Jun 16, 2020 City Council on 2020-06-16 2:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on June the 16th, 2020. The time is 2.03. We have a quorum. We have full attendance. We have a quorum. We'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. Our first item on the agenda is our closed session or executive session meeting. And Mr. City Attorney, I've got a question for you. If we can do this, and I won't ask it substantively because of just the issue we're talking about, but I would like, I think I've got some questions for a closed session for our work session agenda item 3A, which is the green tree estate subdivision. And so I was wondering if we could include that at this time in our closed meeting or do I have to call it contemporaneously with the calling of that agenda item? No, Mayor. No, Mayor, you don't need to call it contemporaneously. We can do it within this closed session as long as you announce that you will be addressing 3A, at least a legal question in closed session. Okay. All right. All right. Then what I will do then is we will convene in the closed session at 2.04 p.m. with consultations with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071, deliberations regarding certain public power utilities, competitive matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.086. And Mr. City Manager, it's my understanding that the issue regarding agenda item B, is that the North Loop 288 building, that is not being considered today either in closed session or our open session. Is that correct? That's correct. We're going to move it to next week. All right. So we'll pull that as well. And then I will also then go into closed session regarding a legal question for Work Session Agenda Item 3A, and that will be deliberations with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071. Okay. All right. If we could welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council. On June the 16th, 2020 is 318, we've just completed our closed session. We will now move into our Work Session portion of our meeting. Our first item on the agenda is Citizen Comment on Consent Agenda Items. Do we have any citizen comments? We don't have any citizen comments on consent agenda items. Request for clarifications on agenda items listed on this agenda. Council Member Meltzer? So I'd like to pull Item B, and I'll be recusing. And then on Item M, I wonder if I could ask staff, I actually just want to make sure those right up, which one we're pulling. Okay. Did you say? That's right. So pull B, and then a question on M. If staff wouldn't mind just describing who non-toxic neighborhoods is, and what their participation and evaluation of the proposal was. Are you wanting that now, or you're wanting that now? I was asking for it now, but I don't mind doing it later. Are you asking for M to be pulled? Well, okay, tell you what, let's pull M, and I'll do that later. Okay. All right. Any other clarifications of agenda items? Council Member Briggs? On Item J, there was a question, and I did see that it was funding from the 2014 bond. But I was just curious if this was something that we could do in-house. I know that there was a Fantastics designer that was in the Parks Department that would do parks. Is this kind of out of that scope, or is it something that can be done in-house for less money? Mayor, we have Gary Packin, I believe, on the line. Okay. It takes him just a moment to buzz in. Is he here? Okay. We'll go great. Oh, here he is. He's walking in. Okay. Mayor, City Council, Gary Packin, Director, Parks and Recreation. Item J is a 2014 bond program item for Southwest Park for the development. Total funding was $1.255 million, and we cannot do that internally. It's too large of a project. It's almost 200 acres. It'll be a significant city park, long-term for the city. So we do need some expertise to help us, plus workload with our staff right now. We could not do that internally. Councilmember Briggs? Thank you for that clarification. Will there be any input from the community for this design? Absolutely. We have a number of public meetings scheduled, and then we'll form a focus group and have a design charrette for that process as well. So there'll be a significant amount of community input, plus we'll use information that we gather during our master plan process to help with that as well. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage? I had those same questions about this item, and one more, and that is the, it's paid for with the, with money from the 2014 bond election, is that correct? But what is the, what was the category of that bond that it falls under? It was for Southwest Park Master Plan. Okay. So it was specifically for that. Yes, ma'am. And what was the total amount allotted to that from the bond package? It was $1,255,000. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, Councilmember Briggs? Just a quick follow up to that, because will, has there been analysis done that after this 198 is spent, that the amount left in the remaining bonds will be enough to build the park? Absolutely not. There will not be enough. You know, a park that size is probably just for the park itself. You know, roughly $25 million. I mean, that's significant development of a park, if not more, depending on what we put in it. If we decide that a rec center would go in that facility, rec centers right now, roughly are $25 million at that point, as well as a starting point. So you could easily spend 50, $75 million on a 200-anchor park if you wanted to, depending on what's going in there. So that's why the input from the community is so critical at this point. So we get absolutely what the community wants for that parcel. Okay. That's good. And this plan will probably will help us decide what we're going to have and how much we need. So that's very helpful. Right. Thank you. There isn't even enough to do construction drawings for whatever we would master plan at this point in time. Yes. Then is it necessary that we spend this right now? And by the time we have the money, will it be outdated or? So the thought process to figure out what we want and then figure out how we could phase it and then break it into smaller chunks, obviously we'd come back to park board and city council to get feedback from you all in regards to direction. If we wanted to bite it off in phased approach, we will be getting probable costs for those phases. So we could manage it that way, or if we wanted to bite it off all at one time and just develop the entire park, but it probably will be proposed to do it in phases because it's such a large amount, then we could move forward with a design of, you know, phase one. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Council member Armitter. Yeah. So you mentioned that it would be outside of the allotted amount from the bond package if there's a rec center developed, but what if there's not, what kind of estimate on the lower end, could it be budgeted on the lower end without a rec center just as a park within that allotted money in the bond package? Absolutely. You know, I think originally when this was proposed years ago and when the land was purchased, the thought was it would be used for athletic fields. So it depends on how many athletic fields went in there. If it was just a parking lot and trails and some pavilions, you know, restroom, obviously that's a lot cheaper than building another sports complex similar to Evers or something of that nature. So it really will depend on what the community wants and coming out of the focus group and the community meetings to really identify what that program's going to be. And at that point we can identify what the costs are going to be. Okay. Yeah. It would be great if the public could be informed about potential costs at that time too, including for, so you mentioned just having a parking lot and trails on the one extreme, but also to see, you know, whether or not sports fields could be made without an actual brick and mortar building, you know, within that one million. I would think that that would be something that taxpayers would be interested in knowing about too. Okay. Yeah. We're getting close to being outside of posting on this. We're talking about the final plan. All right. Any other clarification? Todd, did you have a question? Well, just a couple of things. We've been meeting with the Bond Oversight Committee about this for almost three years now and we have committed to them that we would have two projects basically. The first one is we knew all along there wasn't sufficient money to develop a park the way it had been envisioned early on, but we did agree that we would go through the master planning process. There would be community involvement. The other issue that we have committed to them is that we would continue looking for land acquisition opportunities in South Dent, which was the other potential use for these funds as well. So Gary is pushing both of those agendas in order to satisfy what was told to the 2014 bond committee. We get asked about it every time that we meet with them. And those were basically the both the paths that we've promised we would head down in accordance with what the voters approved. Okay. All right. Any other questions on this agenda item? I think we've talked this one pretty succinctly. All right. So other clarifications. Council Member Briggs. Item K for the printing. I'm curious if the there were a few people that did and I didn't notice that there were any workers like we didn't have by the hour how much they were paid. Was that asked for or not? Between the first and second choice, the second one is a dent location and I know I ask this all the time if there was a local consideration and it may not even be that this is one of those cases at all so. Ryan Adams, Public Affairs. I can speak to the second part of your question on local reference. We actually had one local submitter on this RFP and they were both the one we were proposing today and the local choice was they were very close in their scores however the difference maker was price and that is the reason we are bringing this recommendation to council today is the difference maker mostly on what would end up being the cheapest option for the city for these newsletters. Okay. Do you so you don't know if it was asked how much because I know that we had looked and some contractors some people put in how much they you know pay by the hour and so if if this second company paid more to their workers it would be another item to look at so but well thank you. Thanks. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah. So following up on that, did we find out how much the each each company paid their their workers into the contractor or was that not asked? It wasn't in the scope of work that was in that was submitted with the RFP I will actually defer to our purchasing staff to see if they can they can provide more information on that. I believe we have Cassie on the line. This is Cassie Ogden, Director of Procurement. In this particular solicitation we did not ask for labor rates. We usually ask for labor rates on some of our on-site services however we did not ask for labor rates with this solicitation. Okay, and so with the one that's a local company they are they are physically in Denton and they would be doing the work in Denton but you're saying because the one that we went with is off-site the information wasn't asked is that correct? Well for services that are completed on-site on-city facilities oh on city we do correct okay okay yeah so and let's see about the the cost so three hundred twenty five thousand dollars was was there a plan to reduce the the the page length in those or have it be smaller or you know measures to reduce the cost because of our current financial situation or is this cost based on producing these the resident updates and construction guides at the same level at which people are used to getting them now? This solicitation was based on just our prior history of roughly eight issues every annual year six of those being a resident update and two of those being a construction guide. Of course any any modifications due to budget reasons we would take up through the budget process and we wanted to give ourselves with this contract enough flexibility to continue what we have been doing and account for any unanticipated issuances of citywide newsletters that could go out even the first year or the fifth year whatever that might be and whatever those needs may be. So my understanding is yeah this is is not to exceed amount we may not spend this amount correct I mean yeah okay all right any any other questions clarifications for agenda items so the only ones that I have that are being pulled are agenda items B and agenda items M is that correct all right okay all right then we'll move on to our next agenda item which will now put us into our work session report. Mayor sorry I had a question about F okay all right it's about the retaining wall for the Brinker substation okay do we is a staff person here who could answer? We have Cassie Ogden on the line and Terri Kater here as well I'm sorry Terri healthy. So this so that's the 755 retaining wall the the agenda description mentioned that this is the the cheapest alternative and that there are two alternatives is that correct did I understand that correctly? Terri Nalti assistant general manager DME yes we we evaluated one other alternative which was a concrete wall a standard concrete retaining wall and this this type of structure is was significantly less expensive. And can you explain at what state is the Brinker substation right now? Yes ma'am the Brinker substation the walls have been erected around the substation all the subsurface work has been done the control buildings have been delivered and are being configured now we anticipate the bulk of the construction on Brinker substation to be underway this summer for the above ground portion and the facility will go into service sometime late in in mid to late 2021. So the rationale for committing to this cost now is that because of the the rise of construction costs? No ma'am the the site is a large site that's cut into the side of a hill and without this retaining wall we would have an erosion problem with the hill the dirt from the hill eroding down into the site on a long-term basis so we have 25 foot of elevation difference here that we're trying to retain that soil behind the wall and avoid a an ongoing maintenance headache and to maintain the reliability of the site. Thank you and so that that part I understand that's the the physical reason for for the need for it I'm asking about why why commit to that cost now as opposed to later is that something that needs to be built now for the for the for the safety of the rest of the facility as as it's built and the safety of the workers and or does it have to do with just the rising cost of construction that it is better to to to lock that down now? It's part of the stage construction of the facility we want to get all the perimeter work done so that once the structures are erected they don't interfere with the construction of this wall we'd have to bring in cranes and other equipment to lift the wall materials over the erected structure so it makes more sense for us to do it now rather than after the other equipment is is erected. We also got a very good price. Okay thank you any other clarifications questions of clarifications? Thank you all so much we will move on then to our work session reports work session report 3a is now to give us just a word this is being translated so we will need to be aware of that to try to pause during our discussions maybe slow it down a little bit it is being translated simultaneously and we will have public input on this we typically do not but because of just a letter that went out that said that there would be we're going to go ahead and do that this time I think we have about three callers but we will take their input after staff presentation and council will take their calls after the staff presentation and then we'll have council discussion so I will call the agenda item agenda item 3a report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding an update on the council directed milestones at the green tree estates subdivision. Again please be mindful of the translation process. Mayor members of council Mario Cannasaris deputy city manager I will be providing the presentation let me go ahead and start sharing the screen. Can you all see that? Yes I can anybody can't see it okay you may proceed okay as mentioned this is being translated so if you will indulge me I will be reading the power point basically bullet point by bullet point so on May 12th of this year at the city council meeting the city council gave the following direction to staff regarding the water situation at green tree estates the city of Denton would extend the emergency declaration to July 31st 2020 the city of Denton would waive the nine thousand two hundred and four dollars cost of line extension provided that after May 5th no new customers at GTE or green tree estates can establish water service with the city and by July 3rd all fee simple property owners of record must pay the six thousand nine hundred and thirty eight dollars tap meter and impact fee to connect to the city's water system and as mentioned on July 31st 2020 at 1159 p.m. the emergency declaration and temporary water services would cease at green tree estates also at your May 12th city council meeting the council directed that by June 12th that city courtesy inspections would be completed also by June 12th that the head of household living at green tree estates must establish a city utility account in their name I've already mentioned about the July 3rd fee date for the fees and then by July 17th that those who had paid for the fees that city staff will have installed the water meters that have paid the tap meter and impact fees also by July 21st a report to city council would be made on the progress that had been made with property owners for those connecting to the city's water system so to give you an update since July 12th was last Friday here is the status of those milestones that the city council directed from May 5th as of last Friday seven property owners have received courtesy inspections four property owners have paid the six thousand nine hundred and thirty eight dollars for the tap meter and impact fees six heads of households have created water accounts in their name just doing the math eight property owners have not taken the steps to connect by not doing the courtesy inspections or the accounts in their names however those who have not done so who have not placed water accounts in their names or have done the courtesy inspections by the June 12th deadline they still can connect to the city water as long as the fees are paid by July 3rd of this year to give you a budget update of the one hundred thousand dollars that was set aside for the emergency declaration a little over fifty percent or fifty one thousand one hundred and eight dollars has been expended as of last Friday June 12 2020 and just as a reminder to city council that residents who have not paid the fees that water tap and meter fees impact fees by July 3rd will lose water service after July 31st 2020 because the emergency declaration will end and the temporary water services will stop within the subdivision two more slides to provide here and really one is just a to provide some discussion or allow for discussion from council on those customers that have not connected to the city's water I'm sorry for those people those folks who have not placed the account within their name you would like to get some direction from council we are we still stand ready to continue providing water services for those residents regardless if they put their accounts in their names but we would like to get some direction from council on how to move forward if you have any other direction that you would like to give us going forward as mentioned we will be providing some future updates and those are scheduled to be the next one after today would be July 21st then the following week on July 28th and then finally August the 4th and then as far as next steps the city is planning currently planning to the extension of the water main and the installation of meters staff will be meeting on site which would include building inspections and water utilities will be meeting on site tomorrow June 17th for a pre-construction meeting there at green tree estates for those who want to connect to city water it's dependent on the following three things that payment of fees be made by July 3rd that that residents that are that have paid the fees conduct a customer service inspections through building inspections and that the private connection to the meter is facilitated by a licensed plumber and as mentioned from the previous slide that the next update after July 3rd deadline will be July 21st 2020 and that is the update that I have for council at this point okay if we could pull the screen down we're going to take the public comment at this time so if staff could queue up the caller and then I believe we have translation services for those callers who will be speaking Spanish as well caller it yeah are we we starting yeah oh well I was I didn't know if we were translating my recognizing the caller so yes caller you are on if you could state your name and address your time will begin and you have four minutes okay I'm sorry let me correct it is eight minutes for translation so I apologize for that at the end of the discussion I would like my daughter to do a statement also or a question okay okay okay I'm glad to be communicating with you I just want you to let you know that we have completed what you were asking from us and the requirements to be connected permanently to the to the water supply they already done the inspections and he just found a little somewhat some little things that every house will have and to fix without any problems or issues and it looks like it's not how you guys were thinking that it was that they said that we're not that were viable to live in there so it wasn't like that to the point to condemn our properties or houses things that from the beginning they had been telling us so we made the payment for the the meter the amount of $6,938 per household even though what we live in with the pandemic and the economic struggles we have done everything possible to move forward with all this problem and with the the finances and what we yet need to accomplish also we have talked to a plumber so he can do the job like he has let me know let me know that not all the houses have the same distance and because of that reason it's going to be needed more pressure so the water will flow eventually normal to every house this doesn't means that that we have a contract with him at this point I hope you take into account every detail to do the job as clean and secure as possible beforehand thank you very much for everything you guys doing okay there's still time left I believe her daughter wanted to to speak as well there's still time left can you put your daughter to speak okay thank you okay my name is Yerka Saldana and I will be translating everything my mom just said hello my name is Elva Hernandez I live at green tree estate the reason I am talking is to let you know that we completed what was being asked and demanded of us as requirements for to permanently connect to potable water the inspections were done and only minor issues were found things that are usual in any home and that could be fixed without problems our homes were expected and imagined to be in dangerous and even uninhabitable conditions it didn't turn out like that from the beginning we were told that our homes should be condemned we were also able to make the payments of $6,938 for the water meter for our home despite everything that we are going through with this pandemic and the economy we made sacrifices to push forward and take care of this problem to deal with expenses and to take care of what is still left to do we have also talked to a plumber so that he can do that work the plumber told me that not all the homes are at the same distance to the meter and for that reason more water pressure will be needed so that the water can flow adequately to each home this does not mean that we already have a contract with this person I hope all the details needed are taken into account so that the work can be completed in a clean and safe way without further problems thank you for all that you are doing thank you all right there's if there's any more comments that they would like to add there's still about a minute and a half left but if they're completed I understand we also opened the accounts and to our names so we can get the bill and the meters might not I think the meters should be different because we're not close to other houses like other places with a lot of sacrifices we have done everything step by step as you have told us and we're not waiting until july 31st as it was stated in the last section or council okay thank you the time is up but oh I'm sorry go ahead thank you for listening to us and we will uh probably have a question about the meter size and the distance that will come up during discussion thank you we'll go to our next caller caller you are on the line with the denton city council if you'll state your name and address your eight minutes will begin now yes thank you can speak in pauses while I speak pauses for you to do the intros and the interpretation behind it okay? yes that's fine my name is Beatriz Martinez I am a resident of green trees I live in 4055 ash lane 76208 I'm here to give thanks to the council for the great job and help you especially to the department of development and services that they have helped me with the situation with my house we hope this situation will be resolved for all of us because we have been working very hard all the neighbors that live around my personal situation I'm working to comply with the codes that the laws require and that the city requires for us to connect uh with the city I have paid the the fee already that they have access for the moment that is all thank you very much and thank you for your attention thank you all right so we have one more caller so caller you are on the line with the denton city council hello once you state your name and address your time will begin this is Nicole yard at 4008 hickory lane then texas yes go ahead um I have questions on the meter placements myself I don't agree with them being all the way at the back I think they should be closer to our homes and I also have issues with the payment being due by July 3rd considering with the corona and everything not everybody is able to work right now so I think y'all should extend that just a little bit longer okay go ahead okay you can continue that's pretty much it okay I mean is there like would y'all be willing to make work out like payment plans or I mean the the council member Briggs I believe has a question for you uh-huh council member Briggs uh yes I was um wondering I wanted to ask the caller um how long of an extension would would be necessary or at least a couple months a couple months okay thank you uh-huh council member Armitter so since you asked about about the the payment due date had you had you inquired about the option of being able to pay in over monthly installments yeah that's what I was thinking you know would it be able to like you know do in monthly installments like is that possible well I know that that for for utilities customers there's an option called budget billing that's written into our charter um yeah I myself don't know if if in this case um that would have to be a decision of the council as a body or if it falls under budget billing but that's a question that that I have because I'm concerned about that too ma'am uh this is chris watts can you hear me okay yes sir yeah so um are are you one of the ones that are owner occupied there I think there were five or six or y'all um yes sir okay okay all right thank you any other questions for the caller thank you so much for calling in I appreciate that oh ma'am have you have you had your inspections yes sir okay all right good thank you okay thank you appreciate it thank you so much thank you for having me okay I believe that completes the list of callers so we will now go into discussion and uh continue to be advised that we are still translating I believe simultaneously uh offline so those listening in are receiving simultaneous translation so if we could just be mindful of that as we move through this discussion council member Briggs thank you mayor I have one main question and and then just another um another question so on the original accounts um of those who were getting water um and had are they the same individuals who have access to hook up so if individuals were not getting water and if not set up accounts um are they still in the realm or lineup to be able to um hook up to the watt to the meter at this point so there are 14 folks that were receiving temporary water so is your is your question I'm not understanding your question is your question so all 14 of those are able to um pay and get into have a meter if there was someone that was not part of that original 14 do they still have the right to do this to do it that's my question right it is my understanding that there is a additional person that has paid the water tap and meter fee that was not part of the original 14 and has requested to be a customer a permanent water customer of the city so it is my understanding that that is allowed okay my next question is about the roads and I know we've had this question for over a year um but it's it's more or less because the rules are different if it's a private road and if it's a city road as far as um the the permits and the plumbing and and who can dig um my question is are we operating I believe we're operating as if it is a private road correct well it really is a matter between those folks that want to connect to to the city's water system to make sure they have adequate permission and authority to lay those individual lines to serve their homes okay so I understand that I'm but for us as a city we have to take some sort of stance because if it is private there is a homestead rule where the individuals there can get their own permits have a plumber check and sign off and they can do their digging and lay the pipes and save money and and time but if it's not I mean if it even if we are I guess what are we requiring of them are we requiring them to get a plumber and the plumber to do all of the work even though it's possible or it is likely a private road and that homestead rule exists I don't think we can comment on the homestead rule at this point and try to provide any legal advice over the phone but we have we have brought the water meters that the idea is that the meter banks will be right to the edge of the property and as as we have been concerned about all along there there needs to be legally identified easements permission granted we have been urging all the residents out there since last December to try to work together identify who's got the rights to use the roads to to transmit the water infrastructure there and it's going to be something they need to work out on their own I'll defer to Mr. Collister if he wants to add anything to my answer but it really is something that we we cannot get involved in this they have not those roads have not been legally there's no legal descriptions they have not been improved have not been brought up to city standards so until that happens they're still treated as private and as far as the homesteading goes Larry I don't know if you have anything you want to add to my response I can help with that this is Scott McDonald okay and remember remember Scott we're translating yes thank you the what council member Briggs was asking regarding homesteading relates specifically to an individual being able to do plumbing work within their property in which they own and occupy okay so on an individual lot where they reside they may do that work any other property has to be a licensed plumber that so it really does separate between the the road and someone's personal property and Scott they still has to meet all building codes they'll correct it's a matter who does the work absolutely yes all all of the work has to comply we have to inspect prior to connection so we will look at all water service lines from the meter in the connection to the residence so if I could add a little color to that so Scott when you say that the homeowner can perform plumbing based upon the homestead that means and correct me if I'm wrong that if the from the meter to the edge of their property line that distribution line has to be permitted by a licensed plumber from the distribution line at the edge of their property to along their private property up to their structure you're saying that the homeowner can do that work is that correct that would be an accurate statement there are two caveats I'd like to add each of those pieces of work would require a separate permit for that work to be performed so it's going to be best for those property owners to just allow the plumber to do the work from the meter to the house however they may if they opt to it will require an additional permit and an additional fee to do that so one one more question of clarification when you say that the property or the work has to be permitted by a licensed plumber in other words a plumber who's duly licensed by the state of Texas that's registered in the city of Denton applies for a permit let's say for that project but yet if that that doesn't mean that that plumber he or she physically has to do all the work if there's some if they have people working for them who are doing work then but it still has to be permitted by a licensed plumber and they also that work has to be inspected and pass all the plumbing rules and regulations pursuant to our code that that is correct the plumber must supervise perform the work and or supervise so if he has employees they can help him do that work but he as the licensed plumber shall be there and we will inspect all of the work prior to it being concealed so everything has to be visible for the city to witness sure and so mr mayor go ahead well i was just going to add one other part from um as far as we we did discuss this with a plumber yesterday i believe um there were a couple of plumbers that were contacted um we did speak with one of the plumbers i don't know if he's under contract yet i believe that he's going to go back out there tomorrow with that being said he he did um indicate to property owners out there he didn't know what the water pressure was nor what size of meter however after our conversation with him he indicated that the three quarters by five eight meter that we were proposing to do is adequate and will perform satisfactorily to the farthest dwelling out there the difference will be is the service line from the meter to the residence based on how far it has to go will change in size if i put that into simpler terms if you are a thousand feet away from the water meter it will require approximately a two inch water line if you are 100 feet away from that water meter it would only require a one inch water line it will not change the pressure from the city it will not change the size of the meter to be installed and just to get uh and i'll come back to you i'm sorry just because i think this is an important question that the residents had and i think what i understand the reason for that larger line depending on how far it is is because there's enough pressure at the meter but you need a larger diameter of line because you will lose uh there will be friction that will reduce the water pressure and that's why you have to increase the line is that correct basically yes it is the volume of water okay to have more volume and the pressure will maintain the same yes through friction all right and so one last comment so our codes do specify that based upon the the linear feet from the meter to the service whether it be a home or or other structure that we they can understand and the plumber will know that if it's this distance it requires this size pipe that's part of the requirement for the licensed plumber to pull the permit for that absolutely correct a licensed professional is required to perform the calculations and our codes that we enforce on every structure within the city of denton requires a minimum of 40 psi 40 pounds per square inch to operate plumbing fixtures okay and this this will exceed that all right thank you thank you council member briggs for your indulgence i'm sorry but uh go go ahead and then we'll pick up with council member armater oh no that's that's perfect uh all of those questions were valid and the information was needed um my my question was just to hop on top of the question i asked before as far as permitting and each individual if they are owner occupied and um pull the permits as requested and have a plumber watch and check check that it's been done in the past of the inspection are we working with each individual homeowner and um on that i only ask because it will save a a lot of money if they're able to do the work uh themselves and the time would go quicker because they're not trying to save the extra money right so i do have have we the ones who are able to do that are they aware that that they can or is that just something the plumber will talk to them about we we have communicated with them um and i believe it's been reduced to writing on the documents that we've put out but when we go to each of those individual property owners um there has been three of us each time um we've we've taken um andy along with us to be bilingual and we have communicated if they own and occupy that they may do their own plumbing work on their property um it will it will be the licensed plumber that will have to take it from their lot line to the meter and yes we absolutely have been communicating and and we've been out to a couple of those residents a couple of times just to answer questions okay thank you and just one last final thing mayor i just would like for council to consider um those who have started the process who have um checked off several boxes but cannot get the money in time to um consider an extension on that for those individuals that that have already done their inspection thank you councilmember armature so a number of questions one uh to to what extent if at all does the varying size of service lines affect the cost to each residence i don't know that number specifically i think there is a significant cost difference between a one inch and a two inch and there's only one of those properties that potentially needs a two inch line and that's the furthest one which is a thousand feet away the the balance of those will be an inch and a half pipe or less and that that's not as expensive the two inch takes kind of a hike up but it's it's all poly pipe or at least proposed to be poly pipe so it's it's not significant as much as the distance is probably more significant and when the cost the uh was the six thousand nine hundred eighty three whatever uh per resident was um arrived at uh was was that under the assumption that it would be a standard size service line across the board or was that kind of an average based on different service lines uh two two different numbers that the the the tap meter and and those fees are set and they're they're all the same we did some calculations originally to the furthest residence and we thought that it might be somewhere between six and seven thousand dollars based on a two inch water service line and really just working off a two to three dollars per linear foot being the worst case scenario okay i i would support if if the residents would like to know um you know what the cost would be per household depending on the size of the service line again only if uh the uh an individual resident would like to know what their cost would be uh because uh i think that for somebody for whom the the cost would be closer to six thousand than seven thousand uh i know that if i were them i wouldn't want to pay extra just because my my neighbors in in a different position on within green green tree uh are are paying more just as i myself uh when when i uh make expenditures uh for you know my household it doesn't matter what my neighbors are doing in paying so i i personally think it would be nice uh if if they could at least be given that information if they would like to have it at an individual basis the plumber is going to meet with them tomorrow as i understood at least one of the plumbers is going to meet with each individual individually and he's going to provide an estimate of what it's going to cost for their specific residents this is all a private matter this is not any work that's being contracted or or being coordinated through the city other than the permitting process thank you um another question i had uh was about meter placement uh and one of the the residents who spoke who uh said that where the meter was going to be she would prefer it to be in another place um can somebody speak to you what flexibility there there is for an individual homeowner about where the meter can be and uh you know and whether or not each homeowner has been consulted on that on where they would like it with within that means with flexibility there's only there's only one place that the meters are going to reside they're going to be in a public right