Jun 23, 2020 City Council on 2020-06-23 8:00 AM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on June the 23rd, 2020. It is 8.05 a.m. Our first item on this agenda will be a closed session meeting deliberating personnel matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.074. So we will now convene in closed session at 8.06 a.m. and all those not necessary for this closed section, if you could just please disconnect from the call at this time, that would be greatly appreciated. Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on June 23, 2020. It is 2.12 p.m. Apologize for getting a late start. We'll move down through our agenda items. Do we have any comments on consent agenda items? I don't believe we have any comment on consent agenda items. Excuse me, Mayor. It's putting me in safe driving mode, whatever that is, I'm going to leave and come back in and hope for a better result. Okay. All right. Safe driving mode. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Meltzer. So our next agenda item is request for clarification on agenda items listed on the agenda. Request for clarifications. And we're missing Council Member Armitage as well. So requests for clarification. Council Member Briggs. Thank you, Mayor. On consent agenda item B. My question is the $50,000, is that for the actual gas for the vehicles? I know that we're phasing the vehicles out. And so does that cover the amount of vehicles we have, or is that just a pay-as-you-need-it type of contract, if somebody can explain to me the $50,000 a year and what that covers? This is Brian Barnard, Director of Solid Waste. This is -- there are two parts of this contract. We have the Atmos part and the Luminant part. The Atmos part is for transportation. So it is for the gas that moves through the pipeline. We purchase the gas from Luminant. So what this does is we pay a meter fee on a monthly basis, and then we pay for each MMBTU that we actually pull through the pipe. So we use only -- we pay only for what we use, and it's for the existing fleet. And as we currently have 15 vehicles that we currently have on CNG, several of them are back up. There are several front line, but over the next five years, those will be phased out. And at that point, this contract will not be needed. And okay, so this is just the money that we're seeing here. This contract is just for the use of the pipeline. It's not even for the actual fuel for the vehicles? That is correct. So this fee plus the fuel fee is what makes up the total cost for the CNG that we purchase. Okay. And where is the fuel fee? That is through a separate contract that we have with Luminant. And we will probably see in probably the next six months another renewal of the spend authority for that contract. And how many vehicles did you say this was for? Currently we have 15 vehicles that are -- that remain as CNG, and we'll be phasing those out. Okay. That seems like a lot of money to cover for those 15 vehicles. And again, we're only paying for what we use, so 50,000 is a spend authority. It's not the total cost of this. It will be much less than that. Okay. All right. Thank you for that clarification. Mayor, I have a couple more. Sure. On C and D, I think they're both for EMO. Is that correct? And my question would be what budget does this come from and where does the money come from to pay these contracts? It comes out of the electric fund. And is that part of our -- the rate? Sure. Everything in the electric fund is supported by the electric rates. Okay. Okay. On item D, is that -- is that something brand new to us that was recommended in the last -- the study that we did? Or is this something that we've continued to do? This is the second iteration of this particular purchase, and I'll defer to either Terry Nalti or Tony Puente to fill in the specifics. Good afternoon, Council. Terry Nalti, Assistant General Manager, DME. The energy trading risk management policy requires us to put in place a system of record for all of our trades and all of our hedges. And this is, as a result of a recommendation from Deloitte and Touche from several years ago, it's taken us a bit over a year to get this procurement finalized and the contract finalized, but this will be our system of record going forward. Okay. All right. Thank you. Last one. Sorry. I just have one -- last one. Item E on the credit card, is that -- is that credit card fee staying the same that it was or is it going to be changing with this contract? I couldn't gather. Good. Either David Gaines or Krista Foster. Yeah. One second, Krista is heading over to the mic. As far as credit card fees are concerned, we are in the process right now of switching over to the Wells Fargo Merchant Services, which means that all the credit card fees that we currently charge to commercial customers will go away once that switch happens. Okay. So is this item just temporary then? The ELEVON, yeah, it's -- because we're having some trouble with getting some of the tokenization transferred over. So we're trying to get the final switches made to be able to switch over to Wells Fargo. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Davis, you had a question? Yes, sir. I just needed to pull item A for a recusal. The other -- the other third of that agreement is with the county. On the consent agenda? Yes, sir. That's correct. Okay. All right. Okay. A. All right. Councilmember Briggs? If no one else has a question, I have one that I forgot. I asked for the list of the street projects. Thank you. And I received that. My question is after this item is approved, because there's a few streets on here or one particular that is torn up right now from the utility work, what is the date once this is approved? How much longer would it be before those roads are actually repaved in this contract? In which item were you referring to? The street segment of the rest of the bonds. So item F, I think. Todd, I just saw you on the phone. Yes, sir. I am. Okay. Councilmember Briggs, this is for the design services for those street segments. We anticipate that this would still be ready to go out to bid by the end of the year and be under construction probably early next year. We feel with this small contract here, they could get this work designed very quickly and have us out the door to get those segments done. If you can give me the particular segment that you're concerned about, I can definitely look into it a little more. Okay. Well, I was just fox cross circle. I know that we had talked about where we were going to start doing all of the projects at once so that streets wouldn't be in a really bad condition for a long time. And so I was just checking on the progress once this was approved, how long that would remain that way. I would just have to look into that. I know that that pathway forward is part of the Next Bond program, and we're doing our best right now. Okay. My question was answered. It would be next year's. Thank you. Okay. All right. Anybody else a clarification on agenda items? And we only have one agenda item being pulled off the consent agenda and that's consent agenda item A. All right. We'll move on to the next portion of our agenda, which are our work session reports. Our first work session report is three a receive report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding an update to the city of Denton's COVID-19 response. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, Sara Keettler, Chief of Staff. One second while I pull up the presentation. Okay. So this is our standing work session to provide an update on the city's response to COVID-19. Just as a reminder, the city does have a current disaster declaration and order, which is in effect until June 30th. There is a separate agenda item today under individual consideration for City Council to consider extending that declaration and order for the City of Denton. Today's work session will have two updates. The first will be an intergovernmental update. Dr. Matt Richardson from the Denton County Public Health Department will join us to give us a brief update on COVID-19 and answer a few questions. We have a couple of slides to inform you of Governor Abbott's announcement last week regarding face masks. And then secondly, Jessica Rogers, our Economic Development Director, will join us and go over a slide in regards to a few questions we've received regarding unemployment benefits. So I'll jump right into the presentation and ask Dr. Matt Richardson, who should be on the line, to give you a brief overview and update. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and council members. I appreciate your time today. I hope you can hear me. We can hear you. Yes, sir. Excellent. I appreciate some time. I'm just going to go over a quick sit rep, a situation report about COVID-19 and where we stand in Denton County, and then I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Quickly going through, we have our total case count is 2,219 cases in Denton County. Our active cases are 1,114 and recovered is 1069. We do have 36 deaths that we have reported. Our case count per 1,000 population. Denton County has case counts of 2.41 cases per 1,000 population. That is lower than the state of Texas average, lower than the Dallas County, Tarrant County, just a tick more than Collin County. We have noticed in the last two weeks, we have two different epi curves, epidemiological curves that we track and publish on our website at DentonCounty.gov/COVID19Stats. So anyone can go to that website and you can track daily information, daily reported data. We do have two epi curves that we look at for trending. That is active case reporting by day, and then we have symptom onset. I would note, I can't recall if I mentioned this to the council at my last briefing, but the symptom onset, we like to look at two weeks prior from today and then two weeks prior to that. So basically a month out. Because the symptom onset, we need to allow time for people to get tested, people to incubate, people to get tested, the laboratories to report the positive test to us and for us to investigate those. That's about a two week lag. So if you look two weeks prior and in the two weeks before that, we trend those symptom onsets to try to understand infection and symptomology in Denton County. And so our cases reported and the symptoms reported, both are trending up. So that's bad news. We do have daily case counts, again, trending up. That's very much a concern. Our testing, a lot of times people ask, is this a result of expanded testing? The answer to that is yes and no. Yes, we do have additional cases because of expanded testing. And so we do rank seventh in tests per 100,000. You'll recall that Denton County ranks ninth in population in Texas, but we rank seventh in tests per capita, tests per 100,000. So we're a little ahead of what you would expect our population rank to be. We're a little ahead of the testing rank. So we are doing more testing proportionately than some other counties. Still not enough, I would say. We would want more testing capacity overall. However, it's nice to not be behind our ninth ranking in population. And so we are expanding testing and we are expanding eligibility, which is important. Many people have wondered if our positivity rate, which I'll talk about in just a second, people have wondered if our positivity rate was growing because we were limiting who we tested and it's actually the opposite. We have a more inclusive testing criteria, anyone over the age of 60, anyone who has a contact to a confirmed case, anyone with signs and symptoms. And so that's more inclusive. And so we've expanded testing and we're opening up the funnel for testing, at least from the county-provided tests, of which we're about 10% of the total tests in the county. There have been, well, I will tell you, there have been, according to the state of Texas, there have been 34,000 tests performed in Denton County, and Denton County Public Health has performed 3,200 of those, just under 10%, 9% of those tests. So our positivity rate, this is also concerning, our positivity rate has increased. Texas overall, Texas statewide positivity has increased, that's a concern. So last week our positivity rate was 7.8, this week it is 9.3. And so we're going the wrong direction, additional cases, additional positivity, these are all a concern and certainly bear more scrutiny. I would note that we also track hospital metrics. And so we try to assess our hospital capacity and we do that daily. We report that on our website daily. And that's also an important metric of our healthcare system and its flexibility and capacity to respond to all diseases, not just COVID-19, but the ability to respond to chronic disease, to acute care concerns, to mass casualty events, for instance. We're very concerned about the infrastructure of healthcare in Denton County. We do report that. Some of those indicators, as of this morning, we have 50.5% of our total beds, staffed beds in Denton County occupied. We have a little less than half of the ICU beds occupied in Denton County. This is in general, this is not COVID-19, this is in general. So we have 43% of ICU beds occupied and 14% of total ventilators in use. So that's the good news portion of the presentation. The silver lining is our healthcare infrastructure can flex and has margin for additional surge. I would note that if you go to our website and you track the spike of additional cases, they are mostly in 20 to 29 and 30 to 39 are our additional cases. And that can explain some of the discrepancy for the low hospital utilization. So we do know that younger people need hospitalization much less frequently with COVID-19 than the older population, our seniors. We do know our seniors are more vulnerable. We do know people with chronic conditions, diabetes, heart conditions, cardiovascular conditions are more at risk. So we're tracking all of those metrics and those again, updated