, but because May and July is about two or three months, and when you're told the pandemic, I'm okay with August because then it gets also time for school district attendance and things such as that, but in no way am I going to agree to November, and I'm not certainly going to agree to May of 2021. So I'm going to ask for direction, mine is August 31, and if that doesn't work, if there's three of you that want July, I will do that. We've heard already two directions, which was Council Member Briggs was okay with the November presentation by staff. Council Member Armitter prefers the May 2021 solution, but can accept the November solution as proposed by staff. Council Member Davis doesn't want to do any extension, at least in his initial remarks in May, and as far as anybody, I think Council Member Meltzer, I think you had said that you're okay with November pending the discussion in closed session. So that's where we are. We've got the proposal, Council Member Briggs, I'm going to get the direction from the council. We've been going at this for about almost two hours, and Council Member Davis, I want to touch base back with you again. Yes, sir, I'm fine with the July date in the staff recommendation. My holdup with the staff recommendation really was more about the waterline than the extension of time. That's a separate issue, but as far as extension of the disaster declaration, I'm okay with July 31. Okay. Council Member Ryan, I have not heard from you. I'm in the same way, July 31, but I'd like to see a date in there that says that we see that they've got easements before we do anything on our end. Okay. All right, Mayor Pro Tem. I really need to go, I need to, two things I need to understand, one, are we talking about owner-occupied or rental or all, and then two, I really need, I have my question for legal that's going to help me. I hate to be... Okay. All right. I can only tell you from my perspective, when I talk about a deadline or a date, I'm talking about all the units that have an issue out there, because if somebody wants to come up and hook up to a water line, I don't know if the city says, "Are you the property owner?" If it's a requirement that the line be hooked up by the property owner, well, then we have a much bigger issue. So that's something we need to find out the answer to as well. All right. So I don't hear consensus. So what that means is we're going to go into closed session, and we're not going to do that right now. We're going to move through our agenda because we've got it scheduled for closed session, and then we're going to have to come back. And when we come back to this item, well, we have translators waiting, is that correct? So I'm going to then go ahead, since we have translation available, I'm going to go ahead and move us into closed session on this issue so that we can come right back out. And so I'm asking that those who are on the line listening, that somehow if staff could be sure and get a number or something to where we can contact them back when we go back into open session. And I ask that the translators just sort of sit with us until we come out of closed session because we'll go right back into this instead of wasting everybody's time and having to call everybody back and get everybody back together. All right. So at this time, we will go into closed session pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.071, and this is attorney advice only. And it is 347. So what we'll do when we come out of executive session, we'll give some time for everybody to get back together on the phone and the translators, and then we'll start our meeting. I cannot give a specific time on that. I suspect it won't take that long, maybe 30 minutes, 20, 30 minutes. All right. So we will now convene in closed session at 347. We'll take five minutes. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on May the 5th, 2020. It is 427. And we are going to, we convened or adjourned our closed session, which was pursuant to work session item number one, agenda 3A. So now we will resume agenda item 3A, and I will slow it down because we're in translation. So the 3A work session was receive report, hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the green tree of states, emergency declaration, et cetera. All right. So we were, we are back in our open session. Mayor Pro Tem. I would like to talk to or ask the city manager, are we talking about the same residents? Has anything changed as far as the residents there at a green tree since we've been under this disaster declaration? Mayor Pro Tem, this is Mario Kanazaris. There has been. It is my understanding and I don't know how long ago, and I'll slow down for the translator. It is my understanding and I don't know how long ago that there has been a, a least one person that's a renter or one family that's a renter that has turned over since the emergency declaration began. So there has been at least one turnover of tenants or residents in the subdivision. So to clarify that someone moved out and that vacant home was then re rented. That is my understanding. Yes, sir. And do we know which address that is? We do believe it's 4000 excuse me, 4003 hilltop. Okay I'll take some notes and listen. I've got a real quick question to follow up on that. I do remember at our last meeting discussing this that it was reported that one of the residents had moved out and now what I'm understanding is another resident has moved in, which is not a part of the original ones that were part of the original declaration and the original issue with the disconnection of the well water. So let's now look at the situation we have. We have an owner who has re rented a property in the middle of this emergency declaration because the city is providing water. How are these accounts set up currently? I mean typically an account is set up, I call down, I give an address, I give my name, I give my information and the account is in my name. Is the account in the names of either the owner occupants or the renters? Mayor Krista Foster our manager for utility customer service is on the line and she can answer that question. Okay. Because we were born, oh, yeah, go ahead, start now. Yeah, you're on now. Okay, so for these particular properties, excuse me, if you could slow down just a little we're in translation from English to Spanish. So if as you're talking, talk a little slower and maybe take a pause between sentences. And I'm sorry to interrupt you. That's okay. I had already forgotten that we were having to translate. So for these particular accounts, the accounts are set up under the property addresses as resident one, resident two, resident three. Because at the time when we had to set these accounts, there were some issues with some of our current practices for documentation and what was going to be available. And with the timing that we had, that was the solution that we came to while they were under the temporary order. Okay. And it's my understanding that we've changed that policy where there's IDs now that we can't accept that we did not accept, which precipitated this process. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilmember Davis. Mayor, before we went to close session, you are asking us to state our positions and try to find some kind of consensus on this issue going forward. My previously stated position was that I was okay with an extension to July to allow time for folks to do the city inspections and other necessary things. I have to revise that at this point. For any property that is not owner occupied, I can't support anything except for cutting off the disaster declaration. We've had six months now of propping up rental situations. And now to come to find out that some predatory landlord out there has re-rented a substandard home in violation of every code we've got. I can't support that with extending that declaration to July so that somebody can keep renting out and taking money from people for a house that doesn't have running water. So my position is to extend the declaration for the owner occupied homes only and to stop. I think legally we have to extend the declaration as a piece, but my direction would be underneath that declaration that we stop providing water just like we said we would on May 22nd for the rental homes. That's exactly what we said we'd do back in February. I'd be open to discussing a different date to give them time to find another place to be, but I'm not going to sit here and help a landlord make rent off these folks for a substandard home. Okay, all right, anybody else? Yeah, I'm concerned. I'm concerned that this is sort of what we've gotten ourselves into. So let's make it very clear. And I want people, my colleagues to hear this, and I want those listening on the lines and via our DTV. We are doing all of this. And the meeting that was had last night contained less than half of the 13 or 14 homes, representatives from the 14 homes that were there. Is that my understanding, Mario? There's somebody, I think Councilmember Armitage, you said there were three owner-occupies and one renter on the call. And that's four out of the 14. You know, I don't have any problem helping people at all. And I don't think this Council has any problem helping people. I think we've demonstrated that time and time and time again. But this is what's happened. Now we have someone who has moved out and that was reported to us. That was reported to us that somebody decided they wanted to relocate instead of move through this process. And now what we're doing is we're providing water to a landlord so that he can release that property or she can release that property. I'm struggling with that. I don't mind continuing my original direction except for the house at 4003 Hilltop, which was not a part of the original group that came before us, unless that owner was one who actively participated. However, so this Council needs to also begin to make some decisions. If people move out who are renters, are we okay with other people moving in to a situation like this? I for one am not willing to do that. So I'm not sure how we handle this moving forward. We may not have a consensus on a date. And if we don't, then the current date, which is May the 22nd, stands. Council member Armitter. Yes. So two things. Number one, I'm okay with limiting the water to residents who were living at Green Tree at the time of the original disaster declaration. I don't support distinguishing as far as water supply goes, distinguishing between owner occupied or tenants, but I'm fine as far as limiting it to people who were there originally. Number two, I wanted to ask, did staff send an invitation to every single household? Because if not, I don't think we should fault the community for not having full attendance. Even if they did, we should not fault those who were there and expect them to represent their whole community. They're representing only their own household, just like at the gas well. Let's let him answer that question. Was an invitation sent out? Yes, mayor, council member Armitter, all correspondents from the city to regarding Green Tree and has gone to not only the residents that live there in subdivision, but also the property owners. Okay. Thank you. So it was sent to every household. Thank you. So I think, you know, I don't know what the percentage was for say the gas well public hearing where we sent invitation to everybody who lived near a gas well, I know that's very different because of public hearing, but my point being, you know, this is the only situation where I have heard us at least recently talking about kind of taking attendance as if it's a class where people in the class are responsible for the attendance of others. I really don't think that's fair for what it's worth. Well, I understand that. And I hear that. My concern is that's not how they've come to us before they've come as a group. We haven't they haven't come as individuals, in fact, even to the point of having advocacy groups advocating for the entire group. And my thought would be if this is that important to you and you have a meeting with the city talking about an extension of a deadline or a deadline that's fixing to arrive where you may not have water, okay, fair enough. But if there's not more interest than that, I think we need to know that. So Mr. Mayor, with all due respect, anybody only comes to counsel as an individual. If people collectively decide as individuals, let's all go together, they're still going as individuals. So again, I think we should be careful with with the way we're I don't disagree. So therefore, if there's only four or five that are interested in this issue, then we need to have a I'm going to want to have a totally different conversation than the one we're having right now. Because I think that if there we've only got four or five who are truly interested in this and interested in signing up and involved in the discussion. That's a different conversation for me. Well, we also don't know maybe people had to go to work. Councilmember Councilmember Hudson may protein husband and then Councilmember Meltzer. So I'm going to give my direction. So one, I'm not going to I cannot in good faith, especially everyone, let me slow down. Everyone has touched on the financial urgency, the city has that same urgency, I can't support anything that does that does not recoup 100% of the cost that extra $400 per week needs to be recouped. So anything going forward that subsidizes this neighborhood cost the other taxpayers, we wouldn't do it for anyone else. I want to treat them no different. My so once I hear someone willing to adopt that, then I'll look at those dates. I just to share my concluding remarks. I'm very frustrated with these groups that email us threaten issuing threats. And I hope we get an email from them expressing their concern about fair housing in this instance at 4003 hilltop. If we don't hear from those groups, on this instance, I'm going to be very disappointed. And then I will also listen to the group regarding how to address this issue at 4003 hilltop, because I agree they should be excluded. And my last question for staff, what is habitat for humanities position when it comes to rental properties versus ownership, owned properties, remind me of that. I'm not sure that we've got the ability to answer the question of owner occupied versus rented properties. Their only role in this matter was simply to serve as an intermediary to try to open up communication with our inspections department. But beyond that, I'm not sure where they stand right now on this issue or their mission as a whole. Okay. So I'll stipulate their policy, I don't know if it's specific to this, but their policy is they have a tap for humanity has a wing that only supports and helps homeowners. Just to say that is that's the distinction is they have that distinction. And so I think I don't see a problem with the city mirroring those distinctions or ultimately just picking a date that it's fair and gives everyone an opportunity to adjust and moving forward with the group. I'll just, I'll listen to see where the consensus falls. Council Member Melser. Did you have a comment? Yes. Okay. And then Council Member Briggs. So I concur with the sentiment that our arrangement was with a set of people and that to provide water and that didn't include a new person coming later who has rented a substandard home. So I concur with that. I would also say that in the long run, when we make arrangements to connect to the city, that has to be with homeowners. If the homeowner hasn't come forward and so far we're hearing from the renter, well, I'd say you know who you pay rent to, you've got to get your landlord on board and if they can't come on board, you know, then you've got to look at whatever your options are. That all said, I'm still fine with November because the underlying issue is just a sort of compromise in giving time to account for the fact that we've all had an interruption in life and that this is just a very big task for an owner or a renter thinking they've got to pay for it. It's still a big task to come up with that money. I wish there were a financing mechanism other than just waiting, but you know, if that's the one we have, I'm comfortable with November. But still, that means you've got to hit the hurdles of city inspection and the ability to bring the property up to habitable standards and coming up with that money. So that's my direction. Councilmember Briggs, if I could ask Councilmember Meltzer just a clarifying question. You'd mentioned something about only working with homeowners. I'm not sure what you mean by that exactly. What do you mean by that? Well, you know, when we connect, we're going to have an agreement to connect and the other one party is the city and the other party's got to be the owner. Okay. So no matter what the date is, that's something that you want to see is that all 13 or 14 of these homes that we're talking about, if they connect, you want that to be a connection that is originated and followed through with by the real property owner of record. Yeah, I think that's what we do in every case, everywhere in the city of Denver, probably ever in America. Okay. All right. All right. Councilmember Briggs. I would just like to ask staff for a little bit of clarification on the $400 of taxpayer money. My understanding that out of the $400 a week of the cost to the city, that is divided by the 14 residents. So that's the $28. And then the residents would pay that portion. Is that correct? Let me clarify Councilmember Briggs. My understanding based on input from our water department, full cost of service, which would include labor, equipment, and the actual water delivered three times a week. If you were to use a full cost of service, it would be approximately $385 per month for residents at Green Tree Estates. Okay. So I'm just trying to clarify because it was my understanding that they were paying, but they're just not paying the full $28 extra that they need to pay. That's for each. I'm sorry, Councilmember. That $385 per month would be for each resident, but what they are paying right now is $20. Just for one container would be $20.59. So they're not paying for the labor, the equipment. It's purely just for the cost of the water, just the actual water running through the meter. Okay. So the sooner we can get them into a system, the better. So I just want to address the one thing that we heard about attendance, and it's my understanding, and I also made the comment before. It doesn't matter, we haven't advocated that everybody has to do it. I mean, we were willing to allow one person, or two people, or three people to connect at the time, and I'm also under the same guidance of who was under the order to begin with shall remain consistently under the order. And Mayor, I'd like for you to state what your date was and where you were earlier before the closed session. I think where I was was for an August 31st date. I may waver on that a little bit based upon this new information. The August 31st date, keeping all the timelines that were in the July 31st date. In other words, the inspection timeline, the money timeline, all those timelines. So that gives us an opportunity to come back in July and look at this again to see if all those conditions have been met, and if not, we can determine which one to do. Now I will say, I understand that what my understanding was, we didn't say, my understanding was about the one person, or two people, or three people signing up. That wasn't about we'll be willing to do this for one person. I'm gonna tell you right now, if there's only one household or one property owner that wants to sign up, and we knew that today, I would say the May deadline is it. What we did is we said we couldn't ascertain at that time how many people would be willing to sign up, and that fee became a variable fee, and that was something that the residents said to us was a problem and