of way in our easement at the one end which is the east side of green tree estates the other option was on the far west side which required a 500 foot uh main extension to get meters down there so we only have one location there is um no flexibility and where that is at the only it's the closest place we have to connect and so uh can can you explain why an individual homeowner if say they were they were willing to to pay more take more time or whatever you know to have it closer to their home that if the power goes out you have to you know uh or actually no sorry because they've got another um i think they have an encore for their electricity this is just about water um but say they would prefer that can we have somebody from staff kind of uh one-on-one explain to them if if they're interested you know why it has to be there and answer their questions at an individual level uh on site about what other potential options there could be if any so let me let me make sure thank you thank you scott and i appreciate that but let me make sure i understood what you said what you said is where the meter is is the only location that you can put it on city property within city right of way in other words if they wanted the meter closer in let's say out in front of their house like most people have on some of these because that's a public right of way but it's private property that's the reason it's it's private property so we're putting the meters as close as we can to these residents which is within a public right of way that is i understand the reason thank you so i understand the rationale uh from the city perspective looking at these homes collectively i'm just saying you know i i isn't i'm just saying that i as an individual homeowner you know would would want to have the opportunity to discuss it one-on-one council member armature let me let me ask you a question answered my question let me know who's willing to do that no but that's that's what you're asking staff to do is go out there one-on-one and they're going to ask the question can we move this meter closer to the house and the staff answer is going to be no we cannot now if you're asking them to go do that one-on-one okay but there's not options i mean so people who are listening that's that's where the meter has to be for the city to give them access to city i i understand thank you very much mayor i i understand i just think that that it's important that we see each homeowner as you know individual tax-paying households and that uh that they have the opportunity to be able to ask those questions one-on-one and receive answers even if it's the same exact answer they're getting right now so so thank you and thank you scott um okay to have that conversation do you have any other questions council member armature yeah um another question uh so before the residents got utility accounts in their name uh when they made payments for the water to whom did they make that payment to was it to customer service or through development services customer service customer service okay so it was always through customer service and so and now that uh they have uh city utility accounts and those that have yet to make them when they do they'll continue to make payments through customer service is that right correct okay thank you so what i'm having kind of a hard time understanding is if they're going to be paying um through customer service uh for the water aren't aren't they going to be paying through customer service for the meters as well um scott mcdowell may want to answer that but i believe those are paid through development services right for those that that would be correct i'm sorry i needed to get unmuted the the the tap and meter fee um for all development within the city of denton is paid through development services once those accounts are established then the billing goes to utility billing customer service okay and that's true whether it's for a large development or for an individual home a new home for every everyone that wishes to establish a a tap or have a water meter installed must come through development services okay got it so um i would like to know uh if if customer service is able to answer this question um if uh that could be could be switched to their utility bill so that they could work out with utilities and installment plan and have the ability to pay that in installments under a budget councilmember armature and customer service can answer that that's a policy decision for the city council uh these are our rates and fees that are segregated for a reason and what you're trying to ask is if we have budget billing for actual water bills why can't there be budget billing for meter and tap fees but that's that's not how though it's set up because they're two different types of processes so so that i mean thank you i understand it's just that because this was all under an emergency ordinance you know uh and it's an emergency situation and knowing that that would make it easier uh for for people who because people who and let's let's face it people who don't have the money uh seven thousand dollars is not going to you know magically appear in people's bank accounts between now and then so we're looking at uh you know is do are we able to work something like that out under the the auspices of this emergency ordinances that would prevent displacement allow people to stay in their homes we would still get the money that's as i said when i first started my comment that is a policy question for the council not a question for customer service yeah okay but what i'm wondering is so maybe not for customer service maybe for legal i'm not sure who but um you know what kinds of considerations are there when you know that i might not be aware of when uh you're faced with such a a policy issue what are the um what what kinds of obstacles are there what might be involved if we were to take that up that is what i would like to know because i'm trying to figure out what options we have uh to to be able to get people who can pay over time but not pay right now to be able to stay there and receive water while the city will still get its money back but over time so i don't know if anyone is able to answer that if if if nobody is able to answer that now then that's fine we can discuss that later that would be like i would like to know i i'm going to repeat myself i think that's a council decision i mean legal legal can give legal advice which i'd want to understand to see if that's something that's appropriate for open session but that's a policy discussion which we've had that policy discussion already during these discussions it's okay to have it again but that's i mean we we've talked about this so well but now because of covid um these are different different times uh i i think it's definitely worth reconsidering how important is it to people to have that money all in one all at once what difference does it make to us as a city you put that but again my question was simply does staff have anything to add if not i'll move ahead with my questions if you could please yes thank you because we got other council members who had i understand that my question was just was for staff not for council well no your question was for council because staff can't answer the question of whether you can shift that or not so that's not a that's not a staff question well i would i would have rather hear it from them than from well okay well that those are the facts so do you have do you have other questions that you would like to ask okay so i don't okay scott would you tell her that it's a council decision please uh absolutely this isn't anything that staff would do and this is typically what would come through whether it's through the a code amendment or the development code amendment thank you and can you speak to are there are you know what kinds of considerations um and maybe the answer is no you can't or don't feel comfortable i just want to hear from a staff member that's all um you know well there are any there are any number of processes that that we do internally um when we do work orders and then they're assigned and we coordinate with public works and through the utilities office when they're when they're setting meters so it's it's not to say that it's not possible to do it's just not the way that we're conducting business today a b i think there's some legal concerns to this and i'm just going to my history and i'm not going to address those because i i don't know offhand and but we certainly can put together a you know and you know a separate a separate white paper on the topic thank you i would love that thank you so much um uh another question is uh the remainder of that hundred thousand dollars we have about half of that left um can that uh amount go towards the uh the roads or uh you know maybe that maybe the city taking possession of those roads or any any other option that that residents might want i'd be curious to know that if it were up to resident the residents um what they would like to see that money go to if that's an option who are you who are you addressing that question to just whoever on staff you know feels comfortable answering that question if they were what what were the plans for that remainder uh you know are we bound in any way the plan the plans for the remainder was whatever was not spent was to be returned to the respective fund because it was simply put up to make sure that we were had the ability to deliver water during the emergency period it was never meant to be used as a development tool for a subdivision to where you go in and take over and serve as a master developer that it was simply to make sure that our costs were covered during this emergency period until a final solution could be put in place so no it would not be appropriate okay and and so it it still it will continue to cover providing water until the emergency period is over yes that will be that will be the those are the dollars council's allocated and approved uh during that period of time and the and the date the i can can look at that the date the emergency period is over is that the july 3rd date no that's later in july date now the the money is a hundred thousand dollars that was set aside for the emergency declaration through council's actions on may 5th it was extended the declaration through july 31st this year so so what you have before you is basically the expenses that have occurred by 12 will have approximately six more weeks of services left to do so it'll be more that will be expended plus we are also through council direct direction using nine thousand two hundred and four dollars to cover the line extension for the meter bank okay thank you so it will be we will use more than half of what you've seen so far okay thanks and then finally because staff had asked for direction on the question of uh what about uh residents who have not yet set up a customer service account uh can you can you say you don't have to in fact i prefer not that nothing else be said about them but just how many people have not yet paid uh signed up for city utilities accounts how many of the households sure let me go let me go to my page it's eight yes eight so um my direction would be that uh that they'd be given leniency and that staff directly uh contact them and reach out to to each of them one-on-one and uh and come up with the solution you know find out whether or not they want to you know maybe they've decided that they don't want to maybe they didn't understand maybe they can't but to kind of find out what each situation is and to deal with each situation on an individual basis but i'm comfortable you know if i can get the assurance that that has been done with with leaving it to staff and not having council kind of you know micromanage those individual situations that would be my direction okay any other council members council member davis a couple questions quickly for staff i think this is probably a mario question um any of the the households that you've told us that have been hitting those milestones whether they're inspections or accounts or whatever they are um are all of those owner-occupied homes or some some of those uh owned by someone who lives off-site and occupied by a tenant i believe uh council member i believe um so far i believe they all may be owner-occupied um we have heard that there may be an additional uh fee coming in later this week that is uh render occupied but i believe all of those so far are owner-occupied okay in the may 12th agenda information uh sheet our agenda placement memo we had um a table of the addresses and whether they're owner-occupied uh who is in each home could we have uh in future updates can we have the same table but with kind of showing where the milestones are who's hit what and who we know we're talking to for instance the third caller the very first question for her was you know who who are you in relation to the property we're talking about it'd be helpful to have that information going forward i sure can thank you anyone else mayor protem and then council member melzer sorry councillor sorry paul uh yeah so my first i want to start off by asking you mayor if we could have a formal discussion on the individual meeting request by uh council member armator uh one i don't support that and then two uh i think there's an issue with the non-disclosure agreement that they've all signed that i want to protect them from violating and i want to protect the city staff from being complicit in that violation and i think that's the unique feature uh with an individual homeowner that has doesn't have a a legal binding agreement amongst their their uh neighborhood so that's the unique identifier for the for the neighborhood and that's my my individual position but i don't want to give staff that direction and put them in that situation without a consensus from council and having that that record then i'd ask for staff to speak to uh or at least put on the record whatever statement they want to about uh the property owner the primary property owner um and his application for water just so we have a clear record and people understand what's going on i think that needs to be part of this open record and then um that's that's the just of my comments for now i may have there's one other thing pending but that's it for now okay uh staff do you want to answer that last question then i'll recognize council member melzer sure i think what uh mayor brook tim is referencing is that uh the mr roddy has uh actually paid his fees to uh enable him to connect to the city water system at some point okay and he was the owner of the original water system that was shut down to uh that essentially put the council in this position of trying to help the residents solve this issue okay uh council mayor melzer if i recall um the nda was with was between the uh residents and habitat so i don't know that that has any bearing on us i would just uh chip in the island uh about where council member armager ended up because there's no real representation here about what the intentions or the obstacles are for the individuals who haven't you know yet engaged in the process i'm very uh pleased to hear that it has worked out so far for some and it's you know looking you know looking uh positive but uh i uh share the uh idea of giving staff a lot of latitude to reach out to individuals and takes have some flexibility to just uh understand their intentions and work around their obstacles well if i if i may mayor pro tem council member melzer you used a different word uh i mean i don't have it if staff chooses to do that given that they've been working with this group with this community for almost close to six to eight months uh i certainly if they feel that that would be helpful and they they are willing to go out and do that and to try to understand those obstacles it's not as if there hasn't been constant communication throughout this process so if staff so chooses wants to do that i'm okay with that i'm going to let that be a decision by staff i'm not going to be directing staff to go do something when staff has been out there on a constant basis and communicating with people uh so that's i mean staff wants to do that i certainly would welcome that uh mayor pro tem yeah just want to just want to clear the record uh and then the nba was not drafted specifically for habitat as are for whoever did the work they found out about it when they showed up but you don't you don't day of draft and nondisclosure you have a nondisclosure in place and you have people sign it as they as you interact with them so i just want to make that clarification that it's it's the document is drafted and ready to go and then you give it to people as you interact with them so that's a subtle distinction to me just wanted to be clear about what i was speaking to versus what was represented okay all right any other comments council member armature real quick yes real quickly uh it was the the nondisclosure agreements were regarding the courtesy inspections that was all it was about the courtesy inspections and so that that's not what what's being talked about now i i also want to add that that i i do want to give give staff direction to do what they would do with with any other uh customer which is to answer their questions one-on-one i think they do a great job of doing that and i'm very proud and if that were not to happen i'd be i'd be concerned but i want to make sure that that happens with with wingtree as well as individual customers well i'm not going to repeat my comments mayor pro tem yeah i just want to request a copy council member armature represents that what the document says the nondisclosure document so i'd ask her to send me a copy or staff to send me a copy so that i can review it as well but if she's not read it that's fine i just she made a representation of what's in it and i've not read it okay any other comments on the direction i mean currently right now we have a direction that is the status quo from our last meeting i've heard that there's been some discussion about uh do we want to give people an opportunity to make payments we've heard discussion that there's a desire to have staff go talk to those who haven't made any contact with the city there's eight households i believe that have not uh performed the courtesy inspections it's what i if i recall correctly but i'll also know from staff presentation that at any point up to july 3rd or probably any time before july 31st at least for sure july 3rd based upon last direction from council that those individuals can perform a courtesy inspection they can uh pay the fee and they can sign up for water so um there's not this is not a definite termination date today of their ability to still sign up for denton city water so uh any other comments um mario you you had a question about um i thought it was your question if you could go back to your slide please under the direction part uh direction on any actions for customers so what you're saying is our last uh direction was that they needed to transfer into uh a name not just um a resident number like resident 10 to a primary name in order to continue services is that correct uh that's correct mayor and so you're asking for those that have not done that yet what's the disposition of the water delivery until that point that they do okay correct i mean we're we're we obviously delivered water to them on monday yesterday yesterday so we can continue doing so um as long as uh council doesn't change their direction we would stand ready to continue delivering water services to those residents uh going forward until the declaration expires which is uh friday july 31st 2020 i think what would be helpful if in um the uh friday staff report if you could provide as council member davis had requested a sort of um overlay of those who have paid with those with whether they're owner-occupied or rental because if the if the remaining units that have not put it into an account name who have not performed any courtesy inspections and who haven't communicated at all with staff regarding the intention to sign up for water by july 31st i think that would be important information um for this council to understand that if all the owner-occupied have signed up but none of the renters have because they can't because it has to be the landlord that does that then i think i think we would like i would personally like to know that information uh so we may be able to take some some different action if that seems to be the case if you could pull the slide down mario mario that'd be great okay any other questions comments mayor protem question for uh i guess scott what protections do we have in place for the homeowners so they've paid six thousand dollars plus but as everyone's touched on during the conversation if the right away uh issues not satisfied you can't run the lines uh and so what protections do we have or or what refund mechanism do we have for them if they encounter an impasse so they're not able to cross these private roads with the with the with the without permission and or they can't uh afford to pay the plumber to span that that distance but we have their six thousand dollars what is our plan to protect them in those in that instance well the the i don't know that there's a plan for say we we do have the ability for refunds so we have a policy in place and we can provide refunds um the the the roadway is a private road and and you know what we've said straight on from the beginning of this is that they need to address um that that that ability to use that that roadway so they're going down that premise and that's where we're at and we of course have the ability to provide refunds as necessary so so one hypothetical uh that i'll follow up with mr roddy applying has in theory access to his own private road so out of all this it could it could end up that he's the only one that is able to tap into that to the water meter i think there i think there's one other property owner that is right adjacent if i recall correctly to the meter bank that the property would be able to take it but your your scenario could play out for some of the folks that are in the middle of the of that subdivision well okay thank you councilmembrometer uh yes so if if we can't have the the policy discussion now about whether or not to allow staff that the flexibility to develop a payment plan for individual uh residents then i would like us to extend that that deadline as some padding to extend the emergency period to that november date uh that that staff had mentioned previously that that we could afford to do without additional cost i would like to do that as extra padding because as i understand it you know by the next time we're set to discuss it it'll be after the third okay all right councilmember breaks well can we extend the july 3rd payment date without extending the uh declaration um if that's an it's just a question to make sure that the people who have already gone through the process have a little bit and longer time to pay but i know that this council was very uncomfortable with extending the declaration last time and i don't want the ones who are in the process now who really want to connect not to be able to because of the the full declaration so mario does the declaration say that the payment if the payment's not made by july 3rd whether or not they can make it by the july 31st somehow they're they're out of luck i mean i i think that was a deadline we put but i don't think it said that if you don't meet that deadline therefore if you came up with that money prior to july 31st we're not going to accept it correct i don't believe if ever my memory serves you right i don't believe that the specific ordinance was that date specific of those milestones what was specific was just the ending of the declaration right another reason why the third is important is is to give staff time once the fee is paid then they give staff time to actually coordinate the work and do the actual work itself out in the field obviously you've got weather more more than likely july is not going to be of issue with weather but just being able to give staff time the physical time to actually do the work and then once it's completed then work with the respective contractor plumber whomever to actually do the work they need to do to connect from the city's the city's meter to the respective home and then get it connected by july 31st so part of that is just a lead time to do the work gotcha okay yep councilmember armater so just to make sure that i understand and also that any residents who are listening understand because i'm not sure i do so are you saying that it's okay that there's nothing binding in the ordinance if they don't pay by july 3rd that they could according to the ordinance pay by the the 31st is that what you're saying they theoretically could but the thing is on august 1st they would not be receiving water from the city trucks they would be without water until that meter is installed their plumber is contracted with the respective property owner and connected from the meter to the home so there could be three to four week delay without just water to the home okay so now previous thank you so so previously at a previous discussion i think as a city manager i might be remembering this wrong but you know there was some suggestion that it could be possible that they could arrange to get water from the city outside of the emergency ordinance is that possible and am i misremembering that there was a discussion that they may be able to get water from a private water service right but it was very expensive for i mean i mean from the from the city uh is that that's not possible outside you know the only reason why we're providing water in the manner which we're providing is because you all have declared an emergency and we're operating under that premise okay so so what i would like is for all of this to be you know written up and made clear to the residents so that they understand exactly you know legally what their you know what flexibility they have and what they don't have you know here's what will have kind of a flow chart here's what will happen you know if you don't pay by the third that's okay you can have until this date but if you don't pay after that here's what will happen and then my other question is what about um so say uh somebody doesn't is not able to pay by the 31st and they are and they are without water um can can we provide them some sort of assurance that they will not be uh cited by by code enforcement for for not having water is there anything that we can do uh and even if not i mean what could they expect as a possibility in terms of code enforcement well if uh if there's no water available to the house it's rendered uninhabitable under the city code so that's again it's it's the uh it's the city ordinance and you've got to have water servicing to the home so that's where you get to uh a something that could lead to a condemnation proceeding is it is that what you're saying if they if that's not addressed so code enforcement would presumably give them time yeah the reason the reason why this is extremely important is because i know that you know residents are are i think they're making decisions um and you know if if this was you if this was any of us and we didn't have the money we would be wanting to know this and we'd be wanting to have it in writing you know and i want to make sure i think it i think it has been in writing i mean if staff wants to send out something a little bit more the ordinance says that the ordinance says as of july 31st i believe it was in the staff presentation that there will no longer be this temporary water service delivery out to that community that's what we decided three weeks ago no no yes that i understand but as far as code enforcement and their ability to continue living in their homes you know i would like them to have something in writing so they're not just you know they they will have that we will have what everybody else has in this in this community and that is just like what happened over on fry street and oak street when you know the community was clamoring to to condemn those facilities because they were uninhabitable and they had water and they had electricity but they were so run down so if staff wants to put something together that's great we'll we'll get that out but we've had these discussions for six or seven eight months now and we had it last month we've got a deadline july 31st it's been stated clearly here that if you don't have water or electricity to a structure and a house or an apartment in this city anywhere it's rendered by definition uninhabitable so people are not allowed to inhabit it i understand that is i understand that councilmember armater i've got councilmember davis we we've got your request down and and we will we will see what we can do on that we'll ask legal to work with staff to get out something that would comply with city codes and explain city codes and and as such we we've got we'll give them what we get on the maximum flexibility i'm very worried for these families and some of these are homeowners by the way so it's not like well like that and that may be true i don't know that's why we've asked for the information it is councilmember councilmember armater please as far as the information goes i want to recognize public i just want to say i don't want those names to be public okay that's fine we can just talk about just the houses and the addresses i mean the names are public out on the county the county tax records i would rather us not extend that in the residence council member i'm going to recognize councilmember davis councilmember davis thank you mayor uh something i said in prior meetings that bears repeating in the context of what we were just talking about the majority of the folks living out there are living under a lease with a landlord and a landlord who has a moral and legal obligation to give them a habitable structure to live in so when the chips fall on the 31st of july or on august 1st it is not the city who is removing water from these folks it's mr roddy and it's the landlords who own these homes who as other than mr roddy himself they don't seem to be making any moves towards hooking up the water right now it looks like the people who are moving towards hooking up the water are the homeowners and the council member armander's last point about the list the reason why we need the list is because we need to know who is a landlord who is a homeowner when someone comes into a council meeting and says the city is taking away the water or the city is shutting off water when people hand out flyers around town saying the city council is kicking people out of their homes and green tree estates people need to know the actual facts and the actual facts are the landlords who have responsibilities out there are not fulfilling their responsibilities the homeowners are the folks that we need to be dealing with and they're the ones whose names we have to have because we have to do business with them thank you okay all right any other uh we're gonna we're gonna wrap this up council member briggs um well my question was just in my head after what uh council member davis said um how many rental uh units out there does mr roddy have and has he um paid for any of those to be hooked up to service do we know i believe he is a landlord for one unit maybe two uh two sites and i don't believe he has not for the not for the ones that he's a landlord for mario that that would be correct and the second piece to that is mr contrerez is one of those and he's ultimately going to be um has paid and intends on um occupying a different structure okay so then what i'm hearing is of the eight uh who have not paid all right two of those one of those may be mr roddy's rental property because mr contrerez who is uh i think he owns one next to mr roddy's property that he's renting it's he's going to be taking that meter for for himself okay all right okay any other questions or comments all right then uh you have your direction and we will take a five or ten minute break welcome everyone back to this meeting of the denton city council on june the 16th 2020 it is 5 13 p.m we are moving through our work session reports we're on work session item 3b receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding an update to the city of denton's covid 19 response good afternoon uh mayor city council sarah keichler chief of staff um one second while i share the presentation okay so this is our standing work session update um to provide updates on the city's response to covid 19 um as a reminder we do have a current disaster declaration and order in effect through june 30th and today's update will be brief we have two parts to it um the first is an update from parks and recreation and denton public library so gary packen and jennifer becker will be presenting that first part of the presentation and then the second part is in regards to the covid 19 disaster expenditures and the declaration order and the director of finance david gaines will be presenting that second part of the presentation actually in getting direction from council regarding extending potentially extending the disaster declaration and amending it which would be brought forward to city council next week on june 23rd so at this time i'll turn it over to the director of parks and recreation gary packen to give you an update and what we'll do is we will split this up bifurcated so when mr packins through we'll take any questions and then after the next part of the presentation is completed we'll take questions after that mayor city council gary packen director of parks and recreation uh a few quick items i'd like to brief you on today um we are proposing to city council that we move forward with our volunteer efforts um some cities across the nation have not stopped uh volunteer cleanups and some obviously have and we are one of those we'd like you know if council's approval and direction start that effective immediately to start all our volunteer programs we have updated our release of liability waiver in our volunteer manual we are proposing pre-screening health assessments for all our volunteers we will be providing masks and hand sanitizer that was provided to us from keep america beautiful and we've updated disinfecting procedures and tracking for the vests and the cleanup material that we provide them if they return to us that's reused these programs include our yard of the month program our garden workdays we reduced those uh volunteer efforts from 30 down to 10 to keep them the small groups and we also are instituting a no tool sharing for those efforts and then and then our meetup cleanups our adopt the spot our cigarette litter prevention program all will have curbside supply pickup for those volunteers uh obviously social distancing guidelines uh we've been providing gloves uh litter grabbers and vests and then uh we'll be providing proper glove removal instructions this is some of the information that we'll be pushing out to our volunteers for our cleanup efforts this is coming to us from keep america beautiful and keep texas beautiful and then we rebrand this to our initiatives specifically and then the second item is special events we talked to you last week and regarding to a pilot event on june 20th for our juneteenth the cultural outreach committee the coc is a grassroots effort for an in-person juneteenth event they are working with the original juneteenth event it is still planned for june 20th or fredmore park uh the core event is from 5 to 9 p.m they will be doing some cleanup from 9 to 10 and there'll be a small basketball tournament in the afternoon that we are planning for to date they still anticipate 750 people in attendance as i mentioned the basketball tournament open mic music uh food and games merchandise uh voter registration will be taking place at the event we have asked them and they've agreed to be promoting safe protection sanitation stations will be available uh masks and gloves will be available and then encouraging social distancing as well um the event for our planning efforts uh on the following uh last wednesday we met with the committees as well as police and fire and worked on details for planning and we did as mentioned last week last tuesday at council we did reach out to the denton county public health and they provide us provided us the cdc recommendations that you can see on the slide regards to physical distancing face covering restroom facilities being clean and sanitized as well as those high touch areas we did identify a number of tasks and fees that were required of the group uh based on some council discussion last week and that is insurance that they have to provide they have provided that to date uh getting all the associated permits that are required trash removal restrooms and those sanitation stations i had mentioned earlier are the responsibility of the coc as proposed in your agenda for this evening is the in-kind service request provided by the city of denton those are the typical uh services that we would provide to the original juneteenth event if that was happening alive as well so that's fairly standard for our parks fire and police expenses pending the outcome of the event we have anticipated what those costs would be if something changes between now and then we'll return to council for retroactive approval if needed if those in-kind services exceed what we've projected uh in the next week or two uh we still we're still concerned obviously about attendance could could be higher based on you know recent um events across the nation and then obviously covet 19 precautions we want to make sure that we are educating everybody we are going to be putting out some additional signage in the park uh to encourage people to practice those cdc recommendations at this time mayor i'm open up for any questions okay um if you would like to pull the slide down we'll see if there's any questions any questions councilmembers so one one small point and then one bigger question um the the the kdb flyer which looks great has that been all has that been printed already or is that just a prototype that's um that has not been printed yet it's just a a prototype i mean we can obviously amend that yeah just a small suggestion it and i wouldn't even mention it if it had already been printed out um but at the top um so there's if you could go can you put the slide up it's uh number six i think this would be a relatively easy change they're the two little figures up under for next to no contact safe supply and then on the bottom there are also two figures that are bigger and closer together um i think if we could have those same two figures down there then it would look more they would look closer to six feet something more like a six feet distance between them uh it i wouldn't have even mentioned that if it had already been printed out but since they've already got that graphic at the top i think they can just repeat the same one you know and then say 60 uh do you see what i mean yes it's just seems so off scale so uh but it's a great flyer otherwise i love the the directions on gloves um my my question was you know and this is a question for the last time uh but now it it feels even more important to me to ask it again because of the spike we're seeing because we're seeing a big spike in covid cases and we're seeing you know depending who you ask uh the the level of testing either stay the same or go down uh and and we're not doing contact tracing and these other things so you know my question again is uh does does staff have any plan for unraveling some of what we we've put forward based on what the numbers are telling us or are we going to keep uh progressively um you know moving forward with increased openings i would hope that that we'd be going according to the numbers but i want to know if there's been any change in that since the last time i asked uh you know and if not uh if council would be interested in giving direction on us paying more attention to the numbers and acting independently even if the county is not rolling back for us to at least consider you know having a having a discussion on that i guess a clarification i believe we're under current governor's order based upon what's opened the capacity of what's being opened so i don't think that the city if you're talking about rolling back are you saying that we we go back to a stay-at-home shelter or we go back to 25 i don't think we have the no no no no no no so i mean so so let me clarify so i mean within what the law allows in other words opening of city facilities because in my opinion unfortunately you know our hands are tied in what we can do by state law as the mayor has just said but we do have some flexibility in the opening of city facilities and i know that uh you know staff can make recommendations it's up to council to decide i know the last time that that staff was stirring on the conservative side and i agreed um what we have up here now is not in in my opinion about you know further expanded opening but it's also we're not hearing about any reconsideration about the plans for you know basketball tennis rec centers etc so i was wondering if there has been any change in staff's recommendation on that and if and uh regardless with the answers if we could have a council discussion on that if not now then soon because the numbers are are alarming so in regards to our next steps um most recently as of yesterday we opened up our restrooms uh and started providing those to the