daily at DentonCounty.gov/COVID19Stats. We are tracking and trending over time the total occupancy. So in the last week, total beds occupied increased by 3%. And again, we're right at half of those staffed beds being occupied. COVID-19 patients hospitalized, that has increased from 2.5% of total patients to now about 5% of total patients, according to the state of Texas. So again, we've had quite a jump and yet the 5% is a relatively low number, particularly when you've seen this outbreak and when you've seen infrastructure on the East Coast a month and a half ago, they had very different situations. And I think that's what we're all concerned about is the hits to the infrastructure and being able to see again, chronic and acute care patients. So that is a really, really high level. I'm happy to answer questions. That's a very high level sitrep of what's happening in Denton County. Again, I would urge everyone to go to that website because that's our best real time information that is updated with our press release every day at about four o'clock. So what happens is we report cases. Our epidemiologist will be finishing that in the next 20 minutes. We will push that information to our GIS site. So that happens with the mapping. And so all of our maps are updated real time. And then we publish that information concurrent to our press release where we talk about active cases, total confirmed cases, recovered and in our deaths. Okay. Ready for Q&A? Sure. Yeah. And just, you know, we've got some time for him to answer a few questions, but his time's obviously very valuable and he's very busy at the county. So let's keep the questions pretty concise and I'll try to get as many as we can. Council Member Briggs and Council Member Meltzer. Yeah. Two questions. First question is I've been, well, first one comment, thank you for the data and keeping us informed. It's been very helpful, the website. And I've been following along the hospital information. So my question is kind of about that. How many hospitals, when we were looking at that, does that include? Because I know it's not just our local hospital. I mean, you know, when I look at it, I'm curious and I'm concerned about just our local hospital Denton beds, but that information is not available to us. So first question, how many hospitals are we talking about when we're looking at that information? The second question is what positivity rate would you consider or is it considered an outbreak or a hot spot? Okay. So the first question, there are five inpatient facilities that are monitored with those staffed beds, the five largest hospitals in Denton County. The specialty hospitals, a heart hospital, for instance, is not tracked in the same fashion. So this is the five major hospitals. The second, a positivity rate in thinking of hot spots. This is a pandemic. And so what happens, you'll notice about a month ago, Louisville was really increasing in their cases. In the last two weeks, that's really flip-flops. The city of Denton seems to be increasing proportionally more than Louisville. Some of our smaller communities, you know, when it comes to rates, the trending in the rate, smaller communities are impacted with fewer cases. So a Prosper or a Crumb can really accelerate with just a few cases. So we don't have a threshold and a lot of times this week and last week we've been asked a lot of threshold questions and we don't have tried and true lines in the sand about thresholds and hot spots. Again, in a pandemic and with household contacts, that can change quite a bit by community. And so if we can find and pinpoint places of business or if there are households with several household members, that can be a driver in a small community and larger communities like Louisville and Denton, it's really the aggregate. And so, again, right now in a true pandemic and a global infection, the cases pop up differently at different times everywhere. >> Councilmember Meltzer. >> Yeah. Thank you. If I could just ask a couple, be as concise as I can. Just broadly, you know, I hear some people say this is just like the flu. Is it just like the flu? >> It is not. So a couple of distinguishing differences that are really, really important. Flu seasons are about six months, give or take a few weeks. Flu season, the traditional flu season in North America is basically October through March. This year I think the CDC estimates are between 25 and 30,000 flu fatalities over six months. That's very different than COVID-19. So nationally, as of this morning, there have been since late February 120,000 COVID-19 deaths. So in a little more than half of the same amount of time of a flu season, we've got four times the number of deaths because of COVID-19. Very, very, very different than the flu. So flu fatality rate is, the CDC, their latest estimate, which is very liberal, I would say their latest estimate, not conservative, it was 0.5% of people with the flu die. I think that was the most generous number I had heard. In Denton County, the fatality rate with COVID-19 is hovering at 2.1%, something like that. So you can see that we're, even in Denton County, we would be five times the fatality rate of the flu with positive cases. That's a big deal. That's a very different thing. So yeah, when people want to discuss and debate flu versus COVID, the facts bear out the truth of this is much, much deadlier comparatively to the flu. The difference too, the flu, we have a vaccine and until we have a vaccine with COVID-19, those that have not previously been infected are at risk and that's a continuing concern. Thank you for that clarification. And then early on, all the discussion was about flattening the curve in order not to overwhelm the hospital system, which would be very bad that you're very affected and can't get a hospital bed. So I'm hearing you say there is hospital capacity, but how severe of an experience is that to be hospitalized for COVID-19? I mean, is that sort of a mild thing or is that a very bad life experience? Yeah. Hard to know. It depends on the patient, right? So some patients much more vulnerable, hospitalization can be lingering, people can be hospitalized for weeks on end with COVID-19. Some can be hospitalized with a one or two day stay. There's an enormous variability on the severity of COVID-19 and hospitalization. I would say that what is different than March and what we're seeing in the trend is that much younger cohorts of people are accelerating the infection. And so we're not seeing the same really increase in cases or spike in cases in our most vulnerable population. That's the good news. The bad news is the younger population can still transmit the disease. So we're seeing fewer hospitalizations than we were seeing comparatively in March and early April. And this experience still is a little different than April because of who seems to be getting it in the last two weeks. Obviously, that can change, but in the last two weeks, that's what we're seeing and that's why we're not seeing this parallel hospital surge. We are seeing a spike in cases, but we're not seeing this infrastructure hit. Mayor, if I can ask one more and I'll... Real quick, yes, because we've got other people wanting to ask him. We're going to... Yeah, go ahead. I appreciate that. So, you know, Governor Abbott, yesterday said COVID-19 is now spreading at an unacceptable rate in the state of Texas and it must be corralled. And Dr. Fauci of the White House Coronavirus Task Force said this morning that the next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surges that we're seeing in Florida and Texas and Arizona and other states. Do you agree with those statements? And if so, what would make a change that would help corral it and that would help us address the criticality of the next couple of weeks? Yeah, this is a struggle. Our interventions are limited, right? And so what we have is behavior modification that continues to be very, very important. We do need the physical distancing. This is critical. Staying out of large groups of individuals, wearing a mask here at Public Health, when you're going through the hallway, if we go to the restroom, if I leave my office and wearing a mask, this is non-negotiable for us and that is decisions that we make as an employer and certainly this situation in Public Health. Also because we're at increased risk because we're doing testing in our office and our staff is involved. This behavior modification of wearing facial coverings, making sure that you stay home when you're sick, that we don't get a gold star coming to work sick, you know, there's not an attendance award at the end of the year for employers. If you're feeling ill, go get tested, stay home, don't expose others. All of these things, hand washing, I think that gets lost in the narrative and yet we know that transmission is most effective when we interact with other people, shake hands and we touch our nose or our eyes. That is an incredibly efficient transmission mode and hand washing remains not part of a community narrative and yet hyper critical. And so it's this composite patchwork of interventions that are important and I think Dr. Fauci is correct. I think the governor is correct. I think everyone really understands that we haven't beat this yet and until we have a vaccine we're going to be managing the outbreak and that's our current situation. Thank you very much. All right, we're going to go to Councilmember Husspeth and then Councilmember Armitter and after that we're going to rhyme but we need to, let's make sure we, I don't want multiple questions if I could with the following Councilmembers, if you could just limit it to one question, that'd be great. I understand I gave the other two additional questions which I'll correct that in the future. No problem. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Richardson. I'd just ask you to one, so it's one question and it's around masks and the components of the very mask, medical mask, you know, because that information is put out. So the question is this, open-ended question for you to opine, assuming we're going to have a discussion about whether to mandate masks, et cetera, et cetera, I just want you to be heard on that topic knowing it's coming. So I want you to have the opportunity to speak to the one, the different types of masks pluses minuses as much as you want to go into that and then two, what you're, if you're participating in that conversation that's coming that says, should the city mandate masks, yes, no, and I know your answer, I read it, but to give you an opportunity to speak to that. I think our message has been consistent and it's important and that is that facial coverings are effective. I think there's no question that the science is bearing that out and it's, it's a portion of what we need to be doing as community members, as family members, protecting our most vulnerable, masks are important. Physical distancing is important. This idea of not gathering closely together, again, the hand washing, these, these are messages that have been consistent with CDC, with WHO, certainly are at the local level. I think we've been on social media, we've been very consistent about these recommendations. So those recommendations stand. When it comes to city ordinances or county ordinances, we were part of that conversation as well and we do provide these recommendations and I think when the, we really accelerate and we emphasize the importance of recommendations and even in the instances of the infrastructure being impacted negatively, we might make a recommendation to city councils, to county commission, to the governor's office if it becomes negatively impacted with our infrastructure and unable, we could ask for a reclosing, a limitation on public gatherings. We could ask for ordinances with masks. We could ask for an increased lockdown of long term care facilities, depending on the situations. I think all of those options remain on the table. And so we don't want to, we don't want to paint policy makers in a corner. We don't want to draw lines in the sand at this point. We want to say truthfully, the recommendations of masks, physical distancing, hand washing, those are consistent. And then we don't know what the future holds, but in the next two weeks, in the next four weeks, in the next three months prior to a vaccine rollout, we're going to let the context of all of these metrics guide our public health recommendations and we hope that that will guide policy makers as well. Okay. All right. Council member Armitage. Yes. So you mentioned if the hospital routing continues to increase, if we continue to see the numbers we're seeing, as I understand it, it is less a conditional uncertainty than a relative scientific predictability in the sense of the rate at which we're seeing our hospitals filling up. So I'm wondering what you have to say about, you know, to what extent is this rate at which we're seeing hospital beds fill up consistent to what predictions have been? And if you believe that they are consistent, then why is the recommendation not for masks, that is the recommendation from you and from the county to implement mandatory masks now? So to the trending question, you know, this is a little like, I don't want to be flippant, but I've seen a lot of models since the end of January. Our first meeting as a staff was January 17th, I think, before it was even named COVID-19. We had our first community meeting January 22nd and then we started looking at models at the very beginning of February. Those models were incorrect for March, obviously. March then came and went, we did have the closing of Texas and some of the modeling really suggested that May 7th through 11th was going to be our peak. I made a personal prediction and I learned a lesson. I was predicting about June 7th through 10th, based on case rates, that that would be a real surge and a real spike and what I learned was prognostication