May 19, 2020 City Council on 2020-05-19 1:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, May the 19th, 2020. It is 1.03 p.m. and we do have a quorum so I will call this meeting to order. Our first order of business for this meeting today will be to adjourn into closed session. So I will now adjourn us into closed session at 1.04 and we will be meeting in executive session pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.071, consultation with attorneys, and then deliberations regarding personnel matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.074. Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council. We've just concluded our closed session. We're now reconvening in open session, moving through our work session agenda items. The time is 3.10. We do have a quorum so I will reconvene this meeting. Our first agenda item for the work session is Citizen Comments on Consent Agenda Items, and I do not have any indication that there are any citizen comments on consent agenda items. So we'll move on to our next agenda item, which is Agenda Item 2, Request for Clarification of Agenda Items listed on this agenda. Council Member Armitage. Yeah, I had some clarification I'd like on C and E, and I'm fine putting those together since they both have to do with solid waste. If staff is fine with that. Do you have a question on C and E? Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Would you like me to state the question now? Yes, please. Yes, that'd be fine. I was just thinking about C, which is about the solid waste, the routing. What the cost range, you think, is of that service? I know for E, there were bids that already came in. I can't remember off the top of my head if there were bids that had yet come in for C. I think we have Brian Berner on the line who can answer that. Yes, Mayor. I'm a member of the Council, Brian Berner, Director of Solid Waste. I do appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about C and for clarification on this. We have received proposals under C, and we're in the process of evaluating them. They were in the range of about $300,000 to $500,000 because, again, this was significant software and hardware upgrades for the in-cab camera and routing systems that were to be applied to our existing fleet. This rejection is really an unfortunate casualty of our COVID response. What we hope to do is once we get a little better handle on the revenues that are coming out, we would go back out and restart this process. But right now, it's not prudent to proceed with the unknown of what our revenue or funding sources are at this time. And thank you. You just answered what was going to be my second question, which was would this be coming back to us? Because I agree that it's important for us to have this at some point, largely because it is a cost-saving and time-saving, ultimately, expense. But I am perfectly okay with that if we're going to be coming back to it and it's not just being written off. What you say makes perfect sense. And my question about E is very similar. So I see that there were three bids received, if you could speak to the range of those bids. And also, I noticed that on the Public Utility Board, there was a six-to-one vote, if you could speak to the one dissenter, I'm always curious to know. And apologies that I didn't have time to watch the entire Public Utility Board meeting. Well, again, my answer is going to be very similar to the answer on the last one, is that this proposal, the rejection of this proposal, again, is an unfortunate casualty of our COVID response. We did receive three bids, and we had just barely got them in before the COVID response hit. So we have not had a chance to look at them, much less evaluate them. But again, just a quick look at the cost range. They're anywhere from about $125,000 to $150,000, $175,000, depending on what we were actually going to consult or contract with for the consultant. So again, we are very much excited about moving forward with this once our revenue situation improves. And again, we hope to do that within, you know, start looking at that again within about 90 to 120 days and get that back on track. Excellent. So 90 to 120 days. So this is really just not right now at this moment. So that is good to know. And so I take it that this is not something that could be -- and by the way, for the public listening, that, you know, this is about a comprehensive solid waste strategy. This is not something that could be done in-house, in the interim. This is something that -- or rather that it would be most advantageous to get an outside perspective on it, is that correct? That is correct. The key word is perspective. We're looking at somebody that's not as close to the situation as we are and be able to look at it at a much higher level. Okay. So thank you. So I support both of those. Thank you for answering the questions. And then the third one was just about F, which was about the car cameras for police. And I don't know if you need a moment to -- Yeah, we've got Melissa Kraft and Chief Dixon, I believe, are online. What was the question? Well, so my question was, because I'm thinking of this, so it's about almost $1.5 million. And I love the idea of -- so this is about car camera technology where it would be able to be saved on a cloud, as I understand it, which is much more convenient and better as far as archiving and saving this information. So I totally understand the need for it. I was wondering kind of why the 100 cars, is that -- you know, because we have more than 100 cars, so why that number 100? And I was also wondering, you know, if the fact that these would be saved in a cloud would make it easier and possibly more cost effective to process, say, public information requests for this kind of data, or is that a separate matter? Who would like to take that? I can take the -- this is Chief Dixon from the police department. I can take the first part of it on the working pieces for the police department. We currently have 100 patrol cars that will be outfitted with the new camera system, and this would mirror the body cam systems are also from Axon, and we'll additionally at some point in the next two years, we move into our interview rooms. So we're trying to streamline all of our processes, all of our technology into one going with Axon for it being stored in the cloud. It does make a retrieval of it, but more importantly, the storage of it. Now, we're still going to be bound by state law on how long we can retain them, but having everything in one centralized location really streamlines the process when you're looking for video, whether it be body cam or in-car camera. And thank you. And so I love the idea. I'm wondering why the 100, because there are more than 100 patrol -- or how many patrol cars do we have? Essentially, the idea would be to fit all of the entire fleet in this system, right? Well, we won't have the entire fleet, just the patrol resources, because that's what the patrol officers will be driving. So, for instance, detective vehicles don't have a need for in-car cameras. Every employee in the department has a body camera. So when our detectives go out to do work, they utilize their body cameras to capture the information that we need, patrol, obviously, are the ones around the front lines that are having constant contact with our community. So it's really important that we have very robust systems to catch those interactions both in-car and on-body. Got it. Thank you. So 100 is the total sum number of the patrol -- of the cars in the patrol fleet, is that correct? Of the patrol fleet. And then, obviously, as we replace those cars or purchase new cars, we grow the fleet, we'll have to install new cameras into those. And can those same cameras be installed in a new car, I take it? Yes, they can. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Absolutely. Okay. The second part of the question was about the cloud, so, yes, if there's somebody. Yes. Okay, actually, Chief Dixon answered about the cloud. I feel like, even though you said you will only answer part of it, I feel like you answered most of it, except maybe the part about how it would be easier for -- or would it be easier for public information requests, but I feel like you answered that it was more about storing the data. Okay, so -- So I feel satisfied with that. I had a question for the city manager, just about the kind of 1.5 million -- or, I mean, 1.4 something, something, close to 1.5 million, you know, is it -- I take it, you know, the fact that this ended up on the consent agenda to have all 100 of those cars all at once, I take it there was kind of consideration of would it be more cost-effective to do, I don't know, half of the fleet now and then another half later, as far as just general funds, you know, limited money at this time. If you could kind of speak to, you know, why all of it now, is it because costs are going to rise or you get a better deal for all of these? It's far more efficient to have the system deployed at one time in terms of your professional consultants and you want that system to be as uniform as possible. My understanding, Chief Dixon, I'm sorry if I'm wrong, is that that system has essentially reached its useful life, so we're at a point where it didn't make sense given the liability concerns that we have and the need for information, those cars, to hold this one back, so we purposefully made sure that this stayed in the budget during that first couple of rounds of cuts. And so you're looking at, again, around a little under $300,000 a year for the system, but it's a, it was important to get this all done at one time, so we're using one system and have one maintenance contract. Okay, so thank you, so that makes sense to me. Thank you for answering my question. Okay, Council Member Briggs. I have a follow-up to that and then I have a couple of other questions. Does this improve the quality of the video and sound, this contract, or the Axon moving it over? The Axon product will have a better video quality and sound quality to it than the L3 systems that we're currently running. Okay, perfect, thank you. So my questions are on C and E as well, I'd like to go ahead and pull item G for presentation, and then I might pull E. My question on E is, I thought we were looking at a grant for part of that, part of that. We were, my understanding in the prime burners on the line is that the city was not approved for the grant on E, and I just wanted to kind of explain to the council, once we get into July and August, we will continue recalculating where these funds are at, particularly the general fund and the solid waste fund, both of them have had to deal with some real ups and downs given the COVID response over the last couple of months, so if these funds are in decent shape, if the solid waste fund is in decent shape, we'll bring this back, but we were not approved for grant funds that we had requested. I know Brian had brought a number of ideas to you, but my understanding is none of those ideas were approved. So to follow up on that on E, so because both C and E were very vital, and I remember during our solid waste presentations, especially C, it was significant for our route planning and for efficiency, and so for me to see this getting withdrawn after hearing the importance of it was a little bit concerning. Well I don't think you should be concerned, at this point we're trying to get some idea where the solid waste fund is going to set, given the response in COVID, as Brian told you last week in the Friday report, we've been actually out working with our business community, several of them have had significant reductions in their service that they requested, so it's impacting our bottom line, and I think he wanted to get through the next couple of months to understand exactly where the fund is sitting, and then we'll bring them back, but that would certainly be the first one that would come back of the two. Just a process question, do we have to reject the bids, or can we not just wait until that time where you're talking about re-evaluating next month? We may be able to, and I need to defer to Brian and Cassie on this, but we may be able to see if the bidders would hold their bids for a period of 90 days, I'm kind of asking the question and they haven't had a chance to talk to either Cassie or legal on that, but we have done that from time to time when we need more time. We've got somebody, does somebody on staff want to address that? This is Brian Barner again, and that would be correct, we would need to reach out to the vendors and ask them to hold their prizes and extend their proposals. Right now we're approaching the end of when those would be valid. Okay, Mayor, I'd like to pull C and E for a separate vote please. One other thing Mayor, if I could, item G, staff is going to ask that that be moved back to the first meeting in June, there's another item that needs to be cleaned up on that one. Okay. All right. So that was getting pulled off, not for consideration, but just to be rescheduled. Right. All right. Councilmember Davis. I'm just requesting to pull item I for recusal. Okay. All right. Okay. Anybody else? Agenda item, all right, then we'll move on to our next work session reports, which are work session reports, agenda item three, we're going to take the, I believe we're going to take agenda item 3C first, just to accommodate scheduling on this. Is the speaker queued up to address agenda item 3C? Maybe I'll go ahead and call it, but I wanted to make sure that we had everybody on board. Okay. There's, I see Laura's on the line. So yes, I'll go ahead and call agenda item 3C, which is receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding amendments to the ethics ordinance and the board of ethics rules of procedure. Hello, this is Lauren and am I up? You're up. Is there a presentation on this or is this Laura making the presentation? There's a PowerPoint that Madison sent me and I guess I, you know, I can't see y'all. I'm just on the phone, but she told me that that was going to be a PowerPoint. Yeah, it is. Yeah, she's pulled that up and she'll probably just follow along with your presentation as she scrolls through the slides. Okay. All right, so we're bringing forth the recommended ethics ordinance amendment. We were asked to look at council member Davis's proposed amendment and that's on slide 2 to add polling places as something that can be deliberated on and there wouldn't be an ethics violation, kind of like with the city budget and the majority of the board of ethics voted in favor of that amendment when we had talked about it. We had talked about how there could possibly be some instance we can think of where money can be exchanged hands and there could be some problem, but we ended at the likelihood of that is very low and it's more important that everybody's able to vote on polling places. The rest of the presentation moving to slide 3 is about mostly recommendations that we've already given, but as a board, we thought that since we were asked to look at council member Davis's amendment, we might as well bring forth the amendments that we've all agreed on. There's one new one, the first bullet point on slide 3 under 2-273A1, change and a majority to wear a majority, that was something brought up that board member just thought that it made more sense and was more clear to change that and we all agreed on that. The second bullet point is replace the term accused with respondent throughout the ordinance and we've brought that forth before just because we don't think this is some sort of criminal thing that we're having and I think that respondent was a better way to, a better thing to call the person that the complaint's against. Moving to slide 4, the board recommends adding that special counsel shall be engaged whenever there's an ethics violation or an ethics complaint against a city council person and that's because the city attorney would have a conflict of interest there between their job of representing city council and the board of ethics and that was actually I think Chris Leal brought that to our attention. Moving to slide 5, that was, that is about, that recommendation is for the person the complaint is against to get a copy of the complaint right away, we found that in the ethics complaints we've had so far, the person the complaint's against doesn't get the complaint and so sometimes it might be in the paper or go to a panel before they're able to see what the allegations are against and we just thought even if the person has, that's unfair to the person the complaint's against. Moving to slide 6, I'm not sure if we brought this forth in October when you mesh a presentation to the city council but it's to add a whistle, some sort of whistleblower protection against people who file ethics complaints that it's a violation of ethics ordinance to retaliate against someone for filing a complaint. Moving to slide 7, under the definitions of relative, we wanted to add a reference to the Texas government code that way if some person that's say not a lawyer wants to know what relative means they know where to go to get a definition of what third degree affinity is because that's not necessarily common knowledge. Moving to slide 8, and this was a recommendation by you mesh to remove department supervisor from section 2-284(b) because the ethics code doesn't apply to department supervisor so we couldn't find a violation, find a department supervisor in violation anyway. Slide 9, so with the recommendations we have for amendments to the ordinance, we also have some recommendations to our rules of procedure. The first bullet point is just amendments to the ordinance and the second bullet point is about alternate members and notice of absences. It's currently under the hearing section but it really makes more sense for it to be under the general section of the rules of procedure. So that's not really, it's not really substantive just moving things around to make more sense. And on slide 10, we would want, we want to change the term of cues to respond it throughout the rules of procedure if we also do that in the board, in the ordinance. And there's additional changes just so that the page numbers and headings are all lined up. Some of them were out of order and weren't correct. So that's all, that's all I have for recommendations. Again, it's kind of awkward. I'll admit talking on the phone and I can't see everybody, but if there's any questions I can answer those. Sure. If we could pull the staff presentation down so I can see the full panel. Okay. All right. Council member Davis. Just a quick question for the board chair. One of the things that has kind of been on council's mind for months now and I know that the board has talked about a lot is the conflict of interest provision. I noticed that there's not a board recommendation at this point for a change to the conflict of interest provision. Can you kind of tell us why there's not a board recommendation or kind of what the board's conversations have been to this point and why we don't have kind of a consensus from the board of ethics on any conflict of interest changes? Yeah, I actually, I talked to Madison about that. There's some things that we haven't come to a consensus on. I know there's some board members that want to talk about the reconsideration portion of the ordinance. And the biggest thing is the conflict of interest. I mean, since, I mean, I would say for the past year, a lot of our meetings have been revolved around talking about conflict of interest. And there's been some members that have brought proposed conflicts of interest, but we haven't come to a consensus or a majority about anything that should replace the current conflict of interest. Because we don't want to, I think as a board, we don't want to make it something that would be impossible for people to understand. We want everyone involved to have notice of what the conflict of interest is. And we don't want to kind of go backwards from what we currently have and come up with something that's going to be more confusing or worse. So we haven't figured out anything that's better yet, if that makes any sense. Okay. Councilmember Davis, did you have a follow up to that? Okay. All right. Okay. Councilmember Briggs. Yeah. Are you still in conversations about that? Or are you waiting from direction for council to continue those discussions? Where are you with your board in that conversation? Well, in the last meeting, we had, so, you know, okay, let's see. We, I think we canceled our March meeting, you know, once all this COVID stuff came out. And so we haven't met since, I believe, February. And we hadn't met over the holidays. And from what I remember, we had everybody send me and Umesh and Betsy their proposals for possible conflict of interest amendments. And we went over those in the February meeting. And we could not come to a consensus of using those or reworking what was sent. So I guess we're, we don't have anything on the table right now, but it would be something for the next meeting we would have. I'm sure it'd be something that would be discussed because it's been discussed at, I believe, the past, all the meetings for the past year. So I guess, I'm not sure if that answers your question well, but I would say we're, I don't know if we're any closer to having something for y'all than we were a year ago. Okay. All right. Council member Amature. So thank you. So first of all, I approve of the recommended suggestions. I approve of all of those. And I too was going to ask about the conflict of interest. I'm glad that that's going to be coming before us. I have learned a lot from the Robert Weschler, I believe that's how his name is pronounced model that was, I believe, put forward by y'all, but is kind of a standard template. And I'd be curious to know if not now at this moment, then at some point when this comes forward to us next, whether or not the ethics committee agrees that the Western model is a good model for a conflict of interest to me, I'll say it does seem a very good model. And I know that it is adopted pretty ubiquitously in other cities, including other Texas cities. So I feel like, you know, even a repeal and replace of our conflict of interest section of the ordinance with the Weschler would in my view, make things clearer as opposed to more complicated, but I'll be curious to know if the committee has had discussions specifically about Weschler, I believe it's section two, four, three. And if not, if you plan to apologies also for not having had watched your previous meetings. Yeah, we have talked about the model code and the Weschler's model code. I don't remember which exact meeting that was, but I believe council members or board members brought that up and we had discussed it. From what I remember, and I'm kind of going off memory, I don't have the notes from the meeting, was that the model code was just a little more broad. And our current code was more specific. I think our, well, I guess I don't really want to answer that because I'm not exactly sure, but I know we've talked about it and we didn't think it was better than what we currently have and what, you know, the council over the, you know, 11 public sessions that they came up with the current ordinance, what they came up with, we didn't think that the model was better than that. The majority, you know, not every single member of the board of ethics. Okay. Thank you for answering that. I'll just add that I got a really helpful, I was sent from one of the members of the committee, a kind of comparison that they did, had done of, this is a Netta Ramsey from the committee, comparison of Denton versus other cities. And I would love for, I'm not sure if that went to all of council, I would love for that comparison to go to all of council and to the ethics committee if they haven't seen that yet. And what other cities have done, so let me, I don't want to get stuck on this conflict of interest situation because that's not what's before us today. I guess what I would ask is that, because board chair, if the ethics board is unable to put forth a recommendation for conflict of interest change, it would be helpful if y'all came to that consensus, then just to forward that to the council. And so then therefore, if the council wanted to do something different, at least we know that it had gone to the board first and we've got your recommendations or lack thereof. And then if the council wants to take that up at some later date, they're certainly willing to do that. I'd like to get some kind of official disposition and it doesn't have to be from the next meeting. It's just, if you guys are making progress, that's great. If you feel you've hit an impasse on that, then it would be great to report that as well. - Okay, we will, the next meeting we have, and we're coming to an impasse to let you know if not, we'll just keep working on it. And in the last meeting in February, we did, Annette Ramsey did present the documents that council member Armator mentioned and we talked about it during that meeting in February. - Okay, great. All right, any other questions for the ethics board chair? Laura, thank you so much for being with us. Sorry that I appreciate you commenting and sending your patience and getting you on. Thank you. - All right, thank you. Bye. - Thank you very much. All right, so what we direction, we need to give direction to staff. Council member Davis. - No, I think these are all great additions or changes to the code. We've had some time to work with it now. The board's done what we asked them to do and fully vetted them. I think we should move forward with their recommended changes. - Okay, anyone else? Opposed to that, I guess. And council member Briggs? - No, I'm not opposed to that. I'm just going to say that. And also with your discussion with the chair on the conflict of interest, if I would like for them to send something back to council, if they can't agree on changes for that. - Yeah, I think that's what I asked them to do. I absolutely appreciate that. Any other, everybody okay with the recommended changes? I don't see anybody objecting. So staff has their direction in that regard. And so we'll move on to work session item three A, receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding an update to the city of Denton COVID-19 response. - Good afternoon, mayor, city council, Sarah Keettler, chief of staff. One moment while I pull up the presentation. Okay. So this is our standing work session item for staff to provide, sorry, hold on one second. All right. Now it's on the screen. Sorry about that. So this is a standing work session item to provide an update on the city's response to COVID-19. So currently we have an order and local disaster declaration that is in effect until May 31st. Staff has scheduled a city council special called meeting for Friday, May 29th for city council to consider extending or amending that declaration and order as well as provide some further updates on the city's response to COVID-19. So this afternoon have a quick presentation for you, a few updates in regards to some intergovernmental updates from the state and county, give you a little bit of outlook on what we're planning for city facilities and programs. And then lastly, a couple of updates in regards to some of our community resources programs. So I'll jump right in. The first section of the presentation is the intergovernmental updates section. So as you may be aware, governor Abbott had held a press conference yesterday. He announced phase two of his strategy to reopen Texas. And this is under GA 23. That order that he released yesterday will be effective through June 3rd. There were some major changes announced as part of this order. It expands restaurant capacity from 25% of occupancy to 50% as of this Friday. It also staged a reopening of additional business types. And I'll go over that on the next slide in a more visual manner. And then his order also explicitly states that staff members of these businesses are not included in the occupancy calculations for 25% or 50%. So just making that clear through that all business types, staff members are not to be included for those service type industries. And then lastly, his order gave also a couple announcements in regards to schools. So for public school districts, they may start to offer limited summer programs and in-person classroom activities beginning on June 1st, but they must follow the minimum standard health protocols that are issued by TEA. And then private