a concern, because we were saying, well, if only one person signed up, then this is gonna be your fee. If two people signed up, this will be your fee. If four people signed up, this will be your fee. And what we did as a city, wanting to help, the last recommendation from staff is, we will pay for the meter bank that we've installed. We will pay for the permanent solution to the problem. And that the property owners now, and I agree with Councilmember Meltzer, the property owners, it then becomes their obligation, because it's all private property on the other side of that meter bank, to do what they need to do to obtain the necessary approvals to use easements. And then once they get their plumbing and their piping installed, the city inspects, they inspect the connection, make sure everything's okay, and you turn the water on. So if we're only talking about one or two families, I think if that were known at the beginning of this whole process, again, this conversation would be different. And now what we've heard is one renter has moved out, now somebody else has moved in. And I don't know if we can legally say, if you're providing Water City to now 4003 Hilltop, and we're going to turn it off, we're going to quit delivering water there, but we're going to be delivering it everywhere else out there. That's a decision this council is going to make. I'm very concerned about that development. And so that was my original proposal, was August 31st, with the current deadlines in place. And if we can legally somehow provide a time limitation on the water delivery to 4003 Hilltop, then I would be in favor of that. Whether or not we can do that, I'm not sure. I'm just really concerned that we've created now a situation that is getting much deeper for us, and we need to come to a resolution and a solution on this issue. Councilmember Armitage? So several things. So as when Krista from customer service spoke, I believe she said that when the accounts were initially set up, they were set up as, sorry, I'll talk slower, when Krista from customer service first spoke, she said that the accounts were originally set up as resident one, resident two, or was it residence CE one and residence two? Could you help me understand the significance of that? Well, the significance being that, now I'm not a lawyer, but if they were set up as resident one, a resident two, then we could simply say that the delivery of water was, as I believe it was, a mistake to new residents, because there's no agreement with the house. It's an agreement with the person, but I don't know, and I'm curious to know if she said it was a resident one... It doesn't matter. I'm sorry, sir. Councilmember Armitage, listen, she said it was set up by address, and they just simply put as a label in the name portion instead of somebody, it's not somebody named resident one or resident two. I understand, but I'm curious to know what the label was. Is Krista there? May I hear from Krista? And then make your comments brief. We're going to get some direction on this. We're moving forward. All right. And if we don't have a consensus, then it will expire and we'll deal with the situation then. So while we're waiting for Krista to come on the phone, I will say that I have not heard anybody here, and apologies if I'm mistaken, I've not heard anybody here oppose excluding new residents, okay? So if we all agree that new residents should be excluded from the water, then there's just the issue about possible liability. I'm not all that concerned about that since it appears to have been a mistake, unless the agreement was with houses instead of with people and accounts. So Krista, if you could explain. We simply created an account for each address and they are addressed to resident one through resident 14. Okay. Resident. So R-E-S-I-D-E-N-T? Yes. Okay. Great. So this is my argument. If you could make it brief, council member Armitter, please. We must move on. You had plenty of opportunity to speak, please. This is extremely important and I must speak slow for the translator. If these accounts were indeed set up as resident one, resident two, just like every other customer service account, which is only tied to the address in that it's the address where that resident lives, then in this case, we can say that delivery of water to additional residents was a mistake. It was a mistake and it will cease and then we do not have that additional cost burden and we can clear that up in the wording. Does anyone else support me? We will take a consensus on that. Absolutely. Thank you. Any other questions or comments on this? Council member Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. I'm looking at the AIS in our backup and the owner of the 4003 also owns another property out there and the resident is listed, unless it's two people by the same name, the resident at 4003 is listed in two different spots as a resident. Can the staff have any clarification on that? Well we'll have staff do a little research on that. I don't want to get caught up in who owns it or who's living there. We just got to make a decision on what do we do when we have people turning over. Now if we do it only with the owners, then that's going to be, so I'm going to add a condition to my proposal, and that is that by a certain date, and staff can help me with that date, that because we do now accept IDs that were not acceptable before, that each person receiving water service out there comes in and opens up an account in their name. Because right now there is no name on the account. It's simply by address. And so that's one of the conditions I'm going to put on is that by the end of May, the middle of June, that they come in and substitute their name with the corresponding ID that they have that we now accept and onto the account. So I guess my question is, are we able in this situation to exclude certain houses from, and so I'm going to withdraw that. I'm going to withdraw my condition of excluding 403 because if we're willing to do that folks, on that technicality if someone else is moving in, then we just need to just stop this whole process because what we're doing is we're going to be doing to someone in 403 that we've been fighting so hard over these last eight months not to do. We never put that condition on. We never put that condition on. This is the difficulty of this. This is the hole that this council is digging for itself. And until we find a deadline, and we give everybody an opportunity to perform, and with Council Member Meltzer's suggestion that it's now the property owners coming forward to make these connections and to have these inspections because Habitat of Humanity only inspected the owner occupied properties. Am I correct in that? Did I hear that correctly? Just one. Mayor, it was my understanding that they only inspected the owner occupied but Council Member Briggs mentioned during the meeting that they may have also inspected one renter occupied home. Okay. I wasn't aware of that. Okay. All right. Well, you weren't aware because people signed a confidentiality agreement. That's one of the reasons. Okay. We need direction. We're wrapping this up. Council Member Briggs you got 30 seconds. You're on mute. Sorry. I'm going to be in agreement with your August date so that we can try to achieve some consistent consensus to get this process moving. And I do know that the homeowners agreed to the June inspection date. So we can go from there. Okay. All right. So let's go around and take another. And so I need to review what my proposal was. Mauro, could you put up the deadlines for the July 31st? Yes, sir. Give me give me a moment. Sure. Mayor, that's the slide. Okay. All right. So I'm going to say that what what day of the week is July 24th? Give me a minute. July 24th is a Friday. Okay. So I'm going to say that I'm going to agree to these conditions. But I want to add a couple more that by June the 12th, which is the same date of the customer service inspections are completed. And this is completed of all the residences. Not just the owner occupied, but all of them that I want to add and that water service will be transferred into the name of those occupying that residence. Because as renters, you can get an account, obviously. Also I want to put in there that on that would be Friday 3rd. I think July 22nd is our is a council meeting or it is a Tuesday, but somewhere in there, I want a council meeting to give an update on all these items that are supposed to be performed right before they're connected on July 24th. So that before July 24th gets here, we understand as a council, who's paid, who's wanting to accept and who hasn't. Mayor, can I interject something? Yes. Just looking ahead, July 7th, you do not meet due to the July 4th, due to Independence Day. Yes. So it looks like your next regular meeting would be July the 14th. And then the meeting after that would be the 21st and the 28th. Okay. So let's do it on July 14th, because the July 17th and 24th are actions that the city has to complete based upon the actions of the residents. Other words, by July 3rd, according to this slide, that we should know who's already ready to sign up, who's paid, and then whose meter we need to set. That's correct. Because we cannot, as a council, come to a July 14th meeting with three or four people who have paid and others saying they need more time and willing to give them more time when we weren't willing to give those before more time. We've got to find the city in this slide and in this proposal, just a different date has provided a permanent solution that the city is offering of city action to these residents. The remaining action is upon the residents themselves on private property. I would also say that after today, that sometime in the next few days, that part of this date include that no new water will be delivered to the residences of these 14 who have been vacated and then since, well, just since vacated. In other words, if it goes vacant between now and July the 14th, no water service will be delivered to that unit. Then that will avoid the situation that we had developed where somebody moved out and then a landlord put them back in. Okay. And that is my proposal. And so the only thing changing on this slide are three things. The addition of a council meeting on July 14th, three things, excuse me, four things. The addition of residents coming in to sign up in their name for the water service at their address. Number three, no new water deliveries for those units that have gone vacant who are receiving water now after today when disordinates. And then that last bullet point on July 31st, that will be August 31st. And it says there the emergency declaration and temporary water service, let me take this off because I can't read it, hold on, ends. So that gives a specific date of August the 31st when no matter what the situation is on the ground, the city will have performed pursuant to these conditions and the declaration will end and the temporary water service ends and then those units left without water delivery or without water, those units will be processed in the same manner as any property in our city that does not provide utilities to the occupants, whether it's a business or whether it's a residence. So that is my recommendation, my proposal. If we could take that off so I could pull the council, since I made it, it's not a motion, this is just direction. So I'm going to obviously approve that direction, we're just going to start at the top, go down. Councilmember Davis? No I can't support that, I'm done propping up the landlords. All right. Councilmember Briggs. Mayor, I have a clarification question for you. Okay. So if only three pay, we're not going to do the connection? If only three pay, I think that we committed back, a while back, that if three people pay, that they will be allowed to connect. That was the whole discussion with either the variable fee or the flat fee that the city agreed to, but I'm going to add another condition in there as well. So I'm going to add one more condition, and that is after July 31st, that no one can hook up to the meter without paying the necessary costs and the prorated costs of the extension of the line and the infrastructure to get it there. In other words, we've said we are going to provide a benefit to the people currently there, and if only four of them sign up, then we will prorate it out. In fact, I'm going to say this, I'm going to strike that, that we will provide no more water service to any other resident out there after August 31st, and certainly no new residents that is not receiving water currently. We're not going to get in the situation of having a hundred meter bank water connection out there or a hundred meter loss there are. So that's my, and we can, if it's confusing, I'll clear it up when we come for an ordinance if it, if you get direction, we'll clear it up there. So council member, city manager. Yeah, just a clarification mayor, is your proposal contingent upon the continuation of water service to each property, that those property owners meet each of these deadlines that are laid out in the staff recommendation. So if you have, just as an example, if there's 14 properties and eight of them comply with the June 12th date for city inspections, then the other six would not receive water or would the idea be that there would be water continuing through the 31st? Of August? Yeah. Of July. Of July. Are we, are we using an August? Yeah. Of August. The other question is in order to continue getting water service delivered out there, water delivered to the properties, would they have to comply with each of these dates? I'm sure. No, because I don't think that was set up even in this staff proposal that way. I think it's, I mean, these are deadlines and, and if they don't meet those deadlines, we still have the hard deadline of by July 14th, we're going to have a council meeting. Okay. So we can determine August 31st is when the water delivery, if this moves forward, ceases. Period. Okay. Council member Briggs, I think we stopped with you. Okay. Yeah. Well, I, I wanted to clarify earlier when I said I made a mistake, it wasn't one renter that was inspected. It was one renter that wanted to get the water. So it was, I read my notes wrong. I just wanted to clarify that for the record. So there were no, there were no renters who got inspected by habitat for humanity. Yeah. Okay. Honor occupied. Okay. All right. Okay. So how, how are you on the direction? So my, my question, I guess my main concern is the, the date that we saw on there, the July 3rd, that is this date that's staying where the payment of almost $7,000 has to be due and that was the one thing that they were looking for a little bit of extension on and that's still in your requirement. Yes. Because, oh, and that it has to be owner occupied. I mean, the connection has to be made by an owner occupant. Right. I mean, so the owner, the owner of the property, not an owner occupant, the owner, so the owner. So if they're an owner occupant, it's them. If it's a rental property, it's the owner of that rental property. So if the owner of the rental property is not willing to provide potable water via a city system, why in the world would the city want to take that upon themselves to do it for them? So yes, I'm keeping that deadline. Okay. So how are you on the direction? I'm not, I'm not 100% because I'm worried that people that really in good faith could of the five that I know that want to connect may not have the money to connect in time. But if this is what we have, and this is what is going to get consensus, then I'm, it's better. It's better than in two weeks. Okay. All right. Council member Ryan. Mayor, I'm confused on, we're using these dates from staff recommendation ending on July 31st, but yet you're saying August 31st. That's right. I'm saying simply giving a little bit more time. In that, well, you make a very good point council member Ryan, and that is if I'm saying all the dates are hard, then why am I extending the date out to August? So that's a good point. I mean, if we're going to meet again on July 14th, we would have the option to do a 30 day extension at that point if we really felt that people were starting to comply or starting to come forward. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think you pointed out a, not a flaw, but something I didn't consider that if I'm willing to keep all the deadlines the same, why am I giving extra time? And I'm going to agree with your assessment of that. So I'm just going to go with staff recommendation of July 31st, the original one with the additional conditions that I've placed in. With that, I can support it. Okay. I will change that. So council member Briggs, I'll revisit you because I don't think you're going to be okay with that. So I wanted to revisit with you on that. With a possibility of a 30 day extension the next time we meet, I mean, is that, is that this council at any time it meets through a consensus has the opportunity to make policy decisions that may be different from what they originally had moved forward with. So I don't see, that's obviously an option. Doesn't mean it'll happen, but that is an option, obviously, just like it's an option today. Today, the extension and the declaration ends at the end of this month and we are taking an opportunity to extend that. So I don't see that as any different situation on July 14th. Mayor, this is Mario. May I just interject something? Yes. Actually for staff, the trigger that for staff to install a meter is the fee payment. So if the fee payment is made July 3rd, as you stated, you know, the work from staff's perspective can get done in a matter of days to install the meters. So really, it doesn't matter if you keep it at the July 31st or you extend it an additional 30 days to August 31st. The trigger date that we need to install the meters and get the work really rolling is July 3rd. And I understand that. And so that's why I'm staying with July 31st, because I think what's happened is we've just, we've not stuck with deadlines. We've not, we've not put hard things that have said, hey, this is what we need. We've said many, many, many times what we need and what we would like. And so if that's your trigger date, then that's what needs to be done by that date. And we can always make an accommodation if we see that people have half of it, if we see that people are working on it. But to date, I've not seen any demonstration that people are working on anything. And so I'm real okay with giving an extra, what is that, 60 days, an extra 60 days from the end of this month, which makes it now almost eight months from the original time. So I'm just going to stick with that. I'll stick with the staff recommendation and those three items that I placed in there, council meeting, accounts being put in their name, and also no new water delivery to, after May the 5th to units that go vacant. All right. Council member Briggs. If this staff recommendation doesn't get consensus, that means that it ends May 22nd, correct, and everything just stops? That's correct. Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to agree then. Okay. Council member Armitter. Yeah, I concur with council member Briggs. I was sorry to hear the August deadline taken off the table. That was one thing that I liked about the previous recommendation, but I am going to go with what gives us the most, with what gives the residents the most time. I do want to add that people not only need time to save up for a meter, we're talking about home owners, renters need time as well to save, to move. Okay. All right. Council member Ryan. You know, you've already stated, I believe, yes. I want to revisit with you council member Davis, just touch base with you because some things have changed. Sure. The comment was just made, you know, renters need time too. I remember distinctly saying in February, May 22nd is when the water is turned off. That's not the date that people need to come back to this meeting that we're in now and talk about a future date. Granted, that was before the coronavirus. We built in time in this proposal to kind of toll like council member Meltzer talked about. The thing that has not changed for me from staff's original proposal is that we are still, there's nothing to stop a landlord from bringing somebody back in. There's nothing to encourage a renter who is renting from one of these bad landlords to find somewhere else to go, to use that six months we've given them to find somewhere else to go. That's the missing piece for me. We are propping up the status quo longer than is tenable, so I still can't support it. Sure. And just as a clarification, in part of my recommendation is that we no longer provide water delivery to any unit that goes vacant as of May 6th, 2020. So that would keep the situation that we just learned about today from happening again. They could move in, but they'd have no water. And we'd have to find out about it. Right. It would take a while for us to find out about it, and again, we've given time for that situation to sort itself out. The renters should be gone at this point, the May 22nd deadline that we provided originally. They're not the people in the same crisis that they were in November. Okay. I appreciate that comment. Mayor Pro Tem? No, I said early on, I cannot continue to subsidize. That's just not right. So I haven't heard nothing that says we moved to 100% recouping. And so we're taking taxpayer money in a very tight time and continuing to put it towards these individuals. And I just cannot support that. Several of us, I think, have been in favor of... Councilmember Armitage, if you'll hold on just a moment, I'm going to talk... Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Councilmember Meltzer? Okay. I want to inject a certain piece of reality. First of all, I'm fine with the general structure that you laid out there, but I think most of us on council, at some point in our lives, had very low income. And I don't know exactly what the incomes are out there, but we can each make our own sort of guesses. I think if you think back to when you were in that situation, you probably would square with this assumption that to make the November day, we'll likely take these folks every penny beyond very basic groceries and necessities. To come up with $7,000, I think they're going to need through November, just to be realistic. And we're coming... And I know we have extended a lot of time, so I'm sympathetic with the point raised that people have plenty of time to think about alternatives. But as far as time to save, another element of reality is we're at a time when national unemployment is expected to come in somewhere in the 16 to 20% range. I don't know what it's going to be locally, but there's probably not been a lot of savings in the last eight weeks. So I just, as a practical matter, with everyone there being as well-meaning as possible, I think it will take till November for them to do it. I urge you to think back to when your budget was that tight and consider all the structures that the mayor proposed, which I think are right, and go with the November date. So council member Meltzer, first of all, so your direction is... Well, let me ask you a question of clarification. So when you talk about the financial difficulties, you're talking about the real property owners' financial difficulties, because you've said it's the property owners that have to connect and pay. Well, some are owners, some are owner occupants, and some are owner not occupants, but yes. So they have a piece of real property. If we were talking about the renters, I totally understand your comments, but we're talking about real property owners who have a real property asset. Now I don't know the disposition of that asset, if it's paid off, they could potentially get a loan with a lien. I mean, if you've got a piece of property that you're going to improve the value on with water infrastructure. So I hear what you're saying, but your comments seem to be more geared towards what we've heard is potentially the situation for the renters out there, but based upon your comments, now we're moving to, we need the property owners, the people who are property owners of record, to step forward and now begin to move this process forward. And some of those owners are the owner occupants who were in that conversation last night. Right. Yep. So I'm going to keep the deadline the same because understanding that we have an opportunity to change that with people who come forward in that regard. And the only reason that I am, the only reason that I'm staying firm to that deadline is because we've set several deadlines and just asked for several pieces of information that really aren't necessarily affected by maybe the last month and a half. It's merely just information. It's not money. It's not, it's let us, let us, the city come inspect it. No, you don't want that. That Habitat for Humanity inspect it. Fair enough. But we don't want them to tell you what they found. And so I hear what you're saying. And if, if people, if we begin to see this information move forward and we begin to see some of these deadlines met and owners who own the real property injecting themselves more into this conversation, I'm, I'm more than willing to listen, but I need to see some movement. I need to see something from the residents that we're trying to help and that they're also and the owners, the property owners, because they're the ones that really have to do this. And I'm completely aligned with you on all those steps. Yep. Okay. All right. So, well, council member Meltzer, you're sort of the, unfortunately, I've learned a long time ago not to wait till the last to decide direction because we've got, I think, three in favor of moving forward, which is council member Briggs, council member Armature and myself. Council member Ryan, you want to move forward on this too, don't you? Okay. So nevermind. So whatever you decide, if you want to not support this particular one, because you have some other ideas and wait until July 14th, I understand. So what, what say you on that direction? Well, I'm sticking with November, but you know, I see you've got four. Okay. All right. So I'm going to put that down as your direction is not to move this forward. And we'll wait and see what happens. Okay. Well, that's, that concludes that agenda item. Let's take a real quick five minute or let's come back at 524. Let's come back at 530. All right. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on May the 20th, I'm sorry, May 5th, 2020. The time is 541. We do have a quorum. So we'll call this meeting back to order. We're on our work session agenda item three B, which is receive a report, hold a discussion, give staff direction regarding an update to the city of Denton's COVID-19 response. Mayor, city council, Sarah Keckler, chief of staff, just pulling up the presentation here quickly. Okay. So this is our standing work session item to provide updates on the city's response to COVID-19. We did give a fairly lengthy update last week on Thursday, April 30th. So we'll try to keep this short today. Two major areas for updates. The first is on our city operations in regards to how we're thinking strategically to reopen certain city facilities and programming. So you'll hear from our parks and recreation department as well as the Denton public library. And then second, we did add a slide on your presentation to review the consent agenda item for two modifications to the current order. So we'll go over that last. So at this time, I'd like to introduce Gary Packin and he'll take you through the parks and recreation update. Mayor, city council, Gary Packin, director of parks and recreation. We want to go over our phased approach. Obviously, we've been working on a number of our phases and what's going to be rolled out slowly dripped, I guess, out to the community. We'll get presented to you tonight, phase one, that's an overall summary of that approach. Every community is handling this differently. We're starting to track what every community is doing via spreadsheets and social media just trying to keep up with what everyone's doing. But everyone is different. Everyone's handling it differently. There's no set approach. Obviously, we are looking at CDC recommendations, our national parks and recreation association recommendations and then specific associations, which we'll talk a little bit about here in the next few minutes. Currently, we are hearing feedback from the community that there are -- that our parks aren't open in some aspects. Our parks have never closed. Our open spaces and trails and fishing ponds have been open this entire time for people to go out and fly kite, jog run, those types of things. On Friday, we did open our tennis courts and our tennis center, and on Saturday, we opened our disc golf course. Currently, the Civic Center pool is open for hygiene operations. We have staff overseeing our shower facility. We do have a laundry station on site that's proposed to be there until May 15th. We are working with our Daily Bread to provide vouchers for the community so they can receive that service in that location that will allow us to back off at the Civic Center. That facility is open Monday through Saturday from 9 to 5 p.m. We get about 45 to 40 or so people using the restroom facility and about another 15 using the laundry trailer a day. Future openings, obviously, as I mentioned, pending CDC recommendations, the governor's guidelines and announcements, and then overall industry best practices that we're looking at. So from May 1st to May 8th, obviously, I mentioned earlier that the tennis courts we open on May 1st, those are limited to four people per court. That's a no contact -- no contract programs will be conducted. It's just purely drop-in. We do have the opportunity for people to reserve courts at the tennis center. The tennis center facility will not be open, so there will be no charge. So those courts are for drop-in rental as well. There was some concern and some questions recently about use of tennis balls. In reviewing recommendations from the USTA, which is the United States Tennis Association, they actually recommend to use two cans of balls per player. So if you're out there with a friend, you may use tennis balls with a number one. The other player used tennis balls with number two, and you never touch the number two balls. I would only touch my three balls that I'm using in the match or in the volley. So that's one way to kind of handle that challenge with contamination. Obviously nothing's perfect. You know, a contaminated ball could touch your racket, and then you touch your racket. So there is risk. We're trying to mitigate that as much as possible. Tennis golf opened on May 2nd, which was Saturday, and again, that's limited to four individuals per group. And then we have a couple items we'd like to propose to counsel for feedback that we would open. The batting cages at Evers Park could open tomorrow. We would unlock those in cooperation with DBBI. We would limit just using alternating cages in that facility, and that's typically, you know, two people in there at a time. Our fields are not open, but this would give people an opportunity to go in there and practice a little baseball. Pavilions, tables, and benches, we've been taping these off since the middle of March. We have had people remove the tape. We go out three times a week into all our parks and re-tape as needed in addition to the playgrounds. But we're proposing right now to open our pavilions, our tables and benches on May 6th. There would be no rentals; that would just be, again, for drop-in use on a first-come-first-serve basis. The skate park, we get anywhere between 15 to 25 or so participants a day on that facility. We would open that as well starting as early as May 6th. And then the driving range, this is the only really fee-based or really customer interaction that we would have. It would be limited to one-on-one interaction in our pro shop at the driving range itself. We would propose at this time limited hours from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Again, no contract instruction, just drop-in play. We would have bucket sales, and then we'd have the range stalls spaced appropriately to allow social distancing there. Another question that I've heard is, will we be providing sanitized stations at each location? We've talked a lot about that. It's a little bit of a challenge. We probably would need 100-plus sanitizing stations if we're going to put one at every playground, maybe two based on the size of the playground, pavilions, tennis courts, ball fields, dog parks. So that's a challenge. There is concern about being able to get the actual product, so staff is looking at that right now to see what the inventory out in the market is right now. The concern with sanitizer being pretty popular at this point in time, that theft may be an issue, staffing levels to maintain that level of service and keep up with it, are all concerns that we've considered at looking at that. What we would like to propose on the sanitizing station situation is to really promote and encourage people to bring their own sanitizer when they go out to the parks, and that would be the best way to remain as safe as possible. And then one other question that we've had recently is basketball goals. We've talked a lot about that. It's something that we'd like to wait until the next governor's announcement on the 18th. For the person that's going to go out there and use the basketball court by themselves, yes, it makes total sense why you couldn't go out and do that. But typically, in basketball, you'll have three or four people just show up with a ball and they pick up games and play. There's a little more contact in basketball. It's a tighter area where you're playing around the hoop. So we thought it would be best just to wait a couple more weeks on the basketball goals to reopen those. Obviously, our virtual rec center is available 24/7. Our marketing staff is constantly updating that in cooperation with our recreation staff and putting online programs. So we're trying to be as aggressive as possible on that. That may be something that lasts going into the future. That may just be a new business that we're in and providing those types of services that we'll have to look at once we get on the other side of this pandemic. Just some overall service plan discussions. In our tennis center, I mentioned earlier, we're following USTA standards, both for facility and players, similar with this golf association and our professional golf association for our driving range. Following the limits set by the state, when we start going to programs, we will be providing signed waivers. So we're working with the city attorney's office on updating our waiver of liability. That would include some COVID language in that. So that's something that we're working on right now. I mentioned the tennis center will not be open. Some best practices in this golf is obviously no shaking hands, no picking up other people's discs, keeping sanitizer with you as much as possible, and limit contact with any type of equipment. From the driving range, I had mentioned earlier about spacing out the tee times. We'll have a limit number of people on our putting greens. We do collect the balls once a day. So what we're proposing to do is collect the balls in the morning, letting them sit all day and all night on the course, and then picking them up, and then we put them into a washer and clean them, and we'll put some sanitizer in there or some bleach solution to help with that cleanliness of the balls itself. And that will be a one-on-one customer interaction in our pro shop. We do have a self-service golf machine that we're just installing right now at the driving range. We hope to have that up as soon as possible. We're working on some integration with the credit card. So once we get that running, we'll consider how we're going to make sure that that machine's clean every time someone uses it. So that's something we'll be looking at once we get closer to rolling that out to the public. Some staff requirements, we are in the process of finalizing the process for all of our staff, whether it's park maintenance or our leisure services or administration, when they come into the office or their place of collection or business, that they'll have to go through some self-monitoring checks, sign off their PPE, and then make sure that we're cleaning property to the right standards, and each facility is a little bit different. So we'll have an outlined program plan or service plan for each one of those facilities. And then moving forward, obviously, the facilities that we've opened and the ones that are still closed will continue to monitor those current situations, making sure that we don't have abuse of the opportunity where we have large gatherings and trying to mitigate that as much as possible, keeping our playgrounds and our facilities that are closed, keeping them closed, looking at best practices and standards, whether it's the governor's announcement, CDC recommendations, and then local considerations as well. And that concludes my presentation. I don't know, Mayor, if you'd like me to stand here and answer a few questions or let the presentation continue. Let's go ahead and just take questions on this. Does this pretty much stand alone from the rest of the presentation? Yeah, the library has one or two slides that they'll give you a presentation on their operations as well. Okay. Yeah. If we could go ahead and pull down the next step slide so I can see the full panel and we'll get moving in on the questions. Council Member Briggs. Thank you, Gary, for the presentation. I've had a lot of questions about North Lakes Rec Center reopening, and I know that today the governor said that on May 18th that's the plan and released the guidelines for that to open. Is that a date that we are considering? At this time, I think we're going to be very conservative on our approach to open up our field facilities, especially where there's children and youth. We want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to be safe and make sure that no one gets sick. That's ultimately our goal. So I would not anticipate those opening up in the near future. I think the city manager had said a few weeks ago that we'll be revisiting everything June 1st to see where things are, and we'll continue to reassess and look at what other organizations are doing. There are some facilities that are looking to open June 1st in DFW and then some that are going to be a little bit later after that. I think at this point in time, our recommendation would be to a little bit later than June 1st, obviously. But again, something we'll continue looking at, but we want to be pretty conservative. Okay. I just wanted to put that out there in case someone saw that the governor did say May 18th for gyms, that that doesn't necessarily mean that the city is on the same timeline as the governor's order as far as the rec centers go. That's a great point because people will see that on TV and written in the newspaper on social media. We have the ability to be more restrictive, so I think we're going to be more conservative in our approach, specifically with parks and recreation, with city attorney's office and city managers continued discussion on those approaches. We'll obviously make adjustments as needed, but that's our plan as of now. Okay, thank you. That's my barometer. Yeah, several questions. So first of all, how many rec center staff are working from home currently, roughly? Well, all our leisure services staff, whether it's the senior centers or rec centers are working remotely. We have them either working on policy operations, those types of things, or helping with online programming, as well as