on COVID-19 has not been very accurate. So I've seen the newest projections, I've seen UT Southwesterns, I've seen IMHE's projections, I've seen Hopkins projections, we're a little bit of a connoisseur of projections at Denton County Public Health and I think everyone is and none of them are in agreement. And I would say that all have been erroneous at the top of the spike. And so what we've tried to do in lieu of adhering to policy based on projected trends, what we've learned is all of our metrics that allow us some context, all of those metrics in concert should be driving local policy and that's our recommendation. And so we're looking at, again, reported cases, we're looking at the trends when it comes to symptom onset, we're looking at additional fatalities, we're looking at total recovered, we're looking at percent positivity and what could be driving that, and so when you look at all of those things, we believe that where we are is being consistent with our recommendations on facial coverings, on physical distancing, on hand washing, and we're comfortable with that in this current climate. But again, we reserve the right to change that based on what we're seeing on the ground and the numbers that are local. And again, projections are important, that helps us do some strategic planning, but those projections have been less practical than we would have liked, whether it, again, and I think UT Southwestern does a great job, I've got personal doctors there, they do a marvelous job, but they also, there has not been a lot of fidelity of the projections versus our county reporting. - Okay, all right, Council Member Ryan, I believe you had your hand up. - Yes, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Dr. Richardson, for sitting in with us today. My question is mainly on the statistics, the data that's on the website, and it may be somewhat of a HIPAA issue as to why some data points that I feel like should be out there aren't on there, 'cause when I look at the charts, it's showing that since the beginning, we've had 2014 that have stayed at home with it, and 200 that have been hospitalized in 1,069 recovered, but it doesn't, you can't tell whether it's the hospitalized or the stay at home that recovered, and so is there any way to get those data points to be able to better understand it? And also, when you start looking at the ventilator and ICU and total beds occupied, well, there's a total occupied of 506 and 200 cases that have been COVID cases, how many of those 506 are still COVID? Is that a HIPAA issue that we can't put that kind of data out there, or how many ventilators are being used for COVID versus someone who had a heart attack or other serious illness? So a little about, so hospital, you're right, so one of the challenges with 2,000 cases, we have to prioritize staff time, and I'm just gonna be honest about that. Our prioritization has been case investigation and contact tracing, and then follow up to find out resolution of symptoms for recovery. To dichotomize that, we do hospitalizations and we do track whether they had needed to be hospitalized or not, but we don't keep calling you, for instance, if you've been hospitalized and track your status as a hospitalization, okay? So what we do is that the initial case report, did that individual require hospitalization, yes or no? But then we don't have a daily trend of who's hospitalized just because of the staff time. I can't hire enough people to make enough phone calls to track that status daily for every positive case. So it's really a resource issue. I don't know of anybody who does that. I don't know of any health department, I could be wrong, but I don't know of any running total per day of hospitalized cases. Now the state of Texas does report some daily figures on how many hospitalizations they have for COVID-19 patients, but that's not the same metric. A running total of hospitalizations is not, was I hospitalized today and now I'm not, and was I a Ponder community member and I was hospitalized and now I'm not. Those are data points that are so granular that we're just not able to operationalize that sadly. I love that people are so interested in the information, but I will say that the interest has become so granular. We're victims of our own success. We've been very, very proud and I think we've set a really high bar, particularly when you compare us to other counties, I think we've set a really high bar, but the problem is now people are so interested in this transparency, people are so hungry for the data, it has gotten granular and honestly, we just are not able to split it up as specifically as I think the public would appreciate because we are running down active cases. All right. Councilmember Davis, did you have a question? Just want to make the round the horn and see if you had a question. No, sir. Just be duplicating what's already been asked. Okay. Good question so far. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And I share that same sentiment. Well, Dr. Richardson, thank you so much again for being with us and give us an update and answering our questions. We know that you're very busy. Thank you so much for your hard work and your diligence in this and also just your willingness to keep everything as transparent as you can given your resource limitation. So thank you again very much for being with us. Thank you. Mr. Mayor and council members. Thank you very much for having me. Call any time. All right. Thank you. Okay. Mayor of City Council, I'll return to the presentation. Okay. So as some discussion just took place on this topic, but just a little bit of background. Last week, Governor Abbott did indicate through some press interviews that local governments could require businesses to require their employees and customers to wear masks and that would still be consistent with his current executive order. So in other words, counties and cities may issue local orders imposing fines on businesses, but they may not impose a fine on individuals for not wearing masks. And that is very clear in his current order. So since that time last week when that was announced, several of the state's largest counties have ordered businesses to require employees and customers to wear face masks. Staff just did some quick research, tried to find the counties and cities that may have passed these orders. There may be some more out there, but just wanted to give you kind of some indication of those counties and cities. So as you see, most of the cities that have passed are within a county that has also passed that same order for consistency. So just some considerations if council would like to have a discussion regarding face masks is in regards to Denton County's considerations and actions, and you just heard Dr. Matt Richardson speak to that, what their recommendations are, and also that Denton County at this time is not considering that order, but that may change in the future, just depending upon the situation here in Denton County. And then there just are a number of enforcement challenges that we wanted to just be upfront, that it would be very difficult to enforce this and wanted to set the expectations out there. So I'll open it up to council discussion if you'd like Mayor, or we have one last slide on the CARES Act and unemployment if you'd like us to review that. If you've only got one slide, let's go ahead and just go through that and then we can take all the questions at once. Okay, great. So I'm going to turn it over to Jessica Rogers for this portion. Good afternoon Mayor and Council, Jessica Rogers, Director of Economic Development. I'm just going to go over a few quick points, we had received a couple questions and wanted to provide additional information regarding unemployment benefits. So first off, the federal pandemic unemployment compensation, which is commonly known as the extra $600 that has been distributed through unemployment insurance expires on July 31st, 2020. So at that point, if someone is still qualified for unemployment insurance, they would go to the amount that they qualify under the regular unemployment insurance. So in Texas, that's a maximum of $521 a week, could be less than that depending on as we went over a few months ago, it's a calculation based on a percentage of wages. The second point on that is that the pandemic unemployment assistance program, which is the part of the CARES Act that made self-employed and independent contractors eligible for unemployment benefits that aren't normally eligible for those benefits, that program as well as the emergency unemployment compensation, which allows for benefits to be extended for an additional 13 weeks, whether an applicant is under the unemployment assistance program or the regular unemployment insurance program, those benefits actually continue through the end of the year. So if you are unemployed starting today, you would qualify for the 26 weeks of regular unemployment and up to the 13 weeks through December 31st, 2020. The additional question that we got was in regards to return to work and how return to work and reopening of businesses might affect someone's eligibility. So the Department of Labor's guidance has been that a general fear of getting COVID is not a sufficient reason to maintain your eligibility for unemployment insurance. There are, however, great flexibilities afforded to each state through their unemployment insurance program to make a determination on a case by case basis in which an individual might have a substantiated reason for not returning to work. An example of that would be someone who's in a high risk category might be eligible to continue their unemployment insurance. They would need to contact the Texas Workforce Commission directly to discuss their individual circumstances. And really at this point, there are some general categories that Texas Workforce has published on their website that say if your childcare has been impacted by COVID, you might still be eligible. But all of the decisions are being made on a case by case basis. So anyone who feels that they have a reason to not return to work are encouraged to contact workforce directly. And that's all I have for unemployment unless there's questions for counsel. Okay. Yeah. We'll go ahead and pull the... Here we go. All right. Any questions on either of those topics on the COVID-19 response in general on this agenda item? Council, any questions? Council Member Armitter? Oh, Council Member Armitter. Yeah. So first a question for Jessica. Yes. First, a question for Jessica, does this reflect a change in the policy, the state policy or federal policy on unemployment? It was my understanding that it had been a little different previously, or is this consistent with the way things have been throughout? This is consistent under the CARES Act. In terms of unemployment... So if we separated CARES Act provisions out of this and COVID-related provisions, generally a refusal to return to work is you would be disqualified from unemployment insurance. With the CARES Act there's a substantial number of exceptions that would allow you to refuse to return to work. Those are the situations that the Workforce Commission is handling on a case-by-case basis. Again, there are some broad categories which they've published and said generally if you're in these categories we're going to consider your refusal to return to work on a more generous basis, but this is separate from what would be normal protocol, yes. Okay. So thank you. So in that sense that is consistent. So I'll continue to encourage people to, if you're on unemployment and you don't feel safe going back to work, definitely call, get that checked out. You can't take it for granted that you are covered, but also don't just assume that you have to go back to work. Definitely check that out sooner rather than later. Is that fair to say? Yes. And there's a list of FAQs posted on the Texas Workforce Commission website and in it it lists a few of the broad categories, but again it says in bold letters, I think, please contact us because every decision is made on a case-by-case basis. Yes. So thank you so much. So I will just say as far as direction goes I feel fear very strongly about the need for a mask ordinance. I have felt this way since back when we were allowed to do it, then it seemed that we weren't allowed and now there's this Abbott's riddle that has been solved by certain other counties and cities. So I'm not that we can in businesses, I'm deeply concerned about the projections to which as Dr. Richardson says rightly, projections are just a guideline and they generally tend to be inaccurate, but as far as I'm concerned the experiment and leaving it up to personal responsibility has been a failure and I see the trend continuing to increase at this level until we start mandating some additional measures. I don't want us to have to go back into quarantine, mandated shelter at home, but it looks to me like this is where we might be heading if we don't enforce a measure like this now. I will also say that I myself am much more concerned about the effects that my decisions have on the lives of people in Texas, in North Texas than I am on my reelection, anything having to do with me personally or with politics and I encourage others to think similarly as we weigh the decisions before us today. Okay. Anybody else? Council Member Briggs? Thank you, Mayor. I have a few comments. First my name is Keely Briggs and I wear a mask. I feel like I need to say that I believe in masks, I believe that they save lives and I think it's important, especially now when we are increasing at a very high rate here in Denton. I've gone from hardly knowing anyone to knowing several people just in the past couple of weeks and I will say I'm in favor of masks. I will also let you know I have a couple of concerns with the policy. One, it's a $500 fine for the business and so enforcement and everything falls on