schools and institutions of higher learning may reopen if they select to. So as you'll see on the screen here, these are the phase two of reopenings that the governor announced. As of yesterday, as you can see in this far left-hand column, child care centers, massage and personal care and beauty service establishments, as well as youth clubs could begin to operate. And with massage and personal care, it's following the same standards underneath barbershops in terms of having six fee of separation between any workstations. In this middle column is the next round of reopenings for this Friday, May 22nd. As you can see listed here, this includes bowling alleys, bingo halls, as well as bars, all operating at 25% occupancy, except for that one expansion that restaurants can now operate at 50% capacity. And then lastly in the third column is the next round of reopening set for May 31st, including youth camps, youth sports, and then other professional sporting events with no in-person spectators. And there's some further regulations there as well. And there's a lot more details contained, the full order as well as the minimum standard health protocol checklists for each of those business types are available at gov.texas.gov/opentexas. And there are checklists for the businesses as well as customers that may visit these businesses. And then just for our residents as well, the links are linked through our website in addition to other resources that we have available. The second update we'd like to provide is in regards to the county. We did talk in the work session last week in regards to the CARES COVID relief funding, and that the state had announced a program of how they were going to distribute federal funding to local jurisdictions. However, since Denton County received a direct allocation of COVID relief funding from the US Department of Treasury, we would not be eligible for the city's program, and that cities within Denton County would need to seek the CRF funds directly from the county and not the state. So since that announcement was made last week, we have been working collaboratively with other cities in Denton County to submit a request and a letter to the county. And we've been in direct contact with the county as well. And we'd like to provide an update that was actually released earlier this afternoon in regards to how the county is looking to allocate these funds to municipality as well as the remaining funds that they have. So I'll go through this, and I apologize that this is blurry. This is actually the slides taken from the Denton County Commissioner's Court meeting earlier this afternoon. So Denton County, as a way of reminder, received just over a little bit of $147 million in CRF funds. They've come up with this, it's just kind of a rough buckets of how they intend to distribute that funding as of now. So $45 million would be reserved to be distributed to the cities through direct payments. And they have three different options that they had proposed to put forward to cities within the county of how that could be distributed. And I'll go over that in just one second. And then the remainder of the bullet points here are how they intend to use the remaining funds. So they do plan to expand their local business grant program, as well as looking at expanding a housing assistance program, 10 million for food programs, accounting for 6 million in estimated expenditures the county has already spent on COVID-19, 2 million for funding to support local nonprofit efforts, and then as well as allocating some for Denton County's ongoing expenses related to PPE and their public health department. So as far as the 45 million that is intended to be allocated to the cities, there's three different options that the county has put forward or that the county commissioner's court earlier this afternoon directed staff to develop further with their attorneys and develop guidelines on. They wanted to give different options available to the cities within the county from large cities to smaller communities who may have different levels or different expenditures, just depending on the services that are provided in each of those cities. So option number one is what the city of Denton will be interested in, or we believe the staff would be interested in, is to submit a letter of intent for full funding to the county based on a per capita figure of that $55 per capita, and then we would have to submit documentation, or the municipality must submit documentation that we would follow all of the guidelines and requirements that are outlined by the federal government for these funds, including that they must be used on COVID related expenditures and they cannot fill any revenue gaps. An ILA agreement would be drafted and that's currently what the county will be working on through the next week is getting that draft agreements and documents together. The other two options that the county put forward were in regards to a community could apply for supplies only from the county and get support from the county in that manner, or a third option of some combination of kind of both in regards to getting support from the county for not only supplies, but in terms of a direct reimbursement of expenditures. Whereas in the first option, it would be a direct allocation from the county to the city and a per capita figure. This option three will only be on expenses seeking reimbursement of COVID related expenses. So that's a quick summary. Mayor, would you like me to continue or stop here? I've got just a question on the first section. When you talked about the occupancy and that the governor said that it did not include the staff of the business at the 25%. So let me make sure I understand that. So let's, and I'm assuming occupancy is based upon the occupancy permits that are issued by the city of Denton, at least for the city of Denton. So let's say if a restaurant or a bar has an occupancy limit of a hundred on our certificate of occupancies, does that also include staff? That means in other words, there can only be a hundred people in there at a time. That's staff, patrons, anybody. Is that how our CEOs are constructed? I guess, Aaron, I'm not sure if you know that off the top of your head, but. I know from the governor's order for most occupancy, it does not include the actual employees of the establishment. It's only the actual customers. No, understand. My point is that, you know, what, what do they base that upon? So the only thing that a business has to base upon what their total occupancy is allowed is let's say for a restaurant, if it says, if the CEO says a hundred, that means you can't have a hundred customers or you know, together with him, but you can't have more than a hundred people in that establishment. So if there's 10 employees, which the governor's saying, you don't, you can't, you know, use the employee. You don't have to use the employees in that count. Then is the correct approach? I'm trying to get this clarified for the businesses and moving forward, that if you have 10 employees, your CEO says a hundred, that means you've got 90 people that are left that you or do you base it upon the hundred? It sounds like what I'm hearing you say is since you don't have to include those people, but then it'd be based on the hundreds. So you could have 25 or 50 people in there plus the employees. Yes, that's what it appears like in the order. Okay. And it's just no matter what percentage the governor gets to or anybody, you just can't go over whatever that certificate of occupancy says as far as the maximum limit. That is correct. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Council member Briggs. On that first section too, I've had a few questions about government buildings. Has the governor addressed when they will reopen or do we know? Are you talking about state buildings? Yes. I do not know that offhand. I think it depends by each agency in terms of government buildings. If you have a question, we can check on some that are in the city of Denton or Denton County in regards to when they will reopen. I think the Mary Horn building was brought up. Okay. We can reach out and see if they have a plan yet or have announced a date of reopening. I have a question about the funding from the county may or may I? Oh, of course. Yes. And so I know that we've had conversations about refunding from the cares act, but we had looked at a CDBG. Are we looking to this funding for helping us make, well not make money, but for refunding for repayment for the hotels that we've expended and that 600,000 or I guess the declaration amount of money that we've spent, is that, is that where we're applying for this? Okay. Yeah. And the intention would be as we continue to work with the county in the is to hopefully be back to you on the 29th with sort of a idea of where we are right now, what we think is eligible and then what would be leftover for forthcoming expenses and programs. So I'm hoping in the next week and a half, we'll have much clearer picture for you. Thank you. Yes. So I understand that, you know, the state orders, regardless of what we think of them, they stand, we can't do anything about it. So when it comes to, you know, 50% of capacity for businesses, excluding employees, if there's a question about whether or not that's being practiced, one should report through, you know, engage Denton if one feels that it's my understanding from a recent staff report that if one feels that a business is having more than that, that, you know, one should report through engage Denton. But what about if the numbers for 100% capacity? So for instance, at the Walmarts, the Wal-Mart on the loop, the Wal-Mart on University, I was surprised to see that at 100% capacity, those have been determined by the city, as I understand it, to be, you know, from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart with between 5,000 and 5,500, I believe, people at 100% capacity. So, you know, that's a number that raises the eyebrows. But as I understand it, that's a number that was determined by the city. So if you could speak to what should one do if one is concerned that the numbers, which might have been determined some time ago as to what counts as 100% capacity, if one is concerned about those, who should one report that to? And can that be reconsidered by this city building inspections or whoever it is who determines it? Okay. I'm going to interject here. That's a good question. I don't think that's, I mean, you're talking about how do we determine our certificate of occupancy levels. And I think that's a good question. I think it's a little bit beyond probably what Sarah's presenting here today, but we can certainly get you an answer to that question. I'm sure there's some formula based upon some standard that they use together with the fire code based upon square footage. But if the city manager could just get us out a sort of a response to that, because that's a good question. But I don't think as far as trying to delve into that in detail right now without the information from the answer to your question, I'd like to, to move on for what's actually in the presentation. That's why I brought up this issue was not to have a discussion about how the number was derived, but to give businesses at least the opportunity to know how do they come up with the number that they can have in their store. And so your question is certainly a policy question that takes a little bit deeper dive. So do you have a question for her council member Armitter on the- Oh, just, yeah. I mean, I would love to just hear from the city manager, including who should, to whom should one report if, you know, so for sure, for instance, if somebody says there, you know, there are, you know, 2500 appear to be 2500 people at Walmart. And I say, well, actually that is within, that is within the, you know, 50% capacity according to the numbers we have. If somebody had a challenge to that, a member of the public, who should they report that to? Because it's not, it's not a violation of the 50% rule. It's more of a question about, is that really a reasonable? And from a public safety perspective, you know, is that safe under COVID or even pre-COVID conditions from a fire, fire perspective, is that a safe number? I think that this is, and I understand and respect what you're saying that that's kind of outside of what we're talking about now. But it's the kind of question that will come up, I think, especially about the big box stores as I look at the numbers. Well, and I appreciate that. I agree. But I just, I'm going to ask the city manager to defer his answer to the white paper where he's going to address how we've developed that because you're saying report it to someone or challenging it. Well, we don't even know what the policy year is or how it was created. So before we try to figure out how we tell people, they can certainly send all of us an email and ask us the question and then we can forward that on. So I'd look to get some guidance from that from the response to your initial question. Yep. So let's, let's move on from this if we don't, if we don't have any more questions on that particular issue, because I just, I just think that right now they're in legal standing. And so when you talk about reporting it as if there's somebody who's doing something wrong, but what you're really, what you're really asking is you just want to know how is that number determined? And is there some opportunity to do something different to that number going forward? Yes. For someone to report a personal concern that that might. Sure. But I think they can report a personal concern just as they do many times on many different subjects. So we all get the emails occasionally and the city manager gets them and we forward on to him. So I think it would be no different. Okay. Okay. All right. Any other questions on at least the first two segments of the presentation? And I, and I just want to reiterate to what the city manager said that, you know, we are, and I think we're going to go into some of this in the next presentation, the next agenda item with the recommendations from, from our committee. But it's going to take some really good planning to make sure that we maximize the federal dollars moving forward while we also doing that minimize what the taxpayers are forwarding. So Sarah, do you have a third part of that presentation? Yes. I just have a couple of other quick updates for city council. If you'd like me to. Yeah. If you could hold that question, council member Palmer to try after her presentation. That'd be great. Okay. Thank you. Let me bring it back up. Okay. And so a couple of weeks ago, staff provided an update on how we were determining and thinking and discussing a reopening strategy for city facilities and programs. So just wanted to give you a quick update. We are still in progress with this effort. The city manager's office has been meeting with departments to continue these discussions and review plans for reopening. Really we're looking at a number of different factors as we're putting these plans together, including what is the staffing that is required for our facilities? How can we balance having staff on site and maybe still working remotely? What are the safety requirements for not only our staff and employees, but as well as residents and customers that might be coming into the facility? What is the proper sanitation? How often are we sanitizing our facilities? And then really what is the right timing for reopening which facilities and when? So we're making progress, but we would expect to come back to city council at the special call meeting on May 29th, provide more of an update and recommendation for how we plan to reopen the facilities with more details. Along that same theme, both the library and parks presented to council two weeks back as well and kind of their phase one of reopening. So the public library is still in that phase one. They are providing materials curbside to customers and they also have 24/7 access to all of their online resources. They're continuing to do online programming and activities, but there is no public access currently into the library facilities. Library is planning for what a next phase might look like, including maybe expanding to have an appointment based in-person library access. And this would just be specific to computers and internet and printing. So if our residents need to use those services, they could make an appointment. We have not determined a timetable for this yet, but that is what staff is working on and plan to have a further update again on May 29th. And moving into kind of a parks update as well, park staff is continuing to evaluate their facilities and programs with the guidance that's been released from state and federal as well as their industry specific best practices that they're learning. So our rec centers, dog parks and playgrounds are continuing to be closed at this time. However, you'll see on the right hand side of the screen as parks had reviewed previously with city council, these are open services currently at the time. And then parks and recreation has an item for individual consideration on tonight's agenda for summer food program agreement with a nonprofit called STHP. This is an annual program, but we did want to provide this information to the community and parks and rec staff can answer more questions specific to this item during individual consideration. But there will be a summer food program to provide free breakfast and lunch to any children under 18. And it will be provided at the locations listed on the right hand side of the screen in Denton, including two parks and recreation facilities at MLK and Deena rec centers. And then lastly, just a quick community resources update. This is an updated chart of the Denton County COVID-19 relief fund for eviction prevention assistance. As you can see in this first column here in pink, over 101 households have been assisted in Denton through this fund. Over 100,000 has been expended and just under 30,000 remains for Denton restricted funds. Once these first two columns of Denton and Lewisville would be spent, Denton and Lewisville residents would still have access to all of the remaining Denton County funds listed here in this third column. These first two are just restricted for Denton and Lewisville residents only due to the funding sources. And then we are continuing to work with United Way in trying to promote and communicate this information through various channels. United Way of Denton County created this flyer last week and describing the program as well as required documentation to apply for assistance. We're continuing as well working with the United Way closely and the information referrals program and are going to continue more marketing. We've primarily served individuals through this program so far, although it is open to small businesses as well. And the primary needs have been needing help accessing or being referred to agencies for rental assistance and utility assistance. And anyone looking for assistance can access this program by phone, email, or the website listed here in the bottom right hand corner. And then lastly, wanted to provide an update on the alternative shelter arrangement. So as you're aware, the city has rented two rooms at two hotels until Friday, May 29th. And we're working closely with our nonprofit partners who are helping to manage those hotel locations. We are recommending today along with our nonprofit partners to extend these hotels through at least June. This would continue the safe distancing for clients and mitigating potential exposure. But we're really not confident in this point and returning to the shelter environments of MKOSC and Salvation Army. There's a few different reasons. And one, we'd have reduced bed capacity if we did return to the two shelter locations just due to the social distancing that is needed. Second, we haven't seen the volunteer forces return during so far during May. And some of these nonprofits are still stretched pretty thin to provide service to the consolidated location that we have at the hotel. And if we begin to expand across multiple locations, that will stress that reduced resources that we have currently. And also that, you know, we're continuing to monitor the situation through May as things reopen and what point would return to shelter be recommended. As well as that the hotels may be reimbursable or ineligible costs through a number of different funding sources, including the funding that's potential from the county, the CARES Act funding. And so you'll see here on the bottom, for the last approximately two months, we've expended about $250,000 approximately for the hotels and security. And if we were to extend it's an additional four weeks to the end of June, it'd be an additional $125,000 approximately. And that is the end of my presentation. Happy to answer any questions Council has. Council Member Briggs. Thank you, Mira. My question is about parks. I have a few questions and I've had several emails from moms now with this last phase of reopening that have to go back to work. And in the past have used the summer programs and camps to help with childcare, and they are looking to for some guidance on that. And I know that the governor said May 31st, youth sports and camps. Are we looking to what the governor's saying or are we still pushing that out? Can you give any guidance to those parents who are looking for a solution that normally use the city? I know our park staff is evaluating that currently and with the announcement just coming from Governor Abbott yesterday, including all of the checklists, and they're still working through that. And we're planning to come to council next on May 29th for any future discussions. But I believe Gary Packen may be on the line if he wants to add anything additional to that explanation. Gary is there. Mayor City Council Gary Packen, Director of Parks and Recreation. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead, Gary. Yes, what Sarah said is correct. We're looking at a number of opportunities, whether it's our aquatics, our camps, our recreation centers. We're getting requests from community for all the services we provide, dog parks included. And we're trying to balance all of those needs and priorities in regards to what we feel comfortable providing and opening to the community in a safe manner for both the customer as well as staff. And trying to sustain the requirements that are being provided by the CDC, state and local officials at the same time. So we're currently going through that all right now in cooperation with the libraries in regards to what they're providing as well. So we hope to have that to you by May 29th in the presentation. Go ahead, Council Member Briggs. Gary, could you speak to the playgrounds? I saw that they were still on the list to be closed, but I know several of them I've seen the tape is down and kids are playing on them. Parents are saying they're open, they're not open, Corinth is open. Are we still trying to tape them up or are we just, what are we doing here? Because it's pretty confusing for parents. There's some parents who say, you know, you can't go on, it's closed, but there's kids currently playing, so it causes some tension. Are we still trying to tape all the playgrounds or did we just give up? No, we have staff going out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday checking them on, checking on them and retaping them. Unfortunately, we do have that tape being removed on a regular basis. You know, people, people want to get back to some normality. And right now with the industry, we're just not seeing playgrounds opened across the entire organization, the industry. We may see some of that change with the governor's announcement and we'll continue to monitor that. Right now, we're not in a position to feel comfortable to open up our playgrounds. We will reach out to both our marketing staff and Ryan in the public affairs department to make sure that that message is getting out. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Armitage? Yeah. So on that note, so that is a concern of mine too. And on that note, I want to put another shout out to signage. And while signage would not necessarily prevent all misunderstandings, if we had signs up in English and Spanish with a nice little graphic that made it clear to people as clear as possible that regardless of whether you see tape or not, no playing on the playground equipment, it would help. As Councilmember Briggs mentioned, I mean, parents are confused and they're having a hard time with kids when they walk by and kids say, look, other people are playing. There's no tape there. You know, parents genuinely don't know. I think the same is true also for adult play and the advantages of signage, for instance, on tennis courts. You know, I was walking by with my son, the Avondale Tennis Court the other day, you know, and I noticed that there were some people playing, which was okay because there were two people but there was no, you know, no signage up about here what the recommended measures are. So we have some great recommendations that staff has worked hard on about what are the best social distancing recommendations. And although we can't necessarily enforce those, if it can help, and I believe it can with public health to post those recommendations, I think that would be great. I also want to what we've got parks on the line is to say, just to shout out and to thank you for the care and the time that you're taking to protect the safety of your employees. And I want to thank the public who I know that adults as well as kids really want to get to playing and play is essential. But safety comes first and so I want to thank everybody for their patience and parks management for your diligence and taking the time to figure out what is best to protect the safety of your employees. I had four other questions. Okay, let me see if there's anybody else that wants to make a comment first. Any other council members have any questions? I do have a question, Sarah on the slide 15, where it's the specific breakdown of the COVID-19 Relief Fund. If you don't mind maybe pulling that up so that just the other council members can... Sure. One second. This one? Yes, that one. So I can understand this chart. When I see household assisted, that's the total number assisted and then the rent mortgage utility, that's out of that number, correct? So let's take Denton for instance, 101 households have been assisted. All of those were regarding to rent, mortgage, and utility. That's correct. And what I heard you say was that all other Denton County that once these funds are expended for Denton and Louisville, then it's not that if the citizens of Denton and Louisville therefore will not have any opportunity for additional resources. It then resorts to countywide. And my understanding, I don't see the slide because you just interjected it because it was a slide from the commissioner's court. They had talked about, and I know those numbers are all general, the breakdown that they used. But if I thought I saw rental assistance or something like that, housing assistance program. And that could mean a lot of various things, but it's $20 million. So that could include rental assistance. It could include potentially mortgage. It's all those things related to housing assistance. And they're saying that that's what we're targeting to be able to provide assistance for throughout the county, including obviously the citizens of Denton and Louisville in any city or unincorporated area in the county. That is correct. This slide shows their targeted buckets as they're referring to them and funding with more details to come at a later date. Sure. Okay. I appreciate that. Let me see if I had any other questions. Yeah, because I have shared the specific information with people that I know that are struggling with rent and I think they've made application, but obviously there's a lot coming in. But do we have a, because when I see denied requests at six, and we're talking about the city of Denton, does that mean that by this chart or this slide, I could assume that there's been a total of 107 applications made for relief within the city of Denton? 