Jun 09, 2020 City Council on 2020-06-09 1:00 PM (AMENDED)

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, June 9, 2020. It is 1.05 pm. So we'll move down through our work session item. Citizen comments on consent agenda items, I believe we do have one, I believe, and we will have that caller here shortly. Okay, caller, are you on the line for a comment on a consent agenda item? Yes, I am, thanks. Okay, if you could just state your name and address and which agenda item you will be speaking about, and I believe you'll have four minutes, and I will start your time once you begin. Mayor, you will not need to worry about time, I'm calling on item ID 2956, I need my name and address first though, right, Jennifer Lane, I'm probably not going to announce my address, but I will say that I live in Denton, zip code 76205, given my address on the phone to those who have called me back. Okay, sure, and I can hear you, but it's a little muffled, so just wanted to give you that feedback. Are you able to hear me now, are you able to hear me a bit better? Yes, that's perfect, and if you're listening to the meeting in the background, if you could turn that down, or if someone who's online is listening, if they could mute their microphone, okay, thank you. It happens to be a big day for both the City Council and the County Commissioners. Anyway, so what I wanted to ask was that 956 be pulled from consent agenda and put on for individual considerations because it involves the Givens Creek coal plant, and there's quite a bit to discuss there. Okay, all right, thank you, thank you very much, you bet. And on, go ahead, I'm sorry, yes. In case it is not pulled, I would like the Sierra Club's ideas to be implemented and that it not be kept in use. The land can be restored, there are plans and there have been plans for that coal plant, it needs to be gone. Thank you. Okay, thank you, you bet. The ins and outs of the sale, I'm not sure what that means, but I think that would be a stipulation the City could make potentially. So maybe under individual consideration would be a better place to talk about it. Okay. Anything else? Thank you. All right, thank you. At the moment, no for other items, yes. Okay, thank you. All right, so I don't believe we had any more citizens comments on agenda item 20-956. There were four people making comments, one in support, three against, there were zero who called into the 349-7800 to register position, and of course, based upon that, there were zero in support or against. All right, I don't believe we have any more callers for the consent agenda. So move down to our next agenda item, which is clarification, request for clarification of agenda items on the agenda. Member Meltzer? Well, I'll go ahead and honor that request to pull out item A. I'd also like to pull out item F, and I have a question on C. Okay, let me make sure I understood that. So you're pulling agenda item A, consent agenda, and are you pulling consent agenda item F? Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. So the question for me is just, what is the relationship of the contractor to the owner? If any. And if Steph isn't ready to respond to that question, I'm happy to... I can respond. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yes, go ahead. There is no relationship at this time, there's no relationship between the contractor and the people applying. No relationship. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Council member Briggs. All right. Thank you for pulling item A. I have a question about item D. Is that it's, so it's from today's date or until the item is approved till June 30th, is that what is the $33,000? Just for that time period? Is that on consent agenda item B? D. D. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's for the security. Yes. Can you hear me? Uh-huh. Yeah. This is Danny Shaw with community services. Yes, the additional amendment is to increase those funds to cover the cost of security through June 30th. Okay. May I follow up with one more question? Yes, of course. And is that, is that the same pricing that we've had throughout the contract? Yes. By hour or bodies, I guess you would say. It is by hour. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Council member Armitage. So I had planned on removing A for consideration as well. So thanks to those who did it and thanks to the caller. For Danny, is this, is this the same private security firm that was providing security to Monsignor King? It is not. This was, this group was secured after the hotel was, was secured for these services and it is the, it is provided through the city. Monsignor King still has its own security service. Okay. And can you, can you speak to the need for, for security from a kind of boots on the ground perspective, because I know you've, you've been there, the need for a private security firm? Because the property is private property, the hotel site, the security just adds additional support to make sure that, that folks are complying with the rules as well as, you know, controlling access in the, in the overnight hours so that there's, there's no coming and going of folks that aren't supposed to be there. Okay. And if, if somebody who was, who is staying there has any issues with sec, with the private security company, they should contact the city, right, or contact a city staff who were there, or Monsignor King, our Daily Bread staff, what, what would be the route to go? The best route would be for them to let the staff who's there, so Monsignor King staff or our Daily Bread staff who are supporting those clients, to let them know first and then they'll let us know. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I was trying to figure out whether to pull it for individual consideration or not, but based on your answers to those, to those questions, I'm okay with it, so thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Yes, go ahead, go ahead. I apologize, with A and D, I'm sorry, it was A and F, can we get some idea of what the council's questions are so we can be prepared for individual consideration? Do you want, do you want formal presentations or? Yeah, I'd like, if I may, I'd like to see, I'd like the public to see a presentation on F. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Council Member Briggs? On A, we've had a lot of emails and there's been groups that have weighed in, there's been a newspaper report, there's been a lot of things out in the public, so I would just like a presentation on the process, where we are and about what this item actually is. Okay, we can, we can certainly do that. I will ask Tony, if Tony's on the line, I just wanted to clear that up real quick because I'm not sure we're posted for the sale, and I don't believe this item has anything to do with that. I don't think it does either. Go ahead. Todd, this is Tony, so, so yes, this, this is the indemnity escrow, correct? Yes. So, so this is tied to our joint operating agreement with TMPA that is basically the constitution for how TMPA and the member cities are going to operate. It is a $5 million escrow that will be set up, TMPA already has that money, so there won't be any additional funds. It is not tied to any of the decommissioning potential expenses, nor the sale or potential sale of the plant. And so that is, those are completely separate issues from this. And so, you know, we can certainly provide that in a different format for the council if you desire, but that's basically the, the, the story on, on this particular item. Okay. Yeah, I just want to thank you for that. I think that probably answers quite a bit of questions in the community on, on what it actually is, the item. Yeah, I'm happy to put something in a, again, in a Friday blurb in the report, but I just didn't want to get mislead the public, we're not going to be able to use this to answer questions about the potential sales, just not properly posted to that. Thanks, Mirrometer. So I would, I would still like to have it pulled just for a brief description for the people who are tuning in in the evening about what it is, and primarily in case people were planning on, on, on speaking on commenting on it to give them an opportunity. Yeah, so let's just be clear that this is an indemnity escrow agreement that is provided for in our joint operating agreement. In essence, it simply says that if somehow TNPA has some kind of a claim against them for the things described in the joint operate, a joint escrow agreement that the member cities fund that so that there is an insurance fund, a self-insurance fund to indemnify TNPA and, and all the other terms and conditions of the, of the escrow agreement is not pursuant to any particular sale to any particular party. This is just part of the joint operating agreement. So I want to make that very clear so that there's no misunderstanding about that. Okay. And then we can answer questions about that. We can just have a very brief presentation about the escrow indemnity agreement. What are some of the major functions of it and, and move on from there. Happy to do that, Mayor. All right. Thank you. All right. Any other clarifications on agenda items? Okay. All right, we'll move on to agenda item 3A, which is receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding an update to the city of Denton's COVID-19 response. Good afternoon, Mayor, city council, Sarah Hickler, chief of staff. One second while I pull up the presentation. Okay. So this is our standing work session item to provide an update on how the city is responding to COVID-19. As way of a reminder, the city of Denton does have a current disaster declaration and order that is in effect through June 30th. That plan was adopted by city council on May 29th, and also includes the plans for parks and libraries reopenings. So today we have two brief updates for city council. The first is an overview of an executive order that governor Abbott released last week for a phase three of reopening Texas. And then the second part update today will be an overview of how the reopening of our city facilities is going so far. And then we did add one item to touch on special events from our parks and recreation department. We have one time sensitive item that we're seeking city council's direction on. So I'll go ahead and get started in regards to the intergovernmental updates and governor Abbott's order. So he came out with this new order last Wednesday, and this is the phase three of reopening Texas. So as of last Wednesday, it was effective immediately that every business establishment in Texas may operate at 50% occupancy. So it got rid of those previous occupancy limitations that differed per business establishment. However, there's still a few differences and I'll go through those. But there continues to be no occupancy limit for essential services, religious services and local government operations. So also contained in that order, it specifies that the 50% occupancy limit does not apply to any outdoor areas, events or establishments. However, the 50% occupancy limit does apply to the following sub bullet points that you see listed on your screen here from swimming pools, water parks, libraries, and so forth. It also went further to specify that any outdoor events that would have in excess of 500 attendees could have additional restrictions opposed upon that event by the county judge or the mayor in consultation with a local public health authority. And so Gary Packen is going to speak to that further when we discuss special events forward. As far as the 50% occupancy limit, it does not apply to those businesses that are providing personal services. For example, salons, massage establishments and other personal care and beauty services. The restriction here for these businesses is that they must maintain a six foot separation between workstations, but they do not have the occupancy limitation of 50%. And here is the graphic from the state, just showing a little bit more consolidated view of what the executive order came out with. Just a couple additional points to hit on. As of last week, restaurants could seat table sizes of 10 people, that increased from six to 10. And then also beginning this Friday on June 12th, restaurants may expand their occupancy levels from 50% to 75%. That is the update on the executive order from last week. Mayor, would you like me to continue with the presentation or? Yeah, let me see if there's any questions. Are there any questions? Any questions? Council Member Meltzer? Yeah, I don't know if you'd have this at your fingertips Sarah, but just to put this in context, I've seen the state trends in cases and in deaths. The deaths are trending down, but the cases are trending up, which could be a leading indicator. But I wonder if you have something that's a little more local than just state of Texas. Do not have that data at my fingertips, but I can say that Denton County Public Health Department does have an open data source where you can go in and get their latest data. I think it's daily, it might even be live information that's coming in now in regards to testing and balance and so forth. Thank you. All right, anyone else? Okay, all right, thank you. Moving on with the presentation. Okay, so the second half of the presentation is just a quick update on the reopening of our city facilities that we had discussed with city council previously. So just as way of reminder, City Hall and City Hall East did open last week, as well as playgrounds and dog parks. Other services that continue to be available to our public by appointment are animal services, urban services, and the library. And this is what staff had reviewed with city council a couple weeks back. These are some of the measures that we are taking to make sure that we are reopening safely for the public as well as our employees. So just quick reminder, we are doing daily health checks of all employees that are coming into our facilities. Any employees, volunteers or contractors must wear a mask when they are in areas outside of just their general office space. And then we are doing regular disinfection of our facilities and those high contact areas. And we are maintaining social distancing, and that is mandatory with the public. As well as in our facilities, we're continuing to balance and having some employees on site while some are continuing to telework and work remotely. This slide shows our parks and recreations reopening schedule, so as you'll see these first three columns are those parks, facilities and services that have reopened. As of last Friday, ball fields and field rentals were available. And then beginning at the end of, or sorry, beginning of next week, Monday, June 15th, the additional things slotted to open in parks and recreations include park restrooms, as well as sports and fitness instruction. And then our libraries, right now they are opening up to do virtual book librarian, as well as taking computer appointments for those residents that may need to use the computer internet at one of the libraries. Residents can schedule these appointments by calling the phone number listed on the screen here. And then they are planning for a next round of openings as far as looking at North Branch and what services would be available. And I believe we'll have some further information for you next week in regards to the next phase of reopening for the Denton Public Library. So at this time, I'd like to turn it over to Gary Packen, our Director of Parks and Recreation to take you through a few slides in regards to special events. Okay. Mayor, City Council, Gary Packen, Director of Parks and Recreation. As we continue to have discussions and work on plans of reopening our parks and recreation system, we have had some recent activity obviously with the governor that we'll go through here. We currently are not permitting any special events as of today. That is not something that we had planned on doing this quickly. The outdoor events on June 3rd from the governor's update did allow for outdoor gatherings of 500 or more are permitted under following conditions. That is approval by the county judge or the mayor of that local jurisdiction in coordination with the local public health authority, promoting social distancing, self-screening, washing and disinfecting of hands and cleaning and sanitizing items within the event would be preferred steps of any type of activity with more than 500 people. Last week, we did have some discussion in regards to Juneteenth. The original committee, which is the group that has been having Juneteenth over a number of years, has been planning and plan to do a virtual event due to COVID-19 restrictions. We have had a local group, a grassroots effort and community support for an in-person event. We had a meeting last Thursday once we heard of this with the original committee, which I'll talk about here in a second. But they're planning for an event on June 20th at Fredmore Park from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. They anticipate 750 people in attendance. Some of the standard activities that have been going on in Juneteenth, basketball tournament, open mic, music, food and games, they do want to have a voter registration in a health and wellness area for people to talk to therapists or social workers. And then also promoting safe protection, masks, gloves, sanitizing stations and social distancing. So we had met with the original committee last Thursday, June 4th, to identify exactly where they were at with their virtual planning as well as this new group that started to emerge with a lot of discussion and social media and on the Internet in regards to some planning efforts. So we asked the group, the original committee, if we could potentially meet with them as well as this new group. They are the cultural outreach committee, the COC. We met with them on June 8th last night. And the original committee supports the COC's desire to provide and advise and provide advice and expertise to the COC. They'd like them to move forward. They look at it as an opportunity to really get more people engaged and involved. The COC did submit an event application last night to us that we have. Typically, our special event process is 60 to 90 days. Obviously, we're 10 days out from this event. And there's quite a bit of work that needs to be done between now and then. We did advise the groups that they need to gain support from city council in order to hold the event and discuss the recent governor's orders. If it would be supported by city council, we'll have to do quite a bit of planning over the course of the next week with the committees permitting, whether it's for food, tents, those types of things, site layout, finalizing that, site prep. We do have a section of Fredmore Park that's closed right now with the construction of ALH. So we may reach out to the contractor to see if we can't move some fencing around temporarily -- obviously, safety and security precautions, restrooms to make sure we have enough on site for the activity, and then obviously staffing to help support the event. We do need to identify possible incurred expenses by the city and identify those funding options. We currently have funding that was in this year's budget for in-kind sponsorships by the city that was part of the $1.9 million that parks and recreation cut from the budget due to the COVID crisis. So that is something that we definitely want you to consider. But we're willing to start working with them as soon as possible. If you did decide you want us to move forward with this event and support them, we'll identify those costs and the needs with other city departments to make that happen. And then we'll also identify what those funding costs are going to be and possibly get back to council on June 16th with an ordinance identifying those in-kind costs or worst-case scenario come to you the following meeting at the end of June basically for a follow-up in regards to what was actually spent once we're able to identify those more in concrete. Moving forward, staff would like a recommendation from city council regarding this specific event for June, Juneteenth. We do need to start talking about future special events. We've had a number of our community planners start to reach out to us, especially once the governor's orders changed last week in regards to the future for their special event. And then reopening that process and the permitting process for the department, people start planning months ahead of time for their events, so we need to start having that discussion fairly soon and also the status of in-kind request is something that we'd like to get back to you in regards to that being something that was eliminated from the budget. The largest participant in that funding source is the Arts and Jazz Festival. The second largest one is the Juneteenth committee. Obviously with them going to a virtual, they may not be using all that. There is a meeting this week from the HUD funds committee to discuss that. So that's kind of the steps moving forward, but we wanted to get feedback from council in regards to feedback and direction from council in regards to moving forward possibly with the new Juneteenth event by the COC committee. All right, questions, if we could pull this down, we'll get you, all right, council member Briggs. I am in favor of the Juneteenth event and I'm in favor of starting the permitting process and doing all that we need to do to help parks get their processes started. Okay, councilmembrometer, oh, go ahead, yes, I did have one question because I know that now the bathrooms are fenced off and when this event happens, will the bathrooms be open? That's the one thing we have to work with the contractor to see about moving the fence. But they are working? Yes. Okay. All right, councilmembrometer. I, too, support the Juneteenth event and I was able to talk to someone from the new COC this morning on the phone and she was helpful answering my questions. A couple of questions for the city, for staff one, a request. I know that we had talked about the question of having hand sanitizing stations at parks in general outside of this particular event and one of the objections was, and I was in favor of it, one of the objections was, I think the main objection was that fixtures might be removed, including hand sanitizer, big containers, small containers, whatever. Since we've got the splash park right there, we've got the bathrooms with plumbing right there. If it is at all possible to set up a simple hand washing station with water, running water outside and you know how they have those no touch soap dispensers where you can just wave your hand. Something like that I think would be great at all of our parks, but if we could, is it kind of a test run, just put something like that in place at Fred Moore in time for Juneteenth, that would be really wonderful. Again, just something really simple so people can wash their hands outside. Also I wanted to ask about mask availability, so obviously we can't require masks on public property outdoors according to the state order, but I'm wondering what the city can do to encourage mask vendors or mask providers, for instance businesses who have masks with their company logo on it. What we can do to encourage them to show up at events for people who don't bring their mask, you want to buy one or get a freebie. Also I think it would be nice to have that up on our city website, that is a list of here are our local vendors of masks, here's where you can get a mask. But as for the Juneteenth festival, I think it would be nice for the city to see what we could do to reach out to mask providers and see if they want to be there at this and other events if that's okay with the organizers. So just to follow up on a couple of those, they are planning on having sanitizing stations and handing out masks to people that are participating according to our discussions yesterday. The splash pad is actually at Carl Young Park, which is down the street, so that's not in Fred Moore, and that currently is not open, but we certainly can pass along the desire for them to have vendors to have masks available for that. And in addition to the sanitizing station, then the free masks that they'll be giving away. Thanks, because I know at the festival, the festival tends to extend over to both parks and people hang out in both parks. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor, so it's kind of funny what a difference a couple of weeks makes in these conversations about large gatherings. I'm okay with the permit. I think that's a good thing to kind of start getting our feet wet with these special event permits and get an idea of what things look like for the future, and of course, people can make their own decisions. Do they go to these large events? Do they not? Do they stay home? The funding is a stickier issue for me, not because I categorically don't think the new group ought to be funded, but the original committee, you know, they went through an application process. It's an event the city is very familiar with, we're familiar with the people putting it on and there's a relationship there, and part of the reason why that application goes through every year is because of that relationship and understanding of the event. I don't think I have a good enough understanding of the new group and obviously haven't seen an application from them for in-kind donations, so harder for me to give direction on that. And then, of course, you know, we have to be pretty careful with all of our city sponsorships and funds at this point, you know, we don't really have a clear financial picture yet where we're at. So I'm really trying to stay open-minded on the funding question. It's just stickier than transferring a sponsorship over from a group that applied and has been through the process before over to a new group. I need a lot more information, I think, before I'm okay with just opening up the coffers for the new event. Okay, anyone else? I guess does this mean that because I don't think if we're going to do this event through the normal permitting process of these type events in the city, then that means we're going to do that for anyone who comes forward based upon their application and the permitting process and that they meet all the rules and regulations from this point. So I just want to make sure that that's the direction you're asking for, Gary, is that by doing this, we're basically saying we're okay with these type of events, you know, these public events in our parks as long as they meet all the applicable permitting guidelines that we've had for many, many years? So that's a great question. Obviously, we weren't in the position to start our special events right at this point. With recent events in the community and nationwide, there's been a groundswell of support to move forward with this event, and the timing of it was just right. So there's a lot of community support behind this event. So it could be a pilot project for us to see how it goes, to see how we would react and handle future events. The Blues Festival is in September, it's right around the corner. So those will be coming down the road. So this could be looked at from that perspective. I mean, obviously, this is uncharted territory that we've been working through over the past few months, and we could possibly use this as a pilot project to see the dos and don'ts and what we may want to change. Could you refresh my memory what the funding request is? They don't have a funding request at this point in time. They've put together a budget. I'm just anticipating that there may be a need for financial assistance. They haven't asked for anything specifically at this point in time. But based on their budgets, I don't think they are prepared to pay for additional $15,000 in police and police security, parks and recreation, solid waste, those types of activities. So we just wanted to kind of think proactively that there may be a need for it over the course of the next week, and then we'd come back to you with what that need would be. And as far as the allocations, if the original committee had moved forward with this, what was the allocation that we've had in our sponsorships for that just over the last, I mean this year? Their in kind requests of the past few years has been $15,000. And so that's what you're saying is if that's something that needs to be done here as well. That's the financing that you're referring to. Councilmember Davis, is that what you were referring to was that in kind donation or you're talking about an actual hard payment of currency? No, that's what I'm talking about. We've tried to budgetize those in kind sponsorships in this budget cycle and really get a handle on those. So that's all I'm talking about that we had budgeted that this year based on previous events. I agree with what Gary is saying that it's prudent to plan for a request at some point in line with what was needed in previous years for a similar event. I just like to see more information and that's probably forthcoming, you know, if they're if they've not yet made the ask, but we expect them to make the ask just need a little bit more information before I know how quite how I feel about that. Okay. All right. I think this event has just really gained a lot of legs over the past few days. So we're trying to scramble to get ahead of it and prepare for something as opposed to reacting at the last minute. Just wanted to add one one comment in regards to the governor's orders. They do ask for the county or city approval. We did reach out to the health department and Matt Richardson today and he did say that he would emphasize that we follow CDC recommendations, physical distancing as much as possible, face coverings are recommended, restroom facilities are frequently sanitized with common disinfectants and high touch areas, and limited close gatherings of large number of people. So we would emphasize that with the special events group to make sure that they're, you know, promoting social distancing and spread out and sanitizing those high touch spaces. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Gary. Good information. So I fall in line of I'm generally supportive, but I do want to see cost and I will register my concern about moving the construction fence. I think there's that just invites more concern because there's more people that can fit in there at once that we have no control over social distancing in that regard versus bringing back out the trailer that was at the splash park if that's splash pad if that's still available that's one at a time or porta potties that's one at a time. And I would also agree with you that there's momentum but I also would ask the group to so that they get a sampling understanding there's opportunity to help down the line. But I would like to task them with as much of the fundraising as possible to capture that energy and also be be even handed as future events come across and and we have to match a budgeting budgeting concerns, they should understand and get a real life experience and at the same time understand there's help there if that falters but at the same time, no different than the approach we take with the funding from the county we're going to are from the federal government, we're going to receive whatever we can from that end and then ultimately have to supplement so in this instance, they should have to take care of responsibilities with the city fundraise for other things as well and then if there's a shortfall, we have that conversation after all other means are exhausted. Any other questions, Gary in the in kind contributions you were talking about the 15,000 because I know in these type of gatherings in general, you know, there's a permitting process there's insurance requirements and things such as that is is the insurance requirement and indemnification of course that's not really a cost but outside of the in kind what other requirements are there to meet the requirements of one of these permits. Well, there's typically there's a fire permits there's 10 permits or vendor permits health department for food vendors permitting there there's there would be property permits or pavilion rentals those types of things would all be part of that process and then security that would fall under the in kind as well as parks and recreation staff. So, so then the the various permits that you described depending on what they have, whoever has at their event if they have food then they require these permits, so forth and so on, then those are and rentals then those are actual monetary payments that are required and what are they what are the insurance requirements, a million dollars coverage and that the original June team committee was going to give them their carrier, since they have a history of that event and give them some support there, but that is something they would have to purchase. Okay. All right. And you're saying all of the all of this has to be finalized and reviewed by whatever either committee or personnel to ensure that all that is in line for the for the permit to be issued. Is that correct? There's there's a lot of work that we have to get done to make sure we're we feel comfortable with it and trying to help them get through the process. It's not typical the process that we go through, because it's a crunch timeline, but we're going to do our best to try to accommodate that. Great. All right. Councilmembrometer. So just two quick things first I just wanted to thank Gary and park staff for working on this so quickly and being so responsive and also just for the way you articulated what's important about this event and how timely it is and why it is different. Anyway, I agree with what you said and couldn't have said it better. I do want to say that the insurance costs and I'm guessing I wasn't the only one to you know, be impressed by the million dollar cost for that. It's really is, as you know, a barrier to a number of groups for most groups actually, you know, for doing events. And I understand the need to, you know, to want to require that for for liability and safety reasons. But I'm hoping that at some point down the line, we can kind of take that up because as I understand it, that's a city, the city requirement, right, is not some sort of state mandate. So I'm hoping we can take that up. I don't know what the solution is, you know, and I appreciate the concern, but it is it is cost prohibited for a lot of groups. Thank you. Okay. Any other? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem. Just to be clear, so that those watching, it's not a $1 million cost. It's a $1 million policy. Just just, yeah, just to be clear, and the price is very dependent on who you insure. But I just I didn't want that to go uncheck. Okay. Thank you. Yes, but it is. It is expensive. Okay. So Gary, if you could put up the slide that shows your three requests. I'm sorry, Councilmember Davis, go ahead. Really quick. Some council members will remember an email we got from a concerned citizen about masks at the community market, and the concern was, well, this is a city sponsored event. How dare you have a sign up that recommends masks when cities aren't supposed to be requiring masks. There can be significant confusion when an event is sponsored or in kind assisted by the city. So I would hope the city attorney would include in the contract language going forward, some sort of additional indemnification for spread of disease, COVID-19, that the city's not taking on any additional liabilities there simply because we're providing security and some barriers and that kind of thing. Okay. All right. Yes. Mr. City Attorney, just responding to Councilmember Davis and the rest of the council, we're proposing a COVID waiver to be included in this ordinance for next week as well as all other events, special events held on city property. Okay. All right. Thank you. So, Gary, if you could put up the three. All right. So, Gary, I don't know if we've really heard from everybody. When you say future special events, are you talking about using this as a pilot program so we're not making a policy decision that therefore all special events moving forward are, have the opportunity to happen as long as they just meet the general permitting requirements of the city? That's not really what you're asking for. I don't believe. Is that correct? I think what we're asking for is we'd like to use this because it's in unique circumstances and we're reacting quickly to almost use this as a pilot project to see how we can move events forward in the future to an event date to be determined when that may happen. We'll come back to you in the near future with that discussion. Okay. And then reopening permitting process? That would be in tune with that in concert. So if we say we're going to start events October 1st, we could start that permitting process shortly after that discussion so people can start planning their events ahead of time. Okay. That's the direction you're needing now. This is what you're telling us you're going to be bringing. I'm sorry. I didn't see. I just, just now caught that first line on the second time. Okay. So if we could pull that down. So council, as far as giving staff direction on moving forward with the necessary processes to get this event moving so it can, can go off without a hitch, how, just, you know, just some kind of, all right, I see, I think I see enough thumbs up to where, yeah, Gary, go ahead and move forward with that. And then, of course, if there's anything that transpires within the next week before the meeting that becomes an obstacle, roadblock, be sure and bring that back to us. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Was that the conclusion of agenda item 3a on the work session reports or no, I don't think it was, was it? I think we got libraries and something else or yes, that's the end of that work session item. Okay, good. All right. We'll move on then to agenda item 3b, receive report, hold a discussion, give staff direction regarding demonstrations following the tragic death of George Floyd, the call to review and reform use of, excuse me, use of force policies and Mayor Watt's proposed pledge to the commit to action initiative and creation of an ad hoc use of force committee. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, Sarah Keettler, Chief of Staff. One second, while I find the presentation. Mayor? Yes, Council Member Meltzer. George Floyd's funeral is today in Houston. Okay. Before we get started, do we have a moment of silence before we just get into the actions? Of course we can. Of course we can. All right. We'll just take a moment of silence in honor of George Floyd and his life, if you'll join with me, please. All right. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Meltzer, for that. All right, staff. So Mayor, City Council, we have two parts to our presentation today. Chief Dixon will be covering the first few slides in regards to the first two bullet points seen here on the screen, a review of the demonstration events that have occurred in Denton in the wake of George Floyd's tragic death in Minneapolis. And then he will also review the police department's current use of force policies, just a high level overview, and also in regards to how they match with the 8 Can't Wait initiative that is going nationwide. The second part of the presentation I will cover, it is in proposed next steps for Mayor Watts to sign on to a nationwide initiative to commit to action for mayors to take the initiative locally to review their use of force policies and engage with their community. And then as part of that, I'm proposing to create a temporary citizen ad hoc committee to review the use of force policies by the Denton Police Department. So at this time, I will turn it over to Chief Dixon to go through the first few slides. And Chief, if I could before we get started, I just want to sort of encourage the council some, if there's questions that are specific to current ongoing investigations, the chief is not going to be able to address those. So just wanted to share that comment with you as we move forward. All right, Chief. - All right, good afternoon, council or mayor and council. I wanted to walk you through a little bit about the demonstrations that we've seen in our city for the last almost two weeks now. We've been very lucky and I want to take a moment to praise all the police officers as well as all the protesters that have come out. I think this has shown what makes our city so special that we can all come together in the most difficult times and we can have voices heard without violence. So starting at Saturday of last week, we started having demonstrations and protests here locally. Very quickly, we made contact with the lead organizer of the first group that came in and we established some rapport. It was very important to me from the beginning that we took a very proactive stance in the sense of making sure that everyone was safe, including those wanting to come out, have their voices heard. So it was important that we got in contact with them and set up a method by which we could facilitate their safe movement around the city. That has worked out very well. The only time that we had any points of contention was on Monday when we anticipated a crowd of about 200 people and we ended up in some estimates about 5,000 people that showed up to our city. And then that larger group broke into four smaller size groups and started moving in four different directions in the city. So it made a little challenging for us to provide them the protection for traffic and such, but we came together, pulled our resources really quickly and everything went off very well. I think that was a pivot point for us as a police department and as a city, because if there was going to be a time where something went wrong, that was going to be it. I can't stress enough how pleased I am with not just the police officers that have been involved from day one, but for those coming out. So I don't want that to go without talking about it. As we stand right now, everyone knows that the curfew was lifted and since that has happened, we haven't had any issues. Like I said, by this time we have really gained a lot of mutual trust and understanding between the groups out there and the police department at large. And I think that some of the things that we were seeing early on, as far as intelligence that we're gathering from other DFW cities and other groups around the Metroplex, those have pretty much subsided, so really happy about that. So we're going to continue to be supportive of the protests as long as they happen in our city and we have every intention of providing the same level of service. So I want to move on to the use of force policies. About this time last week, after former President Obama spoke at his town hall, there was kind of a ground roots effort to start this eight can't wait initiative to start spreading. And President Obama challenged mayors across the nation to sign on to his campaign. I was very happy to learn that Mayor Watts was on board with that. I think that's a wonderful idea. It's going to really bring our community together with police departments across the country. With that being said, I want to make sure that council, you understand that the campaign zero organization has been in existence since 2015. I have personally been following them since 2016. And as I came into our city in October of 2018, we started reviewing our policies and procedures very early on. And that was one metric that I looked at coming in was what were some of the recommendations from campaign zero. So when the eight can't wait was launched, we looked over our policies, our general orders, and we found out that we met all of those, which is something that I was happy about because I knew that already. I think where we go from here is really coming to a happy medium between what our community wants from their police department, what the police officers themselves, we want to make sure that we don't put them in a situation, a no win situation. We talk about a policy or procedure being black and white and too restrictive. You kind of paint yourself into a corner. And I'll speak briefly about that. I was very pleasantly surprised this morning to get something from a concerned citizen. And it was a document that laid out how he was relieved to see that we were ahead of the game as far as it came to the eight can't wait. But he went a step further. He went and outlined in each one of those eight scenarios what our policies said and where he thinks that they could be improved. I think that's exactly what we're talking about, just how we can work with our community, not against it, to really craft the most robust policy for everyone. At the same time, I got something from one of my supervisors this morning saying that some of the policies were a little either too vague or they didn't direct every single movement throughout it. And I'll give you an example. In the deescalation policy, it talks about you shall, if reasonable, identify and employ deescalation techniques. Now for our community member, they thought that that wording should be a little tighter and that there's a little bit of subjectivity to it. For our police officers, some of them believe that it is mandating that no matter what, they can't skip a part of the process if their lives become immediately in danger and they need to immediately deescalate in lieu of doing something that could potentially save a life. So those are the kind of conversations that I'm really interested in getting into a room and seeing how this committee comes together and works through those. Because we're going to have to make sure that we take in consideration state law, civil service law, the meet and confer contract, and then again, what's going to be best for our community. And we don't use a cookie cutter approach that other cities are using. So with that, I'll stop, I'll pause there for any questions that you may have. Okay, if we could pull the, all right, questions. Council Member Briggs. Hey, Chief. I've been out every night except for last Tuesday and of course today and I've seen your officers interact with everyone there and I just wanted to say thank you and thank you to them for being out there and being respectful in your communications. It's been very eye opening for the community to see and I just want to say thank you for that to you and the officers there. I just had one question because I put this out and as you know, it kind of spun and there was a rumor about this conversation about an issue that's actually not going to be brought up today, but I just want to ask you because in that conversation, I got lots of questions and the main one that people wanted to know is if we're already doing everything in that chart and it's already there, then, and I think you kind of touched on it previously, but if you can say again, how do you think this committee will be beneficial to you if all of those things are touched on and you've already enacted these within your department? Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. We can't be naive thinking that policy and procedures and anything that we do trying to reset a culture is going to change a person's heart. At the core of what we're talking about across the country are the hearts of those that choose to serve. So one step further in that is going to be the conversations we start having, the training we start having. Especially on the back end of this, we have a very robust recruiting and hiring standard that we increase and just getting people to really understand that it doesn't matter if you wear a uniform or not, we're all human beings at the end of the day. So if I could make a comment to that, I appreciate that Council Member Briggs. I think what I heard though in the chief's comments earlier was that he'd had a citizen reach out to him in one particular instance and a police officer in another and they both had a different take and a different idea on the actual policy. So I think that is part of this mayor's pledge is to get the people together and begin to look at these policies that are already in existence because there's going to be a different interpretation of those policies and are there ways that we can improve that so that when the chief gets these two seemingly conflicting requests on the same policy, we have probably a better way to address it. So I do appreciate that's a good question. Let's go ahead Council Member Briggs. Okay. Yeah. And again, these are questions that I received before the meeting started. So I've seen the same ones. I've seen some of the emails as well. Yeah. Yeah. And that's very helpful to hear. So I guess if we have questions for you mayor or just general about the committee, do we want to hold those and right now just have questions for the chief? I mean, that would be fine. If you think that, I mean, the chief will I think will still be available if he needs to share his thoughts or answers to any of those general questions, but you're certainly welcome to ask the chief at this time or we can hold it and we can talk about it in the next presentation. Okay. Because I did notice that on the list, there were some comments and some people were asking can we have a mental health professional, someone from MHMR or and I did notice that a disability advocate was added and I wanted to thank you for that mayor on the list, but I did notice that a mental health professional was still not on there. Is that something that that you would be willing to? Well, there is a Dr. Cruz, I believe is a mental health professional, but also we did reach out and they reached out to us MHMR. So we are going to put them as a representative, they can appoint a representative to be on that committee. Absolutely. Yes. And it just it happened too quickly to get it in the last presentation. So yes, we've we've made that change. Okay. And just another question, I'm running through these really quickly. Another one that I had asked was that if we didn't do it through this process, was there another process that that a situation that this could be done in? And have you thought about an external group coming in to do this with the department? Sure. Well, let and if let me see if there's any other questions for the chief, and then we can we can talk about that in the in the next segment, because those are those are very good questions. Any other questions specifically for the chief in his presentation? Councilmember Armitter. I had a question that I wasn't planning on asking, but because it has to do with arrests at the protest, but since you had begun by talking about the protests, I just wanted to know if this was an appropriate venue just to ask a brief question about that since you mentioned it. Well, I think if it's a if it's a question about an incident that is still under investigation that hasn't been resolved, and I won't know the answer to that question, I may have to defer to the chief. But we certainly don't want to ask questions specific to a current ongoing investigation if arrests are considered ongoing investigations and not being a criminal lawyer. I don't know the answer to that question. How about if you want to ask it and then we can sure sure I'll ask my question and and chief you or the city attorney can let me know or both whether or not that can be answered. So my question was going to be that as I understand it, but I'm not I'm not certain that that there were two arrests on Monday and and one of them and there was something in the paper about it involving somebody who had a shield. It was implied in the article in the paper that that there might have been that there was some scuffle or something or at least contact. But is my understanding that the charge was for a violation of the curfew violation curfew and there was no charge for assault of an officer or anything like that? Is that correct? Or is that something that you can't comment on? That's correct. Okay, so the charge for the violation of curfew and was the other for violation of curfew as well? The two on Monday were okay, so there were no assault of officer charges. I don't I don't even remember there being a scuffle during that arrest. It was very, very, I don't know, very light arrest as far as contact. Okay, yeah. So it was okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So that was my question about that. Thank you for answering that. So wondering about a committee review board or a civilian oversight board, a number of questions have come to us about that. My understanding is that this committee that's coming forward is not that nor is it trying to be that right? This is an ad hoc committee about use of force policy. Okay, is that that sounds like a question to me or to staff. So I want to again ask, are there any other questions for the chief, particular to his presentation? Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, thank you, chief. I just need some help with the and thanks for all the officers that have served the extra hours and overtime, etc. My question is, though, can you help me with the time in or this may be a city manager's question? But I think it's yours. The perf consultants. Was that before you were hired and you were provided that or was that something that came in after you were hired? It was prior to my hire, they were completing a report in November of 18. Okay, and then you were hired in October. Got it. Okay. And Mr. City Manager, thank you, Mr. City Manager, can you send me that report again? I want to give me a link or something to what there are the highlights of that. Is that okay? Absolutely. Thank you. Any other questions for the chief? Mayor Melcher. First, I'll join in the comments that I've heard most consistently about the protests. What I've heard is how excellently DEP and PD comport themselves, and that's got to count for something. And this is not Minneapolis, this is not Los Angeles, and I'm really grateful. But now what I know that we're trying to do is demonstrate to the community that we're serious about making real improvements, whether we've got those kinds of issues happening or not, that we want to have the sort of best policies that we can have. So a couple of points that have been raised to me that I want to ask chief if you feel like that'll play some role in this. Two have to do with transparency. One is I hear a lot of interest in transparency and whether individual cops have sort of a record of stepping outside lines or having violations. So if I could take this one at a time, do you have any thoughts about that and where we are now and whether you'd be recommending any changes? >> I think right now that the state law already allows that those be disclosed for anyone that gets a day off or more. So those are already open records material. And when you're talking about accountability, I can tell you that if you ask some police officers, they'll believe that I hold them maybe a little too sternly to account. And if you ask them, say it's right on, and you ask them, they'll say it's not enough. So I think you're going to get that same answer from the community, right, and that's what we're talking about. We're just building everything together to see how we can get better. >> I appreciate that. Let me -- my next question might go a little out of bounds, and I'll sort of look for guidance on this. But some of what I picked up just in the general conversation is that people of color feel like they're vulnerable to being pulled over more and just sort of being policed more and that those situations are vulnerable to escalation. And I wonder, first of all, if you have an opinion about that, but secondly, for kind of community accountability, is there any sort of metric that we have or could have that would build confidence in, you know, what our detainment practices are? >> So Chief, if you could, I just want to make sure that we're -- I mean, these are all great questions, and I just want to make sure we're still within the posting because obviously we're going to be having many more meetings, many more discussions on committees, many more discussions on police policies and interviews with the Chief. I just want to make sure that we're within the posting of our current work session. So I'm not saying it's a bad question. I just want to make sure that, as you said before, as you qualified it, that we're within the bounce. I guess I would ask the City Attorney to help us with that. >> Given that the posting is narrowly addressed to three topics, your question would be, in my opinion, off-posting, Councilmember Melter. >> Well, I hope you note it for future discussion, Chief, and just if I may, just the last one. Within the realm of use of force, this is just a question I got from a constituent. I didn't know the answer. Do our practices include, if deemed necessary, use of tear gas and other chemical agents? >> Tear gas only for specialized purposes, not for typical day-to-day police work. All officers carry the cease-fire base with people commonly reported as. >> Thank you for the answer. >> Councilmember Marmotor, is this a question for the Chief? >> Well, yes, this was, as I was seeing, which questions were allowable and which were not allowable. I'm kind of getting a sense that some of my questions for the Chief might be allowable right now. So on the question of tear gas and use of force policy, we've seen how the use of rubber bullets in Dallas and elsewhere, really harmful to people. Is that something that this committee might be considering or that you might consider having a ban on the use of rubber bullets? So we haven't had to use any munitions whatsoever during this entire protest period, and that's my goal. My goal is that you never see a police officer outside of our normal uniform throughout their protest. If we can just facilitate movement of people, facilitate a platform for their voices to be heard, and we never have to do anything in the realm of using force, then to me that's what we're shooting for. We're going for that. >> Thank you. I wanted to ask about the use of force policy to actually have something in writing, not just saying this would be a last resort. I understand that that already is the way it is, but to just say in this city, we don't think that's an acceptable tactic. Is that the kind of question that use of force committee could possibly consider? >> Are there any more questions for the Chief so we can move on? >> Yes. I wanted to know the Chief's take on it because, you know, I can tell from the back up that this was a collaborative, that putting this presentation together is collaborative. He's been following these issues for his professional career, so I did want to get his take on it. >> I don't think there's going to be a black and white. With anything that we discuss when it comes to using force or the use of less lethal munitions, the use of gas, there's not going to be any black and white where we can say that we shall not ever use it in the city. When you start talking about ultra restrictive stances like that is when people have to resort to other things that legitimately create a higher risk of serious injury or death. But we do support a ban on choke hold, for instance, going forward, which is one of those eight. So that is something, by contrast, that you're saying we could have a concrete policy saying we do not do this, not only just saying as a last -- not saying as a last resort or we'll try to avoid it, but no choke holds. Is that what that means in that list of eight policies? >> We already had that in our policy. >> Yeah. So okay. So something like rubber bullets, it could potentially -- a policy could be made. But it sounds like you're saying that that's not the inclination or the preference. >> Well, I think that's the whole purpose of moving forward with the mayor's pledge. And so I -- okay. Any more questions for the chief? I do have one more. And I do appreciate everything I've heard from the chief. I appreciate hearing it from the chief directly. Another question, what is your sense of the way use of force is addressed just in basic training? That's my, you know, layperson's term for it. But outside of the, you know, numerous additional trainings that people can take for extra credit and the supplementary -- whatever supplementary trainings are required, where do you -- can you speak to where you see room in just basic training for de-escalation practices to become more of an integral part of that basic training? >> So de-escalation is already interwoven through the entire basic peace officer course, which is the police academy. So in everything we do, I mean, 99% of what we do is talking to people on the job. So de-escalation has to be interwoven in everything. So we want it to be a part of the fabric of our culture and not something that's on a piece of paper, which is exactly what we're doing now. We're always working to refine that and make it better. >> Thank you. So finally, would you be open to having training manuals, since people are asking about it, having police training manuals on the police website, having a link so that people can read and see for themselves as we continue to have this discussion as a community? >> So it's my hope -- this is what I'm going for, is to have our training manuals on there. Our general orders are already on there. Our use of force data, our racial profiling data, we want to give as many data sets as we can to the public so they can look on there whenever they want to. But as you all know, in November, we made our switch to our new technology upgrade. We've had a substantial number, not just in police, but across the board in implementing some of those things through that, but we're working through it, and I'm very happy where we're at right now and how we're going to get that accomplished. >> And thank you. If someone wanted to see that, should they write to the public relations officer or for the person who's in charge of public relations for the police department, would you recommend they write to the city council, do a public information request, what would be the way for a resident member of the public to go about getting that information as we have this conversation? >> Well, we probably need -- since we're going to have this committee starting out, we probably need to wait until this committee concludes before we start looking at that, because very -- you know, obviously we're going to have some changes in everything we're talking about throughout the course of this committee meeting, and I would definitely hate to start having people dive into things that the committee's already going to dive into, if that makes sense. >> And thank you. I think people would like to see what it is that's going to be changed and discussed so they can weigh in the thinking. >> Well, and I think if I'm understanding, Mr. City Attorney, that the training manuals and things such as that are public documents, that if somebody can request those public documents, they can request them through the -- you know, the I.O. -- right. And we'll go through all the normal procedures like we do any other requests for public information. So if it's not on the website, then that's really, I think, the best way to get it. That's our process. Okay. All right. Any other questions for the chief? All right. Thank you, chief. Oh, Councilmember Meltzer. >> Just more a comment in case there's any lingering doubt in the public. You know, when you want a cop, you want a cop. You know, there are situations that just call for a cop, and you generally want them as fast as possible. And in order to have those good response times, you need to have a fair number of police. That takes funding, and I'm glad that we do that. >> Okay. All right. Okay. So we will -- chief, thank you so much. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> And we'll move through the second portion of this. I tell you what, let's take a quick five-minute break here. We've been going for about an hour and a half. Let's take a five-minute break, and we'll come back with the second part of the presentation. Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on June the 9th at 2.32 p.m. We are halfway through our work session item 3B, so we'll begin the second half of that presentation now. >> Mayor, City Council, Sarah Hickler, Chief of Staff, I will take you through the second portion of the presentation. One second while I pull up the presentation. Okay. So on tonight's agenda or later today's agenda, there is an item under individual consideration for City Council's support of two proposed actions from Mayor Watts. The first is Mayor Watts intends to join the pledge for the City of Denton to commit to action that has been led forward by former President Obama and my brother's Keeper Alliance. You heard Chief Dixon speak to this earlier and his support of this initiative. It calls upon mayors at the local level to review use of force policies by police, engage communities by including a diverse range of input, experiences, and stories in that review, report on the findings of the review to the community, and seek additional feedback, and also then taking that report, turning it into action to reform communities police of use of force policies. So in line with this pledge, which is calling upon to engage the community, Mayor Watts is proposing to sign and form a citizen ad hoc committee to review the Denton Police Department's current use of force policies. The committee would be charged with reviewing, researching, gathering community input, and establishing clear findings, conclusions, and recommendations regarding use of force policies and training for the police department. City staff would be available to help this temporary citizen ad hoc committee with administrative and technical assistance as needed. The committee is proposed to be made up of a group of diverse stakeholders and community representatives. So listed on the screen is the proposed makeup of the committee, including representatives from the various stakeholder groups, as well as the names of some representatives that have been confirmed as willing to participate in the committee. So just quickly go through these. They include a representative from the NAACP, from LULAC, from the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and this is the University of North Texas chapter. It would also include a member from the Denton Police Training Advisory Committee, and this would be member Cheryl English. It is proposed to include representatives from each of the three universities in town, from UNT, TWU, and NCTC, and they would decide upon their representative, as well as one from the Denton Independent School District. It would include representatives from the LGBT community, Dr. Cruz and Camion Connor, as well as the faith community, Reverend Cedric Chambers and Reverend Bo Hughes. It would include a representative from persons with disabilities, Jamie Walker Blanton, as well as representatives from the two police associations that we have in the Denton Police Department, and it would also include other citizens and community members, including John Baines, Rhonda Love, Gary Henderson, Katina Stone Butler, and Jarell Butler. Also not listed on the screen that Mayor Watts had mentioned earlier, it would include a representative from Denton County MHMR. That would be a total of 21 community members on the Citizen Ad Hoc Committee. In addition to the members, it would also have ex officios of Chief Dixon, as well as someone from his department, Dr. Richard Williams, who is the Police Accreditation and Compliance Unit, City Manager Todd Heilman, a representative from our City Attorney's Office, Mike Kronig, and City Council Member Jesse Davis. The committee would be asked to develop a report to the Mayor and City Council no later than September 15th, and that date is based upon the 90-day goal that is included in the Commit to Action initiative, recommending that this action be taken immediately to engage the community, review the policies, and come up with recommendations within a 90-day time period. So underneath individual consideration is that resolution that would affirm City Council's support for the Mayor to sign on to the initiative and then immediately form the Ad Hoc Committee. And that is the end of the presentation, so I will take it down for Council discussion. Yeah, and I'll just take the questions unless you have one specifically for staff. Oh, you have Council Member Meltzer. First, Mr. Mayor, naturally, we're accustomed to and like getting to select nominees. I understand you're acting quickly, but I want to say this is a very fine list, and I very much appreciate your accommodating suggestions that have come up along the way. People who have been sort of unhappy about this have said, "Why isn't there someone on there like Dr. Carmen Cruz? Why isn't there someone on there like Katrina Stone Butler?" You know, and they are on there, so I appreciate that. Second question is, will the committee itself be able to choose its own chair? You know, originally, I had thought about selecting John Baines as the chair, and I think the resolution -- I can't remember, having just read it a couple times -- they could. Since he's chaired other committees, I just didn't want them to spend the time doing it, but if they want to do that, that's fine. I'll certainly leave that up to him. He's already agreed that he would be willing to serve. And so let me make a comment, because I think it's important. And I know that to some on this body and to some in the community, this seems like sort of a unilateral heavy hand, but it is not. For those of you who have served with me over the six years, you know that's not how I operate. But when I began to receive all the emails in order to -- asking me to sign this pledge, and as I reviewed the pledge and as I began to think about our community, and I also know about the processes of city council government, that this is something that I put forward. If you don't agree with it, you're certainly welcome to vote against it, and I don't have any -- I won't have any misgivings about that. So I certainly understand that, if there's a different direction that the city council wants to go. But I felt like that based upon what we've been hearing, based upon the protest, based upon the issue, the issue has been, at least as it's presented itself, about police brutality and systemic racism within police departments and discrimination regarding use of force. So I thought, what better way than to sign on to the pledge and to get this thing moving? It's a very short fuse. It's 90 days, and it's very narrowly tailored. That does not preclude this council from setting up other committees to look at other and different policies that might be greater in scope. We also know the timeframe that sometimes that takes, but I just thought it was important to get before the community some action, and so that's the action that I've taken, and I certainly rely upon my colleagues for that support in the council meeting with that individual item on the agenda, and if it's not approved, we'll pick a different course of action. So I appreciate, though, your comments, Council Member Meltzer, and I certainly understand that and understand the resistance and the hesitancy in that. So that's not gone unnoticed on me, and I've not done it in order to cut anybody out, as you can tell on the list. We've really tried to be all-inclusive, and of course, the committee itself is charged with seeking various stories and experiences from a cross-section of the community. So in no way is the public cut out from that. In fact, the public's going to be very much an integral part of this. So I understand, and I just invite everybody to vote their conscience, and we'll see how that turns out, and I certainly will respect whatever that decision is. So thank you. Council Member Armitage. Yes. So Council Member Meltzer covered a couple of questions I was going to ask. One or two comments that I would like to make, because we're having this conversation because of not only the murder of George Floyd, but also the public response to that and protests, not just in Denton, but all over the nation. Black Lives Matter is the movement that is associated with these protests. It is a number of different groups coming together, and primarily here in Denton and elsewhere, just individuals just coming out to join. But I would like to see somebody who is involved in Black Lives Matter, who is there for them. I know that people on that committee, and I know almost everybody looking at the names and everybody's good people, so I'm sure there's some, in fact, I know there's intersectionality in there. But I think that would be good. Also, even though there have been a range of ages of people who have been protesting, and actually for me, that's one of the things that I have enjoyed most, to see young people and old people coming together around the same cause and in conversation with each other. I don't know everybody's age on the committee, but my guess is that the average age or the median would skew higher. So I don't know what to do about that. I understand that it is up to you, Mayor, but I would like to see more young voices on that committee. I understand that wasn't deliberate, but I think part of it is because it's kind of organized by having leaders of these big organizations that when people are younger, they tend not to reach that level in an established organization like that until they're older. So what can be done to get more youth into this committee? Sure. I appreciate that. Well, number one, we've got the student chapter of an organization with UNT that's represented there. So they certainly have an opportunity to select a student. We have the two universities and NCTC that they also have the ability to select students or those who represent student issues within that organization. So I think there's ample opportunity, the NAACP has an opportunity to select someone that might meet more of your age demographic as well as LULAC. So there's several appointments that still are available to meet some of those criteria that you're advocating for. So that's why I didn't ask, I mean, some of those representatives asked me if I needed a name at that point, and I said no, because I wanted them to be able to hear what the needs are and to point someone who's going to represent, because those are colleges. They have students, that's their business is students. So I feel certain that they will select those who will represent the student population, whether it be an actual student or someone who works with students primarily within that organization. So I'm going to defer to them on that, but I think there's plenty of opportunity to address the situations that you've just described. Council Member Briggs. Thank you, Mayor. Could you just address the question that I asked earlier about, there were questions that I had in the community, I'm still going down my list. If we didn't do it this way, would there be another way for Council to review this, the actions? Of course. I mean, any Council Member can make a one minute pitch for what they believe is appropriate. And let me say, I'm beginning to receive emails as well, I mean, we all have. It's in the hundreds, if not close to a thousand, about some asking to defund the police or reduce the police budget and some saying, in so many words, what are you doing? And I've seen the emails that say why put this committee together and there's eight little bullet points. Those all have to do with funding. If a Council Member wants to discuss that, they can certainly go for a one minute pitch. Additionally, we've got the budget process coming up in just the next month or two to begin to really talk through the upcoming budget. So I think there's going to be plenty of opportunity to talk about some of these other issues that are of concern to people and I understand that. My point was simply I was asked and as I researched it and I thought about it, the Mayor's Pledge specifically targets use of force. And that's the thing that seems to be what is the greatest concern in the community, in the African American community and in the community. How do we address and make sure that our policies are our best practices to mitigate and reduce the amount or the situations where use of force is needed? I don't think the Chief would disagree with that. In fact, the Chief is supportive and he's going to be there, but that's really the it's very narrowly tailored because I wanted to get out in front of this and take some action. So if this Council isn't okay with that, that's okay. I mean, this is my way of trying to respond to what I'm hearing. Councilmember Briggs. Yeah and I appreciate you going over the process and explaining how all that works. My question wasn't necessarily about talking about any other topic. I spent over three hours responding to everyone about this item and talking about that we are going to be discussing use of force. And so in the conversation it was if you do not discuss use of force this way, is there another process that it would be and it would be the typical process that we use? So that was the question that had been asked in that area. If I can respond to that too. It would be the typical process that we use and given this particular circumstance would mean that the Council comes up and we all select committee members. They all get voted on. We have to figure out a scope and by the time we actually got that convened, the timeframe that this committee is scheduled to meet and to have findings back to us would probably have already been realized. So part of is also just understanding how slow sometimes and how sometimes we do bog down the process by not taking these things in a little bit more smaller increments and intervals so that we can be the most efficient. So I get it and if that is the course this Council wants to take, I am real okay with that because I am part of this. So no, if this does not work, I feel very confident that we will find an alternative method to address all the other issues that people are talking about, but I just want to really say that if they are expecting it to be done expeditiously, that would remain to be seen choosing a different method based upon at least our past experiences. So it is okay. This is my way of trying to take some action to respond to what we have all seen in the last two weeks. Go ahead, Council Member Briggs. I appreciate that urgency. I am just relaying questions that, and the last one and the other one was, do we know is this committee costing money? Are we, what funding are we using for this? Is there a budget for this? Is it? It's a good question. City Manager, I believe we have committed that we will provide technical assistance. Obviously, the committee at least for now might decide to meet in a similar format as what we are right now, and that will probably take some technical assistance and also some administrative assistance with either scheduling of meetings or queuing up public comment on the phone. So the city is going to be providing some of that assistance. So Mr. City Manager, if you could address the budgetary or the aspect of that. Yeah. I think the mayor hit it on the head. I don't see a major budgetary commitment to this. It's much more of a time commitment. I can definitely envision a couple of scenarios happening as we're working our way through there where we may want to bring in some folks that do this kind of work around the country just to answer their committees' questions, and so there may be time that we need here and there, but I'm not expecting a huge budgetary commitment. I think the chief's been working on updating these policies since the day started, and it's more of a matter of refining the process, and I really see the benefit in this entire thing is, obviously, we've got to do a better job educating the community in terms of the changes that have been made. I like the questions about the policy manual online and access to our policies, so I don't see it being a hugely costly endeavor if they want a couple of experts to help give them some advice, we're going to bring them in, but my main point is to support this committee and get these policies updated as quickly as we can if there are other ideas that come to the forefront. Okay. Well, I appreciate that because that was another thing people wanted to make sure that we weren't going to be spending a lot of money, and I didn't think, I thought it would mostly be staff time and we're not paying the volunteers on the committee to come in, and so I appreciate you weighing in on that as well. I think, I think that's all, that's all my questions. Okay. Council Member Melser. I think there's a good suggestion there to either include on the committee someone from the Black Lives Matter movement to just hear the case, or alternatively, this would be a suggestion to the committee to have someone from that movement come and give a thorough presentation so that the full critique is on the table. And as far as payment, I would say they should make twice what any other board and commission members make. Okay. Right. Right. Okay. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. We'll move on to the next agenda item then, which is agenda item. Mayor? Yes. Before you move on, can we just make a comment that for anyone who heard anything in this meeting today that there's an item just as a reminder that they can call in and speak on it? Yes. Yeah. The individual item, item for individual consideration. Absolutely. Yeah. And I believe they have to call in within, is it 30 minutes of the, is that, is that right? Well, I'll let staff figure that out. But yeah, no, there's certainly the opportunity to call in and share your thoughts. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for reminding us. Agenda item 2C, receive a report, hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the urban forest master plan. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Good afternoon, honorable mayor, city council, Haywood, Oregon, city of Forrester, city of Denton. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. We have with us Dana Karsher, who will be presenting on the urban forest master plan. Dana is the, is an urban and community forestry specialist with Davie Resource Group. She has assisted numerous communities throughout the Western United States in developing urban forest master plans that help move programs forward. In addition to working for Davie, Dana has worked for the National Arbor Day Foundation in Nebraska. She is also a certified arborist with a municipal specialist qualification. Although she has worked with many communities in Texas since the start of her career with Davie, she has now happily called Texas a home and is enjoying the hospitality and a much more pleasant weather. Thank you very much, Haywood. To go to the next slide, please. Honorable mayor, city council members and city staff, thank you for allowing me to make this presentation to you today. Also thank you for allowing us, Davie Resource Group, to work with your city staff and the citizens to make this urban forest master plan a reality. It truly was a pleasure working in the city of Denton on this project. Today's presentation is divided into four sections. A discussion of the process of the development of the plan, an overview of Denton's urban forest based on the 2016 State of the Urban Forest report, a report on the current state of the tree mitigation funds and the goals, and at last, last, the focused areas and action plans of the documents. Next slide, please. The process began with a data review. This included operational, budgetary and guiding and regulatory documents and also plans as follows. The Denton Development Code, the Denton Plan 2030, 2012 Simply Sustainable Denton, City of Denton Integrated Test Management Program, Best Management Practices and Industry Standards, and the State of the Urban Forest report conducted in 2016. I will elaborate further on that report and it is really key into the development of this plan. Also key to the plan was the opportunity to meet with people and to get their input. This was accomplished through internal and external stakeholder meetings and community meetings. The internal stakeholders included Denton Municipal Electric, Fire Community Improvement Services, Water Utilities, Environmental Services and Watershed Protection, Parks, Recreation and Beautification Board, Planning, Development Services, Building Inspection, Solid Waste, Engineering, and the external stakeholders included Keep Denton Beautiful, the Texas Trees Foundation, Denton County, Denton Community Development Alliance, the Dallas Builders Association and Preservation Tree, the consulting group. Additionally there were two community meetings which I will discuss later in more detail. Next slide. In 2016 a State of the Urban Forest report was conducted for the City of Denton. This report lays the foundation for the value of trees within the city. Trees in Denton remove almost 405 tons of air pollutants which includes ozone, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. They also reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by approximately 23,000 tons. They reduce energy costs through shading, evaporative cooling and reduction in winter winds. They also reduce the volume of water entering the storm system through capture in the leaves and bark along with increasing water filtration rates through improved soil structure and the slowing of velocity of precipitation which reduces the impact of storm events on soil. Next slide. Canopy cover is the layer formed by the branches and crowns of plants or trees. Canopy cover can be hard to conceptualize sometimes so it is helpful to compare your canopy with the neighboring communities. Denton has approximately 28% canopy cover which is equivalent to nearby flower mounds. In contrast, Garland has approximately 11% which is less than half of Denton's canopy. Plano has 21% which is slightly less than the canopy in Arlington with approximately 22%. This comparison although very important may be skewed due to the various scientific methods that were used to calculate these canopies. However it does give a good indication that Denton is on par or above other cities in the Metroplex. Next slide, please. As part of the State of the Denton Urban Forest Report, an iTree eco-assessment was conducted to provide a broad picture of the entire urban forest, both public and private trees. Trees are sampled in 275 randomized plots across the city and encompass both private and public property. Data on the trees was collected in these areas. Based on the assessment, there is an estimated 3.5 million trees in Denton. That's both public and private trees. A rule of thumb among urban forestry professionals is that no species should represent more than 10% of the overall population and no genus should represent greater than 20% of the overall population. In Denton, both sugar berry and cedar elm violate this principle. Diversity importance has come to fruition in Denton with the recent discovery of emerald ash borer, or EAB. If sugar berry and green ash numbers were reversed, Denton could see the possibility of a 21% reduction in their tree population rather than just 4%. Next slide, please. The amount and distribution of leaf surface or tree canopy is the driving force behind the urban forest's ability to produce benefits for the community. As canopy cover increases, so do the benefits. The overall average tree canopy cover identified impervious surfaces at 14%, open water at 1%, pervious surfaces at 45%, whereas post oak and prairie makes up most of that pervious surface area, bare soil at 10%, and tree canopy at 30%. Next slide, please. In completion of the analysis, a higher priority was given to the planting sites that would receive the most benefits from the addition of a tree. So as you look at the Teevely Lane area and see the bright red planting areas, those are street trees. They provide higher benefits, including shading streets and homes, helping to ameliorate the heat island effect. Next slide, please. We held two community meetings. Meeting number one was a fact-finding mission asking community members specific questions and listening to their comments and concerns about the urban forest. Those meetings were well attended by a variety of citizens and stakeholders. When asked the following questions, each attendee was asked to rank their preferences. What should the canopy goal be? The majority of attendees thought the canopy goal should be high, 40% or more, but there was also great interest in having it be based on land use opportunities rather than just setting an arbitrary goal. We asked where should more trees be planted or should there actually be more trees in the city of Benton. Attendees felt that there should be more trees in new development. The second highest number of votes was for commercial areas. What level of care should the city provide for trees? Proactive care was the number one priority with predictable cycles followed closely by plant healthcare-based care, which I'll explain further. We asked if amending the municipal code to require property owners to remove dead, dying or diseased trees which threaten public safety was important. The majority of attendees wanted to see the code amended. We asked should the city take care of neighborhood trees in the public right of way. The majority of attendees wanted to see that the city take care of their neighborhood trees. We asked what educational topics of interest that they had, and this varied. However, many people were interested in learning about what trees to choose for their own yards, historic tree locations, and education about the cross timbers region. Most preferred to get their information by social media and by in-person workshops. And lastly, we asked the question of how this tree mitigation plan should be used. The majority of the people wanted to see the city purchase property for tree preservation and not far behind that was a city-wide inventory. However, there were many other suggestions that showed that there was not a clear consensus on how to use the tree plan. On the second meeting was also intended to present a draft of the plan. It was not as much as a fact-finding mission. We focused on the focused objectives and on the goals. The meeting was also very well attended and there was robust discussion around many ideas for the plan. Next slide. This chart shows the expenditures from the tree fund starting from 2014. The balance is currently a little over $752,000. The next slide. Now this slide has been updated since you received your packet. This is the breakdown of the tree fund expenditures and property purchases at 63%. Tree planting is at almost 32% and education and outreach is at 6%. Both the State of the Urban Forest I-Tree Eco project and the Urban Forest Master Plan are included in the education dollar numbers. Ultimately, we determined that the tree mitigation fund recommendation should be as follows. It's 65% property purchase, 30% tree planting, and 5% education and outreach. Next slide, please. The Urban Forest Master Plan created for Denton is unique and based on the information that we garnered during the background research, the analysis of the 2016 State of the Urban Forest report, and the community and stakeholder interaction. Tree focus areas were developed. Each focus area has goals and objectives attached to it. Lastly, each objective has action plans to fulfill the goals and objectives. Focus area one supports the implementation of proactive and quality tree maintenance. In general, trees pose a minimal risk to the public, but tree care can help make the community safer and the urban forest more resilient. Focus area two supports the action to preserve and enhance the existing tree canopy to maintain the benefits provided by the urban forest. This can be done by planning so that trees are maintained throughout their lifetimes in growing the urban forest in a sustainable manner. Focus area three supports the connection to the community and then to the urban forest by creating an environment all community members can advocate, feel free to advocate for the urban forest. It recognizes that the urban forest is more likely to be preserved and maintained by a community that actually understands the benefits that the trees provide. Although there are 85 action plans, some do overlap and sometimes they do apply to more than a single aspect of managing the urban forest. Next slide, please. To meet the objectives under this focus area, Denton needs to understand the composition of the urban forest. The state of the Denton urban forest report provided us with an estimated composition of Denton's overall urban forest, both private and public trees. For managers, it is critical to understand what community trees, the public trees look like, including species composition, health and maintenance needs. This is done by completing a tree inventory. A complete inventory of city managed trees would allow the urban forestry division to identify maintenance needs and determine the feasibility of the city caring for the city managed trees and neighborhoods. Additionally, an inventory can be used to quantify the ecosystem services or benefits provided by public trees. From this inventory information, the city can develop pruning and maintenance cycles. Maintenance should be performed on a four to five-year cycle based on the estimated number of trees, which are actually 20,850 trees, and Denton's public right-of-way. This would include the maintenance of approximately 4,200 trees annually. By not completing an inventory, it would be difficult to understand the age, the structure, the benefits and maintenance needs of public trees, which makes the community tree resource in total vulnerable to canopy loss. However, by having a better understanding of the public tree resource, the urban forestry division staff is able to prioritize tasks, improve efficiency and better plan and manage for pests and pathogens. The objective of this goal is to explore the feasibility of the city taking responsibility for the maintenance of community trees and neighborhoods and to revise policies and standards for pruning young trees. It is important to maintain standards that are utilized throughout the U.S. for tree pruning and BMPs to protect the health of the trees. These standards are known as ANTI from the American National Standards Institute and the A300, which addresses tree care and maintenance, and International Society of Agriculture Best Management Practices. Again, the benefits of these action plans and objectives to maintain canopy for optimum urban forest and city health. Good care allows trees to reach maturity and increase the benefits that they provide. Lack of good tree care leads to premature death of species, branch, pests and diseases, all of which cause the loss of valuable resources. Being proactive allows the city to plan and care for and model good tree care for all of its citizens. Next slide. Denton does have vulnerabilities to wildfire and carries some risk of having a major event such as the Bastrop fires in recent years. The objective here is to have a fire safe community. The fire safe community actions include initiating contact with the Texas A&M Forest Service wildland urban interface team and their specialists to assist in developing a community wildfire protection plan or CWPP. And also, reducing ladder fields in the natural areas is important. But not mitigating or reducing the risk of fires, Denton risks long-term impacts from a catastrophic event, including slice and property damage. By being proactive, the city reduces the likelihood of such a conflagration. Next slide, please. The objectives of these action plans, that these action plans support, do allow trees to be seen as green infrastructure. These include prohibiting the encroachment of other utilities to present future conflicts, develop maintenance and design strategies to mitigating conflicts with otherwise healthy trees and ensure design standards adequately consider trees. Designating trees as green infrastructure will assure that trees are a key element in cityscapes, just like sidewalks and street lighting. These action plans lead to creating a more tree-friendly environment for green infrastructure. By not designating trees this way, conflicts with trees will continue to grow and removals may increase. Ultimately, this designation will result in less removals because conflicts are minimized. Additionally, these action plans ultimately help with tree longevity through development standards that protect trees. Next slide. These action plans lead to the concept of no net tree loss. It is canopy that provides the environmental benefits to communities and promotes tree preservation and protection is the way to save and grow canopy. This is accomplished by revising and amending the code of ordinances. Additionally, the mitigation fees still need to be applied to the tree funds. The recommendation for fund distribution is 60% tree planting, 35% property purchase and 5% education. By not taking these actions, again, there is a likelihood, a likely loss of tree canopy and the associated benefits of the conflict canopy. By preserving and protecting the current trees, including the iconic post oak trees that exist in Denton, there is an assurance that environmental benefits are sustained and trees that have been preserved and protected have the potential to provide even more benefits in the future. Next slide, please. Plans that are met through these action plans include setting a sustainable annual planting goal based on an understanding of where trees need to be planted, promote species diversity in the urban forest, encourage equitable distribution of tree canopy cover across the city and set emphasis on planting the right tree in the right place at the right time. Developing a planting plan provides direction and clarity for all who plant trees in the city. If you're having a plan, it may be difficult to grow canopy where trees can provide the most benefits. A plan will give structure to reaching a canopy goal. Next slide. With an objective of engaging the community in their role in the urban forest, these action plans incorporate the planting plan while engaging the community in a typical outreach fashion. The recommendation to continue the tradition of the Red Bud Festival giveaways is coupled with the additional giveaway, is coupled with additional giveaways, and education to go with those giveaways. The benefit of these action plans and objectives is to encourage a more equitable tree distribution across the city and encourage community participation in the urban forest. Next slide. The objectives of this goal are to support stormwater management through the strategic growth of canopy. Weather events are changing and addressing water savings through urban forestry is a management strategy that is effective. Use of design elements including bioswales and planting dry retention ponds support effective stormwater management through tree planting. Additionally, assuring tree diversity is critical in this time of major pest and disease growth. As stated before, the importance of species diversity is a key management goal for the urban forest. EAB is proof of that. As much as 30 percent of entire tree populations were wiped out in the northeastern states due to emerald ash borer. Next slide, please. These action plans support the monitoring of invasive species through PHC policy. PHC, or Plant Healthcare, is a program that consists of routinely monitoring landscape plant health and individualized plan management recommendations to maintain or improve the vitality, appearance and safety of trees and other plants. Coupled with following the city's already utilized integrated pest management program, there should be a reduction in impact from invasive species. By not following PHC policy, there is an increased risk for growth of both invasive plants and insects. This threatens the native species already in existence. By using comprehensive information to support and supporting pest management strategy, we'll allow the city to prepare for and/or manage the invasive species and the detrimental impact that they have on the urban forest will be lessened. Next slide. The community has shown that it wants to be engaged in growing and supporting the urban forest. By developing a webpage specifically for the urban forestry division, participation and support and most importantly, understanding of the urban forest will increase. Apathy towards the urban forest may result in a loss of benefits of the trees as information is not easily accessible. By reporting results of this plan, the community will remain engaged in growing the canopy and therefore growing tree benefits. Next slide, please. During the first community meeting, many people wanted to know more about the urban forest, its benefits, management goals and care. Many of these action plans came through that community input. The objective of interacting with the community is critical in assuring that engagement nets results of citizen participation in the urban forest. Next slide, please. Maintaining the Tree City USA status through the Arbor Day Foundation is important. Additionally, the city itself has received nine sterling awards, which show growth in the program and those are also awarded by the Arbor Day Foundation. Observing, recognizing, and celebrating the benefits trees provide by the urban forest encourages community engagement and promotes appreciation for trees. When community members are unaware of the benefits of the urban forest, people are likely going to be less supportive of programming and the resources needed to care for the urban forest. The benefit of community awareness and appreciation of the urban forest is that they promote and support the necessary resources to maintain it. I want to say thank you again for your time today and for allowing us to work in your city. It has been a great project and I hope you are pleased with the results. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Dana. Okay. Let me ask my question real quick because I've only got one. Dana, on the slide, I think it's goal seven. Let me get to that where it talks about if we could put up goal seven, please. It's one of the last few ones. It talks about I think it's maintaining the health and it talks about Chinese privet. Let me see which one that is. Unfortunately, I don't have a slide number here. No, no, that's fine. We're going to we're going to find I just want to show it for my for my colleagues. I think it's I think it's a hold on. It is slide number where the goals Oh, where was it just passed it. Okay. Goal number seven. Yeah, it's on slide. It's 2121. So when it talks about action plans, continue to follow the IPM program, I get that reduce the impacts of Chinese privet. I'm very familiar with Chinese private just in my own private property. And I've know that I've seen where we have natural trails that the city has. We have some at South Lakes and then we're working on some other parts. What is the goal? I mean, are we to try to just keep this the Chinese private from spreading because obviously it's a very aggressive plant in bush is the goal to sort of hold it at bay is it to eliminate it or really what role does the Chinese private have sort of in our at least within the city parks, you know, for trails and things such as that? You want me to take that room? Yeah, who? Whoever wants to answer that Dana, why don't you go and then we'll have drew answer it as well. Okay, so it is difficult to reduce Chinese privet to, you know, to nothing, because so much of it is carried by birds, but the idea is really to reduce the impact so make sure that it's not taking over in large patches and not either environmentally sensitive areas that you want to maintain. So the idea is some sort of removal process, but to to have an awareness that there is a problem and it does exist, it will have to be addressed with resources of some sort. And that's why it's in this plan. Okay, Drew, would you like to add on to that? Yes, sir, Mayor and Councilor and the parks superintendent, we parks, the Parks Department and the Environmental Department is working together to come up with a plan to control and remove Chinese privet. It is being studied not only here in North Texas, but there's countless studies on the northeast on the East Coast, and in East Texas on removing privet what privet does to natural forest and how it takes over the forest and really impacts the growth of new trees and the trees that are already there. And of course, we, you know, we're here are the master plan for the urban forest, we want to make sure that we save all those trees. Chinese privet doesn't grow like a tree, it is a invasive species and we do want to continue to control it. And so we are working through a plan to make sure that we do that and we do that in a systematic way to where we control it and not just and not control it with chemicals, but control it in other areas. For instance, last year, we use goats to remove Chinese privet, and we we've looked at different areas or different ways such as, you know, controlled fires, equipment, manual labor, all those good things. So we are continuing to work with environmental to come up with a good solution for it. Okay, good. Thank you. I appreciate that question. It can be, it can really take over quickly if not managed well. So thank you all so much for that. Okay. All right, Councilmember Briggs, and then we'll go to Councilmember Armitage. Thank you, I have just a few questions I want to run through here quick, but first I want to give a shout out to the goats and say that I'm highly in favor of bringing that back. And this is just for for the lady who did the presentation, I wanted some clarification because I heard two different things or I thought I saw two different things. The most important to the residents for the tree fund was it planting new trees or was it purchasing property? It was just a moment I have so many things open on my desk, I need to move something to the side so I can pull something up here, but it was actually kind of, it was a tie, to be honest, it was the tie of the way that they really, the way we use the dot method of voting and however we utilize a different system of percentages and it came out that planting came out a little bit ahead and I cannot find, I'm sorry I don't have that document in front of me, but planting came out a little bit ahead. Okay, because I thought I read that and then I thought I heard you say purchasing, so I just wanted to clarify. To be honest and we stated in the, we do state it in the plan that there was not really a clear, there was not a clear desire for one single thing. I just want to run through a few quick questions here and so I, can you explain how important a critical root zone is and for its protect, critical root zone protection is and its importance for preservation, I didn't see it in the report. It is important, it is something, it is important and if you look at the appendices in the back of the actual plan, there is a tree protection zone example set out, so it is in the plan, it is mentioned in the plan as something that needs to be addressed. Because we saw street trees mentioned a few times, do you know, do they grow as tall and last as long? Do they have a long lifetime as well as a regular tree in the middle of a yard, do you know? Well, there is numerous studies that have been done, most of those have been done in the northeast by a professor named Dr. Laura Roman. Street trees last with care, they last with space to grow, but not as long as a yard tree, but it is kind of sometimes comparing apples to oranges depending on the care that each tree will get. But street trees definitely do provide benefits and if they are well cared for they will continue to provide benefits. May I just have one and a half more? Sure, sure. And it is about the canopy goals, because in the actual report I think it is future land use table three chart, it has all the different canopy goals for residential, commercial, I think it has percentages. My question actually is for staff, are those the goals that we are putting into, our tree code is taking that as a recommendation, and then just to add on to that, I just wanted to clarify what I heard in the presentation and what I took out of this is that we actually need to purchase land or we will eventually experience loss of canopy at the rate we are going. Correct. Okay I am trying to go back to the first part of your question here, can you restate that part? Yeah, in the actual full report, I don't remember what page it was, I wrote down a future land use table, I think table three, it was a chart. Yeah, so the idea was to set canopy goals based on land use, which was something that came out of the public meetings, and based on those percentages we will be able to attain I believe in the report we have 40% canopy goal, and as far as the purchasing property to maintain the tree canopy, when we looked at setting the tree canopy goals and the percentages of the tree fund usage, one of the things we considered was within the Denton Development Code, there is a 30% requirement to preserve trees, so developers pay into the fund actually when they are not able to replant mitigation trees on site, so considering that initially those funds would have been used to plant trees, we thought it would be wise to recognize a significant amount to plant trees so that we actually can add new canopy and also have trees for our future generations. Sure, go ahead. So just to help me clarify, so as we plant the new trees, when we are figuring in our canopy, are we thinking, are we actually using the actual canopy of the small tree to get that percentage, or are we using what it will be in 25 years to get our current percentage? Well, to get the actual canopy, you would use the canopy of the tree at the size of this planet. We would use the canopy of the adult tree or mature tree if we are projecting out the potential tree canopy that we would have based on the number of trees that we are planting. When we see our actual canopy percentage, are we using the one of the actual sizes of the trees that we have on the ground? Yes, that's actual through aerial imagery, so it's looking at actually what's out there. Okay, thank you for that clarification. Okay, Councilmember Armitage. So several things, one, I love that the term infrastructure is now being integrated into the tree plan. I think that's the way to look at trees, so I'm really pleased that we are thinking of them as, well, just infrastructure. Several questions. One, I'm a little confused now, in the beginning of the presentation, Dana mentioned something that sounded absolutely right to me in terms of what I'm hearing from constituents and what I heard from people who are at either one of those meetings or two of the meetings. I'm not sure if they're both at the same meeting, and that is that people who have been asked in Denton prefer preservation to planting new trees, that people understand that that's where emphasis has to be. But then, you know, later on, I believe Councilmember Briggs had asked about that, and it seemed like you were saying the opposite, but I thought that what I was hearing at the beginning was that number one was tree preservation, number two was inventory, and that number three was planting. That sounded right to me, but then I was hearing something different. So if you could just clarify that, that would be great. Okay, just a moment here. I'm pulling up the document that I have. Bear with me a moment, please. So in answering – so the tree mitigation fund question was plant and maintain trees received a total of four votes, maintenance and conservation agencies received two, purchase property preserve trees received eight, the citywide inventory was six, and education was one, but then there were one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight additional comments by residents who voted on them included grants to local nurseries, move trees, and so it was kind of – that's why it's off – it's kind of skewed because there were so many things that were added on, so the actual questions – the thing that we put up there that was voted on did not come across clearly. So, for example, tree giveaways was only one, yet we heard that tree giveaways are really important in another part of it. So it's hard to break it down in a way that makes absolute sense, but this is also with our notes too. Okay, and thank you – am I correct in remembering – was there an online survey that the city sent out on this topic relatively recently? No, the recent survey was a tree survival survey that was put out by trees – by KDB for trees that were distributed through their programs and through the Dent Tree Initiative. Okay, well yeah, I think that moving forward, what would be helpful I think would be to kind of have a question where we ask how would you rank today these three things, you know, which is more important to you – preservation, planting new trees, or inventory, or even – I would be fine with preservation versus planting new trees, because to me this seems to be the big debate, and it's a controversy about, you know, what to do with the tree fund. I myself am hearing – that they prefer preservation of our urban forest and that that money be used for that purpose, but I think conducting a survey just about that would be really helpful, because some of these other categories that you mentioned are kind of overlapping, right, like education or – I think one of them is maybe management. So that would just be a comment for moving forward. Second, so to clarify, in the tree plan that's in the backup, I think it says that it seems to have a reversal of the percentages that you showed us in this slide, where you say I believe it's 65 percent of the fund going towards purchasing is the plan moving forward, and there to be something toward – so can you clarify, because in the backup, it seemed to be the reverse, the emphasis seemed to be on the planting. Councilmember Armitage, when you say in the backup, what exactly are you referring to? Are you referring to the actual study or the presentation in our backup? The tree plan, I believe it was in the backup. Okay. Maybe it was included in the backup. So I guess – well, I'm trying to find where you're – because you're – it sounds like what you're asking her to do is sort of clear up what you believe is an inconsistency in some document that you're looking at compared with something in the presentation. So I'm trying to understand. Well, yeah, or simply just to answer the question, just to confirm for me, is it true that what is in the slide – and you're welcome to show the slide. You don't have to, but the slide in the presentation, it says – it mentions 65 percent of that fund – of that budget going towards preservation. Is that correct? I just wanted to confirm. Property purchase. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Dana. Sorry. I said it's property purchase, and then 30 percent planting, and then 5 percent education and outreach. Okay. Okay. Good. Just wanted to – just wanted to make sure. Okay. The slide that was presented showed how the tree fund had been spent over the last five years, including to date now. The recommendations in the master plan are actually 60 percent tree planting, 35 percent property purchase, and 5 percent education and outreach. Okay. So thank you. Thank you, Heywood. So that answers my question and explains my confusion. I would like to see – so it's not a contradiction, then, in terms of just the matter of fact as you presented it, but for me, it's a contradiction in values. I feel like what is presented in our master plan going forward should more accurately reflect my sense of a community preference of preservation over planting. So that would be my recommendation to flip those, to reverse those, which I guess just by coincidence would then, based on what you're saying, Heywood, which makes sense, would make it look like the way the distribution has occurred over the past, did you say five years? Yes. Okay. Yeah. All right. Any other questions? Because that's a policy discussion that we're – we can have later on, but we're not going to decide that today. But now we're talking about the master plan, right? So this is my recommendation for the master plan, but I would like to see it going forward. If we hear any – let's take these one at a time. Is there anybody that's wanting to keep the master – I mean, I'm going to say I'm going to go with the master plan as it's been presented in that – with those particular issues and those particular percentages, and Council Member Armitage feels differently. She's proposed something different. Is there any discussion on wanting to change that in the master plan? Council Member Meltzer. Thank you. I'm inclined to move that out based on a couple of things. One is the community preference, but I don't know if that should necessarily be the most important thing. We're talking about something where the sort of natural science ought to inform us. But it sounded like the community preference wasn't anything like 60 to 35 for planting versus property purchase, so not quite sure where that comes from. But then, from the point of view of the kind of natural science, I want to put out a point of view and ask for response. Okay. Council Member Meltzer, let me – I just want to make sure I understand what Council Member Armitage has requested. So Council Member Armitage, could you articulate very quickly, very succinctly, what it is that you're saying you want the percentages to be on the classifications? Well, I think that they should be reversed. Okay, when you say "reversed," give me a specific percentage with a specific classification. Yeah, if you – you may want to look at page 48. Okay, let's – okay, we can't – The campuses on preservation and – meaning producing property. Okay, Council Member Armitage, let me – apparently, Council Member Meltzer has an actual page reference to what we're talking about, so Council Member Meltzer, go ahead. Yeah, you may want to refer for this discussion to page 48 of the master plan itself. Okay. It's goal five. Okay. And that's where it shows 60% tree planting, 35% property purchase, and then 5% education/outreach. So what I took Council Member Armitage's comment to mean is that instead of 60/35 planting to purchase, it would be the opposite. Exactly. Okay. So it would be the opposite meaning? Give me – It's meaning 60 property purchase, 35 tree planting. Okay. So – Is that what you're referring to, Council Member Armitage? Is that correct? That is exactly what I was referring to. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you, Council Member Meltzer, for that assistance. Go ahead. Sure. So, you know, I'm very open to that point of view, but I'd like a little dialogue about that. You know, I went through a bit of a transition in my own point of view working on committee on the environment, and when the tree plan – tree ordinance first came before us, my initial reaction was, well, you know, if you preserve, we already have those trees. Planting creates more. But what I came to understand was it's helpful to look at it from the point of view of a future date when all the land that's zoned is developed as it can be. So when you preserve, you're preserving the trees that would otherwise have gotten cut in the course of development. And the further when you preserve, you've got trees that are already, you know, naturally sustaining, that don't have to necessarily get watered and, you know, might have a much higher survival rate. So I'd be interested to hear, you know, from Haywood and our guests, is that accurate? You know, is that an accurate perception? And if so, you know, wouldn't that incline you to recommend more property purchase versus planting? So, well, when considering the planting versus property purchase and how to do that split, as I mentioned earlier, we also considered that the 30% true preservation that's required with new development and the actual source of those fundings was based on mitigating trees that were not able to be replanted on that site. So that's why we, you know, had a higher percentage toward tree planting. Also, when you look at getting trees in the areas where they do the most, where they provide the most benefits as far as helping reducing pollution and reducing the urban heat island damage, you're looking at having trees that are planted along streets near paved areas. So that's another reason why I was skewed a little bit more towards planting. Also, planting of trees is really the only way that you're going to significantly increase tree canopy. Natural regeneration, you're not going to see the gains in tree canopy percentage that you would as if you're planting trees. I appreciate that thoughtful response. Okay. All right. So anyone else on this particular request to reverse on page 48A and B? Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. So I think those are really good points that have been made about the, you know, the relative merits of planting versus preservation, but the thing that I'm kind of struck by, and the reason why I'm okay with the percentages as they are, is that your purchasing power is different. The amount of money you can spend on new plantings is very different from the amount of money that you can spend and how far your dollars are going to go with purchasing. We also have more, I'll put it this way, there's been a lot of talk about bond money that's yet to be spent from previous bond packages. We have different sources of funding in different city departments, different ways of looking at land purchase. We're going to talk about some land purchase later this meeting. And there are different ways to go about preservation than solely the tree fund. The tree fund is not the only way that we can go about preservation. If we want to put more emphasis on preservation of what exists, I think we look at the tree code like we already talked about a little bit, I think we look at some of the other things that we do to encourage people to do preservation in their residential homes, where they're less regulated by some of the development code stuff. And at the same time, one of the things that Haywood just said that might be maybe getting missed out there is trees naturally age and die. So if we put all of our eggs in the preservation basket and not enough eggs in the replanting basket, to Paul's point, we're not really adding on to, in the grand scheme of things, not really adding on to the canopy. So what we're doing by putting a little bit more emphasis on spending this money for planting to replace trees that are being taken off out of our canopy, really what we're doing is building more canopy that we'll realize a little bit later on, kind of trying to get ahead of that curve a little bit. Ms. Briggs. I am in the favor of increasing the percentage for purchase property and preservation because this goal is to promote tree preservation and protection. It's not to increase the canopy. So it's under which goal it is. And so to enhance goal number five, to promote tree preservation and protection, it would make sense that we want to purchase older trees and property purchases rather than plant little trees. The 60% tree planting just seems a little bit heavy-ended to reach the goal of five, which I think we're trying to focus on. Okay. So what's your proposal? My proposal is to make property purchase number one and tree planting number two, and then figure out the percentages. That's what I'm asking you. You said you would rather place more percentages in the, I mean, we've got a recommendation on the table or propose on the table to make tree planting 35% and 60% property purchase. It seems like Council Member Armitage is the one that proposed that, Council Member Meltzer, I couldn't really get it sure. Okay. All right. Thank you. And so now you're saying you sort of agree with it generally, but you may not agree with the numbers that are proposed. So I'm saying if you have some numbers, that's fine. If you don't, that's okay too. Just wanting to see if you have some numbers that you are willing to put out there. Well, if the proposition right now is just to switch them, then I will be in favor of that because I don't have any percentages to my knowledge that I could just throw out there. Okay. All right. So before we continue this, I just want to see what the temperature of the council is for this change. If there's four that want to make the change, then this discussion pretty much can move forward. And if there's four that don't want to make the change, this conversation can pretty much move forward. So it seems like we've got two for changing those percentages pursuant to council member Armitage's proposal, and that would be council member Briggs and council member Melser are still undecided. Council member Davis, you had spoken and so I'm just gauging your thoughts on this. If you had to say direction, if you could help me with that, that'd be great. Sure. Let me see if I can be a little more helpful in my comments. I take council member Briggs point that this is a preservation item that makes a lot of sense to me. At the same time, the percentages that we're talking about, and the reason why these are guidelines is land purchases are going to have a whole lot more to do with what's available, what the market prices are. I mean, to say that a percentage of this fund is going to be just locked down for purchase versus replanting. I mean, that's a decision for a future council as they look at each purchase, as they look at the availability of the fund. I mean, for the sake of good communication in this master plan and saying with this plan what we want to say, I'd be fine with just splitting it 50/50. Why start gaming the percentages and, you know, they seem kind of arbitrary to me anyway. Why not just call it 50/50? That's how we intend to use this fund going forward and take up land purchases. Plus 5% education to add into 105? Something like that. 50/50 would be my proposal. I guess for me, I'm not even sure why we have to put a percentage there. I mean, these particular issues are a sort of case-by-case basis. I mean, it does give us, I mean, this is just a policy statement unless we're going to change the ordinance to say you can only do this percentage with this. So when we come up with a purchase agreement that we want to, maybe that goes outside of this, does that mean we can't do it? I think we just need to say that the actions, you know, the tree fund shall be allocated as follows, tree planting, just take the percentages off, you might have 5% for education. So that does give us some money that says, okay, you can't spend it all with no education. So there's no reason to really hamstring us on this, is my thought. So I don't know if I even need a percentage there, but that's just how I see it. Councilmember Briggs? Yeah, I'm fine with that as well, but if we're going to number them, I would like the preservation to be one, tree planting to be two, and then the education. I'm okay with eliminating percentages because we don't know at what point how much tree fund money we're going to get in from developers to spend on trees and how much money we have for the preservation purchases. Sure. Yeah. And you're just switching the letters from A to B to B to A. Okay. Councilmember Armitage and then Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah, so just to comment to that, and I understand that this is just a plan, but for me the percentages are important because at least it's something we can point to, but for me it would be fine just saying, I'd be fine just saying at least 65% towards preservation. My goal is to have something in place in writing that we can point to to say, look, we're spending too much on planting if that turns out to be the case, right? And we need to spend more, here it says we need to spend X percent or at least X percent, so that's why for me having numbers as well as a priority in the plan so that there's a little more teeth to it, although I understand, I acknowledge that there's not all that much teeth planned. Okay. Councilmember Meltzer? So these numbers are fairly arbitrary. I'm going to throw out another set, 55 purchase, 40 planting, five education. And the reason is if you just have them there with no numbers, I kind of bristle at a lot of it going to education as was the past until we purchased that park, because I mean, education is a good thing, but it's not treats. So that's the reason why I would want a number there to say, can't be all that. And I take Councilmember Briggs' point that the goal of goal five is preservation. So purchase should be greater than planting, but it doesn't have to be so far skewed that ties anyone's hands. So that's what I'm saying, 55, 45. We're going to get out of this discussion real quick. So 55, 45, and five, we're spending, 55, 45, and five. 55, 45. 55 for preservation. Yep. 40 for purchase, five for education. Okay. All right. I'm seeing hands, Councilmember Ryan, Mayor Pro Tem, any, I'm seeing already four enough. So if y'all don't want to weigh in, that's fine. So all right. So let's move on from this discussion. It looks like we're changing that to, I saw that Gary Packin had sat down, but that's okay. I didn't know if Gary had a comment on that, but we're going to move on from this. So we'll make those changes. And all right. Any other questions? Real quick, Councilmember Armitage. So you're saying real quick that there were a number of other points in the plan. Okay. But I understand that, but we just spent 20 minutes on percentages. So if you could just, yeah. Thank you. I understand. I understand. Thank you. So the question of soil, IPM, it mentioned something about, we will follow the IPM. I forget exactly what that stands for, but I know it's about the pesticide management or pest control management in the Parks Department. What pesticides we use. What I would like to see is instead of just kind of following that pesticide plan to have, I know that the tree preservation has done some work with Texas A&M to really review our IPM and soil treatment and also in terms of what pesticides we use, but also soil condition and to kind of come up with a plan on that from a tree point of view and to look over the chemicals that we do use. So we ban glyphosate, to look over the chemicals that we do use and to look at the comparative benefits versus detriments to trees. So could you put that in a very succinct proposal recommendation so I can then ask my Councilmembers if they're for that? Yeah, so who would like the Urban Forestry Master Plan to review the IPM possibly in conjunction with Texas A&M or some other experts from a tree point of view and to make recommendations accordingly. Okay, all right, anybody expressing approval or at least assent to that? I mean, we've gone through the IPM I think two or three times. Councilmember Briggs? Yeah, I'm trying to find it, but I recall that it did bring up the IPM in the plan and so I was just trying to find that more. Well, I think what Councilmember Armitage is asking, we have an IPM that already covers how we handle pesticides and things such as that in our parks with our trees and so forth. She's wanting an additional layer of review for trees specifically with some other organization like Texas A&M or something like that. So that seems to be what's on the table. Is there four of us that are, or three others that are wanting to do that? Okay, all right, go ahead Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, and then so the last thing was about tree inventory because that was one of the categories that came up and there has been expressed by at least three of us on council, maybe just so I don't remember, on the question of landmark trees and finding out exactly what we have in terms of landmark trees and just in terms of what we have in terms of a tree census in Denton, it appears to me that there hasn't been anything budgeted for that and I know that what we have done so far is just kind of to reach out to people and to ask, hey, let us know what trees you have. I would be open to looking into how we could either use existing satellite technology or do a more active census instead of just kind of let us know your feedback, to do a citywide tree census, citywide tree inventory and to really commit and even possibly put funding into if necessary, assessing our tree inventory, especially with regard to land. Okay, so could you again put that into a specific proposal that just sounds like you're wanting included in this master plan? Yeah. Is that correct? Yes. Yeah. Some sort of plan for a tree inventory, other than just simply kind of saying tree inventory and having people voluntarily, private property owners just voluntarily share information. Okay. All right. Something more like a census I'm open to. Okay. All right. And anyone speaking in favor of that as well? Council member Meltzer and then council member Briggs. Yeah. Council member Meltzer and then council member Briggs. Paul, are you... I thought you were looking for like... Oh, I thought you had a comment. Okay. No. So forgive me. All right. Council member Briggs, go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I do believe in one of the action plans, it does call for that type of thing for tree identification and a tree committee. And so I would be in favor to make sure that that is... What page are you on, council member Briggs? Well, I'm trying to find it. I know that maintain a tree committee is on goal four. And I could just see a tree committee going over that and reviewing the tree. I'm looking for where it said all of the trees need to be... Dana, are you still on the line? I sure am. That's... Do you know where... Go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah. The inventory is under goal one, efficiently manage the community tree resource, and that's the number one action plan to conduct an inventory of all trees and parks, open space, trails, city facilities, and public rights of way. Yeah. And this is... Yeah. So that is where that is. Okay. And it is just city trees. Right. Okay. All right. So go ahead, council member Briggs. Yeah. And so I believe integrating that as well with the tree committee to insert other trees that they find across the city would be well. I'm just trying to figure out what council member Armitage asked was if that was already in our action plan, if we need to vote on it separately. I think council member Armitage is asking for private inventory of trees on private property and that the city expend funds or some type of satellite imagery to try to figure that. You got to look at specific trees if you're trying to inventory every tree. You can't do it from a satellite photo. So I think that's the main difference is this plan is already calling for an inventory of all city trees. She's asking for an inventory of all trees in the city. Can we get the parks or Haywood to talk about that because I thought that at one time he was discussing a group to do something like that. And if that's already in the process, then I don't see why we can't continue that conversation here. Now, what you're saying is the only thing I'm hearing different is the action plan is saying we're already going to inventory all city trees on parks, trails, rights of way and all those kinds of things. The only difference is there's a request to inventory private trees on private property. So if the if if parks can answer that question, I mean, parks isn't going to be going on private property necessarily. I haven't heard that plan. So if you could just sort of outline and give a brief summary of what what parks is doing in that regard. Yes, sir, this is Drew Huppen, Park Superintendent. Mayor, to your comments that we didn't have a plan to go on private property. We don't have that access to go on everyone's private property. When we did have the public meeting, there were residents that said that, you know, they would help with an organized volunteer group and at least request access to private property owners that would allow either them to go on their property to inventory their trees or inventory the trees themselves. Now we couldn't make anyone, of course, inventory their trees. But so I just wanted to go kind of like where do we go from here with this plan? So we're going to continue to develop a program with our budget needs for tree for city tree inventory, pruning and care plan that will develop a five year plan because we went over that in the draft and in this presentation that we want to maintain our trees every five years. We want to prune and care for our trees in a five year cycle and organize a volunteer group and we want to record all the trees we have as far as city trees as an asset. So we already do that with manholes and water valves. We want to we want to mark those trees as an asset. We've already gone through with all our GIS layers. They're already separated in different, you know, named basins so we can keep an inventory of those trees. We can go through there. We can say, OK, in this section of town, this is the five year cycle that needs to be taken care of. We do an inventory of those trees, really dial in exactly how much it's going to cost per cycle to manage our trees. And we'd also with that volunteer group, you know, we would give residents an opportunity to be a part of a part of the program to where we can really get an outpush and a push to have, you know, our trees taken care of even better. All right. So it sounds like that that seems to be the primary difference. And I don't think I would be in for including in a master plan forcing private property owners to inventory their trees or the city to do it. So I'm not I'm not going to agree that that's not legal, not forcing. What are you asking? What's your proposal? I'm making an attempt, you know, like we do with the census. I mean, you don't have to OK, you don't want to send in your and you don't have to, but just kind of asking and encouraging. Well, I think we've heard that there is a volunteer group out there willing to do that. So we can just continue to interact with them and see if you know how that works moving forward. OK. Any other questions on the master plan? Councilmember Armitage and then I'm going to go to Councilmember Davis because we Councilmember Davis and then we're going to take a break here in five minutes if we're through with this or not. Go ahead. So what Drew just told us was really, really, really helpful. It really helped that last conversation. And that was implementation because a lot of what we've been kind of back and forth thing this afternoon has been less about plan and more about kind of in the weeds on implementation. So if somebody can just real quickly give us a 50,000 foot view of just like Drew just did on that one piece. We're not voting on the plan today. It's a work session on the plan. When the council adopts the master plan, what happens next? How do we move forward? And I think that'll really take a lot of these back and forth questions off the table. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Just basically what's the next step once the council takes action on the plan? What are the next steps after that for staff for implementation? OK. So the overall objectives of having an urban forest master plan is to basically lay the groundwork for building an urban forestry program for the City of Denton where we would look at the management needs of the trees that are under our care, which are mainly trees on public property. So we would set forth with probably a five-year plan to accomplish the goals in this master plan and the master plan. I think there may have been some that allotted more time than that. But that would be our next step is to formulate how we're going to go about accomplishing these objectives. OK. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it, Hayward. Yes, Councilmember Armitage. Yeah. And one more thing that is kind of more of a value statement about trees, and that is about street trees, you know, which was mentioned. And I understand that if you have large, these thriving street trees, that would benefit the environment. You know, but as I see it, planting new street trees, if that's defined, as I stand as trees planted in individually on concrete or in medians, the waste of water and the cost of maintaining those, for me personally, is a situation where the cons outweigh the pros. So I'm not such a fan of putting money into that, planting trees and irrigating them and all the costs and the waste involved in that. I'm curious to know if any other of my colleagues feel that way, and if anyone would be interested in working that value statement somehow into what is said about street trees in our Urban Forestry Master Plan. And I would leave that up to staff, even the wording. Councilmember Melser? Yeah. You know, I have the opposite view of, I don't really know all the costs, but what I am responding to is that planting trees in, you know, linear settings near roadways is one of the few things we can do to improve air quality, and that's an important issue for them. So that's why I'm supportive of that. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other questions on the Tree Master Plan? And it will come before us as an action item, and some of these questions that we've had and changes that we've recommended, those will be made before it comes back to us. Okay. Thank you all very much. Let's take a five-minute break, and then we'll come back, and I'm going to talk with them about the next agenda item, but we'll come back in five minutes. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on June the 9th, 2020. It is 417 p.m. We are on our work session agenda item D3D, receive report, hold a discussion, give staff direction regarding the update of the 2012 Sustainability Plan. So I want to ask the members of the Committee on the Environment. I know you all have seen this a couple of times, but I think one of them was in the midst of COVID, and I want to just see if you guys have, when you saw it, if you felt comfortable with the amount of discussion and things such as that in your meeting, or do you think you would rather see it one more time before coming back to the Council? Councilmember Davis. I'll defer to Keely as the Chair of the Committee if she wants to talk first. Okay. All right. Councilmember Briggs. Well, I have quite a bit of notes and comments here, so I think going back through the Committee would be good so that we could flesh some of these things out, but again, I have, there's two other Committee members here that can speak on how they feel about the final product that has come to us. Okay, and let me just say, this isn't a, and I don't think anybody's going to say that if it goes back, that means it's a criticism of what we're looking at in the presentation. I just, I know we've had some unusual circumstances with meetings and things such as that, so I just want to touch base with you in that regard. Councilmember Davis. So my thoughts are twofold. Partially what you're talking about and what Councilmember Briggs is talking about with the notes. Some of my own notes come from community interaction and some of the questions that I have come from community members. So one thing that's different about this plan as opposed to, say, the master plan we just talked about is that really kicked off pre-COVID. We had a round of in-person meetings, a couple rounds of in-person meetings with the community. There's a lot of ample opportunity for community input. In today's discussion, if this is our only opportunity to have this discussion, I'm going to struggle in these confines to voice everything that I'm hearing from the community. So my suggestion would be not just the Committee on the Environment, but do a little more community outreach on it. That way we're not just, you know, council members trying to field the emails that we're getting and somehow articulate that into a cogent conversation. Okay. And who's the other member on the committee? Oh, Councilmember Meltzer. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, I resonate very much, you know, if I was prepared to do what we had to do, but if you give us the option, yeah, I would like to, you know, to vet it a little more thoroughly and I very much appreciate Councilmember Davis's suggestion to, you know, vet it a little more with the public. Okay. Well, then I think that's what we need to do is go ahead and maybe move this back down to the Environment Committee on the Environment to continue to vet this a little bit more so that you, it sounds like you all have a lot of notes and questions and additional feedback that you want, and I think it'd be more efficient to do it at the subcommittee level than necessarily at the council level because we might miss something. So and Councilmember Armitter? I completely agree with that, and as Councilmember Davis mentioned, public comment, too. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, I'll leave that up to the committee chair and the committee members to determine that. Catherine, I apologize for that, but no, I appreciate that and appreciate the Committee on the Environment's indulgence in that and their recommendations and observations. So thank you all so much for that. We'll move on. Thank you for extending the opportunity to work on it some more seriously. You bet. Okay. Thank you, Councilmember Meltzer. All right. We'll move on then to agenda item 3E, which is receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding DME's proposed electric vehicle charging infrastructure strategy. Good afternoon, Mayor. This is Chris Lutrick with Denny Municipal Electric. I'll be giving a presentation over the EV chargers. We have a brief presentation for you, and we're looking for some guidance. Okay. So this presentation, it kind of got put on hold for COVID. So this presentation was prepared before the pandemic. It has gone to the PUB, but we wanted to make sure that we complied with the sustainability plan, which says develop electric vehicle strategy to address short and long-term infrastructure and charging needs as electric vehicle ownership expands. So as you know, we have some existing Blink charging stations that are around the city. They are starting to fail. They've been out in the field since 2013, and what kicked off this initiative was we need to do something in the near term to remedy those stations, those charging stations that are failing, as well as provide you with some midterm goal and a long-term goal. So our strategy is flexible, and it's interesting, we prepared it before the pandemic, so the pandemic kind of would put that to the test. We'd want to provide public charging in a manner that recovers the cost of service to the ratepayers and encourage charging behavior that will not compromise the distribution grid as EV adoption increases. So we have a three-tier plan, and our fourth bullet point here is just kind of updating you what's on the horizon facing the electric utility industry. So our most urgent need is to modernize our existing charging network. As I said, we have the Blink stations out, so we'd like to update the presently utilized public chargers to a more modern option that allows for improved customer interface and development of the DME network. So what this first phase will entail will be upgrading the existing chargers, and what we're proposing to do is we actually file the grant with a TCEQ for the Texas emission reduction plan, and this grant can fund up to 50% of the total cost. And when some of my staff attended the grant writing introduction, it was noted that the TCEQ is looking for DC fast chargers along interstate corridors, and so we added one of those options to our phase one. Proposing charger upgrades, our present charger locations at the North Lakes Park and the North Branch Library account for 85% of our public charger use. As mentioned, these units are older, and we're not given a lot of detail on who's using them. All we can see is the electricity that's flowed through them. So we're proposing to install dual-port, modern-level two chargers at each of these locations and remove the old chargers at a cost of about $15,600. This could be covered with current budget funds, and we will be seeking 50% of those funds to be recouped from the TURP grants. We'll maintain the current charging bill rate and adjust in future to recover the cost based on usage levels. Just a note, the TCEQ has also been affected by the pandemic. Our applications were submitted on time, and as of now they are still pending. Here's a quick map that shows you our existing locations that we would like to upgrade the chargers. We have North Lakes Park, North Branch Library, South Lakes Park, South Branch Library, and in this table here shows you the estimated cost for the upgrades at each of the locations, as well as the timeline that we would like to get that completed. It should be known that the purchase option on these, we can go through a buy board, a government cooperative, so that will facilitate getting those chargers upgraded if that's the direction of the council. Our POCRUS suggestion, we kind of thought it would be wise to submit this option to the TURP, as it might make them look more favorable on our other applications. So what this is, is our POCRUS page substation off of Interstate 35 and POCRUS page road. We own the land, we have electrical infrastructure in place, so the cost would be minimal to connect the charger, and it would also show off our substation and our public-owned utility to our, the travelers on Interstate 35. The estimated cost of this project is about $75,000, and again, we'd be looking for half of that funding to come from the TURP grant, and either way, we would bring that decision back to the council based on our grant award. Phase two would be more of a near-term, to not commit a lot of our ratepayers' money, we looked for a public-private solution to the EV charging. Charging be range anxiety, I guess, is the exact term, and this came to our attention because it already exists in our community. So as you can see in the graph, the city of Denton has four charging stations, Tesla has four, and there's three non-Tesla charging stations, but what we found is Cinemark has also put in chargers for their customers, embassy suites has chargers, so it seems that some businesses, and again, prior to the COVID, were using the installation of these chargers to entice customers to their business. So what we propose is to join in with these businesses and offer a rebate fund that would cover some of the cost of these chargers to be installed at private locations that would be used for public charging, and the target date on that is 21/22. This slide came up through sustainability, is we were contacted by a company that's going to be rolling out these solar EV charging stations. They're modular, they drop them in existing parking lots, in convenience stores, and other retail locations, and the charging is free, and what they do is they recoup their costs by advertising. So they're rolling these out. I believe they're looking to put about a hundred in the DFW area, and Denton will be getting one of the first ones. Phase three is the expansion of our public charging network, so as the electric vehicle count grows in Denton, I'm sure we'll come across a need for additional charging areas. It could be in public parking lots in the downtown area, neighborhood parks in areas of Denton where you have higher rent populations, and again, the grant funding is ongoing, and as the need arises for these additional charging stations, we would utilize the state grants to help fund those installations, and that target date is 22/23. Another caveat here is we're working with the development community and the city staff, so new city buildings, much like the development services building, we are getting involved to make sure that that facility in the future, if the fleets are electrified, that we'll be able to serve those facilities by installing the infrastructure necessary to provide charging. Finally, phase four is long-term, it's on the horizon, as Elon Musk sells more cars and the EV cost comes down, there's going to be a point where there'll be a breaking point on our grid, so if you can imagine a hot summer day like today in a normal, again, this presentation was pre-COVID, everybody comes home at 5.30 or 6 and plugs their cars in for convenience and goes in their house, at that point, that is when our grid is under the most strain, and if there's enough EV chargers on a certain circuit, it would overload our circuit, so their industry is tackling this in different ways, but try to promote off-peak charging, and there's different options, we'll see how those fare with other utilities, and we'll bring that to the council on a future date, but we just wanted you to make aware that it's a big issue, and we don't have to address it today, but it's on our radar. So in summary, we have a short-term need, we're looking for direction to pursue the replacement of the four chargers at the four locations as mentioned, in the medium term, that would be our rebate structure that we could partner with businesses to get more charging access available, and finally, the Horizon viewpoint we have is just to let you know that there's going to be some changes needed in the future, so that we stay ahead of this EV revolution. So with that, I'll answer any questions. Okay, if we could pull the panel up, please. All right, Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. I really appreciate this conversation and this presentation. I think the plan you've outlined is very reasonable, it doesn't try to do too much too quickly, but it is getting out ahead of the trend that we see in consumers. I mean, you're careful to warn us that some of this is pre-COVID data and the way that people normally behave and the normal traffic patterns that we see, but it's still really valuable. I also like the emphasis on public-private partnerships, I like the timelines that you've laid out, they're very attainable, and then the seeking grant funding. I also really appreciate it when you mentioned that the new development services building downtown, I mean, what an opportunity there as we need more publicly available charging stations. Somebody comes, stops off at the square for dinner one night, they're charging while they're having dinner or seeing a show or whatever it is, that's a great place. Some of our other locations we have now are convenient for certain activities, but unless you're planning on spending a little while at the library, that charging station may not be exactly convenient for your plan, so overall, I think it's a great plan. The only real question I had was on the mobile solution, if they're a mobile advertising platform, are they going to have any problems with our sign code? Is there going to be any kind of additional permitting that they're going to have to go through or are they going to be able to bring their mobile solution into whatever area they've identified as best for them and plop it down with the permission of the business owner? Councilmember Davis, that's how we understood it. They're not a kind of fly-by-night company. They've done a lot of research. We did point them or direct them to our development services to make sure they comply with all DIN development codes, but I think it is a private arrangement, much like some of the convenience stores have TVs that are when you pull up to get your gas at the pump there, they have some sort of display, but we did advise them that they needed to seek approval with development services. Thank you. Yes, sir. Councilmember Armitage, then Councilmember Briggs. I might be in a minority opinion on this. I'll say, first of all, I happen to own an electric car. I love electric cars. My little Nissan LEAF, it's a used one. I appreciate this effort, but thinking about how limited funds are always, especially at this time, I'm thinking about how can we serve the maximum amount of people? While I