starting to plan future phases. So when we do open, we're ready. We have policies and procedures in place to make sure that we're doing it in a safe and proper manner and that we are making sure that we have the right programming activities. If we open up a rec center at some point in time, we're going to have to keep people spaced out appropriately for safety reasons. So they're working on different types of activities based on who they are and what facility they're at. Thank you. And by the way, and I so appreciate the virtual rec center and all the virtual activities, all the creativity that your staff are using. The reason why I asked is because I would be curious to know, and I don't expect you to be able to answer this now, but if any rec center staff might be interested in life guarding or refereeing, whatever you want to call it, more like life guarding and monitoring, you know, tennis, basketball, batting cages. Again, this is a question where I'm wanting to know if people would be interested in it to see, you know, much like with a lifeguard where, you know, they're just hanging out and watching to see if, number one, anyone's life needs saving, but also if people are horsing around, if just, you know, letting people know, hey, by the way, we're not mandating social distancing, but, you know, you might want to know that such and such. So I'd be curious to know if staff would be interested in something like that at some of the, I'm not going to name, you know, any specific sport, but as we open up in public outdoor tennis courts, batting cages, about the waivers, that is something also that if staff were interested in, you know, manning a tennis court, again, not to interfere, but just to have something that people could sign saying, much like how online, I appreciate that on the Facebook page you said, you know, look, we can't guarantee no one's going to get COVID from playing tennis, but, you know, play at your own risk, just like we do many things at our own risk, personal responsibility. Maybe if people had something to sign that they could take with them saying, but saying the difference, I'm almost done saying the difference between, you know, here's what's recommended, which is not all that, I'm sorry, here's what's required, which is not all that much. And then here's what we recommend for best practices where they could sign. If not, then I would like to see a sign at the tennis courts and batting cages, et cetera, with just recommended safety measures because, for instance, the idea about having different balls, different number balls, different color balls, different brand balls, that's something that I think a lot of people would do if they had thought about that, if they knew about it going into it. So I think having something in writing. Gary, look, I really want to try to limit our discussions. We are a policymaking body. I've got two more things... Hold on, Councilmember Armitage. What you've sent about five or 10 minutes discussing are basically management issues. It's Gary's, the Director of Parks and Recreation, so I trust his guidance in this and I would just please just, if you have these in the future, if you could email those to him, those kind of recommendations, because we're spending a lot of time... Some of this I have been emailing with staff, but this is... Councilmember Armitage, please just let me finish. If you could stick to policy things that this council can discuss, that is a management function. And if you want to make recommendations or suggestions for management, obviously, certainly feel free to do that. I want us to try to limit our discussions here as a policymaking body to policy issues. Okay. So if you could please help with that, I would greatly appreciate it. So I consider this a matter of public safety policy, but I understand that that differs person-to-person. Well, okay. I'm the Chair of the meeting, Councilmember Armitage. So if you could please make your comments concise, and if you could go ahead and begin to wrap this up so we can move on to some policy discussions, that this council can actually... I truly believe that the staff has the public safety in mind, especially when they say, we're going to be more conservative. I know they do. So may I please continue on? Please. Please wrap it up quickly, please. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Anybody else for comments about parks and recreation? All right. Thank you, Gary. Let's move on to the next part of the presentation, please. Mayor and Council, this is Jennifer Becker, Director of Libraries. Yes, go ahead. I will be going over our phase reopening process. As Gary is doing it with parks, we are looking at something similar, a phase reopening process to ensure that our library patrons, community members, and staff are safe. We've already started phase one, which started last week when we brought back our curbside service. So although our facilities are closed to the public, all of our circulating collection is currently available and can be placed on hold and picked up at any of our three locations. Phase one also includes phone and email reference, account and reader's advisory assistance, which we have been providing the entire time that the libraries have been closed. Of course, our online resources, downloadable eBooks, databases, learning resources, those have all been available. Our Wi-Fi at our facilities is on 24/7 and is accessible from inside a vehicle if you're at South Branch or on the benches around Emily Fowler or North Branch Libraries. And patrons can make online payments for billed items or to call us to make online payments to clear accounts. We have staff in the facilities performing library duties and projects, and we are available currently Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays at North Branch, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. also. We're following many of the libraries in the DFW area are also looking at a phased approach. We recognize that computers and internet access are of high importance right now. However, libraries are a high-touch interactive facility, and we are concerned about spread and limiting allowing patrons into our facilities right now. So that's why we're looking at this phased approach. So what we're doing in terms of sanitation and health concerns, all library materials are checked in and quarantined on carts for three days, and that is following CDC recommendation. They're saying that the virus could live on cardboard or paper for 24 hours and on plastic for up to 72 hours. That's where we got the three days as some of our materials do have plastic covers. Any items that are returned and are newly on hold for someone, those are wiped down to sanitize those. Staff is wearing gloves, masks when they are in the facilities. The facilities department has worked with us. We have enhanced janitorial cleaning nightly in our facilities in any of those common shared work spaces, and staff is wiping down shared work surfaces and equipment throughout the day when they're on site. And we are also preparing facilities is creating some temporary plexiglass service desk shields for when we do start opening in future phases, but right now we're just focusing on getting materials into the hands of our patrons, and we're still developing those future phases. Any questions about library reopening? If we could pull the slide down, and then we can see if there's any questions about the library. I do have one. So it showed that masks were required when in close contact where social distancing is not required. Is that just restricted to the library or is this a department by department consideration, Mr. City Manager? I'm sorry. My question again was whether this is a department by TARC. Go ahead. Sure. In the slide, it showed that masks would be required when in close proximity to patrons that you can't maintain social distancing. Honestly, I forgot. Was that a mask required for the staff or a mask required also for the patron? It just totally slipped my mind. Right now we've been focusing on staff in particular, and I'm getting head shaking. We have not set the rules for the actual patrons, but that is pertaining to staff. All right. So I'll withdraw my question. So it sounds like each department is deciding for the protection of staff whether mask is required and then that's a policy decision on most likely if it's going to be required with citizens as always. Yeah. And we will have a little bit more information here in the next couple meetings for you as far as how we're handling that internally with the buildings. Sarah and Mario are both leading teams right now that are talking about how we reopen, make sure that we keep staff safe, keep the public safe. So it's a case by case scenario based on where their jobs, whether they're inside, outside, and whether they can maintain social distancing. So I think we probably need another week or so to formulate that policy and make sure that it's communicated to staff and to bring it out to the council. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, so thank you to our library staff for being safe and helping people read and helping your staff be safe. I'm wondering if there are, I know there's no such thing as a mask vending machine. I know one could be made, I know it's probably not realistic, but it would be nice if there could be masks available or maybe if, you know, independent individuals who want to give out masks or maybe sell masks, I realize that that could get kind of crazy, not inside the library, but outside, something where that could, even though, as I understand it, under the current state order, we cannot, cities cannot require masks, we are allowed to recommend them and the state does recommend them. If there would be a way that someone could have, that there could be a mask there. I don't need an answer on this, but it's just something that I've been thinking about, how nice it would be at any public or private place, if there was how you can get a Coke at a Coke machine, or how you used to be able to get a cigarette at a cigarette machine, you know, just to have it there and if you don't come prepared with it, how much safer that would make staff feel and how much safer it would be for the public at large. Just wanted to throw that out there. We can certainly look into it and consider it. We've had a couple of vendors in the city that have actually been working with us to create masks for our employees and so I don't have any problem taking a look at and seeing if there's a way we could keep a small inventory on us, maybe we went to the library and forgot their mask or something like that, so all things we can consider. Yeah, and people, again, I'm not saying I want us to make a profit from it, but you know, people might even be, you know, make a donation. Thanks. Right. Mayor Pro Tem, I believe you had a question? Yes. I just wanted to confirm you're comfortable with the number or supply of hotspots you have? We have 30 hotspots that are circulating and as those are coming in, they have a long hold list and those are moving out to the next person on the hold list. We would love to expand that. One of the challenges we have in addition to funding it would be they are no longer found anywhere. They have gone the way of cleaning wipes and toilet paper. So as school districts and businesses and other libraries have ramped up their usage of hotspots, they're just out of stock everywhere. So even if we had funding available right now, we wouldn't be able to get those in until the fall at the earliest. Okay. So I guess to that point, Mr. City Manager, we, I don't know that there's an angle, but we spent a lot on telecommunications in the different first responders areas. So maybe if there's a way to work different things, and not saying that the budget is there for it, but saying, you know, if just whatever is available, if we could keep that in mind, that's good to know because I think the summer that need will increase. And then I had another question policy wise on traditionally age doesn't really matter first come first serve as far as the library, but are there any concerns with those that arrive first and stage taking up the available space in the library and maybe a kid that wakes up later can't get in and kids coming in independently? That would be my thought as we get closer to a discussion about libraries reopening. So right now the library facilities are still closed. We're just doing curbside as we look at the adding those phases. We're looking at a phase two would actually be an appointment based system to use computers only. So specifically for those individuals who are trying to fill out their forms for unemployment or getting some kind of assistance or working on resumes, but that would be appointment based. We would be looking at general access to the facilities and something like phase three. So that could be the end of May or into June when we would be addressing that. And then at that point we would be looking at our lounge areas and interactive play areas would still not be accessible, be kind of an in and out service. You're coming to browse the stacks, check out materials using computers, but we would have certain ones unavailable to maintain social distancing. So as we move into the summer, that's something we would certainly address, but I don't know that we're going to have that volume of visitors that would match. At that time, the governor's order would have been 50% of capacity. And I don't know that we would have that many people in at once if we aren't doing programming. Got it. Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? I have a question that I just thought of, can people do a zoom call with a reference librarian or something like that? We are working on that. We have a book of librarians service and we're looking to make that via zoom. So we've got our librarians working on that right now. Of course, our librarians are there and we do phone and email reference throughout the day, all day, and we've been doing that this entire time also. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Councilmember Briggs? This is a question for parks. I didn't hear about the dog parks. Can somebody highlight on if they're reopening or going to be reopening or we're treating them as another facility? I had a few people ask about the dog parks. Let's get through the library presentation and then Gary can come back and answer that. He's probably already set that down, but I don't want to let's try to keep it in an email. Okay. All right. Well, it might be good information just in general for the public. So yeah, let's let's complete the any other questions for the library presentation. Okay, seeing none. So Gary, if you have an answer to a council member Briggs question. So he's going to come sit back down now. Gary back and Director Parks and Recreation. Yeah, that's a great question. We're getting a lot of calls about the dog park as well. Both dog parks. It is a CDC recommendation to treat animals like you would a family member in the fear that they could transmit COVID to another dog and then get into another family. So until we get more information from CDC, we're going to keep the dog parks closed at this time. Unfortunately. Okay. All right. Thank you. Appreciate the question. Thank you. I think that people needed to hear. And Mayor, just kind of before we totally get off of the library and parks, we are thought processes that we would be back to council every couple weeks with our, our next iterations of thought process on what we would be opening up things are continuing to change with the with the governor. We are very in tune with our local health professionals concerns about, you know, will we see a resurgence, will we not and I think the advice that we've and I guess the approach we've kind of taken in house is that we'll just take this every two, three weeks at a time. Make sure that you're on board. We know that there's people want things opened up a little bit quicker. But you know, the safety of the staff and the public is really driving this and making sure that our legal department feels like as we are opening up that we're properly educating and warning folks of some of the exposures that are out there. So that's how we're looking at it through maybe July August timeframe. Okay. All right. Okay. And I think we have then a just a brief update on just sort of where the declarations the governor's declarations are and things such as that. Mayor, this is Mario Ken is our deputy city manager in keeping with what the city manager said this is kind of our approach that we're taking regarding city facilities. And so there have been there is a committee that's been established of department heads and assistant department heads and other staff that's just looking at their facilities. We want to create sort of a universal approach when it comes to the use of PPE signage, medical checks, make sure that we've got capabilities for cleaning and custodial capacity. So that's kind of across the board. And then as we as city manager said taking it slowly establishing the protocols for employees as a telework or they need to be on site creating those social distance requirements, et cetera. So we're looking at that especially those those those buildings where multiple departments are housed want to make sure there's full coordination from one department to the next. So we'll be working on that over the next week interviews with the departments the following week and then come to you in the next few weeks after that to kind of bring you up to speed on where we are in our facilities. Okay, Councilmember Briggs has a question. Has the has the governor taken anything away that allows us to continue to meet like this with any of his updated orders? So would we be required to come back to City Hall? Yeah, is that in the next is that in Sarah's portion of the presentation? No. This is Catherine Clifton. Oh, Catherine. Okay. No, at this time, the governor's order declaration is still in effect. And so those suspensions of the open meetings provisions that allow you to meet in this way are also still in effect. Okay, thank you. All right. Any other questions for Mario? Yes, Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, no, not a question, just a comment that I think staff is is really getting it's just just about right in terms of, you know, people here opening up and they think it means the risk is gone. And that hasn't really changed. There's no cure, no vaccine, but staff is being very innovative in finding ways to do more and make this period of time, you know, more more more bearable and more productive for people while staying safe, and I appreciate it. Okay. All right. Okay, Mayor, City Council, Sarah Keuchler, I'll make this quick, get to the last slide. So just wanted to take a minute to review the consent agenda item today to modify the order that was adopted last Thursday by Council, it does propose two modifications to that order that was adopted last week. The first would be to allow staff to resume acceptance of all development applications. This was just a staff oversight that we did not remove that provision that was in the previous order. So the order that is for consideration on the consent agenda would change that and would allow staff to resume acceptance of all those development applications and the Planning and Zoning Commission is meeting virtually so they can continue on in the process of reviewing those. If this is approved by Council beginning tomorrow on Wednesday, May 6th, we'll begin to accept all those development application types again. The second change in the proposed modified order is to move the expiration date of the order from May 15th to May 31st, and this is to align with the expiration date of the declaration as well as it incorporates some language that any new executive order that Governor Abbott may issue would also take