101 were accepted and some type of relief was provided. Six were denied. Is that the message I'm reading from this? Yes, that's correct. Okay. That's it. Okay. I appreciate that. All right. That's helpful. And so if there's a, if there's a denial, then someone will receive an official notice of that denial? That is correct. They're working directly with the nonprofit and reason would be provided to that applicant. And we do in a previous Friday report, I know a couple of reasons were listed. We're happy to provide that again. No, no, that's okay. I'm just, I was just curious because I, what I want to make sure is that there's not a backlog of applications that still, I mean, that they've been submitted. And do we know if there is a backlog and what that backlog is? You don't have to answer that now, but if you could maybe provide that in an email later on, just so, because I'm hearing that, you know, well, we've submitted, hadn't heard anything. When I look at these numbers, there must be many more people applying that they just haven't processed yet. And that's really what I'm trying to get a handle on. Yeah, we can continue to provide updates through Friday report. At first, when this program was set up and established, there was some backlog. I'm just trying to get all of the program and requirements together and as well as staffing from the nonprofit agencies. Since then, United Way of Denton County has offered support to a few agencies, including our Daily Bread to help expedite some of these applications and requests. So there is not a lengthy backlog there. No, no, I appreciate that. That's very helpful. Thank you so much. Council Member Armitter. So anyway, and thank you for that question too. It had been my understanding that there was a significant backlog, but I guess that's to minimize. In any case, I would like to see the data on that too. So several questions. One about the governor's rainy day fund, the state rainy day fund. I believe that is under the jurisdiction of the governor. Any news on that? Has he looked into dipping into that for state relief, city relief, trickling down to counties, municipalities, whatever? I have not heard. I have not heard any news on that. And I'm looking at our director of finance who has not as well. But if we hear anything, we'll inform council. And thank you because, you know, there are, and I know numbers are important, but I remember, you know, being surprised at how large this fund was in the billions, I believe. And this does seem to be a rainy day. So I would be interested to know if other cities are making an organized effort to, you know, to try to tap into that and to get some sort of answer from the state for that. Another question I had had to do with the part about internet and libraries. Can somebody just kind of pull up in their car and by sitting in a parked car with a cell phone or a laptop in the parking lot of the library have access to city internet? This is Jennifer Becker. Can you hear me? Yes, Jennifer, go ahead. If you park in the front row of South Branch Library, yes, you can remain in your car and access the library's Wi-Fi. At the other two branches, however, you would have to exit your vehicle and sit on some of the benches. We have spoken with TS. We are unable to extend that wireless at this time. However, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission just opened their CARES Act funding grant, and we will be submitting a grant request to extend Wi-Fi access into all three parking lots. We're getting quotes for that now. That application process ends at the end of this month. The funding would be available later this summer. So we are looking at ways to expand that internet access. Wonderful, and thank you. As always, library staff is just many steps ahead. I really appreciate that. It would be nice if this could be wider known, circulated through the city to the extent that we do know where our public parking lots are that have Wi-Fi access. It would help me to be able to let people know. It would be good to have that online so that people know where they can pull up and park and access public Wi-Fi. For instance, it's good to know that at South Branch, you have to be in that first row of parking. So somebody who tried another row might just assume that, oh, it doesn't work here, but they didn't know you had to go in the first row. So that's really valuable information. Another question I had, and there are just two more. The other question about the hotels for people experiencing homelessness. First of all, I'm really glad that we are using hotels. It helps to obviously contain the virus while also giving some small support to the struggling hotel industry. I do want to know, the last I heard, we had a nightly rate. Is that still the case that we're paying a nightly rate? Or have we moved to a weekly rate? Someone could speak to that. We're still on a nightly rate. That's correct. So yeah, I would like to, and I want to make it clear that I am strongly in support of the hotels and have been since the very beginning from long before we started using hotels for this purpose. But I would encourage, this is just my personal view. I'd be curious to know what my colleagues think. If we were to move to a weekly rate, like some other cities have been able to do to negotiate a better deal, that could help us to extend the time and the number of people that we could put up in hotels, which would be better for the greater public good for public health. So I'd be curious to know about that. Okay. And if you could wrap up your last question because you've been going for about five or eight minutes and we need to wrap it up and I think you've got some good questions staff can get back with you. Councilman, Mr. City Manager, we'll talk offline about the question about nightly versus weekly. I think I trust that staff is doing everything they can to mitigate the costs with everything we're doing on the COVID Relief Fund. So your last question, Councilmember Armitage? So, and the last question is about something that I have written about, inquiring about, and that is hand washing stations and or hand sanitizer stations. Any word on any progress on that? And if some of the funding that is coming through can be used for that to mitigate the health effects, especially as we have this opening up at the state level. It depends on where you're suggesting for locations. I know, I believe Jessica Rogers Economic Development had addressed that in a Friday report in terms of some conversations she had had with the downtown area for hand washing stations and looking at some of the different potentials or options just for sanity, sanitization overall. So we can continue to see if that's identified as a need and look at that further. Thank you. That would be great. I think also at our nonprofits that deal with homeless populations, our daily bread in our parks would also be really great as we have people using our parks, including as we roll out the summer food program for food where those locations are would be great. Thank you. That's all. Any other comments or questions on staff's presentation? Mayor Pro Tem? And then we're going to take a quick break. It's loosely tied to this conversation, but I want to put it out there. Sarah, have we looked at the crosswalks as we increase activity and as things open via the governor's office? Right now on the square, it's mandatory that you push it to trigger the crosswalks. Whereas before, it was automated. And so just wanted to hear staffs look at how to address that across the city or if we've -- We've had that request, particularly as it pertains to not having to touch them. So Todd Estes and his staff are looking at technologies that are out there and just getting us some ideas and pricing right now to kick around. Okay. Councilmember Briggs, real quick. I was just going to add to that that we had an informal staff report on that recently, but I'm glad to hear that they're still looking at options. Okay. All right. See no more questions. We will go ahead and take a quick break. We'll come back at 4.35, and we'll move on with our Work Session Reports. Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on May the 19th, 2020. It is 4.37. We're moving through our Work Session Reports. We are now on Work Session Report 3B, Receive a Report, Hold Discussion, and Give Staff Direction regarding a Substantial Amendment to the 2019 Action Plan for Housing and Community Development. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Danny Shaw, City Services. Give me one minute and I'll share my screen. All right. Today we're going through a presentation regarding the CARES Act funding that was awarded to the City of Denton for CDBG funds. As you know, the CARES Act made available $5 billion in Supplemental Community Development Block Grant funds for the purpose of the grant to prepare, prevent, and respond to the coronavirus. This has been nicknamed the CDBG-CV funds. On April 2nd, we were notified by HUD that the city's portion of that funding would be $618,736. At that point, we reviewed the CARES Act provisions, and that's the slide in front of me now. A couple of things that the CARES Act allows for in CDBG is it extends our ability to submit our Consolidated Plan and Action Plan. Those due dates are now August 16th, 2021. We were already in the process of working through our Consolidated Plan and Action Plan, so we are staying on the same schedule and will be submitting that in the next month or so to council for approval, so we won't be waiting for that 2021 date. It also suspends the 15% cap on public services, so normally there would be 15% that would be allocated for public services in CDBG. If the activities are related to COVID, we are able to suspend that cap and use more of the funds towards CDBG. Also, because of the situation where we have to be meeting virtually and other items, it allows for a five-day public comment period and that public hearings could be done virtually like we're doing today. There is an option for HUD to also waive further requirements for the CDBG. They haven't come out with any of those yet, but they may and we will be watching for those as well. And then the other waiver was that it may reimburse costs for eligible activities that incurred prior to the funding date. Now, CDBG has some eligible activities. These remain the same, however, they have to be specific to the COVID or coronavirus efforts. We can acquire, construct or reconstruct, do installation of public works, update facilities or other site improvements. We can rehab buildings. We can provide assistance to private for-profit entities when it's appropriate to carry out economic development projects, including micro enterprises. And then we can do the public services for coronavirus efforts, as I mentioned before. Funding is also eligible for planning costs, so if we were to engage in any planning to help respond to future emergencies, those costs would be eligible. You've heard earlier and every week of the council meetings regarding our response, but here's just a quick overview slide of what we have done thus far. We allocated $100,000 to the COVID Relief Fund, the CRF fund. We've also increased funding to interface specifically for this in the amount of $50,000. We provided reimbursement grant for the information referral hotline up to and not to exceed $50,000. We funded the hotel rooms, as Sarah mentioned in the previous presentation. And then we are providing staff on a regular basis to both volunteer and also support some of the resources that are happening in our nonprofits, especially at Our Daily Bread and previously at Grace Like Rain for their child care provision services. Now when we received these funds, we did organize the CDAC and the HSEC to meet in response to these funds specifically. They had previously not been able to follow through with their funding requirements to meet and make sure the recommendations were completed. So we did meet on May 8th to go through those. But one of the topics in each of those meetings had to do with specifically with these CDBG CV funds. When the committees met on the 8th, the CDAC was the first to meet and their goal was to review and give staff direction on how we would notify HUD, how we would utilize these funds. And we had two options that were available to them. We are currently operating under an action plan in our 2015-2019 consolidated plan. Those funds are in place now and are being utilized by those who have been awarded funds. What we can do, one of the options was to provide a substantial amendment to those funds and just incorporate those in the current year's funding. Or we could wait and incorporate them into our future consolidated plan. So we gave the committee these options and it was their recommendation to make sure the funds were available and in process as soon as possible. So they did select option one to submit a substantial amendment to counsel into the community in order to use these funds immediately. In addition, both committees were provided to give recommendations on how we should utilize those funds and then how we should allocate them, what the process would be. In both cases, the committees were pretty consistent in their alignment with how they wanted to allocate the funds. To go through a little bit more on the HUD requirements, in order to notify them, we do have to go through a substantial amendment process. And to do so, we would be amending our 2015-2019 consolidated plan and make those goals additional goals specific to the COVID-19. We would also make sure that the HUD action plan for 2019 was amended to include specific actions that we would take. And then it also requires, because there are some waivers related to the participation, the five-day public comment period and the ability to meet virtually, that we would have to also amend our 2015-2019 citizen participation plan and incorporate those waivers in that plan as well. So all three will have to be done at the same time. This is the timeline that we're looking at today to submit to counsel. Of course, May 8th, the committees met. And then we are presenting their recommendations today on May 19th. And if you are approved to move forward with the substantial amendment, then on May 23rd, we would open a five-day public comment period for the proposed substantial amendment for the fiscal year of action planning. And then we would then bring it back, the substantial amendment completed with public comments on, we would look at June 2nd or later in June for to submit that ordinance, giving the city manager approval to sign the substantial amendment and submit it to HUD. Now, when we talked to both committees, they also were giving us recommendations on how to utilize the funds. The CDAC went first, giving the option to provide funding. They were, both committees were provided four options of recommendations based on the information that we're both learning from the community, as well as some surveys that we've completed with the nonprofits in response to COVID. These were grouped into two specific areas and then a third area was provided. So most of the response that we're getting is about emergency response, that the need is for rent, mortgage, and utilities at the time that we conducted those surveys. In addition, we are seeing some situation where the nonprofits are gonna need some stabilization in order to return to full operational levels as soon as possible. Those would be things like salaries for staff to provide direct services for the increasing need, rents to make sure that they're stable throughout the next few months where fundraising is dropped. And then the third option that staff provided was improving our housing crisis response system by offering some of the funding for the Loop 288 facility. We then gave the both committees a fourth option, which is whatever priorities they would like to bring forward based on what they believe the community needs were. As a result of that, the CDAC did recommend that the full allocation be provided to the Human Service Advisory Committee for 100% of the funds to go to public services. After we met with the HSAC, they then prioritized two of the four options for a 50/50 split to emergency response and stabilization. If we were to go forward with those funding recommendations from the committees, based on council direction, the target would be to look at June 2020, as we mentioned before, for you all to approve the ordinance to submit the substantial amendment. That's a lot of S's, sorry. And then we would then wait for HUD approval on those. Once we received HUD approval, we would initiate a grant application process. The HSAC recommended that that grant application process be an expedited one, short and quick and easy. And then we would then target August 2020 for council to consider whatever recommendations were to be received through that application process for those funds. How it would look overall, we are also looking at our consolidated plan and action planning process. I don't want this to be confusing. This is two separate processes we're talking about. The substantial amendment is one. And then we are still going forward with our 2020/2022 plan and action plan process. So we did want to bring a little bit of information available for you as well. So some of this will be happening concurrently. So again, the recommendations for the CDAC and HSAC, they also met to consider the recommendations for the 2020 action plan. Those were applications that were received in January of this year and reviewed by the committees through February and March, and then finalized on May 8th. That was a result of a delay because we were no longer able to meet in person. So these recommendations have been finalized by both committees on May 8th and will be separately and presented to you in a separate work session. We're looking at June 2nd to provide those committee recommendations and receive direction from you. Then again, we will also submit to a public comment period. We're going to maintain the 30-day public comment period rather than use the waivers. We want plenty of time for folks to be able to comment and respond. So we'll open up a public comment period from June 1st through June 30th and then hold a public hearing on June 16th to allow the community to come in and speak to council and provide those public comments there. With a target of July 21st for city council to consider approval of the ordinance that would authorize the city manager for us to submit the consolidated plan and action plan to HUD for approval. Now we are going through what you would probably remember as a five-year plan in our previous consolidated plans. This year we've elected to submit a three-year plan instead because we have, pardon me, some additional information that's going to be coming with the census and also our affordable housing assessment that we want to be a little bit more nimble and be able to incorporate those in future planning. So we're just going to submit a three-year plan this time instead of a five-year. So with that I'll take the presentation down and then take any questions. I'm going to go ahead and start this one out because I've thought about this. First of all, I really appreciate the committee's recommendations, both of them. I noticed that the committee, I believe, when did they meet, Danny, May 8th? Yes, sir, May 8th, but both committees met back to back. Right, okay. So a lot has happened since May 8th, since the committee met to have recommendations. So I'm just going to share with you my thoughts on this and of course the committee is going to give their recommendations, but I'm not going to be able to support the recommendations, not because I have a problem with the recommendations, but we are in a very unusual situation in that we've got now county funds that are coming to the city, but we also have county funds that are committed to rent and housing assistance throughout the county. So I personally would not think that we would want to spend funds that we have on programs that are funded at a greater level. I mean, I think, what was it, $20 million in general they set aside for that at the county level. We're also going to be receiving in excess of $7 million, potentially. So to me, the thing that would be prudent is to take, because some of the restrictions for these funds are not, you can use these funds for things you cannot use the COVID-19 relief funds coming from the county, i.e. if we wanted to have some help with the building on remodeling or purchasing. So my point is, we're going to get two sort of buckets of money. We've already got the CDBG and we're going to get the ones from the county. I don't think it's in the best interest of the citizens right now and of us financially to try to begin to make decisions in a vacuum on what our needs are before we have a full understanding of the entire landscape, i.e. we want to be able to use all of that money to the maximum benefit of the citizens of Denton with minimal cost to the taxpayers. In other words, where we can use federal money instead of city taxpayer dollar money, let's use that. If the county is going to be offering to city businesses, city renters, along with all every other city in the county and unincorporated areas, the opportunity to get rental assistance and business grants as they're doing right now, we should let that be something that they have a tremendous amount more money in that pot than we do. So I'm not saying I don't appreciate the recommendations. I think the recommendations at the time, based upon the facts on the ground, were important and were relevant. I think right now, though, we have an opportunity to even maximize those more by looking at the different restrictions for the different funds and creating an action plan that will maximize those funds, ensuring that none of those needs that they recommended would go unmet. I mean, to put another $300,000 into the COVID-19 fund from CDBG funds, when we can use them for other things, when the county's committing millions, I think would not be prudent or responsible on our part when we could maximize those revenues somewhere else. So I just set that table to let you know where I am. I've thought about this a lot over the last couple of days. It's just a matter of how do you best use other people's money? One thing in the real estate business, that's what you use as leverage. So we've got almost $8 million coming, almost $8 million. And we need to make a comprehensive decision and plan based upon all of that and based upon all the facts to make sure that we spend that in a way that maximizes its effort to our citizens. So I just needed to say that. And so I will now recognize Council Member Meltzer. I think that input is extremely helpful. And it kind of goes to why I was asking in my questions before the meeting to whether we can form some kind of a point of view about what the total need in that area for Denton is likely to be. And the answer, of course, is it's difficult. I know it's difficult, but I think it's still worthwhile to try to form some kind of a forecast. And then you can apply against that the different funding sources and see that, okay, you know, those needs are being met through these funding sources and go to the next item down on the list. Okay. Council Member Briggs. Thank you. Yes. Having information about the county and the allocation this afternoon was really helpful. And I think it adds to this conversation in which before that information, the committees did not have. My question is about the nonprofit stabilization. Was there an allocation for the county for nonprofits to apply for the county for that? I don't remember Sarah's chart. Yeah, 2 million. 2 million. Okay. My other question on that would be that if that was the case for us, what nonprofits get to apply? Is it those who we specifically work with like our front door nonprofits or any nonprofit? I don't know that they've stipulated how to apply for that. They also provided funding for the North Texas Cares grant for nonprofits as well. So they've already started to have the ability to apply for county funds for stabilization. Okay. So there's money for the nonprofits right now. If for some reason we didn't allocate the funds right now for the nonprofits, there's another way for them to apply. Yes. And some of them were eligible for SBA as well and did apply. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Council member Davis. Mayor, I appreciate your comments about taking a comprehensive look at the kind of the entire picture and the entire funding picture. Danny, is there anything to be lost by the kind of short delay that the mayor's talking about with to get that more comprehensive picture? I know there's a longer deadline than we're accustomed to for a plan amendment this year as you described, but do we lose anything by taking our time? No, the funding would be available to us for a longer period of time. I think through September of 2022. So it's not that we'd be losing anything. It's just being able to, because these funds have to be in direct response to the emergency, we would lose the ability to use them because over time there may not be as much of a requirement for a response to the COVID emergency. Okay. Council member Armitter. Can you speak to the timing of the receipt of CDBG funds versus the timing of receipt for cities of these state funds that are going to the county divided up per capita to cities? I don't think we have a timeline yet for when the county funds will be distributed to us. I think they're working through that process. They just approved it today. Yeah, and thank you for that. You know, for me, that would be critical to know when those funds would be coming to us. If the CDBG funds could come, you know, would come first, then it could be that, you know, even though there's redundancy or, you know, less red tape with one or the other as far as timing, it might make more sense to go with one than the other. Obviously, this is all hypothetical, not knowing what the timeline is, but I'll be curious to know that, including to what extent we can know when we'll find out about the timing of that. My guess is that probably the county has limited control over the timing of that since to some extent they, I mean, they have to wait for the state. No, they've already got them. They've already got the money. So they, okay, so they actually already got the money. They actually have them. Okay, so that's good to know. I knew it had been allotted to them. I didn't know they actually, no, they've had it for a week or two. Okay, so that's good to know. So anyway, so I would be curious to know. And I would like to see it, you know, go back to go back to the committee. I'm guessing there probably was not both of these committees that there probably wasn't a plan for them to meet. And I don't want it to get in the way of, you know, to hold up to create additional time for council, but I would really like to know their input because I value their input and really respect and like the recommendations that they made, knowing what they knew at the time without today's knowledge of the distribution of that county distributed state funding. Let me give you an example of why I brought this up. And I really appreciate, I appreciate all the comments because I think it, and again, this isn't about somehow disagreeing with the recommendations or saying that they got them wrong. They made the right recommendations, given what the facts were at that time. If the city wasn't looking at getting additional county funding, this conversation would be very different. But when you look at the, and this money, the county money has to be spent by the end of the year. And I think to go to Danny's point of, you know, we can't dilly-dally, so to speak, with any of this funding. And I don't think we need to because we're looking at now needing to bring on board a $3.4 million building with additional modifications to help, especially now, to continue providing support and enhanced services to those that are experiencing homelessness. So as an example, if the CDBG funds can be used to do either remodeling or help with the purchase of a facility to help with the COVID response, but the county funds are not, then you could use the CDBG funds and you could use the county funds to do exactly what the recommendation was for the, from the committee. Or when you have the county providing that kind of money to help businesses and individuals, you can use that funding to do something that is uniquely, is unique to Denton and that would otherwise be paid for by the city taxpayers. Danny, I do have a question for you and I just lost it. Oh my gosh. Oh, here it was. You said that nonprofits now are able to apply for the, is it the North Texas Cares grant? Is that that