community and then the volunteer efforts would start today our next step would be to open up north lakes rec center that's scheduled for june 22nd um and then after that we we really don't have anything on the horizon uh our next facility to open would be mlk at this point in time and that's tentatively planned for september and obviously that's subject to change i think with the recent spike that's something that would continue to pay attention to both locally and within the county and then dfw north texas and then also continue to monitor our partnering cities uh across dfw to see what they're doing uh and gain some educational advice from them as well um so that that's our current uh status in regards to next steps um we'll continue to monitor uh the if they're the spike continues and then readdress it obviously if council uh wants to provide some direction we'd be certainly uh moving that direction as well thank you and has there been any reconsideration of the need for hand washing stations uh it it it parks because everything i see suggests that that would make make a difference i'm wondering on on on staffs end if you could speak to that yeah from from the beginning we've been concerned about product availability that's becoming more readily available but um the the ability to get the actual mechanisms for the sanitizer uh the refills maintaining them uh concern about theft the people taking them uh and then the amount that we would need uh we we've been encouraging people to bring their own sanitizer uh we were actually looking into maybe even small handouts i know kdb did get some for handouts uh to our volunteers so that's something that we could do down the road um but putting stations at each facility and numerous ones within each park would be challenging um so we're encouraging people to to bring your own sanitizer uh and take that responsibility while they're using their parks uh just as if they were um you know at a grocery store or something in that nature uh make sure you have supplies for yourself as well thank you um i meant by hand washing stations i mean actual water because we've got we you know we've we've got water hookups you know and i know in quaker town there's an actual uh a spigot that i think has been shut off but i think it could be turned on so even you know the most the most primitive kind of setup where there could be a no touch uh soap built-in soap dispenser we do have we do have three over at the civic center pool right now uh we're moving two of those over to fred moore for the juneteenth event uh we are renting those so at some point in time we'll have to return those but uh i don't know about availability and total cost that'll put those throughout our entire park system would be challenging all right uh council member melzer i noticed she had a question then council member breaks um yeah i'd be interested in knowing what the what the cost would be to do that uh and i would just um tee up i think you know that's number marmotor makes a quite a valid point that outside of city facilities were governed by law inside of city facilities we should be guided by public health and perhaps we could get a return visit from our our county public health director to advise us you know as the situation changes rather than you know just leaving it up to sort of our guesses okay uh council member breaks thank you my my question is not for gary um it's for either sarah or the city manager is it for this press part of the presentation uh for covid okay i mean is it appropriate to ask now i well i think gary was presenting uh the covid because i think sarah's got another presentation so i think gary was presenting based upon the dentons response to covid 19 for the parks and recreation department and i think sarah's going to give us another presentation on a different aspect of it so um if it's not for gary if we want to go ahead and have sarah give that presentation unless there's another question for gary specifically to what his presentation was mayor just just one quick follow-up on the hand washing stations you know since we did open our restrooms uh yesterday we do have restrooms in a number of our parks so they do have uh obviously uh sinks in there that people can use those to wash their hands so that would provide that that resource that council member armature had asked about okay thank you council member breaks is this for gary it's a follow-up to that yes gary how many parks do you know uh do not have bathrooms um i don't know that number off the top of my head but our larger parks obviously have uh restroom facilities uh some more than one um but the neighborhood parks typically do not right avondale and netty schultz i know i do not so okay thank you any other questions for gary okay thank you gary we'll hear from sarah then i'll go ahead and start the presentation for jennifer oh jennifer i'm sorry yeah there you go jennifer can you all hear me yes we can great um this is jennifer becker director of libraries um our phase three um will begin on monday the 22nd we will be opening the north branch library we time that to match gary's opening of the north lakes recreation center and we'll be opening it with some limited core services the hours are temporary limited hours monday through saturday 10 to 5 and that's to match the current curbside services at all all locations um we'll be bringing the other branches up to phase three in a slow rollout every few weeks but patrons would be able to come into the facility for grab and go browsing and using our self-check machines to check materials out access um computers or laptop work tables if they need internet access um and printing um we would be able to provide some quick answer reference or computer assistance as long as it was something we could do quickly with with social distancing those more involved or complicated research or technical assistance uh services we would refer to our virtual book a librarian service that we've had going on here um some services would be unavailable during phase three and those include the study meeting and quiet rooms the maker space um lounge seating open seating general study table use and those youth or teen interactive play activities um any branches that are not yet in phase three would just remain in phase two until um we got everything settled with um north branch and then we'd roll the additional branches out later any questions on our um library reopening plans let me see uh council member melser um i'm sort of making the same point really i made with uh with mr packing do you think it would help uh you might feel differently uh before going ahead with that next step to confer with the county director of public health you know just given the recent trends we're always open to hearing um recommendations um at this time this is what our peer libraries are doing um mckinney frisco plaino are already open um and we do have it lower than the governor's even at the last update the governor recommended 50 capacity for libraries and museums we are only doing 25 capacity um so right now we're pretty comfortable we do have shields across all of the service desks um we have ppe for staff we have cleaning supplies out we also have wipes and hand sanitizer available for the public um but right now we're comfortable unless you all have a different recommendation okay uh any other questions for jennifer yes mayor pro tem thank you uh thank you jennifer i just want to my only concern and i touched on it before is that some sort of time limit uh to allow to to help the residents avoid kind of a first come first serve uh and then uh someone being unable to get in i would advocate for some sort of uh not strictly enforced but some sort of mechanism or notice to citizens that they you know after hours so we may ask them for one for cleaning purposes and then also so that it allows for especially with the limited capacity so if you filled up at eight o'clock and no one left then or 10 o'clock would i forget the hours but you know the gist of it if someone walks in right at 10 and you're 25 percent then that um and if you maintain that level the entire day other people aren't able to get in so i would advocate for some sort of timing mechanism again not strict in place but just giving people a notice and a target uh so that we can regulate that make sure everyone can get in and utilize the the park i mean thank you yeah the library that was a concern of ours um but when we ran the numbers 25 capacity for north branch is 162 people um we only have up to if everybody was working at the same time the same exact shift 20 staff members at a time so that leaves 142 people for that 25 percent and again we have there's no seating there are no programs and nowhere for people to sit unless they are on the i think it was set it's less than 10 computers that would be available at any time um so the ability for somebody to stay all day would truly be their ability to stand up all day um just without that furniture and the lounge areas that's that in a in and of itself should be limiting um capacity um and with that high number for capacity at 25 for north branch we we think we will be well under that mayor pro tem thank you and thank you for the update but so and i think you answered every question but for that that in the middle there how do you feel so 10 computers will you rotate those or could someone be on the computer all day uh if they chose to oh thank you yes those do have a time limit they always have had a time limit um all patrons get up to two one hour sessions so the maximum time that somebody could be on one of the computers would be a total of two hours okay that's that's very helpful i think we may if you if you're going to push that out social media wise you may put that asterisk at the bottom or something just um or i'm sure you have it posted there as well so that should be fine but uh that that answers my question thank you you're welcome uh council member davis thank you sir just a quick question jennifer um i wonder how the the collections and uh materials availability are holding up i heard anecdotally about one patron that had just an astronomical number of books checked out at one time and i wonder if in the current situation we have any kind of material shortages or if people are mostly of hold times are longer than average or people are mostly able to get a hold of the materials that they need uh when they request them um we've had curbside hold pickup service going for all but three weeks um since library facilities closed um so patrons have had full access to our circulating collection just like they would if our doors were open um anybody can place anything on hold whether it's in the facility or if it's checked out with somebody else when their due date comes up and they return it it'll roll to that person who's on hold for the items we we are not seeing exceptionally long um hold lists um because our facilities are closed so many of our patrons use browsing to select items so our circulation has dropped considerably compared to um march april and may of last year um this this is our prime time summer with our summer reading challenge um but without that browsing our circ has dropped quite a bit but items still are moving at a pretty fast pace um but we haven't seen any backlogs we do have a check circulation limit on each account um so nobody can check out more than oh i'm gonna draw a blank right now it's either 25 or 35 i'm sorry i'm i'm just drawing a blank all of a sudden um items at one time on their account thank you that that answers my question thank you you're welcome any other questions for jennifer any other presentation from you jennifer that was it just an update of where we are okay thank you thank you and we have i think uh it was at the end of the presentation or sarah do you still have something david david okay yeah because i know council member briggs had some questions so want to make sure we get hers in i'll take us to the end of the presentation and then we'll be open for questions okay so we're going to go through the expenditures and where we are just to set the set the stage there the current disaster declaration is the fifth order of council and this order goes through the uh through the end of june and the spending authority is eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars we do plan on bringing uh updated uh uh order to council for consideration next next at the meeting next week in the in the order that we bring forward next week we are going to recommend that we increase the uh the emergency expense allocation from eight eight hundred fifty thousand dollars uh with a three hundred thousand dollar increase to the current eight hundred fifty thousand dollars and that's based on our expense projections that you see there below uh currently we've spent approximately six hundred fifty thousand dollars in response to to covid-19 that we relate to these emergency expenses uh i think it's important to point out especially as we're thinking through female reimbursements and the crf reimbursements that this is exclusive of personnel costs those non-personnel costs that we've had directly related to covid-19 but we do as we project out the next couple of months uh anticipate that that amount increasing to over one million dollars you can see our projection there through the end of august of 1.1 million dollars and that is assuming that we keep those homeless initiatives and those and the other expenses um somewhat consistent to how we've had them and continue the hotels and security associated through the end of august as well so this is the the chart that we've shown kind of throughout this process there you can see our total amount spent of the six hundred and fifty thousand dollars if you take in the encumbrances we have exceeded the eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars but we really focused on the spent amount because a large amount of those encumbrances are really amounts that we could or could not spend just give us the the the purchase orders essentially authority to spend them if if required but we're really tracking against that amount spent and you can see a number of those categories again there you saw projected out on the previous slide for the different tracking of expenditures that we've been monitoring so for a final slide just as a as a wrap up we are obviously initially had a new order on the agenda for today and we're delaying that until next week and that would include an increase of three hundred thousand dollars in in spending authority obviously open to any direction and in confirmation for that that plan of action with it with an updated order so that would include the three hundred thousand dollars in spending authority but didn't want to take this time to to bring up the non-suspension of the utility non-payment of shutoffs during our we had a work session in may where we laid out a plan for moving forward with shutoffs again and with late fees again and the direction from council at that time was to discontinue the suspension of shutoffs at the end of june and so we would reinstate those in july so our customer service staff has been working toward that goal as laid out in that presentation throughout the month of june they've been proactively reaching out to accounts and letting them know that this was a possibility that could be moving forward so kind of prepared for that and we'll on in the friday report this week we're providing an update on the status of that all the measures that we've taken up to this point so that we would have no resumed shutoffs in in july and then resume late fees in august so wanted to reaffirm that with council as we start to approach that deadline and have a new order next week presentation for questions all right let me get okay if we could go ahead and bring the presentation down screen down okay question council member breaks go ahead thanks mayor i have i have a few um one i noticed that the send it the city funding is for rent assistance is at zero and so am i under to understand now that our residents can still make those requests but it will be funded through the county and that the county funds are are there that's correct with the crf funding from the county they have their own program now for that so we'll be relying on the county's program moving forward and is there a division um between cities on how much the county can spend within each one or is it um just if you apply you you get money they've just seeded it with i think it was 20 million dollars for rental assistance was the initial program and um there there's no parameters in terms of how much we'll be spending in one city they have tried to do that um when working through the 55 allocation and the the business loan program but even in that case they've been very good to debt and then work with us very well because of the nature of the the requests that we've had and the expenses that we've been covered for many times county expenses okay and you know we've all listened and heard about a spike um my question uh because i do know we tested all of our nursing facilities um does any of that have to do with that specifically and now we can expect for things to kind of normalize or or no it's not really it doesn't have anything to do with it i think we would need when i talked to chief hedges last week they had not yet got the results in so i'm not sure how much that's playing into the numbers but we can certainly ask dr richardson that question and and see what what information context he can provide us okay um and i was asked this question and i'm not sure if this is something we would do but if if there is conversations going on with the school district and with the colleges i ask that um the city be involved in those uh just so that we know what their plans are and that that can be relayed um pretty easily yeah we're in the process of setting up meetings with uh with both well actually all three entities here shortly okay um two more questions are um i know we're not there's an item on the agenda tonight and we're not going to do that are we going to pull that or will that come up to us and we'll postpone that um you're talking about the loop 288 property no no the uh the actual order tonight we'll we'll pull that out yeah okay okay all right and so on that it does say still under number two that this is a dent and stay at home order and i i think that that has been lost on many people and so is that is that really the intention of this still or um is that just in it and carried over uh good evening that language has carried over and i believe it's been modified to say recommends to stay at home unless you're engaging in certain activities or operations so we can clarify that further if you'd like and that's in line with the governor's order the recommends correct that is aligned with the governor and the cdc that unless you have certain activities um or the best course of action to be the most safe is to stay at home unless you are safely um going out and taking the necessary precautions okay and just one last comment i watched the um the governor's press conference and um he did mention that there was some he mentioned bar specifically and he said that the tabc would be enforcing and so i just want to put a a note just let the individuals out there know that um the governor has said that and um to to take this um to take his comments serious because i don't want to see anyone um get their like their license suspended um through tabc uh he did mention that in his um press conference today so i just wanted to put that out there but if that were to happen it's not it's not the city that's enforcing it okay all right any other questions councilmembrometer so a comment and then a question um my comment i i continue to feel that even more strongly than before that suspensions and of of uh shutoffs and lake fees uh suspensions should be extended especially with the spike and so i will be when this comes forward to us next you know i'll be voting no as long as that is in there uh it would be great if if anyone else has changed their mind on that you know based on on the numbers and the health risks of um of shutoffs uh my questions are about uh the homeless initiative so as for the people who are staying in hotels i had asked once before if the city has looked into getting any kind of reduced rate any kind of weekly weekly rate to be able to uh put more people to afford to put more people in hotels at that same cost i was wondering if there's any any update on that any any internet from either the hotels we're working with now or other hotels we have worked with the hotel owners the current ones to have a reduced rate um to have a rate reduced further and there also is capacity limits just to currently what our non-profits can manage in terms of number of individuals to serve in those hotels with case management meals delivered daily and so forth so there is some limitations not only financially but just from the capacity as well yeah and thanks for mentioning that because i know that under you know the new money that's coming in there's going to be an expansion of staff capacity so can we kind of expand the number of people we can uh put up in these hotels with that and can you also speak to if that reduced rate is it still a nightly rate or have we gotten a weekly rate now right now it's still a nightly rate and in terms of the use of those cares dollars we're continuing to advocate um with the county um i'm trying to make sure that we get as you know as many dollars to our local non-profits as possible but um that's really the only authority that we have at this point is to try to seek other avenues for them and then we're trying to seek reimbursements for some of the costs that we've already laid out but this is not a panacea in terms of their staffing issues they've got to prove they've got to be prepared to be audited they've got to be able to prove that it's directly related to covid and so one of the things that i've asked sarah to do is to start working with some of the local non-profits understanding what what their organizations look like post-covid you know assuming this assuming we're by this in a year how do we continue to help them stand them up and provide those services but what do they look like after the fact there's some consolidations that are being contemplated there's different service models that are being contemplated so one-time shot of money is not something that an organization should be planning around and so i think we're trying to help them take a very purposeful look forward well thank you i'm glad you're doing that it's it's hard to imagine a time post-covid but we know it's going to happen no matter what um so uh anyway and then my other question about that about the hotels is so are we still uh are the people who are staying in these hotels still people who are quote in the system already with with with case workers and whatnot generally people who had stayed at men's senior king in the past has there been any yeah any any shifts since we last got an update so that's a good question the individuals that were initially placed at the hotel were from mkoc as well as clients from salvation army and our daily bread sunset time as rooms have opened up and availability has become available additional individuals have been placed with a recommendation from our street outreach team so there are new individuals still being placed in the hotel it's not just the initial clients that were placed okay thank you and and that's set to end on what august the end of august we're still we're still discussing that um sarah and david gains and i are meeting regularly to review the budget um i'm continuing to have discussions with the county talking about what kind of programs are there to help us with some of these costs because i do feel like we are providing a service that's county-wide in some of these areas so they've been very good to us i just can't emphasize it enough in terms of helping um at least entertain some of these funding requests but that's where we are at this point well wonderful i'm really glad to hear that and i myself uh you know would would support extending that as as much as we can uh afford to do so and and thank you to the uh the county for you know for for being for giving city so much so much flexibility and working with us on that yeah i just think it's important to make sure that we're managing expectations there's two important issues here the first one is as you all saw in your update we're working with the property owner on the loop property to to remediate some issues there and and make sure that our budget and timelines are sized appropriately now that that threw some different wrinkles into the deal so that's going to have an impact potentially on the hotels the other thing that i i just don't want them to i can't emphasize enough is something that sarah lost over pretty quickly but we've got odb and my senior king i mean they are having a rough time with volunteers we've made as many deals as we can with the hotel owners to make sure that there's security in the hotels that sort of thing to help supplement the staff protect their their properties but that is really a limiting factor so it's not as if we can just move another 50 people into the hotels they just simply don't have the the staffing horsepower right now to manage it and this is with city resources supplementing them at this point so i think until we start seeing their volunteers come back to them feel safe enough to come back to them we are in a pretty constrained environment right now and i just think that we need to right size all of your expectations it's just not that simple as adding more services we need the bodies to help manage the the properties thank you for that i i do understand and i'm just looking forward and hoping uh uh for you know when when that when you can allocate that money or when nonprofits can use that money to help with the staffing issue because you're right and i'm seeing that from the people who are being served by this as well mayor pro tem uh yes just want to respond to the to the city manager i'll forward you an email from um gary steel who helped uh work with the veterans um hall of texas veterans hall of fame and i talked to him and he's interested in providing volunteers and also interested in office space there at the building so there may be opportunities to one explore that going forward but to get a group of well-organized volunteers that are willing to step up and help us because i shared your sentiments so i'll forward your email i'll forward his email to you and staff can reach out and evaluate it but just to let you know i've been trying to work that angle and see what connections i have individually that could help with that okay anybody else council member melser uh i wonder if uh staff would indulge me by just googling denton county covid case trend and sharing the screen so we can you know uh have a little discussion with that in front of us i've got an email sarah i can oh you want to go ahead and start your comments while they're pulling that up so we can be efficient there tom please what you see is a graph of progress and it would actually shows even though it says coronavirus disease denton county texas what actually shows is the state of texas i don't know if we have a similar graph for denton county or city of denton um and uh i think what you'll see is from uh kind of middle of may to end of may uh it really looks like sort of calming down and you could see why you might uh feel like you know it's it's uh maybe we should do you know we can do things a little bit differently so i don't know if you can if you have got some way to indicate todd you know that that peak there in the middle of middle of may then you see it going down to may 28th but from may 28th to the most recent data it's really different looking and i'm having this feeling that our conversation i'm by the way the financial part and the operational part very grateful for the expert you know management but but just talking about you know what we should be doing at this moment when you look at may 28th to today uh it gives me this feeling that we're like like this conversation is a little untethered from reality uh you know there's nothing there unless you tell me this is totally wrong data and there's some other data we should be looking at there's nothing there that tells me full steam ahead with you know the opening up part and and we're only talking about the part that you know we can address which is city services but that's why i say hey if you leave it up to us and nobody on this call is a public health official you know i go wow that's pretty scary looking i don't think i would you know take another step forward if anything you know i i entertain the discussion of taking a step back uh but uh since none of us are public health officials you know that's why i would say can we you know and we don't have a debt we don't have a city of dent public health official we do that at the county level so that's why i'm you know re-raising this point but now with everyone seeing the data you know maybe one of the people in the conversation should be a public health official to advise whether we should really be moving forward with an opening up given this data i don't think you're going to get an answer to your question i've heard you ask it before and and uh dr richardson has been on weekly calls with chief hedges myself since this began he has been very consistent in warning that we shut down texas so fast that it really it got it put the trend it really stopped it in its tracks as much as you know because we were able to see what's happening on both coasts he has been warning us for weeks that as you started having you know nicer weather we started opening up more people milling about i mean you got the holiday the july fourth holiday i know it worries him he has been warning us that you're going to see a trend spike in this in june july that is exactly what we're saying so i think they've switched their message as has the state's a more personal responsibility they're not willing to politically shut down the economy again right now well we don't control the economy i'm only talking about the city and at what point does that happen you know is be out of control in terms of the city the parks i think the libraries jennifer's got a very conservative approach in place i think gary has taken up you know we've taken a lot of criticism for how slowly he's opened up the the parks and and i think you had a good robust conversation last week on that i've kind of talked to the directors that we're going to be managing the the city facilities the way we are probably through the end of the year at a minimum encouraging telecommuting less meetings in person ppe i'm not sure right now that there's much more we can do in a responsible way because our business has to continue on but we can bring matt back you're going to hear exactly what i just said to you from him that he's well i'm consistent i think with him you know i'm personally not uh interested in making the decision based on politics or anything like that i prefer to do it based on the data and i just don't see how this data says go forward i i think that's not supported so if he would say warning warning warning i would heed that warning i can't support moving further until we see things calm down i just don't see how the data supports that so so let me ask you a question then council member melzer we just had a conversation about the juneteenth celebration coming up and and i think we had a comment from dr richardson regarding that i mean he certainly said people should exercise personal responsibility and caution that they need to exercise the proper social and physical distancing with the mask and all those type of protocols that we're all very familiar with so based upon what i'm hearing you say it sounds like that you are not in favor of that physical that that particular gathering moving forward uh or or am i misreading something well i'm okay if you ask my opinion not being a public health official i'm less concerned about the outdoor stuff than i am about uh indoor facilities and continuing to open up indoor facilities and and if you know if you want to tell me the data set absolutely that that trend tells you that you know you should be doing as much as possible to increase indoor interactions you know i i guess you know i would have to disagree with that but i haven't made a comment either way yeah i mean i mean you're you're the one bringing up the issue i haven't made a comment either way i was just trying to understand what you're really aiming for so what you're saying is you you don't think that the city should be opening up any of its indoor facilities either for libraries or for uh camps or for uh like an auditorium uh these kinds of things that that we're looking at well what i'm really what i'm really saying you know and we've heard uh city manager characterize what you know the county uh director of public health would say and i'd be interested in uh you know in hearing that uh but what i'm what i'm saying is uh that i'm not a public health official and the data doesn't seem to support further openings so and and not being a public health official just going based on what i read in the news i'm less concerned about outdoor activities than indoors so yeah i would i wouldn't go further than we than we are now just being a layperson uh until i saw some calming down in the you know in the case activity okay todd if you could uh i mean i know dr richardson is very busy if you could maybe relay that question on and see if he couldn't provide something in writing about just some of our programs and just yeah i i don't think he's going to say to us don't do it i think he's going to give us probably the same kind of rationale and advice that he's given but we need to present that to him if he can't make it in person to just say hey could you comment on this because i think one of the things with this outdoor facility with this outdoor meeting the governor there was some guidance i read where talk to your public health official to get guidance on different types of outdoor events and things such as that so if we could just get something from him uh either in person or in writing on these indoor activities that the city of denton is solely responsible for it's not governing other people that that'd be great uh thank you you bet and one thing i want to make abundantly clear because i think todd touched on it and i don't know that he hammered it home uh i don't know i guess my point would be we need to have a vote on it a record vote on it going forward because he the city manager is absolutely right this is a uh this is something that is very polarizing that i've seen zero post uh when the the city staff is getting beat up about the swimming pool about summer camps about these things we as a body if we need to have a vote and those that are advocating against those things need to stand up and not make staff the scapegoat and say i and i and i directed staff to do this that or the other so that staff can then unequivocally say we're following through what we have to do here's your council members and we can stand accountable to those that we represent but i just want to make sure that we have a clear line that says staff's executing based on the majority and the majority vote is this and and so those uh elected officials that are responsible to talk to the constituents can do so and and not make staff uh weather that storm that that would would come from those actions okay all right well we'll get that we'll get that input from dr richardson then we'll have that we'll have that discussion all right any anybody else all right we'll move was that the completion of that work session item uh sarah okay thank you all right we'll move on then to um agenda item c which is receive report hold discussion and gaff staff direction regarding dent municipal electric solar program and distributed generation rate structure let's take a real quick five minute because this probably is going to be a it's this is going to be a a robust i think discussion so let's take five minutes and we'll come back and and and tackle this topic oh i was on mute sorry i'll try it again all right uh welcome back to this meeting of the dent city council we did have the countdown uh and it is june 16th 2020 it is 6 16 p.m we are on agenda item 3c which is received report hold discussion you have staff direction regarding dent municipal electric solar program and distributed generation rate structure just as a housekeeping matter we're going to move agenda item e to a later date uh probably the next week or two because we've got a proclamation in person here and we've got some people on citizens report so we want to try to stick as close to 6 30 as we can even though we know we're going to go over so uh with that i will go ahead and turn it over to staff for the presentation uh thank you mayor watts council member members we have a brief presentation here over our distributed generation program mainly our solar program as we've looked into to cutting costs over dme uh our solar program is our largest program so we took a look at that kind of what the current cost is and what the future costs are and and we thought we should bring that to your attention so through this presentation uh there's no action but we're looking for direction uh for the rate structure for this program then we then bring back to you uh with the rate book as part of the budget process so our existing uh solar program overview it has two main components the first being the rebate program it was implemented in 2009 to help reduce the equipment cost related to solar uh this current physical year the rebate budget it has grown to five hundred thousand dollars those funds became available on october the first and by about the first week of february all of those funds have been accounted for uh so over this over this time period installations and system sizes of pv systems have increased as solar costs have decreased and customers are electing to install systems without receiving a rebate so that be that that comment there and as i should state through this presentation we had numerous questions that we'll all attempt to answer in the presentation that being said when the funds are all accounted for we put that information out on social media we put it up on our webpage and when new applications come in we actually contact that that resident and say are you sure you want to proceed with this as the city will not be will have rebate funds available and as you would see we've already had 16 uh installed this year the second part uh the second component of the program is a distributed generation for maneuverable resources rider and for the rest of the presentation if you allow me i'll call that the dgr that that's a rate rider in our rate book that allows for the actual credit or accounting of the energy that's generated by the solar panels and is pushed back on the system so generation here is power that the panels put out that is pushed back on to the grid so and then the second line here we have excess generation um that is generation that is above that's pushed out on the grid that is above the consumption of the homeowner so over on the right we kind of have some charts to show you where we stand today as of today we have about 3665 kilowatts or about 3.6 megawatts of rooftop solar on our system that's comprised of about 345 total systems and on the bottom is the the contribution or the cost of the dgr program in 2009 we had 297 solar accounts that actually pushed enough power back on the grid to receive a credit and that credit totaled 121 thousand dollars so the the current dgr as as is difficult to say it is also a complex rate structure so we have this illustration to kind to to demonstrate how how it works so at the top would be a typical line items you would see on an electric bill you have the delivered kilowatt hours it is shown in the first column that's simply the power that is consumed by the residents the green column on the right the received kwh that is the actual power that is pushed back on the grid in excess of what what the residents needed at that time so on the right we have all the all the categories so as you know we have tier one and tier two in our bill so the the green on the right is the credits on the excess generation and then they're shown on the left how they are credited to the bill so in the example at the top this customer consumed 800 kilowatts in a month returned a thousand kilowatts of excess generation their bill would have been a net credit of two dollars and 15 cents rooftop solar generation cost so now we're going to talk specifically about the cost of the energy we have one of our comments was a lot of these these terms on here may be technical so i'll try to explain them a market is just the what our traders can go out on the o'clock market and purchase the power net metered is exactly what that says so they have the consumption minus the generation equals a total usage and that can be a positive or a negative number so the three lines we have here the red represents the net metered rate that is paid to the solar customers of bme and its average is right a little less than a hundred dollars it's about 97 dollars the blue dash line at the bottom is our eca rate that's our energy cost of adjustment it's 34 dollars and 10 cents that all citizens pay for per kilowatt