the effect through the end of the month. So on that note, you did hear this afternoon that Governor Abbott held a press conference. He made a number of announcements. We're still waiting on the written orders or the written statements from the governor to understand all of the details, but just a couple of quick highlights to share with City Council, Governor Abbott announced that beginning this Friday, May 8th, all salons can reopen to customers. They do not have to reopen. It is up to individual owners to decide. Secondly, he started to announce his kind of reopenings for May 18th. So beginning on Monday, May 18th, all gyms and other workout facilities are allowed to reopen at 25% capacity. However, showers and locker rooms must remain closed. He also announced that beginning May 18th, non-essential manufacturers can resume operations at 25% capacity. There are also some other parameters that were mentioned. We're waiting for more of those details to come out in written form. And lastly, he also announced that offices can reopen on May 18th. Again, probably more parameters around which offices, how many, and so forth, but those were kind of his announcements that he put out today to the press. Sarah, real quick question. I see on item two where it says to move the expiration date of the order from May 15th to May 31st. Is that because that's when the governor's order, current declaration is through? Is that the reason for that? It's our current declaration of disaster, City Council's declaration of disaster May 31st. So we just want the order to match that local declaration. I've got you. Okay. I apologize. Thank you. Council member Armitage. Yeah. So this is a question and you might not know the answer since the governor's statement just came out today. But I was confused by the announcement that non-essential manufacturing can be open because it was my impression under the previous state ordinance that all manufacturing was considered essential. Again, that's not, I'm not saying anything about my opinion one way or the other. That was my understanding of what the governor Abbott's rule was. So can you explain that? Was it not the case that all manufacturing was already essential? I believe it depended on the type of industry. So there's a CESA list, which is the, I forget exactly what that stands for, but it listed more specifics regarding which manufacturers, under critical infrastructure, certain goods to be produced, continued production. So this would open it up to all manufacturers. Yeah. It just, it covered so much. So thank you. Sorry about that council member Briggs, I was on mute. Council member Briggs. Yeah. I just wanted to thank staff for putting number one in. It was a question that I asked the last meeting. It was a concern and I appreciate this coming back. I think it's really important we do this. Thank you. Anybody else? So we've got one more presentation and work session. What I want to do is move through that quickly. And then we, I believe our closed session item, was that a placeholder, our closed session item? Yes, ma'am. Yes. Yes, ma'am. That was for the COVID-19 response. Does anybody have any questions on the COVID-19 response, legal questions they need to go into closed session about? Okay. Seeing none, then we will just go ahead and avoid that closed session and move straight into our 630 meeting once we get through with the next agenda item. Our next agenda item is our work session, our last work session agenda item, which is 3C, which is Receive Report, Hold Discussion, and give staff direction regarding 2019 through '20 Audit Plan. Hello, Mayor and City Council. I'm Madison Rorschach, staff auditor here at the city. And I'm here to present three items for discussion about our fiscal year 2019-20 audit plan. Sorry, getting used to the technology. So to start, I'd like to give you an update on the current status of our audit plan. As of today, we've substantially completed three audits and one follow-up review and are in process on three additional projects, which means we've completed about a third of our audit plan to date. I did want to discuss the CIP construction audit. This audit has not yet been presented to the Audit Finance Committee. But due to COVID-19, my understanding was that there may not be an Audit Finance Committee scheduled for some time since it's a subcommittee of the full council. For this reason, at the moment, I'm planning to present this audit along with the other two CIP audits on May 12th. However, I wanted to make sure that this was okay with the full council before presenting that to you. So does anybody have concerns about presenting this audit to the full council and not presenting it to the Audit Finance Committee? Any concerns? Council Member Ryan, I believe you're the chair of the Audit Finance. Any concerns? No, I have no concerns on that. I know the airport committee is doing the same thing, that things just come straightforward to council. All right. Council Member Armitage? Yeah, I would just like to hear the opinion of the other members of the Audit Finance Committee. It's fine with me if it's fine with them. Yeah, I don't have an issue with it. And I think Council Member Meltzer, you're the other one on the Audit Finance? Yeah. I think it's fine. Okay. All right. All right. Are there any other questions about the current audit plan? I don't believe so. Yep. Okay, so today I have two items I'd like to request direction on, which could result in changes to the fiscal year 2019-20 audit plan. And if there is a decision to change the audit plan, we would need a new audit plan ordinance, which would be approved by council at a later date. In the audit process, you can kind of see it on the right side of the slide. So the first item I'd like direction on is utility easements audit. So for a little bit of history, this audit was originally requested by a council member. As such, we presented this audit to the city council for direction on October 8th of 2019. At that time, our understanding was that the city attorney's office would provide the city council with legal background on the audit and that further direction would be received at a future date. On December 17th, our office brought the audit plan back to council with the aim to receive direction on two audits, one of which was utility easements. Our understanding from city council's direction at that time was to not remove the utility easements audit from the audit plan. And so as such, the audit plan, including utility easements, was approved by council on January 17th, 2020. However, in March, it was brought to our attention that the city council may not have intended to direct our office to perform this audit. We have since taken this item before the audit finance committee, who recommended that council provide further clarification and direction on this item. And to give you a better understanding of the audit, I've laid out the general scope of the proposed utility easement audit, which would focus specifically on high voltage transmission lines. And a review of controls over these lines may include physical examination, review of development documentation, and discussions with DME and development services staff. So now I'd like to pause and just take direction or questions on this item. Sure. If you could pull the staff, yeah, because this was brought to my attention and I'm the one that asked this to come back because when I went back and looked at the tape and it was not my understanding that we did give direction to include this in the audit plan. And when you look at the tape, it was very clear that when I was questioning Umesh, the council, there was not a consensus on council and I asked Umesh if he had been given direction by the council to move this forward and he said he had not. So I'm not really quite sure how it got on there, but it did. And we approved it. So I think it's coming back to say, hey, we just need to revisit this and if the consensus is the same, we'll just remove this off the audit plan. So that's really the direction that she's looking for. And this was council member Armitage's request and we had this isn't to go back over this whole debate on whether it should be there or not as far as the merits. We were the same council that made that decision is the same council today. So we just need to either reaffirm, we just need to give direction, either leave it there or take it off. And council member Armitage real quick. Yes. So I will say the one thing that I have to add to my previous recommendation is that since then, we've had someone come before us in an individual situation about transmission line, the placement of the transmission line. So I just wanted to mention that that that is one thing that has come before us since then. And it's my understanding that was a TNPA transmission line and this audit would not be TNPA transmission line. No, no. But that is just to say that it was an example of how placement of transmission lines can be very expensive and time consuming process. All right. Thank you. All right. So I'm going to put forward, I still share my same thought that I did at that time that I don't have a desire for that to be included in the audit plan. That was my direction then. And that's how my direction stays. Council member Meltzer. I can't say I remember our full discussion on it, but my question would be, if it were to come off, what would Madison recommend go on? What does it enable? So that would be that, you know, determinative for me. Okay. Well, that's the exact question that was posed back then at that meeting and there wasn't anything substituted for it. That's why it got included on there because they said there were two coming off and one coming back off, one staying on it. But when you look at the tape, it's clear that the question answered was, no, council had not given direction. And that was pretty much the end of that. So let me see what the direction is. Council member Meltzer, if we need to, we'll come back to you. Council member Armitter, I'm assuming your direction is to leave it on. Okay. Council member, Mayor Pro Tem Husbeth. No, I'd like Madison to come back with some other options. Okay. Yes. Okay. Council member Briggs. I'm okay leaving it on. And was the option though that if it's left on, there couldn't be a COVID audit or was that just not part of this, just the utility easement? I believe those are two, the COVID audit would be an immediate project that we would take place starting now. No matter what the utility decision was? Correct. Okay. Yeah, I'm okay leaving it. Okay. Council member Davis. I only vaguely remember the original conversation, like Paul said a moment ago, but I just don't really see it as a priority when you stack it up against some of the other things we already have on the list. It just doesn't really rate. So I'm taking it off. Okay. I'm rather affirming what we did the last time, which is not to put it on. Right. Council member Ryan. I'm in favor of affirming that we did not intend to put it on there the last time. All right. So I'm going to take those affirming, we didn't intend to put it on means to remove it if it got on there. Is that correct? Okay. So we have, we have four there. So we'll move on to the COVID-19 audit discussion. Okay. So as you know, the city, we're recommending that the city council modify the audit plan to approve a COVID-19 audit series due to current social distancing guidelines and increased staff workload. It's currently not feasible to perform the remaining scheduled audits. Approval of this series would provide the city auditor's office with needed flexibility to identify areas where we could best add value during these unprecedented times. And so on the right of the slide, I provided some potential topics, which we developed through discussions with other government auditors, as well as city staff. These are only examples of what kind of work could be performed. So if the series was approved, we would, of course, keep council informed of what that is. I don't, I don't think your slide is, I don't think you have, you have a presentation. You're right. I apologize. I'm not used to this. No, you're good. Thank you. Yes, so on the right of the slide are some potential topics. These are just examples. And of course, if we, this was approved, we would keep council informed of what exactly we were working on and would give periodic status updates and there would be reports just as normal. So are there any questions about this? Councilmember Armitage. I just want to say, I love the idea of a COVID audit. I think it's really important. I like the idea of looking at the card spending. I was wondering if you could say about the, I lost the staff. I'm not sure for everybody, but so I can't see exactly what the wording is because now I'm looking at everybody's faces on the zoom chat, but something about equipment return for laptops, et cetera. Can you explain that? Is that just about for equipment that has been borrowed from the city or being actually returned as in equipment that was bought, that's being sent back to the manufacturer? I think the idea with that would be we have a lot more employees teleworking now and we also have implemented the voluntary separation program. So I think the idea there would be to look at the controls over how we're making sure that the equipment that our employees have get returned to the city appropriately. Got it. Okay. Got it. Thanks. Anybody else? Councilmember Meltzer. First, I actually have a question for the city manager, whether what I'm about to say is needed or not. And another question is whether it's something that would be appropriate for audit, but I wonder if we've got anybody working on combing through that CARES Act to find all the areas of funding that could be targeted that we maybe haven't yet sought. So maybe that's already happening. So that may be the answer. And then if not, would audit be an appropriate place to put that task? We've got staff working on that every day with our representatives in Austin as well as Washington and our local representatives as well. So in fact, David Gaines and his staff are already pre-applying everywhere they possibly can where they know that funds could be heading our way. I think the thing that's been a little challenging on the CARES Act dollars is they initially or the last tranche of dollars that were sent down, you had to be an entity of 500,000 people or more, so the county ended up with tranche of money in several of the big cities, but they wired out some of the smaller cities. This next round, we think we're hoping that there's some more opportunity, it appears that there's going to be a fourth round of funding here, but so far, we're applying everywhere we possibly can right now and probably badgering people more than they want us to be calling them. Okay, good. Thanks. I just wanted to give an update too, because we did receive an email from one of our legislative delegation staff that mentioned that there's a certain percentage of the state funding, the state received billions of dollars in a B of COVID-19 relief funding, which some of that has been earmarked for the cities or counties that did not qualify for that over 500,000. So we are certainly diligently looking into, and I think they still haven't prepared an application process or guidelines, so we're monitoring that and once we get the information that we need to apply and what they need, then we'll certainly be on it, but wanted to give that update as well. And we did have the mayor sign a letter today that will get out to everybody tomorrow, basically asking that they put some formal rules and regulations around those dollars to help local governments that weren't able to receive the direct funding from the federal government. So we're doing everything we can to possibly access those dollars. I think part of that letter was asking for, because the conditions right now in the CARES Act funding is you cannot use it to backstop lost revenue, and part of what we're asking for is can we use some of that money, if it's at the state's discretion, in order to do that is also provide some reimbursement for some of the additional programs and expenses we've incurred during this process. And I think the Councilmember Meltzer's original question, I think it's probably a very good use of the auditors time just to kind of work with our finance staff, making sure that we've got the proper structures set up, reporting structures, because all of those dollars that we receive are going to be subject to federal audits or state audits anyway, so never hurts to make sure that if they're saying something that we can take out of the way early on that we do that. Okay, any other questions? So it sounds like, is the direction to move forward with the audit as Madison is laid out for the COVID-19 response to start that immediately to begin to monitor those processes and things such as that, okay, I'm seeing I don't see any objections to that. So Madison, believe you have direction in that regard. Councilmember Armitage, did you have a question or were you just signifying affirmation? Yeah, I just wanted to say Madison, if you have time when you're done, if you can audit the state and the federal government for their use of COVID funds as well. I know that you don't even have the time or the jurisdiction for that, but they could use some help too. Okay, I'll communicate that request to my colleagues. Madison, any other issues the council needs to give you direction on, Madison? No, that is the end of my presentation. Okay, thank you very much. Well, that concludes our work session portion of this agenda. We will now adjourn at 640. Let's come back at 650 for our regularly scheduled city council meeting. Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on May the 5th, 2020. The time is 655. We do have a quorum, so I'll open the meeting and I apologize for us getting started late. This meeting typically is scheduled to start at 630, so we ran a little bit over in our work session, but we'll get started now. Our first item on the agenda is reports from the members of the public, presentations from the members of the public. Do we have any reports from members of the schedule reports, pre-registration reports? I don't believe we have any scheduled pre-registration reports from the public. Do we have any open mic requests from the public? I believe we don't have any open mic requests either. So we will move on to our consent agenda. The chair would entertain direction or I mean action on the consent agenda. Council member Ryan. Move approval with the exceptions of items G and H. Okay. Council member Briggs. I will second. All right. We have a motion and a second for approval of the consent agenda, except for items G and H, which will be pulled as items for individual consideration. We have a motion and a second, so we'll take a poll of the council. Council member Meltzer. Aye. Council member Ryan. Aye. Council member Armitter. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem. Aye. Council member Davis. Aye. Council member Briggs. Yes. The mayor is a yes, so the motion carries unanimously 7-0. We will now move on to our item for individual consideration. The first two we'll be considering are those consent agenda items that have been pulled. The first one is consent agenda item G, which is now an item for individual consideration. So that'll be 2G. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, a Texas home rural municipal corporation, authorizing the city manager or his designee to utilize a contract through the city of Arlington for the airfield vegetation management program. I believe this was pulled just to get an answer as to the type of chemicals that are being used in that program. Do we have an answer to that? Yes. This is Assistant City Manager Sarah Henson. We have Scott Gray on the line from the airport who has the answer, but we also have I'm here as well as Laura Behrens to answer any other questions. Okay. We did send you in advance an email after it was questioned earlier on, and the answer is in a written statement from me in regards to the questions raised. Okay. Good deal. All right. So you sent that to the council. Yes, sir. All right. So if we could go ahead and just get a real quick description from Mr. Gray on that chemical, and then we'll go to see if there's any other questions. Good evening, Mayor, members of the council. This is Scott Gray, Director of Airports, Capital Planning, and Facilities. To answer the question and to be clear, this contract is a supplemental or a backup to the use of the Parks and Rec staff that will be doing our herbicide spraying and management for us. So it'll only be necessary if they believe that there's additional assistance needed. In either case, whether it's the staff or whether it's the contractor that provides that herbicide spraying, both will be required to abide by the adopted IPM plan and only use the products that are listed in that plan. So hopefully that clarifies that. There was additional question earlier about the additional 100 acres. I'm not sure if that got answered. The initial spray for the first year is for 150 acres. That was due to, we added the second runway, as you all know. That area that the second runway sits in was actually part of a hay baling lease that can no longer be bailed due to the need for the runway. But we also can't spray that area for a year because we need to allow for turf to seed and grow in order to prevent erosion control around the runway. So that's why there's a different area. Okay. I'd be happy to answer any additional questions, sir. All right. Additional questions? Councilmember Armitage? Thank you to staff for getting that information for me about the pesticides used. I understand that it is in following with the city IPM. I do prefer the level of oversight when staff is doing it, because I know that a lot of it is done by feel. And that is something that I have been concerned about and kind of talked about with people in the past. And I prefer the idea of having staff go by feel than a contractor. So I'm gonna be voting no, but I do want to say that I appreciate the information and I do understand that it does follow the IPM. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any more questions? Okay. Let's Chair would entertain action on agenda item 2G. Councilmember Ryan? Move approval. Councilmember Briggs? I appreciate the email and the information so quickly. I'll second. All right. So we have a motion and a second. House say you Councilmember Ryan? Aye. Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Councilmember Meltzer? Aye. Councilmember Davis? Aye. Councilmember Armitage? No. Mayor Pro Tem? Aye. Mayors an aye. The motion carries six to one. All right, move on to agenda item 2H and I believe Councilmember Meltzer and Councilmember Armitage are recusing themselves from this item. I believe is that's what was stated in the beginning. So and how do we do recusals on Zoom? Just shut off? Just shut. I think you can just shut your camera off and just shout out to me. I still have my volume on. Sure. We can do that. Yep. All right. Okay. I don't believe there was a presentation requested on this item. It was strictly removed for recusal purposes. Councilmember Briggs? I did have a question and was told to hold my question till we have discussion here during this item. Sure. Okay. Go ahead. Well, my question was if this is for basketball, I know that our season is supposed to start at the end of May, and is this a pro-rated type of contract or does it start when? I mean, I don't assume that we're going to be doing our basketball at the end of this month or are we? Good evening, Councilmembers, Mayor. This is Laura Behrens, Assistant Director for Parks and Recreation. So this is a pay-as-you-go, essentially. So we will only play for the time that we use the gym. So if those programs do not occur, then there'll be no payment for that gym space and the usage. Okay, great. Any other questions on this agenda item? Chair, Councilmember Ryan? Move approval of item 2H. Councilmember Briggs? All right, I believe that was the second Councilmember Briggs, you were on mute. I'll second. All right. Councilmember Ryan, how say you? Aye. Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Councilmember Davis? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem? Aye. Mayor Watts is an aye, so the motion carries five to zero. So we can bring Councilmember Meltzer and Councilmember Armitage back to the panel. And we will move on to our items for individual consideration agenda item. Yeah. Oh, yes. Did I forget something? No, I apologize. Even though Anne was approved, I just wanted to circle back with council. We did get an answer. I think Councilmember Briggs question regarding the lease at the medical city. There's a provision in that lease that basically states that it goes through next May at this point, but we've got a 90 day notice period. So if that fire station comes on board a little bit early, we just simply give them the 90 days notice and we can break the lease at that point, so early. So I wanted to make sure that we wrap that up for you rather than worry about a Friday report. Right. Okay. Thank you. You bet. Okay. Items for individual consideration agenda item three a consider approval of a resolution supporting the Texas Department of Transportation proposal for the removal of certain roadways from the state highway system within the city of Denton. Comment here, whoever's making this presentation. Just a minute. Sure. Good evening, Mayor, members of the council's pretend a deputy city engineer apologize for the technical difficulty to begin this quick presentation. It is about a turn back program for state highways for tech stop. We had back in December, come to council in front of council and a work session item and presented several segments of roadways that go through the city that are owned and operated by text. And currently request text out is requesting for the city to turn these over to the city. Just a quick refresher on the stuff that was covered and a clear direction that was given to staff back in December. Here are the six segments that were be under consideration at the time. Starting with the top us 77 from I 35 to us 380. There's a small section of locust, which is FM 21 64 on the north side all the way to the loop 288. The middle section, which goes through the heart of the city, which is us 377 and 77 from us 380 to Carol. And then the last piece of that from image is the Dallas drive from Eagle or locust all the way to 35 E. There was also consideration for Sherman drive at the time within the city or inside the loop and then 15 15, which is currently under design by textile. Based on direction that we received at the time, the two segments that were highlighted in red in the previous slide, I'm going to elaborate a little bit more on those two. Are in front of council in the form of resolution. The first segment is us 77 that's that goes through the center of the city from us 380 all the way to Eagle and down to Carol. It's a four lane facility, a two lane couplet, one way couplet and majority of the pavement is asphalt in this segment. The second segment is Dallas drive from Eagle drive all the way to 35 E. It is a five lane undivided segment and it has a mix of asphalt and concrete right about here. The asphalt pavement is on the south side and the north side, it's a concrete segment. This was a table that was presented to council back in December. Just to refresh the memory as far as what would be the maintenance cost if we took these two segments over on an annual basis. So they're in the 70,000 range. And that's the recommendation for staff to move to approve the resolution to allow the turn back of these two segments from textile to the city. Councilmember Briggs. Thank you. I do know some of the other segments are we were looking to also turn those back as well. Is there a later date that these can come back to us? Or is this the one chance we get? No, I think based on the work session, it was loud and clear that we're going to do this in phases. This was clearly the first phase that we have brought forward and these are the two segments that the city is ready at this time to move forward with. The remaining segments will definitely come back as we work with tech stop on several answers and for maintenance and moving forward. Can I follow up, mayor? Sure. Since COVID has kind of changed everything since our original discussion, can city management or engineering weigh in on either of these segments if you see an issue now? At this time, given the maintenance cost, I do not believe that there is an issue. The operational budget has enough flexibility to accommodate that. As you can see, and back in the presentation back in December, we had laid out how soon we'll have to go back with some of the maintenance dollars. We do not have to since we'll be getting these over in a completely rehab form when we take them over, they will not need maintenance at a minimum for two years and some of the segments will go all the way to five years, depending on what type of pavement. We won't be hitting that annual maintenance for at least two to three years at a minimum. At this time, we don't believe that any of this COVID would have an impact on this. Okay. Thank you. I just want to make sure it wasn't going to push any of the projects that we have or currently have out of the way so that we could get to these. No, I think on a parallel track, we are currently going through every project that had been funded through general fund balance dollars, which are like the small transportation projects, some of our other maintenance projects, making sure that these ongoing, that those are taken care of so we can absorb these ongoing costs in. But those are the projects right now that we're going back and studying again, making sure the dollars are there, given what's happening to our reserves. Thank you. Yep. Council member Melzer. I know people have already sort of taken positions before, but I would encourage a fresh look simply to say, not that this is a gigantic amount of money, but simply to say that whether we do this or not, those roads will be there. Whether we do this or not, those road segments will be maintained. The difference is, if we do this, then we have an average liability of 150,000 a year. That's like two staff positions. So I move denial of the resolution. Okay. Do we have a move of denial? Do we have any discussion or a second? Council member Armature? First of all, I'm not sure if my Zoom screen appears green to you all. It looks green to me. I don't know why that happened. No, it's fine. Yeah. Okay. Right now it's all green, but okay. I sadly agree this is something that before COVID, I really support, and I would support it afterwards, but these are different times for budgetary reasons. So I'm going to sadly agree, but I want people to know that under normal circumstances, I think this is something that's important to do. So are you seconding his motion for denial? Yes. Okay. Yes. I suppose this is now discussion on the motion for denial. Yes, that's correct. I understand the concerns, and we're looking at every piece of the budget as the city manager has said many times. We're looking at every piece of the budget, capital projects all the way down to every day, pens and pencils, kinds of expenses. This is planning for a long-term future. This is, as Preetam told us just a moment ago, these are expenses we don't expect to realize for several budget cycles. This is anticipated annual maintenance, and I'll point out as somebody who's driven these roads for many, many years, these are some of our most often complained about roads. These are the roads that people already assume that we take care of and want us to take a more active role in. Not to mention every time that we want to do something on these roads, every time that we have an interchange with them, we have to ask permission from a state agency, and we have a good relationship with them, but I don't think that today's budget concerns override the long-term multi-year issues that we talked about solving by taking them on. I don't support the motion to deny. I think we do have the budget flexibility in coming years to move forward as we had intended to. - Council Member Briggs. - That brings me up an interesting question. It may be a legal one because I know that Dallas Drive is currently in process of working on it, and this may be a different segment. Somebody may need to help me understand, but I know that Teasley and Dallas Drive intersection, is that part of this section we're talking about? - Yes, it is part of this segment of Dallas Drive that's on the South Side. - There's been recent complaints about TextDOT starting the project there and then abandoning it. If this goes through tonight, is there anything in our language that says that they are to complete the work they've started, or do we automatically assume responsibility for finishing that work? - No, our agreement and the resolution clearly reads that we will not accept it back or turn it back to the city unless the rehabilitation is completely complete to our satisfaction. So unless we believe that all the roadways have been reconstructed or rehabilitated to our or better standards, we won't take it back. And the schedule on that, we are working with TextDOT on pushing them, the original schedule is July for getting that piece of Dallas Drive completed, but we're trying to get them to wrap it up earlier in the month of June. - I agree with that, with what Preetam just explained to you. - Okay, all right. So let me make sure I understand. You said that we won't accept the roads unless they've done all this rehabilitate. You're saying if they've started a project to repair, that we won't accept it until the current project is completed. Or are you saying that we're gonna inspect the roads or we're gonna tell them, unless you do this, we don't want the roads? I think I'm hearing that as long as all the current projects are completed by the time the handoff takes place. Is that correct? - Correct. - Okay. All right. Yes, council member Briggs. - Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that that is specifically stated because I remember Mr. Polster saying that there was another issue with the city and TextDOT once before on a take back where it was kind of like just understood but not said and there were some issues. So I just wanted to clarify. - So question, will this resolution, obviously there's some kind of document that's gonna be executed by the city and TextDOT for this transfer. Is that correct? Some legal document? - Correct. I think at this point, this resolution only says that the city is interested and we will be taking back on these particular segments at a later date. We will come back to council to codify that part. - Yeah, that's my point is we will see the actual legal ordinance or legal contract or agreement. So we'll be able to look at it to ensure that whatever language you would like to see in there to give you those assurances, we'll be able to have, we'll be able to review that. Is that my understanding of that? - Correct. - Okay. Fantastic. All right. So any more discussion on the motion to deny? All right. So we have a motion to deny agenda item 3A and a second. So while we'll poll the council, council member Meltzer? - Aye on the motion to deny. - Yes, correct. Approval of the motion to deny. Council member Armatuer? - Second. - So you're, I'm taking that as an approval of the motion to deny. - I approve the motion to deny, yes, approve it. - Council member Davis? - Nay. - Council member Briggs? I couldn't hear you, I'm sorry. You're still muted. - No. - Okay, thank you. Council member Ryan? - No. - Mayor Pro Tem? - Nay. - Mayor Watts, is a nay, I believe, is there anybody I've missed, I'm losing count. The motion fails two to five. Mayor Pro Tem? - First, I want to note that Teasley Lane is already starting to be repaved. So whatever you did pre-Tem worked, they've already repaved the north side and working on the south side. Move approval. - All right, Council member Davis? - Second. - All right, we have a motion and a second for approval of agenda item 3A. Mayor Pro Tem, how say you? - Aye. - Council member Davis? - Aye. - Council member Ryan? - Aye. - Council member Briggs? - Yes. - Council member Meltzer? - Nay. - Council member Armatuer? - No. - All right, moving on, Mayor Watts is a yes. Motion carries five to two. We'll move on to our agenda item 3B. Oh, also I want to say that we had for this item A, we had zero people making comments using our online form. Additionally, there were zero people that called in to 940-349-7800 to register their position. And finally, there were zero requests to speak over the phone on this item. Agenda item 3B, consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, the Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation authorizing the city manager or his designee to select a vendor to provide the city with, to provide the city with to purchase and to execute an agreement for generation utility plant forced outage insurance. - Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, Terry Nolte, Assistant General Manager, DME. Talk to you tonight about a risk management tool that we're recommending we undertake for the Denton Energy Center. This forced outage insurance is very much like other insurances that you're familiar with. It's like a home insurance where you're insuring against catastrophic failures. And the idea here is to purchase this insurance, which is part of our approved risk management plan in order to mitigate the potential for large losses associated with a catastrophic failure of the facility during high price periods. So the objective here is again to provide the protection to our customers and owners in the event that this forced outage would take place during a high priced period. And it is a requirement of our energy risk management policy. Just like a car, the deck is subject to forced outages despite the fact that it is a new facility. There are unforeseen things that could happen that could force these units to not be operational for short periods of time or potentially long periods of time. Even though we spend a significant amount of money and time and effort doing maintenance of the facility to ensure that it is available. There are just things that can go wrong, just like with a new car. The policy itself, as I said, is very similar to a auto policy or a homeowner policy. It has a term. We would start the term either in June or July and end it at the end of September. There would be a deductible amount that we would pay on a per event basis, or that would be in effect before we would make a claim. The difference here is that the settlement is a financial settlement. It is the difference in price between the spot hourly market price and an established strike price, which is a price that we would negotiate as part of the insurance policy. In my example here, it would be a $50 per megawatt hour strike price and at a $5,000 per hour settlement price in the market. The difference between those two prices times the volume that was impacted if it was one machine or 12 machines would determine the settlement. The policy would have a maximum payout. We believe it will be in the $10 to $20 million range. The reason we picked that amount is because as we experienced last year, most of the revenue generated by the DEC will happen in a very short period of time. Last year in five days, we generated about $17 million of revenue for the DEC, and if we were to avoid or if we were to miss that period of time as a result of a forced outage, our year would be upside down for the DEC budget. Of course, there's a premium you pay in order to have this insurance. The process is very interesting and it's driven by the fact that the providers of this insurance hedge their risk in the market at the minute that you agree to a price. So in order to meet the procurement requirements, we've issued a request for proposal. We received indicative offers in terms of conditions. We are in the process of negotiating the binder agreement and the terms of the policy. We will request firm offers at some time late this month based upon the price in the market. And the way that the policies work, we will have 30 minutes to transact at the price that's offered by the competing insurance providers. There is a 2% state insurance tax that needs to be paid as well on the policy that's paid by the provider. So in summary, forced outage insurance is the most cost effective way to manage this particular risk. It is mandated by our policies. Because it is not an approved product under our energy risk management policy, it requires your authority for execution. It is a competitive process and we will achieve the lowest cost through this process. So we recommend approval. With that, I will be glad to answer any questions. >> Councilmember Briggs, sorry. I was on mute. I apologize. >> That's okay. It happens to me all the time. Thank you for the presentation. So this policy will be something new for us, correct? >> That is correct. >> Okay. It's new for me to hear in the conversation, but I did hear you say that it is now in our risk policy. Was this something that was recommended to us to get when we had the consultants come in and review the EMO? >> No, councilmember Briggs. This was something that I put into the risk policy through my experience at other utilities. This is the most cost effective way to manage this risk. And it's done widely across the industry. The Deloitte did review that energy risk policy before it was forwarded to you for approval and they agreed with the recommendation. >> May I, mayor? >> Of course. >> So the $800,000 that we see, is that -- that's for the year and it's up to that point for -- to the insurance company and then we would get a higher payout if we needed to use that? >> That's correct. That the -- we would pay up to $800,000 for the policy that would give us somewhere in the $10 million to $20 million of coverage. We'll obviously try to get that number down to the lowest possible number that we can. >> And city manager or Terry, this -- so this will come out of the operations but will be added into the operations budget for something yearly to cover cost? >> That's correct. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? Councilmember Armitter? You're on mute, Councilmember Armitter. >> Sorry. I was wondering if you could explain what are some of the potential reasons for shutdown that would be initiated by ERCOT? >> Well, if ERCOT were shutting us down, it would be because the price was lower than the cost of generation. This insurance policy is to cover those instances where ERCOT is calling us to operate because the price is very high, but we physically cannot operate because of malfunction of equipment at the plant. So this would not even protect us against an ERCOT -- against a shut off that's caused by ERCOT not wanting to use the gas plant because of the pricing? >> Well, we only run the plant when it is what we term in the money. So if the price that we're being paid for the energy being generated is above the cost to generate that energy, we run the plant. ERCOT does not tell us when to start up or start down. That is our -- or shut down. It's our decision based upon the price that's available in the market. >> But if there's no demand for it based on the price, then we would shut it down? >> Yes. We would not be operating in that condition. >> Yeah. So in those days that you mentioned, where in a very short period -- I forget the number of days, but just a few days a week maybe, there was a great deal of revenue. Are you -- when -- at what point when you're looking at net revenue, do -- does that trigger a move to shut down for cost reasons? >> Well, we would only shut down for cost if the revenues that we were going to achieve by operating the plant did not cover the cost of operations excluding the debt. So if the price of the energy in the market, the ERCOT market, was $50 and we were generating for $20, we would be running and we would be netting $30 in that case per megawatt hour. >> Thank you. Yeah. That was my understanding. I'll save my comments for the discussion, but those are my questions. I just wanted to confirm. Thank you. >> Any other questions, comments? I can tell you from experience that when I was on TNPA board, I cannot -- I think it was -- I don't think it was when I was mayor. I think it was when I was District 4 that there was a major freeze that took down many generation plants in South Texas, and TNPA was included in that, and the price of electricity spiked tremendously. The city of Denton did not suffer -- I think they suffered about a less than $100,000 or $200,000 loss because they had some hedging insurance in place, whereas some of our member cities who did not have that were forced to go out to the market and buy electricity at that astronomically high price. So this is just like any other insurance policy, that if something breaks and we've had an opportunity to make a tremendous amount of revenue and somehow it's been forced shut down, then we can draw upon this insurance policy to replace those revenues based upon a formula that we were not able to take care of, which means that we can cover what we would have had to have paid with those high prices. So I appreciate you bringing it to me. I understand what it's for. Like any other insurance, we may not use it, and people can say it's $800,000, but yet if you have to use it for forced adage, it could mean millions to the ratepayers, absolute millions. So Councilmember Armitage? I think Councilmember Briggs, I guess, was next on the queue. Okay. Councilmember Briggs? I was going to make a motion to approve. Councilmember Armitage? Well, I was going to make a motion to deny, but so instead I'll just vote no, but I wanted to just state my reason. So I have used the term sunk cost fallacy a lot when talking about the deck, the gas plan. I'm not to use that term too much, but it is what happens when you keep putting more money into an investment that is ultimately a liability. And I like the analogy of car insurance. If you've got a car that does what you intended it to do, and you need to protect it against outages, then have some kind of insurance, but if the cost of keeping it is either more than the total cost with interest, or if you will, as in the projections for the deck, just kind of barely make, break even, hopefully after a long time, I think that's when you start looking at a sunk cost fallacy. So although I understand the wisdom and insurance, I have nothing to weigh it against. I want to look at what, how much it will cost 800,000 a year versus the O&M we're already putting into this 225 million plus interest investment that is barely going to break even. I just can't justify putting 800,000 a year into it. So that's why I'm against it. Okay. I got hands going up everywhere. Mayor Pro Tem. And we do have a motion on the floor. You know, you seconded it. I'm sorry. I didn't. You said it so fast. I missed it. Councilmember Davis. I was just going to second it. Okay. Well, so we have motion to second and I want to respond to this sunk cost fallacy analysis. Because I think what's missing in that theory or in that explanation is that you have an asset on the ground with $200 million worth of debt. Now that debt has to whether you agree with it being there or not is really immaterial because that debt has to be paid. All right. And the deck was created to provide a hedge against $9,000 a megawatt hour electricity cost to our residents. So therefore, if you don't care about the residents and the tax and the resident rate payers paying that exorbitant amount, then you can do that. But if you're saying that you want to shut the deck down, that it's a bad investment, let's turn it off. Let's never use it again. The debt still has to be paid for probably an excess of 20 years, which is, I don't know what the debt service is, $15 to $17 million a year. So what this insurance does is to help us have a consistent revenue stream that helps all the rate payers pay less electricity bills because we have revenue that's paying for this quote unquote sunk cost asset. So I'm not quite sure how all that works in that theory, but all I know is I'm not for taking a risk of losing the generation capacity of a 220 megawatt generation plant that we currently have, whether you're for it or not, that generates enough electricity and enough revenue to help pay the debt service. Because if it doesn't help pay the debt service, guess who's going to? Every rate payer in this city. So we're adding it to avoid a $10 or $20 million hit to the rate payers. So your analogy of a car that does not do what it's intended to do is inaccurate. The deck is doing exactly what it was designed to do. You can shake your head all you want, I don't know exactly what you're missing, but that's exactly what it was intended to do was hedge on those high dollar electric days and to provide a hedge for the resident tax rate payers of the City of Dent. We have a motion in a second. Councilmember Davis, how say you? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem? Aye. Councilmember Meltzer? Aye. Councilmember Armitter? No. Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Councilmember Ryan? Aye. Mayor Watz is an aye. The motion carries 6 to 1. We'll move on to our agenda item. On this agenda item 3B, we had zero people making comments using our online form. Additionally, there were zero people that called in to 940-349-7800 to register their position and there are zero who have requested to speak over the phone on this item. Agenda item 3C, consider approval of a resolution creating an interim municipal utility district policy for the city and the extra territorial jurisdiction and providing for an effective day. Good evening, Mayor, Council, Richard, development services department. I have a short presentation. Most of the slides that you'll see tonight are almost identical or for the most part are identical to what we looked at last week as part of the work session. Again, just again wanted to provide a little bit of the background as to why we're here. Again, the legislative changes that have stripped our authority to really manage growth within our ETJ as it related to the continued eroding of the annexation, our ability to annex properties as well as – and so the policy that's in front of you is essentially what we discussed last week, the policy framework is essentially identical. It has the purpose intent, applicability, those policies, and then under each policy again are those conditions and restrictions to consider as part of that consent agreement. And then those conditions or restrictions would be what would ultimately be placed in a consent agreement that would be brought in front of you if that's something to be considered. The only change I wanted to highlight – and it's in sort of in red on the screen – to the right is what we had in the first draft. We added the following language in the applicability section regarding if voluntary annexation would be considered for properties that are contiguous, that alternative financing options could be considered, including but not limited to a PID, and would be made part – included as part of a development agreement. And again, that's if City Council wishes to entertain that request. So it's not a lock-in or a guarantee, it's just we added that in if Council so desires to include that. Again, these were the eight policies, that policy statement, and then you see the conditions and restrictions underneath that highlighted in blue on the screen in front of you. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. >> All right. Seeing none, the Chair would entertain an action on this resolution. Councilmember Davis? >> I move approval of the new policy. >> Councilmember Ryan? >> Second. >> All right. Any discussion? Seeing none, Councilmember Davis, I say you. >> Aye. >> Councilmember Ryan? >> Aye. >> Councilmember Armitage? >> I will say aye. I'm very wary about MUDs, but I really do appreciate some of these protections that have been put in place here. >> Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Meltzer? >> Aye. >> Councilmember Briggs? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. We'll move on to our items. Oh, and on this unit, excuse me, on this agenda item, for agenda item 3C, we had zero people making comments using our online form. There were zero people that called in to the 940-349-7800 number to register their position, and there were zero who had requested to speak over the phone on this item. >> I'm going to go aye, just in -- >> Oh, did I miss you, Councilmember Pro Tem? >> I'm unassuming that way, but I -- >> I apologize. >> But I -- just so we don't have to come back in this record -- >> I appreciate that, man. It's just -- yeah. I'm sorry I overlooked you. I'll make sure I call on you first on the next one. I apologize. Thank you so much for letting me know. This public hearing 4A, hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, approving a change in the zoning district and use classification from the residential 2R2 zoning district and use classifications to the mixed-use neighborhood MN. And let me go back and say that that motion on agenda item 3C did pass unanimously 7-0 with Mayor Pro Tem weighing in there at the end. Thank you so much. All right. So we're on agenda item 4A, which is the public hearing. I will now open the public hearing, and we'll move on with staff presentation. >> Good evening, Mayor, Councilman Richard Canone, Development Services. The request in front of you this evening is to rezone a approximate 3.5-acre parcel from R2, residential 2, to MN mixed-use neighborhood. You can see the site here outlined in yellow. It's on the east side of I-35 north, just north of Thunderbird, with access from the access road to 35. You can see the zoning around the area to the north is MN under the current zoning. I believe there was an overlay with that, so it actually reflects as a PD, but the base zoning is MN. R3 to the east, and then you have some R7 to the south. The proposed would change it to MN, which would be sort of this natural progression of MN along the I-35 corridor. This is a concept plan that the applicant has prepared for this development. Again, we're not acting on this plan, but on the zoning itself, but this is something that they had brought forward with the neighborhood when they met twice. So you see the layout with the buildings kind of centered to the middle of the site. That way, there would be less disruptions to the residents that back up to this parcel. Something to note is the 50-foot right-of-way taking that TxDOT will be taking with regards to the expansion for I-35 northbound. There's a number of criteria that we look at. There's 12 general criteria, as well as seven specific criteria for the zoning to recommend approval of a rezoning, sorry. What we'll be going over tonight is really those criteria specific to the rezoning. And the first one is whether it's consistent with the Denton 2030 plan. If you look at the land use plan, the future land use map in particular, it has a designation of low residential, and so with the MN, it is not consistent. But that does not mean it is a hard no. There are some other provisions that both the DDC and the Denton 2030 plan allow for if there is an inconsistency, it looks at the other competing goals with respect to that area or this site in particular and whether or not it satisfies or brings forward or there's other changing conditions that would help promote or enact a rezoning. Criteria two, it's consistent with all relevant small area plans. There are no small area plans for this location. Consistent with the purpose statement of the proposed zoning district. And so really that MN district is the least intense of our districts. Maybe we looked at HC or highway commercial up and down a lot of the areas of the I-35 corridor. But when we have this close proximity of residential, MN would be the least intensive. And that's where the applicant had landed with respect to requesting this as well as continuing what's been applied just north of the property. Criteria four, there have been or will be significant changes to the area to warrant a zoning change. If you really look at the existing plans that TxDOT have for the widening of I-35, you see this ultimate right of way line coming right in and again peeling even probably even more into the site than I think was initially anticipated. And so really keeping this at R2, which is a 16,000 square foot lot, it is just not ideal to have that either really fronting or backing up to an interstate highway. Criteria five, the intensity permitted under the zoning is not expected to create any significant adverse impacts. And so really looking at streets, wastewater, water, and parks, there is no negative impact that would be a result of this. One of the conditions is, and you'll see it here as part of the streets, as part of the neighborhood meeting, the residents wanted to make sure that the access gate from Colonial would be limited to EMS service only, again making sure that any of the commercial traffic related to this site as it develops would access it from the service road. And so fire did not have a concern with that condition. Same with schools, there would be no impact because it is a non-residential. And then the fire station's approximately just under a mile and a quarter away with an eight minute or less response time. There was a notification that was sent out. We have zero in opposition, four in favor. I would like to note those in favor were in favor if the conditions were put in place, those conditions and restrictions. That was something that the applicant worked on with the neighbors as part of their neighborhood meeting. They had two different neighborhood meetings out at the area. And so P&Z recommended approval, five, zero, subject to two sets of conditions. The first are these general limitations, the four bullet points. I won't read each of those, but they really talk to more of how the site would be laid out and access control. And the second are specific limitations that restrict the number of uses, multifamily being one because that is a use that would be permitted by right under MN. So by including these specific limitations, multifamily could not develop there as a result. And then there were some other uses such as hotel, liquor store, bar, tavern, mobile food court, automotive sales, food processing, homeless shelter, community home, dormitory or chapter house that would also be restricted again. These were conditions that were worked upon with those residents. Staff looked at this without the conditions and felt as though it still warranted a rezoning, but have no objections obviously to the conditions that P&Z are recommending. And with that, I'll be happy to entertain any questions. - Okay, let me get to this, there we go. Okay, questions, council member Briggs. - I think it was covered, but I just wanna make sure that there were not gonna be any drainage issues with all of the parking lot and the neighborhoods right behind, like with runoff. Was that addressed in a slide? - It was not addressed in a slide, but this site is not platted. So they will have to go through, if the rezoning is approved, their next step would be to go through platting. And so that's when we would look at all of the drainage related to that site and make sure that it meets all of the standards of the DDC and criteria manuals. - Okay, thank you. Any other question, council member Meltzer. - So