grant that was for small businesses? No, this was a grant that was established by, I believe, the United Way as well. Okay, initially. We put funding into it for this very specific need. Yeah. I guess, Mr. City Manager, you know, the committee is scheduled to present to the council. Danny, was that on June the 3rd? What date was that? I think it's, is it June 2nd? June 2nd. June 2nd was when we were going to present the consolidated plan and action plan for 2022 and 2023. Oh, okay. So let me ask you this, Danny, because I wasn't aware that, so if instead of amending the current action plan for these funds, these additional CDBG, CV funds, you're saying that we could incorporate those also into the current plan you're working on and we could almost have a different paradigm or methodology for saying, okay, the regular funds we get, here everybody that's made an application for those funds and this is how we're going to do that or we can do something different. But we can also have this separate set of funds, which is easier for staff and which is, I don't think the timing is an issue because we don't have, do we have those CDBG funds yet? Well, we don't get it. We don't get a check in hand. It goes into our disbursement system, but we have to tell them how we're going to use it. So we won't get them until we either do the substantial amendment or put it into the next consolidated plan. Once we do that and HUD approves it, then the money sits in our IDIS account for us to spend down. Okay. And so if we do the substantial amendment, which means we have to decide before we do the amendment exactly what we're going to spend them on. Is that correct? We can do the substantial amendment in general categories because the committee's ordered them to public services. So we could be generalized in saying it's to public services. It's better if we... And so therefore, timing is an issue there for the council to come up with either a general category, which you say is not as effective or is not as desired more so than a specific one. So that would put us in a position of having to make that decision. Whereas if we waited till the 2020 consolidated plan, which we hear that June when? We would do a presentation, a work session presentation on the 2nd, if the schedule goes as well as we want. And then there would be a public hearing on the 16th for the public to comment on it with an approval at a council meeting on July 21st. That's our projected schedule right now. So if we chose to do the 2022 action plan, if we needed to have a council meeting before then to approve it, to make sure that we're moving forward in a time manner, we could do that. I mean, my point is whichever route we go, we could go through a process that really mitigates the delay based upon whether we submitted it as an amendment or as the action plan. It might be a two or three week difference if we really wanted it to be that. Yeah, in this year, we have the flexibility because of the waiver. So we've projected a schedule for you, but we could push the schedule a little bit longer if we needed to before we submit the consolidated plan and action plan. We're just trying to get it done so the funding is in our hands. Oh, no, I was talking the opposite. And that is move up the date for the consolidated plan to where instead of being forced to choose between an amendment and a consolidated plan, one being we have to name specific categories right now, but we get the money sooner, if we can move that action plan a little closer in time, then we're not really, we haven't lost much time in receiving the money, but we've had time to look at what our needs are, what the community's needs are, and to be able to allocate those funds that would maximize its impact on the citizens. So I think we could, we're talking about a two or three week period. We're not talking, I can tell you, we will get the county money most likely faster than we will get the CDBG COVID funding. I don't have any doubt about that at all. I would agree. So those are my thoughts. And I guess with those thoughts, I don't know if I really say there's any direction, except maybe if there's an availability, obviously you can summarize this conversation with the committee members and give them the option of, hey, do you want to go ahead and reconvene with all these additional facts and all these additional fundings to see if we want to make a different type of allocation or even say, well, we, since we're not privy to all the facts that are changing and all the needs of the city, it may be best just to leave that up to the council for this particular set of funds, whatever they choose, or they could come to us on the second and just present their recommendations as you presented them here today. I think it'd be good to give them that option if there's time. I think that would be direction we would need from you today because to bring the committees back together is going to take some time and coordination and planning, which would put us, would automatically put us a little further than our proposed schedule as it is now. You know something, then I'm fine with it. If they want to bring the recommendations to us on the third or the second, or yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter to me. I don't necessarily want to drag, I don't want to push time out, but I also don't want the committee to think that their input is not valuable and then to give them an opportunity to meet again in light of a tremendous amount of different facts that we've got since the last time they met, which may have an impact on their recommendation. That's all. So I'll be quiet now and listen to maybe some of the direction from others, some of the other council members based upon those comments. So what I'm hearing from you, Danny, is right now they're scheduled to come on the second to present their current recommendations as you've presented. And if the council directs you to ask them, do they want to get together again to consider all these new facts, you can do that, but that will extend that June 2nd deadline to some other date to be determined. Well, let me make some clarification. So the Substantial Amendment is what we're bringing today. What we're bringing on June 2nd would be just the regular funding. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, then, okay, then I will... I got you. So if you're directing today that we not do a Substantial Amendment included in the 2020-2022 Consolidated Plan, we would take that direction and go to the committee and ask them for their feedback and schedule a meeting. Yeah, because what I'm hearing you say is if we went forward with a Substantial Amendment, we're either going to draft a Substantial Amendment with the committee's recommendations or this council today has to decide a different need for those funds and to create another category or to put something else different in that Substantial Amendment. Correct. Okay. Well, I can tell you my direction is not to move forward with the Substantial Amendment at this time until we can have more facts based upon the city funding, county funding, and I believe city management is bringing to us on the 29th a list of reimbursement totals that they've got and needs moving forward that need funding and then looking at the building, seeing what costs are eligible for either CDBG, CV funding, or county funding to give us a comprehensive look of our needs and our funding sources. Is that correct, Mr. City Manager? That's right and I think you hit on another important point is one of the conversations we had over the weekend with the county staff was just trying to eliminate the duplication of programs between what the cities are offering and what the county is offering. So I think not only do we have facts on the ground change for our CDBG committee, but there was just so many people putting programs together, particularly the housing assistance and business assistance. I think we're going to be working with them over the next few days to try to streamline who's going to be in charge of what so we don't end up with duplicate funding at the expense of other needs out there. So we really need a week to work on this, put it in a format for you that's easy to understand and easy to follow what the needs are and there's probably going to be a couple million dollars still discretionary that we can put out there to get your your feedback on. Okay, all right. So that would be my direction is to not submit a substantial amendment and to include it in the action plan for 2020-22 and if possible to continue to expedite that 2020 plan as quickly as possible because we're going to have many opportunities in the next few months to spend money. So I don't think the timing is going to be an issue. I just want to make sure we have a comprehensive understanding and game plan. That to me is the most important thing. So that would be my recommendation and direction. Council Member Armitter. So I approve of that. I just just wanted to verify so that it would go back to the committees and they would be asked if they wanted to hold another meeting. I don't think so. Yeah, not based upon what Danny told me because the issue for us today during the work session is do we want to submit a substantial amendment to the current action plan to incorporate the recommendations for those CDBG funds, CB funds as presented here by the committee. The committee on the second, I think Danny said that's going to be their recommendations as if we were doing this normally during the budgetary process. Is that correct, Danny? Correct. Yeah, so this is this substantial amendment specifically has to do with the the COVID funds for CDBG and do we want to put the recommendations by the committee in a substantial amendment to the current action plan? And my direction is no, we do not at this time. Yeah, and I'm fine with that because of the news as of today about the funding that's coming per capita from the county which is significant. We want to make sure to avoid redundancy. But I would like, so I understand that this issue today before us today is up to council, but I would like to know, you know, what both committees have to say if anything. But it sounds like we will regardless as part of the process. Yeah, that's the issue before us. I mean, what I'm hearing Danny say is that if we want them to have another meeting, it would be a meeting to specifically consider a different set of recommendations to put in a substantial amendment. And yeah, I don't think that's necessary because they the recommendations they provided were were sound at the time and they're still sound. The question is, from what set of funding do you provide and meet those needs? And that's to me the critical answer. Is there anybody that objects to the direction as I've proposed? Yes, Councilmember Melser. Not objecting, the only sort of timing thing that's a little bit looming out there, not explicitly addressed yet, is the fact that we've got the evictions opening up. I think, is it today? The Supreme Court ban expired on Monday the 18th, but my understanding is I don't think the JP courts are yet open for those types of filings and other filings. That's my understanding. I guess, you know, really the question is whether we have, you know, adequate funding to cover the period of time between now and, you know, when more comprehensive decisions can be made in the emergency funds that have already been established. Well, I don't know the answer to that question. I don't think anybody can know the answer to that question, but I think when you see that the county has committed to some general number for that kind of assistance, that doesn't mean that somebody couldn't approach them and say, "Hey, you know, we need some interim help here." And they've already got their own fund. They've got funds within their own fund to help everyone in the county. So it's not just citizens of Denton or Louisville are excluded. It's not like we have to provide all our funding for our citizens in this arena or this issue. So I think it's just continuing to have those conversations with the county because they're certainly committed to providing the funding necessary to help the citizens of the county, including the citizens of Denton. So I think we can work on that. Well, I'm aligned with the direction that you've helped establish in this conversation. I think when we get to the fuller discussion with all the facts, I think I'd like to hear a little more granularity at that point when we're able to do it, particularly on the shoring up the nonprofits. It sounds like when you express it that way, it sounds like administrative overhead, and it's not. A lot of it is direct provision of services. So with some granularity, I think that could be presented so that we and the public can understand what services are being provided. Similarly with building on the loop, there are probably phases to that. I don't know if we've figured them out yet, but there might be some particular components that we're ready to move forward on. We might be able to have some rough sizing on. I agree. I agree. Anyone else? Okay. Danny, is that helpful to the direction? Yes, sir. Okay. Fantastic. All right. Thank you all so much for that good conversation. And certainly we'll be having more conversations like this at a much more detailed level in the weeks to come and months to come. All right. So then we will move on to our next agenda item, which is agenda item 3D. Receive report, hold a discussion, and give staff direction regarding a request for resolution of support from a developer applying for a 4% housing tax credit with Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. This will still be me, Danny Shaw. Okay. I'm going to pull up that presentation as well. All right. Just wanted to give you the heads up. The developers are on the phone. So for any of the tough questions, we'll bring them in to answer those. But I'm going to go through a brief overview of the project and then questions after. So as you know, there is a program that allows multi-family developers to seek housing tax credits through the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. There are two different types of tax credit projects, the 4% and the 9%. The 9% is a competitive process that goes on a schedule that typically is through January and March. They're awarded points and can receive 9% of the project through funding. The other is the 4% and applicants can apply at any time for these. These are non-competitive. The TDHCA requires at the minimum a resolution of no objections for the 4% applications, though resolutions of support do help the projects along as well. City Council did approve a policy and application process in May of 2018 that establishes an actual process that developers have to go through in order to submit requests for these resolutions. This is a map of the properties in the vicinity where the project is. This project is at 1900 South May Hill Road and then the vicinity in one-mile, two-mile, and three-mile radiuses. These are important both for their application but also to help Council have a perspective on where the location is compared to other housing tax credit properties in the community. This developer is the Michaels organization. They have been around since 1968. They own and manage 53,000 affordable apartment units across foreign communities in 35 states, including Texas. This is a little bit of an overview of their footprint and what they've developed. This project on 1900 South May Hill is on 33 acres. It's proposed to be a 360-unit mixed-income multifamily. Its current zoning is mixed-use neighborhood. This is a site plan. This may look a little bit different from the one that was in your submitted project. They had an update to it but it's relatively consistent with the previous one. It's 12 three-story building units. The proposed unit size range from 700 square feet to 1,220 square feet. And then there's a unit breakdown that's provided on this slide as well as in the AIS that shows how the units will be laid out. This project is proposed to have certain amenities. There's more detail in the backup of the application. This is just a sample list that was pulled from the backup that the developer provided. There's a clubhouse, swimming pool, a dark park, some outdoor seating pavilions, some playscapes, sport court, and then certainly security and perimeter fencing. This is a housing tax credit project. So there are some additional resident services that will be provided on-site including after school, an adult learning and training center, food pantry. They'll have on-site events with a full-time residential coordinator on-site and then it and then it does have access to public transportation. This map shows some locations of other local amenities that it's close to. Now this project is would be income restricted 30% to 80% of AMI. It is using income averaging so the total average must equal 50 or 60 percent or lower. The breakdown of that is in this slide as well and there is a unit cost that's projected between $421 and $1,727. As you can see in the proposed unit mix it does stay below 60% on its income average. And so that's the end of the presentation. Okay Council Member Armitage. So I approve a resolution of support. I think this is a really essential tool in acquiring the kind of low-income housing that we need especially a workforce housing at this level. It is coming at a really difficult time but a time that that really makes it clear we need this. So anyway I think it's a great tool and I approve the resolution. Council Member Briggs. I have a question. Someone asked a question about is it taxable and the answer was 50%. We don't normally do that correct. It's usually all in the tax rolls or they partner with a housing authority and it's completely off. Is this something, am I misunderstanding the response No it's it's correct. The tax code allows for the eligibility of a 50% property tax exemption for projects that partner with a community development housing organization. So they are partnering with a non-profit out of San Antonio for this project that makes them eligible for a maximum and this the code does require this a maximum of 50% on the tax exemption. So it will be and this is and this is one of the first that we've done like this right or we've had come to us with an out with an out-of-city non-profit. There are sometimes they're partnering with non-profits to provide property management or other services but this is the first time a chodo has been in our community in a while so yes. Go ahead Council Member Briggs. Yeah I that's a little concerning to me. I'm really glad to see affordable units in our community but when you look at the breakdown the three and four bedrooms which will be more likely for families there there's not a lot of them at the 30% which would definitely benefit our community our family communities. There's a lot more of them in the 70 and 80% which mean that they would be renting to you know individuals you know by the separate bedroom. So was there any wiggle room in the in the breakdown for the 30% of the units or no? I think I would like to bring on the developers to answer that question. I would say just because of the income averaging there's flexibility as long as they're meeting that 60% threshold but I don't know if we can let the Ryan or the Ryan in. Yeah. Hey this is Ryan Zen, Vice President with the Michaels Development Company. I appreciate the question and appreciate your time today. So what we've found is yes you are correct there are a lot of families in that 30% income band that utilize this housing but we've also found is that the the workforce element of this is where you do see a large percentage of your families and that really is demonstrated in the 60 to 80% of range and especially in the 70 and 80% range that is previously a category of income targeting that hasn't been accessed to affordable workforce housing path. Kind of commonly referred to as the missing middle aspect. Yes Councilmember Briggs go ahead. Yeah I just know that from past projects when we do have these the 30% to 40% all of those fill up the quickest because it's the most needed and so when I see that there's just 24 of those with 30 to 40% which you know with the crisis that we have now or more than likely going to affect a lot of our residents in those categories and then there's 40 46 at 70 and 80 which are the workforce's higher incomes. It just seemed a little off balance to me. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah is I've got a question Ryan are you still there? Yes sir. Okay this is Mayor Chris Watts. First of all and I understand Councilmember Briggs concern and I appreciate her bringing that up. I will say that on its face and the information I just learned just five minutes ago that I must have overlooked somewhere on the 50% property tax is sort of weighing heavy on me but before understanding that I was really appreciative that this is one of probably Danny correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know of any units that have come on board that are providing a total of almost 108 units that are 50% or below. Do we have anything I mean like that at 30 40 and 50% that have that many units? I guess since if it's a tax credit 4% then we might but I'm not aware of as they've been presented in the past seeing that number at that low amount the 30 to 40% or am I wrong? You know you're not wrong. I'm not sure on the ped corps project but a couple of nuances are 9% aren't being competitive right now because we're not getting disaster points for emergencies in the past so we haven't had a lot of 9% in the last two years and then with the 4% they're coming through at different times and then the income averaging is new so all of that has contributed to the increasing numbers of 30 to 50 units available. Thank you so Ryan this is my concern and there was a project that came I believe it was a 9% project or something that was was partnered with a non-profit here and one of the things that and it was totally tax exempt but one of the things is when in the in the providing the the pro forma that to the council it was indicated that the developer had projected almost a 19% internal rate of return over 10 years on their project pro forma which was totally unacceptable to me given that we were having to give up all of our tax revenue so it's hard for me to to approve this given that 50% of our taxes are going to be exempt without understanding exactly what that 50% exemption which is it only applies to I guess it applies to all taxing entities correct school county everything is that correct yes sir okay so it's hard to to make a decision when I don't know exactly what that 50% of the city taxes and all of them quite frankly because I'm going to be hard pressed to support that if it's going to support a pro forma that indicates a 19% internal rate of return over 10 years for a private developer and so if you could shed any light on that it would be greatly appreciated hi mr mayor my name is Ryan Watt I'm another member of the development team at Michael's the main reason why we are requesting or pursuing the 50% tax exemption is due to the maintain the financial feasibility of the project so looking at the the most pressing housing needs for them it really is those units that are at or below 50% of area median income in order to maintain a budget that is balanced in terms of our sources meeting our uses we we need that 50% tax is empty to maintain the financial financial feasibility without that we would not be able to proceed and that is our reason for pursuing it no ron I do appreciate that and I understand that because that was the same situation for the other project that I mentioned that if you had taken out all of the tax exemption if you had added the taxes back into the pro forma it would have the project wouldn't have made any sense and so I do get that but I think there's obviously and maybe this is the project that strikes that balance between providing for those of the very low income in our community certainly some affordable housing and that and part of that is subsidized by the 50% tax exemption which does give the developer a reasonable rate of return that they can expect over their performance life of the project I just don't know what that rate of return y'all have determined to be absolutely mr mayor again this is ryan zent again I just wanted to thank you for pounding that out the you know the balance is really what we were trying to target here with seeking this 50% tax exemption that is something we typically don't really look at it on this side but we are partnering with a non-profit that actually is active in your community at one of the other tax credit communities that is serving some of the residents there with supportive services and some of that tax exemption will go and the operating cost saved from that will go to provide some of those services is that something that we feel really strongly about are you at liberty to say I think I know which one it is are you at liberty to say which one is that the one on mckinney street the uh what's the name of that I believe it's the veranda yeah yeah yeah that's that's what I thought okay yeah and they they built a quality project and and I believe but they they are not tax exempt they no they were because they partnered with the dentin housing authority if I'm correct in that okay yes sir yeah okay and and I think the other thing to say is on the housing tax credit side you know we are a long-term owner of these properties so we will own this for the duration I think a property where Ryan and I are actually rehabilitating up in midland right now we've owned since 1977 and we will continue to own it into the future that is kind of our business model so we will be here for the long term to make sure this community is maintained and at the end of the solid asset for the community over the long term so so Danny or is it are both of your names Ryan yes yes we like to make it really confusing okay I appreciate that thank you so Danny help me understand something or or one of the gentlemen on the phone because when you say that you're partnering with a non-profit in San Antonio if it's the same development that has the veranda they needed to partner with the housing authority to get the tax exemption so what how are they the arm to get the tax exemption it may be something Danny like you said we've never done before so it may just be I don't understand all the different types of opportunities so does that make sense yes so this so different than the enclave which would be a tax exempt because of the partnership with the housing authority oh no I'm talking about the veranda right has a partnership as well that gives it the tax exemption but the housing authority is the partner right but but what I'm what I thought I just heard Ryan say was that the one that they're partnering with is the non-profit that gives them the ability to ask for the 50 percent or have I got that in reverse I think the community housing resource partners is active on the veranda property but I'm not sure they were the developer and Ryan you may clarify that for me that's that's correct Danny this is Ryan want the on the veranda they they achieved the exemption through a different part of the Texas tax code in this case we'd be using the Texas tax code it is section 11.1825 where the CHDO organization is actually the the owner and the co-developer and what is the name of that organization community housing resource partners this is also in your AIS backup it is to refer to it later okay okay I got confused including the tax code reference okay okay so community housing resource partners is a partner in the development and they're the organization that provides the opportunity to to use or utilize this Texas 11.185 correct okay okay sorry to correct monopolize that time do any other council members have a question for the applicants or Danny council member armature yeah this is for the applicants can you speak to the preservation of affordability over time that's a big concern with affordable affordable housing of all kinds you know to what to what extent can can you guarantee that these units will remain affordable over time and over how long a period of time absolutely um so for these tax credit transactions a land use restriction agreement will be recorded against the property which will require that these units remain affordable for these current AMA set AMI set asides for a minimum of 