hour the blue line the blue solid line is the cost of the power that our traders could buy at the urtot basically this right here says seven days a week in the in the north texas area so that line is represented by the blue line the difference between these two lines is the is the cost of energy increase that our solar program is putting on our rate base so the subsidization here is the existence that we're paying the the solar customers uh this high rate for their excess generation increases our cost of energy chris could i just ask you a real quick question just for clarification if you could maybe go back to the the previous slide and i usually like to maybe i guess it's this one so that difference that you show there that delta where would that be here in this line that you're talking about it says delivered k watts return k because what i'm hearing is that somehow we're they're getting credit for a per megawatt charge that's much greater than what um uh we're having to pay out on the market where would that show up in this like bill this calculation where is that and if this is the wrong slide to do it it's later on that'd be great just say mayor we've got we've got it coming forward and i'll i'll stand down no sir mayor and uh kind of probably um confusing the units here so as a house we cannot talk in megawatts we have to talk sure um when we're talking about power it's megawatts so what you will see here is that this bill if it would uh um if they wouldn't have this kwh so their bill would have been in the the hundred dollar range so that excessive price that we're paying which covers all of their bill basically is giving them about a hundred dollars credit in this example per this this one household oh okay so um okay go ahead and proceed and i think i'll pick that up as we go but i may come back to that question yeah sorry about that sorry for the interruption no problem um so i think i covered this slide so this this is this is what caught our attention and this is what we what we decided that we we might have an issue so this trend here what you're seeing is the green uh bars here are the number of systems rooftop systems installed in uh on our system and in 2017 and prior back to the start of this program this amount is inconsequential so but what we notice is this trend is it's almost doubling every year um so as you will see in 2020 uh this cost is nearing i'm sorry 2019 it is nearing two hundred thousand dollars and then by 2025 the credits that will be paid back from the utility to the solar customers are nearing six hundred thousand dollars and at the top we also have the as the mayor just alluded to the actual cost per megawatt hour in 2019 will be 96 dollars and 28 cents so this trend going forward is going to put extreme rate pressure on all of our rate customers so some solar program council considerations that we would like like brought up the first would be the renewable resource landscape when the current dgr was introduced in 2009 was totally different the actual cost of renewables at that time was very high you know in the north of a hundred dollars so the the the structure that we were paying our solar customers within line of what we'd go out and buy that on the market since then we've had the den renewable resource plan which has increased the city's renewable portfolio to 100 so that kind of puts us in a unique position uh in in comparison or in contrast to some of the other utilities throughout the state dme's contracts for utility scale sales scope utility scale solar and wind achieve the lowest possible cost of renewables for all dme rate payers of increasing renewable energy from rooftop solar utilizing our current dgr rate structure is the least cost effective manner for all dme rate payers and finally i made a big snafu here energy generated by rooftop solars does not count towards the drrp's 100 goal and i apologize for that for that error it's kind of caught fire on social media there we do not um we get wrecks from all of our ppas as you know we brought that discussion to you it's our policy has been approved and that's all we're what we're following but we do not request and we do not count um the wrecks from our distributed generation sources which was in this case the generators would be our our our customers um currently the the current solar program requires subsidization from non-solar customers so we have 470 uh solar customers at this time and we have 56 000 total customers so that the cost of the of the solar program in fact the cost of all of our programs uh increases the the utilities expenses and therefore those must be recovered through our rates from all customers and another and the final topic i have here is our current dgr structure does not adequately recover dme's costs to provide electric service to solar customers so we took a look at our our cost of service and the minimum cost to provide power to each uh account or each resident the city of denton is 84 dollars and 62 cents so this is the cost that covers all of our facilities our substations our transmission costs our metering our poles wires transformers service drop everything it takes to provide electricity to our residents our fixed cost is is 84 dollars and 62 cents a month so our our solar program while the benefit of that is um they have a lot of avoided costs so as these as these bills i showed you prior are left two dollars or are very low bills we're not recovering our costs from those customers therefore those those costs must be absorbed by the rest of the rate base staff proposals to address these issues first would be to create a residential solar rate class uh the rate that we would charge this rate class would be exactly the same as our is our non-solar residential rate class but it would allow us some flexibility in the future not today and not in this presentation in the future would allow us to address these these fixed costs that we're not recovering from from this class of service we would like to cap the system size at 20 kilowatts for residential installations we'd also like to cap the annual excess generation of these systems at 100 percent of the annual consumption these last two that they're pretty much industry standards and what they do is is residential or solar installers or what we're seeing over time they try to upsell these citizens to put you know you have a lot of roof space the more panels they put on the more money they make so what we want to try to limit and possibly avoid is these systems being net generators onto our system the second topic we would like that we would propose would be to restructure the distributed generation rider thread we feel that it is kind of an archaic plan and we would like to modernize it and bring it more in line with the uh the rest of the utility industry and we would do that by discontinuing the policy of crediting customers for their base rate and the rca rate for excess generation we'll call that for the rest of discussion the all-in rate we would like to replace that with a propose to replace that with a renewable excess generation credit based on the actual market value of energy as determined by forward market curves i was provided some information of some other cities that call this the value of solar and for us the egc would be the value of solar for that for our utility in denton and the value and the dollar amount paid would be the amount that our traders could go out and buy that power out on the open market would that would be the price of the most comfortable pay in our citizens next all systems mainly commercial greater than 20 kw would be converted to a power purchase agreement that would be that would be approved by council those would be individual considerations based on the the the load of the facility and the size of the panels they put in there's currently eight of those systems um on our there's eight of those systems on our system some of those or all of these are actually being serviced now under this dgr rider and and lastly we would like to evaluate the solar rebate budget annually to see if those funds need to be adjusted or if those funds could be used um better in another in another program and what that would look like is is the mayor i'm sure we will revisit we have simplified this this program is more in line with cities like you might see in austin for instance uh you have delivered kwh and you have received kwh we would pay a simple flat amount for all of the energy generated and the bill structure would look like this the same thing 800 delivered a thousand returned and the bill they would credit that they would get on their bill would be the egc paid at a fair market value and their total bill would be 70 dollars and 67 cents one thing that that i should bring up about this is one thing that's not mentioned here is we have net metering so that the the solar panels or all these systems are behind the meter so majority of the benefit that solar customers receive from their panels is avoided costs so if they're the during a sunny day like today the full output of their of the panels is most likely consumed by the residents and that is power that they do not that they do not have to buy from us that's provided by their own system so that is not shown on here because it does not come through the meter but it is a benefit that's enjoyed by the solar customers and with that i'll ask any answer any questions so one real quick question on that last slide if you don't mind yes sir what i think i heard you say in your last comment was that last slide showed a bill of 70 dollars yes sir but what you're saying is they could have that could have been they could have consumed more than that based upon a solar installation that is behind the meter in other words that's just the amount of electricity the kilowatts is what went through the meter is that is that correct yes sir that's very much correct we kind of use an average kw consumed and dentin of around 1300 kw in the summer that number will run up to about 1800 so we see that this that this example here there would have been about a thousand kilowatts that their panel produced a thousand kilowatt hours that they consumed that we wouldn't see because it never went through the meter right okay all right okay um all right questions council member davis so i i think i think i'm understanding this correctly this is a very complex uh you know we're doing arbitrage on energy rates all the time constantly and we talk a lot on the council about um you know our long-term power contracts and our ppas with our customers and how we get ourselves kind of stuck in these long-term unfavorable rates sometimes am i correct in understanding this is a very similar situation we're essentially in a long-term contract with our our solar customers right now at an unfavorable rate because the way we decided to structure the rate back in 2009 and what we need to do is renegotiate a more equitable rate that's better for all of our rate payers it doesn't just benefit the solar rate payers is that about right council member davis you are correct it is a they the rate structure it's um it's not a long-term contract it's more on a yearly basis so it's in the rate book so every every every year in the summer that rate book is approved and those are the prices that are the rate structure that goes forward for the next year it's just that that has been held the same year after year after year so i guess that's the long-term part i know it's not an actual long-term contract but that's that's what i refer to as kind of a long-term contract the the the way we've had it set up for our customers has been the same for a long time now um it is how do we quantify some of the the less tangible benefits you know i guess they are pretty tangible when you talk about maintenance costs uh peak capacity um load on the system you know my neighborhood it has a bunch of solar maybe my equipment close to me my transformers and switches don't wear out as quickly as somebody who is doesn't have as much locally produced electricity how do we build those things into our rates and models that is and and thank you for the question that's your one question that that i think i haven't answered yet that that is a difficult thing to quantify um from the aspect that um say one of your one of your examples was peak demand they do help so if it's if it's a um those 3.65 megawatts of power that we have in the summer they help our peak demand so on those coincident days that are uh takes our temperature there and sets our t-costs our transmission costs for all of our rate payers for the next year there is there is a benefit to that the the issue we have it is a lighter load on the system but it's not dispatchable and it's intermittent so from the utilities you know it's i'm not not here to knock solar we get a lot of our solar but if i put my utility hat on we have to have assets in place to provide power to all 470 citizens say there was next year i think there's a solar eclipse coming coming our way so during that time those panels are not going to put out any power yet we have to be on the standby to pick up that load to serve those customers the eclipse goes away their panels kick on when we kick back so so there is there is a cost to the utility for for being basically a standby or ready to serve those customers but the benefits you do mention they're hard to quantify but you are right if there's less power that has to come through the transformer you share with your neighbor that has a solar system um there is some benefit that it's just it's hard to quantify and the term distributed so at this point we have 470 systems spread out over 100 square miles so the benefits there's voltage support if you had enough of them just at the point we're at that those those tangible benefits while real would be would be hard for us to quantify um i'm eager to hear what my my colleagues say but for my part i like a lot of what i saw in the staff proposal slide i like a lot of moving towards kind of a more equitable way of calculating the rate i'm not entirely sure how we got stuck with what we did in 2009 because it seems unnecessarily complex even with the rates what they were back then the part that i don't like and i'd like to hear from my colleagues on a lot is um establishing a separate solar rate because it seems like uh today that rate might be or solar rate class today our solar customers might be paying you know exactly what i'm paying in my non-solar house but tomorrow as soon as we start adjusting for some of those system-wide costs and stuff um their rate's going to start going up and up and up and at some point there's just no incentive whatsoever for distributed generation so um so far i like everything else that i hear council member riggs and then council member melzer uh thank you and uh thank you jesse for those comments uh yes i i would not be in favor of a separate rate structure either um i do have some some comments and questions here and i do i think maybe the dme has has them ahead of time i believe i heard they were sent to dme so who are these yours are these from some some from somebody else these these these questions and comments are these uh are these they're mine okay okay so i just if we've got things that people are sending that you're asking questions i mean i'd like to at least get a copy of them if they're coming from an outside source that's that's all my only point okay all right well i mean i can send them so i'm like we all know it's it's really complicated and when you hear this for me i want people to have solar right you want people to have solar panels and create renewable energy and put energy back on the grid but when that gets unfair you want to make sure and you have the right conversations so um my my question is um how can i say this you okay so are are we planning for decreased distribution on grid demand and decreased block purchases so i understand i'm trying to understand how this all relates back to to aircott and the grid and market purchases and if if the homeowners have solar and they're putting energy back onto the grid it seems to me the only issue is um how much we're buying that energy for and if we could just fix that then there there shouldn't be an issue is that correct that that is correct councilmember riggs but an issue we have with solar is the time that they're putting that power back on the grid so the this the solar panels that we see most of the excess generation would be in the in the morning hours so that's that's time when we have excess power already so the solar panels are actually giving us power when we least need it when it has the least value to us so that's one of the issues with solar and then through the afternoon they are offsetting our demand you are correct so our our our traders our emo staff they have that model they know what it is the solar is integrated into that so in essence they would buy 3.5 less megawatts of power then the the another cost then the other part of that is in the afternoon so come five o'clock when that direct sunlight falls off the solar panel uh production across town drops off very rapidly we're still at a peak time of the day when power is very expensive on the market and we're still under those those those load zones or those critical distribution loads at that time yet those panels are no longer producing any power so if that answers your question it it does um i've just can we because i know we have an emo and there's a very very intelligent people in there um but um can we not buy less power when that is being created in excess i mean smaller and smaller block purchases i think at that time that the power that we're buying those smaller block purchases is the minimum price that we can buy that so as you will notice in the in the presentation and what we're proposing is the value of that electricity as you know changes all day long so what we were proposing to head towards is that we would pay those solar our solar customers the real-time value of that price at the time that it's being pushed back on the grid now we're not totally there with technology wise but we're heading that direction so our proposal now is those very smart guys and i might have to differ with you on that and the emo if they're watching i'm probably in trouble now but so we will use forward curves well they will give their best estimate of the value of that electricity to make it equitable across across the city so that's that's two things is is the issue of them pushing back excess electricity one thing we have to keep in mind is through the direction of the council uh we've gone out and purchased 100 renewable electricity so we're we're not out like some of the other cities and some of the information i was sent that are 30 renewable or 40 renewable and they want to up their percentage by having their citizens generate their own clean energy we're actually displacing um renewable resources with our own renewable resources at a much higher cost so that that's the part where we would like to get that in an equitable situation where the benefit of the rooftop solar is to the the resident whereas our emo guys have taken care of the rest of the city and the rest of our rain players can you explain the um excess generation cap at 100 is that is that um yes ma'am i think i can so uh so what you have there is you have um were you trying to keep the benefit of the solar installation so this is this is a not a mandatory this is an elected financial purchase that these citizens are made uh to offset their electric bills so by um capping their generation at 100 of their usage to us that would be the ideal situation so if you in a year you could produce excessive your excess information excess generation could equal your your your consumption you'd almost be at a a net zero position so the the reason that those those caps are in place so that you have a citizen or a homeowner that can't put a massive solar system on their house and use it to make money which would then be have to be born by the rest of the rain players right so by by by by limiting the size of the system then you also keep that benefit localized to that resident okay um mayor can you just i'm still trying to understand this can you tell me how transmission fits into this um because doesn't it lower the transmission demand when um all the excess generation is being produced no ma'am i know okay it doesn't it's not it's not ever entering a transmission voltage the one benefit i think that it might have is that that 3.5 megawatts or 3.6 megawatts so you know there's four times a year the ERCOT takes a snapshot of our grid and and the load that we're as a city is putting on on the grid they establish our transmission costs that we pay over the next year so what the solar does is during that that peak demand is it actually lowers our demand by the output of the solar panels okay and so one of my other comments on the thing that you had is for commercial solar um i'm afraid that if we asked that for um they would have to get a lawyer and that's expensive and if it's more than 20 um kow then they wouldn't do it and so i know that we want to encourage renewable energy and for me i know it's not listed on there as counting towards our 100 but i'd much rather use um actual generated solar energy towards our 100 then then the recs that we talked about um so is that is that something that we can consider or is that just your only recommendation for commercial installations i think maybe that that was a two-part question i think the first part is the ppa it's a very simple document it would be a boilerplate so we have in our distributed generation manual which which is a manual that has the steps for connecting all systems be it residential or solar to our to our system that's an approved document by council and what we're what we're proposing to do is put a ppa i mean we just we've negotiated you know we spent a lot of time on tw and unt we have a simpler version of that it just lays out the turn to the system that that boilerplate would be approved by council and it would be something that we would provide to these to these commercial um these commercial installations commercial customers i don't see it being a big burden on a as far as a legal aspect basically just be negotiating the terms and here's the interconnect it'd be similar to the interconnect agreement that every residential customer must sign that to have service with us so i don't think that would be a big um a big hindrance to people not putting in commercial installations so our commercial installations i won't name their names they're they're some of our foreign companies that have that have facilities here in texas and are indent it's a big deal to them they have larger systems so that they more than so they can mostly offset their their actual usage so most of those systems are not set up to push power back on the grid we actually only have one that does that mainly it's for them if they're if they're keeping track of their of their carbon footprint is where we see that and most of those systems will not be net exporters onto the grid okay i'm just i was just worried about small businesses and wanted to make sure that they had the opportunity if they wanted to get commercial solar that they could but i'm hearing you say it's more of just a form ppa agreement and that would be shared and it wouldn't be complicated that is correct and we actually just went through this with a local business um which kind of brought this up earlier in the year and it's it's the same process it's just the size of their system they follow the same process but the size of their system we would just have the interconnect and the actual rate structure would be through a ppa okay as council member davis said in essence the rider is a ppa that's for all of our residential customers so this one is just specific to their to their to their application and just my last question yes what is er tnpr it's a rate that's on a solar bill but it's not in our rate category class for dme could you say that again please er tnpr it's um right under the rg rate and it's it says that rate on a home that has solar and i i couldn't find it in in our rate class um i'll have to get back to you on that it's not really okay so i'll take a look at that and i will get that information okay thank you was that is that a bill from a home here in denton yes sir okay uh council member armature yeah oh sorry sorry paul i'll catch you on the back side sorry oh was paul was before me yeah go ahead council member melzer you're up here in a corner i can't see you corner square yeah uh right so i'm you know groping my way through this uh as i suspect you all are uh if if i could just share with you my current understanding of the basic idea and kind of check uh there's a fixed component dissolve question we're all several questions there's a fixed component to being grid tied right you could have non-grid tied solar don't participate with dme at all but if you want to attach there's a fixed cost that includes contribution to overheads and maintenance for everything right so that's whatever was about 80 bucks so if we get that and we build that what if they have zero usage we should still be happy then there's a variable part uh which is whatever they the excess usage that they sell now if if we're covering all of our customers needs through our own existing long-term contracts uh that have some fixed components some variable then whatever comes from my neighbor solar system uh if we pay him at the spot rate and we sell it into the grid at the spot rate we shouldn't care am i right that is correct okay and is that essentially what you're proposing that we pass it through at the same you know rate they get paid what what we'll get for it at that moment in time essentially it is that's where we like to get to with that technology you mentioned uh but as i mentioned we can't we're not there now we're not 100 real time correct so some smart guys in your mathematical models but you're you're exactly right same same idea so so but if if we you know are pretty good at basically passing through uh the expense and recovering it for her cut uh why do we need to why would we care about limiting the size i mean if somebody wants to if somebody's going to pay the fixed amount to be tied to us but they've got you know 100 megawatt system and we're passing it all through why do we care council member melter that is a very good question and i actually brought that up myself to again council member briggs the smart guys the administration costs on that would get very high so as you know as you've seen our presentations on our utility grade we're dealing with one trade with with one transaction there what you're talking about here is essentially you know up to 330 individual generators so the the flat on us the headache and in the over administrative oversight of that what would would outweigh or add cost to that that would just not be beneficial to the utility or to our repeats well what if we you know we talk a lot uh in these meetings about cost of service and again there's a cost of service to dealing with a big complex system but what if we recovered our cost of service and then it's you know it's up to the individual men to say okay that's worth it to me or not yeah i keep getting those but but you are correct so if we were saying if we received our cost of service from every individual customer as you know we're not for profit um then that then that would not be an issue but in reality that that is that is that is not what's happening oh no i get that but i'm but as far as like a way going forward i mean i'm with council member breaks that i i'd like to in general have uh policies that keep us whole but that have the end result of encouraging people to create more solar uh uh so you know if we could recover our cost of service and not not limit there of doing that i think that that would be sort of you know happy results all around let me just uh uh ask one more well um council member breaks kind of touched on this too so we don't get wrecks from individuals who have solar systems but but it's a sort of like a kind of nonsensical result right i mean that's the most clearly renewable you know energy that you could get so can we overcome that some way like we can like because it's not like it's a question about whether that's renewable it's coming from solar panels you know couldn't we just say we do count that or is there something we would need to do to you know create so that wrecks are created for that because it just seems like a like a nonsensical result to go to the most to say the most clearly renewable doesn't count as renewable how can you explain that to anyone well i wouldn't say it definitely is renewable and i wouldn't say that but but our official um if we kind of tie this into a presentation that we gave you earlier so we identify our percentage of our renewable resources by the wrecks that we retire in a given quarter to give so we use that as a definition so we're not going to our i would never argue that this isn't the most that it is not renewable the issue would be as though those facilities are registered with ERCOT as a generator and they initiate the wreck you know their request from ERCOT ERCOT grants that is given to us so in that case um and this is this is new i'm going to have to get back to you because this just came up to us last night is we we we we've heard some other cities that that are much larger than us that do have wrecks for their um for their rooftop solar and but we don't know if it's specific to residential or to their larger commercial maybe a community solar project or something so we're going to look into that but but we talked about it today we would think that each individual uh consumer or customer would have to register at ERCOT to therefore yes yes sir so that's for for for four for four megawatts um right now at that point we just don't think that would be worth the effort to do that well all right so so uh let me uh ask uh just one more question if i may mayor and then i'll sort of summarize um if we did go to a system where people are where we're recovering our sort of fixed costs and contribution overheads where we're substantially just passing through and being you know covered for uh the excess generation you know into the grid and where we are recovering our cost of service for dealing with bigger systems the hassle of doing bigger systems uh if we went to that structure is is there any way in which uh the people who have bought systems under our incentives in the past and kind of modeled out you know their their paybacks and so on that they would feel uh you know if they'd be getting short shrift in some way or uh yeah just let's respond to that you know just change the dynamics uh for somebody who's who's taking our incentive to act in the past yes sir i i i was i was waiting on that question thank you thank you for bringing it up so the issue we have there is there is the rate of return with our current dgr package is probably one of the most lucrative in the state um so my group deals with a lot of our citizens so we try to act as a liaison with the contractors and the salesmen they know exactly what our rate structure is they can they can walk into these homeowners they can tell them what the return on investment is so the the best thing that we can figure with our rate structure on on some of our systems that we looked in the last year the return on investment is six or seven years with our rate structure whereas with with some of our um not competitors with some other utilities and in the industry standard that return on investment is in the 15 year range so that we are we are not our citizens aren't being taken advantage of but they do know that and that is pressure so yes i i think uh um it will impact the maybe some people that are that are deciding today or waiting till october to if they want to put rooftop solar on there it may it may change but as far as the systems that are already out there it will reduce it will lengthen out the return of investment but again our intent here is is we are 100 renewable our guy we're buying utility scale solar so we've made our our our system all the power providing to all our all our customers 100 renewable our citizens that have elected to to put rooftop solar on there be it for environmental reasons or for finance or for financial reasons to offset that the the main benefit of solar is the avoided cost so every kilowatt hour that that the uh the panels generate that that powers their air conditioners their pools their evs is is a kilowatt hour they did not have to buy from us so that is that they get credited that at the fully loaded rate so the ten and a half cents so we are not removing all benefits from from from the existing solar customers but yes we are we are making it where their credits would be less yeah well that may be reality that you know we were you know overly subsidizing uh but well i guess you know my uh sort of direction so far in the conversation would be uh to make us whole uh in such a way that you know the fixed uh costs and the administrative costs and the excess energy expense are covered so that we would be indifferent to whether you know uh customers choose to build bigger systems that that that's so that that's would require some adjustment to what you presented that's that's my thought so far thank you thank you that's my barometer yeah so i i really appreciate um what council member davis uh griggs and and melter have said so far um i i don't like the idea of a solar rate um because it could be much higher and i i definitely don't like the idea of capping because i feel like that's the opposite of what we want to do uh so i i will be very eager to hear you know what are the answers to some of the the the good questions that people have been asking so far about other possibilities another possible one possibility i want to throw out there is if it is too expensive for dme to power homes with solar power roofs what about and you know and i know this this is this is a radical suggestion but what about uh if we allow and and talk to residents about how they feel about this if we allow people who have solar roofs uh to to use co-serve instead of dme because when i look at what co-serve has to offer for people who have solar you know they they can offer things that that we can't since we're only operating in one city uh and you know and and i know that's a huge suggestion um and a real departure from the status quo and i'm not saying just open up to everybody uh but if push comes to shove if that's the only way we can get more solar in denton then i would totally be for that because people are doing this you know not just to uh for the environmental benefit that benefits us all but because it's much cheaper and utilities are expensive so i feel like if if there's a way for us to provide them that option we should at least at least look into it uh councilor armature i the uh the question yeah i don't that would be a major policy discussion to allow co-serve to serve in our territory what i can tell you um without looking at the slide here is co-serve actually charges their solar customers an extra fee of ten dollars and i believe that their excess generation fee they pay is zero dollars per kilowatt hour and if your resident if your system exceeds so if you put out more power than you consume in three consecutive months um then you lose all solar benefits for the duration of your term with co-serve so where our our we've had a very uh lucrative um or very generous solar program and we've had received a lot of information from from sources a austin is the model um if you'll look at austin they they cap their rebate at 2500 and they're winning awards our average rebate is 4038 um we have net metering they don't have net metering so our our incentive and i think a lot of misunderstood it doesn't cost us extra money sir with solar customers it cost us the same but the problem is is when they the excess generation they receive a credit they're not covering their cost of service for us to serve them so and and creating a new rate class that is just because of their their load characteristics they are much different than our other residential customers so that was a solution or an idea to put them in their own rate class so we would not we would not charge them more for the power um all of our residents residential rates pay the same way and thank you for thank you for clarifying that so i guess um i guess it it's not a surprise that in in looking into uh you know co-serves policy that they're not they're not really advertising that they have this cap um so what what i would like to know so i was i had just looked them up before the meeting just as an example to see what did they do uh and reading about you know on their website okay let me hold on if we could i mean we've got council members want to ask questions about what the presentation is i don't want to spend a lot of time talking about co-serve okay um just let me quickly because we're not talking co-serve this we're not this is way out of posting no way out of posting council member armature council member armature there's no way that this posting can be read to where we can discuss using co-serve for solar customers and the city of denton okay so i will not mention by name other utilities utilities but i will say what i would like is to see uh what private utilities are doing and it was very helpful what what you just told me uh which i'm now piecing together with what i'm seeing here on their website i would like to know what the the private uh providers who are already operating to a small extent in denton co-serve encore i have no idea if encore even has a you know solar program and to look at what uh what you mentioned austin is doing and what i would in all of these things i would need to be able to make a decision um because i can't come to i can't come to the decision today and one more thing mr mayor i also want to hear uh from those uh customers of ours who already have solar both commercial and residential if they don't want to speak out then that's fine but i would love it if we could contact them because i want to i want to hear from them because in in in doing my due diligence for today uh you know council member armature we we have some other council members that want to speak on this so could you wrap up your comments please and we'll come back to you if you have some additional comments okay so did i is that is that clear yes counseling we actually we have that information we can provide it to you um the only thing i have to to to to put a uh caveat on that is it's not really fair to look at the residents and retail providers and if you do you have to remember that the tdsp so the wires are just not included in the retail provider chris chris i mean she's asked for that give her give her the information but what we're not talking about allowing people in where they don't have a ccn to come in and start just negotiating this we're going to get back on topic council member armature please excuse me i'm sorry he he basically said well we're going to come back around to you there's some council members that have not spoken there are some council including myself and who who's got the who's got the meeting on in the background i'm hearing it because it's it's uh okay yeah if you uh if you'll hold that question council member armature will come back to you on that mayor pro tim thank you thank you chris i appreciate your informed uh look at things and and and i appreciate you being prepared uh for the for the questions uh that come from this body i i guess really how i'm framing it just to clearly give direction if you came to me and said uh we have a new contract and we can buy solar at 100 dollars you know a unit um i would say absolutely not and so that's how i look at this and then i i do take council member davis's point of the concern about the variables and that predictability and so my suggestion would be maybe some sort of uh base are not to go below right for so there's obviously you have projections going forward so there's a projection going forward our model that says hey we feel comfortable hedging at this number so you're guaranteed this number but if it go if it exceeds that we'll give that to you uh but we won't go below this if if if the bottom drops out of it so that way i i think that's where i i find middle brown does that make any sense is that i'm not using the correct terms but i hope the the the thought is conveyed yes sir i i believe i understand what you're meaning to you to ensure that the solar customers that they will be getting some benefit from their solar panel what what value we're comfortable with that going forward yes yeah and so it's it's no matter what happens for example the household's guaranteed a buck per unit but if it increases then you get you you realize that increase but if it dips below that then then because i trust the the staff's modeling and they look forward they're purchasing and and selling etc so i trust their their models to be able to have a level of predictability to that so that the the the the unit owners or the the solar customers if you will are able to to have some predictability or some assurances yes sir uh may approach them and our intent would be probably to have two rates as you know the value of electricity in the winter and the summer are vastly different so we would have to to see a seasonal rate a summer and a winter rate that we