know that more people are, again, based on pre-COVID data, investing in electric cars and the prices going down, I would be more supportive of applying grant money like this, and it might be too late, so I'm curious to know, and I have a question about the grant and the parameters of that grant, so it might be too late for this, but I would prefer to spend grant money like that on, say, a solar farm or solar array, something like that that could help solar roofs in our city buildings, or in certain areas in some of our most neglected communities that could help to bring people's rates down. I feel a little uncomfortable, but maybe if you could explain to me the parameters of the grant, that might change my mind about that. Was this a grant where you could apply for any kind of energy saving or environmental effort, or was it limited to, did it have to be limited to electric vehicle charging stations? No, it wasn't limited to electric vehicle charging stations, but the way that we applied and this application process is already closed, so the grants were written for this, would be for alternative fuel, so that's how the part of the grant that we were allowed to apply for was an alternative fuel provision in that grant in which electric vehicles are, so I do not believe that this particular grant that we applied for had anything to do with solar generation for powering homes at all. It was strictly for transportation. So that's already been applied for, and can you speak to, so you mentioned that the stations that are in need of improvement, I haven't used those stations myself, so are you hearing reports that they don't charge fast enough, or is it just a matter of shelf life for these charging stations? Could you speak more to that? That is correct. They're not user friendly, so if you do not have a Blink account, which is I think pretty arduous to set up, and you were driving through Denton and you saw a Blink charging station, you cannot utilize that charger, so whereas the charger that we're proposing, you'd be able to pull up and maybe pay with a credit card or some other method that you would not have to be a Blink customer. As far as the shelf life of these units, we've already replaced the displays on some of them. It's very costly, and it's just that the functionality of them has gone downhill. So we were at the point, and what started this whole presentation, this whole thought process, was they're at the point where they're not functional. So those are some of the comments that we've had. So that's why we put those as our near term need, is to get those functional so that our citizens that are charging can continue to utilize those, and with the new platform, we will now have access to the type of car, those cars, as you may know, have your zip code that they're registered to, so there's a lot of data that you can get from the new charging platforms so that we can start to build a database so we can see who's utilizing them, are they local, are they out of town, so that's going to help us drive our EV strategy going forward, because the more data we have, the better we can implement a charging solution. Okay. So thank you. So that, it helps me to know that you've gotten comments also from people who've been using them, that it's not working, that they're not working well, and in that case, I support updating them. I'm wondering if the additional, so that's around 15,000-something for those updates. That is correct. The new part of it is like 75,000. Is there any room in the grant for applying that to say investing in an electric vehicle or something like that, or is it really limited to that specific use as you've applied for it in the grant? Yes, ma'am, and I may not have been clear, there was two projects here. So we applied, actually we had to put in five grants, so the grant is tied to a specific project to a specific location. So we put in four grant applications for the level two chargers at the parks and the libraries, and we also put in an application for that DC fast charger. So that would be a charger where you could charge your car and say 30 minutes or less. It is expensive, and again, this was prior to COVID, and our idea was to maybe entice that grant board to say, "Hey, we're willing to put this in. Maybe they'll help, they'll approve our other grants." So their individual projects, they could all be approved or none of them could be approved. But we're proposing, just to be clear, we're proposing there is a short-term need. The grant funding would be great to help offset some of the cost, but even if we do not receive the grant money for the $15,600, we're still proposing to fund that out of our current budget to get that service back up and running. Okay. Well, thank you. In that case, I approve it, and I appreciate your answers to those questions. I myself am wary about the public-private partnership, but are we committing to that in the grant application? Would that have to go to private-public partnerships? No ma'am, the grant money is specific for public. Okay. All right. So we're going to move on to Council Member Briggs. Council Member Briggs. Hey Chris. Thank you for your presentation. So a couple of comments, and then I have a few questions. One, I just want to say that being on the Dallas Regional Mobility Committee, and I'm sure Council Member Ryan too on the Regional Transportation Council, we talk about electrical infrastructure and making sure that we're prepared for the future as we grow and it becomes more popular. So it is something that we need to discuss and plan for for the future. Do we have data on the current electric ownership in North Texas? I know that when we asked before, I think it was rather high for North Texas on alternative fuel vehicles and electric vehicles. No ma'am, the best numbers I have are roughly 150 vehicles that have a Denton zip code and roughly a thousand that have a Denton County zip code. Okay. So I'm actually pretty excited about partnerships. I would like to throw in DCTA and maybe a conversation with them and they could maybe get a grant through some of theirs to have these charging stations on their lots while people use the train to commute their cars can be charging while they're gone. I'm very in favor of our municipal buildings remodeled and new having them as we increase our fleet. That's part of our sustainability plan and part of our other goals is to increase that electrical fleet and downsize some of our vehicles. Now part of my issue is having the quick charger at the electric substation. Is that the only place that we can think of along I-35 because there's not any retail or restaurants or anything. So we're asking people to pull into a substation and park there for around 30 minutes and just sit there around within the substation. I mean is that what the proposal is. Yes ma'am it is. It's a very attractive substation but I get your point. So when we were filling out out we're trying to keep the cost down. So we looked at areas we wouldn't have to procure any land. It's on city property and a big thing about those DC fast chargers is the electrical infrastructure that you need and being right there at the substation we kept those costs minimal. So we're definitely open to that. Our plan was that's kind of an entry point and coming up from the south on I-35 East that if it was successful and it's something that the council was interested that we'd look at more areas maybe one on the north as you know I-35 on the north side of Denton 380 but that was the idea that came to mind to keep the cost the lowest but I do understand it's not like a retail area that people would park. So my concern is that I know just write down a little bit of ways that Razor Ranch there's some charging stations as well and so a lot of people may bypass that just to go to where the shopping and restaurants are located and then it would look like we don't need them and in essence we do so I just wanted to throw that out there and see if that has been a discussion because it's a concern of mine because I think DC quick chargers are fantastic and I would like to have those you know in in other locations as well. Councilmember Briggs are the chargers you're talking about the Tesla chargers at Razor Ranch? Yeah well there's also chargers in the Walmart parking lot okay thank you. On the ones that we're looking to upgrade at the libraries are the new ones or do they charge any faster at all I mean I know it's a little bit newer technology or is it still the same are they you know destination chargers where it takes you know eight hours to charge? Correct you are correct they're level two chargers so what we've found is the price goes up exponential so the level two all that is is the voltage that that car or the amount of power that that charger is able to put out so we would be replacing these with level two chargers as well as you can imagine that the next step to go to the DC fast charging or a higher level the cost is exponentially goes up so in our terms of trying to keep costs low for a service level that's not really determined at this point because of our lack of data from the blink we tried to make this very modular and very flexible so to least get a service level up back to the community that they had and then start growing from there much like your guidance on the DC chargers where they would need to go can you justify the cost and return recoup the cost to the rate payers by putting in a a fast charger so that is information that we do not currently have and right now we're still kind of at the early point of the EV vehicles but our thought in bringing this to you and staying ahead of it is they're saying pre-COVID that next year that the Nissan electric vehicle would be less expensive than the gasoline powered vehicle so some experts say as you probably know in your committees that that will be the tipping point that will push EV vehicles you know that the sales will explode so that's that's that's kind of our goal it's going to be very flexible we do not want to commit to a lot of money to a lot of infrastructure and then the usage not be there so we're taking it very moderated and a very conservative approach. You know that the charger at the embassy suites is a level two because it seems to charge faster although it looks similar it seems to charge faster than the than the ones that we have on city property. Yes ma'am it is a level two and you're very you're very right so electrical equipment as it gets older it's probably not as efficient it may be the same power level but let's to be non-technical it may just be wore out okay all right I just have one more comment yes go ahead on the mobile parking I think councilmember Davis brought it up as well as far as the permits go I just want to make sure that we're clear on that that you know if that comes in because we know we have plenty of parking in some of those larger lots that there's not going to be a permit issue that they run into so just want to throw that out there okay mayor Pro Tem. Thank you appreciate the presentation and I'm going to pick up kind of at the the quick charge station how much of that property does the city own is it is it just the driveway into would that be to the east to the rail track is that what the city owns basically Mr. Hutz but there is there's a strip of the land that's to the west there on the 35 side has a gas line in it the city actually owns that property but basically it's from the clearing there over to the railroad tracks got it I share a concern but for a different reason mine is a security concern with that being there so but I like the idea I like the area and and I would advocate even though it's going to cost us more if there's a way maybe some I-35 signage and an agreement with the property owner that allows us some sort of drive-through because the residence in sits back there and it's almost impossible to get to so if I'm not I'm advocating but I don't I'm not I don't want to create any extra work but if there's a way to partner with that landowner to say we're going to make your property more valuable by increasing traffic and then the charging stations at the hotel proper I think there's maybe some synergies there and then that shopping center is activated and that quick trip is already one of the most frequented quick trips in the area so there's there's kind of a connectivity there and thinking long-term for what it's worth we're going to work on Mayhill and and all cut-throughs will probably be appreciated as that life gets real complicated around there so that's my only concern everything else I'm all for looks great and look forward to executing the plan support the plan just I that location I even if it cost us more I'd love to look at opportunities to add a second drive or just some sort of path through there in conjunction with that property owner yes sir and thank you okay any other questions I don't really hear any objections to the plan oh we've heard some concerns and comments so we certainly would ask staff to take a look at those and if there's some options that you can bring back that'd be wonderful but really appreciate the forward thinking on this and all the research that you've done in trying to find the best places and the best opportunity to increase and encourage the increase of people to use and to buy electric vehicles so thank you so much Chris I appreciate that alright that will conclude our work session agenda item I will now go ahead and call the executive session we will call the closed session at 4 50 p.m. pursuant to Texas Government Code section 551.071 consultation with attorneys and also pursuant to Texas Government Code section 551.072 deliberating regarding real property mr. city attorney are those the only two that we have I believe is consultation with attorneys and consultation for real property that is correct all right thank you all right so if we could clear the the meeting except for all those essential personnel and take a five-minute break and then lunches or dinner is here at the city hall so let's take a 10-minute break and then we'll come back welcome everybody to this special call meeting of the Denton City Council we are convening directly after our closed session meeting it is June the 9th 2020 it is 8 10 p.m. we do have a quorum so I'll call this meeting to order our first item on the agenda is our consent agenda do I have any count mayor pro tem I move approval of the consent agenda but for items A and F okay councilmember Ryan second all right we have a motion a motion and a second for approval of the consent agenda items except for consent agenda item 1a and 1f which will be taken up as an item for individual consideration directly after this action so I will now poll the council for approval for the consent agenda item say for items a and f councilmember Ryan how say you all right council member mayor pro tem hudspeth all right council member armature yes councilmember Briggs yes councilmember Melzer aye councilmember Davis aye mayor was is an I the consent agenda carries seven zero we will now take up agenda items 1a and 1f as items for individual consideration agenda item 1a is considered adoption of an ordinance of the city of the city of Denton the Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation authorizing the city manager is his destiny to execute an indemnity escrow agreement among in between the Texas municipal power agency a Texas joint powers agency and the cities of Bryan Texas Denton Texas Garland Texas and Greenville Texas and we do have a person wishing to speak on this agenda item and we will take that call after we have staff presentation and comments. Yeah just open it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Good evening mayor council Terry Nolte assistant general manager DME I'm going to talk to you this evening about item a which is the tmpa indemnity escrow agreement. Yes go ahead. Okay. The action we require we're requesting today is to permit the city manager to execute this pro forma agreement. This language was agreed to by the council on September 16th of 2016 the language was agreed to as part of the joint operating agreement section 6.3 of the joint operating agreement specifies that indemnity protections are are part of the agreement and establishes the reserve account of five million dollars. Those indemnity protections are both for members of the tmpa board as well as members of city councils of the participating cities. The fund is currently funded there's no additional funding requested and all the other member cities have executed the agreement. As background the joint operating agreement is an agreement that was executed in 2016 it does the scope of the agreement is to governs the agency operations outside of the power contracts power sales contract the decommissioning of the power plant the disposition of agency assets and matters related to the disposition of dissolution of the agency. Schedule h to the joint ownership agreement is required by section 6.5 of the joa schedule h is the indemnity escrow agreement. The agreement is really just details the mechanics of the indemnity reserve account how that account is specifically administered and run and it does stipulate in the agreement the distribution of excess funds in the reserve account upon the dissolution of tmpa. This is purely an administrative action today it appears to be a bit of an oversight that this was not executed some time ago as all the other cities have executed. With that I'd be glad to answer any questions. Okay let's get the full panel back up there we go. Councilmember Melzer. Yeah thank you for the presentation. Is this related in its timing to potential sale of the assets or it just you know kind of coincidentally comes up while it's. No sir. No sir the in doing some due diligence around our current agreements with tmpa in anticipation of the dissolution of tmpa and potential bifurcation of the transmission system we found that this was a document that was never executed and that's the reason for it. So both our attorneys and tmpa's attorneys identified this as an agreement that we were deficient on. Okay Councilmember Malmertor I believe I saw your hand up. Oh I'm sorry I'm sorry. Yeah I appreciate it. Yeah so are the terms anything different because of that situation or it's just kind of a checking the box thing but the terms are what they sort of were always meant to be. Yes the terms were part of the agreement that was established in 2016 there have been no changes to that and in 2016 there were discussions going on about the potential for the retirement of the facility. Yeah okay thank you. Councilmember Malmertor. Thank you so Councilmember Melzer addressed I think were the primary questions surrounding this. I wanted to pull this item in part for those questions also because I thought members of the public might have some comments on it or questions for staff. Have there been any callers or no? We've got one caller standing by. Okay thanks. All right any other questions for staff? Okay for this item we did have four people making comments I think as I mentioned before there were one there was one in support of the item three against one has requested to speak and that's who we'll be hearing from now. So if the caller could we'll wait on the caller. Caller are you there? Yes I am. Okay if you could state your name and address and when you do your time will begin and you will have four minutes. Okay it's Jennifer Lane Denton Texas 7625. I left the square where Jerry's family was speaking so I'm not as clued in at the moment as I'd like to be. I did hear Councilmember Melzer ask whether or not the terms of 2016 were any different because of the deficiency deficiency in all the signed documents. I don't know if I can ask a question on this but I'm asking whether or not the city has any say on what comes of this Gibbons Creek plant upon sale. You've got some additional time. Is it possible for you to answer that? I don't think that's part of the agenda posting I mean we're talking about an escrow agreement and the questions been asked and I will I told your time so that I'm not taking up your time. The question was asked about that and it was answered that this has really nothing to do with any potential sale or anything having to do with the disposition of the Gibbons Creek plant. It was something that should have been executed four years ago. I see so you all are working on executing a document that was just overlooked. It seems to be the case. Yes it seems to be the case. Okay. Okay I'll just tune back in and is it you know I guess I'll write to you if I need to thanks. Thank you. Okay is there any other callers for this agenda item? Okay thank you. Thank you Ms. Lang for calling in. Agenda item F. Oh I'm sorry I'm way ahead of myself. Sorry about that. I'm still thinking on consent agenda. Thank you Stuart. Yes so any questions for staff or chair would entertain a motion. Council member Armitter. Yes so I just wanted to make a motion to support and to say that you know I empathize with and I'm with you people who have concerns about issues regarding the sale and what's gonna happen. No I'm just saying what's gonna happen to the plant but that because that is not what this issue is before us right now I am I'm fine voting yes. I'm glad I had the opportunity to clear that up so I move approval. Okay good that's what I was that's what I'm gonna ask. Okay clear and then move approval. Sure okay we have a motion for agenda item 1A. Do we have a second? Council member Meltzer. Yeah I'll second. All right so we have a motion to second for 1A. Council member Armitter has say you. Yes. Council member Meltzer. I just want to point out that for all these ordinances when it's recorded terms are aye and nay. That's why I say aye. Okay all right thank you. So I'm sorry I didn't get your answer. Aye. Okay all right thank you. Council member Davis. Aye. Council member Briggs. Yes. Council member Ryan. Aye. Council member Husbeth. I mean Mayor Pro Tem Husbeth. Sorry Mayor Pro Tem. Aye. Mayor Watz is an aye. Is there anybody I missed? I don't believe so. Motion carries 7-0. We'll move on to agenda item 1F which is consider adoption of a resolution of the city of of the city council of the city of Denton in support of the original Denton district's application for the arts respond cultural district project. I believe council member Meltzer did you pull this? Yes I did I would just like the public to see a presentation on it. Okay great all right. So we'll now see the have the presentation from staff on agenda item 1F. So is the presentation a phone presentation? Oh here here we go I'm sorry you're on mute you're on you're on mute Jessica. Sorry we're having technical difficulties my mouse disappeared. Okay. Working now. Good evening mayor and council members. Jessica Rogers director of economic development. I do have a very brief presentation just a high level overview. I'll note that in your backup you do have the draft letter of support from the public art committee as well as the draft narrative. The reason that the full application isn't in the backup is that it's an online application and the rest is sort of the background information and and details addresses phone numbers and things like that. So I'll just be going over an overview of the proposal. So the objective for today is to provide a brief overview of the district's proposed application to the arts respond cultural district project grant program. This is a cultural district grant that is available through the Texas commission on the arts. The city of Denton is a eligible applicant because in September 2019 we received our state designated cultural district for the original Denton district and this grant can be used for five purposes all to promote cultural tourism. Our particular proposal is in the enhancement enhancements to the cultural district and grants can range from $3,000 to $250,000 but they cannot exceed 50% of the project budget. The online application process is very very simple and easy but it is due June 15th which is why we are in front of you today and it does require a letter of support from what's called a CDME or the cultural district management entity council designated the public art committee as the CDME for the city of Denton. So the project proposal is to create a signature public art piece in a featured location within the district that honors the Denton women's interracial fellowship and the values of community and understanding. And I will note that throughout the documents there is reference to both the Denton women's interracial fellowship and the Denton Christian women's interracial fellowship. I'm taking the lead and following Lenny McAdams a member of the DWIF who referred to it as the DWIF in the DRC. So that's how we're going to refer to it throughout the proposal. Just to kind of give you a quick timeline of how of how we're here back in January and ISR was prepared for council regarding the background of the fellowship. In January council member Meltzer represented this project in the council request section and council's direction was to submit the project to the public art committee. On March 5th the public art committee accepted the monument as a project but unfortunately there was no funding available at that time and so they added the project to the future projects list. On May 1st the TCA grant application was released and staff reviewed all of the available projects that were that could be placed in the inside of the district itself as that's one of the requirements of the grant and the monument project was the primary project that could be submitted that was on their work plan. So on June 4th the public art committee held their first remote meeting and reviewed the project proposal and recommended approval to the city council. So here's a few details about the proposal. The project narrative included in your background materials includes details of the fellowship's history as well as a description of the goal to create a public art piece or monument to honor the fellowship and their lasting impact in Denton. Additional information and that's in the online application includes the project budget which I'll cover just very briefly on a slide and information about the district itself and the organization's budget in our case that's the city of Denton's budget. The public art committee is in ongoing discussions about possible locations noted on the map that you see on your screen. Those include Fredmore Park, the American Legion Senior Center, City Hall Courtyard, Quaker Town Park and the Industrial Street Park. The comments that we received from the public art committee was that they wanted it to be in a prominent place where visitors could see it. Here's a very quick project timeline. One of the requirements of the grant is the project must be completed by August 2021 and I forgive me I caught this in the public art committee and didn't get it corrected. I'm not going to repeat 2020 as you see on your screen by January it's supposed to be 2021 so I apologize for that but the goal would be to have it completed in early August 2021. The estimated project budget for the grant is $80,000 that's based off of a similar project that we're doing at the Martin Luther King Junior Rec Center that came in about the same which is a large monument there and so we are requesting $40,000 which is the maximum we could request for this project given the $80,000 budget since it has to be a one-to-one match requirement. So to meet that the public art committee would actually have to commit the remainder of their hot funds from this current fiscal year as well as their most likely all of their hot funds from the next fiscal year which would reduce their ability to do other projects but they believe in this project and see that as a really positive investment in the community. One note is that the TCA could choose to award the grant at a lower amount. The grant total is actually based on the scoring and so if a lower amount was awarded if less than $40,000 was awarded the gap would have to be made up for the remainder of the $80,000 budget. So at this time we're seeking council approval of a resolution to submit an application to the TCA for the grant as well as submit a letter of support on behalf of the public art committee for the project and the public art committee recommended approval eight to zero. And that is it. Okay council member Briggs. I'd like to thank Councilmember Metzler for bringing this to us in a one-minute pitch. It was it is a fantastic idea and I'd like to move approval. All right thank you. Councilmember Metzler. Couple of questions if I may. Sure. Would there potentially be an opportunity for members of the public to contribute to the monument? So if ever needed. I discussed this briefly with the public art committee and again with our legal staff today. There are some complications in terms of fundraising but it's not I don't know how to say this. There is a possibility that we could accept donations but there's more complications in terms of true fundraising and so we're still looking at the legal requirements of that. So you could take it but you can't ask for it. Something like that. That's that's kind of where we are right now generally but we are working with the legal staff to get a more clear path forward on that. Okay I look forward to hearing more about that and then you know we have a little bit of background. I first heard this idea when it was proposed by Phyllis Minton at the public art committee and I immediately stole it and at that time I was serving on the county Confederate monument committee and I proposed in that committee that the monument Confederate monument could be moved and that this would be a great updating of the story of what Denton's values are about you know working together to make a you know more fair society. That's a wonderful unique Denton story and I noticed that there's no specific location within the cultural district and I just I guess I'm really just pointing out that might be a difficult negotiation but I hear there might be an opening soon on the square. Okay any other comments? All right okay Councilmember Armitage. So a question about the funding just to clarify so the funding from the couple of sources for this are both funding sources that are reserved either for the for the arts or for the public art committee specifically is that right? Yes so the forty thousand dollars that the city is contributing is based off of the allocation that the public art committee gets for the public art policy and the hot funds policy they receive. I want to say I'm going to get the number wrong but it's around two percent of hot funds go directly to to public art and so they have an allocation in this current year and they'll be requesting another allocation in the next year so as the hot fund applications come out hopefully soon we'll be making that request and those funds would be directed towards this project. Thank you and the reason why I asked I wanted to point that out for the public for anyone listening you know we are in very hard economic times right now and arts are always important and this is money that has been put aside for the arts so I just want to say that I strongly support it and if any of the women behind this incredible heroic group are listening I want to thank you because this really uncanny timing of the the county's decision you finally moved the confederate monument off the square could not come at a better time I feel that a place has been cleared finally and in my personal view Denton has been made a better place that is worthy. Are we still on posting? Yeah I don't I don't I don't think so. I actually I believe we are so thank you thank you for your work. Councilmember Armitage I appreciate we've had a okay Mayor Pro Tem. Quick question Jessica you you raise a good point on the future funding is is is there anything we need to do paperwork wise to make that a reality so for example if the if the committee changed and someone or the vote changed do we need something that allows this to move forward even though I don't anticipate the vote changing but you're almost encumbering future funds for a committee you know a year in advance and I just don't know how that works do we need any additional paperwork to make that stand? So we are sort of encumbering future funds except for that the public we set aside a specific percentage of hot funds specifically for public art so they do make an application and their application to the hot fund committee may be in excess of that designation but we do set aside a percent and so when that's brought forward to the hot committee it's usually in that sometimes less than the kind of percent that we allow so we fully accept expect to be able to make that submission and make that request of the hot fund committee. No no I'm tracking with you but would you you you understand what I'm saying and as long as it makes it as long as you think it it holds to scrutiny then I'm good with that if if it doesn't let's fix the paperwork so that it it's you know and get the right paperwork employee place it says hey this year we're not going to take applications whatever that is so let's just make it above board. No absolutely like I said it's within the percentage that we would expect to receive with the with the current policy. Okay so we have a motion in a second any other questions or discussion? All right Council Member Briggs I say you. Yes. Council Member Meltzer. Aye. Council Member Davis. Aye. Council Member Ryan. Aye. Council Member Armitter. Yes because women say yes men say aye. Mayor Pro Tem. Aye. Council Member Davis did I get you I think did I get you I did okay. Mayor is an aye that carries seven zero and for this item there are no public comments submitted online prior to the meeting we also did not have anyone from the public call in to register positions or to speak on the item. Thank you okay now we're moving on to items for individual consideration. Agenda item 2A is consider approval of a resolution of support for the mayor's commitment to reviewing use of force policies engaging the community in such review by including diverse input reporting the findings of the review of the committee and seeking feedback and for reforming use of force policies creating an ad hoc use of force review committee confirming the charge for the committee and declaring an effective excuse me effective date. Staff do we have a presentation on that or just a short presentation or what? Do not have a presentation prepared however I can review the slides that we went over during the work session if Council would like. Why don't we just do that real quickly yes. Okay. One second. I apologize I I don't want to apologize I didn't think I I think I said I'm not sure about that but yeah she'll pull Councilmember Briggs did you have a comment while she's pulling up that staff presentation? Yes I was just wondering if there were people that have called in for this item. Yes I think yes we have some yes and we'll take those here momentarily. So the item before council is a resolution to consider supporting Mayor Watts's proposed next steps to join the commit to action initiative as well as form a citizen ad hoc committee for use of force. So the commit to action is a nationwide initiative that is led by former President Obama and my brother's Keeper Keepers Alliance. It is calling upon mayors to take action locally to review police use of force policies engage their communities by including a diverse range of input experiences and stories in that review and then reporting those findings to the community and seeking feedback and then using that report and recommendations to reform a community's police police use of force policies. In line with that pledge and that initiative is the thought to take immediate action to engage the community and form an ad hoc committee to review our police use of force policies. So this resolution would charge the committee to review research and gather community input and then establish clear findings conclusions and recommendations regarding use of force policies and trainings for the Denton Police Department. City staff would be available to provide administrative and technical assistance as needed to the ad hoc committee. The slide here shows the proposed makeup of the ad hoc committee by Mayor Watts and includes a number of diverse stakeholders and community members. So listed on the screen are some of the groups that would be invited to participate as well as some of the names for those community members that have been contacted by Mayor Watts and have confirmed that they would like to participate on this committee and so we went through these during the work session further but they are listed on your screen for your review. In addition to these community members there would be a few ex officio members including Chief Dixon, the police accreditation and compliance manager with the Denton Police Department Dr. Richard Williams, City Manager Highland, Deputy City Attorney Mike Cronig and City Council Member Jesse Davis. So the committee would be charged to develop a report to the Mayor and City Council by September 15th and that is in line with the 90 day goal that is included in the commit to action initiative to take those steps four steps as outlined and have a report within 90 days. So the resolution for consideration is to affirm City Council support for the Mayor to sign the City of Denton on to that initiative and then immediately take actions to form the Citizen Ad Hoc Use of Force Committee. And that is the end of the presentation. Okay thank you. Okay any questions before we take public comment from my colleagues Council Member Meltzer. First I'll comment that I appreciate this speed with which the Mayor has pulled this together and I understand that that's part of responding to the timetable of the initiative. So it's a little unusual in that ordinarily you know there's more participation in creating the list. I think it is an outstanding list. I would ask well first of all let me also acknowledge that Mr. Mayor that you've been very good about adding people as sort of categories of representation that have been suggested to you. Would you support the idea that there ought to be a kind of liaison ship relationship between the member of the committee speaking for persons with disabilities between that person and the committee on persons with disabilities so they can kind of share input? Of course I think as with any of these committee members if they are active in a particular stakeholder group in the community that I would fully expect them to engage that stakeholder group in providing input, getting input, getting stories as the charge describes. So absolutely I mean this is this committee is simply also its primary objective is to get community input and to provide community feedback and to get community feedback. So I would fully expect that to to occur. Yes sir. Great thank you. You bet. Anyone else? Yeah yeah Councilmember Briggs. So does this will this committee be will they have open