30 years and as Ryan Zemp mentioned our ownership strategy is to own for the long term where after we get to the end of that 30 years we look to renovate the property and then continue on that same affordability on into the future and so in that midland example that Mr. Zemp mentioned we again require the property in the late 70s have rehabbed it uh twice this will be the second rehab now and we intend to continue owning that property on into the future okay any other questions for the applicant so uh this is Chris Watts again um i i and it's understandable if you don't want to answer the question that's fine but as far as uh the question i asked was uh what is the projected uh rate of return for the development uh at what i mean i don't know how long y'all performing those out to be you know you got to do it i know you do it over some certain period um even though you may not follow that plan like okay in 10 years we're going to sell it for x well you keep them but you're still uh doing some type of investment analysis what what what are what is that coming up to if you're willing to share that and if you don't i certainly understand absolutely yes sir and i think it's a little bit difficult to to model a housing tax credit deal on a traditional irr sense um as i've mentioned we are the long-term owner and manager of the community and so we will we will be working on management of the community and we'll be having a presence here over the long term and really if you were to look at that as kind of the the income that we receive from the community over over the long term in the short term we do reserve a developer fee and typically we'll reinvest about 50 percent of that developer fee into the project which will then be paid about over time from cash flow all right so it's not a traditional return like you would think on a traditional irr i understand are you the so you're the also part of your development is the management company as well so you'll be receiving a fee for that yes sir and what is that fee that y'all will will be charging the development and that fee is typically six percent but it is split between three percent of a base fee and then below the line fee of about three percent as well and that is from available cash flow only at the second three percent the second yeah the second three percent is only from available cash flow is that what you said correct okay correct it's an incentive management fee to ensure that the property is managed what uh what are you what are you projecting to be the construct the final cost of this project the final development cost of this project would be approximately 60 million dollars when you take into account the construction cost and the other soft costs like legal fees architecture fees etc okay so outside of y'all going in and protesting to get the value reduced uh let's say if it stayed the same then the the taxing entities would receive property taxes on let's say 30 million of that if that's what is valued at on the tax rolls did be yes that's correct that's generally correct i think the housing tax credit yeah the housing tax credit properties do have to statutorily go through the income approach for evaluation right but other than that yes okay all right have y'all done that calculation on the income approach to see what the the value would be based upon uh maybe an appraisal district's approach yeah mayor the the developers did put this in their application okay did i miss it yep okay it's pretty lengthy application so how much was it um over the 15 years is that what is that information yeah i was just asking what they thought the value would be on the assessed roles i mean yeah i can figure out the taxes on it yeah okay i guess it's in that it's in the backup too as well some of that's not but they did have some proposals on the 15 year uh on the tax roll calculations that might be helpful as well all right okay yeah i appreciate it gentlemen thank you so much for answering my questions at least um any other uh council member melzer as council member briggs alluded we have seen projects that are affordable housing projects that aren't tax subsidized and you know apparently those developers have an economic model that makes it possible to do that if this council were not to uh support this going forward is that out of the question for your firm to come back i mean i don't i don't know what hurdles you know that entails but for your firm to come back with a structure that does not require tax subsidy hello this is ryan watt again um just wanted to respond to that uh by pointing out again the ami set asides where we've got a total of 108 units at or below the 50 percent ami level um with without this tax exemption it would not be possible for us to provide that number of units at those lower ami set asides and again the reason for us pursuing the exemption was after evaluating the housing needs for the city of denton um the need for high quality housing options that those those lower ami levels was was absolutely crucial in the information that was available to us and so our our best most viable path forward to providing units at those ami set asides was to seek the tax exemption um should we should we uh should we proceed differently we would have to come go back and re-evaluate the project feasibility and likely would result in different ami set asides yeah council member briggs so it says that this uh project is in district one but could you tell me the school that the schools the districts that the uh children would be attending i can uh just bear with me one moment my apologies it's also in the presentation oh i apologize for the delay the the middle school would be meyers middle school the elementary school would be pecan creek middle pecan creek elementary excuse me and then the high school would be ryan high school okay and just another fault like i'm i'm looking at the uh the map and the whole lot that you have looks heavily treed um on the on the uh design are you are you do you know if you're saving any of that is it the back part of the absolutely it's a good question so uh as a part of that's that's correct so there actually exists an environmentally sensitive area on this development site um specifically is an upland tree habitat area and as part of the preparation process for this application we had an environmental esa field assessment conducted by the city of denne environmental services department to confirm the the accurate current boundary of that esa area um and so we confirmed we what we did is designed our development footprint to absolutely minimize the percentage of impact on that area um and this was again something that we discussed uh at our preliminary you know meeting with sitting staff um we also intend to furthermore conduct a tree survey prior to commencement of construction which will verify the counts and species of trees that are impacted and we will mitigate any of those trees that are impacted either by paying an impact fee or by replacing those trees with uh with new trees elsewhere on the development site thank you any other yes mayor pro tem thank you um i think this first i'm gonna start off with a question for staff regarding mayhill we have multiple partners in that widening project bridge etc etc my question is how does this new project intersect with uh uh what's the word i'm trying to blank impact fees so how do we how do we reconcile that so if the county and the state participated and and then we then assess the impact fee do we have to split that how are we approaching that we would need to wait until we actually saw a development submittal i don't think we can answer that right off the top here um we they haven't gone through a detailed design yet because they don't know if you're going to support the application to begin with but once they actually got into that process we would answer those questions for you impact fees tree preservation those sorts of things okay but so if i gave you a just have we entered is there a different project you're familiar our experience in the past how that's been handled i just i'm curious if that because that's going to affect in my mind just some funding are you asking if they would be if they would have the impact fees waived or or better said what would they be diluted because we have to then share those fees with the partners that helped us develop because the road finished you know yeah i see impact fees would only really apply to city owned roads so if they're if he's affected if this project is affecting capacity on any road that the city owns maintains uh and at some point would need to widen we would keep those impact fees we do not collect impact fees on state roads so in this case there's not that that is not an issue they would have to pay impact fees like anyone else okay thank you and then uh i i guess i want to ask one of the ryans there their appetite for flexibility in the ami's obviously that question was asked and i've not heard an answer uh and so it's i'm not advocating one way or another i'm just trying to get you on the record as saying it is what it is what you submitted or there's a level of flexibility yes sir yeah i mean sorry uh we would we would absolutely could look into the income ami set aside here what we do know is what we presented to you supports 108 units below 50 or out of below 50 percent of the ami um and that is a financially feasible deal based upon the structure we played out so we would have to reassess the entire deal in totality at that stage depending on on which direction that would go okay okay uh council member armature yeah so i would like to hear danny and then uh from the developers only if they have anything to add to that about the nature of these resolutions what exactly if council were to agree today to this resolution what exactly is and isn't locked down by a resolution and what remains flexible um good question the next time this would come back to us so the resolution just allows them to move forward with their application to tdhca for the four percent tax credits has nothing to do with approval of the development or any other items beyond that it is just merely for them to go forward with the application with a resolution of support from you thank you and that is my that was my understanding that's why you know i i'm so eager to move ahead and support this and i do appreciate the kind of questions others have asked and look forward to if this does go forward um you know those being discussed at a future date but my understanding we could discuss those at a future date but i'm i'm open to if the developers have anything to add i don't imagine they necessarily do i think i think the only addition to what danny said is if if you're wanting to see some a different lineup here my understanding is on these four percent applications if the resolution is not supported by council it's very rare for if not almost impossible for developer to have approval at the state level so if there's a different mix that you want to see as a council and you would like them to look at it this is probably the time to give them that direction because we're not going to have time to sitting on the dais when there's a resolution before you so these questions that we've had a few of you answer are important ones to them so i've got a couple more questions i'm looking on uh the application uh it's page i think it's 184 185 of the actual application and um i see here where it talks about the real estate tax projection the income method and when i see net operating income plus real estate taxes i'm assuming those are real estate taxes that aren't paid because it's added to the adjusted noi uh and i see the cap rate but then i see a capitalization rate of nine percent to determine the value the taxable value which is 23 million 565 i'm just curious uh where did y'all come up with a nine percent cap rate for brand new construction in the city of denton and denton county because uh those cap rates at the appraisal district are closer to about five to six percent which would obviously have a huge that's a great question um sorry i just wanted to respond by saying that as a part of our investigation we did reach out to the denton center central appraisal district um and ask them specifically about cap rates not just for new construction multi-family but for housing tax credit communities that are new construction and the feedback we received is that those cap rates range from about eight to ten percent um and so we used something that was in the middle of that and it is it is possible that you know a couple years down the road when construction is complete that cap rate may have shifted um but this is a projection just at this point in time so that's interesting is the only thing i would add this is ryan's end to that is that oh i was just going to say deed restricted properties are are handled a bit differently with the central appraisal district and that they you know when they are statutorily bound to use the income method there's also a stated cap rate for those and that is what ryan mentioned and typically around the state we see those ranging anywhere from eight to twelve percent um and and obviously we've used nine uh for this model so and the only reason i ask about this is because i i'm familiar with the process of protest especially for multi-family properties so what i'm hearing you say is that uh now you're saying that's not statutorily required there's not a statute that says your cap rate is higher for um tax credit properties because i find that interesting because it's sort of a double whammy um you're getting a lower tax you're getting a lower a higher cap rate which lowers the assessed value which then makes the property taxes less all the way around which for those taxing entities it it provides sort of a double hit because uh the the break in property taxes is what provides the profitability for the for it to move forward uh but i won't belabor that the only the last question i have is i saw in the application where this community um where is it uh here it is it's on page uh 188 to 189 of the um of the application so i see that the and this is a letter from community housing resource partners talking about the proposal for social services at this complex and so they're the ones providing the social services is that correct yes sir that's correct all right so they're not they're not involved in the equity or they don't have an equity position in the property is that correct or do they that is correct they do not have an equity position in the project okay all right so when i read here it says the social service contract for this particular project is 54 000 a year and then it has expenses staff emergency pantry after school program uh uh i mean the emergency pantry is 7200 dollars um after school program 2400 adult services 5000 and this is yearly program management 6600 and supplies for programs is 2400 so what i'm seeing in this is y'all are paying them 4500 a month and then we've got this budget here of what their expenses are you're paying them 4500 a month to administer these social services that are listed here is that is that how i'm reading this yes sir that's correct um so part of the part of the the savings that we get on an annual basis from these real estate taxes are actually put right back into this supportive services budget and again we believe you know in our experience across our portfolio these services are really valuable you know amenity for for residents whether it's children or adults we have services to accommodate you know both of those different age groups okay so you're saying that part of the tax savings that you realize is going to help provide some funding or all the funding because yeah the tax is at 23 million uh we're at about 0.60 so that's a hundred and that's about 138 thousand uh a year and if that's half of that we're at whatever that is um 69 or something like that so you're saying that the portion of tax savings that you're incurring is what's really funding this particular uh project i mean this budget yeah and and so the yes sir that's correct okay so the advantage to you all from a developer's perspective the the uh well how should i say the profit the rate of return is is usually generated from the income tax credit that you receive that you can do with what you want to you can apply to your own returns or you can sell it so that's really what where the the meat of this thing is it's not so much the real estate taxes as much as it is the tax credit that you're receiving from the state or from the feds that that's exactly correct it is a federal tax credit that we will sell to an investor to help fill the financing gap within our project so we will have a traditional first mortgage and then the equity that is generated from the sale of those tax credits to finance the project and one last question for me what what is the development fee that's being charged on this so in the case of texas the development fee that is charged is a total of 15 percent of the eligible costs however like my colleague ryan said we will defer about half of that fee to be paid later out of residual cash flow so in this case the total fee is a little over five million dollars but we will only be paying that paying upfront amount of half of that and that will be paid out over a period of about four years we will not be receiving that until the property is construction is completed the property is leased up and we receive our 8609 forms from the state agency so the half of the so you got a total of five million dollar developer fees 2.5 million will go to your organization and then the other will be deferred as you just mentioned after construction and you receive this approval or some form from from the state agency is that right yes sir that's correct yeah and i apologize for all the business questions you probably weren't expecting that but i think when you know i'm going to divest the city of property taxes that could be used for other services i don't necessarily mind doing that as long as i understand where that's going it's almost like writing you all a check of city city tax dollars and it's just important that i have a sort of an understanding of the lay of the land financially so that we're not unnecessarily giving subsidies where subsidies may not be needed and i know you understand that so it's nothing against the development or you i'm just trying just want to understand the overall general landscape of the project we've got a mayor pro tem absolutely sir we appreciate it you bet we appreciate the question yeah thank you thank you mayor one follow-up are are you open to it as an option and pardon my ignorance if i'm off but can can you source your building products from denton that that is absolutely something we will look into um you know we we will work with a general contractor to to source as much as possible locally i mean we typically look to do that on every project because it does help to alleviate some of the cost um and certainly something we're we're open to suggestions on that okay and then so can i can i follow up with you on that councilman because i think because i think um part of that is not so much source you know buying the products here but i know that we've done development deals where you can attribute uh the sales tax collection or you know that the sales tax dollars go to the city in other words you might buy the lumber from xyz company that's out of some other place in texas but you can designate that those sales tax dollars are generated in the city of denton and that's certainly something that i think uh i would i would want to see it doesn't really cost the developers anything but it helps us defer some of those uh deferred property tax so i apologize mayor pro tem i i think that's where you were going and i think they were thinking purchasing it here in the city of denton yes sir no i thank you very much for the clarification so is that something y'all would be amenable to uh you know what i mean amenable to uh as long as it didn't necessarily hurt you financially but if you're able to state the original sources uh from the city and and if we need the city attorney to weigh in on that just to sort of explain that we can do that have y'all ever done that before we have not done that before specifically but we would certainly be open to in this case okay all right um councilmember armature oh i'm sorry i'm sorry councilmember armature i'm sorry i didn't uh i walked away from mayor pro tem prematurely i'm sorry go ahead mayor pro tem thank you one other thing to to the city manager's point i i'm gonna have a hard time i'm on the fence just candidly because this has blown back against us before things change and another developer said hey well you agreed to this phase of it unanimously so ergo you're okay with it at some point down the future when we go to hash out the details i'll tell you it gives me heartburn the half the half the 50 of the tax um forgiveness if you will but furthermore i i'm just struggling ryan candidly ryan's plural with uh the fact that you would represent that you penciled this project to the nth degree that there's no variance that you could speak to uh today without having to go back and rework your math with respect to the lower spectrum 50 and below uh ami and so i'll tell you i i'm gonna i'm not going to vote for this uh at this phase because i just think that there's in everything we do there's kind of been a a variable or either this or that or here's our wiggle room i i just find it hard to believe that you penciled this down at this phase to the very unit uh so unless i hear some kind of guidance on where you're flexible understanding the city managers what that you need to know now i'm telling you now uh i disagree with with the numbers and i'm happy to hear your insight on where you think those can go if you have a range but if you're telling me you have no range and it is what it is today then my answer is is is uh i have everything i need okay council member understood thank you council member hudson um i'm sorry i just wanted to respond to mr oh yes i'm sorry go ahead i just want to clarify we absolutely no problem we we absolutely can revisit the the numbers in terms of the ami set asides what we'd have to do at that point is bring forth a new resolution of support application so it'll be a completely separate application with city staff and consideration by council if that is the feedback that we're receiving from council in terms of the ami set asides that is heard loud and clear and we can go go down that path if that is the direction we're receiving okay all right council member armature uh so so two things one about the uh local resources issue i wanted to add to that just my own view uh that in addition to the the sales tax option to have the the sales tax benefit the city instead of wherever the product is sourced from i i also like the idea uh in addition to that not instead about uh utilizing local resources and also local labor whenever possible and and i believe that that is something that was you know already mentioned at least in passing and is one of the written materials um that that came before us from the developers um i will say you know i'm open to flexibility in in ami uh you know the more uh uh people in need of affordable truly affordable housing workforce housing um that that we can help uh without you know delaying something like this from getting on the ground the better so i'm definitely open to that you know but i want to remind people that which people probably don't need reminding of this but i will remind people anyway just of the need that we have for uh affordable work workforce housing of any kind and that if we had a vision of what we wanted you know we can always woo uh any you know developers to come and kind of you know make the project of our dreams in in cooperation with whatever uh non-profit we want but this is something that's coming to us and in my view it's not often enough that this happens when it comes to affordable housing so that's why i'm so eager and and willing to uh pass this resolution question i have is one of timing um if if somehow the council wanted to see uh a response to mayor pro tem's question or others of how would this look with a different unit mix of ami um does that present i mean how long does that take number one and then when is this application do or when is when is all of the components of the application do at the state level absolutely mayor and just the touch of that in and council member has this comment too if i misspoke earlier i apologize but i definitely do want to promote flexibility and working with the city council in the city to to make sure that we come up with a concept that works but as long as we maintain that balance of financial capability with the project but but to answer your question mayor that would take us not very long at all to really look at a couple different options and we could certainly put that together um for you relatively quickly okay well i guess then what i would ask because i i appreciate first of all appreciate all my colleagues questions and i appreciate your responses and staff presentation um understanding that if you if you lower if you increase the 30 40 or 50 percent then you're knocking out the 60 and you may have to knock out some of the 70 and then increase the 80 so i just would ask my colleagues that if we're going to ask them to go back and do this that we give them some direction on what we would expect to see or anticipate to see uh not to say that if they do it we'll approve it but just i mean if we're going to ask them to do it i think we need to give them some idea of what would be more beneficial from our perspective on what that unit mix will look like because i i really don't believe we have any apartment buildings in this town that have that kind of unit mix from 50 and below i mean i can almost uh i'm not going to guarantee it but most of them are at 50 to 60 percent because i think the law requires it to be an average of 60 percent is that correct it's available now that's correct yeah previous previous housing tax credit properties may be a little different but yes okay so so then technically what i'm hearing you say is if you put them all at 60 percent ami then that satisfies the condition in the law and the reason why you have a different mix is you're trying to get to the average of that uh by trying to meet some of the needs of those at the lower ami level is that right yes sir okay so if council could give them i mean some of you have had some current some concerns with the unit mix so uh i mean you don't have to tell them specific unit mixes unless you want to but i think it'd be important to give them some idea because i don't want to waste their time and i don't want to waste our time coming back if somehow they don't have an idea of what we're looking for not again whatever your comments are doesn't lock you into an approval i'm just saying that it would be only fair to let them know what it is that that people are looking at uh council member briggs yes yeah so i mean if we're we're doing the they're doing the 50 tax rebate then i would like to see more help or some of the the larger apartments like three bedroom which would accommodate um families um two and three bedroom you know or three maybe four in the uh 50 percent and below as opposed to the 60 percent and 80 that's where the higher ones tend to be um so that's that's just where i i would like to see um i don't have any specific numbers for you uh to get that average but when when i'm thinking about families who are having a hard time right now um they're not going to move into a you know a one bedroom so they need to be able to afford the space that they can um spread out in and not all pile into you know a smaller unit so that's that's just my concern however however that works out okay understanding that the more three and four bedrooms you may move into those categories the last one and two bedrooms you have in those categories as well which i mean there are people who are single or who have you know smaller families that you know the one and two so i just want to this is all a i mean go ahead council member briggs yeah i'm not talking like 50 units into one thing i'm talking like two or three you know like just a little bit more so that yeah i'm not i'm not looking for a giant drastic change where it all moves and shifts into you know 50 um or you know 30 that's helpful yeah okay uh mayor pro tem