would evaluate every year and make those values known yeah no and i thank you and i just really see it as that i mean that that that rate we wouldn't sign on for for a contract anywhere for that and so that and the wrecks and everything that conversation we've had that and that's what we ask you you and dme to do and bring back so i'm comfortable with that thank you yeah you know i mean we've had a lot of discussion this is a very very complex issue and this is about this isn't even a 50 000 foot elevation this is you're orbiting the earth elevation with this discussion and i think as we get more into the details that but i can tell you just from a policy perspective for me i don't think we need to incentivize solar panels whether it be uh residential or commercial where they can have as a as a as a goal to literally make money as a business i mean if they if they exceed a little generation here and there because this 80 cost of service and all these kinds of things you're not taking into consideration all the costs opportunity costs for we have a whole grid set up for for our city so they don't have to worry about a whole grid that you know if if a solar farm goes in and is built out in west texas they've got to figure out how to get that electricity to the masses and that's quite a quite an economic undertaking so i'm real okay with saying hey if you want to put up solar panels your main interest and your main uh uh benefit is you are avoiding having to pay utility costs to the city of denton and over time that you're generating now a six or seven year payback is a 15 to 16 percent rate of return at least that's how i calculate it and that seems a little excessive i can understand why people are putting up solar uh solar rooftop and and commercial but i think we can find something that it meets in the middle because i don't think that our rate payers should be subsidizing people uh with solar panels to the extent that we seem like we are i mean a hundred dollar a megawatt hour we just had a discussion i don't know how many hours ago now uh on the landfill and how much we were paying there and nobody thinks we should continue to pay that but that's what we're paying and that's what we're paying here is is is what i'm hearing in the presentation so i i'm all for people who want to put up solar panels i think we need to look at our incentives based upon if we're going to be paying a certain rate back how does that coincide with our incentives because it sounds like what's happened is our incentives are higher than most everybody else's and the amount we pay for energy is higher than most everybody else's so i don't think it's unreasonable to ask that the rate payers ask us to bring that a little bit more in line with an equity situation of hey if i don't want to put solar panels on my house why should i have to necessarily be subsidizing someone who does when they're going to be receiving that energy and therefore uh they're going to be avoiding the cost of that we are council member armature i'm going to let you comment but we're getting out of this discussion because we got people waiting and so you can ask your question and if it's a quick answer if not we'll have we're going to have many many meetings on this and this is we can't answer all these questions here this is so technical but i think staff has enough information to go back and try to put together a specific proposal specific proposals because that's not really what we had here we had concepts we had policy statements i think they've received enough feedback so go ahead council member armature i think that if a customer who doesn't have solar is another customer who does have solar getting a better deal they're going to want to switch to solar so i don't have a problem with that because as i see it the real quick council member armature is to provide make sure that everybody in the city has electricity that they can afford and they can control that they have a say in as citizen owners of that utility let's speak of affordability we have a regressive we have a regressive rate with solar right now in other words people who can least afford to subsidize those who can afford solar panels that's the situation we're being told is existing right now yeah and i'm saying i think we can remedy that situation if we open our minds to other possibilities okay all right okay okay all right we're going to end this discussion here staff do you have enough information to formulate our next steps we do and i appreciate your patience thank you thank you very much me as well all right let's take a five minute break a 10 minute break and then we'll start our regular meeting welcome everybody to this meeting of the denton city council on june the 16th 2020 it is 7 26 p.m i apologize for us being about an hour late on our regular scheduled meeting but we'll move through our agenda our first item on the agenda is pledge of allegiance to the u.s. and texas flag if you'll stand if you're able i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all will now honor the texas flag honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one and indivisible okay our next item is a proclamation and a presentation and it's uh with great pleasure and honor that i that i will read this and i it's unfortunate that we're in this covet situation where we have these remote meetings because i think it would just certainly be spectacular uh to to honor this man in the commission chambers uh and i will be delivering this uh proclamation to to mr husbeth he is here in in city hall but i will make sure that i wear my mask and socially distance appropriately but i thought it was important to to really give him this recognition personally so i'm going to read this proclamation it's whereas willy husbeth with support and sacrifice of his wife dr dorita hudspeth has been a civic and community leader in the city of denton since the 1970s and mr husbeth serves as the president of the denton county NAACP has also previously served on the denton isd board of trustees the denton county confederate memorial advisory committee in 2017 and on numerous other boards and commissions for the city of denton and whereas mr hudspeth has regularly petitioned the confederate memorial on the denton courthouse lawn on sunday evenings and during denton county commissioners meetings since the late 1990s since the late 1990s whereas the confederate memorial was erected in 1918 by the united daughters of the confederacy and the texas united confederate veterans in the downtown denton square and whereas the denton county commissioners voted unanimously on june 9 2020 to remove and relocate the confederate memorial from the denton county courthouse lawn and whereas others have come and gone i'm going to read this start this over again whereas others have come and gone but mr hudspeth was a constant and represented those that wanted to protest but could not or would not and whereas the city of denton wishes to thank mr hudspeth for his civic participation and relentless dedication for years of standing up for what he believes in now therefore i chris watts mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby declare and proclaim the ninth day of june 2020 as willy hudspeth day in the city of denton and urge all citizens to recognize and honor the many contributions of mr hudspeth and the city of denton so i'm going to come deliver this proclamation to you now mr hudspeth i'm gonna let's yeah let's let's let's unmute our mics everybody unmute your mics yeah absolutely absolutely all right i'll be right in hi willy careful don't let him hug you i'm gonna get i'm gonna get down here so i can get in the picture okay there you go all right do you want to say a few words yes i did okay uh first off uh todd i sent you the money in the mail that you would eliminate um gerard from this proceeding but there he sits we'll talk about that later uh keely i want to thank you for remember me and pushing for this to be this presentation to happen i appreciate that and deb you know you're my my bestest friend so uh and uh paul we've done a lot together and and i appreciate that uh mayor i want to thank the citizens here and everybody's been so nice and so uh honorable to me and with their comments that i think that that's a it's a great honor to do what i did all those years but that wasn't my motivation i just wanted to do what i thought was the best thing for this this city so to be honored now i'm having to work through that that process of being honorable which is being respectful to everybody and i'm working on that and i think that that's what we all should do and i appreciate all the things that have happened but moving forward we i have to continue doing what i'm doing which is respecting everyone and trying to make sure everyone respects other people so i appreciate the honor and i'm gonna put this in a very neat place thank you again city council for allowing you staff thank you mr husband i appreciate it thank you sir oh he he can stay no because i'll hurt her okay councilmembrometer uh so i just wanted to thank you willy um i think i have told you this word before and used it with you it's a a yiddish word um from which is the language that my grandparents spoke and the word is mensch it's also a word in german that just means man um but mensch is what you are and it is more than um just a man uh well women can be a mensch too i mean it means a person of integrity and honor uh and it's a word uh that is not um just scattered around thoughtlessly uh it is used very selectively and and that is what you are and all of denton knows that even people who don't know that word um i wanted to share just just something that i i witnessed recently at one of the the protests uh and then this was before the announcement that the monument was going to come down uh and and will willy has you you have outlasted that that thing this was it was a david and goliath and you just threw your endurance it is just just amazing um that i saw you and and you were sitting in a lawn chair and you were surrounded by young people look like in their 20s uh and they were just looking at you with just adoration in the way that kids look at their grandfather as just this is the coolest person in the world you know if if i were their parent i would have been jealous you know and and you were telling them about your experiences and i i leaned in a bit i heard some of it um but mostly i was looking at at their faces just learning from you and your face and you know you you were just in heaven because you you were transferring your knowledge and you were talking to people who got it and it was an amazing uh site of this the passing of knowledge from generation to generation that happens of course within families uh but also beyond that in communities and i can't imagine denton without you you're mensch and and thank you anyone else councilmember breaks so i i just want to thank you willie and this proclamation is actually from the community there was it was um i'm happy to bring it forward it was a petition the the minute it happened everybody asked for you to be recognized and so it's not just us here on this computer screen that are recognizing you it's it's the community that you've been out there for every sunday so thank you councilmember melzer and then mayor protan willie thank you for your leadership and for your example it's unequaled mayor protan yeah hey pops i'll tell you what i really think when we're not on the record but on the record i'll tell you you're fantastic i appreciate you and uh i have fond memories of uh you picking me up on a tractor in the newton razor elementary school line and and all those fun things so i appreciate what you do and there's uh and again people have talked about it the main thing is that sticking with it is is uh is that's it's tenacious so uh i respect that so thank you anybody else mr husbeth it's hard for me to call you willie i know you as mr husbeth so i'm going to call you mr husbeth um i have really enjoyed your tenacity and your perseverance at the confederate memorial has been seen also at the city council on different issues throughout the last decade that that i've served both as a council member and mayor and i've really enjoyed our friendship i respect you tremendously because you're a man of values you're a man of conviction uh whether or not we agree on everything is not important but i respect that about you and i think you know how i feel about just your tenacity with the confederate memorial so uh thank you so much for your contributions to our city and to the young people in our city and just to the overall awareness and and raising the the issues that you so believe in to a place where they cannot be ignored so thank you so much for uh for this and just it's our honor and it's the community's honor to give you that proclamation thank you sir you bet what a wonderful wonderful presentation all right we're going to move on then to our agenda item three which is presentation from members of the public uh and we've got um review of procedures for addressing the city council we haven't been doing those i believe everybody's going to conduct themselves in a manner that we don't necessarily i don't need to read those and so we'll move on to our agenda item three b1 which is pre-registration and we have two people who are pre-registered to speak with the council uh the first one is lauren clark uh regarding community composting in denton and she will join us here just uh in a few seconds by telephone my name is lauren clark from turn and dallas fort worth can everyone hear me okay yes lauren we can and what i'll do is once you start state your name and address i will go ahead and start your your four minutes for your for your uh uh citizens report thank you sir you bet my name is lauren clark 6442 macomas boulevard in dallas texas and i'm ready to begin just you all have the powerpoint presentation okay yes wonderful we're on the first slide thank you mr mayor and city council members for your time my intention in the next few minutes is to introduce turn to you in hopes that we can collaborate on a residential community composting program for denton residents next slide please local national and international forces will all tell us that food waste is in a landfill is a major problem for our environment here are some basic statistics from the usda epa the u.n environment even from the city of dallas um food waste and landfill is a problem for the environment and the other issue with food waste in a landfill is that it is a valuable resource being wasted by not turning it into compost healthy soil makes healthy food healthy food makes healthy people next slide please that's where turn comes in i started this company two years ago in my local neighborhood in dallas in my very uh with a residential pilot in east dallas turn is an environmental service that does four things first we transport organic waste to those who can responsibly recycle it we also produce nourishing soil supplements for our members third we educate and consult on sustainability practices related to the food cycle we also provide sustainable products and compostable products for sale to all of our clients next slide please two years later turn has expanded our program across dallas fort worth with 12 plus residential drop-off locations including a partnership with whole foods market it's the first ever in the united states we also offer doorstep pickup of food and yard waste to 17 zip codes in dallas next slide please turn is not just a waste hauler we are trained and certified to compost in fact i attended the u.s composting council facility operator training up in denton last fall with your fantastic dino dirt colleagues rusty willard and monica benavides turn values education and also giving back to our community by partnering with local farms and gardens we have a growing list of commercial clients some of whom are listed here we have been certified with the green restaurant association of america such that restaurants that work with us can earn points to their green certification next slide please i want to give you all a snapshot of our residential program which i hope will be the focus of our conversation our residential program works on a subscription model with three different price points based on desired interest level several things though remain common throughout each of the levels of subscriptions one every subscriber gets a clean bucket every exchange and we have five gallon buckets for the food waste in our residential program every subscriber gets a monthly perk we weigh and measure everything so that every subscriber and if possible the city of denton would like the information could have quarterly household impact reports by zip code we are maniacal about data and we have ongoing communication and education with all of our clients next slide please we received our residential recycling permit with the city of denton and we started drop-off location at armadillo airworks on the square a couple of months ago and i'd like to get suggest a few things that we can do to to cooperate with you all they are coordinate with the city to promote residential composting number two partner with a dino dirt facility team to accept the vegetative organic waste in our program and three perhaps utilize a city-sponsored storage unit for us to store supplies in a vehicle thank you are all right um let me if we could pull there we go okay we might see if there's any questions uh yes council member briggs has a question for you thank you this is very interesting i know in a lot of our conversations we talk about compost and especially in our solid waste conversations about reducing waste and minimizing waste in our landfill um so this is pretty interesting i see that you know it would be a really interesting program um that it would fit within our green business program pretty easily um and i think you have answered my question what you what do you do with the compost that you get right now um can you all hear me yes i'm sorry go ahead we divert a couple of different ways um first is that we actually create compost ourselves so all of our residential customers get compost twice a year back to their homes uh it's 12 pound bag and then we also divert by feeding farm animals or farm compost piles which we have a network of farms here in dallas and we would love to have a network up in denton as well a lot of the food waste is actually still viable to feed animals and and basically creating a circular economy okay so that that brings me to my next question because i know that um how how does contamination fit into into this do you have much of an issue with that that's a great question it's a commonly asked question um listed on one of the slides is our composting guide and we have a big do's and don'ts list and contamination believe it or not with our residential customers it's not an issue at all because they're so passionate about what we're doing and that also goes into our communications with them we have a 24/7 uh text line where all of our customers ask us questions constantly at what what can and cannot be composted so it really has not been an issue it becomes more of an issue on the commercial side with schools for instance or restaurants and back at the house staff on the residential side it's it's very much a minimal issue i just have one more question yes please what what is the uh you mentioned a monthly is it a monthly fee or is is that how you you put it i is it for for residents yes ma'am we have three different options um three different price points and we've tried to make it flexible for um but basically folks depending on their budget or their interest level the the starting fee is twenty dollars a month and that's the drop off program um the doorstep pickup service is 35 a month and that's weekly pickup of your food waste and then the premium level is fifty dollars a month and that's food waste plus yard waste all three of those levels get a perk they get a quarterly household impact report and they have constant communication with our team thank you so much okay um council member armature so thank you for your great presentation i wanted to ask uh can you uh send that presentation to city staff i guess you can send it to the city secretary or and if you could i would i would love to see that i took a photo of one of the slides um but i i didn't get all of them so if you could that would be great um i i wanted to ask uh so currently you're working with armadillo ale works and got a uh a drop off location there and you mentioned that you do good door in dallas at some locations obviously door door uh is easier for uh for individuals than having to leave your house get in your car and go somewhere um what i'm curious you know what what it would take since you're based in dallas uh is there any interest in uh door to door in another city uh or or is that just not feasible uh for a service like that to be offered in another city because we've we've we've gotten so many i've gotten so many letters uh asking for for the for the city to provide this kind of service yes that's a great question and uh simply to answer it the answer is yes it is feasible and the way we grew the program in dallas was based on demand so i started it in my personal zip code 75214 we opened up the second third fourth fifth zip code based on request so we have a form on our website which could easily be replicated for dentin where uh basically you could you all decide you know the minimum amount of people to sign up and we open it up as zip code so the doorstep service is absolutely viable okay thank you and so you're talking about the possibility of not just having a relationship with individual customers but possibly with the city as well for the city to uh possibly subsidize those those fees does dallas do that or do other cities do that they do not do that we've been in conversations with several different municipalities in dfw including dallas no one has subsidized yet to date um so you know how that would work with you all is you know i'm up to ideas of course and brainstorming thank you okay mayor pro tem thank you thank you mayor thank you very much great presentation and no i'm drawn to the fact that it's a turnkey opportunity that you saw a need you worked hard you developed it and and so i'll sign up tonight no doubt uh and so i just want to thank you for your professionalism uh and and for you meeting a need because i think it's best in the hands of a private company and and i want to support that and then you partner locally and then you have my blessings and obviously that goes through the city staff and city manager but i hope uh and and i want to lend my support to a a location that you could store the vehicle in the buckets uh if that's you know uh whenever that becomes available or that's an opportunity i i would absolutely support that that uh in whatever form that would come to this body because i think it does i want to reward and encourage others to to take the same steps and put in the work and and make it easy to say yes uh versus others that would come in and browbeat us and tell us how uh we're doing it all wrong so i commend you on your presentation and i i hope others replicate uh your process and i'm going to sign up and and get my uh five gallon bucket and and and get to work okay thank you sir i appreciate it all right thank you so much loren for calling in and giving us this great information i appreciate that thank you mayor protem just i just want everyone to know so it's turn turn compost dot com is the website all right good deal thank you all right so we'll wait for our next caller we have one more caller as far as on the scheduled and then we have some open mic callers hello caller you're on the line with the denton city council and the public portion uh public comment portion of our agenda if you when you state your name and address i will start your time and you will have four minutes thank you my name is ann chastain i live at 912 kilkenny court in texas 76210 yes you may proceed uh with my complainer did you want me to introduce myself oh no you've got four minutes you can uh share whatever you'd like to share yes okay well i was misinformed okay i've been trying for since the first of june to speak with y'all so uh i just want to voice my concerns first of all i've been here 20 years i've had my own business for 15 and uh recently most recently it's come to my attention i call the law enforcement which sheriff and the police both and also attempted to get in touch with you earlier than this because i was very concerned with the amount of people that descended on here in denton uh so many all at once and it was a disruption it was very scary and i heard fireworks going off in my neighborhood and also i live in way south denton i live right across from i think the mayor's office off of country club and 377 and i was going out to dinner not this last sunday but the sunday before last and i decided not to go and it was a good thing because a lot of people are roaming the streets with signs and there were some fireworks thrown and it was very concerning for me i know a lot of people that have been upset by what happened uh to our city uh i've got my information mainly from law enforcement that told me that over a thousand people were here in one day now the second thing they told me was there was a curfew in place but since someone thought it was a peaceful in the square with these people defacing property and destroying some others that it was decided not to enforce the curfew um that's the first thing the second thing is uh i have been attempting to talk to you and it would have been nice to be face to face uh to address you and get to know who you really are by looking at you i understand some of your council members were down at the square almost every day uh to talk to these people face to face so i hope that in the future we'll be able to address you the same way i understand that justice is blind i know that she's also fair so that was my my first thing is that it's disturbance that lasted two weeks here and it really my business has been very affected i haven't had any business really for this month um but with everything else it was affected already and then when we were allowed to go out and be more some of the restrictions were lifted then this influx of people from many were out of town if you check the license plates they were from out of state a lot of them a lot of them were underage teenagers and there were a handful of very sincere people so i just wanted to voice that to you as city council members i've written you emails already you've gotten some of my emails um i've lived here so long you know and uh i've heard people say this has never happened to them before it's happened to me before i lived in california i in fact was raised in compton california when it was still a city uh i had my best friends when i went to san pedro high school uh from watts and i stayed overnight in their house because it was beautiful that it only about five years old watts was then so i know what it's like to be in that situation and that's all i have to say thank you for giving me the time to talk to you yes we have a question from council member council member briggs yes hi hello ann thank you for calling thank you for calling in um my question is is your um business is it was it located in the um in the curfew area so you were forced to close no it wasn't no it wasn't it was in south tenton okay okay i live right by where 377 and country club meet okay i live in a condo okay i appreciate that i i know that some some businesses were negatively affected by that and so i yes i know because a lot of my friends are counselors and they have i think it's right off of hickory is that hickory where there's a building that they used to call it a funny name because they're all counselors there and i'm sure they were affected i haven't talked to them recently though okay thank you for calling in thank you well thank you for hearing me i hope i can talk to you in person the next time you bet thank you all right we thank you we'll move on to our open mic portion of the agenda item uh so we have i think two speakers and we will take the first caller when they end up here in a just a moment three caller you're on with the denton city council once you state your name and address i'll start your time and you have four minutes thank you this john homen 76207 um we have been told that public comment would be discussed i don't haven't seen that it's been discussed yet that was promised from one council member to another i hope that happens i think uh what the public has to say is important um especially considering that we can't give any comment during the work session excuse me when things are most flexible and in flux and open to to being changed by public comment when the public comment process happens predominantly towards the end right before the vote's being taken and the backroom deals have been made it's much less powerful so if that could be put on an agenda item sometime public comment i'm also calling about the integrated pest management update that you guys may be approving tonight um what's in this ipm is pesticides herbicides insecticides fertilizers uh all of which according to nature magazine after countless studies this is quote after countless studies pesticides have been linked to cancer Alzheimer's disease adhd and even birth defects pesticides also have the potential to harm the nervous system the reproductive system and the endocrine system we also use organophosphate at levels that are so dangerous that blood tests are required of the person applying them that's in the ipm so something is so dangerous that we have to test our own people with a blood test maybe it's not a great idea this is for weeds we're doing this a commonly cited white paper says compelling evidence indicates that prenatal exposure at low levels is putting children at risk for cognitive and behavioral deficits and for neurodevelopmental disorders so the question y'all have to answer for yourselves is how much is your soul willing to contribute to poisoning dentin's children that's up to each of y'all and if it's not true and that they're not toxins and pesticides are safe and the epa is above board and harvard and yales studies and nature magazine is just a bunch of tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists then that's on you it's up to you but i suggest you do the research because if they are poisons and yale and harvard and nature are correct then you're poisoning our children on purpose by pushing this ipm and and rubber stamping it through the system i also like to note that page 33 of the ipm deals with playgrounds in this one page and page 38 deals with dog parks which gets two pages of course it's still tossing to dogs but why would dogs get more content than the children in there also neonicotitoids are still approved knowing that they kill monarch butterflies and we're a monarch city usa if you that's page 41 then part of parks had said that the presentation that around the glyphosate the roundup when we banned it which was awesome well that they'd have to double fertilizer use well i called texas a&m i said does that make sense to you texas a&m says no but maybe they're wearing tin foil hats too and really parks is the smart one and then why are we dumping our industrial sewage sludge where our children play that's industrial sewage sludge over 80 000 man-made chemicals in the dino dirt that we just paid money to put where our children play anything that goes down the sink down the toilet down the gutter from industry residential mr holman your yes sir your time is up if you wanted to have a concluding statement that that's fine um no i think that's basically it i think everyone understands what i'm saying okay all right uh thank you sir i appreciate it does anybody have any questions please i don't see any sir thanks for asking you bet councilmember armature can we ask questions and i thought we can only ask no you can't ask you can't ask questions in open mic yeah that's what i thought just checking yeah uh okay we got another caller a caller you're on the line with the denton city council and the public portion comment of our agenda commonly referred to as open mic are you there caller yes i am and uh basically you have four minutes now since this is an open mic a portion of our agenda the council is unable to to have dialogue except for policy statements and matters of fact and i'm getting a a sort of a sound if you could maybe turn the sound down on the meeting but i'm getting some rhythmic pulsing sound okay there okay well the sound's still there but we're going to push through it so yeah once you state your name and address um i'll start your time for four minutes okay um my name is tracy owens i'm at 4002 hickory lane at the green tree green tree estate okay yes go ahead oh i have some questions and comments uh one my question is if the owner of the property out here we cannot connect to the city of denton before our water can a private delivery company be brought in at our expense two the question is how's my road private property and the comment i have on that one is if the city was to buy said property out here y'all would find out who the actual owner of the so-called private road is um my another comment is uh why is my name posted publicly when i'm a renter and not a owner of property i do not like that um let's see another question is if the code enforcement comes out if i have so-called don't have utilities i get evicted from my property are y'all going to put me out on the streets like the homeless ones that live under the bridges and into trees when i have a home with a roof over my head it's not fancy but it is security it's my home that's it and plus i you know make another statement on this i would like my comment and what y'all think all in writing please uh okay and if i can't bring a private water company out to service my water out here and i do get evicted from my property are y'all going to move me and pay for it when i'm on disability and i can't afford getting prices we live out here because we can't afford other places to move so discuss other issues why can't issues of me be going to be homeless because my owner doesn't and cannot afford to connect to y'all because the lines are being way down the road instead of at our property how's that fair and why can't the owners if being the virus is going to the covid virus is out there and people have been laid off why can't a payment arrangement be established to help the you know the owners connect to the city when we did the inspection we passed inspection he was laid off he don't have the money the house is up to date it passed inspections why can't a payment arrangement be made because of the virus that laid off people that's all the questions and comments i have at the time okay thank you very much uh this is open mic so there's not any questions council member briggs huh yeah this is open mic so the question to staff well let's get through let's get through these i don't i mean i think that we can we can address those um i just wanted to make sure her questions were being written down by staff that's all okay all right uh and we i think this is being recorded so if they weren't or if they missed them then we can go back and get those uh okay all right so our next caller if you'll cue the next caller up please caller you're on with the density you're on with the density council when you state your name and address your time will begin you have four minutes this is open mic so uh due to uh open record open act texas open meeting act rules and regulations we will not be able to have a dialogue with you on this particular agenda item okay i understand my name is jennifer lane i'm in dentin 76205 um i'm calling to talk about the solar program just to sort of give you a heads up on that i looked at the um work session powerpoint and i'm happy to see that there are 345 installations now as of the end of 2019 which was the last year of the federal rebate so uh getting your installation during those years was a good idea between the city and now and we are um off and running and looking at that at the new powerpoint however if i start at panel six i see that um it doesn't really show how jimmy is defining cost effective and for whom cost effective is the term used there it's too vague um quote unquote at least uh cost effective for rate payers would of course be using no energy at all but they can't really measure that so us solar users are the closest to that and the reason residential solar is not included in the drrp is because uh dme defined us out of it uh this needs to be redefined with us in it uh so that our contribution to um the 100 renewable will be calculated that's a shortcoming in the drrp and it needs to be addressed solar users uh subsidized by non-solar users well you know maybe that's the case for installation but after that we are subsidizing the non-solar users because we are producing what we are producing is free energy we are selling energy to dme at an incredibly generous rate because it's actually free dme pays nothing for it whatsoever we produce and we use and what we don't use goes to dme and that doesn't even get into why we are um using and why the city should support solar in the first place each and every month of the four years that we have had our solar installation we receive a solar report our carbon offset is the equivalent each month of 15 to 20 trees depending on how much sun we've had this installation for four years that's the carbon offset of at least 815 trees that means over 200 trees every year 200 trees equivalent carbon offset every single year and that is only one of the 345 installations that denton has so i'm calling to request that the staff report and the council going forward continue the discount do not lower the cap on the system size do not cap uh no cap on excess generation continue to credit customers for base rate and rca increase incentives for commercial solar use for example uh covers for parking spaces forget about ppas encourage the commercial community to use solar panels this is about the future of the community here in denton not about the continued profitability of the municipal utility we are at an inflection point and about five years ago as predicted about five years ago you all probably can remember when tape recorders suddenly were about half percent 50 digital and suddenly from that point became all completely digital then and within more recent memory in the mid-90s came cameras all of a sudden you could see everybody in central park for example using half of them were using digital cameras and it was a very quick switch after that right at the moment it's energy generation we need to be protective of this because us early digital camera users so to speak solar installers are showing you how soon it's going to be just you know 60 70 80 90 100 people using solar panels so keep this program going and please open a public hearing on it and especially hear from everybody who installed those of us who have installed we'll be able to speak to you about it and give you our feedback thank you thank you all right that concludes our public portion comment of the agenda so we will now move to the consent agenda and my understanding is that we that number a of the consent agenda has been moved to july the 23rd i believe and that agenda items b and agenda items m have been pulled for individual consideration and or presentation mayor yes yes city attorney i just wanted to you said uh item a was pulled to july 23rd it's actually june june 23rd yes sir i appreciate that thank you uh yes i saw a couple of hands uh council member melzer yeah mayor uh got a text from someone saying that uh the phone isn't being answered you know that someone wants to call in to speak on a future item tonight so i'm just i want to pass the common law to staff okay see if there's something that can be done okay thank you appreciate that uh okay uh i'll move the consent agenda i'll move approval of the consent agenda excluding items a b and m yes council member armature uh so wasn't it item a of the individual items that was going to it was postponed to the 20th year that was the consent agenda as well yes it's the consent agenda as well okay okay council member bricks i'll second okay we have a motion and a second uh for the consent agenda except for items b and m that have been pulled for items for individual consideration and a has been moved to june 23rd at staff request uh how say you council member bricks yes council member melzer yes as the person who moved approval yes i i don't understand that response council member melzer okay all right well okay okay council member armature yes yes council member ryan aye council member davis aye uh mayor protem all right uh mayors watts is an i the motion carries seven zero we will now uh take up agenda item four b which is an item for individual consideration at this time i believe council member melzer was going to recuse himself from that one is that correct yes that's correct okay all right okay uh and so i don't think we need a i don't think we need a presentation on that so considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing a memorandum of understanding between the city of denton texas the emily fowler library foundation the rotary club uh mayor protem move approval of item um uh so this is four b yeah council member davis second mayor protem