meetings with agendas and minutes? That I suspect so. We're going to leave the policies and procedures up to the committee itself to develop those especially being that they might have to meet with Zoom. In the Zoom platform or some other digital platform of course the city has pledged to provide technical and administrative assistance so when they do have meetings where they they're soliciting public input and they may solicit public input on each and every meeting I certainly am going to leave that up to the discretion of the committee. Then the city will be able to assist them in doing that just as we're doing that here tonight because we do have some callers that are queued up for this particular item. And I want to echo what I echoed in the last work session Councilmember Meltzer when you brought that up. Yes I do understand the atypical approach to this. I do. I think it was spurred by the the emotions and the passion for reform and then as the Mayor's Pledge became more publicized it's been around for a while I believe but I began to see many many emails sign the Mayor's Pledge and as I reviewed it and as I began to look at it I thought this would be a great opportunity to quickly take a look at the things that are really creating the the fear the the the passion here and that is police brutality and racism. And so therefore that's why I put this committee together and I'm asking the council for support. As I said before I understand if some council members are uncomfortable with that and decide to vote no against that I certainly understand that I understand if there's community members people in our community who feel that same way I totally understand that. In fact we've gotten up to this point we had 25 people make comments on our online form 14 in support and 11 against and additionally there was one person that called in on the 349-7800 is one again. So there's obviously many ways that this could be done than this process but I felt and for expediency and to really address the concerns of the community head on this is what I put before this council in the community. So I understand and will certainly expect a respect whatever decision is made tonight. All right any other comments or questions Council Member Meltzer? And just an item that I spoke about in work session but I'll make it the form of a question as building on an observation from Council Member Armitage would you encourage the committee to give a full hearing and a presentation to to the Black Lives Matter movement to just hear that case fully as input to their deliberations? Of course of course I would expect that not only would I expect that but we've got five or six organizations who still have people to nominate. So it wouldn't surprise me if one of those nominations met that need. So that was part of it is we still have from the colleges down to the independent school district to the NAACP and to LULAC to Denton County MHMR. So we still have an opportunity for almost half of the committee to be those selected by organizations in our city who really are at the grassroots of many of these type of issues our colleges dealing with student life and student fears and and things such as that that occur on campuses and to their students. So absolutely I would expect that and it'd probably be more than one. It might be more than one meeting. I mean this is a very short short duration. This is a 90-day committee and that's why I agreed to do the mayor's pledge because I think it's it's more than just a worthy goal. It's absolutely what's required and needed at this time and it's not something that's going to linger and it's not something that's going to drag out as we all know sometimes how a government bureaucracy tends tends to do that and the chief expressed his support for that as well today during the work session. So I fully expect the committee to acquire all the input they need from all the stakeholder groups in our community from Black Lives Matter and to get the information they need to bring recommendations to this council. This is a committee for our community and I think everybody that I've talked to has been very passionate and willing to serve on this committee and I believe that they will do all that they can to reflect the views and values of our community. Thanks. All right we'll go ahead then and start the public process public input and we'll wait for the first caller. Hello caller could you identify yourself please and and once you do and state your name and address your time will begin and you have four minutes you are on with the Denton City Council for our public portion input of our agenda item. Yes sir my name is Jacqueline Cox Lawson I reside at 701 Winswept Court Denton Texas 76209. As a black woman of a black son and a black husband it frightens me it saddens me and it angers me. Today more so than ever this day and age that this racism and justice that's going on daily I think about my husband and my son not making it home at the end of the day not because of any health issues or traffic wrecks or anything like that but it's because of the color of their skin being stopped for tail lights out maybe even running a stop sign instead of an a citation just being issued no now we're being detained and use of excessive force comes in. Now this is where I think reform needs to happen reform meaning improvement or amending what's unsatisfactory and sometimes corrupt. Coco's need to be banned use of uncessive excuse me unnecessary for if you already handcuffed someone why tase them why pepper spray them why place your knee on their neck why shoot them above the waist I mean instead of shooting them in the leg they can't run without their legs if you say they're trying to get away or you're protecting yourself cause they running for you why shoot them in the shoot them in the leg if you need to or shoot them in the hand where that weapon is if there's even a weapon present why not fire warning shot exhaust all means before killing us police must be held accountable for their actions what do you mean well I mean suspended without pay until further notice when you put someone on administrative leave that's like putting them on a vacation you killed somebody you hurt somebody so no there needs to be charges brought against them they need to be in jail and most of all their credentials need to be taken away so they can't go and work in law enforcement in any other town or city as an officer of the law because there are too many good officers out there and then you have these bad officers making the good officers look just as bad when I know for a fact that they're not all bad I know that for a fact so what needs to happen is those officers individually need to look in the mirror and just say do I have the integrity mean the honesty and the moral principles do I have the integrity to be an officer not do I want to be an officer we all want to be a lot of things but do you have the integrity to be an officer of the law only they can answer that question we can't answer it for them listen all black men aren't evil and all black men aren't those my son is a very educated black man he has served on the citizens advisory committee here in denton give scholarships away to all four high schools here in denton my son life matters black lives matter our country is spiraling out of control george lord death has got to be the turning point of a change i can't breathe and thank you all for your time thank you very much uh councilmember armater ma'am are you still there on the line yes sir i'm still here okay uh we have a i believe a question from councilmember armater so thank you so much for your words um and uh it's not up to me uh to make up the committee i you know i don't know if there's um you know how how much flexibility there is in terms of use on the committee but as far as i'm concerned it is it is voices like yours um who have uh real like ideas about how to really change not just in policy but with accountability um that that uh legislators need to hear from right now i'm wondering if if you would want to speak to uh you know what what you would like to see in terms of accountability for uh say even in a non-use of force scenario uh such as like racial profiling for instance do you see a continuum between racial profiling situations where there's no physical harm and a use of force scenario councilmember armater i appreciate your question if we could limit it to the agenda item of the use of force that would that would that would be helpful if you would mind doing that thank you okay okay so never mind that question that just if you could just speak speak to the issue uh of accountability uh do you see not do you see accountability not happening now correct yeah correct yes ma'am and that's what i was saying there needs to be accountability i mean we shouldn't have to die and then someone is still on a leave of absence excuse me administrative leave of absence so you sit at home basically on vacation and when will this go to court you never know they may be on this administrative leave for a whole six months to a year well you're getting paid you're getting paid and then nine times out of ten have the charges even been brought up on you i mean things need to happen if they if we give you if we meaning the community give you videotape of something that happened i'm not understanding what takes so long and i know there's a process but what takes so long to get um charges brought up you know what i'm saying and i and i have to say this being a black woman and what i've seen we have to be we have to do something different because had the had it be the scenario been switched around and my son done something i already know i gotta come to the jail have to get him because it's not gonna be let's just see and wait what happened before the video and invest that in the other what everybody have to say no there has to be accountability on the officer's part and that officer has to have that integrity on the inside to say i have to tell the truth because i took an oath to protect and serve okay thank you thank you thank you very much yep all right our next caller we'll wait for the next caller to come on caller if you'll state your name and address uh your time will begin you're on with the denton city council and the public portion of our agenda item hi my name is george fairy i'm sorry george could you uh yeah i was hearing the the meeting in the background on a delay so i turned it off yeah okay thank you hi my name is george fairy 2932 stockton street good evening mayor and city council members i address you today in the hopes that you can recognize we have bigger issues than quote use of force policies end quote apparently the mayor has decided what the right response to hundreds of years of white supremacy and police brutality should be under the guise of haste his first step was not to go out and speak with the public he seemingly chose not to ask leaders of these movements what they wanted to see i wonder did he read or consider the demands of local organizations run by bipoc black indigenous people of color like the ones from debt for diversity that many of us sent today mayor watts did you go to the protests and the sit-ins to gain a better understanding of why they are there and what they want or was your primary and seemingly so asked to pray with the group of male preachers for a photo op after issuing a problematic at best curfew i'm asking you all to consider that you may be centering your feelings just a little bit by making this solely a police reform problem some council members i see before me are responding to constituents today by saying the denton tv is underfunded in a city that approved a 37 million dollar budget that averages out to about 250 dollars a person for the population of 142 173 detonates comparatively we see less than one million given to community development with grant funding that amounts to a comparatively small 1.7 million which is less than five percent of that indeed pd allocation it takes an officer six to nine months to become a person with a badge and a gun it takes a licensed clinical social worker six years to obtain two degrees one free internship that lasts a year two years of supervised training while being employed full-time passing state board exam and training each and every year to stay licensed in the state of texas why is it we are not asking different questions to solve this problem by the time the ad hoc committee finishes doing your work the budget will already be decided it is time to divest money from our local law enforcement in an attempt to write grave miscarriages of justice that occur in our city and across the country with 36 million dollars in one year we can end homelessness with an estimated 320 people experiencing homelessness in our city we can establish safe and affordable housing program we can create staff and fund crisis intervention teams that save lives instead of end them we can have a community center needed now more than ever after covid-19 that offers low cost and free child care meals counseling job placement increased skills job certifications to help the unemployed we can provide legal and medical care to those without we can put money into nonprofits and programs like giving hope incorporated and the barrier funds to ensure communities have money to protect housing stability the list goes on and on council members we can establish sentence resilience by ensuring that anyone can access more resources throughout our city and that we value all citizens and we do so by strengthening these partnerships not flashing their budget the real history of our country has taught us that doing what is right is never popular injustices have noticeably continued when the response is a change in the wording the policy without addressing and solving the root of the issue everyone deserves to be safe in our city borders we've heard how that has not been the case systemically across the board in this town we need a reapportioned budget to encourage a better safer more prosperous dentin i call on you our city council members to invest in our community i call on you mayor watt to invest in your constituents do your job do the work thank you okay thank you thank you mr fairy all right our next caller is jennifer lane hello miss miss lane are you there yes yes i'm here okay uh you'll state your name you've already stated your address your time will begin you have four minutes thank you very much yes i wrote earlier today i agree very much with what i have heard the first two callers say at least the part that i have heard so far in particular um the reallocation of resources however i'd like to address at this point the creation of this committee i believe first of all i guess you have mentioned that there are still places to be filled and those can be filled by constituent groups and um uh persons who have interest in serving i would however say that i noticed immediately that there were not enough young people on this committee and that i urge you strongly to let the committee choose its own chair do not choose the chair of the committee for the committee let the committee choose its own chair if at all possible it would be my hope and it's not my business but it would still be my hope that the committee would choose a woman especially when i heard the first speaker speak i felt that more strongly than ever because the greatest sufferers of this entire situation for so many years have been the mothers of those killed and i would like to hear um that i would like to hear that a committee would be formed that could be choosing its own membership its own chair and more input from the other council members i really appreciate what you've done so far i'm glad that half of it's been suggested and half of it is open i hope you will keep it open until you are certain that the members of the community the members of the constituent group are very happy with the members of the committee and that enough young voices are on there enough i know i did see wonderful women on there wonderful men but please let the committee choose its own chair okay yeah i don't believe in the uh and i'll let me stop your time just so that i don't believe the resolution is calling for me to pick the chair i believe it's it's open if i'm not i think i looked at it uh so yeah what i saw was the list of membership and that you had chosen john bain who's a wonderful man but i believe the committee should choose its own chair sure that's and that's fine i'm certainly i'm that i'm real okay with that that's not an issue and i would i would move to the younger uh membership as quickly as possible even perhaps some of the people that you thought of who are wonderful people they might even recommend younger members at this point those who are really experiencing it thank you all right okay thank you very much miss lane okay we've got another caller we'll wait till the caller comes on uh caller you're on with the dent city council and the public uh comment portion of our agenda item once you state your name and address so your time will begin and you will have four minutes all right if you could uh caller i think i hear your the radio or the tv on in the background if you could uh turn that down then we'll have we won't have a delay yes sir it was the uh the meeting live stream in the background i turned it down for you okay yes go ahead and uh once you state your name i'll start your time okay perfect uh my name is hunter harwood uh i live at 808 zelda drive um so ladies and gentlemen of the council uh i'm here today speaking uh on behalf of black lives matter and resistance assistance to community-led organizations that are dedicated to working together with our local public representatives to better our community and make the streets safer for everyone i truly believe that each of you care about this beautiful and diverse community as much as we do i believe that each of you is presented now with what will undoubtedly be the most important decision of your political careers you have the chance now to make decisions that will impact race relations in our community for generations to come we recently voted to remove the abominable confederate statue on the square and while that is tremendous progress it cannot stop there as a society we need to come to an agreement as to what the role of the police should be as we move forward it is no secret that law enforcement has a long and troubling history with people of color in this country more recently mandatory minimum sentencing for substance abuse and broken windows policing have continued this cycle of violence into the modern era people of color are exhausted so we've been in the streets fighting and i am thrilled that we've got your attention but we want to be clear police kneeling in the streets for photo ops is a useless and offensive waste of time this does nothing to materially affect the way that people of color feel disenfranchised by the state and its policing methods our demands are simple as a collective we are demanding accountability as a collective we are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that no unarmed man or woman is killed unfairly in an avoidable situation as a collective we are demanding the fair treatment of all humans eight can't wait is a good ethical starting point for this discussion but i genuinely think that it does not do enough the bans on chokeholds and shooting into moving vehicles are intuitive and will be effective but it lays out nothing about the specifics of de-escalation training a majority of the language in the other planks is vague and seemingly unenforceable we ought not tolerate these kinds of piecemeal reforms the purpose of policing is to reduce crime and keep the whole community safe and in that regard it has failed it is time to start having a discussion about the roots of crime poverty lack of education substance abuse and homelessness and consider the ways in which we can use our resources to ameliorate these inciting factors cops are overworked and tasked with performing abilities which they are vastly undertrained for such as mental illness calls and domestic disputes this is a recipe for societal disaster and we see and feel the impact every day we should consider cutting some of them substantial police budget and reinvesting it into communities of need fund and fairly compensate social workers who are far better equipped to deal with many of the complicated situations that cops come into contact with on a daily basis this is not a radical idea minneapolis and los angeles have made incredible and unprecedented strides in the last few days to move in this direction denton has the opportunity to be on the forefront of history to literally write it ourselves it is my hope that we can continue this dialogue and work together to do what is best for our community as a community we will be submitting an alternative to eight can't wait directly to these city representatives that i'm speaking to to our specifications it is our hope that you will carefully review it and work together with us to come to an agreement the options we're presented with are not simply police state versus anarchy we can solve these problems in a number of ways many of which would be far more effective than the police state of the status quo thank you for your time thank you very much hunter council member armature i just wanted to thank you for your comments and i i completely agree um and uh i i hope that we get a black lives matter representation on this committee and a younger representation because this is where the answers are and i i feel like it's our job to take direction and listen i don't feel change is going to come i completely agree it should be community sourced i think that's the most important thing thank you thank you so much thank you thank you hunter appreciate it appreciate your comments absolutely y'all have a good one thank you sir all right we'll wait on our next caller uh caller are you with us yes i am all right uh caller you're with the dent city council on the public portion of this agenda item once you state your name and address i'll start the uh the time and you have four minutes thank you uh good evening mayor was the city council my name is samuel escalante i'm at 2565 quail ridge drive tonight i've heard mayor watt speak to his reasons for calling this resolution on the one hand i can appreciate the sense of urgency from which he is operating but on the other i believe this resolution centers the wrong people and the wrong priorities working in haste is not a substitute for doing the necessary work of consulting and centering the black activists who have taken to denton streets so did you march with or consult with the folks you claim to be responding to are you aware that there is widespread criticism that we've already heard tonight among black activists for the very initiative you're calling for now the mayor did cite that the use of force is a large concern for the black community and while this is true black activists have already criticized the eight can't wait policies as not going far enough and potentially shifting more resources to police if council is committed to the black lives matter movement council will commit to more than the current resolution given the mayor's sense of urgency i fear that this resolution as it is currently worded and intended will begin a process that will at best appear to address institutional racism but will merely maintain the status quo in practice police reforms have been enacted in the past and yet incidences like the murder of darrius tarver still happened in denton please understand though that i do not mean to say that we should not review our police use of pause use of force policies rather i argue that the current resolution fails to grasp the significance of the moment i have heard mayor watts argue that the scope of the resolution is necessarily narrow but i would much rather see a resolution that is decided upon by the very communities that are most affected by both policing and institutional racism more broadly even if that takes more time i asked that the resolution be pulled and amended to include a formal commitment from the city council to address residents concerns beyond just reviewing police use of force policies including but not limited to heavily increasing funds for community development and social services as well as establishing a new ad hoc community that addresses the needs as determined not by the mayor or city council but by community members most affected by policing and the gross underfunding of social services now while this item we're discussing tonight does not explicitly refer to any budget related matters i bring up this topic to stress the unprecedented times in which we face we aren't just asking for police not to kill it we are asking for much more if you think the best response to the city the city can make right now is to review use of force you haven't been listening to our protest now if you are committed to addressing the demands of the black lives matter movement you will commit to investigating how budgeting may serve the purpose of the movement locally otherwise you're being insincere if you claim black lives matter you can't say that you're for progress yet commit to old ways of thinking around funding for police and social services we need imagination dedication compassion and policy we need your commitment in writing otherwise residents can only hope that the city is looking for band-aids to an issue that requires structural change that is why i'm asking that council amend this resolution and add some imagination from the community to actually address the roots of racial disparity specifically i ask the council amend the resolution to include a formal commitment to address the concerns of the black lives matter movement beyond just reviewing police use of force including investigating how budgeting may serve the purpose of this movement locally and establish a new ad hoc committee whose scope purpose and membership are decided by residents most impacted by police and institutional racism and dentin thank you uh thank you very much samuel thank you all right our next caller will be on shortly caller are you with us yes i'm here if you could state your name and address your title again you're on the public you're online with the dentin city council on the public portion of our agenda item public portion comment and once you state your name and address i'll start your time and you have four minutes good evening my name is mariela nunia stains and i prefer not to state my address in public but i do live here in dentin texas my zip code is 76210 i'm asking you tonight to vote no on this agenda item the proposed resolution and proposed ad hoc committee are not enough to address the systemic problems that are related to the police use of force they are not a commitment to action and reflect instead a commitment to the status quo a huge gap exists in city budget allocations upon police versus community development and social services in the call to serve and protect police are asked to act as social workers educators mental health counselors and immigration agents i have attended the recent project on the study community forums that have been organized by dentin pd to engage the immigrant community and in these forums i have heard officers tell the community to call them for anything that they need while at the same time express their frustration because they're asked to be mental health professionals and social workers officers are right to share this frustration the presumption that police can solve every problem is not only irresponsible but it's also dangerous it led to the deportation of one of my students who had no criminal record and who got pulled over for a routine traffic violation it led to the death of derrius tarver because of an officer's response to serve and protect was to pull a trigger when confronted with mental health crisis no amount of training can compensate for the expertise of professionals and local organizations who can respond in times of emotional social and economic crisis and who also have the preparation for coming up with long-term plans and solutions in the past decade the city has invested over 56 times more of our city's budget in funding police than in community development and social services this money likely funds a patchwork of police trainings that result in mediocre understandings and approaches to our community's urgent needs leaving police ill-equipped to respond adequately both in the short and long term and leaving vulnerable residents underserved i recently reviewed denton denton pd's proposal for engaging the immigrant community it is filled with all sorts of inconsistencies and wrong information about immigration law and procedures it contains no specific procedures for avoiding inquiries about immigration status and provides no accountability for officers who do not follow denton pd's prerogative prerogative of not being concerned with immigration issues if denton pd has an official stance when it comes to avoiding racial profiling especially in inquiries about status and citizenship why not make officers accountable why continue insisting in and engaging in inquiries about immigration status especially in cases of victims of crimes and crime reporting an ad hoc committee whose charge and membership are determined by the mayor completely misses dentonite's outrage at the power of public institutions to make decisions that despite best intentions harm the black community my understanding of the denton code is that membership in city committees is limited to qualified voters this leaves behind denton residents who are permanent residents daca recipients undocumented immigrants and those who are able to access proof of citizenship even when they contribute to our cities through their tax dollars any committee that looks at the use of force must be populated by those who are mostly affected by it and those who have the expertise to see and understand the implications of physical and emotional violence against black and brown bodies across generations i'm asking you today to take a first step towards justice and healing by draft drafting a formal commitment from city council to address residents concerns beyond reviewing policy use of force policies but not limited to and heavily and also including increasing funds for community development and social services and to establish a new ad hoc committee that addresses needs as determined by community members that are most affected by policing thanks for your time thank you very much council member armature so mariela i think you're aware that that the issue of uh of uh having to be a registered voter on in the city of denton to serve on a committee is something that's come up before council in the past we didn't didn't have the numbers for it are you aware of that i'm aware that it's been discussed in the past yes uh thank you and i was wondering if somebody could answer for her now um for ad hoc committees did the same rule apply i thought that i i had remembered that it's different for for an ad hoc committee is that correct uh i think the city attorney's looking at that we can we can get that answer if he can't find it right away thank you now i hope my colleagues will be willing to do that at some point okay all right thank you thank you very much caller appreciate it okay all right we have another caller a caller you with the you are with excuse me the denton city council and our public portion a comment section of our agenda item once you state your name and address i'll start your time and you will have four minutes my name is chris last name event 1405 center first circle yes you can begin your parents my parents grandparents both sides including us we have failed we have failed to allow my children and other children growing up to see this right now absolutely no reason my eight-year-old and my ten-year-old should have to be asking questions about what is going on they shouldn't even have to be asking me to explain what that statue was years before finally we got that removed thank you so much but that right there is just a beginning and i hope nobody thinks that this is just going to be a moral victory and we are done this is serious right here that we're dealing with and i don't want to be doing this 10 years from now action needs to be taken right now i raised born right here in didn't texas southeast didn't it's not too much people can tell me about the history of the city from how we came from quaker town to over here and basically surrounded by jails courthouses county court county jail juvenile detention center the only all black high school is turning to an alternative school there's more fun in going to the alternative school the the detention center than the actual alternative school i mean that could be a magnet school or to perform it something like that the pain that i feel as a as a resident growing here growing up here and didn't which is a great city but great isn't enough it's got to be the greatest the pain that i felt i've just written this in the the systemic oppression that most people may not realize until you are right here and you grow up and you and you and you see it changes need to be made we have failed you have failed everybody at that city council has failed everybody that's old enough has failed all of us police has failed the community that's there we have failed and we have to make changes right now now i've been listening all day and i know everybody's been going over numbers and and giving you the things of the budget and they're real things have to be changed i mean 36 million or 34 million compared to 1.7 million it's not good enough we're giving our officers too much to handle i mean just think about it if you're if you're officer and then you got to go and witness somebody dying and then your next call you have to go to a house and you may see some some babies not being taken care of responsibly these are calls that they have to take by the time they may get to me at the stoplight they're frustrated and hell i'm frustrated with living in this mess because i don't have enough resources and then before you know it yeah a knee can be on somebody's neck these are serious issues that we have to deal with now i applaud you for the the ad hop and what you guys are doing i like some of it i don't like some of it that's how the city feels you know some things need to be changed you know we could draft a formal commitment from city council to address residents concerns beyond reviewing police use of force policies including but not limited to heavily increasing funds for community development and social services we could establish a new ad hoc committee with it with that addresses needs as determined by community members most affected by policing uh not not by the mayor and you know what i've been listening to you uh mr watts and you have made it clear that look i'm open to this i'm opening to people uh picking who is on the ad hoc committee but i will say younger voices need to be heard i am a guy that's in the middle mr baines great guy guys like mr eddie these are my coaches i looked up to them yes sir but now i have a community younger guys and my age that look to me and i know the older guys you can come to more people younger my age and maybe i can point you in the direction of some younger guys i'm pretty sure the older guys that are older people that are on this community they probably feel like man it's time for some other people to pass we can pass the torch to someone else but we do have to develop a budget that adequately addresses the needs of the black community and all other communities that have long gone underserved by increasing funds for community development and social services and decreases funds for police now it's only bad when we say decrease funds when we talk about police but it's never bad when we say decrease funds for school learning and things of that nature chris so crit i'm sorry yeah we're over a little bit on time but if you could if you could just say a couple of concluding remarks that would be wonderful great my concluding remarks is this the budget for 36 million compared to 1.7 million needs to be changed we need more community resources so we can help our police officers do their job for what they are specifically trained to do and we need to put the resources to the people that can actually help the people so we can progress and move forward and be a better city that will eliminate a lot of tragic things happening let's not wait till it happens in this city and let's not pretend like there hasn't been killings and didn't before but we're not even going to get into that we have a question from the mayor pro tem chris maybe the great hey how you feel about uh fake handshakes i think i think i think fake handshakes is how we got here yes sir no i and i have my my wife wears a bunk and sweater so i appreciate you here's what i want to do though can we shift the conversation from 36 million and 1.7 million can we shift it to uh you emailing you can email everybody from the city website what programs you think you'd like to see now i mean because i mean yeah i don't know that i hear you right so i'm phoenix apartment i'm i'm uh scott street willow creek all that i get it but i'm asking you to to give me uh and us a list of programs a list of things that you say hey this will work this ad so you know take the money away because if we you shift money around it doesn't mean anything gets done so i'd rather talk about programs that you think uh are missing and let's see if it it fits with the city the school district and let's get you plugged in in the right space your own time the school district is is doing some things that you're already talking about so just that's my ask if you email what programs you think you want to we were missing that could help the community help the city as a whole let's look at that and and shift from a you know generic dollar figure to actually can we make these things happen all right well for for example just without giving specific organization that we all can figure out as a community and as a council just on the the the lines of racial discrimination houses houselessness poverty food scarcity drug addiction intimate partner violence mental health disability and access discrimination against the queer trans community and more i mean there's things we can't talk about and we need to talk about especially with the budget uh you guys are about to go over the budget pretty soon so this does pertain to police violence and and it it will at the end of the day help the police and it will also help the community so let's get on that and i appreciate that thank you thank you chris so much for calling in in your comments i really do appreciate that mr watch one more thing we would like to see you guys along with the people we would like this y'all to come out we want to see y'all all right social distance all you want that's good i'm about that too but hey we need to see you