thank you yeah so well one in a perfect world i would receive feedback from them versus me grabbing an ambiguous number but i'm happy to grab an ambiguous number the ambiguous number for me is a third point three three times the 360 uh total unit so a third of units going to 50 percent and below that's 119 units so that bumps up their number by 11 units so if they want me to grab a number just to account you know i want to share my thoughts my thoughts are a third okay all right well i think that's helpful appreciate that thank you um anybody else of course now i haven't heard from some of the council members so there may be we're gonna have to go around and decide do we want to move forward on this resolution uh or do you know if not then we'll we'll do the fallback uh so um if if we i guess we need to do that now we're going to just do that now i understand council member briggs uh are you uh opposed to this resolution as it sits with the current presentation without some kind of modification to those number of units that you you mentioned um yes after with the new information of the partnership with a non-profit i feel like if we're gonna that's going to be a subsidy it needs to benefit the um the most vulnerable part of our community those who need the assistance the most okay all right and mayor pro tem i think i know your position but i want you to go ahead and state it yes no yeah i i would be opposed as it's currently constructed okay um council member armature you know i'm i'm i'm flexible either way okay well council member armature i need you to i mean because we don't know what the other votes are so um so you're saying that you could support the resolution as it stands today yeah i could support it as it stands today but i but i'm not going to get in the way of it coming back with it a different ami i'm open to that too all right well i'm going to put you down for the calculation of direction as supporting the current resolution for as presented sure sure okay okay all right uh council member ryan yeah i i don't see where coming back with a different round of ami is going to make that much of a difference because you're averaging to 60 so if you just shift where you've got what you're still going to average to 60 uh and i can't support it as it is uh brought to us today okay uh okay um council member melzer my inclination is to hold out for projects that are uh not tax subsidized because we know know that they're out there and they've come before us and you know we're at a you know we're at a kind of a tough uh crossroads uh we need the affordable housing but we need structures that we can sustain uh so my inclination is against but i'm definitely uh open to to seeing what it looks like when it comes back at another time and um you know seeing the pluses outweigh the minuses at that time okay so we do have four to give direction to um wait am i right one two three yeah we've got four to give direction to not support the resolution at this time as presented in the current presentation so i mean council member davis if you want to state your your thoughts you're certainly more than welcome to but right now we have uh direction sure thank you no i've mostly just been listening to my colleagues here because i think we've got the conversation pretty well rounded out that uh with the tax subsidy this isn't quite the product we're looking for as council member melzer said there's others on the table that we've seen it'd be a lot more attractive to me if we had say if it's a 50 subsidy we had 50 of the units offered at 50 am i or lower um that makes a lot of sense maybe i'm using numbers that are arbitrary and in two round to actually pencil out a project um but giving me something more to bite off than what i'm seeing today with that kind of tax subsidy so my direction is against right now okay all right uh so so gentlemen um i think what we've heard is uh they it's we don't have direction to support the resolution based upon the current unit mix and you've heard i think uh the conversation today and the feedback so uh certainly would welcome you to bring something else forward that uh given the feedback that you've heard uh that is a win-win for everybody uh and since it doesn't sound like that time necessarily is a constraint and we certainly won't have this kind of conversation the next time because we've sort of vetted out all the issues of you know the different things as far as whether it should be tax subsidized or not i think for most here it's a matter of looking at the unit mix as well i'm open uh i don't have as much heartburn on the half percent uh property tax uh especially if we get a a good mix of those units that are lower uh that are 50 are lower because that is in all types of unit mixes because that's really where the need is all of these most of these multi-family projects whether they're tax subsidized or not they have very very few uh units at 50 percent or below so i'm certainly open to see what kind of feedback you you come back with if you decide to come back based upon this conversation you may decide well we're going to move on uh but certainly would welcome uh another another shot and we're going to take one more comment from council member briggs and then give the applicant the last opportunity to speak if they want to have some closing remarks council member briggs yeah well i just wanted to kind of align here too i like the the 50 with a unit and not to get very specific with that um i i feel like that might be easier for them i just wanted to align there with my colleagues on on that okay all right okay gentlemen do y'all have anything you'd like to say no just wanted to thank city council for their time and their consideration today this this feedback is really really helpful and we appreciate it we absolutely intend to come back with a revised proposal for your review we look forward to that to that process okay thank you gentlemen so much appreciate that all right um we're going to take a really quick break even though we got one work one work session left which is the council one minute but um we've been going at it for quite some time so let's come back in about five or seven minutes all right welcome everybody back to this meeting of the denton city council on may the 19th 2020 it is 6 22 p.m and we're on our last work session item which is work session item 3e receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction on pending city council requests hello mayor and council this is rachel balter-mendoza assistant to the city manager i'll present the city council pending requests for information just as a reminder for everyone um we have up to seven requests to be reviewed per meeting tonight's just one i'll introduce each request and the elected official that made the request will have up to one minute to describe and justify the request the remaining elected officials will then have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support for the use of staff time and then we'll respond to all the requests where consensus of council is established like i mentioned just one request for this evening from council member armenter drafting and passing an ordinance requiring all towing companies to provide vehicle owners of all required notifications orally and in writing following a non-consensual tow and mayor um you mentioned earlier that you would time this evening but just as a little bit of staff information is back up city attorney's office prepared informal staff report number 2020-050 which was included in your backup okay all right if we could pull the screen down we'll get ready to start okay council member armature when you start speaking i'll go ahead and start your one minute this is modified somewhat based on the backup we got this weekend predatory towing is a big concern for the public we serve i'm asking council to consider a no risk know your rights consumer empowerment measure to help dentin drivers better defend themselves against predatory towing when people get their car towed and go to pick it up they need it back asap for food work and health reasons and will pay up on the spot if they can and sign on the dotted line to retrieve their property mandating clear and brief oral notice of their rights and options in person including uh the distinctions between legal and illegal towing while not contradicting current state and local law would better inform and empower the public including potential victims of predatory towing it's legal according to our city attorney car owners should sign to ensure that they were read their rights either in english or in spanish a recording would be great if possible also the city attorney included some flyers that i think should be included in english or spanish as well very good all right time time expired so uh if there's a council member that wants to speak then i will start the time once they start speaking and when i recognize them council member briggs um i i am in favor of a work session um it may just be that we bring our regular towing ordinance back and add to it um there's been so many issues with towing lately we are getting emails from residents and so i feel like it deserves another conversation and what form uh in the in the work session that would be fine with me we need to talk about our ordinance and how to add apps to it anyway we just need a another discussion on how to improve uh towing in our city okay all right anyone else council member melzer so i'm happy to have a work session in general on how to improve the towing situation i'm not sure that uh i would expect to end up at the recommendation just at least i can't picture how the required oral uh notification would work people aren't generally at the cars when they've got to be dealt with in legitimate towing situations but uh but i'm uh in agreement with council member bricks and we could look at it holistically okay anyone else council member mayor pro tem i dislike this process because you can't ask questions i say that a lot because question is the way it's written here that's not what's been discussed what's been discussed as an overarching towing policy and specifically what was requested by this process is this ordinance that mandates some some documentation of some sort so i do not support uh this as presented but i i guess someone needs to put forward something that's just more generally the towing policy so that we follow our own guidelines okay thank you council member davis thank you sir um so kind of like council member melzer mayor pro tem said i don't i can't support the request as it's presented but i also have trouble with just opening up to a general let's talk about towing work session i think that's kind of too much of an onus to put on staff and and too much information to gather without enough direction i could get behind you know maybe a receipt requirement you know where there has to be filed someplace in fact somebody signed off their written notice that they got it a posting requirement you know a sign that's in certain certain font certain height like a lot of ordinances have something along those lines but just a general let's have a work session to talk about towing i can't get behind that and this specific recommendation that's being requested with the oral notice i can't get behind that either just too onerous okay all right all right anybody else okay it seems like that this specific request did not receive consensus of council to move forward to a work session all right that uh concludes our work session agenda items so we will what time is it it's 6 28 so we've got a two minute break and then we'll come back and start the council meeting welcome everybody to this regularly scheduled meeting of the denton city council on may the 19th 2020 it is 6 37 p.m we will move through our agenda items we will be doing the pledge of allegiance to the u.s and texas flag and that will show up here on the screen so if council members will join me if if they so choose we'll start out with the pledge of allegiance to the u.s flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all there's a there's a there's a delay in there uh now we'll pledge the texas flag uh honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one stay under god one and indivisible all right thank you uh we'll go to agenda item number two which is presentation from members of the public i don't believe we have procedures for addressing the city council uh that we can roll is that correct that is correct okay um i know i read them last time but i'll i'll forget that forego that now i don't have the script with me but i trust that all of our citizens will will adhere to the the best decorum uh for these meetings so we'll move on to then our reports from members of the public we've got two methods one is pre-registration and we do have someone who's pre-registered to do a citizen's report and uh it's jennifer hughes and as soon as jennifer gets on the phone uh we'll start her time as she jennifer are you there yes i am okay yeah once you state your name and address i will start your time and i believe you have four minutes to speak my name is jennifer hughes i'm at 1029 quait street in denton and i do see that it looks like that you might have addressed this today in your meeting um in your agenda b but i did call friday um regarding the utilities and other things maybe the city can do to help the uh the residents here since um we are all in this together um i compared the denton utilities with lewisville and my most recent bill was um 191 83 and um comparing that with since we don't have power to choose dot org here um comparing that though with using the lowest rate there with which was 8.5 cents compared to your 10.25 cents per kilowatt and then with lewisville's water and my bill would have been 138 27 versus 191 83 it's like a 28 difference so i thought you know maybe for a couple months while we're going through this covid thing with and you know a lot of people losing their jobs or being furloughed um nobody's really hiring right now so um maybe you know something the city can do is you know maybe decrease the utility bills a little bit since you aren't in charge of those also we have evictions that just started today where landlords can start evicting and so i'm hoping the city will put something out as far as that goes i see that you did address that in the meeting again under um be under the cares act i'm not sure if that is only under affordable housing or not people who qualify for that but i'm hoping that we're not going to have like hundreds to thousands of homeless people added to the ones that i've already seen as a late night uber driver for over a year i've been doing that to help students get from the bars to their residents um and um i'm just i'm hoping that the city is going to be participating in trying to prevent a bigger homeless situation um and not just pushing it off onto all the charities who have already been overwhelmed by all by all of this um and that was my main concern and has been my main concern also with the mental health crisis that's going on we have so many people who have fallen back into their addictions and people who are committing suicide and we really don't have hardly any resources for that here and then anyway so uh that's my main concern as a dentin resident and somebody who's lived in dentin county my entire life well since i was five so for 45 years so um i just felt the need that i need you to call in about that and i'm hoping that um the city will put something out for the residents um to know that that y'all are helping too and not just pushing it on to charities okay anything else that is all i had to say sure and i think we've got a couple questions uh council member armator and if they could be questions not necessarily uh commentary so if you have a question for the caller that would be great yeah uh so thank you thank you for speaking uh your concerns or my concerns i wanted to know uh that if you're aware uh of number one uh the measures that this city uh does have in place uh to assist those non-profits that you mentioned and number two if if you're aware uh that that that i have put forward uh at least a couple different proposals to reduce our rates uh that have not gained consensus on council but that it is something that has at least uh been discussed i wanted to know if you were aware of either of those honestly um the second thing no the first one i just uh was scrolling through today's agenda that y'all had and i noticed that y'all were awarded or provided 618 thousand dollars under the cares act and that you were using part of that money to give towards some of the charities i called on friday and this memo was done today so i wasn't aware of that on friday when i called um and that's great i mean if that will really help i mean when that dissolves and runs out i think my biggest concern is is this eviction situation since uh that in the 52 percent renters and we have a population of 142 000 and according to a vice poll approximately a quarter to one third of people did not pay rent okay we could be having a major homeless issue okay real fast all right council member briggs i want to thank you jennifer for calling and and now that you're concerns are our council's concerns as well um it's been a discussion that we've had um all throughout this this crisis from beginning uh till till now um we did have a couple presentations on funding and um are you on facebook yes yes i am because i just have to ask you a question so that's the one question i decided i had to ask you um so so council member briggs it's not just about asking a question like but also i mean it well i wanted to know is that if you are are you on facebook because i shared the chart earlier from this day's presentation to get the information out that you've requested us to get out so if if you um are you can find that and share that as well and pass on the information to others who may be uh needing help at the moment okay thank you all right so is that under the city count the city or is it under um what under yours that under the city of denton oh we'll request that that information get out through our city uh facebook channels okay okay jennifer i just have one question for you back on the back on the utility uh comparison uh-huh so you compared electricity and water yes the the because you know we get all our here in denton we get electricity and water in one bill right but also there's solid waste on the utility bill for the city of denton as well yes yes that's correct and um in louisville there's is water sewage and waste as well so yes that's included the the and i did all the math i called them uh yeah i did all the math including the overage because my water they charge uh 3.3 dollars and 85 cents uh you get your first 2000 gallons of water and then after that it's no no that's that's fine i just wanted to make sure because i'm not familiar with louisville's utility structure whether they're full service city like we are um and if there's if their trash removal is also part of their bill but i just wanted to make sure that yes i understand that okay they include the containers both trash and recyclable and they're also once a week okay great uh and also um um we're i appreciate it i was going to ask another question but i'm going to refrain from that right now um okay thank you so much jennifer for calling in i appreciate oh we have one more i'm sorry jennifer we have one more uh person council member melzer yeah i'm just going to uh you know share with you uh first of all thank you for speaking to us and just share with you that i think it's generally within a day that you can look at the video of work sessions and the item that you referred to which was work session b to talk about that you know the digital funding the main topic uh that you'll hear was about other much larger sources of funding uh that uh maybe apply to those needs and uh and i would just uh encourage you to take a look at that just that session when it comes up on video is it going we're very much okay is it going to be online because i don't have cable in all of that yes no no no yeah it's online if the easiest way i find i i always do it the same way i just google dentin public meetings and it'll take you right to the page you'll see the date of the meeting you can either click on agenda or video and if you click on video uh it'll show the agenda you can click right on the agenda item in this case it's work session b and it'll take you right to that section of the video and i think you'll be very interested in in what our discussion was this afternoon okay all right thank you so much you bet you bet um okay all right thank you so much jennifer appreciate you calling in okay i appreciate you all right we'll move on then to our um i don't believe we have any callers for open mic so we will move on to the consent agenda councilmember briggs so i move approval except for item g which is to be pulled and given at a later meeting is that correct for staff yes and then um item c and e which will have a a separate vote and i understand i needs to be recused as well and i yes okay all right oh yeah so do we have a second on the consent agenda councilmember ryan a second all right so we have a motion and a second for approval of the consent agenda except for items c e g and i uh c and e and i will be items for individual consideration uh immediately following this action on the consent agenda item g has been pulled for consideration at a later date all right we'll take the polling councilmember armatr hasse you on the motion aye councilmember briggs yes councilmember ryan all right mayor protem all right councilmember davis aye councilmember melzer aye mayor wass is an aye so the motion carries unanimously uh we will now take on the uh go forward with the consent agenda items that were pulled for items for individual consideration uh and these will be we'll start with agenda item c consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of dentin a texas home rule municipal corporation rejecting any and all competitive proposals under rfp 7169 i don't believe we have a staff presentation from this i don't believe councilmember briggs yeah i i just would like to make a motion to see if we could postpone or ask the them to hold the um hold it before we reject all bids so we don't have to start the process all over again and we can start there and if for some reason they say no then you could bring it back to us to reject um but if we're just pausing this for a little bit of time um i'm afraid that the bids may come in higher next time okay do we know when this this these current bids expire i don't know off hand brian burner may i will let the council know that i asked brian burner and cassie ogden to reach out to all the vendors in both c and e after our discussion earlier and see if they would hold their pricing through august 31st so if they will do that so far we've had two of the vendors respond that they would but we haven't heard back from everyone but i think we should be fine bringing this back on june 2nd okay councilmember armature i would like to second that motion okay all right we've got a uh motion and a second for i think we need to postpone to a date insert now was that what was that date mr city manager june 2nd yes yeah that'll give us enough time to hear back from the uh the uh everyone that's bidding on to make sure that they're all in agreement with giving us the ability to extend through august 31st if they're not in agreement then we we can't do that is that correct then we'll reject it um the idea was with this fund and with the general fund in particular we need to go back through now that we've made several cuts service reductions um both of those funds have lost some revenue that uh that we're still comfortable moving forward particularly having to raise rates so i think we can get that um analysis done pretty easily in july for you okay all right uh so councilmember brig so your motion is to postpone till june the the second is that correct yes sir all right councilmember armature that's what you understand is your second yes okay uh so councilmember brig how say you on this motion yes councilmember armature yes councilmember melzer hi councilmember davis i'm mayor protem all right councilmember ryan all right uh mayor watts is an i so the motion carries uh seven zero to postpone till june the second agenda item e consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton the texas home rule municipal corporation rejecting any and all competitive proposals under rfp 7281 councilmember breaks yeah the same applies here instead of rejecting all bids and starting the process over if we could postpone till the date certain if it's the same date for the city manager for this item i would like for us to do that before we uh get rid of all of the uh the bids so was it june 2nd yes postpone to june 2nd okay councilmember armature i would like to second that motion as well okay i'm getting some feedback from someone so just double check um all right so uh we have a motion and a second for postponement of agenda item e till june the second councilmember breaks how say you yes councilmember armature yes councilmember melzer aye councilmember davis aye mayor protem all right councilmember ryan aye uh i'm sorry i got distracted i heard something in the background uh and mayor watts is an eye so that motion carries unanimously we will now move to agenda item i which i believe councilmember davis will require recusal so we'll see you on the flip side councilmember davis um all right consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton a texas municipal home rule corporation supporting participation and the 2020 transportation alternative call for projects councilmember briggs move approval councilmember melzer second we have a motion and approval for agenda item three i councilmember briggs how say you yes councilmember melzer aye mayor protem aye councilmember ryan aye councilmember armature yes mayor watts is an eye the motion carries six zero so councilmember davis you can return thank you so much good to see you again all right well moving on to items for additional consideration for individual consideration excuse me agenda item 4a is consider appointments to the tax increment reinvestment zone number two board of directors including appointment of a chairperson good evening mayor and council members jessica rogers director of economic development and still struggling with the technology after two months all right so i'm going to have a very brief presentation just to remind everyone why the tours appointments are slightly different so today we're doing a quick overview of the west park tours reinvestment zone number two board composition and then ask council to make appointments and appoint a chairperson um tours number two is the tours that exist on the west side of town in the industrial area and under its authorizing ordinance this tours board consists of 14 members 12 members serve concurrently with their appointment to the economic development partnership board denton county appoints a single board member and raise their investments where the developer as it's known in the ordinance has a single board member um if you'll remember we made some adjustments to the authorizing ordinance and the bylaws um in late february and so we were holding off making the formal appointments and reappointments until those um cleanup items came forward um the second item of this that's a little bit different is that according to the tax tax code chapter 311 the governing body actually appoints the chairperson of tours board so today you'll be asked to appoint the chairperson and so here is the membership as it exists of the tours board marty rivers is the current chairperson and those noted in blue are members that were appointed to the economic development partnership board in 2019 and so this is simply confirming their appointment and their concurrent appointment to the tourist 2 board and those members noted in green are those that are appointed by the other entities and cell one razor is appointed by the developer and alex pain is appointed by denton county and that is all i have for this evening happy to answer any questions so jessica the people who are up for reappointment are the ones that are in blue on that last slide yes all right and so we need to do two things uh decide how we want to what actually we want to take on the appointment of those listed but also on the action of uh appointing