the backs of the businesses, which is something that they've had to carry throughout the COVID. And so I'm concerned about the fine for the businesses, but I also know that the governor will not let the individual be fined, but that's my question is does a fine have to be implemented and if there's not one, can we still ask businesses to require a mask? The next question. Do you want him to answer that as far as the fine or do you want to ask, you can ask these questions all at once or do you want them answered as you ask them? Well, I can wait, or I can just go through. I mean, I have a list here. Okay, if you could just name off two or three and then we'll go around and see if there's other council members and then we'll come back to you on your other questions. Okay. And whenever I heard about the Dallas County, I reached out to the chamber and have learned that the chamber has put a survey out to their businesses as well because from the feedback I've gotten, some businesses have actually asked for this to help them as an enforcement. And can face shields be worn instead of mask because there were some concerns about being claustrophobic or allergic to material so that it wouldn't just necessarily be mask. It would be just any kind of face covering. That's another question that I had and I would like to, if we can't do the businesses at this point in time, I would like for council to consider at least requiring mask in any of our municipal and city facilities at this time. I think that that would be wise for us to make sure that our employees are taken care of. That would be my ask for now, for sure. Okay. All right. So on the question of the fine, Mr. City Attorney, if you have an ordinance with no fine, I'm assuming that a no fine ordinance, is that legal? Is it still legally effective? Even if you put it as a no, no fine, it's going to be a classy misdemeanor and under state law, that's up to $500 offense. So the judge would be able to have the discretion to implement a fine or not depending on the circumstances of the defendant, what the state actually collects for its portion of those fines and costs. But in essence, it's basically a decision for the judge to make. Okay. So that's not something that we just couldn't pass an ordinance to say, yeah, if you get a citation, there's going to be no fine. That's outside of the control of city council policymaking. That's based upon state law and those types of things. Okay. All right. When you pass an ordinance to create a criminal penalty, you're going to get wrapped up into state law and follow whatever the state law standards are for a classy misdemeanor. Okay. So question on that is, I understand that I believe the Dallas County and maybe some of the other ordinances are not criminal in nature, but they're civil in nature. So if they are civil in nature, does your answer change as to how that fine gets determined? I know that the city of Dallas has taken a lot of their classing misdemeanors and made them into civil infractions using a certain statute within the local government code to create a special type of civil court to hear these types of cases in order for this city of Denton to do that, it would have to follow the same. It's under Chapter 54 of the local government code. Okay. All right. And then I guess the face shield question is one of policy or, I mean, I think that's probably one that is a policy question for, unless a face shield is not considered a "mask" in the eyes of whatever legal form defines masks. Okay. All right. Anybody else? Any other questions, comments? Council Member Armitage, let me make sure nobody else is, at least on this round. Council Member Davis? Thank you, Mayor. I don't have any questions, but others have volunteered their comments. I'm going to go ahead and interject mine at this point. I have a big problem with the quandary the governor has put on us. I think Council Member Armitage called it earlier, Abbott's Riddle. I don't know if that's original to you or not, Council Member, but it's not a good position for us to be in as a city. It sets us against our business owners. It could put us at odds with our chamber, and it's a pickle for us to figure out. The difficulty for me is it'd be easier for me to be okay with an individual mask requirement than it is to say a business now has to be in charge of not only taking care of their shop and looking out for shoplifters and making sure the till adds up, but now they have to make sure that people who may be violently opposed to wearing a mask don a mask whenever they're in their store, or they're going to be fined. One, I don't know how in the world we're supposed to enforce that. I don't want Chief Dixon to detail police officers to patrol Walmart for masks. At the same time, how are we going to put that burden on our small businesses to take that upon themselves? I can't support fining our businesses for the conduct of their customers. I can get behind a conversation that talks about types of businesses where you need to be wearing a mask, where your employees need to be wearing a mask, where you're in contact with individuals making their food, whatever it is that you need to be wearing a mask. I could get behind a conversation that talks about signage, that talks about the city of Denton requires the employees in this establishment to be wearing a mask, something somewhere in that range. I can't get behind a conversation that puts the conduct of individuals on the shoulders of the business owners who have literally no way to enforce that other than kicking somebody out of their store and inviting confrontation. I'm not sure if y'all have ever seen a business try to enforce a chase down a shoplifter or to deal with difficult people in their businesses, especially bars and restaurants, that could be very difficult. So that's where I'm at on the issue. Council Mayor Meltzer? I think the enforcement question comes up sort of any time you talk about doing anything, and I've said this before, but I'll raise it now, all laws, all ordinances are difficult to enforce. They just are. You have to step in periodically, and if you want to leave it to a judge to set the amount, whatever. But people do put up signs that say no shoes, no shirt, no service, and this is kind of one other thing. And yeah, it's difficult, but I don't think it means don't do it. My take is that many people in Denton are really scared right now, and they're not scared of coronavirus, they're scared of a shutdown again. We were at 12.6% unemployment in May, I hope we're a little better now, but a lot of forgiveness is running out, even in our own utilities policy, the sort of flexibility is running out. And they are just concerned because they need to work to live, and particularly in Denton, they need to work a lot of public contact, frontline, retail, restaurant kind of jobs. And until we have a vaccine, we're going to have to find some way to live with this without spiking. And what we're doing now is not doing the job. So if we want to keep people employed and have safe employment, I believe we have to take steps to protect those people that must work to live. So I favor something along the lines of what Dallas is doing, we could certainly share notes and see how they've been managing it as a practical matter, but I think we must protect our people so that they have a safe workplace. - Council member Armitage and then council member Briggs. - So thank you, council member Metzer. Can you hear me? Let's go ahead. - Yeah, thank you council member Meltzer. I agree, I myself, I don't have a problem with businesses being required to pay the fee because that actually helps businesses be in that enforcement role and it helps them justify decisions that as you mentioned council member Meltzer, no shoes, no service, you know, businesses have had to deal with especially bars, customers getting rowdy, you know, these are unpleasant kind of roles to be in, but it's something that business owners, especially in the service industry are used to and I'm hearing business owners, definitely not all business owners, but I'm hearing a number of business owners really calling out for and wanting guidance. I've been so impressed with those who are trying to enforce these rules, but if you're just enforcing it within one business, it's not gonna make an impact unless all other businesses do the same. So I think it's really empowering to those businesses that are protecting their employees health, that are protecting their customers and community's health to issue an ordinance like this. As enforcement goes, I agree that police at least if that is what was implied, you know, police shouldn't be involved, it's expensive to get police involved, you know, we've got code enforcement, we've got staff has under our, under previous ordinances kind of come in and check on situations. As council member Meltzer mentioned, we do not have the number of staff to enforce every situation, but that is true also as council member Meltzer mentioned about any number of ordinance and fractions, including speeding, for instance, there's so much speeding that happens and every once in a while somebody gets caught for speeding. I know that, you know, the one time I got caught for speeding, every time I go down that street, I am focused on driving that speed limit. It is not consistently effective across the board in capturing all the offenders does modify behavior. So I'm strongly in favor of it. And I think a lot of our business community, though not all is behind this too. Okay, council member Briggs. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I mean, the Dallas order, it does say that face covering when in close proximity to other people or six foot of separation is not possible. So it's confined spaces when you cannot use your appropriate social distancing. I have no problems requiring someone to wear a mask, because that's CDC guidelines in itself, if you cannot social distance. One thing I have seen out while wearing my mask is that no, there's no longer sanitizing buggies. People have stopped counting. There's the the social distancing is is lacking. For some reason, although we have an uptick in cases, people have forgotten that we're in the middle of a pandemic. I'm glad to see people out. But these are the you just heard Dr. Richard say, we have to social distance, we have to sanitize, wash our hands and wear our face coverings, and these are not being done. So whatever we do as a body, we need to make sure that the message is out loud and clear, that this is still very important. And that we need we need to be doing these things, the businesses need to be following these guidelines. It's just been a concern of mine while out. I have seen that some people have started a wear a mask, you can save a life campaign. There's there's some things that we can do to get the message out. I just want to make sure that that we're that we're still doing the things that we were supposed to be doing in the beginning. Anyone else, Mayor Pro Tem? Yeah, I'd like to hear from the city manager. I mean, the the idea was thrown out to have it have it implemented in our city buildings. And so I think if he wants to be heard, it's not a mandate. I just before we invoke that, and then would have him enforce that, I want to open a door to have that conversation, not not a prerequisite by any stretch of imagination, just an invitation. Okay. All right. The policy that we've passed internally for employees says exactly what the Dallas one does for our own employees, where we stopped short was in was insisting that customers come in wear a mask, we suggest it, we asked them to please consider it, but we're not requiring it. So that's I think the difference there. There are obviously areas where city hall, for instance, is still very limited where they can do business as are some of the other facilities. However, there are places where six feet of distance is not necessarily achievable, but we sort of included other types of safeguards, that sort of thing, barriers, but we have not required people visiting the buildings to to wear a mask. Our employees have been asked to adhere to the exact same parameters that customer breaks this right off. Okay. Yes, go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem. And so along those lines, I think here's I mean, I do want to be heard that I think it's wrong to trivialize the enforcement. I think just to say that it's hard as we sit in the comforts of our home is not is not very thoughtful. It's not very pragmatic. We've seen fistfights, we've seen Walmart employees assaulted. We've seen you can see any number of those on the news. And so to trivialize it by saying, oh, it's going to be difficult, but you can do it. I don't think that's right. That being said, talking to Councilmember Ryan earlier today, and I think he raises a great point in the in the document in Dallas's document, it says if you have an underlying health issue that would prevent you from wearing it, if a mask is prohibitive to your health, you don't have to wear it. And that's written in the ordinance. So now, not only are we confrontational, now we're interrogating something, someone that may have an underlying health concern that can't wear a mask. And we're either calling them, you know, you have a manager going to every table, hey, you don't have a mask. Do you have an underlying health issue? Well, then you get into HIPAA laws on what you can ask them and what they can disclose. So really just I think we just have to look at it holistically. And I and I disagree with the other statement that was said, because I take personally, I take sanitizing wipes with me to the to the grocery store, and I wipe down the cart. I have sanitizer in my pocket at all times. And I use it for my hands. And there's plenty of people that do the same. But they're not I mean, there's just certain people in our community that are making wise decisions. They just don't need the guided tour. They don't need to publish it on Facebook. They don't need to send out a tweet that says I'm doing the right thing. They're just doing the right thing. And so that's I think it's just important to stand up for those that are doing the right thing. And then look at it even a step further, just to say, I'm okay with what the majority decides. I'm I think we do need to add but I think we need to advocate for personal responsibility. That's where he ended up. And I think that is a key. There's nothing and I'm listening, but I don't hear anyone saying that businesses can't tomorrow get together the chamber can't get with their representatives tomorrow and say, everyone requires masks, they don't need the city of didn't do that. They're independent business owners that can do that tomorrow right now. So that's what I'm missing. That's the connection. And I'm listening to conversation. I want to take care if we I'm okay and if we have a consensus to say, people in inner city city facilities need to wear a mask, let's let's set up a table and make that happen. And then we can do that and handle our buildings, but and lead by example. But I need to understand why we're not putting the responsibility on the business owners on the chamber to make those decisions. They don't need the city to tell them what to do. So that's what that I'm just missing why the city has to tell them what to do. And I'm happy to do that. I just don't understand I'm missing something. Okay, and we're gonna I mean, just a few more comments. I mean, I haven't spoken Councilman, but I don't we all pretty much have have, except for Councilman Ryan and myself, stated their position on this. So I don't want to get into where people are debating other people's comments and we've all had a chance to talk at least once. And that's sort of how I want to to move this forward because we could spend an hour or two hours just talking about this just going back over the same thing over and over again. So Councilmember Ryan, you haven't really spoken yet. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to Well, I think Councilmember Davis and Councilmember Husbeth have pretty much summed up most of my comments on it. And there is the issue of, you know, those who do have underlying health issues that a mask is detrimental to them is a major concern you're you're crossing lines that we shouldn't be crossing. If they do to the state level, that that's a different story. But I just can't see again, as we started in on this, we said, let's let the county decide they've got the health department. If the county wants to impose something, they can impose it, but I don't, I don't see us as being the health authorities that the county is. All right. Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to have the last word here because I haven't spoken. I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated that we've got leadership that cannot be clear and emphatic about what the direction is they're trying to give to say that, well, they just now figured it out. It's been there all along, I think is disingenuous. However, I've heard that there are signs, no shoes, no shirt, no service. Those signs are there voluntarily by those businesses. Each business tomorrow, forget the chamber, each business in this city could have a policy where people that come into their stores must wear masks. Now I understand that a government ordinance provides cover because that is a hard decision to make and it's much easier for the government to tell people what to do. But I find it fascinating that how many times our business is really coming to us, asking the city to make policy, telling them what to do. Usually it's the other way around. It's the way of saying, Hey, let us do our job, give us what our standards are and let us, let us run our business. I agree with council member Briggs that I think that people have gotten complacent. So when I hear about this fear that everybody's afraid, there's sort of a disconnect because if there's that much fear out there, people are acting in a way that is not indicating that they're fearful of these types of situations. So I'm not in favor at this time of creating an ordinance that requires businesses to enforce, if you were going to enforce something on individual citizens, take away some choice that they have, the government needs to have the courage to do that. And it seems like right now at higher levels, that doesn't seem to be the case if, I mean, I would be much more in favor of saying that people who go into businesses must wear masks, but we can't do that. So I don't want to then turn around and put it on the businesses. I mean, I got, I got some heat for my curfew because it harmed businesses. What else would this do, because what's going to happen, here's the scenario, someone comes in without a mask, Dallas county ordinance says, if someone is in your establishment, who's refused to wear a mask and a city enforcement officer, whatever form that takes comes in, that there's no violation. You cannot be cited if that person is in there without a mask because they refuse to do it. So then what's the alternative? You tell someone to leave. What if they don't leave? Road enforcement cannot go in and enforce a trespass notice. If they're asking someone to leave, but are the officers going to be able to ask someone to leave when they're asking to leave because they're not wearing a mask? And does that then go to the individual liberty that the governor has talked about that cities cannot interfere with? So I'm not in favor at this time of placing that burden on our businesses, especially when they do have an opportunity and they have the option and the choice to make those policy decisions for their own employees and their own customers. I mean, if they didn't have that opportunity, I understand that. But if that's what they really want, they can do that without necessarily city intervention. So I thought I heard that right now, at least right now, and I think each one who has expressed, I can only speak for myself, but I would almost surmise that each one who's expressed a desire against that at this point, circumstances may change. And lastly, I really do feel that this needs to be countywide if it's going to be made. Because if you only have it in the city of Denton and people may drive out to go do something else, people driving in, they've got competing ordinances here and there. So it can be quite confusing. But in the end, I'll go back to, and I understand some people don't like this term, but each one of us at some point have to take responsibility for our own health and welfare. If you go in somewhere where there are a lot of people not wearing masks and you decide to stay, I mean, nobody's asking you to stay or go. So I hope that we can maybe double our efforts on the educational side, because I agree with Councilmember Briggs. It's not just the mask wearing that's gone down. It's the gathering in large groups. It's all these other things that we're told we need to do in order to, that work together. You take one of those pieces out of the puzzle, you're still going to have the same problem. It's all those working in concert together that will help us provide a way to get through this. But at this stage, I'm not willing to pass an ordinance like that, given the facts and circumstance. I'm going to tell you, unless it has to do with something else, we're going to cut this conversation off, or you got 30 seconds, because we're not going to be debating each other's comments. So we could do that forever. And so if you start going over on your comments, I'm going to cut you off. I'm just going to be frank with you. Councilmember Meltzer. So given this outcome of this discussion, concern that businesses have is, I don't want to buy myself, chase my customers over to other businesses. But why not get with the head of, get with the chamber and ask them to survey the business owners and see if they would collectively like for us to provide them collectively that backstop. That's already that's already happened and I can share that result with you after we after we talk. Okay. Councilmember Armitage and then Councilmember Briggs. So in 30 seconds or less, I'm going to be looking at Dallas and these other counties that are enacting stricter measures than Denton County and city of Denton are. I expect to see that they're going to fare better than we are. I might be wrong, but I want to state this publicly and I hope that if they do better than we are, that people will be willing to reconsider that in spite of the imperfections of this kind of mandate, it can work to save lives and hospital space. Okay. Councilmember Briggs. Yeah. Well, I would like to see if any other council members are willing to implement the policy for our municipal buildings and facilities. I know that we're saying it's not our problem for the businesses, but our employees health and safety that would be our option and our choice to make here at this point. And so I would like to see if there was anyone else willing to at least do that and provide masks for individuals before they enter city property. Mr. City Manager, your thoughts on that? Well, I think that's certainly the council's call on that one. We have, as I stated earlier, that rule applies to all of our current city employees. If we have a customer that comes in that will not abide by the social distancing, that will not respect our employees' right to have at least six feet of distance, they've also got the ability to not meet with them or to end the meeting. So I think that where we did consciously stop one step short, and that was requiring that anyone that comes into the business, into the buildings to wear a mask. I think our broader concern was, again, we lacked the county ordinance, and we were trying to make sure that we did not put our employees in situations where there may be a dispute from someone in the public that refuses to wear a mask. So I think it's that one extra step. That's your call if you want us to take that strict of a step or not. Before we get to that, I do want to share, I did reach out to the chamber here in Denton Friday and asked them to do a survey, and I think they're trying to compile that data. They're trying to compile it in a way that's anonymous. But from what I can gather, some of the data was, I think it was based upon, last I heard, about 100 respondents, 92 to 100. About half and half already required masks in their businesses. I think it was 68 to 31 percent who said they wouldn't be opposed to a city ordinance as similar to Dallas'. And I think it was about the same number that would be able to provide a mask to their customers if they did not have one. And that should be forthcoming if they can gather that data in a way that doesn't compromise anybody's response, so I just wanted to share that with you since you'd asked it. All right. So the question before us is, as far as for city facilities requiring customers, of course, all employees are required to wear masks if they're not able to socially distance. And let me just digress real quick. The cities who have passed this ordinance, I think with the exception of Waco, all did it after or contemporaneously with the county's ordinance. So I just want to make that statement a fact. All right. So council members, as far as requiring customers, the public, to wear masks when visiting city facilities, and I'm assuming those are interior city facilities, not outside. If you're meeting outside at a utility construction site or something. Mayor Pro Tem. When mayor? Yes. Just when you cannot separate within six feet. So it would be, that's when you would need to be required to wear the mask. Okay. Well, I thought what I heard the city manager say was that they require that really, unless there's some kind of barrier, like they put in some of the public areas like development, they require that and if they don't comply with that, then they can end the dialogue at that time. Is that correct? Mr. City manager. If you have a customer that refuses to social distance, they can end the meeting at that point. Okay. All right. Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So I think that that's the, I think I would transition and pivot a bit. I think it's the, as the city manager has outlined it, but then, and just really mandate all meetings have that distancing. So it's the individual comes in, are you willing to wear a mask? No. Okay, great. We'll go in this room where we can be six feet apart and have our meeting. And it really, that then does, I don't want to put the city staff in positions to be confronting people because it is a volatile issue, whether we want it to be or not. And so I think that's fair to say, because that's in line with the order. All meetings are held within, with a room that has the distance required. And if not, then everyone's wearing a mask, et cetera. And so we either way we meet the, the, the suggested requirements. It's just not as it's not the format's not mandated, quote unquote, that you have to wear a mask, but the, the goal is achieved in all meetings. Okay. Councilmember Armitage, I'm sorry, Councilmember Melser, then Councilmember Armitage. You're muted. Councilmember Melser, you're muted. Okay. Yeah. The way the city manager has laid it out, I think that is a very responsible approach. And I know the use of the plexi shields, you know, is, is a perfectly good substitute to me. So I think, you know, the city policy is, is very responsible. Okay. All right. Yeah. Councilmember Armitage. So just to say, I, I support councilmember Bray's measure. I will add, you know, in response to councilmember or mayor pro tem has this objection. I believe that this is something that city staff generally want to protect themselves. I would also like to see it extended to even our staff who works outdoors, that they be able to, in those situations where they find themselves confronted, say a member of parks staff, solid waste staff, or somebody, you know, working on a utility line, if they get approached too close, I want to empower them to be able to tell somebody, look, if you don't come this close to me, you need to wear a mask. Okay. Anyone else? Yes. With all due respect, every employee out in the field has that same, that same authority right now. And their supervisors, we have had instances where it's continuous educational type thing, but there's nothing really new being offered here where the employees don't have that authority. I think the other thing that we've really done to take it one step further is we still have a majority of our employees working off site that are in the offices and that's really helped as well. But I don't, I don't see that we're accomplishing a whole lot right now. We have not had any run ins with the public. We've been able to really minimize the traffic into the buildings. So I just wanted to add that the employees, the field supervisors, our department directors are constantly working with them. So the way these questions are coming across is if there, there's some issue out there, but all these employees have been given that authority along with their supervisors and the directors and that's, we speak regularly about that. Okay. And by the way, thank you, city manager. I agree. I just want to make sure that we're not rolling back anything and within some of the others. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Were there any more, there weren't any more presentation slides. Correct. All right. Any other, were there any questions on the slide that Ms. Rogers had presented as far as the CARES Act? I think we had one, but just want to make my round again. Okay. Let's take a quick five minute break. It's 3.37. We'll come back at about a little bit after 3.40 and we'll move further into our agenda. Welcome back everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on June the 23rd, 2020. The time is 3.50 and we are moving back into our work session reports. We are on work session 3B, receive report and hold a discussion regarding the 2019 Water Loss Audit Report. Mayor, I'm going to have to turn my video off for a moment. I'm being kicked out of the house so my kids can have my office. Okay. That's fine. So you'll be on audio, just not video. Okay. Yeah. Okay. If anybody need to ask a question, just pipe on in. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for letting me know. All right. So again, we'll on the receive report and hold discussion regarding the 2019 Water Loss Audit Report. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. My name is Tyler Dawson. I'm the Manager of Asset Management in Water and Wastewater, bringing the Water Loss Audit Report for our 2019 Water Loss Audit. This is a regulatory report submitted annually to the Texas Water Development Board. This is due May 1st. Our report is already submitted. We're bringing the results of that study. And this is not only a regulatory report, this also is something we use to drive operational strategies, understand where our water is going. We do make strategic decisions based on this. All right. So Water Loss Audit is basically a formula. We're looking at our authorized water consumption, identify what's called apparent losses and real losses. Those are two terms we'll define here shortly. And that'll add up to the total water supplied out of our two water treatment plants. We are most interested in the losses, apparent losses and real losses. And of course, while this is a pretty simple formula, in this context, it's quite a bit more complicated. And we won't get into all the details, but we'll get you into the most important numbers out of this. First on apparent losses. Apparent losses is water that was not read accurately by a meter or sometimes was not read by a meter at all. This isn't what you would typically picture when you hear losses. So this is water that went to a customer or some authorized use, but we didn't record it correctly. Typically this is through meter inaccuracy more than anything. A water meter is right about 100% accurate the day it goes in the ground and then slowly degrades from there. So we look at the water that is not captured as it goes through that meter or somehow bypasses the meter. This is an indicator of the fiscal health of our utility. It's basically water that is absorbed by our rate base. Typically we want to account for the water that every customer uses and of course, charge utility bills accordingly. And we're not able to do that with apparent losses. So those are absorbed into our rate base. It's an indicator of our fiscal health. We look at the financial impact based on our average retail volume charge. If you look at either our rate book or your water bill, we have a facility charge that is your fixed cost to have water service. On top of that, there's a volume charge. So that volume charge we assume is what we are not capturing because that water isn't being recorded. And we offset those losses primarily by our proactive meter replacement and calibration program. If you ever hear that we have a 13-year replacement cycle in all of our small diameter meters, that actually comes from this study. We look at the cost of replacing meters and what we save, the extra water that's captured and financial revenue that's recovered based on that. And we found 13 years is the break point on that. So our total apparent losses for the year 2019 was about 3.1% of our total water produced. That volume of 197 million gallons sounds like a lot, but it's also in context of the billions of gallons that we put out from our two water treatment plants. And we applied the financial impact to that, again, the average retail volume charge. That's a pretty high price tag. And that 947,000 you're seeing there is what remains after our meter replacement and calibration program. So a huge part of that is offset by that program. And we've reached the point where if we were to replace meters more frequently, we wouldn't realize the savings from that. We'd be spending more than we would be saving at that point. And you can see on the right side, just a five-year trend, apparent losses per connection. We stayed relatively flat. There's a convenient little downtick in 2019. The real loss portion of the audit, this is more what you would picture as water loss when you hear those words. So this is water that actually exits the system without going to a customer or an operational purpose or through, say, a fire apparatus, a fire protection apparatus. This is an indicator of our water distribution system health. Old pipes, old or ineffective joints, any problems that show up in our actual physical assets in the ground show up as real loss, it's leakage, it's main breaks. We price this at the variable treatment cost. This is actually a very cheap price tag on that water. The vast, vast majority of our costs in water utilities are fixed costs, especially when you compare it to volume. We have the capital assets to be able to treat that water. We have the staff to be able to treat that water, the maintenance activities that are done no matter how much water is going through the pipe. So the variable treatment cost is only 35 cents per thousand gallons. We offset these losses by discovering and repairing leaks. We do that within economic reason, and I'll stress that within economic reason and get into a little bit more detail here in a moment. Our total real losses in 2019 were about 9.4% of total water produced. And again, that 607 million gallons is in comparison to the billions of gallons that we put out from our water treatment plants. The cost of that compared to the $947,000 you saw on apparent losses is much less, only $209,000. So when we say we repair these leaks within economic reason, we have to do it within context of this value here. So $209,000, we would price that out at approximately what it would cost to hire and maintain about a two, maybe three-person maintenance crew. So when you look at the logistics of that, we could hire a two or three-person crew. We have to have minimum three people on site for safety when we're working in open pits like this. We would have to be able to recover every one of those $600,000 gallons, sorry, $600 million gallons to effectively spend that money as a water loss recovery method alone. To dig a little deeper into that, last year, our discovered and repaired leaks account for 40 million of that 60 and only 14,000 lost water. So the economics of that get pretty difficult, especially when you look at the cost of $300,000 to repair all those leaks. Of course, there are other things happening there. There are other reasons to repair our main breaks and leaks. Of course, there's public safety consideration, especially with larger leaks, environmental impacts of having chlorinated water when we don't need to. There's also the cost of ... We want to keep these leaks from damaging other assets. The most obvious one is roads. You have a leak under a road, that's going to erode the pavement. So we have to fix that leak. We want to repair the pavement on top, but we also want to fix the source of the erosion coming from the water beneath the surface. So there are other reasons to repair these leaks. We've gone about as far as we can from a fiscally responsible perspective of reducing real loss by repairing leaks. And somewhere to the previous slide, you can see we're on a pretty flat trend on a real losses per connection over the last five years. In contrast to that nice downtick we had in apparent losses, there's a similar slight uptick in 2019. And I want to highlight one change in our audit that was put into effect for fiscal 2019. And that's how we recognize and calculate the amount of water that comes out of our main breaks. If we go into prior years, we would simply assume that all main breaks were created equal. Any main that broke, whether it was a small leak or a huge geyser on the road, had an average rate of flow. It ran for an average amount of time before it was fixed. And we found out last year that's just simply not true. We adopted some Texas AWWA calculations to collect a set of observations on a leak, including the diameter of a hole, the length of a split, basically all the dimensions of the actual break itself in the pipe, and how long it continued from the time it was observed until the time it was either turned off or fixed. And we even run some of our large leaks through our hydraulic modeling software. And what we found was without an increase in the actual occurrence of leaks, our estimates went from 3 million gallons to 40 million gallons. So it was a huge difference in our audit validation to understand that we were seeing such a large impact in our main breaks and better validates where we're spending our money on that. In case you're curious, this is an older picture, to find one clear enough that you could see the break itself. This is from 2017, about 400 North Elm Street. And this main break alone was about 1.5 million gallons. As a benchmarking measure, the best figure we have for this is the Infrastructure Leak Index, or ILI for short. This is an engineering calculation. It normalizes our real losses, basically because every system is different. We have larger cities, smaller cities, some have more miles per connection, some have less. So this normalizes that real loss value to see how healthy your system is. And their recommended ranges, we target the one to three range. A one is a theoretical minimum that is the absolute best value you can have for an ILI. So we do target the most aggressive range to keep the lowest real losses as it compares to our system size. And here you can see some results among Region C. This is 33 different utilities. Almost half of these utilities are within the one to three range, and Denton is there also. I'm glad to say that Denton, since our water loss audit in its current form, which dates all the way back to 2003, we have always been able to stay within the one to three range, and we continue to target that. You can see quite a few utilities, about a third of the ones surveyed are in the three to five range, and a few fall even higher than this. The results of this audit, again, we use this for strategic decisions as well as regulatory measure. We're going to continue a few things that have worked very well for us in the past. One is our meter replacement program. We recommend continuing our 13-year meter replacement program for all small diameter meters, and we do annual testing on our large diameter meters and recalibrate or replace those as needed. We want to continue the leak detection program we're doing. We do a minor amount of leak detection. Again, that's not necessarily targeted at water savings. A lot of our leak detection is targeted toward asset management or even to prevent street erosion. If we know a road is about to be resurfaced, we have the ability to check for leaks on that road prior to construction. We want to continue the main break water loss estimates. You saw a couple slides ago. That was a huge improvement to our audit validation, and a couple of new things. We want to target improvement on volume estimates for new line flushing. What this is, if you ever drive by a water construction project, you can see the mains that are about to go on the ground are sitting out on the ground. You can imagine that you probably don't want to drink out of those pipes at that point, so when you put them in the ground, there's a procedure to clean out and flush out those pipes. It uses a lot of water. This is something it's hard to measure. It's not as hard as a main break, but it is very hard to measure how much volume is going through there. Similar to the main breaks, we have been using an estimate that depends on the size of the pipe. We think we'll see a