how say you we have a motion a second uh for four b aye council member davis aye council member armature aye council member briggs yes council member ryan aye a mayor's an i motion carries six to zero uh so council member melzer will rejoin us for individual item 4m consider approval of resolution of the city of denton adopting an integrated pest management plan as policy for city-owned property and declaring an effective date did we have a staff presentation on that i mean who pulled this uh council member melzer did you pull this you're on mute council member melzer you're on mute yes i did pull it um i'm okay with the presentation if uh people like it mostly wanted to uh ask ask a couple of questions well well i mean this is probably about the third time we've we've looked at this so if we have questions about it let's just ask questions i don't know if we if we need a full staff presentation on this so uh the chair would entertain questions from the council yes go ahead council member melzer yes yeah um and this is uh you know for benefit of the public uh with staff it's mentioned in in the back of material we have that this was reviewed by several organizations and i wonder if you could share uh in a brief way what non-toxic neighborhoods is and what their evaluation was of the proposed uh ipm good afternoon mayor council members my name is laura barons i'm the assistant director of parks and recreation uh the ipm that's in front of you was peer reviewed by three agencies one being non-toxic neighborhood the other two were the ipm institute of north north america and then also by texas agri-life so it's an am extension non-toxic neighborhood specifically is a non-profit organization that has a goal of reducing pesticide use they do help different municipalities uh and other organizations implement um strategies and practices that would achieve that goal and may ask a follow-up of course so uh i don't know if you heard uh the comments you know in the open mic portion uh is would you care to respond to any of the you know the comments that were made about this item uh sure i mean if there's any specific information i'll be more than happy to answer those questions um well we're poisoning our children basically right that's you know that was sort of what was leveled at us so some of the information that we have provided in terms of fertilizer use again the term fertilization simply means to add amendments to the soil where it is lacking so that does not necessarily mean a synthetic product that would be used in our park system it could be an organic product if we're finding that that soil is lacking some particular mineral or other amendment that it's needed to help improve the soil content there we can find a product that would then be used in that area uh to improve the soil uh there so again it's not necessarily a chemical or a synthetic product it simply means that you are adding an amendment to the soil that it is lacking um in terms of the i guess the difference between the strategies on the playground and the dog park that is a question that has come up and that again we've previously provided some information on the major difference is that in the dog parks the majority of that area is turf so there is more maintenance that goes on in those dog park areas and so you've got a strategy it's a little bit longer in there for turf maintenance in the playground area there is no turf it's it's essentially wood chips and so we have some information that specifically talks about how to maintain those smaller areas that are non-turf um and then we also did make quite a significant change in this process that eliminated all pesticide use in the playground areas including the eliminating the use of blue dye in those areas if something were to be sprayed and if i may the call the call referenced uh studies by harvard yale and nature magazine are you acquainted with those i'm not uh and you know do you have any comment about the about those that comment yeah um i i can tell you that through this process um our staff has worked um very closely again with those three organizations specifically um who are all uh recognized in their field they do also look at not only what other communities are doing through benchmarking but we also do try to keep on top of the different studies that are coming out again there there can be several um they can have sometimes conflicting information so we really lean on and rely on these organizations again that are recognized for the work that they do in this area and we strongly feel confident in the three that provided a peer review that we've gone over and implemented pretty much 99 percent of what they recommended and suggested in the document that you have before you councilmember briggs thank you laura i have um just a couple of questions so this was the original ipm that we saw um a long time ago and then it came back and then we asked for it to be reviewed and then that review with changes and um and uh recommendations came back to us and so this is that document that we saw we went through almost line by line uh recommendations and changes from these peer reviews i'm just doing the time history so that's um that's important so i have a question about um dino dirt do we use dino dirt and are around in our playgrounds or dino dirt light or do we even use dino dirt we do not use dino dirt or dino dirt light in the playground areas again because there's no turf in those areas um so that's uh would be considered a soil amendment a type of fertilization um and we do use both products okay and so earlier i heard you say that we're not used we've eliminated completely pesticides from around the playgrounds including the blue dye correct okay um and so if this ipm does not get passed does that mean it reverts to the city can use whatever pesticides that it that it wants i mean if we do not have an ipm in place for city facilities if this doesn't pass then there's nothing guaranteeing that um chemicals and pesticides um i mean they could be used right this ipm is what controls that this current version uh again is much more restrictive uh and also implements the recommendations that were made to us by those three peer review organizations what we would revert to would probably be the the first amendment draft that we submitted to you we would not go back to the original ipm that was first adopted in 2001 we would you know try to find a certainly a middle ground but again this one is the most restrictive and the one that we would want to move forward with uh it's also the most detailed in outlining a step-by-step process of evaluating each area and then prioritizing the use of insecticides that um that are frankly were recommended by non-toxic neighborhoods they have a very detailed and specific process based on the area for use and then it outlines step by step the order of product that you would use and that has been incorporated into the plan that's before you tonight well just thank thank you um i wanted to ask because i i personally would not be i wasn't comfortable with the the draft and that's why we asked for the peer review and so this is more restrictive and so it's better than what we had my final question mayor if i can sure um so even after this is approved this document can change i think i heard you say as new information comes in as as we're working with something it's not it's not working changes can be made this document isn't the only thing we're going to see for the next three years right i mean it's no absolutely so some of the things that are included in this new document that that were updated since that peer review you'll notice that we now have essentially two pieces to it there's the plan which will serve as the policy and then there are a separate set of standard operating procedures and the intent is for that to be a living document that was one of the recommendations made during the peer review one of another recommendation that was actually made by all three organizations was to establish an ipm focus group or committee moving forward and we have done that so that's incorporated into the actual policy itself we took this draft back to the original ipm focus group that helped us update the ipm and several of them uh has an interest in continuing to serve and so this policy actually has a formation of that focus group um requires us to meet with them at least once a year but also to bring any changes back to that group for vetting prior to making that change and there is an appendix that would document any changes made uh to the ipm program itself okay thank you councilmember armature um several questions yes several questions uh one so you mentioned so to go back to the the playground question so you mentioned that that no pesticides will be used in playgrounds it sounds like is that being defined as the the area with the wood chips or is that does that mean the green area the the grass around it so it does extend to treating the turf immediately surrounding the area of the playground where the wood okay so it's the wood chips and the surrounding turf and and so you mentioned and correct me if if i heard this wrong um it it sounded like you it said that if pesticides do get sprayed that blue dye won't be used were you talking about in playgrounds or just in general no we'll continue to use um blue dye as a method of notification when it could be sprayed around cracks or fence lines but specifically to the playgrounds we have now a no pesticide use in that area awesome okay great because i was getting here got it okay great so that makes sense now um councilmember armature do you have that you have the meeting on do you have the meeting on in the background somebody's got the meeting on in the background that i'm hearing uh well okay go ahead um so uh let's see so i wanted to ask about the soil maintenance uh can you mention when is is that going to happen i'm sorry soil testing adding soil testing to the maintenance program i'm excited about that um so we did do a series a series of soil testing um several months ago and what we'll do is well what we did is from that make some changes to the maintenance program and then we'll give it a full growing season before we test it again to see what kind of results we get and uh determine where the next steps are moving forward okay and i'm trying to remember was there a staff report on that about uh with the results of the soil testing i believe we provided a staff report of the soil testing that was performed in the locations i don't believe that it included the actual results of it okay yeah i would love to see to see those results um and maybe an upcoming staff report uh let's see um about uh the the the focus group can you can you speak to that how how that was determined how often they meet having ipm focus group i love the idea yeah no absolutely so our original um ipm focus group that went through this uh recent updating process with us uh included members from uh master gardener master naturalist uh texas native plant association we also had a representative beekeepers association a representative from unt was also with us and a representative from twu so we had a very diverse group of individuals who have some knowledge in this area diverse knowledge in this area and also have a commitment to you know the environment and also the maintenance of our park system so we'd like to keep that same diversity moving forward and again we also had two other local community residents that are very active um in environmental issues the soaps were on our committee and so we had several that um wanted or expressed an interest in continuing to serve as a standing committee okay thank you so so i know now uh the committee you're talking about so this is the same committee that uh that made the recommendation about getting off glyphosate this is the same okay excellent thank you um uh let's see so um the reports from the texas annm the ipm institute and nontoxic neighborhoods especially the annm and nontoxic neighborhoods reports i i would like to see those uh are but i take it they're not in writing in what form did they deliver those they're in writing and we provide them as exhibits uh at our march uh work session when we recorded on the peer reviews so you actually have the original reports from all three organizations and then we also provided a summary on a matrix that um that summarized each one's uh recommendations and then uh also had some deliverables and action items from those and the status of those changes okay great so so this is the and i remember that so this is the same reports this is nothing new uh this they were the ones that were just performed um at the end of 2019 and then early uh of this year 2020 okay thank you thank you um thank you okay uh council member davis move approval of item n i have a do i have a second council member ryan i'll second thank you uh any discussion i'll say thank you to staff i mean you've it's uh several iterations of this council member armator i was just gonna just gonna you know thank staff for you know the improvements that that had been made um i'm i'm gonna be voting no for a number of issues that i have brought up before uh that i think still need improvement but i just want to say i recognize the changes that have been made okay thank you thank you uh okay so we'll we'll vote uh council member davis i'll say you aye uh council member ryan aye uh council member melzer because staff is open to continuing change and input um and because there is this uh outside group they'll continue to advise uh and can look at things like the papers that have that have been brought up i'm going to vote aye okay uh council member briggs yeah so i i'm going to vote uh yes to this so that we can um move forward and keep making changes as needed and welcome input um i i don't want to go back to the to the draft um i think we've made a little bit of improvement here with the soil testing and the um the playground discussion and that's the ultimate goal is to um to keep moving forward and keep making changes so we can do that council member um armature no thank you and i i'm an i uh so that's uh five one it passes thank you staff uh with that that will take us to uh items for individual consideration uh so is there any we're not skipping a are we we are okay skipping a all right so then that takes us to um item b so that is i'll call that so that's item five b number id 20 11 29 consider approval of a resolution of the city of ditton texas homeroom municipality corporation authorizing mayor to sign a letter of uh of protest and uh mayor watts is back yes thank you thank you mayor pro tem uh okay we have staff presentation on 5b good evening mayor council members kenny banks general manager of utilities got a brief presentation on the lewisville lake lease sale and uh this particular uh approach has been used before on lewisville lake if you'll recall back in 2016 we had a very similar lease sale larger piece of property uh the u.s department of interior bureau of land management did issue notice that it will sell mineral right or intends to sell mineral release for a section of lewisville lake in an upcoming auction that auction will occur in august of this year this particular parcel is approximately 71 and a half acres and got a general location map this came off of the bureau of land management page so it's not easy to read but the you can see where i-35 goes through and then up to the uh to the west and so this parcel is immediately upstream in an arm of the lake that feeds our intake structure for the lewisville water treatment plant the area itself is entirely inundated by the lake and so what would happen is that the mineral interest if this was successfully leased the the operator would have to locate the actual pad site somewhere adjacent to the lake most likely in close proximity and then access the minerals through horizontal drilling the city of denton is a holder of water rights to the water impounded in lake lewisville and it is a primary source of our drinking water we are allowed by the code of federal regulations to file a letter of protest there's a protest filing period that goes along with that that it is designated for this particular piece of property to run from june 22nd to july 1st within your backup you have a resolution and an attachment that has the letter of protest that was drafted by staff basically the letter supports concerns that have already been submitted to the bureau of land management by the city of dallas water utilities we've been working closely with them and and others on this particular issue those issues that they included were induced seismicity health and human safety and dam integrity our letter of protest recognizes and supports those individual items and expresses additional concerns regarding surface water quality reserve pits and uncontained fluids risk for indigestion and floodplain protection the letter also requests future in the future for direct notification for lease sales typically we have found out about the second hand and oftentimes fairly late in the process and so we're asking for direct notification from the bureau of land management for any future lease sales as stated the letter of protest is included in your backup as a part of the resolution and our protest is basically filed via our standing as a water rights holder in the reservoir if council decides to approve this resolution it will authorize the mail to sign in the letter of protest and we can file it with bureau of land management and staff recommends approval of the resolution and subsequent filing of the letter of protest so that's my presentation and i'll be happy to answer any questions councilmember riggs if we could pull the presentation down please thank you thank you councilmember breaks thank you dr banks for following this and bringing in thank you mayor for considering this resolution that's really important dr banks is is dallas the only other one that has interest in in this um water in the water rights though in this area yes for lewisville that's correct although i do anticipate that there will be others that file a letter of protest in 2016 uh there were a number of cities around the lake that file the letter of protest and while they're not water right holders themselves they obtained water from treatment works that are water right holders i do expect that they're the upper trinity regional water district has already filed a a basically a position paper on the environmental assessment and they they very well may file a letter of protest as well again they're not direct water right holders but they have a vested interest in the water of the lake and is this is this information is it readily available to to those cities to know what exactly is going on you can find the information on the bureau of land management website i wouldn't classify it as easy to find but it is there and you can certainly find out additional details including maps information about the lease sale the environmental assessment the finding of no significant impact and all of the associated documents okay thank you anybody else council member armater i just want to thank uh staff for putting this forward um and for doing the preparation for this uh and i i move approval okay uh council member davis second we have a motion and second for agenda item five b council member armater hasayu yes council member davis aye council member melser aye council member briggs yes council member ryan aye mayor protem aye mayor wass is an aye motion carries uh unanimously uh let's go ahead and go to agenda item 5c consider approval of a 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 council member melzer yeah uh mayor i know you know that uh we would take up my nominee from last time first uh was karen daviddy i'll just uh just add a comment she's a skilled and experienced volunteer public servant she's presently serving on pub she was on the bond committee in 2013 and 2019 she served on traffic safe safety hickory substation citizen committee she was on historic landmark for seven years two as chair she was on the small area plan for the body break hector area for three years she was secretary for 10 years the denton neighborhood alliance she was on the international property code rewrite committee and she was on the 2004 cip commission uh subcommittee on parks so i think she's a very able uh volunteer public servant as i said okay so i'd nominate karen daviddy sure uh yes staff is there i think we had uh we postponed this to see if we had additional names so uh yes go ahead uh yes so in in addition to uh miss karen daviddy we also had michael bradshaw who's was nominated by mayor pro tem okay uh council member husbeth would you like to comment on mr bradshaw or share some things about mr bradshaw yeah no he's just uh he's a local realtor that also serves the community various ways he's a member of the community market and he and his wife organize neighborhood events for their neighborhood it's uh they're just dynamic people uh very uh grassroots and and i think they're the biggest perspective is they advocate for uh homeowners and they're in that business day in day out and would help us craft uh the best policies to make sure homeowners are aware of what they're signing and make sure we cover those individuals and that there there's advanced notice of the the taxing district etc so i value his input and his uh process customer service etc okay any other comments uh questions i do want to say that on this item we had zero people making comments zero people that called in to 349 7800 and zero who have requested to speak i did overlook on it on agenda item b we didn't have any comments on our online form we had zero people calling in on 349 7800 and we didn't have any requesting to speak so we have uh we'll take these nominations in order uh that they were received or at least karen daviddy was received last week so we'll uh uh post her first and then if she prevails with four votes then we won't consider the other nomination if not then we will consider that nomination all right so we have a uh mr city attorney do we need a second on a nomination i don't no sir okay uh council member amel sir yeah if karen daviddy doesn't prevail michael bradshaw would be outstanding but i'm gonna vote aye okay uh council member armature i do think michael bradshaw is awesome um i bet i'm gonna vote aye for uh karen daviddy too council member briggs uh yes um because we saw karen first and that's the way that it is i'm gonna go ahead and vote aye for her but michael bradshaw is fantastic and i agree with your nomination there uh mayor pro tem so if one doesn't pass we'll be in good hands with the other one uh council member ryan yes mayor uh much as i like karen and she's been great for the community i'm also looking forward to having someone who hasn't served on quite as many boards starting to get involved more at the city level uh and in because of that i'm going to vote now uh council member davis yeah very similar to council member ryan um i was really excited to hear michael's name i had no problem with karen either but i'm gonna vote uh nay for karen and i'm for michael okay uh yeah i'm gonna go ahead mayor pro tem i'll call you last um yeah i uh i think both candidates are are are well qualified i share a similar sentiment to council member ryan i'd like to get more people involved but i think because we already have one that's representing i mean it's been on the public utility board that we had appointed to the i think the hunter ranch um i think i'm going to be less inclined to put someone on the other board who's with the public utility board so uh unfortunately i'm going to have to decline uh that nomination uh council member uh mayor pro tem husbeth again yes i i think uh i'm biased but yeah i think either it's a win either way but so i'll vote uh no just to get to my nominee okay all right so that uh nomination fails uh so now we will take up the nomination for uh council member i mean mayor pro tem uh could you state that again for the record please yes so i nominate uh michael bradshaw for for this position and um yeah okay uh how say you council member husbeth all right mayor pro tem oh mayor pro tem yes i i don't know why i'm still making that mistake it's it's it's not late but it seems like it's late uh council member briggs yes council member melzer very happily aye council member armature yes council member ryan aye council member davis aye mayor watts is an aye motion carries unanimously seven zero or nomination carries unanimously seven zero let's take a quick uh five minute break we'll come back at about 8 55 that's a little bit more than five minutes welcome back to this meeting of the denton city council on june 16th 2020 it is uh 8 59 p.m we're moving through our items for individual consideration we have agenda item 5 d consider adoption of an ordinance directing the public of notice of intention to issue 27.250 million dollars in principal amount of certificates of obligation good evening mayor members council david gaines director of finance actually i have one brief presentation to cover both items d and item e if we want to do them together sure i'll call them we'll make the presentation together then we'll vote on it separately agenda item 5e consider adoption of an ordinance directing the publication of notice of intent to issue 37 million 120 thousand in principal amount of certificates of obligation of the city of debt so the the purpose of a notice of intention is the is really it's the first step in our in our debt sale process each year and related to our certificates of obligations that we plan to to sell for for this year um and the and really the intent is the difference between a certificate of obligation versus a general um general obligation debt sale that a general obligation debt sale is is related to a bond program which obviously has been approved by the voters so certificate of obligation this would be the first time that it's brought forward so the the as shown there the state law requires that a notice of our intent to move forward with the certificate certificate of obligations be published in our newspaper uh for for two two weeks once a week two consecutive weeks and posted on the city's website and then passage of the bond or that ordinance authorizing the sale of co's must be at least 46 days after the date of the first publication so our first publication of these notices would be tomorrow and then our schedule would fall in line after that the general government projects that we have for our certificate of obligations this fiscal year you can see them before you and these were began with our our budget heading into the year we've had a few changes at during throughout the fiscal year which we've had multiple discussions with council on you can see those there in total 27 million uh 20 000 in projects for general government vehicle replacements which we issue five-year debt each year for our replacements throughout the city fire station eight for 5.5 million dollars fire station three we did have an additional 300 000 that were needed that was needed to finish up uh the construction of fire station three the municipal facility the daybreak building at 401 north elm street the total funding necessary for that project is 11.65 million dollars parks lake forest dam to complete that project three million dollars which was included in the cip heading into the fiscal year and then our loop 288 property purchase and you can see the total there for 3.43 million dollars obviously further discussions on that but this gives us the opportunity to issue the co's if necessary moving forward in total the the total co issuance would be for 27.25 million dollars having that 230 000 for the actual cost of issuing the debt and any pricing flexibility as we move forward utility projects you can see we currently only have electric and wastewater projects for this debt sale heading into the fiscal year we did have a number of projects for water and for solid waste but as we have dealt with fallout of the um of covid 19 and we step back and not only look at our operation operating budgets but also our capital budgets we're able to reprioritize a number of projects where we did not necessitate uh co issuance for those two funds and even on the electric and wastewater we have reduced those those amounts from where we had it when we began the cip uh for fy 20 so you can see those projects in front of you and we do have staff available to answer questions on any individual project if there are any uh but in total that's 36.8 million dollars uh in projects and then a total co issuance of 37.12 million dollars and this is this isn't related to the notice of intent but i didn't want to what it is related to our debt sale uh for this for this year we do have an opportunity for some debt refunding that we'll bring forward later and later in the year uh in total 42.67 million is our amount of refunding bonds that are eligible and i've just shown there an approximate of four percent interest rate on those outstanding bonds to be refunded and with a projected interest rate of around two percent you can see there at the on the bottom right a total savings of about 4.4 million dollars over the life of those bonds and we have those detailed out there by fund so you can see general government saving about 344 thousand dollars in debt service payments over the over the next few years we'll bring more information on those as we as we move forward in the process but wanting to give a brief overview of what we're considering for options for refunding so our next steps after our notice of intents today on august 4th council would consider approval of the parameters ordinance authorizing the sale of general obligation bonds and certificate of obligations and then on august 6th assuming approval would be our preliminary day of sale if market conditions are favorable and then ultimately on september 9th is when we would close on the sale and have delivery of those spots i'm open for any questions okay pull the screen down get the full panel up uh questions for either agenda item okay chair would entertain action on agenda item 5d mayor potem move approval council member ryan a second we have a motion a second for agenda item 5d and on 5d we had zero people making comments using our online form zero people that called in on 349 7 800 and zero who requested to speak all right we have a motion and a second uh who made that motion mayor potem mayor potem has said you all right council member ryan all right council member melzer aye council member davis aye council member armature yes mayor wass's and i council member briggs oh she's recused mayor oh okay i didn't know that okay all right okay so then we've got uh six uh zero approved six zero on agenda item 5e so if council member briggs could come on back uh we'll take the vote on agenda item 5e that was 5d 5d past six zero agenda item 5e uh would uh council member davis move approval do you have a second council member melzer a second council member melzer how say you aye council member davis see how it is aye mayor potem all right uh council member armature yes council member ryan aye mayor watts is an aye so uh is the uh so then council member riggs is also recused from 5e is that correct is she here i thought i saw her pop on but she uh would not need to recuse from 5e i don't believe um oh oh there it was 5d yeah yeah i'll say you on 5e council member riggs okay could you go ahead and say that for the record oh yes okay thank you okay so agenda item 5e passes unanimously we'll move to agenda item 5f consider approval of a resolution of the city council of the city of denton texas home rule municipal corporation appointing a primary member and an alternate alternate member excuse me as official voting representatives to the north central texas council of governments regional transportation council do we have a staff presentation on this or do we just have the nominations oh there she is oh you're muted rachel pull up the presentation here it's very short one slide in fact oh and excuse me for agenda item 5e we did not have anyone calling in making comments on our online form or zero people called in on 349 7800 we had no request to speak on agenda item 5e so i'm sorry go ahead rachel okay good evening mayor and council this is rachel ball through it mendoza assistant to the city manager and just going to share with you tonight the regional transportation council's representation agenda item just as a very quick overview you do have some background in your agenda packet about the cogs rtc the membership is based on population and employment figures the city of denton has primacy of appointments for what they titled the denton cluster back in april of 2018 council member ryan was appointed as the current primary voting member and councilman or council member briggs was appointed as the alternate and tonight we have the resolution before you to consider the reappointment of both officials for a two-year term okay chair chair would ask so both council member ryan you're willing to serve as the primary yes and council member riggs you're willing to serve as the alternate uh yes i am okay council member davis i moved the appointment of council member ryan as the primary representative and councilman briggs as the alternate mayor protem second council member davis has say you oh we have a motion and a second for agenda item uh five uh what was that f yes council member davis has say aye mayor protem aye council member melzer aye council member ryan aye council member briggs uh yes and thank you oh yeah council member armater council member armater did you weigh in yeah okay so it's an i okay uh mayor watts is an i so the motion carries unanimously i don't believe i missed anybody it's my understanding again that items 5g and 5h have been moved to the june 23rd agenda is that correct that's right all right so we won't be considering those so we'll move on to our public hearing portion of the agenda and we did not have any comment cards for either for agenda item 5f no no one called in on the online form no called in no one called in on the 349 7800 and no one request to speak over the phone so for agenda item 6a hold a public hearing inviting citizens to comment on the 2020-2022 consolidated plan for housing and community development and 2020 action plan is there a presentation on this or is this just the oh the public hearing portion yes i do have a quick presentation okay one second um sorry i'm taking one second so okay thank you mayor council apologize for the delay danie shaw community services this is a quick presentation on a public hearing for our uh consolidated plan and action plan as a reminder this is our uh three-year plan that we are presenting for public comment tonight the consolidated plan and action plan is required by HUD for communities that receive federal funding from and we receive cdbg and home funds through the city of denton this particular process allows us to go through planning for and describing our needs and resources and priorities as well as our strategies and goals for the future uses of these funds that are received by the city as a requirement it does include citizen community involvement to make sure that we're collecting information on what the needs are from our citizens this particular structure of the consolidated plan is prescribed by HUD it does follow the format that we are required to follow that they set out for us it does include different sections that we um that we're required to fill out there's an executive summary there is information about our participation process it does involve a needs assessment and market assessment the data that's in these is provided by HUD as well and then we provide analysis of that data uh our section five is our strategies and goals which is what we look at for the full course of the plan that we're implementing and then our action plan is what we approve in annually so once this plan is approved our action plan will still come back to you each year to to talk about what we'll use the funds for in the future we also incorporate our citizens participation plan in this process and our fair housing plan and analysis of impediments the timeline is actually a year-round process most of our work is done throughout the community assessing what the needs are by doing outreach and participating in community groups and coalitions we then go through an application process and receive committee recommendations for that funding through November and May starts with the committee's approving that application and then going through that receiving those applications and then the committee reviewing those for approval or recommendation through January and May we do develop the plan and participate in other consultation processes with the community to make sure we're assessing community needs and then the final part of the process which we're in now is to present that plan which we did on June 1st with giving the public 30 days to comment on the actual draft plan and the action plan we're doing the public hearing tonight and then if all goes forward we expect to bring this consolidated plan for council approval on July 21st and then submit it to HUD on August 1st and then HUD approves everything that will receive our funding September 15th as we said it does require citizens participation so we do public hearings we did neighborhood hearings in December and January this year as well as this public hearing tonight we did implement an online survey that gave opportunities for folks to submit through survey monkey we did focus groups within our work with our coalitions and then we take comments over email and phone as people are interested we promote those through our our email and then we have community needs assessments that are completed by other organizations in the community so we benefit from the United Way the Denton County Health Department and other groups that do community needs assessments that we can borrow from and get information from as well our community coalitions and advocacy groups are a very important part of our process they give us information about what's happening on the ground what's happening in individual organizations to identify what community needs are and then you as council appoint committees the human service advisory committee and the community development advisory committee that help process what the communities are and provide recommendations to you as a reminder the eligible activities in each of these programs are these in CDBG we can acquire property and land for projects we can do public facility improvements we can demo and clear our social services cap means that only 15 percent of the funds that we receive from CDBG can be used for public services we also implement housing programs economic development is eligible historic preservation code enforcement and removal of architectural barriers the home program has some different eligible activities as it sounds it's specifically for home projects so it helps us with affordable rental housing home ownership assistance tenant-based rental assistance also acquiring land for housing projects and new construction these are a view of the committees that you appointed and so the public sees that we have a group of committed citizens who come in and help us with these community needs and help us determine what the what the priorities are for the action plan and then recommend those to you all for approval this year the 2020 committee recommendations included for the CDAC 1.3 million dollars 717 thousand for CDBG and approximately 641 thousand for home we did receive nine applications that totaled 1.4 million out of those the CDAC reviewed those and is recommending 1.3 million in projects to eight of the projects that were requested and there was a remaining fund balance of 49 000 that we are going to leave unprogrammed at this time and leave it available for newly identified projects throughout the year the human services advisory committee had one 157 000 which is the 15 percent social services cap in the CDBG funds and then us council allocate general funds to this grant as well we estimated those funds this year to be about 342 000 available so the committee had 500 000 to award we did receive 19 grant applications the total 857 000 and four of those were new applicants the human service advisory committee did review and recommend 500 000 to be allocated to 18 of those applicants these are the proposed activities in the action plan that will be presented to head should you approve it just to give you a quick chance to review that run through it some portion for admin funds the city does three housing assistance programs internally approximately 464 000 for our home improvement program another 250 for minor repair and 120 to the home buyers assistance program as a recipient of home funds we are required to to award funds to a chodo and we do have a chodo in our community community housing development organization didn't affordable housing corp did apply and receive and is being recommended to receive 80 000 there are a few public facility projects that were requested didn't city county day school for playground improvements served didn't enforce some sidewalk improvements to make them ada accessible and then two city projects excuse me for parks and recreation for lighting at the crawl young park and then additional playground improvements for quaker town and additional trail lighting there as well for