the chair yes okay council member briggs um i'm making a motion to approve staff recommendation on um the appointments listed and for marty rivers to continue as chairperson okay uh do we have a second for agenda item for a council member oh i'm sorry council member davis i'm sorry i didn't see you that's just fine i'll second okay all right so we have a motion and a second for agenda item 4a uh for approval council member briggs hasayu yes council member davis aye uh council member ryan all right council member melzer aye mayor protem all right council member armater aye mayor watts is an i so motion carries unanimously for this item we had zero people making comments on our online form we had zero people that called the 349 7800 number and we had zero who requested to speak on the phone we'll move on to agenda item 4b consider approval of a resolution to appoint a member of the board of directors of the texas municipal power agency a joint powers agency to represent the city of denton and declaring an effective date mayor city council this is uh tony puente chief financial officer i have a very quick uh presentation just two slides you'll give me a second okay so uh this item is uh for consideration of nominations and for appointment of a board member to the tmpa um tmpa uh is a four member city organization there's two uh nominations or two member seats per city so this will be the second uh seat for the city of denton mayor watts occupies one seat uh currently uh billy cheek um occupies the current seat that will expire on july 18th uh a staff missing out a informal staff report to the council requesting nominations there was two council members that did um email staff and uh nominated uh billy cheek uh tmpa does require the adoption of a resolution to formally uh name um members to the board of directors um so um today just standing here to ask if there's any nominees or consideration of mr billy cheek um the term will be from july 18th uh 2020 and will expire july 18th uh 2022 so with that i'll stand for any questions okay uh if we could pull the present there we go all right any questions council member briggs my question is to you to you mayor when is your your seat expire your term uh i don't know uh tony do you know that it's uh 2021 2021 okay and is it is there supposed to be a council member on on the board no ma'am it's it could be anyone that the council nominates right okay all right okay uh council member armature did you have a question actually yeah those were two of my questions i was almost expecting you to ask the third one too which is uh do do these terms get infinitely renewed renewed is that possible or is there a limit to the number of consecutive terms there are no term limits right thank you council mayor pro tem just to complete the record so tony you said you were so you received two emails yes sir from uh yourself and council member davis okay good insight thank you okay uh chair would entertain action on this agenda item um council member davis i move approval of the draft resolution our backup with the name bill cheek inserted in the appropriate places council member ryan i'll second all right we have a motion and a second for agenda item 4b of staff recommendation with bill cheek to be the nominee or the appointment as the member to the board of directors of the texas municipal power agency council member davis i'll say you on this motion aye council member ryan aye council member melzer aye council member armater yes mayor pro tem aye council member briggs yes uh mayor watts is a yes motion carries unanimously we'll move on to agenda item 4c oh on on that agenda item b 4b we didn't have anyone uh make any comments on the online form uh no one called in to register their position on the phone by 940 349 7800 and there were zero who have requested to speak on the phone over this item agenda item 4c considered adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing and approving the execution by the city manager or his designee an agreement between the city of denton texas and sth project a non-profit corporation providing for authorization of sth to provide lunches to children under the ages of 18 good afternoon mayor council members this is laura barron's assistant director for parks and recreation and before you have a contract uh for sthp to provide our summer food program and you received some information earlier today during the covid work session and we will put that slide back up for you and i'm here to answer any questions that you might have okay uh any questions from uh the council let me see if i can see council member riggs do you have a question yeah just for for clarification because i i know that um without covid they on a regular the parks provided meals for um kids at camp was this part of that um before and if we do start camp will that be part of this yes it's the same provider this is the same program um in addition to providing you know traditionally uh providing food for the children that are participating in the summer camps it was also open to any child under the age of 18 in the public so it was open to the public even before this it will continue to be open to the public and if we do open up our camp programming these two locations would be the camp locations so it'll coincide nicely with that food service and summer camp okay thank you i just wanted to confirm that this included that so we wouldn't have to if we did decide to open our camps that it was already covered thank you council member ryan i think i saw your hand up yes mayor i had a question because we on the slide it shows that uh target date is target start date of june 1 and while i know mlk was on our list a few weeks ago is one of the first ones to reopen denia was one of the last uh are there changes in the plan as to what rec centers are going to be open or is this going to be just a very limited uh to this the scope only at those rec centers no sir the reopening plans remain the same for now so this is only limited to opening up the building to the provider the building will still be closed to the public and the provider will be serving these meals as grab-and-go so we'll be working on a traffic plan that will allow for vehicles to pull up to the rec center receive the food and then pull away okay mayor pro tem sorry have fun about so my question is i know disd saw some staggering numbers as far as participation uh have they obviously we've i just want to confirm that that staffs talk to them and we have a good feel for uh what to expect and and ramp up and we're able to ramp up accordingly yes sir this is a joint partnership this summer with disd uh and sthp sthp also provides service to their locations as well so disd has shared their distribution service numbers with us and sthp and through this process sthp has requested an increase for the number of meals that they can serve through the grant program so we're expecting to get approval for an increased number of meals at our sites based on what disd has been experiencing over the last several weeks okay council member breaks i move approval council member armature i second all right uh we have a motion and a second council member bricks i say you yes council member armature yes council member melzer aye council member ryan aye council member davis aye mayor pro tem aye mayor watts is an aye this motion carries unanimously for this item there were zero people making comments on our online forum and zero had called in to the 9403497800 to register its position and zero requested to speak on this on this item all right we'll move on to agenda item 4d consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of dentin a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city attorney or his designee to execute an agreement letter with loyd goslick rochelle and townson for professional legal services relating to the city's compliance with public utility commission of texas electric transmission service rules good evening mayor and council larry colister city attorney's office i did not have a powerpoint presentation but i'm here to uh answer any questions you may have the uh ais fully explains the purpose of the engagement all right any questions mayor pro tem was that a question no sir okay okay go ahead move approval councilmember briggs i have a question so you may want to get a second before discussion well no we can we can do discussion now i mean yeah well my question is just for larry is can you just explain why we're going to an outside uh legal source instead of um our our in-house legal department absolutely this requires um expertise that is beyond our office i mean this is digging into the particulars of the public utility commission operations with respect to transmission cost of service filings and our energy earnings reports with respect to urcod and that's something that's really just outside of our expertise and then lamba townson and cody have been working with the pc lambeth over 45 years and cody the last 10 okay thank you okay all right councilmember armature uh yes i was wondering if you could speak to how often uh this this kind of service is needed uh to make sure that that uh we're in sync with with putt on this and also if you could speak to you know over what period of time uh that that not to exceed amount uh is to include the contractors for a period of 12 months from the date it's executed and not to exceed amount of 100 000 and what it's going to cover coming up this year and for this 12 month period is going to be ongoing expenses with a pending application for transmission cost of service reimbursement two additional filings within the next 12 months and the energy in the earnings monitor reports and then just maintaining um active presence with them with their council and the regulatory officials there with respect to the municipally owned utilities thank you and and when's when's the last time we needed a this kind of legal service with regard to you know uh making sure that we're in compliance with putt they've been representing the city quite i mean really for about the last from what i understand 20 years and we needed to come before council because the prior engagements have been let been under the city manager's signing authority and this time we're it's we're going to be doing more filings for more transmission cost service reimbursement applications than we have in the past thank you okay council member breaks one more quick question what what this may be for later it may be for the city manager what budget does this come out of our legal budget the dme where is that for reimbursement dme will fund it okay we have a motion uh looking for a second council member ryan i'll second all right we have a motion to second for agenda item 4d uh mayor pro tem how say you all right council member ryan aye council member melzer aye council member davis aye council member briggs yes council member armature yes all right mayor watts is a yes and aye so the motion carries seven zero we will now move to the public hearing portion of our agenda hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an order i don't think we had any we didn't have anybody on agenda item 4d wishing to speak uh nor did they uh register their position at 9403497800 and we didn't have anyone making comments on our online form we'll now move to public hearing 5a hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving a specific use permit to allow a new monopole tower no more than 88 feet in height on approximately 4.37 acres of land located at 30401 barcelona street in the city of denton denton county richard is pulling up the presentation just a sec glasses on uh good evening mayor council richard canoni development services uh the item in front of you tonight is a specific use permit uh for a wireless communication facility or or a a cell tower monopole tower uh the code requires any tower greater than 85 feet to seek a specific use permit and so the request in front of you this evening is for a property located at 30401 barcelona just north of university and just east of the tracks on the west side of i-35 it's an area there's uh some hotels uh along the frontage road and some industrial properties to the back where this uh where this is being proposed the tower that they're proposing to to erect is approximately 88 feet in height the current zoning is mixed use regional again this is a this is a permitted use with a specific use permit this property is also within the municipal airport overlay district and you may recall from the hunter and cole mpc discussion there's two components to our overlay our airport overlay district the first is the airport height hazard district which this is located in the horizontal zone and so section 4.58 of the ddc limits structures within that zone the area in yellow to a maximum height of 810 feet mean sea level and so based upon the finished grade while we well we initially had this at 723 we looked at their latest grading plans and it is at 722 so again that maximum height would be would be 88 feet to give you an idea of the total site it's approximately 4.37 acres however their development impact area is just over an acre and you see the proposed location of the of the tower which is here and then again the the development impact area they're not using that entire parcel there is some east of riparian buffer so they are staying out of that and just focusing on this one acre corner of the site a little bit of detail on to on the site they have approximately 40 of the impact area is landscaped area so that's 15 more than what's required they will be planting the street trees along barcelona and meeting the 30 tree canopy requirement as with all applications there's a 12 general review criteria that we look at i won't go through each of these 12 but they have met all of those as provided in the backup but i will touch on the six specific criteria for the sup the first being compatibility with surrounding area as i stated earlier there's a number of light manufacturing warehouse and some medical clinics again nothing that would be incompatible with with the with this tower number two minimum impacts on future development most of this area has already been developed so there would be very few impacts criteria three that it conforms to the ddc and the proposed the accompanying office office building would also meet all of the all of the ddc requirements criteria four impacts associated with access traffic emergency services utilities parking refuse noise glare and odor have been adequately mitigated again the proposed communication tower is located on the interior of the platted lot outside of the building setbacks or easement therefore it would minimize any any glare or any obstruction that would occur from a neighboring property criteria five that it's in conformance with the comprehensive plan or applicable adopted plan there is no specific small area plan for this area but it is within the business innovation which is typically for office light manufacturing research and development and so this would be this would be consistent with that future land use designation and criteria six the use adverse the use adversity impacts the health safety and welfare of all of the inhabitants of the area in the city we don't believe that it would have any adverse effect on health safety or welfare in speaking with the airport they did ask that we just include the condition that prior to issuance of a permit for construction of the tower the applicant provide the city with the faa determination letter indicating that tower will have no impact on the dentin airport and our our approach procedures the there were a newspaper ad the property was posted as well as mailed notices sent out there was not a neighborhood meeting held given the the industrial area and nature of the of the of the location of the site we did receive two letters in opposition which represent approximately 11 so this item is a super majority is not required the planning and zoning commission recommended approval seven zero with the following conditions the first being that the maximum height as installed shall not exceed 810 feet above mean sea level again this translates to approximately 88 feet and then the airport asked that we include this additional condition requiring the that prior to the issuance of the permit for construction of the monopole tower that the applicant provided the city with the faa determination letter indicating that there will be no impacts on the airport and the city's approach procedures and with that i'll be happy to answer any questions if we could pull the slide down that'd be great okay any questions council member armature and then we'll go to the public hearing we do have people wishing to speak uh go ahead council member armature the two questions um one uh does this have anything to do with uh 5g wireless that we know of i didn't see anything in the presentation but i know that there are some concerns about that about about the safety of 5g so i wanted to know about that and number two um i couldn't find uh in the extensive backup provided maybe it's there i i just overlooked it uh the reasons for those who uh who said no those those two in in opposition i couldn't find a photocopy of those so if they are there if you could please direct me to where they are and if you could speak to you know what what we know about if this has anything to do with 5g technology the with respect to the 5g i i'm not aware um i know the applicant i believe is is uh one of the the speakers that i i would i would defer defer to them um this was the facility downtown i believe that that is relocating um where we're expanding the the police facility and so this is their their facility that they're they're wanting to stay in the city so they're moving to this location um i will um commissioner i will find that letter if it if it is not in the backup um and provide that prior to the end of the public hearing thank you councilmember breaks i was just wondering if we have received the faa determination nation letter yet we have not received it do what we have not received it as of today okay thank you all right any other comments before we open the public hearing all right i will now open the public hearing for agenda item 5a uh the first public speaker is john hall so we'll wait till mr hall comes on the line and then uh i'll start his time um mr hall are you there yes i am all right if if you're listening to the meeting in the back i can hear something coming through the background so if um um no i'm not i'm just on the call okay so we might be getting some feedback from someone but anyway all right so mr hall thank you so much for joining us for agenda item 5a and once you state your name and address uh i'll start your time and you will have four minutes okay my name is john w hall h-a-l-l 1310 chiming rock drive in keller texas i am the property owner of 3401 barcelona uh road in tenton we're proposing our new uh office and warehouse which is going through um the permitting process as we speak and we applied for a special use permit um months ago for uh to erect a communications tower on the property as well since we are a wireless internet service provider and um we went through the scp process last week i believe it was which it passed the unanimous week seven to zero so now i guess we are just sitting here for a council city council approval uh for that scp so we can proceed on with the building permit and start putting shovels in the dirt and getting this project going that's all i have to say okay all right any questions for the speaker council member briggs so you're the land owner and the owner of the pole correct i'm the owner of everything i own the business speed of light broadband i own the land is jodoka which is an acronym for john and donna's company um so we own the land we're building the office and speed of light will lease the office from us so the shelf tower that's going to be going on the property will be the speed function of speed of light broadbands wireless uh broadband business okay so you would be there and be closed so if anything were to happen to the pole or it needed maintenance or repair you would be there on site to to maintain that no correct yeah i mean my my business is going to be operating the service out of off that utility i mean off that pole correct okay thank you council member armature yeah and can you speak to whether or not this has anything to do with 5g broadband technology or if that's planned or if it's at capacity for that well i mean not to get into too technical details but 5g is a misnomer okay we are what we're fixed wireless broadband we've operated in the in the county areas around there for you know over 15 years we deliver a fixed wireless product that does operate on the 5g spectrum but it's not quote unquote the 5g you hear about in the media all right so that's it's not mobile broadband it's fixed wireless so we provide access to the rural people in the communities that don't have a wire line option and are too far away from dsl fibers or cable products so um we did sign a document in order to get our scp that would allow uh cell carriers to have access to tower as well as us um and of course you know i'm willing to lease the tower space out to 18t and verizon if they so choose to uh but you know the quote unquote 5g question you ask it's we're not a 5g product no okay all right any other questions for the speaker seeing none thank you mr hall for joining us thank you so much thank you you bet thank you our next caller will be mark martin mr martin are you on the line yeah yes if you'll uh you're on with the dent city council for agenda item 5a public hearing uh once you state your name and address then i'll start your time and you will have four minutes okay yeah you can go ahead and begin okay uh mark martin 100 west oak street suite 201 uh i'm mr hall's architect and i'm here to uh support him in any way i can uh sounds like he's already answered some of the questions but i'm here to for any other questions that are needed okay thank you did anyone have a question for mr martin council member davis uh thank you mr martin my question is about the um the railroad right of way just to the west of the property we're talking about and the the height of that burn there could you tell us about what the not the sea level elevation but about the the height from the ground however you best measure it of that burn that the railroad track rides along yes i can give you just give me one second i'll give you a good answer on that layman's measurements are fine not necessarily architect specifications okay uh so in general that his site runs somewhere in the 720s above sea level and that berm looks like it's somewhere in the seven 14 to uh seven maybe 15 16 somewhere in that range seems like it's running pretty flat through there is the is the elevation to the west of the property generally does it kind of come up to a to a hill on the the large parcel to the west or does it stay pretty flat in here it does basically where we're putting his building is relatively flat there's a drainage easement that they previously mentioned that goes between his building and the railroad track so it goes back up at the railroad track and farther to the west it does go up to a low hill thank you that's my question okay any other questions for mr martin seeing none thank you so much mr martin thank you uh all right we do not have any more speakers wishing to speak on this public hearing item uh for this item we had zero people making comments on our online form zero people that called into 349 7800 to register position we did have two speakers who requested to speak over the phone on this this item and it was john hall and mark martin so seeing no more speaker requests we will now close the public hearing and chair would entertain uh action on this item council member ryan i'll move approval all right we have a motion uh council member melzer a second all right we have a motion and a second uh for agenda item five a council member ryan how say you all right council member melzer all right mayor protem all right council member davis aye council member armature no i need to know more about the reach of the opposition sure okay all right council member briggs yes uh mayor wass is an i this motion carries six to one i believe that brings us to i can't turn the page oh we do have one more public hearing uh public hearing agenda item five b hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas amending the detailed plan for development planned 142 stone hill center generally located at the northeast corner of the i-35 northbound service road and west gate so sorry for the delay um let me go let me go back ah there we go sorry so tonight this is julie wyatt senior planner with the city of denton and i'm presenting pda 0001a stonehill center to you this evening so the request before you is a detailed plan amendment for pd 142 it's also known as stonehill center the applicant would like to add a 30 000 square foot building to accommodate workforce solutions of north texas it's about a 19 acre property it's generally located on the northeast corner of the i-35 northbound service road and north of west gate drive you can see it outlined here in yellow just a little background information about our one of our legacy pds so there was an ordinance that was adopted last fall ordinance dca 19009u and what that stated was that valid pds in existence prior to the adoption of the 2019 ddc would be governed by the zoning and development regulations that were established by their pds in this instance it was established under the 1991 development code and i know you've seen some of these pds come before you but just as a reminder there they were a two-step process the pd process in 91 there was a general concept plan which laid out the the permitted land uses project boundaries development standards that was the base zoning of that property and it remains in effect until the property is rezoned or the plan is amended and then the second step is more akin to a site plan it talks about where the buildings are going to go where the access is what kind of parking is on site detail plans do expire if construction does not commence within 24 months so for pd 142 the concept plan step one was adopted in 1991 the entire pd took took up a total of 245 acres you could see it outlined in the dashed blue line and once again that concept plan had the permitted uses and development standards a stonehill center was situated kind of in the center of pd 142 so a detail plan for the stonehill center was was approved in 1992 the original detail plan depicted four multi-tenant retail buildings arranged in a horseshoe pattern in 806 parking spaces there were several modifications to that detail plan which resulted in the plan from 1993 which added an additional building so there were five buildings on it however only buildings two through five so those depicted or shown with the green numbers those buildings were were built along with that parking in the center of the of the development and that's kind of what you see today on on stone hill center building one was never constructed and therefore the approval of that building expired so the applicant is coming in to to to come back with with that building one essentially and then essentially the same location so as you can see this is their detail plan and it depicts the the existing four buildings outlined in orange 945 parking spaces that's a ratio of one space per 169 square gross square footage and three access points there's an access point to the north it connects to that commercial lot to the north and then on to loop 288 there's a connection to the i-35 frontage road and then a connection to westgate they are proposing to add a 30 000 square foot building which is consistent with the general size of the buildings on the site additional landscaping and then the access would remain unchanged to zoom in a little bit to more specificity they are as you can see by the aerial there is there's parking where they would like to place the building and so the if approved the result would reduce the parking spaces on site to about 828 and that's one space per 206 gross square feet of of building and they're proposing about 17 000 square feet of landscaping adjacent to the right of way they would plant 16 large and medium canopy trees and at maturity this would actually increase the canopy on the site by about 16 800 square feet they would replace the