out there because we want to see you care we want to see all you all of you passes that came out so that one thing we want to see you we want to see all the city members out there we want to see you all right thank you yes yes sir thank you very much all right uh we have our next caller please caller you are on with the denton city council and the public portion comment of our agenda once you state your name and address your time will begin and you will have four minutes hello council members and mayor thank you for your time my name is donald fornton i live at 87 17 swan park drive in denton texas so i was listening to your uh session earlier when you were talking about the use of force policy and establishing your commission and i gotta i gotta say i was quite alarmed at the list that you have of uh people who i don't know if that's a proposal of these people you or groups that you've already picked but they all seem to lean one particular way if not all of them least the majority of them lean to one particular political persuasion and i'm trying to see where where where's the diversity aspect with this particular commission so i did email you mayor and my city councilman because i live in district four i believe that's you john um uh my concerns uh earlier this afternoon so and i'm just trying to figure out what as a citizen a 15-year citizen of denton county do to get on this commission because i noticed a lot of names you had on there but part of different groups and again most of them are left-leaning uh and that's fine but i think in order to have a holistic uh uh approach to something as is as important as this uh commission is going to be doing i think you should have a broader reach of of groups and people uh and not just one set of groups and i i believe i heard one of the council or two of you mentioning earlier that you wanted somebody from black lives matter on that table um that's a little bit disconcerting uh because like i said when when you read the list off most of the people on the list were left or uh liberal leaning so my question again is how can someone of my persuasion uh conservative uh get on that particular board or and find out what i can do to get involved and to help hopefully get a holistic view uh to you guys about use of force and how we can improve community relations between the police and denton citizens in county citizens okay yeah we will we'll probably have some discussion about that mr thornton once we um conclude the public comment okay so that will be later this evening or yeah yes that will be uh we've got i think three or four more call actually we've got only one more caller and after that with the council we'll discuss the resolution yes sir okay okay awesome well i thank you i thank you all for your work i know this has to be tireless i can look at all you and see how tired you are but as a resident in the county i do appreciate all you guys do in this and i know it's got to be difficult in this tumultuous time we're living in uh but uh i just want to say i appreciate you thank you sir thank you so much for your call and we have one more caller caller you're on with the denton city council public portion comment of the agenda if you'll state your name and address and once you do your time will begin sure my name is steven dillenberry 1004 abbots lane binton um everybody's pretty much said what i think needs to be said with respect to use of force policies um there's a little bit more that i think people need to hear though um with respect to the events that happened thank you for taking care of the curfew and not trying and backtracking on that um taking of our rights um to protest peacefully but what happened monday june 1st um with the police against the college students where they shot rubber bullets at them and tear gassed them i'm just going to read you guys the definition of domestic terrorism and just so you all understand why that action has been entered among others against the majority of this council um 18 us code 2331 if you go down to number five the term domestic terrorism means activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the united states assault obviously is the law appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce the civilian population that's b1 and occur primarily within the jurisdiction territorial jurisdiction of the united states okay that's why that action came based on the events that happened and that is coming all the way from the top okay and it's not i'm not saying that's you mayor watts i'm saying it's coming from the president who said dominate groups of protesters who had very very viable concerns with the treatment of people in trying to protect probably old secrets and clubs that most people don't even know exist and so for all of those reasons i'm not necessarily talking to you guys as much because you all know how i feel and you all know that i'm not happy with the way that y'all are handling this faked pandemic either okay and the fact that we're still promoting the use of masks especially when this is a respiratory pulmonary disease that has people predisposed to that and when they wear masks it hurts them even more and could potentially cause severe health risk for them by having followed our advice as the leadership of this community okay so we really need to think about if those people are going to hold us responsible for having done that okay but the main thing is is people need to understand that you guys stand accused of domestic terrorism for those actions and the same thing goes for any law enforcement who's done something similar okay in the other communities around us we need to do better okay and this is not going away until you guys start doing better and i'm i'm done really asking you guys for stuff because everything i've asked for you got from you guys has fallen on deaf ears based on your actions so i'll be on june 19th 11 11 on washington's memorial lawn and we've got some broken promises and dreams to discuss with the people that can maybe make some things happen and hopefully at that point there'll be enough of us to decide we're either going to have to do something different than asking you guys or we'll see some actions but the actions to this point hiding stuff still not letting us talk about consent calendar items that you said were already open for discussion so we couldn't discuss them tonight including 468 000 being spent on renovating private property these things are what needs to stop we want to get the budget figured out we want to fix it okay let's do it let's involve the community i was really happy to see people involved tonight i'm not surprised that i'm the very last caller as usual doesn't i'm not gonna i'm not gonna say that was on purpose or not but at the end of the day there's actions that need to be taken thanks i don't need to take any more of your time and we've all been out of the wild steven i believe there's a question for you i believe um if you could hold on council member briggs you're on mute ah dang okay uh just one clarification question and then another question about the item um so you mentioned tear gas and rubber bullets on monday were you speaking of something that happened in a different town didn't square or whatever the whatever the chemical was that was to disperse people yeah okay i mean there's videos of it on snapchat all over the place i'm not i'm not talking about something that didn't happen here people saying the protest was peaceful but the police sure weren't well if you if you have something you're welcome to send it so that i can view it my next question are you in favor of the ad hoc committee use of force that we've been talking about i i saw not a whole lot about it but i mean from the sounds of it it sounds like an an ad hoc committee is going to be created in order to determine use of force moving forward and if that's something we're going to be pulling community members in for then absolutely that sounds like something we need to do people who have lived here and lived through this stuff and know what it's like and absolutely that that sounds like a good step in the right direction and hopefully something positive comes out of it all right thank you thank you steven appreciate your call all right that's uh that ends our callers so uh we will begin discussion let me let me just go ahead and say um i number one i appreciate all the calls and all the input and i i don't necessarily disagree with any of it uh so if i'm going to be hesitant if there's going to be major substantial changes to this resolution i would rather get uh voted down because i think this is a good direction a good first step i know there are a lot of callers talked about budgeting and all that which is in no way part of this particular resolution and quite frankly i i would not want to amend it in any way to do that because this is very specific and that's a much larger discussion that we've received a ton of emails on uh that's that's not going to be able to be resolved in this in the framework of this resolution so i understand the the comments and and and take them and i don't necessarily disagree with them uh but this is what i've decided to do is executing this mayor's pledge and so if this council wants to take off in a different direction i understand that if not if you want to move forward i fully expect that this committee will seek all types of stakeholder uh input no matter what ideological spectrum that you that you identify with and uh that's going to be their charge is to gain the public input uh from from the community and not just one side of the community will be all sides of the community so i wanted to say that uh that it's not so much an all or nothing i know that the one thing i said i would agree to is uh if if the ordinance does say that uh i named the chair i i accept that desire to have them choose their own chair and and so and mr baines had very graciously agreed to do that but i think also he would certainly uh invite that that uh conversation with the committee um so i wanted to say that so you're going to have a lot of questions but also it was just more to try to hone down what i what's really uh here for discussion and if if it's about budgets and all those kind of things i've been first of all i think it's outside the scope of this issue uh but yet this is this is my way to put it forward in this limited uh very narrowly tailored fashion and each council member has the opportunity to ask for something different in addition to this this isn't in all this isn't the only opportunity we're going to have to look at whatever issues that we all as council members in the community uh want to move forward with but but this is for me uh the step that i i wanted to take by executing the pledge because i believe it's vitally important and uh i just will leave it in the council's hands in order to determine that uh moving forward discussion questions council member briggs i'll start um and i want to go back to to the very beginning um before all of the new set of emails mayor i know that we were getting a lot of emails and requests for you to sign on to this campaign um in the beginning and i know that as as we've grown further and had more conversation issues more issues have have have come up so um i applaud you for doing what the the email said and the first request were um i do i do think it's a first step i know that there are a lot of individuals that have wanted have requested that we vote no on this um and i i understand the issues but i also don't i don't like being told that i'm against the movement and am i against progress if i'm for this committee i personally don't feel that way um i i do wish that we had a um a better way to put community members on the on the committee um so for this i wish if you belong to any of the groups listed or you know any of the groups and you want to serve i ask that you reach out to them and make contact and let them know that you want to be on this committee um this use of force committee is it can it can do good things and it's not it doesn't mean this is where we have to stop in my opinion um and i know that i've had people reach out to me um there's there's a lot of people saying no on on both ends who those who um don't even want to do anything and those who want to do everything and so uh i just i just i just don't want to sit here and continue to do nothing i know that if we have a regular process a regular item to come through it's going to take a lot longer and i know there was a caller that said we're willing to do that but i i am not i'm willing to start working on something right now and as we um get community input and as we um look at those use of force policies they can come back to us and we can we can create real change with that and in many many other areas as well um hearing hearing this uh this lawson from the beginning it moved me to tears i don't want to hear any more any more stories like that and i want to work with the community to do all that we can so if this is all that we have right now this is what i'm i'm willing to do um but it's not where i'm willing to stop okay thank you very much council member briggs i appreciate that heartfelt response uh council member davis thank you mayor um i i have to um echo some of what council member briggs said i i like a number of other council members when the protests began asked for a work session on this topic something that we should have started a conversation about long before any of us knew who george floyd was before the protesters uh raised their bullhorn and brought it to our attention um and uh frankly i was initially skeptical the idea of a of a committee formed in this way but kind of like council member breaks just said what this does the mayor has done exactly what the pledge asks him to do engaging the committee engaging the community taking it off of the council shoulders and putting on his shoulders to find people representative in the community you heard from callers today even the folks who are they thought they're on the same page they were asking for different things they're asking for things that were sometimes wildly different you heard one guy call and say there aren't enough conservatives on the committee so my concern about taking it outside of the process the mayor's proposed here it it just it throws it into this political turmoil and it doesn't get started for months and it just doesn't get started for it doesn't get down to the work this way this committee can get started from day one as soon as those organizations send in their representatives and and i want to applaud the the mayor and anybody else who helped him uh kind of craft the makeup of this committee uh kind of like council member melzer said earlier uh you think about someone who might need to be on that committee and then you look down the list and you see that they're represented on the committee you see maybe even the name of the person that you would have nominated already on the committee um he's done the heavy lifting for us and this committee can start from day one getting the work done and like council member brig said this is a short fuse committee it's a 90-day thing it cannot be it can be a beginning but it can't be the end um anybody out there who thinks that we're doing this to check a box and move forward and appease people um then they don't know very many members of this council very well because that's not that's not how this works uh this is a process it's a government we have to go through a process and this is a darn good one okay anybody else council member melzer oh okay i'm sorry council member riggs we'll come back to you but council member melzer yeah i'll uh you know echo one major point that this is the first step and it's a prompt step and uh and it's by uh by no means the last step and and if it had been just let's see how much of the eight can't wait you know we've already done and you know the announcement comes oh we've already pretty much done those well that that that would be pretty meaningless but it isn't just that it is developing a group of people who are going to advise us and you know i heard very loud and clear from the callers that the people talking to us should be from parts of the community that are disproportionately affected by the actions of the police and you know i don't know if everybody's seen like the latest version of the makeup of the ad hoc committee but it's NAACP it's lulac it's the lgbtq community it's persons with disabilities represented it's the mental health workers that's not even listed here we discussed that earlier the mayor said absolutely you know uh MHMR will be represented so i think uh we're kind of closer to each other i'm talking about you know what we're looking at here and what callers have said closer than uh might be immediately perceived and you know i'll tell you i originally had teed up for this meeting a proposal for a different committee with a broader uh you know broader task to look at racial disparities in many areas and i pulled it back from today because i wanted us to focus fully on addressing the main thing that is has been the focus of the response to the murder of george floyd so uh it absolutely isn't the last step it's absolutely only the first step and an important one thank you council member breaks the only the only request or change that i would like to make is if we could add um the caller chris av of chris avant who has been a outstanding young community member to the citizen and community members list is there a way to to do that i know that he's very invested in the community you know we're at we're at 21 right now what i would say is let's let's look at some of those organizations that still have someone to choose and see if we can't advocate for them to to select him because i look i i really appreciate all of your comments and no way have i taken what you said every one of you could pick somebody and that we could do that um and i appreciate that and in no way am i trying to usurp my authority i will tell you people don't if people think i'm doing this just to check the box they don't know me because i don't check the box uh and i'm not checking the box here and you are right council member briggs that as the the movement moved forward and here in denton and as we received the the many many emails in the beginning but now we're getting emails of a different nature a nature that is much more difficult quite frankly i mean we've gotten probably close to a thousand emails and the message has been do you defund the police or do you fund the police and everything in between and that's not any way what this is supposed to be about and of course when you start having those conversations you've got much larger conversations you've got much larger uh time frames in order to really get the facts out and to have an understanding of all the issues so uh i totally agree with you and and we will do what we can uh and and maybe there's and you know this committee has a lot of latitude they could set up subcommittees i mean i don't think that it's just a matter i mean this committee uh i believe is comprised of a tremendous amount of you know people who care very passionately about the this issue we're talking about and the larger issues and they know people that they probably wish were on the committee so i feel very confident that they can set up a structure to really ensure that we get the best input uh that we can from the community because one of the stages is to gather stories stories like our first caller you know stories that are from from anyone in the community that that has been affected by the the police brutality or racism racial profiling what what they feel they've been victimized by so that's part of this issue and so i again i i totally understand the concern and hear it uh and my my goal was simply to respond to to what i was seeing but not just because of what i was saying but respond to this is a good pledge this is a good pledge that that mayors are being asked all over the country to take for the first thing to look at you know we can talk about funding we can talk about uh you know how do we provide more funding for community groups and community organizations but the thing we need to first of all make sure is that our policies are are sufficient to where we don't have you know senseless killings in our community and that we have the community input to review those so i i mean i i appreciate the comments i appreciate the callers uh and understand where they're coming from and i think that in no way is this the last conversation in no way is this the last conversation uh mayor pro tem yeah no i just i just want to say i think one of the key aspects of this appointment and i'll get to the to the other thoughts but i want to start off with this one of the key aspects of this is the representative from this body i think i i heard uh council member davis so eloquently lay out the legal aspects and the challenges headed forward on a lot of these cases and including george uh floyd's case and really i think that aspect is going to be so critical because we leave not only with policies but hopefully that body and whoever they bring in gain an understanding that the city doesn't process cases and just kind of how the process works and we leave with that ad hoc committee leaves with suggestions that are actionable and turnkey right out of the committee because they have someone that understands the laws and the application of that at a higher level so that's that's really going to be critical is is them that that ad hoc committee and those that come before it uh utilizing that resource uh to make things tighter more because you hear it all the time people upset about uh things not being charged or charged incorrectly or mischaracterized characterizations of a of a charge and so that that is a great asset so i appreciate you adding that component and again i think those other bodies should be contacted to appoint younger people especially the colleges those sort of things so and i i assume they will they've they've done so in the past and there's nothing to indicate they won't do that again so i i think it is a a good list uh is it perfect absolutely not but i think it it is absolutely a great first step and something that i can support and then work behind the scenes just like you said before i can work on what i need to work on with community members simultaneously in the background and and so those things can can run at the same time no problem so i look forward to doing things independent of this ad hoc committee but at the same time that doesn't mean this committee can't go forward and lay a great foundation as a first step so with that i mean not to cut off uh obviously there's more discussion maybe but i'll move approval of the list as presented including uh jamie blanton with the community representing the the disability component i don't know if that's already been captured but but wanna yeah and and also uh mhmr representative yes and the mhr and so move approval with the two new additions jamie blanton uh representing the disability community and the mhmr representative and one more that that the committee will choose the chair and uh i accept that friendly amendment okay all right all right council member melcer yeah i'll second and uh also not intending to cut off discussion okay all right no we i will still have discussion uh council member armature um so uh i don't usually write speeches but i i wrote a little speech that i have been adding to is the callers it called and commented so i just want to read this there's sure a couple moments for little ad living in here um that is not too long so first uh thank you uh to the callers um your comments were invaluable and uh i wish that i could give you all the the keys to the city we can't do this job up here without you this big committee on some pretty basic policy improvements that could be made with the stroke of a pen is not the community oversight board or systematic reform that protesters are urgently demanding of us right now if this is a response to the protests it needs to come from the protesters this feels like it's coming from government to the people instead of the opposite and that's not what democracy means to me i don't consider it a worthy response to the outcry of protesters and communities nationwide about systematic problems in american policing i believe that a committee on use of force policy should consist only of people most harmed by use of force this is a committee of wonderful people but i still think the committee is too top down establishment in its makeup the average age too old and made up of people who have a very comfortable relationship with city government already some even in government and police i actually don't think white people should be on this committee all of our other committees are filled with white people i think there should be a space where where where white people step back and and just listen so even though this is not the community review board that people are asking for among other things that's okay because as others have said some of you have said it's not an either or we can have both and i agree that this is not the end and and i'm excited that we're going to keep on trying striving for more i'm certainly going to keep pushing for more council member davis said something about it's it's good that we're now finally starting to talk about these things on council you know i i have been kind of raising related issues since i got on council because these are the issues that people bring forward to me in the community and and so this is not new and the community knows this however i i would have approved of this anyway in spite of these these issues under two conditions and the first one i feel the committee meets and the second one i feel that it doesn't the first condition being that the city officials who are establishing this committee not talking about the people on the committee but the people who are establishing it who also sit on the committee can agree that a the use of force shown in the body camera video of the fatal killing of george floyd is unacceptable and b that the minneapolis officer who ended his life must be removed from active duty immediately the use of george floyd's name in this committee mission statement shows me that this committee fills that first condition and i'm i'm grateful for that and relieved by that um that that is a point of common ground but it doesn't meet my second condition and that's why i'm going to be voting no and i'm almost done my second condition replaces the name george floyd in that first condition with the name darious tarver and the word minneapolis with denton that the use of force shown in the body camera video of the fatal killing of darious tarver is unacceptable and b that the denton officer who ended his life must be removed from active duty immediately uh that's a condition for me it's my personal condition since i know already uh that uh the uh government officials who have formed this committee don't agree to that second condition i i consider a use of force committee that can agree uh whose founders can agree to that that condition dangerous no matter how many good people we put on it i believe that unjustified uses of force racial profiling and selective enforcement against black denton residents will never stop if we can condemn and demand accountability for the murder of george floyd in minneapolis while justifying the totally preventable killing of darious tarver and putting the officer who took his life back on duty i believe that's dangerous to black lives in denton so i can't condone it and we'll have to vote no i i look forward to hunter's list i believe hunter the name of the of the caller who said he'll be coming uh bringing to us a list and uh it's it's from solutions like that from the community i'll take my direction okay thank you thank you very much all right we have a motion and a second any other discussion council member briggs yeah i would like to make a friendly amendment that on local university and colleges instead of one representative it says one student representative so that we know it will be a student representative and not um and not someone else i i hear the call for younger people on the committee uh i'm i can advocate for that but to make that change now i think i would rather leave that up to the appointing universities i will certainly talk to them and reach out to them and i've talked to them already so i will certainly reach out and one of the organizations that we have on there is the student chapter of one of the organizations there at the university of north texas so um i will reach out to them and see if we can't accommodate that and make that happen i just don't want to i don't want to necessarily put that in the resolution to force them to do that i would rather them do that from their own volition and disd is there so i mean disd can also appoint a student as well uh which we've you know we've talked about college-age students but i don't think this just impacts college-age students it impacts you know all ages uh so yeah i mean yes so that's that's my response to that all right any other yes uh mr city attorney uh mayor and members of the council i just wanted to get back to the question that council member armentor had asked about whether the qualified voter requirement applied to this oh yes okay there is an exemption for members of ad hoc committees so they do not have to be a qualified voter that's in our city code okay all right thank you so much for that additional information okay uh any other discussion uh mayor pro tem how say you all right council member melzer aye council member armature oh council member davis aye council member briggs well i i've changed because we're not allowing to amend the um ad hoc committee and so i'm not comfortable with who's going to ultimately end up on it so okay um no okay uh council member ryan aye uh have i missed anybody besides myself uh no yeah mayor wass is an i the motion carries five to two uh let's take a quick uh five minute break and we'll come back and move through the rest of our agenda items welcome back to this meeting of the denton city council on june the 9th 2020 at 10 15 p.m we're moving down through our agenda item items for individual consideration agenda item b consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas a home rural municipal corporation authorizing the mayor to execute an interlocal agreement with denton county to address the impact of the public health emergency with respect to corona pandemic providing an effective date yes council member davis just want to let you know i'm going to recuse from this item okay well uh we got enough here yes yeah no we've got enough yeah yeah i was looking for a quorum make sure we had a quorum so yes we'll see you on the flip side all right i want to make sure um okay we do have a we do have a quorum we do have four council members present so all right david go ahead good evening mayor members of council david gains director of finance this item is an interlocal agreement with denton county for the crf funds that they are distributing to cities this is really a follow-up to the conversation we had on may 29th and so i i do have a few slides that that uh recap that conversation and then welcome any questions on the interlocal agreement itself so as a reminder the denton county received a hundred close to 148 million dollars in and coronavirus relief fund funding as a part of the cares act and the county approved a program of how they're how they'll allocate that funding and 45 million of the 148 million was reserved for distribution to denton county cities below there you can see the other buckets of funding that they've they've allocated out from local business grants housing assistant programs down to their own ongoing expenses for the county so of the 45 million that were distributed that were set aside for denton county cities they came up with a program that allows cities to to get a distribution up to 55 dollars per capita that would that comes out to approximately 7.6 million dollars for the city and then they gave this they gave each city in the county three options on how they would get have those funds distributed the city took the first option which is which is full funding we set a letter of intent to denton county requesting the full upfront funded funding which essentially would have the whole the entire 7.6 million dollars come to the city which we would put into a separate account and then use that money appropriately based on a budget a budget and all and all of the guidelines that are set aside for the funding so the interlocal agreement that we have today for consideration is a result of us indicating that we wanted to go with the option for full funding so the crf funds what are the eligible expenses and the stipulations that go along with those funds with those funds you can see them listed there these are costs that are directly due to the public health emergency and that weren't accounted for in the most recently approved budget and as far as the time frame with it'll be expenses that were incurred beginning march 1st 2020 through the end of the calendar year through december 30th 2020 and again those are these are going to be costs directly related to the public health emergency and you can see some examples there from certain payroll expenses that are for those costs that are dedicated to responding to the public health emergency expenses for facilitating compliance with public health measures and then all you can see the rest of the list there including capital costs for construction of mitigation measures so we've taken those examples and the guidance that we've had that we have so far and broken those down into some categories for the expenses that we've we've incurred so far and the expenses that we anticipate and this is the same chart that we that we shared a couple weeks ago as we're continuing to update this and ultimately sending a budget along with the interlocal agreement to the county and so you can see those listed there on the personnel costs that we've incurred so far safety equipment obviously the homeless assistance program that we've that we've that we've moved forward with over the past few months and then our transfers out to united way and interfaith you can see there with the utility assistance program and then other materials and supplies what we've done on that anticipated projected cost is essentially taking those costs out through the end of the year assuming that we'll have the same level of cost for each of those categories and we've also included there 4.5 million for those capital costs those capital mitigation projects that we can do at all of our city facilities which are eligible costs so this is a very high level budget and obviously we'll continue to change not only as we start to realize actual expenses but as we get further guidance on what are and what are not eligible expenses but you can see there with these categories alone we do anticipate that we'll spend in excess of that 7.6 million dollars so definitely think we can that will exhaust the entirety of that amount and we we can use fema reimbursements to offset some of these costs as well so that'll be something that we're working through over the next number of months and ensuring that we're getting the most reimbursement that we can for our expenses related to to go with COVID-19 and that's it for my brief presentation but would it be happy to answer any questions okay um all right uh council member Armitage then council member Briggs and we do have um we do have one speaker on this as well oh wait then council member Briggs oh i was just going to move approval okay are you moving approval yes okay so yeah we'll take public comment and then uh council member Armitage did you me too i was so i'll second when it when it's time okay well we got a motion in a second we can still take the public comment and have discussion so uh any questions before we uh take public comment all right so if we could uh and as the as the caller is getting on we we had zero people make comments using the online form so none in support none against uh none registered with 349-7800 so we do have one caller that will join us here momentarily caller are you there hello yes if you're here yeah go ahead state your name we know your address from previous call uh input so i'll start your time when you when you say your name okay jennifer lane uh dentin 76205 and uh um i want to say uh you know thank you for the episodes you've made um on behalf of cobit and i know that you've tried to to do as much as you can within what is possible to you to protect us beyond above and beyond um the state um guidelines simply because we are a hotspot due to state school and nursing homes other things i would like to see if you can um afford to make asymptomatic testing available to the vulnerable population as soon as possible because we are spiking here and if we can know before we're symptomatic um whether or not we should be quarantining or avoiding um other people before we might sneeze a cough on them um that would be really very very helpful i also wanted to reference a couple i know you have uh sporting facilities and so so on and so forth um swimming actually is more safe than some of the other outdoor activities that you have approved so you may want to reconsider what you're doing with the swimming situation especially if dentin survives the royal weekend and the protest times in terms of the increased contact between people uh then the other thing i wanted to mention was that um i really appreciate the i wanted to call in about the art project and i just want to say that i'm really glad it's happening while some of those that are being honored are still alive and uh then i wanted to say um also back to just the previous topic i really do think you would have had one more vote on the committee if you had guaranteed young members of it and i urge you to use um since you added two people i urge you to add cruz about to that committee one way or another but to for sure add him i think you will have buy-in that you would not otherwise have into this situation so um regarding covid uh we're going up here in texas for lots of reasons please keep an eye on it please expand testing um and please do everything you can to educate the public i see a lot of masks being worn but it does sort of slip when people are out more and getting used to being around one another um so please thank you and especially washing hands continue the education program really lean on it as much as you can thanks thank you all right we have a motion and a second any other discussion on agenda item 2b council brit member briggs how say you yes council member armater yes council member ryan aye mayor protem aye mayor wass is an aye we've got five here so uh paul is the one that's uh not what that is also an eye oh so you're off camera oh i don't know how that happened yeah okay all right i'm still an i