safety we do award the 15 cap to certain agencies as well so we have some requests from agencies we do fund the summer camp program for the city city didn't city county day school didn't county friends of the family span and the salvation army of denton as a note at the bottom we are also leaving the cares act funding for cwgcv as unprogrammed until we receive additional direction from council about how that should be utilized and then as i mentioned earlier 49 000 and unprogrammed funds so with that i will leave it to you to open up the public hearing okay any questions for staff before i open the public hearing council member breaks um yeah the one of the items was for the city of denton summer camp um was is that how does that work was that for this year if the camp if the camps aren't going on or will that be transferred or is it for the camps that are actually continuing so this funding would actually be for 2020 2021 so be next summer okay was funded for this year as well so we'll wait for a final direction from them whether or not they're going to hold any sort of camp and then um look at reallocating those funds if they're not okay thank you any other questions councilmemorometer um there was uh one of the slides mentioned that uh some of the cdbg funds go to code enforcement and i was wondering if you could speak to what aspects of code enforcement that goes or because you know code enforcement doesn't we're seeing um really it can be used for the the process in which code enforcement looks at housing that is um substandard and improvement so it's what's eligible as staffing costs to do that work of um coordinating with households that may have code issues and then connecting them to resources i think uh is that something that the city has always done no ma'am with cdg no the list we provided is eligible activities many of those we do not do currently can you can you repeat that again i don't i don't quite understand so sure while those are eligible activities those are not projects that we have funded so we have not funded historical preservation or development okay any other questions i seeing none at this time i will open the public hearing for agenda item 6a for public comment on the 2020 through 2022 consolidated plan for housing and community development and 2020 action plan i'm seeing that we have no callers at this time or people wishing to provide public input on this agenda item so i will call that item one more time anybody wishing to speak um seeing none i will now close the public hearing for this item uh a 6a zero people made comments using our online form zero people called into 349 7800 to register a position and zero called in or zero have requested to speak on this item i will move on to our next i guess i need to close the public hearing i think i did a council member husband there's no action required on this i don't believe so yes mayor pro tem just just one comment i want to commend danny and i told her this privately but publicly as well she's doing a masterful job a new position at al and and also just her ability to understand the need and of of those that we serve very well and and hit the ground running and and so i'm just thrilled at what the impact she's going to make down the road thank you fantastic thank you mayor pro tem all right then we'll move on to agenda item six b hold a public hearing considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton texas regarding a change in the zoning district and use classification on 11.71 acres from planned development mr and use classification to plan development pd oh good evening mayor and council richard canoni development services the request tonight is to change the zoning on approximately 12.64 acres these are the seven lots associated with the bucky's travel center these are the seven out parcels the majority of those lots have a a or 11.71 acres have a plan development mr district the reason for the hyphen hyphen is there was an overlay overlay restrictions on this property prior to the new ddc coming into place and so it transitioned to that pd and there was a small 0.93 acres a small sliver of mn as you see on the map the the current zoning so you see that small sliver of of mn and what they're proposing is to just be a standalone pd with the mr zoning as the underlying zoning district just a little bit of zoning history on this property in july of 2008 the property was rezoned from rcr1 to regional center commercial downtown for a mixed youth development and there were four conditions or four overlay restrictions that were associated with that the the project that that this rezoning had to do with was never was never was never built however those those overlay conditions still remained and so when the bucky's developed the final plat was approved in may of 2016 they were required to comply with with those conditions and so what the final plat had approved was the creation of eight lots lot one being bucky's travel center and then lots two through eight are those lots that you see here fronting the fronting the service road shortly after the the plat was approved a master site plan was approved for the property with the intent of pushing some of the commercial development a little bit closer to the service road and allowing a little more landscaping and open space to the rear of the property as well as the as well as the drainage when that master site plan was was going through the approval process at the time staff had requested that they also prepare a master phasing or development plan that you see here this is very similar almost exactly what they're requesting to have as part of their pd development plan again this site when it was developed drainage was incorporated for all all eight parcels and so that's why you have the pad site sitting out there like you do today again as i stated the seven commercial lots again were pushed a little closer with that open space and drainage to the to the rear of the property one thing i do want to mention there is isa that runs through here that remains this is lot two or phase two shown on the plan nugget way does not go all the way through nor will it unless an alternate isa is is approved so that would come back it would have to go obviously through planning and zoning after staff review and then to this body for a public hearing the pd standards what they're requesting to change quite honestly the only the only real big difference is the is a reduction in minimum landscape area when when this was initially developed they the required landscape area was 10 they're asking to go back to that however there are some major changes where their front setbacks are being increased as well as the minimum tree canopy coverage is being increased because those lots were were planned at a 90 building coverage which is even the existing pd mr the the increase in tree canopy caused an issue for them as they were as they were laying out the sites with some potential new tenants and what we talked to them about was still requiring the 30 percent that was something we were not going to support at least from from staff and what they've agreed to do is try to meet that 30 percent on that pad site but at a bare minimum 20 and then if they could not meet the full 30 percent that those trees would be developed elsewhere within within the within the subdivision so that that 30 requirement for canopy would still be maintained they are requesting some alternates to some of the parking standards most notably our our restaurant standards really separating out fast food restaurants and sit-down restaurants under the current ddc those those two are counted as one i think you'll see i know we talked about this briefly with the changes to hunter and cole but these are some changes that will be coming forward with the ddc amendments in in providing a little more flexibility but also making sure that there's enough parking for for the restaurant uses section 2.45 of the e of the ddc establishes 13 general approval criteria i'm not going to hit on each of those however it did meet all 13 we have that those findings in the backup what we will touch on are the requirements associated with specific for a pd approval the first being is it consistent with the dentin 2030 plan and it is this is a regional mixed use this is exactly what what was intended and what what what this what this pd will help implement criteria too that it complies with the ddc that would be consistent with the map and and standards and so if if this is approved obviously it would be it would be consistent with with what is intended and and what was intended for that for that site criteria three the pd would encourage whether it provides greater building design amenities and connectivity the pd would would continue to encourage a unified development consistent with the scale and uses that you typically see along our highway corridors criteria four there is no residential development proposed as part of this pd and then criteria five appropriate area location and planning of non-residential uses on the pro the proposed development of restaurants and commercials is is consistent again with what you would see typically along along the service roads of i-35 schools fire and law enforcement it does meet all of the provisions to support support development as it relates to public facilities same with water and waste water these were installed when the when it was platted and developed as a as a master as a master site phasing plan and then there's there's currently three access points from the i-35 service road as well as nugget way provides that internal private road to the to the rear of all pad sites with the exception of two and then you have the breaker road overpass i-35 service road and there is an additional access point private road that they have that they have here on the eastern side of the on the eastern side of the site and then per the traffic assessment again this was this did not change from from the initial traffic assessment that was that was reviewed so it will have minimal impact on the on the roadway network one thing i will mention you'll see here lot lot two phase two there is a an access point here and so if that lot were to develop if that alternate isa were not approved or did not get approved or was not even sought they would need to get a text on approval in order to to access that at lot from that from that service road there are this is non-residential so it will not require any access to to public parks with respect to public outreach there were some notices this was actually over noticed however there were only two two individuals in in opposition outside of the 200 foot buffer and one one person in favor planning and zoning commission recommended approval six one and staff recommends approval of the rezoning to the pd with the mr underlying underlying district and with that i'll be happy to answer any questions okay any questions if we'll pull this there we go i think i call it yeah councilman melzer uh yeah thanks for the presentation can can you clarify a little uh for this to go forward does nugget way have to go through the isa it it does not there are restrictions already placed on the plat as well as the master site plan and phasing plan restricting restricting nugget way to to where it is today so any expansion to that would would require they're all isa and if you recall when we approved the pd zoning district uh as part of the ddc update there were two two standards or sections of the ddc that you cannot modify one being the requirements and the second being other tree preservation requirements so this this pd does not do either of those okay thank you very much councilman breaks thank you mayor so that was one of my questions uh council member melzer asked about about the road because it needed three access points and i was curious that if that isa wasn't allowed to go through if this would stop this development but they would just continue and look for that third access point through text dot correct correct and it would just be for that for that lot too the other the other six lots would be accessed from okay um what about uh signs within this development um the height of the sign would they be bright neon um are any of those things have any has any of that been considered not not as part of this they they're required to meet um the sign requirements in in the current code of ordinances um so any any change to that would require i think similar to what but um bucky's did for their sign where they sought a variance so any modifications to the requirements of our sign code um would require the same but they they are not proposing at this point uh any any uh modifications so those variances would not be included in this pd so i okay councilmembrometer yeah uh can you go back to the slide where uh you talk about the the difference between the definition of a sit-down restaurant and food um between the the fast food restaurant and sit down yeah so yeah current currently in the ddc the only distinction we make between restaurants is whether or not there's a drive-through or not um so for example um a a steak and shake which might be a little different if it did not have a a i'm not saying that's what they're proposing but just to use that as an example um it would have the same requirements for parking as a as a a sit-down restaurant that you would have texas roadhouse would have the same parking standards and so what this does is obviously for fast food restaurants or ice cream parlors it has a standard quite honestly that was our our old standard in the ddc sit-down restaurants um because you have such a a varying um type of sit-down restaurant um today it provides for a a range a minimum of one 100 to a maximum of one per 40 and so this this would this would require more parking for restaurants than what is um than what's in the ddc today i know some of the concerns um with with individuals looking at the parcel um had some concerns with our with our parking requirements um certainly they could do a study to to justify it um however what they're requesting that it just be written within the within the ddc itself within those standards for the pd mm-hmm so so they're going from parking um and i'll be here from councilman barmiter you're sort of fading in and out you're you're you're fading yeah yeah you're sort of your voice was fading in and out so we couldn't quite hear you i think it just sounded like a connection issue but i just wanted to alert you that is letting me know uh no if we could pull the slide down please uh thank you go ahead councilmember barmiter is this better now yeah yeah i think we'll be able to i think we'll be able to push through it i could try changing to another device no that's good i think we can make it out yes okay uh so anyway so thank you thank you for that explanation i'll be curious to hear what uh people who live in the surrounding areas have to say about the increased parking any other questions for staff councilmember briggs um well richard mentioned drive-throughs will these um areas be allowed to drive through or will it have to go through another process for an sup or with this pd anything can go in there with any kind of access no they would still need to meet the um the requirements of the ddc um for for uses give me just one second i don't recall off the top of my head and you mentioned drive-through so you made me think about it anybody else have a question while we're waiting for that research councilmember barmiter we'll come back councilmember briggs with that answer uh councilmember barmiter yes uh have we heard anything about the people who had were having difficulty calling in has that been resolved yeah my understanding is that uh that all the lines were checked when we're called individually and there was it didn't seem to be an issue so we didn't there was no we couldn't find or repeat the issue let me put it that way we couldn't repeat the issue richard did you have that uh question on the drive-through yes sir i'm pulling it up right now so within within the mr um it would it would be it's permitted um there's certain use specific standards but whether the pd is approved or not it's permitted by right with those specific standards in the mr okay mayor potem thank you hey hey richard i watched this uh on pnz as well but what i didn't hear ask and and maybe talked on it was the the parking spaces are are is there an opportunity for us to do pervious parking or what are our options there just to kind of uh or do you know what their plan is just want to try to uh be as inclusive as possible yeah with with with the new standards that they're proposing if they meet those standards those minimum and maximum standards um pervious parking would not be required because it is they're they're meeting the standard so the only time it is required is if you want to go above provide additional parking but i think it's one thing to note is when the site um was was developed and when those pad sites were put in and the drainage it already took into account um a build out at 90 um so that that was already incorporated into into the into the drainage design for this site when it was done in 16 and 17 okay thank you any other questions for staff if not i will go ahead and open the public hearing for agenda item six b agenda item six b pd 19-0005 d oh i don't see any callers queued up to speak on this item mayor if i may the the applicant is on the phone i think if there's any questions for him i don't okay all right uh any any questions for the applicant council member armature first that question are we is there some taboo on asking you know what places they've been going there can we ask that or what you know specific kinds of restaurants names of restaurants so that's the question you have for the applicant my question is is that an appropriate question to ask well i think i mean i i think if the applicant you know we'll leave that up to the applicant if the applicant knows or is willing to disclose or not willing i mean i'll just i'll just we'll just pose that question to the applicant you know if they have an idea of what what type of businesses may they may be targeting or or they've already got commitments from so is the applicant on yes can you hear me this is scott rackliff with buckies yes scott did you hear the question yes yes mayor i sure did thank you once again this is scott rackliff with buckies and to answer the council lady's question we have several sit down large chain restaurants that are looking at padlocks within the development and none of them have drive-throughs uh buckies itself does not our deed restrictions that we have in our own subdivision prevent uh fast food restaurant with drive-through so it's not any of those i can't give you specific names at this time but they are well known uh nationwide chains that are looking at these spots okay any other questions for the applicant scott do you have any comments you'd like to make i appreciate the council members uh looking into this and reviewing this and thank you for your time you bet all right uh seeing no more callers and having heard from the applicant uh i'm going to now close the public hearing uh mayor protem i'll move approval we have a motion for approval for agenda item 6b uh council member ryan i'll second we have a motion and a second uh for agenda item 6b motion for approval count mayor protem how say you all right council member ryan aye council member davis aye council member melzer aye council member armature no council member briggs no uh mayor watts is an i the motion carries five to two we'll move on to i think c is being uh postponed to a date certain of july 21st 2020 mr city attorney do we need to open that and make a motion to do that officially or that can be done just sort of at the staff level that can be done at the staff level okay all right thank you all right then we'll move on to agenda item 6d are 6d and 6e related is that is that mayor one's a one's a plan amendment the other one is a zoning item so i guess then the the presentations would be fairly separate then because they seem to be very different so we'll just go through the normal process and just call them one at a time okay all right so we'll move on to agenda item 6d hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas regarding an amendment to the future land use map and the denton plan 2030 etc good evening i'm julie wyatt senior planner with the city of denton and i will be presenting let me let me pull up the presentation okay i think we're ready sorry about that so you are correct these um this item ca 19001b and the next item are related to each other this is for a comprehensive plan amendment the next one will go in a little more detail with a proposed rezoning so the request before you is a comprehensive plan amendment they would like to modify the future land use designation on 98 acres from business innovation to regional mixed use the subject property is outlined in yellow it does contain three tracks at the intersection of loop 288 and shady oaks um just a little bit about comprehensive plan amendments generally the denton plan 2030 was adopted in february of 2015 as part of the comprehensive plan there was a future land use map adopted and that identifies locations of the future land use designations those sort of indicate how the city is going to develop in the future the future land use map guides or zoning decisions so for example the business innovation future land use designation typically indicates that general office or light industrial would be the most appropriate zoning in that location the best planning practice is that zoning should be consistent with the comprehensive plan and the future land use map now we haven't always done that within the city of denton our 2002 denton development code had pretty limited criteria for approval for rezoning cases however it did provide an alternative path for cases that didn't meet that future land use map with the adoption of the 2019 denton development code we have a more robust criteria for approval for zoning cases and at that time we felt like it was time to implement those planning but best practices and that in in most cases zoning should follow that future land use map now there are instances where that map may be um may require a limited amendment maybe to address a specific area or circumstance and so the denton development code does outline the purpose and process for comprehensive plan amendments they're intended to provide flexibility in response to changing circumstances changes in public policy or to advance the general welfare of the city so before we get into the the comp plan amendment discussion i just want to kind of talk about the existing conditions of the surrounding property so the the subject property is outlined in yellow again it's sort of at the the top of that map and there's quite a bit of development around it so when you start at i-35 here in this loop 288 arterial you see you you start with the mall so that retail is there as well as retail as you move down to that or down loop 288 in track toward the north we also have some higher density retail or i'm sorry residential here high high density residential both in existence and under construction in this location we've got additional retail and then it it terminates with an office and employment use here with the government with the county government offices we also have some arterial roadways in the area as i said loop 288 is this this red line here that's one of our primary arterials it is a six lane divided road we also have mayhill that has been under construction it's not quite complete but it will be soon that's that will be when completed a major corridor in the area connects denton to dfw airport and and to other cities in denton county to the south so it's pretty pretty important regional corridor additionally brinker road here it's kind of that hatched green that will be a secondary arterial it will eventually when when development comes through in this area punch through and connect to shady oaks per our mobility plan so there's quite a bit going on in the area the current future land use map is business innovation this is intended for large tracts of land there that are appropriate for well planned larger scale office and appointment parks also supporting uses such as retail hotels and residential typically as i said those zoning districts that that track with business innovation or general office and light industrial one question that came up in planning and zoning commission about how much business innovation do we have in the city our gis did an analysis for us and um currently there are about 4,700 acres 649 parcels with the within the city limits designated as that business innovation future land use of that total about 2,000 are either undeveloped or developed with an agricultural use um so it's instructive for these comp plan amendments to to look at the historical context how did we get here um so we're going to start back at 1964 this is an aerial map from 1964 to orient you the subject property is this blue star here around about there um it is about two miles as the crow flies to the square and as you can see it was a pretty rural area um one of the most defining features for that area was this um power and the power and water treatment plant here it was a pretty defining feature as well as the just the ruralness the agricultural uses um but we jump forward to the 1974 to 1994 comprehensive plan once again you can see that that power power plant and water treatment plant is a pretty defining feature in the area in fact it kind of informed this entire um future land use designation for this comprehensive plan and this was determined that this should develop in an industrial way and you can see with that aerial from 1972 it still was pretty rural in this area and then the that that power plant had kind of grown inside so you can see why they um why they kind of indicated this as an area for industrial use because of that defining feature and just it was really on the outskirts of town um we jump forward to the 1999 plan sorry the map is so blurry but you can kind of see how the the area has changed um from from the previous comprehensive plan so this dark purple is now introducing regional mixed use into the area and you can see when you look at that aerial map from 1999 why that came in because we had the mall there we started seeing um higher density residential coming in and that um that commercial those commercial uses started started um moving along loop 288 toward the north and so that a regional mixed use future land use was consistent with that development pattern they were seeing um and it also um kind of nibbled into that area they thought they were going to that was going to develop with it in industrial use so that industrial use gave way to what was called employment center it was essentially the same thing it was encouraging industrial type uses um but it was um it was impacted by that um regional mixed use as as the that commercial center started to grow and now we get to denton plan 2030 and as you can see the future land use map that was adopted in 2015 was pretty consistent with what was um what was in place prior to it it maintained that regional mixed use along um along i-35 and and the southern part of loop 288 and it also maintained that employment center at that time it transferred it transitioned to business innovation but it really sort of tracked with that existing um pattern um the power plant is still there you can see it here in this aerial um this is a a current aerial but it really isn't the defining feature anymore as you can see that that commercial starting kind of with the mall um back back decades before and has started to um fill in as you go toward the north and there's not a lot left that um is is along 288 so um here are just a couple pictures of what shady oaks looks like you can see it as a four lane arterial now and then here's a couple of pictures of what of what um that northern part of loop 288 look 288 looks like now um as you can see in this picture the subject property is in this location and then the the county offices are just across loop 288 um this is that new county building that's under construction there is an office building kind of kitty corner from the subject property along loop 288 so this really has really shows that continued um not only commercial pattern but also those office and employment pattern so the proposal is to modify the future land use map um and redesignate the subject property as regional mixed use this applies to areas in denton that serve as regional destination destinations um development may include moderate and high density residential commercial office entertainment and other uses except for industrial at the highest levels of scale and density within the city of typical zoning districts include mixed use regional and highway corridor so um as with all applications within the city of denton there are general approval criteria i won't go over all these um by staff's analysis the proposal does meet all the criteria for approval the general criteria for approval but there is one item i want to take a little closer look at and that is compliance with or consistency with the overall goals of the comprehensive plan so as staff was analyzing the request we looked at those goals in the comp plan for land use and there were three that that really um were are something that i want to highlight tonight so first of all grow compactly um this segment of loop 288 is a regional corridor that connects two highways it connects i-35 and um highway 380 right the current development favors commercial mixed use with retail restaurant office and high density residential this request supports this trend and provides a basis for zoning decisions which would encourage infill development for a variety of commercial and residential uses which are consistent with what's out there the second land use goal of grower assets this request would permit a variety of commercial and higher density residential uses um designed with commercial development standards to further strengthen the commercial character of loop 288 and finally grow with balance um regional mixed use supports zoning supports zoning districts districts like mr or hc which permit a wide variety of residential commercial and employment uses those are our mixed use districts so it provides a lot of flexibility for development to respond to changing conditions and economic trends there are specific criteria for approval for comprehensive plans there's really two sections of the specific criteria for approval the first section is the request has to meet one of that following criteria we're going to look at at two of those events trends or facts after the adoption of the comp plan that have changed the original findings or changed the condition or or the character of the area and then we'll also look at at some of those additional review standards so first those events trends or facts which have changed the character of the area and and in the conditions so there have been mobility changes um mayhill road in the last few years has um has been under construction and and will will eventually as i said connect to that to that regional um system there have also been expanded government offices so the county has been investing in in this area and and building up their offices in this area it expands the daytime population not only in people who work there but also who visit those offices um prior to 15 this the the zoning for the subject property and surrounding was primarily employment center commercial and employment center industrial that kind of informed our current comp plan because that business innovation sort of follows that zoning in a way so um so so that that um that previous zoning kind of informed that and then the current trend is away from that light industrial employment in this area toward that commercial and high density housing as you can see by those historical areas how the commercial development um moved on route 288 additional review standards um the the request needs to be a substantial benefit to the city this would encourage additional mixed use development near an expanding government center and also near our existing commercial districts um it must be compatible with the land use goals and avoid isolated uses um this is consistent with the land use goals as we as i talked about and also once again we just extend that commercial center um it can't significantly alter accepting our acceptable land existing land use patterns this is not anticipated to result in undesirable land use patterns our regional mixed use and those associated districts encourage those compatible land uses and development scale and then adverse impacts on public services and facilities this is an urbanized area it's served by existing transportation networks and there's also a nearby facility so this is really kind of infill in one of our existing urban areas um also the development pattern contained in the existing plan does not provide adequate and appropriate optional sites for the use or change being proposed in the amendment so as we looked at this request we kind of looked at the city as a whole and broadened our view since this is really the comprehensive plan and we looked at three specific areas where we see regional centers first of all we have razor ranch so it is it is located here it's our um it's our commercial center our regional commercial center on the north side of town um it it's kind of got its own um its own uh flavor with a retail restaurant high density residential and entertainment we also have denton enterprise airport another one of our regional centers at the transportation hub it serves air travel and employment uses so it's really different than those other two regional centers and then finally we have loop 288 which is one of our legacy regional commercial centers you know the mall came in in the 1980s and it's really kind of grown from there um but as it's grown and has as the areas have filled in there's less room um for development in those high visibility areas so this proposal would provide additional land adjacent to loop 288 for commercial infill development and then site conditions would make development under the current plan designation and appropriate while areas dedicated to employment centers are needed general office and light industrial districts restrict residential uses and that would really limit a necessary component to support existing and future commercial and employment development that that high density residential is really vital to these commercial areas and mix in a healthy mix of uses and then areas adjacent to loop 288 are really more suited to commercial and high density residential mixed use it's compatible with the existing development there's also high visibility with with um with loop 288 um they're high traffic volumes and there are signalized intersections to allow cars to move um um safely um new uh public right out outreach was done with newspaper ad the property was posted and there was mailings we did not receive any responses in opposition or favor and so the planning and zoning commission recommended approval of the request six to one staff also recommends approval of the request as it complies with the criteria in the dent development code and i can answer any questions and i do believe the applicant is on the line um to answer if you have any questions as well okay if we can pull the any questions before public hearing council member armature were there any callers who called in uh don't see any as of yet okay and you're sure the phone issue is all done yes okay okay yeah all right uh mayor pro tem thank you uh i have a question julie on the the uses i know it's not will the uses come back to us i guess that's the question yes sir we'll actually dive into a little more detail on the uses with the proposed zoning okay but i can answer any question on uses now if you'd like well no i just would i want to try to avoid the current situation we have with liquor stores and bail bonds offices and so when that rolls around just heads up i want to try to to uh incentivize uh away from that but all good and who's representing the applicant that's on that's with us tonight this is danny mccormick okay danny hey let me open up the public hearing and uh good to talk to you let me open up the public hearing and then um if you uh i guess the use question we might address in the in the zoning portion but um and then if you want to make some comments you can council member brings let me go ahead and open the public hearing um do you have a i'll go ahead and open the public hearing for agenda item 6 d council member briggs do you i have no callers that i've seen other than the applicant on the line council member brings do you have a question for the applicant or just a question for staff um just a question in general whoever wants to answer it because what you know looking at the the overall um land it seems like there's a lot of um trees forested and so um i wasn't sure at which point this conversation or the next one we were going to talk about um about that okay uh julie what is that more of a i mean zoning i don't even know if it's a zoning question but it is a question that needs to be answered let's let's do it in the next one if you don't mind uh so we can get through this one and we can just sort of load up those unless it's a truly a question on the uh future land use plan council member breaks well if we if we can do it in comprehensive plans because a didn't 20 comprehensive plan talks about you know open space and it how that correlates with with this change okay sure go ahead so so your question is if you could repeat that um so this is a comprehensive plan amendment and i'm looking i'm going back to the dent in 2020 plan when we talk about um the importance of of open space and i'm wondering if any of that has been um implemented here yes so um they would have to meet all tree preservation requirements and that would be under existing zoning and the proposed zoning so they would have to meet those those updated tree code requirements um i think the differences might come in with the development standards so um i'm pulling to that portion of the code right now so we do have minimum minimum canopy requirements for specific zoning districts the existing zoning of geo and li would require um 30 tree canopy and geo and 20 tree canopy in li um the proposed mr would require 30 canopy so if it was rezoned to mr um that portion that is under the li would actually have to um increase the amount of tree canopy overall tree canopy for the final development to that 30 percent um furthermore um as far as landscape area geo requires 20 percent and li requires 15 mr requires 25 percent so there would be an increase in the um in the overall landscaping for this site as well additionally if if it is if it is approved to if the comprehensive plan is approved and that zoning would be approved it would have to follow more um commercial site design standards more building articulation um so that that is additional thank you okay all right any other questions for staff or the applicant we are still we still have an open public hearing all right i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing mr mccormick we'll we'll take your comments or questions at the at the zoning uh agenda item next uh so we've closed the public hearing chair would entertain action on this item mayor protem move approval council member melzer your question yeah or a comment really i'm just not sure where to go with it i'm kind of in a similar observation you know as uh as councilman bricks we've talked about how the area has changed and um i get that it used to be sort of the edge of town and where there's a power plant so sort of more suitable to to manufacturing but what the other thing that's changed is it's just sort of more rare now as you know that pecan creek uh habitat uh and there's not a whole lot of that left and so between you know mr and geo nli i mean i don't know if there's honestly much to choose i mean i i i hear mayor protem's sort of concerned about the type of retail that you typically get around the courthouse which is not all that you know exciting uh and i also am sympathetic to the idea that hey you know some places we don't have some places that are attractive for employers we're not just a bedroom community you know that's what what you know geo is kind of suited to um but i don't have that much to choose personally between those two what would be compelling to me would be you know if we were to make a change it'd be because i knew that whatever was going in was going to go beyond this just sort of standard average canopy landscaping requirements but just respond to the fact that this is now a kind of rare bit of of habitat for dentin so it's just a comment i'm not sure where to go with it okay all right so we do have a motion on the table council member davis second all right we have a motion and a second uh mayor protem has say you all right uh council member davis aye council member briggs i'm gonna say no because i don't have enough information right now okay uh council member ryan aye council member armature i'm going to say aye because i'm happy to see it go from industrial to okay uh council member melzer yeah because i don't really see it responding to the the actual land use challenge that's presented i'm going to be a no okay uh mayor watts is an aye so the