screen hedge it's the the red squiggly line you see there there that there is a screening hedge in that location and after construction or during construction they would replace that and then the vehicular circulation pattern would remain unchanged to show you what they're proposing in terms of architecture the the top two photos are are the renderings that they're proposing as you can see they borrow a lot of the same theming and elements from the existing buildings and the existing buildings are shown on the images at the bottom so you can see they're very similar the approval criteria is in the 1991 ordinance and we'll go over those there's four of them the first does it comply with the comply with the concept plan the purpose of pd 142 per the that original ordinance was to create an urban center to encourage economic activity and employment particularly at this intersection of i-35 and loop 288 previous detailed plans did not permit specific uses they were really related to more a building arrangement parking areas signage and landscaping so as this pd functions when a particular tenant seeks a certificate of occupancy in one of the buildings or suites staff refers to the listing of permitted uses under that original ordinance for guidance we have researched that for the proposed use of offices and public community center and is a permitted use under pd 142 additionally the proposal meets the dimensional requirements so it does comply with with criterion one and second compatible arrangement of the buildings and then how does that affect the adjoining property so we're going to take this in a two-step process first we'll talk about what's on site and then we'll broaden our scope to look at what's surrounding the property so on site the proposal is consistent with the general building scale those architectural themes and that established building footprint pattern and essentially what they're proposing is just to complete that unified development that was established the with the original plans the proposed use of office is very consistent with the uses that are on site exist and existing and they they they wouldn't create any any adverse impacts or or nuisances for those existing uses the applicant did provide the the traffic generation for the site and it would create minimal traffic 292 trips for the the building per 24-hour weekday and that would be about 44 morning peak and 43 evening peak trips i mean as we broaden the scope and look at how the proposal would affect the adjoining properties i want to take three areas and look at those first of all there's the subdivision to the southeast of the site that's in a an existing established neighborhood as you can see by the by the aerial it is physically separated from the stone hill center additionally there will be no direct vehicular connection between that neighborhood and that future bronco way or west gate so we don't anticipate any adverse impacts the built that the building would cause for that neighborhood additionally we looked at the future dhs site commercial uses are generally compatible with a high school campus think about teasley lane or ua us 380 where you've got high schools you often find commercial areas near high schools so we don't anticipate adverse impacts and finally there's a new residential subdivision that will be under construction soon north of future bronco way and once again it is buffered from the proposal by vacant property so we don't anticipate any negative impacts for that future subdivision the third criterion is adequate and safe circulation of vehicular traffic once again we'll look at on-site and then off-site access to the site will remain unchanged it will still maintain those those access points as well as the existing circulation pattern that will stay the same although the proposal will decrease the number of on-site parking spaces it will still maintain an overall parking ratio of one space per 206 square feet of building area and that's really consistent with what we typically see and actually more in line with what we typically see in more current developments and then when we look at off-site there's there's a robust surrounding arterial network you've got i-35 then loop 288 you've got highway 70 or highway 77 and then bonnie bray and those provide adequate access for not only the existing and future development at some point in the future west gate road will and bronco way will will connect i-35 to bonnie bray and so that will provide additional connectivity in the general area and finally substantial compliance with the landscape sign subdivision and other regulations of the city they're not proposing to replant the property or introduce any additional green ground signs with the request so what we're really looking at is landscaping and this actually this site differs to the 1988 landscape code and it's a little different than what we have today so i just want to go over the highlights and what the main the main tenants are for that landscape code you've got street yard landscaping parking lot landscaping and parking lot screening so first of all a street yard you can see on the the the map that this blue dotted line that actually defines the street yard it's that area from the front building line to the right of way and that area has to have 20 landscaping plus one tree for every 2,500 square feet of total street yard they have 40 about 40,000 square feet of street yard it requires about 8,000 square feet of landscaping and 16 trees they're actually proposing about 17,000 square feet of landscaping and 16 medium and large canopy trees so it either meets or exceeds that requirement parking lot landscaping is also required within that street yard area five percent is required and that can be accommodated with landscape islands landscape medians or end caps their parking area would require about a thousand square feet of landscaping they're proposing about 2900 square feet of landscaping so it meets that requirement and then finally parking lot screening parking lots had to be screened with either a berm a masonry wall or an evergreen hedge there is an existing evergreen hedge there and they will be replacing that with 54 dwarf buford holly shrubs that is consistent with the plant palette that that's out there today and would match the rest of the development public outreach was done we haven't heard any letters in in opposition or in support we did hear from one neighbor in the westgate neighborhood he was kind of calling about the vehicular connection i talked to him and he didn't provide any other feedback regarding this this proposed development so the planning and zoning commission did recommend approval of the request on may 6th of this year staff also recommends approval of the request as it's consistent with the 91 ordinance we do have conditions they really just outline what's what's in text form what's shown on the site plan that one single story 30 000 square foot building the maximum parking on site of 828 spaces the 10 large and 6 medium canopy trees and then the architecture of those elements the colonnade for 50 percent of the facade facing public areas the very roof parapet line and then the decorative tower on at least two corners and that is the end of my presentation okay if we could there we go questions for staff before we open the public hearing council member armature yeah so i'm i'm concerned about among other things noise in the surrounding neighborhoods i know that the west glenn neighborhood has has some real noise concerns also around where the new school is coming in off monty bray that highway noise and i'm not a sound engineer or an engineer of any kind so i don't know how to assess that but i do know that there have been concerns that a construction on the highway of certain kinds has possibly served to amplify that noise can can you speak to what we do as as a city to you know if if anything to investigate to the extent that we can possible noise amplification concerns by when it comes to new highway development well we we do have noise ordinances within the city and we can certainly make sure that that they're in compliance with that i believe it's 65 decibels at the property line so we could certainly make sure that any development is compliant with that you know and i think trees also play a role in that there are there are trees if if you're familiar with the stonehill center all along west gate drive there is a row of street trees i believe they're bradford pears but i'm not exactly 100 sure but there is a row of street trees there that will help mute that noise in addition to those those additional trees planted at the right away should help some of that noise mitigation once they mature and and thank you i just know that you know the people who live around there some of the people who live around there you know are concerned about the noise as is even with the trees as they are now but thank you council member breaks just a few questions will this be the second location or is there a current location and didn't and they're going to be moving or um the applicant will be able or the developer will be able to speak about maybe the more more detail regarding that end user i did do some research on workforce solutions of north texas i didn't see another location in denton but but i bet he can provide more information to make sure i'm right on my facts okay and is there a bus stop or um transit um area anywhere around there i am not aware of a transit stop at that location okay g may or may i i just have a sure yeah yeah if you could yeah go yeah well um and i guess some of these may be for the applicant um so i'll just i'll just wait till the applicant well let me let me say we don't have any indication that an applicant is calling in or wanting to be called in so i'm just making that announcement in case somebody's just sort of missed a process or procedure so uh i just want to oh you are okay all right okay um all right we'll have to get that corrected but okay if you hold on just a moment we'll get to here just a moment council member and briggs go ahead we haven't opened the public hearing yet um yeah so i i just was wondering what types of trees were going to be um planted and um the reason why the established hedge was being replaced with a a newer hedge that's those were my questions all right all right okay are those for the applicant or for staff whoever wants to answer them well we'll wait for the applicant when we open the public hearing um uh any any other questions for staff before we open the public hearing yes count mayor pro tem julie thank you uh my question is well first i want to thank you and i'm i'm grateful for the reduction in parking i think that's a good thing and specifically in that development but my question is are we certain that the expansion of i-35 expansion of blue 28 everything that these trees were asking to be planted fall outside of those projections to make sure we're not asking them to plant something that then it's going to have to be pulled up they are planted pretty close to the building there is quite a bit of right of way or um landscaping between the um the existing right of way and the the landscaping um i'm not aware that texas has finalized any right of way acquisition plans for that location um so so i'm i'm not sure i'm not sure if at some point in the future those wouldn't be removed is there anything we can do generally obviously it's not done until it's done but is there anything we can do preemptively to try to avoid that best we can um you know just to ensure there is pulled back as far as possible away from that existing road is is is kind of what what i'm thinking of in terms of avoiding that potential issue okay if we can do that that's great and then my other question and this may be a city manager uh question i really would like to see the city of denton either by way of keep getting beautiful or whatever that entity would be to kind of go between i'd like to partner with the applicant to plant trees on the south side of that main entrance for about 35 because what you're going to have is a bunch of brand new trees on the north side and if we can partner with them and say if we provide the trees will you provide the labor or something like that to to make those those two sides match i don't i don't know what your pain threshold is for that but that's my my ask okay any other questions for staff all right then we will open the public hearing and understand that alex pain and amy beset are on the line are you you all the applicants yeah this is alex pain i'm here yeah who's going to be speaking well first of all uh you're the applicant so i believe the applicant how much time do the applicants get are you the applicant alex we are yes okay uh all right um well i think it's 10 minutes here too okay i think it's 10 or 20 minutes but surely that's not what is going to be required on this but you never know um okay that's right is it 10 or 20 minutes todd it's 20 minutes yeah yeah i would hope to think that we wrap this up in 20 minutes um okay so uh do you want to start out with some opening comments how are you all going to split the time up just sort of help me understand how y'all got yeah i think i'd like to do i'd like to make a little intro that's just more uh you know high level and can speak to some of the okay questions that were brought up by the various council members and then i'll let amy get to make a little more detail okay um so yeah so again alex pain uh 212 south realm denton texas uh we are well i am one of the the owners we the manager and then the developer of this this new proposed property uh the as stated this building is for uh you know a lease has been signed and this will be a new location an expanded location for workforce solutions of north central texas that's also known as texas workforce commission but the building that you see today over on shady oaks drive so i think they just kind of go by a different name now but that that's fine you see there still exists from a long time ago so it is it is an existing you know employer and then not only an employer it is a provider of employment services so i'll kind of hit on that work for solutions in north central texas provide the variety of services to employers and career seekers through a network of workforce centers in 14 counties uh the uh they provide assistance related to job postings and openings recruitment efforts and connecting employers to career seekers they provide uh services to career seeking customers operating coaching employment preparation educational and skills training as well as tuition support and other services to support their efforts to finding employment um so you know this is this is a uh you know was already a project that we were working on but that we feel in the time that we're in high levels of unemployment obviously a very necessary service for for our area uh we we have uh worked with this you know we've we've owned and managed this property now for four years uh when we took the property over it was 30 occupied and has had some you know some tenants that have been out there a long time some of which still exist but we've been working to try and convert a lot of these these buildings to what we feel is more applicable uses today and making use of the high high amounts of parking that are out there and so we've converted uh spaces for back office operation centers for a big dental company they have a 25 000 foot customer service center and operation center headquarters we have a headquarters for university behavioral health we have the census bureau occupy space out there um and several other office type uses so we felt this was a good fit and again they need a high number of parking spaces for their requirement you know for their requirements for their not only employees but for their uh for all the people that come there to visit so i think i hit on the question that i i heard from council member briggs and then on the the transit question that was actually addressed early on in our discussions with them and we were we made every effort i even reached out to the mayor i believe with regards to trying to provide a bus stop there and we we had discussions with dcta the folks from from workforce it's actually workforce and it's the lease is actually signed with north central texas council of governance and so they they talked to dcta dcta is you know i guess going through and trying to be real real wise with respect to to adding service and what makes financial sense and so i think basically it was it was going to be very very difficult to get a bus stop out there at least at the time but they felt they came to some to some uh conclusions with with dcta on how they could provide direct service to customers in need and so i don't i don't have enough exact information as to what how that was handled but it was enough to satisfy workforce uh the workforce solutions folks and the north central texas council of governments uh to to provide and locate this building there so um the question with respect to the i guess why there was a removal of some landscaping so really what's there is a very low hedge it's it's in that burn and originally we weren't going to touch or disturb that at all but then when we got our site civils going they discovered a utility easement that forced us to have to ship the building slightly east and then doing so i'm sorry slightly west and doing so forced us to have to provide parking in that in that burn which would make us have to pull up that that shrub and so that's really the only reason if that's being removed um you know we we don't we could probably reconfigure the site and not change that and quite frankly would probably save us some money and be okay with that so and we're certainly open to that that idea unless there's some reason i'm not aware of and i don't have my my design team at on hand right now to address that question the uh lastly the the question i think uh put him closed about the right away taking so we have already entered in discussions with text dot with respect to what kind of right away they're going to take it's very very negligible a tiny little corner clip of less than a tenth of an acre that they need from us which is at the corner of west gate drive and the 35 frontage road so it has no impacts on any of our existing or proposed landscaping okay um are there any questions amy do you have a presentation i have a very brief presentation yeah if you could go ahead and do that and then we'll take questions so we can you know sort of get the public hearing more efficient so yeah go ahead and then we'll we'll take questions from from the council if there are any sure thing um amy this is 100 west oak street denton texas i appreciate the time to speak with you briefly tonight um i think julie's going to cue up a very brief presentation for me while she's doing that i just want to address a few of the comments and questions that have come up um julie mentioned that she spoke with one neighbor that called in inquiring about the project i did also get a phone call from judy smith with rose costumes she was primarily curious to know what the activity was and what was going on out there obviously running a business for her in that area she's interested in seeing more daytime employment and daytime traffic there for shoppers and diners so i sent her the concept plans and the the renderings and and she was satisfied with that and to answer questions related to the landscaping and alex did address fire were removing the the row of hedges but we are actually replacing that so we just have to relocate it slightly in order to accommodate the parking and while there is some parking that's hedging into that that berm area we are still increasing overall landscaping and that i think they're being planted right now we have um planned for red oaks cedar elm and bosque elm trees and julie if you've got the presentation open will you um just cut straight down to slide number five which is the one that has our enhanced or our enlarged um concept plan and um based on everything that's already been covered i just want to point out that um we're proposing a building that was a part of the original pd and that never got built it's just slightly smaller but in the same location and we're proposing a net increase in landscaping a net increase in trees and a net decrease of parking spaces but still well within the range of what would be considered appropriate by today's standards and um i i'm not even going to worry about the rest of these slides and i'm happy to to help answer any questions along with alex okay if we could uh pull the panel back up okay questions council member breaks thank you for answering all those questions um i'm happy with the um that you've guys discussed dcta and you're at direct service it's going to be very important that there's a way to get out there besides a car um i'm very glad to see this building there needs to be life out there um in the stone hill center i i still think there's way enough parking there's there's a lot of parking and i just want to confirm did i hear you say that you had to add more parking uh only in the only in that area that kind of fits between the existing build or the proposed building and the highway and so i really as we as the question was posed to me i don't know if that's a requirement for either the tenant or for some code that i'm not aware of but if if not i'd rather not have to add any parking there there's over 800 parking spaces so i mean i'm just i'm just curious can staff answer that question if it was a staff is it a requirement that they add more parking oh no it is not okay so i think i think the intent um council member briggs is that well first of all that's where the the handicapped spaces are located they need to be within a certain location to meet um ada requirements and slope but there are some um some new proposed parking spaces that aren't and that are just provide they provide some proximity and easier walk to the building but overall we are reducing the parking um significantly by over 100 spaces out there okay okay if it's for the building and for the um workforce i just wanted to make sure that it wasn't just something that we were we were adding because of our our code that makes that makes more sense for me i'd even like to see some of those what the parking lot become like islands of trees for that matter but uh thank you for answering all the questions any other questions for the callers mayor pro tem so alex uh so you heard my thoughts on if i mean again i just don't want to presume that it works but your thoughts on if it's available to partner with you on trees to the that would be to the south side of that main entrance i guess i don't have any issue with uh yeah certainly if there's some some some help from the city and providing some trees that we were able to you know maybe make it more symmetrical and add up and you know look more like whatever we're proposing on the north side of the drive be kind of mimicked on the south side i guess i would just just add that as long as it didn't require a resubmission of of uh you know through this process because we're we're eager to get started and projected to get started um you know hopefully by july one and a delivery date about you know well april of next year is our is our goal and so uh so we just don't want to have to slow down any time for any i guess procedural changes in that that's the the challenge with pds is once you approve it you know to you know amending it goes back through this public hearing process and so that would be my concern secondly you know the the agency was you know very cost focused and we had to meet that and because we have an existing parking lot there you know quite a large existing parking lot there not having to add it that we were able to be you know competitively priced with uh with new construction of a building because we didn't have a great deal of site work and so just you know try to be sensitive sensitive to that if uh you know you can if you can understand that so sure yeah no and no promises but hopefully we could make it you know cost neutral uh and just as an effort but but i i'm speaking out of school so we'll see what we can get done and then lastly just give them credit with credits too i've been out there quite a bit and and it has those enhancements and and kind of additions and to your management or whatever been pretty pretty neat to see uh something that was not as activated uh transition so i appreciate that thank you i don't think i hit on it but we were you know i said we were 30 we're sitting about 90 occupied now so okay council member breaks i move approval with the recommendations of the planning and zoning let me let me close the public hearing first uh is there any other comment questions for these speakers all right uh thank you so much uh thank you alex and amy appreciate you being on the line so i will now close the public hearing council member briggs i i move approval um with the uh recommendation of the um detailed planned amendment as consistent with section 35152 council member davis second thanks for making this happen guys all right we have a motion and a second for approval of agenda item 5b uh council member briggs council member marmotor do you have a question uh i just wanted to make a comment but i i can make that in in my vote okay well all right uh council member briggs how say you yes council member davis aye council member armator i just wanted to thank the developers and to say that i'm sad to be voting no because i really admire what you're doing in this um in this area and revitalizing it for me it's just more kind of on the city's end because of the noise issues that people in a couple neighborhoods nearby have been experiencing uh i i told them that that i wouldn't feel comfortable voting yes to new development in this area until i can be sure that we're doing more uh to mitigate possible noise issues again i'm not saying that there would be any with yours as far as i know there wouldn't be but i just wanted wanted it to be clear why i'm voting no um but it's nothing that that i know of with this particular project it's just more about the unknown processes for noise mitigation here uh new highway so council member armator question of clarification is this the same group or the neighborhood that was talking about the kaboda construction on the other side of the highway and the noise so there's that neighborhood the west glenn neighborhood but also around bonnie bray and with a new school okay no that's fine i just didn't know if it's the same ones yep all right yeah so that is one of the the neighborhoods okay that has the noise concerns okay again but i just wanted to be clear that i'm not insinuating that this would necessarily contribute to it is just it's just i don't know and i you know i made that those sure okay thank you council member melzer aye council member ryan aye mayor potem let's see council member briggs i think you made the motion council member davis you made the motion okay so everybody except me i'm an aye so a motion carries six to one approval for agenda item 5b all right we'll move on to concluding items concluding items council member davis so i'll submit the online form as well but we just saw on one of the slides for this presentation a section of westgate that will eventually connect to bronco way very recently there's an incident where a number of big trucks ended up on the other west gate kind of inexplicably and best as we can tell they were probably following their gps that probably told them to turn on to westgate as if it connected and of course it doesn't there are a number of places in town where i think we could take a good look at disconnected streets reiney road is pretty well chopped up so i'd like to ask staff to take a quick not quite comprehensive but a quick look at the map and tell us some places where we might be able to fix that problem where your your east and your west and your north and your south streets don't connect and there might be some easy fixes there to solve that problem okay and before we move on um for agenda item 5b we had no people making comments using their online form no people uh registering their their position at 349 7800 we had two callers as you recall uh mr alex payne and miss amy visit for agenda item 5b okay um thank you councilmember davis any other concluding items any other concluding items all right then we will stand adjourned at 8 0 9 p.m thank you