okay all right thank you uh all right so that motion carries six zero uh of course council member davis can come back in agenda item 2c is considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton texas a home rural municipal corporation rejecting any and all competitive proposals under rfp 7227 is there a presentation on this that is more than the uh what the caption basically states uh yes mayor watts chris lutrig i have a presentation uh we've kind of discussed this it kind of summarizes the rfp and staff's recommendation to reject the single bid that we received uh i'm more than willing to go through it or answer any questions or to save time any questions for staff council member davis just one question that might help clarify from the public did the single bid that we received come in about 500 000 more than we thought this project ought to cost uh yes sir it did so for transparency the uh our estimate was in the uh 300 to 350 000 range the first bid that was submitted by the the uh the vendor was an internal solution and their product alone was 600 000 and then we had to relocate our sprinkler system a lot of electrical equipment some lighting we had that estimate anywhere from three to 400 000 that the vendor was putting on the city to install so they came and visited the uh the facility and saw that that wouldn't work and their baffo option was for an external option at 915 000 okay council member davis move approval to reject all bids council member briggs i i will second but i had a question as to what budget um this was supposed to come from was it just the dme utility no council member briggs we we had uh as you remember the uh deck was completed the original capital funds it was under budget so we've been working on this as you know for a couple of years we've held that money aside and in an account so it would have came out of the original budget for the construction of the deck okay i'll second all right we have a motion to second any other discussion council member davis hasayu aye council member briggs yes mayor protem aye council member melzer aye council member armater yes council member ryan aye mayor watson's an eye motion carries uh seven zero move on to agenda item 2d consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton regarding the addition of land to lala ranch municipal utility district of denton county could this unrecognizable staff member please introduce themselves that richard okay i was going to say something but i wasn't i didn't so i appreciate you saying go ahead yeah okay he looks like somebody uh celebrity i know but i'm not going to say who thank you good evening uh mayor and council uh richard canoni development services i have a brief presentation um on the request sorry for the uh petition to consent to add uh just over 311 acre acres of land to the lala ranch of denton county municipal utility district you may recall uh we briefly touched on this uh on this item when we went through the interim mud policy sorry about that we're having issue pulling it up uh as i said this is a petition to add uh just over 311 acres of land uh into the lala ranch of denton county uh municipal utility district uh the the 311 acres are part of a a larger uh parent tract 656 acres in the as part of the 2019 uh legislative session house bill 4719 uh created the lala ranch mud just over 345 acres you can see that sort of in this area here what they're proposing to do is is include or add the the remaining 311 acres as part of that as part of that mud the total cost of improvements that they're anticipating as part of their petition is 42 million dollars in in reviewing this against uh the interim mud policy there are sort of two central questions if you recall uh with respect to the applicability of the policy um both um if both are in the affirmative or even if one is in the affirmative then the city may move to annex the land if there's an naa defer to denton county or attempt to work through any outstanding issues that would prevent the city from providing consent and really analyzing this um this request it is located within our etj division 2 uh it's it's outside of the city ccn and there are no plans to provide municipal services so we included this this uh location map just to give an idea of how far this this is it's actually closer to the city of crumb than it is to both our our ccn and uh and our municipal boundary in addition as i mentioned the um this the original lala lala ranch mud was created um and is codified as chapter 8031 of the special district local laws and within that within that um within that chapter there's there's two subsections that that kind of speak to uh one the municipal consent that they must apply that they must comply with and the second uh relates to road standards and um uh platting and so because it's not within our corporate limits it would be those regulations within our within our etj2 if you recall the interlocal cooperation agreement that we have with denton county we granted denton county exclusive jurisdiction to regulate all subdivision plats and approve all related permits within the etj2 and so we so in in analyzing this there wasn't much to to really look at just given the the location of it um and uh in accordance though with the uh with the mud policy as well as the special laws we recommended three three conditions uh first being that they they seek consent from the denton county commissioner's court all road projects meet construction standards subdivision requirements and regulations of the governmental entity with jurisdiction and then same with the obtaining subdivision approval from a governmental entity with jurisdiction over the over such matters and there's there's essentially three options first is consenting consenting with conditions or refusing to consent uh similar to what we did with the last mud request if there was a refusal to consent um then then we would get uh it would get kicked into that 120 day review period uh once they uh initiate those proceedings what staff is recommending uh that i that that we can that we consent with conditions uh and those it those conditions be the three that that i just um that are on the screen and that i just went went over and with that i'd be happy to answer any questions okay we could pull the uh there you go all right any questions chair would entertain uh action on this item council member ryan move approval with staff conditions council member armatr you had your hand up i was i was going to refuse to consent so okay all right so we just have it we have a uh a motion need a second council member melzer a second all right we have a motion and a second for agenda item 2d council member ryan houseau aye council member melzer aye mayor protem aye council member davis aye council member armatr no council member briggs yes uh mayor wass is an i so the motion carries six to one uh we are going to uh then go to items e and f e is consider approval of a resolution of the city council of dent to appoint a direct director to the board of directors of the hunter ranch improvement district number one of denton county um do we have a presentation on that or is it we can jump straight into questions yeah yeah let me let me go ahead and um because for each one of these there's going to be nominees that we're going to need to select from hunter ranch typically you know when we have nominees especially when they come from the floor we take them in the order that they're received on the boat uh and so that's what we're going to do here because you've got uh some nominees one nominee was sent in on six three one six eight and one six nine council member briggs uh oh you're you mean you're we're going to take the nominations as they were sent in or as we make them here no no as they were sent in because i've got nominations here and so the the ones that came in first those will be the ones to have the first vote if they fail then we'll go down to the next one in in date succession uh until we receive one that uh that passes for hunter ranch we had three nominees and for coal ranch which we'll address later in the next agenda council member briggs yeah and are you going to go ahead and tell everybody what those three are of course yes yeah absolutely and i'm going to say who nominated them in the date as well um so council member briggs nominated kyle eaton on june the eighth 2020 council member davis nominated susan parker who is a member of the public utilities committee on june the third 2020 and then council member melzer nominated ed soph who's a member of the public utilities committee on six nine 2020 so what we'll do is take in order uh the first one to to to be up for a vote will be susan parker who was submitted on six three if miss parker does not uh secure the necessary votes then mr kyle eaton would then be before this council for nomination yes council member davis i'm just raising my hand to move appointment of susan parker oh okay okay all right and then of course mr soph would be the last one if he did okay so we have a motion for susan parker do we have a second for susan parker council member ryan i'll second all right and this is for the hunter ranch municipal management district all right we have a motion in a second council member davis how say you i council member ryan how say you all right council member briggs i had a question is she also on the public utilities board still yes member of public utilities commission committee yes okay yep uh council member armature oh i'm sorry council member briggs you didn't oh i'm a no okay council member armature i love you susan but no it's a hard one no okay mayor protem all right uh council member melzer yeah i'm just i'm just saving my eye for my nominees so i'll be a no okay uh mayor watts is an eye so i believe uh miss parker secures the number necessary for the nomination um so that was agenda item uh e is is there any other action we need to take mr city attorney on that um oh you're on mute sir i'm assuming that when you nominated her that now uh that was part of a resolution uh you are approving a resolution yes yes that's correct i believe that was your i mean we can do the re-vote if you need us to no okay all right okay uh then we'll move on to agenda item f which is consider approval of a resolution so when the motion is made if we could make it in the form of a motion also improving the resolution of the city council of the city of denton to appoint a director to the board of directors of the coal ranch improvement district number one of denton county texas and providing an effective date we only have one uh nomination at this time uh and of course we can take nominations from the floor but the one that's been submitted will be the one that is considered first and that was submitted by council member melzer uh with karen devaney who's a member of the public utilities committee and he submitted that nomination on june the 6 2020 are there any other nominations from the floor for the uh to be on the board of the coal ranch municipal management district as representative of the city of dent council member briggs yeah i don't i don't have a nomination but did i know that there were some conflicts or the one of the rules was you cannot serve on two different committees was that um is not one of the ones that was conflict okay yeah yes mr city mr city attorney where are there you are yeah if you could so in the particular bylaws of the board i think we carved out certain city boards and commissions that members could not be would not be eligible but the member of the public utilities commission or committee they were eligible to serve is that correct and that is correct and i believe we provided the list of who is eligible and who is not in terms of city boards and commissions to ethan who can display that on the screen if you need it yeah if we could go ahead and do that that'd be great it was just very curious that all of the other people nominated were from that board so i was just i was just curious that makes okay i apologize mayor i do not have that list with me that that's okay i mean we we've got uh okay so we've got a nomination of karen davini is there any are there any nominations from the floor yes mayor protem i have a nominee but i've i he's not confirmed so i'm gonna i'm gonna move uh to postpone to give me another week to uh get a confirmation i've had a conversation they've just been slow to respond but i think it's that important and we'll see if it has traction okay so we have a uh a motion to postpone takes precedent over any other underlying motion which we do not have yet but so we must consider the motion to postpone first we have a motion do we have a second on the motion to postpone do we have a set guess member briggs did i see a hand may i ask a question oh sure uh if it if it's regarding uh mr city attorney if we have a motion on the floor is it regard do we have to make the discussion to the motion on the floor even though it's not been second or is it open to anything in the agenda posting we typically get a second but if council member briggs's question is involving the motion it's about the timing it's about it's about the timing of the postponement because i thought this was one of the last days um to make nominations to make the next meeting so i'm just trying to get clarification on that that is correct um the nomination for the coal board the first meeting would be actually be tomorrow at 1 pm so if if the council moves to postpone and that's that's voted on uh then and the first meeting would proceed without the council representative okay uh mayor pro tem yeah but but i think it's important either if you if you can kind of clarify that that first meeting is primarily administrative and there's no real um substantive conversation to be had for at least six months per my understanding but you you correct me where i'm wrong yeah if you'll allow me just a moment i'll share my screen and show you uh just kind of a an overview of what that agenda would entail so these are the types of uh items that the board would take up during the first meeting tomorrow so you you basically have a lot of administrative items like mayor pro tem mentioned organizing the board of directors electing officers there will be some consulting services taken up such as legal council bookkeeping also establishing a fiscal year meeting places etc and then also it's it's basically just approving some of the agreements that council's already seen on april 7th that's the operating agreement as well as the developer reimbursement agreement um beyond that is basically just an overview of the developers on what to expect in the coming months okay all right so we uh we do have a motion uh for postponement i have not uh had a second council member ryan i'll second all right uh council member hudspeth mayor pro tem hudspeth i'll say you on the motion to post is this to a date certain is the motion yes to yes for our next meeting so a date certain which is our next meeting which is i presume the 16th do we have a meeting on the 16th yes okay all right so your motion is to postpone this item to date certain of june the 16th that is correct and that's your second council member ryan yes all right council member mayor pro tem hudspeth how say you on this motion all right council member ryan all right council member armature no council member briggs no council member melzer no council member davis i we had three options on the last one i'd like to see if we could at least have one more okay uh and so this is for the meeting for next week now i will say that the um the order of the i'm going to say aye to the postponement but to re-emphasize that karen devaney will be the first person to be considered uh in in the nomination process uh next week and then council member davis sorry i didn't want to catch i just want to ask a question if i could um we built into um our operating agreements with the mmd's some pretty hefty transparency um is there a place where we can either watch a live stream of their their first meeting tomorrow or where we're going to see a recording or the minutes of these proceedings that are supposed to take place tomorrow and if that maybe we don't have that right this second but if that could be sent out to us it'd be helpful yes to that question council member davis i will follow up with the the nmd's legal council they're coordinating that meeting it will be virtual and it's also my understanding that that will be accessible to members of the public as well as the council so as soon as that's available i'll be sure to distribute that to council okay um all right uh any other yes council member barmiter and could there be a press release about that just something to the public press release about about the meeting link yeah link to see the virtual meeting if people were interested thanks all right so agenda item f is postponed till june the 16th at which time uh there may be an additional nomination for the coal ranch municipal management district moving on to agenda item 2g consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager to execute the third amendment to the airport lease agreement between the city and nebrig properties relating to lease premises at the denton enterprise airport and providing for an effective day mayor what you call the item h as well i will i was fixing to suggest that um an item h is considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton approving a consent to sublease between nebrig and associates and u.s trinity aviation uh now i i don't i mean we had pretty specific metrics that we wanted to uh for the staff i don't want to go back through the whole presentation um i think we had a pretty exhaustive conversation about uh that last time and there were some specific things that the council wanted staff to bring back so i'd really like to just keep the presentation to that and we've got a couple public uh speakers who are wanting to speak and then if we can pick up the discussion after that uh so uh scott go ahead you're muted okay there we go sorry mayor members of the council um good evening scott gray director of airports and facilities i'll skip through these first few slides as they are the informational items um that we talked about at the last meeting last week and as requested by the council um i wanted to bring forward um really some answers to some of the questions and the topics that were discussed at last week's meeting and they're categorized in a couple of areas first operational safety and the and some of the topics and questions that came out of that was regulatory control the airport operational safety and compliance is included in chapter three of the city code which the council adopted earlier this year that includes airport regulations uh minimal operating standards that includes the fa safety and regulatory language uh aircraft vehicle safety fire environmental compliance is included in that and those documents were created in order to create keep regulatory information in in a particular location rather than putting them in the lease agreements which we typically do not do um one of the other items that came up for discussion was taxi lane safety and i know this is operation so i will not try to use too much jargon here but um our fuel trucks that operate daily at the airport operate on our taxi lanes throughout the airport that's how they get to and from the apron areas out to the aircraft to provide them fuel um we did have discussions with um knee breaking associates representative and they did indicate that a number of their tenants while they do have access to the fuel farm at the knee big properties they actually get fuel directly from the fbo with their trucks so those trucks are out there today and also most of our taxi lanes in order to access the air the aircraft hangers themselves the tenants actually drive their personal personal vehicles down those taxi lanes to access those hangers so we do have interaction of aircraft and vehicles fuel trucks on a daily basis without any safety issues the next major topic was fueling safety that was discussed as well um first and foremost was the top loading of trucks and what that is for those that that i may not have made it clear last week as you fuel your car with a nozzle it would be using that same type of system to crawl up on top of the truck and open a hatch if you will and load the fuel from that as the caller described last week um that that does create some hazards and it does it actually um has a potential for electrostatic ignition of those fuel vapors the issue here though is that has never been proposed to happen by our sub lessee in these particular items they they have always proposed to bottom load the trucks and through a nozzle system the fuel tanks was another discussion and we reached out to basco services which is the entity that maintains the fuel systems for our tenants and the owners of the tanks um representative did send us an email regarding the kneebrick tanks and i and i added a quote there that basically they they have not seen any issues with that system and that afgas jet system is comparable to others that they maintain for their customers not only at our airport but other airports they are performing the enhancements to the kneebrick fuel fuel system which does give the capabilities to do the bottom loading of trucks and or aircraft it's basically um hose connection and nozzle changes to allow that to happen continuing with the fuel tank safety staff did reach out to development services and the fire marshal as asked last week and we did confirm that the enhancements proposed to the fueling system do not need to be re-permitted re-permitted or meet any of the new construction codes or retrofitting activity there excuse me there was also discussions about change of use and in fact the tanks are not categorized as commercial or private use they're categorized in the in the use of the of the tanks themselves which in this case is is aviation fuel and therefore that change that use is not changing so there's no regulatory differences in those tanks moving forward one of the things that the fire marshal will require is a new permit for the new owner operator of the of the tanks which will require that the fueling system be inspected by the fire marshal before a compliance permit will be issued i also wanted to point it out to council that the fire marshal does work with airport staff on an annual basis and we inspect all the fuel tanks as well as the fuel trucks annually as part of our inspection process usually in in the fall lastly the tceq will require an updated registration form for the new owner's information for that for that tank we were requested to put together a slide that depicted some of the code requirements and the each of the tanks and what they they meet so above ground tanks with double wall and concrete secondary containment those are tceq requirements and it's not both it's one or the other so if in the in this particular case you can see across the board they all have double wall tanks so today none of them would be required to have concrete secondary containment a dead man switch is available on all of our tanks what that is is if for the person that's doing the refueling of an aircraft or the or the truck itself it's a shut off switch so if that person were to have some sort of a medical situation or or whatnot they would release that switch and it would stop the fueling activity leak detection detection is another item that is only required if you have underground storage or pipes for the system which none of these tanks have however the knee break tank and the u.s aviation tank does have leak detection safety signage is pretty standard on all of them and setback distances is that for fire relevant to buildings and so forth and they all meet that you can see each of the tanks there in the years that they went active for the most part all of these tanks are are nearly identical with the exception that u.s jet does have a concrete secondary containment which at the time of construction in 2010 was a a dent in fire requirement that is no longer required next item was discussed was actual leaked least language provisions about including items regarding the fuel trucks and the direction that they access the fuel farm and so forth fa does require us to be consistent in our regulatory language for like operations so fbo to fbo our existing leases as i mentioned earlier don't typically include operational provisions not that they can't but they don't they don't currently do that so the the issue of the fuel truck access provisions if we were to add it to this particular lease agreement we would have to be consistent in our fa compliance and add it to other similar leases for other feos the option here is to keep all of our regulatory language within our existing adopted airport guiding documents whether that be the rules of rags or minimum operating standards we were asked last week to identify some of the some of the callers rather than just identify the ones i have actually identified all of the the folks that i understand that have either emailed sent letters or made public comments and i won't go through each of them but the the first four were relevant to u.s aviation and then mr nebrig and then the final two were u.s trinity representatives staff recommendations for you this evening is if the council is is still interested in additional fuel truck access regulations we would suggest modifications to the airport rules and regulations and or minimum standards to address those or any other safety concerns that may be necessary to address through our regulatory environment in chapter three would require us to go to the airport advisory board for approval that would take at least two public meetings to garnish their approval but we could certainly go as long as necessary to discuss any changes and then lastly staff would recommend both of these items be approved as provided with that i'd be happy to answer any questions okay if we'll pull the slide down well thank you so much for that presentation i think that really does is helpful and the information so one question you said that uh they they're committing to bottom fill i guess the tanks that the trucks to fill from the not from the top but the i guess the bottom is is that what you said that is correct it's a it's a special nozzle that actually connects to the truck itself just like for an aircraft so would because i know that you mentioned it last time uh and and appreciated you mentioning it that you know the safety regulations and all those kinds of things you know that those are really the purview of the the operations managers out there at the airport such as yourself so if you were to see that happening would that be something that you would say hey you can't do that we need to make sure that you're you know filling from the top from the bottom of the tank is this one of those safety issues that you would prohibit just because of just the regulations of the airport um we typically are not out there while they're doing that activity but we when we are out with our operations staff we do um we do review what is taking place at the fuel farm so if we were to see anything that's unsafe we would certainly take bring it to their attention and if it's a rule violation then we would take it through the regulatory process as well okay all right thank you and we we do have a caller uh waiting to speak on this we only have one so what we're going to do is try to combine all the discussion for the two agenda items but then we'll vote on them separately so is there any discussion before we bring the caller on all right so uh we'll bring the caller on uh damon yes hey this is uh chris watts you're on with the density council for the public portion of this agenda item if you're listening to the meeting if you could maybe turn it down so we don't get the feedback from the uh the meeting in the background uh also you've signed up to speak on two agenda items which are g and h and so since since we're taking those together uh i'm not going to necessarily say you only get each each agenda item allowed for four minutes for the public to speak for each each public member so i'm going to go ahead and give you eight minutes i don't know if you're going to need to take eight minutes but i'm not going to shortchange you on that just because we decided to combine them uh want to just give you that information and then once you state your name and address i'll start your time and and as it gets close to that the expiration of that time if you're not complete i'll let you know thank you very much you bet so damon ward at 5035 warbird drive here in denton and i'm the fbo manager for trinity aviation and for a point of reference i've also operated an fbo at the denton airport from 2001 through 2017 and i'd like to speak first uh in support of the proposed amendment to the nebrig lease that would allow properly permitted fbo to use the fuel farm for retail fuel sales and as as mr gray mentioned in in his commentary last week at the meeting there were a couple of callers who outlined some safety concerns one of the one of the concerns was around the fuel farm and the loading of trucks and so i'd like to provide the council and you with facts and data surrounding the issues the nebrig fuel farm as mentioned is comprised of what of a 12 000 gallon fire guard tank which does provide double walled construction with a unique material between the two walls that will withstand a two-hour burn without igniting the materials inside the tanks are also impact resistant and resistant to project tiles so the double walls also provide spill containment so no external berm is required so the tanks are identical in configuration to the other fuel farms on the field and so and to comment on the loading of the truck truck as mentioned both of the tanks are capable of bottom loading fuel trucks in compliance with fire regulations the modification of the jet tank is complete to include the dead man's switch and the avgas tank is currently undergoing the modification and should be complete the next few days so the notion of top loading of the fuel trucks was never consideration and certainly not in accordance with current fire and safety regulations so trinity has not and will not conduct the top loading of fuel trucks so as as you see from the comparison of the fuel farms in the field the nebric fuel farm actually exceeds the city on fuel farm safety measures slightly which is currently in use by the u.s jet so the facts can clearly demonstrate to us that the nebric fuel farm is safe well maintained and actually exceeds the fire safety regulations there was also a comment regarding traffic around the nebric fuel farm a survey of the area determined there that there were only a handful of aircraft movements that occur there on a daily basis and our research actually found that the most frequent user of the area was by u.s jet in their trucks who primarily uses taxiway as roadway access to their fuel farm so in an effort to provide safe operations trinity aviation plans to access then the nebric fuel farm via sky lane which is an airport perimeter road and not inside the fence of the airfield we will also work with the airport staff to ensure safe vehicle operations are conducted on the airport and would actually encourage u.s jet to do the same with the airport authority so thank you for your time and consideration on this particular issue and we hope this information will allow you to make an informed decision in support of this lease amendment and to alleviate any safety concerns that you may have had so with that i'd like to step over and comment on the second item if i may yes go ahead okay and so i'll reiterate that damon ward fbo manager for u.s aviation uh i'm sorry for u.s trendy aviation and just from a background operated the business air fbo at the dentin airport from 2001 to 2017 and was fortunate enough to participate in the growth of the airport i'm actually excited to return to the dentin airport enterprise airport as a part of the trendy aviation team to be a catalyst for the next round of airport growth trendy aviation is committed to bringing the airport to even greater prominence by providing world-class fbo services investing considerable capital in airport development and also providing substantial resources in marketing the airport you can expect trendy aviation to be in attendance at the national aviation events such as the nbaa our hope is to be there in concert with city airport officials to promote not only the airport but the entire dentin community we look forward to being active in the aviation community as well as providing facilities for many airport gatherings and events as a top-tier fbo operator for almost 20 years at the dentin airport the council can be confident that trendy aviation operations will be in accordance with faa and nfpa regulations as well as in compliance with dentin airport safety regulations for instance all of our fuel handlers will be faa certified and trained we believe in this airport and have a vision for growth both the private and business aviation we've we even agreed to rent more ramp space it's basically twice the current rates paid by others at the airport to facilitate airport growth so we are solely focused on fbo operations and related services so there will be no distraction from our mission to grow the airport which in turn grows our business so your support of our sublease brings competition back to the airport which has been noticeably absent over the past three years and it's understandable that the current fbo would enjoy remaining the sole sole retail fuel provider on the field i think we can agree the competition makes us all better while providing airport users a choice for fuel and services your approval of the sublease will support recognition prominence and continued prosperity for the dentin enterprise airport so i'd like to thank all of you mr mayor and the members of the council at this late hour for allowing me the opportunity to address you to address you this evening and we really look forward to an opportunity to be a part of the future growth at the dentin enterprise airport and thank you so much for your time well and certainly thank you for your patience and for sticking with us through the end here through this late night so thank you any questions for the speaker any questions for the speaker thank you so much for all that information i appreciate that thank you damon all right we will we will take these individually is there any other discussion for staff if not the chair would entertain uh action on agenda item g 2g mayor protem move approval of item 2g and thank staff for the additional information council member briggs i'll second all right so we have a motion and a second for agenda item 2g mayor protem houseau aye council member briggs yes council member armature yes council member melzer aye council member davis aye council member ryan mayor watts is an i motion carries seven zero now we'll look to agenda item 2h chair looking for action mayor protem move approval of move approval of item 2h all right council member ryan it is a little late yeah yeah i will second all right uh we have a motion and a second for agenda item 2h yes council member briggs is there is there another item related to these two that will come to us or is this is this it council member briggs so these are the the two least related items that will come the rest of it would be part of the administrative actions in accordance with chapter 3 okay thank you all right uh so we've got a motion and a second council member mayor protem houseau all right i think i've already done this but council member ryan aye council member briggs yes council member armature yes council member melzer yeah aye council member davis aye mayor watts is an i motion carries uh seven zero for agenda item 2h agenda item i which is considered nominations and appointments to city boards commissions committees etc is that a single motion for both or each one has to be moved for which one the item you're on there's there's two positions oh no i think it's i think it's just a a a aggregated one one motion would cover both both of the the nominees i move approval of the slate of nominees council member davis second all right we have a motion and second for agenda item i based upon the nominees in our backup council member melzer houseau aye council member davis aye council member armature yes okay mayor protem aye council member ryan aye council member briggs yes mayor watts is an i so the motion carries seven zero now we're on to concluding items concluding items mayor protem all right thank you real quick uh first and foremost uh my grandma grandma castro she's uh having her birthday tomorrow we almost made it but she's in california so she's a couple hours behind us but happy birthday grandma then uh good day for my pops uh so as tenacious as he is uh and as much as we disagree it's still a good day for him i appreciate him uh and then um saturday having a prayer event at the american legion hall at 10 o'clock and so i invite people out to that and it's just to uh pray over the construction those that attend they're going to go be be back there once we get it built and just uh everyone stay safe during that time obviously that that building and those folks are very important to me so we we're going to do that saturday so that's all i have thank you yes yeah anyone else council member briggs yeah i just i wanted to thank everyone for sending us emails like that was really intense i have never really experienced thousands of emails like that when just not being able to um i just want to apologize if somebody sent me an email and i didn't answer it or respond um i really i really tried and uh i'm going to keep continuing to do it but i appreciate everyone being engaged in in the community and and active and and caring so thank you councilmembrometer and i want to second that uh including the the apology for you know not being able to keep up it is um it's on behalf uh because we can't do our job without you and for all of the emails that had to do with um budgeting issues that uh if we're not not on the agenda for for this time please everybody stay tuned for for budget season uh because it's exciting to see that that uh people are interested in in these kinds of budget issues regardless of what what your opinion is so i hope that our budget season this year is more participatory than it's ever been so we need your input and i'm really grateful for it thank you okay anyone else i do want to report as a concluding item that during the break after the ad hoc approval i've already received a commitment from one of the universities to appoint a student either graduate or undergraduate so i made that commitment during that discussion so i wanted to just report that since i already had that news and we will work on the others okay any other concluding items all right thank you very much we will adjourn our meeting at 11 13 on june the 9th everybody be safe