motion carries i believe five to two if my math is correct all right we'll move on to agenda item 6e hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of dentin texas regarding a change in the zoning district and use classifications from light industrial and general office to mixed use regional okay let me pull up my presentation okay so um now we get more into the detail this is for the zoning case z20-0002b canopy trails same property before 98 acres they are requesting to rezone from general office and light industrial to mixed use regional um the current zoning map shows um the the li and geo in this location and they are proposing that mr as you can see it really is just an extension of uh of that existing zoning pattern along 288 um we did have some questions about kind of what they were proposing the applicant provided um um a kind of zoomed in version of this of this particular area of their proposed concept plan um i'll caution you this is conceptual it hasn't gone through the scrutiny of the review for code compliance um not only from planning but other reviewers within the city engineering choir so um but i did want to kind of just touch on this so we can um kind of discuss what they're proposing um these this area here in pink they are proposing commercial uses along loop 288 which makes sense that that is sort of the high visibility area they're proposing more office uses along shady oaks and then residential um on the southwest side of the site they are proposing there is some um environmentally sensitive area here as well as a lot of trees so they are proposing um they will have to maintain that and also meet the tree preservation requirements as you can see per their concept plan they are kind of striving for a more um grid walkable um sort of internal internal um safe pedestrian circulation pattern as well as vehicular circulation so as with the comprehensive plan amendment there is the general criteria for approval and then there's also the zoning criteria for approval um we'll kind of touch on all of these as we discuss the project um so i won't go into detail on the slide this is the comprehensive plan slide uh and and this reflects that business innovation so um with the um with the transition to that mr the proposed um the proposed zoning is consistent with that future land use designation but i did just want to touch again once again those land use goals we we talked about before the those um the the proposed rezoning is also consistent with those land use goals that growing compactly growing the assets and then that balance of the the residential commercial and employment uses um another criteria for approval is minimizing adverse impacts on surrounding property we looked at the permitted uses in mr district and whether it was whether it was consistent with the surrounding development and it is so if you look at this map you can see those areas in red those are kind of that commercial area we've got the the high density residential in green we've got that employment and those government offices in blue and then we do have those public facilities that sort of um that beginning germ of of of that industrial still there so their proposed uses within mr are consistent with what we see on loop 288 which is government offices restaurants large retailers personal services and multifamily developments that mr district does complement this mix of uses and it would be a logical extension of that zoning pattern and development pattern we went further into a land use analysis there was a concern at the planning and zoning commission that a transition from a more employment-based zoning to a a mixed use or commercial-based zoning would potentially push employment uses um to the urban edge and and contribute to sprawl so we we took a land use analysis and we compared mr geo and li and and what we really determined was that mr just just folded in those residential uses the town homes the duplexes the triplexes the multifamily it still allows those that those low intensity manufacturing uses so you could have artisan manufacturing or low impact manufacturing it still would need to be developed with an eye more to commercial development standards but that use would be permitted however those those higher impact uses like the medium impact manufacturing and accessory outdoor storage or even warehouse and wholesale facilities would be limited to to be more consistent and compatible with the surrounding development council member hudspeth you did have a question regarding bale bonds and alcohol sales um i i kind of looked at the code and and those are typically the bale bonds would fall under our office uses administrative professional and government offices and really that would be permitted in it would not only be permitted to mr but it would also be permitted in geo and li so regardless of the rezoning that could go in there um your other question was related to kind of package alcohol sales um that would be permitted in um mr as general retail and it also would be permitted and under the existing zoning for geo and li so um i don't that that um the rezoning doesn't appear to have an impact on those two uses another criteria for approval is consistent with the purpose statement mr district is intended to provide a walkable urban center to augment regional draw an image of denton development can include national retailers employment restaurants entertainment venues and housing at the highest levels and scale and density in the city it's it's maybe established in areas with the greatest regional access and is sensitive to the adjacent built and natural context this really does speak to our loop 288 corridor and the request is consistent with that purpose statement um and then the intensity of development is not expected to increase to create significant adverse impacts with surrounding properties often when we talk about adverse impacts we really look to transportation so i want to take a couple of minutes to talk about that first we're going to kind of look big picture on transportation and then we'll kind of look um more closely at the proposal so um loop 288 is one of our um our primary arterials within the city it is um it is a six lane divided high or road which can accommodate about 55 000 vehicles per day um did some research with the north central texas council of governments they did some traffic counts in 2018 um in the area of about the yellow star um their count uh found that there were 24 545 northbound trips of those 23 760 were motorcycles cars and pickup trucks um the southbound trips were fairly similar with 24 119 southbound trips and 23 450 450 of those were generated once again by motorcycles cars and pickup trucks so what that indicates is this this really is a commercial corridor these are passenger vehicles these aren't um large trucks that are um are indicative of of um distribution hubs or real transportation centers so these are these are passenger vehicles and um and and speak to that commercial forward um additionally in the area we have mayhill as we talked about um and then shady oaks is also an arterial it's one of our secondary arterials and it has four travel lanes um and it is a signalized intersection so shady oaks and loop 288 does have that signal future improvements would be the the mayhill completion more street will have some improvements to make it flow better and there was a question about a signal light at carina there is not a plan for signal light at that intersection at this time so now we want to take a little more um a little closer look at the specific request and kind of look at two different scenarios that could um related to the proposed zoning and the current zoning so another proposed zoning the applicant kind of provided some um conceptual numbers and provided trips that would be generated based upon the ite manual and and by their estimation 1000 multifamily dwellings 259 000 square feet of shopping and 150 000 square feet of office would generate about 18 000 trips within a 24-hour period um because this would be a mixed use development there would be something called internal capture so think someone goes to their office and instead of leaving um instead of leaving that particular specific development to go get a sandwich at lunch they get a sandwich um um on site or someone lives in one of the multifamily developments and they can walk to their office or they can do their shopping on site so that internal capture because of that mixed use mix of uses would reduce the trips to about 9 270 um there would be large trucks associated with it for for things like um deliveries so under the current zoning um they also looked at those trips that would be generated um um and through the ite manual it would assuming 800 000 square feet of industrial space and 400 000 square feet of office uses would generate about 6 500 trips per day but this would be single use so there would be minimal internal capture there wouldn't necessarily be a um a place to go shopping or get a sandwich at lunch so a lot of those trips would have to leave the site but there would additionally be large trucks associated with that i think if there was a distribution center on site and the large trucks that would be um that would have to travel there um that would do two things it could it could change the character of loop 288 so we have about 96 percent of those passenger vehicles by adding additional large trucks for a more industrial use could really change the character of loop 288 and additionally it just because of their sheer size would reduce roadway capacity um think 65 foot truck to a 17 foot long large suv this is also a multimodal area there is the dcta connect route along 288 right adjacent to the property and that would connect any any riders to the a train so you could think you could get on a bus on the on the subject site and get all the way to downtown dallas so um and additionally additional development of the site would require sidewalk connections and other improvements a full tia will be required for the development of this site they've actually begun the scoping of that with engineering however i did discuss the request with engineering and the trips that would be generated and they stated that the current arterial network can accommodate those proposed trips so there is capacity within that area for the proposed rezoning there is water and wastewater available to the site and they would have to comply with any tap and impact fees public outreach once again was done we did not receive any letters in opposition or in favor this the planning and zoning commission recommended approval of the request and staff also recommends approval of the request as it complies with the criteria for approval okay any questions for staff julia let me just say that you know public hearings are typically at the end of the agenda and i just really do appreciate number one your patience and number two just the thoroughness of your presentations uh as we move sometimes into the wee hours of the night so i i just i was thinking about that as you were presenting i just really do appreciate that so wanted to pass that along all right we do have a public comment i have not opened the public hearing yet is there any questions for staff at this time before we open the public hearing all right we will now open the public hearing and we will wait for the caller to come on to the line uh caller you're on with the denton city council and public hearing and if you'll state your name and address when you do your time will begin and you have four minutes thank you this is eric pruett 2111 westwood drive i'm a little confused by this request i'm not 100 for or against it but uh that i just have some thoughts so the staff presentation quotes our development code saying the mr district is intended to provide a walkable urban center to augment the regional draw and image of denton that section in the code continues it says that the district should accommodate greater connectivity and mobility options and create a sense of place the mr district is primarily as you saw along loop 288 and i-35 as well as in razor ranch along 380 and i-35 can you think of any developments in these areas which evoke a walkable urban center feel that you would want to walk around within or promote as an image of them these existing mr zoned areas instead seem like sort of a de facto auto-oriented suburban shopping center and apartment complexes with parking spots where the parking gets primary access to the business and sidewalks are sometimes hundreds of feet away from the front doors in fact we just passed an amendment to the dvc this spring to allow larger front parking lots in mr developments and increased setbacks so that the current non-walkable built pattern seems like it could continue furthermore the two primary building materials and supply stores in our city loz and home depot are located in this mr zoned parcel not this parcel but the zone even though that use is only permitted in the corridor sc and hc zoning districts so i'm confused if the developer wants to to spearhead the beginnings of a walkable urban center in this location i'm all for that i just don't see how the mr district actually enforces that vision if they want to build more strict malls then i don't really think that's the way what we need or want especially clustered together in the same location as the other shopping that we have my guess is that they want to build some multifamily above the 40-foot height limitation of mm and some retail but in a segregated format rather than a mixed walkable one long-term we could miss one of the great infill planning opportunities we have to encourage walkable small lot infill development that preserves and leverages the riparian hickory creek asset as a future trail corridor extending from southeast denton to loop 288 and mayhill and connects directly to downtown so i'm confused the dvc shows the mr district alongside mn and md but functionally the mr areas of our city don't seem very walkable or urban and seem to function more like sc and hc a mixed use walkable area here could be a huge asset especially in context with the development that's occurring in the duchess drive area west of loop 288 i just don't i don't see how the mr zone actually enforces that vision so thank you thank you i appreciate that all right that's the only caller that i show uh that is queued up other than the applicant um mr mccormick you certainly have an opportunity to speak as the applicant and i can't remember uh what the time is an applicant 10 minutes uh mr city attorney is that i think it is or or 20 i can't remember i can't hear you erin i believe it's 10 for the applicant or 20 if there's a more than one representative from the applicant okay i'll double check that sure uh mr mccormick would you like uh to make some comments or or to address the caller's concerns and and his observations and when you do if you don't mind just stating your name and address and your time will begin and are you the only one representing uh the applicant mr mccormick uh i also have my traffic engineer for any questions on as well uh richard barb okay the only reason i the only reason i asked is whether it's a 10 or 20 minute allocation uh so my hunch is probably you've got some comments but i probably not 20 minutes but um but you certainly have that right split it up between the two if you need to so go ahead state your name and address and we'll start your time dan mccormick 724 north west of road east and texas 77024 thank you mayor thank you julie uh mayor protem members of the council city manager thank you all uh to to address i'm here for uh any questions that need to be answered um and uh traffic engineer richard borrows on the phone as well um but yes to address the uh caller's concerns uh this is a 98 acre mixed use development with uh a multi-family retail entertainment office development it is the an info track that especially the community but the old retail being there and with 288 and the proximity to 380 and i 35 and to bring a special development and a sense of place like this is absolutely important to us to be able to be walkable but at the same time have uh bicycle friendly and particular friendly as well so in order to uh hit on all of those uh we see mr as the best uh strategy for that so i'm here to answer any questions okay and appreciate it all right any questions for the applicant any questions for the applicant council member armature can you speak to uh what you imagine to be the uh rent range price range of the homes that are coming in there the apartment at this time i at this time i do not have a rep range i will tell you that it will be a surface part uh rent range so um it will be a market rent product meaning not not above or what was the follow-up question council member armature meaning not above market range not above market me i'm not sure about the question but yes it's a surface part development so it will not have for instance a parking garage necessarily because the market does not demand that today okay did i answer the question correctly council member armature yes she's saying yes yes she's on mute um okay any other questions for the applicant all right saying none uh any any closing comments mr mccormick thank you all very much you bet okay all right we will i see no more callers uh we will now close the public hearing and any questions for staff or chair would entertain action on this item council member davis i don't know if i should categorize this is a question for staff or not it's like 10 30 so i don't want to want to be be careful how long we go on with this but i i have to agree with the caller a little bit i'm a little bit confused i had a question for a staff that they answered in our email earlier about why the developer went with why they're asking for mr instead of md and i got a good answer back i understand that but um i support the the land use map change because a business innovation just doesn't make sense there that had to grow up into something else that had to move on from light industrial and water treatment plants and just that it had to be something better for infill but at the same time i'm not like real excited about duplicating uh what we have at the loop and moving that further up into a very valuable infill parcel um how many stores have failed over there how many restaurants are empty right now in that development i'm just not real excited about uh more of the same moving north up the loop and uh to the mayor pro tem's point earlier um i look at the concept and to be fair to the developer the applicant it is only a concept but that doesn't look like anything to me except for what we've seen in other places in town what we see just south of this parcel um i almost wonder if this is um if this is a parcel that needs a pd and not uh and not just blanket mr you know you look at the parking they're proposing and again just a concept nothing they're stuck on but um that is like miles of parking low tax revenue per acre um density in not very creative ways just a it's multifamily with some big box stores in front of it um and an esa in the back end of it i mean there's just nothing exciting there for me to to say we need to plow under a good infill parcel for that so i'm i'm not quite there on the zoning change yet okay mayor pro tem then council member briggs yeah i think i can speak to both of those and i think it i'll i'll ask my peers to reflect back on the i don't know when the conversation was bad but it was a little bit ago but specifically to eric's point about the walkable component you have to remember this is the same owner that's across the street so that'd be to the north of shady oaks and so staff has mentioned the walkable trail that allows our our residents to walk from the center of town through this beautiful green space that leads to the lake almost because of the trails and so it's a huge connectivity component and so but to make that work you have to work the the the south side of the lot but if you just reflect back i hope that jogs your memory so that's the walkable component so now you have this huge trail next to this this huge uh development that has but but in all things especially in my district i'm trying to tell you i'm trying to get a grocery store there and i need the i need the rooftops and so to it just makes sense if you put the pieces together to say i have to have the rooftops and that sort of thing that then drive and activate the houses that then drive and activate the the the trails and so now these people are walking uh to to the lake from here or connecting the different parks as part as city staff laid it out and then really i'm open to hopefully working with the the developer to regulate some of that so and so at some point they can build it by right and so by right he he could say well you're not going to work with me i'm going to put whatever there and but let's work with him and and have this courthouse experience dynamically different from what we have now and so the corporate space is needed i think you can you can do a number of things there but but that's my concern is that it could be activated currently um and it and it not and we not have any uh say in it or we can work with and develop something but i think the walkable and uniqueness is you got to see the entire package so this this land owner owns everything from loop 288 across to woodrow and then across shady shady oaks all the way up those empty spaces as well so you have to see it for what it will be uh as it's segmented to put the and put together all right uh let's see councilman priggs thank you yeah and and i i am trying to see it what it will be i'm trying to look long term and look at our opportunity here and i really appreciate eric's call because it's in line with the things that i had written down and um i i don't i see this as more of it's a high traffic area um it there's not going to be a lot of walking and as councilmember davis said you're just pushing what we have um further up and when we're looking at denton center or denton crossing there's 11 empty stores right now i mean do we want more of the same do we want empty storefronts trying to trying to fill them with retail with giant empty parking lots or you know i that's just not what i see here and i don't want to sacrifice a unique opportunity and a a really great green corridor for more of the same um i just i i'm not i'm not in favor of this right now for those reasons okay councilmember armature and then councilman ryan so i'm i'm uh a little bit i'm leaning more towards the yes um as uh you know mayor protem said i mean it would be nice to have a grocery store in this area uh we do we need apartments you know my my dream would be affordable housing with grocery store and lots of sidewalks and walkability um but i you know i feel like it's not um my role necessarily to turn this into but my dream scenario would be just to try to to do the least harm um so i i i too appreciate eric's call and his concerns and i wish that we had requirements for more sidewalk uh in our development plan but i'm going to have a hard time saying no to this but i do i do understand concern okay okay uh councilmember ryan yeah thank you mayor yeah a couple of items on when eric called he said that the building materials were only allowed in hc and sc they're also allowed in light industrial which is what part of this is already zoned so if they were thinking about putting that in they wouldn't even be coming to us for a rezoning if they were looking at a large building material type type of place uh i look at this is is a little bit of a down zoning because it's more difficult to get light industrial zoning than what it is to get a mixed use zoning the the concept plan is just that it's a very you don't spend a lot of money on a concept plan at at a zoning for a zoning case you don't get into the detail and i'm as far as the concern over uh all the empty spaces that we have right now in town if there's that much empty space they're not going to build it because they're not going to be able to get the tenants in there so you know this is if if those empty spaces continue on they've got the rezoning but they probably won't start the project until all that starts filling back in again so yeah i think it's a good plan it's nice to see the the uh multi-family potentially town homes everything except for single family detached is can go into that zoning district that none of that can go into either one of the current zoning districts so this allows that housing component and whether it's sidewalk or bike ability both of those would be good on that in that area so i will be supporting those okay all right uh councilman briggs i saw your hand just a moment ago after councilman ryan did you have additional comments i was just wondering is isn't aldi's um like nearby this development as as far as a grocery store i'm just across the street i'm trying to place myself i thought i thought it was but it may be a little further okay uh council member armature then council member davis then council member melzer i didn't i didn't have my hand oh i'm sorry let me go to council member melzer he hasn't spoken yet council member melzer um yeah actually uh just want to address a couple uh a couple points one is that most of it is is go not li general office and from a kind of to least harm i'm inclined to to say no and uh um and and i take very seriously uh mayor pro tem's you know wish that we have an opportunity to kind of work with this developer who's you know owns quite a bit of that area and i just hope that um even though we're not having a really extended conversation with them that you know you'll sort of pick up on the the comments and the hesitations expressed uh and that you know still at the concept stage where a lot of money has not been spent yeah that that uh you might end up you know seeing something that that more of us find compelling uh council member davis thank you no i i take the mayor pro tem's points very well and i think he's i think he's right um he he hit the nail right on the head there's a land owner and developer that has uh one of the last great infill parcels in the city and and that's why this just screams pd to me and not a blanket mr because and i get uh john's point about not putting a lot of money into your concept drawing your master planning you know at this stage but at the same time um big chunk of frontage on loop 288 one of the last great infill parcels we have in the city um all that connectivity that uh mayor pro tem was talking about that's exactly the kind of project that you need to come in and kind of wow with i think and i'm not asking for a lot i'm just asking for some you know give me some justification for uh taking the gloves off and giving over mr where you can build that you can build a big box store you can build something else you can build just about anything you want there um if it was about you know office space and that kind of stuff they could do that in the go and i really just don't want to see more of the same kind of cookie cutter the reason why those stores are vacant is not or because they turn over is i don't think because um your market conditions aren't right i think it's because that's a terrible place to try to shop it's unattractive it's hard to get to hard to park at um you know you go there because there's a liquor liquor store and a best buy and if you're into home goods you can do that too but the mongolian place failed the fuddruckers failed the golden corral failed because those aren't great places to be i think we can do better in this spot and so that's why i'd like to see a little bit more on the table a little bit more information uh and get more familiar with this project before i'm ready to say have your your mr and build what you like council member i mean may i approach him thank you yeah no and i think jesse you make some great points but and i do want to i do want to touch on the fact that uh this is a i'll direct people to a new york times article that says retail sales are up 17 higher than expected and and they predict they speak to the bounce back so for those that don't follow the trends i i would advocate that you uh review that then i think jesse to your point uh for me it those things failed because of the clientele and the um just the basically the funds that people have so you look at that development around there and you see uh a there's an apartment on the back side it just doesn't have the right level of income for those areas but then you look at a village of razor ranch uh behind winco that's that area's thriving they filled up faster so i think it's the right product i don't i don't advocate against the pd i just say uh that i think to to to take this project and apply it to that development uh i don't know that that's a fit i think the corporate offices are kind of that field work and i think everyone notices the trend that no one drives across denton anymore it's it the traffic's too hectic it's it's a mess and so people are staying in their area and so and and just trust me on this i'm not trying to sell you anything i'm trying to tell you kroger is also right down the street and i get the riot act read to me every neighborhood meeting because people have to they can't just drive the brooks without getting on i-35 so kroger aldi all in that area and i get all the same complaints so it adds no value that they have to cross over the loop 288 to go to a smaller grocery store i get the same complaint driving the kroger which is one minute down the road from aldi i get the same complaint so i'm telling you to leave the neighborhood and go down shady oaks to be able to go to a grocery store adds value and talk to anyone in district one if you don't believe me but i'm it is absolutely uh pressing uh and i hear about it regularly so i think that i don't know what the difference is in the pd and mr maybe that's something staff can talk to but i think the difference is you're if you look at those developed areas you're talking about a uh in theory less disposable income whereas if these are going to be at market rate or higher you're going to have a different level of income and not to mention we still have we're right next door to a place that still hadn't cleaned up their nuclear waste i mean there's i mean it just seems like what are we expecting and understand they own the entire everything that you see that's open in that area they own and so there's there's very little um there's there's negotiations to be had but it's not like someone else is gonna this is this is it this is we need to sit down hammer out what we want it to look like and forwards and broker a great deal but i just don't hear i hear stores are empty over there um but i don't hear kind of what we could try to bake into this to say if you did this we can move forward and that's what i'm listening for uh so thank you yeah and go ahead council member davis i'm gonna have some final comments and then we're going to just see where this goes sure i was just going to kind of to to clarify and respond to that i think what i would be looking for if we were to do something like a pd or if we were going to have a more refined plan in front of us for this vote i'd be looking for some of those things like can you actually walk from your apartment to the store or are you looking at the back side of a target or a best buyer whatever um because the concept plan has it where the stores are facing the big parking towards the front you can't actually walk to the store you have to walk all the way around to the front of the store that's not mixed use that's a big store and from some apartments in the same area so you call it mixed use is there really a place to put the sandwich shop that you might go to on your lunch break or are they just kind of adjacent to each other but actually very difficult to navigate um we'd get a little bit more granularity a little bit more refined refined plan and i'm not saying pd is the only way to do that do that i'm just saying typically when we look at a pd we're looking at a more refined plan by the time it gets to that point um if this was a little further along i think i'd be a lot more comfortable with it depending on what it looked like but i'm just just not looking for more of the same because it's not doing so great for us okay um i appreciate everybody's comments for me i really sort of discount the notion that we have empty storefronts we have empty storefronts like we have almost an empty mall because there there's just transitions to real estate i mean the loop 288 i-35 was also under construction for a year or two at least which really hurt uh the businesses over there because some of the restaurants that everybody mentioned had been there for a long long long time a couple of them i was i remember that um again it sounds like what i'm hearing is we just we we don't have enough specificity in this regard now i know what the caller there's talk they're talking about urban development well each one of us could be asked what we think urban development our definition of urban development walkability and we'd probably get seven different answers because for some it's all the way from how it would be in new york city to some other types of urban developments that are maybe less dense uh that that don't have any type of um uh you know the the vehicular traffic is almost non-existent so as far as the walkability uh some would say razor ranch isn't walkable but they do have sidewalks in razor ranch it's just you've got apartments now coming in and they can walk to the grocery store they can walk to uh some of the restaurants there they can cross uh university drive with with a signal line so it just it's whatever your definition of walkability is if you walk down and you walk only 100 yards and you're at wherever you want to be uh so i don't have a problem with this project the way it's it's it's uh proposed um i don't think that a developer who has that many acres there is going to put something there that's going to harm the rest of his development in the sense of that's going to be the first one that's going to set some of the standard i would hope that the developer is not going to do something well i know the developer is not that's going to be a losing proposition based upon the area so i don't have an issue with it i think all the comments have been great i understand the need for specificity and it may be that we can talk to the developer as they begin to move more into the actual planning stage of what they're going to do there maybe some of the comments that have made have prompted some curiosity and some different brainstorming and ideas in that regard so i just really appreciate the robust discussion in that regard because i think this is how the process goes and i don't know quite frankly how it's going to go so with that the chair would entertain let me let me just see if the uh was there any questions for the developer because i was going to say i don't think i can give him another chance to speak because there's it's not really a rebuttal because there's no questions but well i think he's heard this this conversation and depending uh i would say notwithstanding how the vote goes i think these have all been good comments that they can take and and do something that will meet as many of those interests expressed as possible uh council member davis i i mean i'm i've got a question if i can if i can ask if you want me to ask him a question i'll ask him a question if you're ready for action i can hold my if you have a question that you want to ask the developer uh sure sure my question would be um what if the developer would be amenable to something closer to a pd process and and master planning this out in the open with us and showing us what they've got in mind for the whole the whole thing um and uh in kind of a more open way so maybe maybe that means a pd maybe that means more back and forth with what they're planning for the site um because what i heard from before was it's a little bit just right out of the textbook you know um quoting right off our own development code so that's my question would be a meaningful to like a pd kind of conversation right okay uh mr mccormack you still on the line yeah yep you can address that thank you council member davis yes so we own uh 398 acres uh in this development this is the only portion of the port part that needed to be rezoned uh 200 of the acres that are north of shady oaks um we will be coming back later to discuss pd on the single family development side of it um the purpose of this was to rezone this for mixed use regional which could it which includes the entertainment open air concept um and purpose of the the rezone for mixed use regional is really to create jobs and have amenities in today's environment you need to have amenities uberland and dallas because of three things amenities amenities and that means retail that means walkable to your home that means walkable to your office that means walkable to a park um in the future we will be coming back with a pd on the northern tracks to have a cohesive plan for the full 398 acres um and to be able to answer all those questions but for this process uh the purpose of this was to get the rezoning in place on this piece and then come back to you at a later date uh with a full comprehensive plan okay all right thank you uh any uh any more questions or action uh for this agenda item mayor pro tem i'm gonna move approval i'm i'm i'm satisfied with it again uh i've had private conversations i'm biased because uh my neighborhood has uh advocated and i think it's a good fit i think the uh other components come into play and it lays out nicely so i think this is the first phase to to um move those other things forward okay all right we have a motion uh do council member uh ryan i will second that all right we have a second uh council member melzer you're reaching for your phone do you have a question or comment no just getting ready for the okay all right i'm sorry uh mayor pro tem go ahead i do want to echo i do want to echo what you said great conversation i mean outstanding very productive and i think it gives a lot of insight so uh with that i okay council member ryan aye council member briggs no council member davis no council member armatyr yes council member melzer nay i didn't take moan advice last one to speak uh mayor watts is an i so that motion carries i believe it was four two three uh on agenda item six e okay that uh brings us to our concluding items and concluding items council member armatyr okay uh several things number one uh one of the callers for open mic can you hear me yes did somebody did i just hear something or either dog barking or something go ahead um so one of the callers for open mic uh who was a green free resident had a bunch of questions and she asked for an answer from i believe from staff in writing so it'd be great uh to get that just wanted to remind about that i appreciate uh the uh other callers comment about uh public comments at work session so i'm going to be requesting that we bring that back to the table uh i want to say happy birthday to mildred kitchen who is turning 100 years old in a couple hours so actually an hour and a minute so anyway happy birthday to you wonderful email that i got from a good friend of yours that i think went to all of council uh and it really made my day so thank you and i just wanted to say that for people all the people who are writing to us about suggesting police reforms um there there are a number that that i had uh put forward for work sessions so those are coming even though those aren't here on our agenda right now uh hopefully uh they'll be coming real soon those discussions okay anybody else council member briggs all right i got kitty here in my eye um i just want to make an announcement that the homeless uh data report is out and it's online and i've shared it you can also find it on united way the the point in time count too from january all the information is there i know we have people asking in our community and if you haven't seen it or checked it out it's uh it's really great uh everybody worked really hard on it so i appreciate it thank you anyone else mayor pro tem yeah so uh sunday is uh father's day so i want to remind everybody to to enjoy and celebrate enjoy that fellowship uh juneteenth is rolling around so please be mindful of that you know learn fellowship share your knowledge that sort of thing uh and then um i also want to mention uh two tremendous uh pillars in my neighborhood associated with mlk and the legion hall are are retiring so that's bobby gibbons who's been a staple at mlk as long as i can remember and has served our community well so uh hats off to him hats off to miss betty kimble who is just a giant in in my world uh her and her you know everyone that goes to american legion hall's outset outstanding so she'll be um sure she'll still be around still hanging out but but won't be working there and so congratulations to her and then there's the uh miss uh jackie lawson asked me to remind everyone the justice talk is that it's from it's on uh the 18th and that's at 7 30 on the score 6 30 at on the square so six there you go so six on the square uh that's the 18th six o'clock so uh just those are are my notes thank you all right anyone else council member melzer i'd just like to ask how bobby gibbons could be retiring he's only like 29 years old isn't he seems to me yeah okay anyone else all right then we will stand adjourned at 1102