I realize this is just zoning, maybe you can just remind me and others, when in the process might we be able to address something like fencing up against the residential areas that this'll put up against? - Because it's not an SUP, it would not come back for a public hearing or public consideration. They would just meet those standards of the code. - Can you remind me what in the code would apply as far as any kind of a buffer between this use and the residences that are there now? - There's a number of options. I know that the applicant is here, but they can do a wall, they can do a fence. There's a number of options that they can do to buffer that. - But they have to do something, yes? - They have to do something, correct. - Okay, good to know, thank you. - Mayor Pro Tem. - Thank you. Richard, I'm gonna go the other way. Obviously this neighborhood, we've heard concerns about highway noise. Have we received any indication from TxDOT what they plan to do once they widen, what's the finishing look going to be? - Not that I'm aware of. I think Todd is, Estes is on, I think on the line. He may have a better idea, but I'm not aware at this time. - Yeah, not that it has anything to do with the zoning, but it is gonna be top of mind. And since it's not coming back, I would be curious to know if someone's on the line that could answer what they plan to, what finishing touches they'll do or if it'll just be a service road that much closer. - Mayor Pro Tem, are you asking, will there be any kind of sound barriers? - Yes, sir. - Okay. All right. Yeah, if there's somebody on the line that can answer that specific question, that'd be great. - So this is Todd Estes, city engineer. We're still early in the design, at least finish out of the design for I-35. They know what the roadway is gonna look like. That is a discussion item that will be coming up over the next several months as to what these areas really entail. We just, matter of fact, had a email this week asking for a meeting for us to sit down and talk about finish out items along the entire corridor. But at this point, that has not been laid out. - Okay. Thank you. And I would just add the note then. Hopefully it's something they will provide, but if not, if you could take a note that bring back that cost and it's maybe something we can price at the time they're building and find value. - Richard, if you could put the, thank you, Todd, if you could put the slide back up that shows that alignment with the, just sort of the map, with the alignment and then how the properties laid out, the alignment of the highway. I think it's that one. Yeah. - Sorry. There we go. - Because I believe, if I'm not mistaken, and I think council member or mayor Pro Tem, we did receive a report that there was some loud highway noise. But I think when we went and checked with decibel markers, and also I think text dot won't put in sound walls if it's over a certain distance from a residential neighborhood. Is that correct, Todd? Are you still on the line? - Yes, sir. So yes, they do have a set criteria. I would have to go back and double check what that criteria is, but they do have a set criteria about how close it would be. And then also just to finish out in decoration of what the walls actually look like, whether they're sound walls or they're just structural walls for overpasses and on ramps. - Right. I think with buildings in this particular area, because some have complained or sort of postured or proposed that it's the buildings on the other side of the highway that are directing more sound across the highway. So if that's even a viable kind of acoustic theory, then would it also be true that if there's buildings there on this land between the homes and the highway, that that may provide some type of also just barrier to the sound movement as if there were nothing there? Do we have any idea on that? - Certainly any kind of barrier, especially the more angular such as a building it is, definitely provides more of a challenge for sound waves to carry. Then of course, there's some other screening things that could be done on the site itself just to help dampen some of that noise. - Okay. All right. Thank you. I think we could go back to where you showed the opposition and in favor color code. This big track here to the north, this isn't the track that we approved a while back on the SUP for the multifamily, is it? Or is it? - No, sir. That's on the north side of Windsor. - Okay. Got you. Okay. It's further up. It's further up the highway is what you're saying. Okay. Got you. I just couldn't see you from the map. All right. Thank you. Any other questions for staff before Council Member Briggs? Go ahead. - I was just going to move approval with the conditions. - Well, we've got a public hearing, so I need to open the public hearing has been opened. So we don't have anybody wishing to speak on the public hearing. I guess the applicant is on the line and certainly want to give the applicant an opportunity to speak if they so choose. Okay. I'm not sure if that silence means they choose not to, they just haven't come on the line yet. So I'll give it just a few more seconds. And then if they want to speak, we'll just we'll come back in. Oh, yes. Lee Allison, is the caller there? I guess not. Okay. All right. - All right. This is Lee Allison. Can you hear me now? - I can hear you now. Yes. - Okay. Sorry about all that. - And how much refresh my memory, City Secretary, how much time does the applicant get? Is it ten minutes? Twenty minutes. I know that Mr. Allison is not going to take 20 minutes on this, I presume. Lee, I'm just kidding, I'm giving you hard time, Lee, you take the time you need. All right. So let me get the stop clock ready. And you don't want the calculator. We'll do the stopwatch. Okay. Just state your name and your address and your time will begin. This is Lee Allison with Allison Engineering Group at 2415 North Elm Street, Denton, Texas. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I believe Richard Canone is going to help me manage a short PowerPoint presentation. I can't see it on the screen that I'm watching for the council meeting, but I've got it on mine. I'll assume it's up. It is up. It is. Yes. Very good. Slide number one, this is just zoning case Z20-0001. We refer to it as the plaza at Thunderbird. We're requesting a rezoning from R2 to MN with proposed limitations. Going to number two, R2 residential does not allow for any office or retail. We have a doctor's group that is proposing to develop office, doctor's offices there, but they wouldn't use up the entire site, so want room for some retail. The proposed zoning is mixed use neighborhood that does allow that and it allows some retail. Going to slide number three, we had neighborhood meetings on December 19th and again on February 27th. I'll discuss those a little more later, briefly. Slide number four discusses the drainage issue. Council member Briggs brought up some drainage concerns. If you can see, there's nine black drainage arrows on here and there's a dashed line that indicates a drainage divide. Our site predominantly drains towards interstate 35 and towards Thunderbird. A little bit drains towards the neighbors to the east. The neighbors to the east expressed a concern with drainage from a previous development to the north that runs through their backyards. That's not something we can resolve, but we did say to the neighbors we'd bring it to the city's attention. It was brought to the attention at Planning and Zoning Commission and I understand the engineering department is already looking into this to see what they can possibly do. If you'll go to slide number five, we've found out that there is oddly a public sidewalk easement along the northern property and the backside of these lots. The northern lot has not been built before and it is owned by the homeowner on the second lot from the north, two lots below the red line. Just a preliminary look, we thought of the possibility of building a concrete flume there with a curb that would take the flow out to the street, out to Glen Gardner Drive. One of the reasons was because the storm sewer is so far away. We just told the neighbors we would look into this and further express it to the city. We're not trying to propose a solution or tell engineering department what they should or shouldn't do or have to do. It's just so they can look into it and we presented that forward to the city with our work here. Going to the next slide, this is the concept plan that we used at the first neighborhood meeting. It was a rough idea. We didn't want to go to the neighborhood with a blank slate, but we also wanted to give them a concept of what we were doing, find out or considering and find out what their thoughts would be. One of the things that kind of surprised me that came out of the meeting is they wanted the parking between the development and the neighbors to the east. They didn't want the buildings adjacent there and also, of course, they wanted one story buildings because they didn't want somebody looking over the fences into their backyards. Then we had another neighborhood meeting as the next slide shows. We came back with a more refined concept plan, a better presentation of what textile would be taking from the site, and a better idea on what we could do. In this discussion, it was determined we would also keep the sites on the south to have similar limitations to what we had on the east. Some consideration had to do with the sounds that Commissioner Hussbett brought up or Councilmember Hussbett brought up. According to the neighbors, the rumors are that textile is not going to build a sound wall here. These buildings would tend to function as a bit of a sound wall along with the landscaping that goes with this and trees, et cetera, that we don't have on here. The green space between the development and the adjacent neighborhoods would also be landscape buffers that would include vegetation and fencing as appropriate. That's one of the point-getters, but those are details of design that will come when we get to that place in our development process. We came up with the general limitations. I hope that these explicitly mimic what you have in front of you, but the uses adjacent to the east and southern boundary should be restricted to medical offices, clinics, professional offices, and residential. Parking on the east side should be between the offices and the east boundary to buffer the residential to the east. Medical offices, medical clinics, residents, and professional offices along the east and south side should be limited to one story, and access to colonial drive should be restricted to emergency access only. With the caveat that the city agrees to it, and I believe Richard Kenody indicated the fire marshal is okay with it, that was something we didn't necessarily control. We also went through to help reduce the impact or fears of other development uses to limit no multifamily dwelling. I'm on the next slide, Richard, just in case. No chapter houses or community homes or dormitories, no bars, taverns or lounges, hotels, or food processing along with the other items we have listed. That list of restrictions was worked out with the neighbors at our second neighborhood meeting. We had a draft of all of these restrictions, and we actually edited them at the meeting as we met with the neighbors. The one exception would be the limitations against the southern property. That was something that was expressed during the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, and we agreed at that time to include that in the limitations. With that, I'll be available for any questions you might have at this time, or I'll hang on in case you have some later. Any questions for the applicant, Mayor Pro Tem? Yes, hey, Ali, two quick questions. Did you talk to the neighbors about 24-hour emergency businesses, or is that off the table? No, that's why we have explicitly listed medical offices and maquette medical, what was the term we used? Let me find my slide. Medical offices and medical clinics. My understanding is medical offices are basically eight to five Monday through Friday, and medical clinics could be 24-hour emergency. So yes, we did discuss that, and that's why we put these specific uses in this list. Just to make sure I heard you right, the neighbors understand that 24-hour emergency facilities are an option? Yes. And they were good with that? They were. Of course, the size limitations, you're not going to get very large facilities out there, and I doubt personally if you'd get more than one, but yes, that was all discussed during our meetings. Excellent. Thank you. And then the last question, do you have a preference on a wall or no wall? Obviously, there's some visibility trade-offs, but your thoughts? Are you talking about a fence between our development and the neighbors, or are you talking about a sound wall with text dot? Sorry, to be clear, yes, a sound wall with text dot from the service road. That is something that text dot would construct on their site. We would probably want to work with them regarding visibility of our facilities. But at the same time, if you have an intermittent wall that didn't block our building, so our building served as a sound wall and did block our open areas, which kind of defeats the purpose of having open area visibility there, we'll work with them. That's really just too soon for us to get to a decision there. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs, I believe you had a question. Well, I just wanted to say thank you for having the neighborhood meetings. It really helps and for working with the neighborhood. And thank you for addressing my drainage question. I appreciate that. Glad to. Okay. Any other questions for the applicant? All right. Thank you, Lee. I appreciate that. I don't believe we have any other speakers requesting to speak during this public hearing. And so we will now close the public hearing. I guess, Councilmember Briggs, you started with a motion, so I wanted to recognize you first. I move approval of the item with the conditions and limitations proposed. Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah, I appreciate all the collaboration with the neighborhood. I do think it will serve as a sound barrier, as you pointed out, Mayor, and I second. All right. So we have a motion and a second. I'm going to go to Mayor Pro Tem, since I inadvertently skipped over him the last time. So Mayor Pro Tem, I say you on this motion and a second for Agenda Item 4A. Aye. All right. Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Councilmember Meltzer? Aye. Councilmember Davis? Aye. All right. Councilmember Ryan? Aye. Councilmember Armitter? Councilmember Armitter, did we lose you? Okay. Well, I'm an aye. Do we know if Councilmember Armitter left for good? Looks like she's coming back on her. Okay. There you are. Okay. All right. You're muted, Councilmember Armitter. I'll say you on this motion to approve Agenda Item 4A. Yes. Okay. All right. So and Mayor, I'll reiterate mine is an aye, which is a yes. So this motion carries 7-0. Did I leave anybody out? Okay. Good deal. Thank you. It must be a long night already. Okay. That concludes our agenda items, except for concluding items. So yes, Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah, as I mentioned in an earlier item, just because you hear opening up in the news, it doesn't mean the risk is gone. We're still dealing with a situation with no cure and no vaccine. And that's why the governor's orders still recommend, I'm just reinforcing to everyone, still recommend social distancing, frequent hand washing with soap and water for 20 seconds, wearing a mask in public places, and Councilmember Meltzer recommends continuing to support local businesses through curbside and delivery. But I also want to point out a specific opportunity, because the County Public Health Director has been actually pretty enterprising in coming up with more testing resources, still not enough to change the risks all in all, but it does enable the county to open up testing to a couple of new categories of folks that don't necessarily have to have symptoms. If you want to avoid being a source of transmission to others, and you're a transportation worker, or you're on staff at a long-term care facility, you can sign up to be tested at an event this Friday morning. It's going to be near Dillard's at Music City Mall in Louisville, you've got to register first and that number is 940-349-2585, 940-349-2585. So even if you think, you know, you're a healthy person, it'll never bother you even if you got it, but you want to avoid carrying the virus to others, and you're in the high public contact positions, I encourage you to go ahead and get yourself tested. Okay, anyone else? Mayor Pro Tem? Yes, so I have a first one to recognize today is North Texas Giving Day. So that's important. I want to recognize all moms coming up Mother's Day Sunday. So all dads scramble and hurry to order by whatever you have to do and then three, no, two quick birthdays, Brother Tyson's birthday is today. So I want to say wish him happy birthday and then Ellen Sako's birthday is tomorrow. So I want to wish her a happy birthday in advance. Okay. All right. Councilmember Briggs, did I see your hand? Yes, yes. Well, a few of mine have already been, have been mentioned here, Giving Day and testing. I did also want to ask staff and I sent in a question, but wanted you to hear that in other towns and other places, they are using the wastewater to do COVID testing to gauge community infection. And I know we have a wonderful Dr. Banks here, so I was going to ask if that was something that we could do just to get a general idea of our infection rates with water testing. Okay. All right. We'll, Mr. City Manager, you'll run that by Dr. Banks and see what that entails. Yeah. If we can just get a follow up email exactly what we're looking for, we'll get an answer back to everyone. Yeah. Already sent. Okay. Okay. Anybody else? All right. And I just want to encourage everybody to, to be, be responsible, take care of yourself, take care of others by practicing the recommendations of the CDC, understanding that testing does provide a snapshot of that day, whether you are infected or not, whether you're asymptomatic or not, but understand that if you come back with a negative test, that doesn't mean that tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, that you couldn't get that. So the key is to be responsible for yourself, be responsible for those around you and your loved ones, practice those CDC guidelines. And we need to also remember, and I want to challenge every council member to do this as well as I'm going to do it as well. It's really easy for the census to get lost in this, in this time. And so Mr. City Manager, I'm sure we have some census information on the city website, I sure would like to find some ways that we can further promote that because it's critical that we get everybody to fill out the census because it affects the type of public funding that we will have. It affects the kind of funding that we may be able to receive from the CARES Act in the future because of our population based upon the census. So it is critical, critical, critical that this program by the federal government and this requirement by each citizen not be overlooked during this time, because it sets the stage for 10 years to come till the next census. So we do not want to be left out. We do not want to be uncounted. We want our full share of funding that comes to us because of our population. So I really want to encourage everyone to just reach out to your friends, ask them if they filled it out. I want to encourage my colleagues, if you haven't filled it out, fill it out. I have filled it out and sent it in. You can do it online because it's that critical. Okay, anybody else? Okay, we will stand adjourned at 814. Thank you all very much.