similar result if we're able to take better measurements of how much water we're using for new line flushing, and I think that'll tighten up the water loss audit as well. And then finally, on the water plant side, we want to implement a mass balance worksheet for each of our plants, the one on Spencer Road that pulls from Lake Louisville and the plant at Ray Roberts. This is a way to calibrate the very large meters they have there. They meter the water, raw water that comes from the lake, and they meter the finished water, the drinking water that is pushed out of the system. The reason this is so important from a water audit perspective, those meters, when they go out of calibration, tend to overestimate the water that goes through them. And anytime they overestimate the water and we can't find it on the other side at a customer meter or anywhere else, it's assumed to be real loss because we can't find it. So we've replaced both of the raw and finished meters at the Lake Ray Roberts plant, and there are plans to replace one of those to the Lake Louisville plant, I believe, this year, sometime in the near future, and the mass balance worksheet will help keep those in calibration going forward. At this time, I'll take any comments or questions. All right. Council Member Briggs. Thank you. This was very informative. My question has to do with the leak time, because I know that in our neighborhood and just around town, there'll be a leak for several months, like up to five months or so. And my question is, does that have to do with what you said, I guess, the amount of money it costs to fix it versus the amount of water that's being lost, that formula, is that how come it can go on for so long? Or is it something that the council needs to talk about on how long a leak can continue? Sure. I could say that that factors some into it. The amount of water lost is not necessarily the concern, but I will say that is typically only done on very small leaks. So of course, if you ever see water that is coming above the road and pushing up above the road, that's going to be quite a lot of water, and we're going to get to those immediately. There's also, I know, staff time to consider, because we try not to do more than we have to on overtime. So some of that scheduling is to try to fit that into the crews we have so we can be responsible with our funds and our labor time. May I follow up, Mayor? Yes. But for me, I mean, I know that it's not a ton of water, but a small leak for over five months ends up being quite a bit of water. And I wonder, do we look at water as a resource, do we have a value of that when we're looking at what it would cost to fix it or repair it? The financials are purely what it's costing our ratepayers. So again, the additional cost to treat 1,000 gallons of water is only 35 cents. That's basically because we have all the capital in place, we have the water rights in place. Of course, that's a discussion that we can have if leaks are going on too long and we need to change our protocol, we can have that discussion. Okay. Yeah, because I know when there's a main break, right, it's huge. It's like a big giant geyser, and you get to it right quick, and that's a lot of water. But a lot of little leaks throughout the city can also add up. So I was just curious about that conversation. Thank you. Council member Meltzer. What kinds of factors account for the variability between cities? Why might a city like Dallas look so poor on these comparisons and a city like Irving look so good, and is there anything potentially instructive for us in what some of the better performing cities do? Or is it just about age of infrastructure and things like that? Age of infrastructure can absolutely have a factor in that. You'll certainly see that with cities like Frisco that are very new compared to Denton. There are so many factors, and it's really a tough question to answer. We'd really have to go to every utility, every city, to understand their audit. Some of it honestly comes down to audit validation. We just saw a difference of a factor of about 12 by changing how we measure our main break volumes. So the same thing, different cities and different utilities are doing different things to validate those numbers. If you go into the details of the audit, we actually input a validation score on every value that's input, so we can go in and see what the validation score is on different values or as a total for their audit to understand how much of this is assumed or how much of this is actually measured and calculated. Any other questions? I've just got a couple. Council member Briggs, just as clarification, when you said that a leak happened for five months, just real quick, was this just a above ground water line or what? I'm just curious. I've not heard that. Yeah, it was down Emerson behind the school. Individuals had been out a couple of times. The same gentleman, Mr. Bob Pugh, I think, reported it several months. I think I drove by recently and it was finally fixed. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it was something small, but it trickled all the way down to his property for several months. That was the question. Okay. Yeah, a couple of questions. On that picture you showed us, Tyler, on the leak, the actual leak on that slide, typically, if you've got a main break under a road, by the time it shows up, either by buckling the asphalt or water literally coming out from beneath it, is there an average time that those things are like that? I think you said that loss was a million gallons. About 1.5, yes. 1.5 million gallons. What size of line was that? Don't worry about it. It was a six inch main. I don't know how long that leak was going on. Okay. Depending on if the ground is pretty porous and that water sort of seeps or drains off in another direction other than coming up, it could last quite a long time. Yeah, and that's a great comment. That can happen. Typically, with our soils, it doesn't happen. That's a forgiving thing for us when it comes to leaks and breaks is the soils don't tend to absorb the water. They tend to expand and continue to push that water upward. Okay. Leaks tend to present themselves. They don't hide very well. Yeah. One fun fact, and I'll get out. I don't have too many of these fun facts, but they're putting the water line on bonnie bray. I think that's a 48 inch or 52 inch water line on bonnie bray coming down from I-35 to Rose Lawn. It's one of those two. It's 48 or 52 inches. From there in front of the house there, in my house, I was watching them do that. When I was talking to one of the gentlemen there, they said that they ... Number one, I said, "How do you inspect that pipe?" They said, "We send somebody in the pipe." They go in the pipe for about 1,000 or 2,000 feet and they have to run the length of the pipe to check the welds. Then I believe he also said that they do wind up pressuring the line to check for leaks. Is that correct with water? Is that correct? Yes. Every newly installed main gets pressure tested in that way, check for leaks, and also bacteriological testing for it. When you do that testing on a water line that size, and I'm sure they do it in segments, I'm sure they have a way to shut a valve and check segments, I guess. I don't know. What happens to the water that you've put in that line, because it's not really going anywhere. It's not going to houses. It's not going to new construction. It's just then discharged into some creek or something that goes back into the watershed and flows back down to Lake Louisville or something. What happens to the water in those new mains, the test water? Sure. If it hasn't passed those tests yet, then yes, it is flushed out, so it ends up going through our drainage system. Okay. All right. Okay. I remember as a little boy, whenever I'd see big leaks of water, I always thought, "Oh my gosh, look how much water we're wasting." To some degree it is, but I didn't really understand that. It goes back in the drainage system, goes back into the creek system, and drains back into the lake. I just thought, "It just disappears." It's pretty interesting how you grow up and you learn a lot of new things. Thank you so much for that presentation. Any other questions on this presentation? Wonderful. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you, Tyler. All right. We'll move in then to agenda item 3D, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding an audit follow-up of the customer service division audit. Councilmember Meltzer, did I miss something? Yeah. We're skipping C. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. We are skipping C. No, we're not skipping C. I appreciate that. Thank you for that. We're going to back to C. I apologize, I'm wanting to move us through too fast, so we'll go back to C. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding an internal audit of grants management. That is Council Work Session 3C. Hello, Mayor and City Council. I think you can hear me now. Yes. Great. Let me just pull up the presentation. All right. I'm Madison Rocha. I'm a staff auditor here. I'm here to present our grants management audit. This audit reviewed management and administrative controls over grants for eight city departments, including those with the four most significant grant funding, which are engineering services, community development, fire, and police. In general, we found that most grants appear to be managed and administered appropriately. However, there has been little written direction for staff involved in these activities, with the exception of community development, which has established adequate written grant policies and procedures. Our findings are summarized on the following slides. To begin, we found that grant processes are generally decentralized throughout the city and in most departments. For example, in the engineering, fire, and police departments, each grant is typically assigned to a primary grant manager who is responsible for ensuring all grant conditions are met, including assessing expense allowability, submitting reports, monitoring subrecipients, and ensuring match requirements. These program managers then retain this information in their own records. Recently, these departments have begun centralizing some of this grant information with the department grant administrator, who should help ensure that grant information is not lost, still ensuring that there is a central repository for grant information, such as the grant agreement, data reports, reimbursement requests, and more, would improve reporting and provide further assurance that all grant conditions are met. In addition, this type of database could be used as a reference to help staff manage future grant projects more effectively. So based on their management response, all three relevant departments are in the process of creating a central database. Next, we found that some departments did not always ensure that there was an executed grant agreement or memorandum of understanding. These documents outline the requirements and conditions of a grant. So without them, it is difficult to ensure that the city is complying with the grant conditions, which could mean that the city is potentially at risk of losing funding. Though this risk exists and should be addressed, we did not find any evidence that the city had lost funding due to missing agreements. That being said, the police department has conducted a training with its staff on executing these types of agreements with the right authority, and the fire department is creating a written policy to help guide staff when applying for and executing grant agreements in response to the audit. So finally, while decentralization is not necessarily inappropriate, it requires departments to develop their own grant administration and management procedures. So generally, grants appear to be managed by departments appropriately, however there is little written guidance available for grant managers. Formally establishing grant administrative processes and clearly defining the roles for those involved would reduce the likelihood of unintentional errors, improve consistency, and help retain institutional knowledge. Based on the management responses, all three relevant departments are beginning to formalize their processes in a policy or procedure manual. In addition, finance began developing a citywide grant directive in 2019, so this directive should help departments establish effective grant procedures and processes and provide general guidance to city staff involved in these activities. So we recommended that finance include certain best practices in this policy, most of which they appear to have addressed based on their management response. In summary, we issued 10 recommendations to five separate departments. All five departments fully concurred with their respective recommendations. Based on the management responses, we believe these issues will be addressed appropriately and we'll verify in a follow-up review. Okay, any questions? Council Member Briggs. Thank you, Madison. My question is, so does every single department have someone in it that does the grants separately and do they have to go through a special grant training, grant writing training? If a grant has a department, typically they have their own program manager for certain grants, and there is no required training from the city. I believe that there's something in the grant directive to address training, but I don't know exactly what it is because the policy hasn't been completely authorized yet. Okay. And so did you look at any of the funds and how they were allocated through these grants? We looked at, we did a sampling of some expenses to check that there's appropriate controls, like were people checking that they were allowed and things like that, but we didn't do like a full in-depth audit on particular grants. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you, Madison. Appreciate it. All right, and now I will present our follow-up of the Customer Service Division's audit. Okay. Yes, go ahead. I've already called it, so yeah, you can. Okay. Yes. Yeah, I called it earlier. I don't see the city attorney on the screen, so I did call it. I'll call it again. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding an audit follow-up of the Customer Service Division audit. All right, then now I will present our follow-up of the Customer Service Division audit. Yes. There we go. Awesome. So follow-up reports are intended to provide information on what changes have been made after the issuance of an audit. This review was based on the recommendations and management responses originally compiled in the Customer Service Division audit issued in December of 2018. In general, we found that the division has implemented all of the recommendations that were addressed to them. This presentation will review significant changes for each general audit area, beginning with the safeguarding of cash. So the Customer Service Division processes a large amount of payments and cash through various means. During the original audit, we found several weaknesses over the security of cash that needed to be addressed. Since the issuance of the audit, the Customer Service Division has issued a number of standard operating procedures, which did the following. First, they restricted access to safes and vaults. Second, they provided guidelines for when cashiers should move cash from their drawer to the safe. Third, they required customer service to issue receipts to other departments who deposit cash with them. And last, they required two employees to document the collection and processing of payments received in the mail or in the overnight box. The addition of these standard operating procedures have significantly improved the security of cash that's processed by the Customer Service Division. In addition, several system access controls needed to be strengthened to ensure that customer service duties were appropriately segregated. Based on our review, critical system access has since been appropriately restricted, including prohibiting employees from accessing and changing their own accounts and managing user access to critical systems. Customer service staff will regularly review audit logs for employees' accounts to ensure that no changes are made inappropriately. And in addition, technology service will review change logs quarterly to ensure key systems' functionality remains appropriately segregated. We also found that the city has been compliant with payment card industry standards since July of 2018 and is regularly verifying compliance. So next, the audit also noted several issues surrounding the collection of delinquent accounts. Since the issuance of the audit, customer services implemented several SOPs, which did the following. One, they allow staff to make adjustments to account interest and penalties before a lien has been filed. Second, they referred delinquent accounts to the collection agency after 60 days past due. And last, it provides guidance for setting up monthly payment arrangements for customers with large outstanding balances. Finally, the audit found that the city's collection agency hadn't provided adequate proof of insurance as required by the contract. This proof was later provided to the city. However, a new collection agency contract was executed in April of 2020. This contract no longer requires the collection agency to have insurance since they do not perform work on city property. So in summary, recommendations from the audit can generally be broken into four audit areas as shown in the table. We found that the division had implemented all of the recommendations under its purview. Only one recommendation made to finance and legal is still in progress. That outstanding recommendation centers on the resolution of five outstanding commercial account balances. And an update on this recommendation will be reported to the city council in conjunction with legal and finance at a later date. So based on this, another follow-up report will not be necessary. And I'd like to thank customer service for their time and their willingness to implement the recommendations. Thanks. Okay. Yeah. Any questions for Madison on this agenda item? Councilmember Armitage, go ahead, Councilmember Armitage. Yeah. Are the business accounts that are overdue, is that due to COVID? The five accounts for the recommendation that hasn't been addressed. I believe those accounts were outstanding long before COVID. Okay. Because they were first recognized in the original audit in 2018. Okay. Thanks. All right. Anyone else? Thank you, Madison. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. We'll move on to our agenda item 3E, receive a report, hold a discussion, and give staff direction regarding establishing a pilot temporary parklet and streetery program within the Mixed Use Downtown Core MD Zoning District. Oh, okay. And I understand that on 3F, I think we're not going to be doing 3F, I think, today. Is that correct, Mr. City Manager? That's right. I'm going to alert the council and staff to that change. Thank you. Who's at the staff table? Yeah. Okay. It looks a little different than last time he made a presentation. You're on mute, but that's probably a good thing. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, Richard Canone, Development Services Department. What I wanted to do before we get in is just kind of go over some of what we put together, at least for the presentation today, to kind of go through the parklet and streetery, and I'll get into the distinction between the two. But in preparing for this item, we really looked at kind of best practices around both in Texas and around the US. The National Association of Transportation Officials also puts out a publication with respect to parklets, as does the American Planning Association. So today we're really going to get into if we were to move forward with this, what would essentially make up the draft manual and application requirement and process. And then if the direction is to come back next week, at that point, we would finalize that manual as well as the draft license and maintenance agreement and incorporate that into the ordinance. And so just a little history on what a parklet is and where it originated. Started in 2009 in the city of San Francisco, and what they did is they were looking at ways to bring more park space into the downtown area of San Francisco. And so really, I thought it was important as we make this distinction between parklets and streeteries, the parklet, again, was really intended to serve as a park space if you will, or open space for all park members of the public to take part in. And what they've done since that time, there's a parking day, which occurs on the third Friday of September each year in a number of cities throughout both the United States and really the world now participate in those activities. And so the difference between what we made as distinction between parklet and streetery is really having that parklet serve just as it was initially intended or thought through in 2009, is really looking at these to be open, free, anybody can come by, enjoy a coffee, a drink, read a book, or just hang out, where a streetery functions much like a parklet, but they're typically adjacent to a restaurant. However, during the business hours, it functions essentially like a sidewalk cafe. And so during those times that the business is open or the restaurant is open, that seating within that streetery is reserved for that business. And so we've come up, we try to organize this into essentially four criteria, main criteria, just some safety basics, making sure that these would not occur on a street that has a speed limit greater than 30 miles per hour. Requiring wheel stops on both sides, and I have some images that we'll get into that. Making sure that there is a barrier for protection, ADA compliance, making sure that maintaining grade with the sidewalk, it would occupy no more than two to three parking spaces, making sure that water's draining and the materials are easy to maintain, there's some landscaping design incorporated, and making sure that there's no loose particles or materials such as sand or stone as part of that parklet or streetery. And so this just gives some general images of those design elements. Again, you have the drainage and accessibility, so you start to see those. Making sure what we don't want to do is have the water pull up, have those wheel stops on either side, incorporate landscaping barriers as well as the soft hit posts, furniture that will withstand outdoor, being outdoor and in the elements. Signage specific to the parklet or streetery, again, the incorporation of landscaping along with some of that safety, and again, going back to the materials, making sure that they are somewhat durable. And so looking at this a little deeper, there's actually a number of vendors currently out there that make a prefabricated parklet, and so that's just the images, the two images that you see at the top there. I'm not saying this is what everyone should do, but what we really don't want is to have something like this out there that's really not permanent, doesn't really provide protection. If it was a one-day or one-time event, perhaps, but I think if we're looking at this being out there for an extended period of time, we would want to see something that is much more, much more sturdier and can withhold the elements. And so what we've done is put together a simple layout that someone could use, again, what these images, a lot of them would do is essentially be incorporated into the manual if this were to move forward. And so again, making sure that you have those wheel stops on either side, making sure that there is a, you're not right in the lane of travel, there is at least one foot separation. You have some outside edge and railings, as well as maintaining the drainage at the curb line, as well as making sure that it is flush with the curb to avoid any trips or falls. And so this just gives a little bit deeper dive into the platform and decking. What we don't want to see is anything drilled into the street, if it were to be anchored into the curb, that's something that would be okay. But again, a max gap of a half inch, but really having some sort of connection. So it is ADA accessible and just maintaining that connection between the park lit and sidewalk. What we've done here is just provided some layouts given that we have both parallel and diagonal parking. Typically for parklets or streeteries that occur in diagonal spaces, at a minimum, it's typically three. And so you see you're still able to maintain that barrier to the side. However, the barriers, unlike, very different from what you'll see at the parallel, barriers tend to focus more on the corners where the cars are pulling in. The soft hit post, and again, making sure that drainage is there. And if you do have a gap larger than half inch, you have some sort of transition. Some cities have used these more permanent. And as you can see, they've incorporated bike racks in between that safety zone, if you will. Signage, what we would propose is that each parklet or streetery have a sign. This is something that the city would provide a specification for as opposed to providing the sign. But again, letting folks know that it is open to the public, smoking is not permitted. And then for streetery, reserving that cafe seating hours to the times that they are open for business. If someone did want to incorporate lighting, it would need to be self-contained, either solar or battery powered. What we don't want to have is flashing lights or extension cords running over the sidewalk or across the sidewalk. Most of us would probably think this would be common sense. We just want to make sure that trash is taken care of if you are going to serve food, making sure that you have a receptacle large enough, again, that could handle it. Again, these were items that we just, again, looked at best practices throughout and it seemed to be common for what a lot of other cities use for these parklets or streeteries. Vision wise, what we are recommending, if this does move forward, is that it be limited to just the mixed use downtown core or the MD zoning district. And that's everywhere that is highlighted in purple, as well as pink. The only difference between the two, the pink has the downtown overlay or the square zoning district design standards, but it still maintains the MD underlying zoning. What we would propose, initially, we were recommending two per block around the square. Given some of the feedback and concerns that Main Street had, we dropped that down to possibly one per block. Again, that's something just to discuss, but we thought because there was such a concern with losing parking, perhaps maybe we would, for this initial period, maybe one per block. And then everywhere else off the square, it would be two per block or two spaces per block for those parallel spaces. For the application and process, we want to keep this as simple and streamlined as possible. And so, again, just a map or survey of where and what they want to do. We're actually going to provide a graph sheet incorporated within the manual to make it simple. The three big things here, really making sure that you are insured, the license and maintenance agreement is approved, and then you have support from adjacent businesses. And what we've done, again, is try to keep this as straightforward and simple as possible. In the manual, we would include a sample petition of support as well as a sample letter of support. What we would ask is that the property owner get authorization from those businesses or property owners within 100 feet. If they did not get support, then what we're recommending is that it come to city council for consideration to consider what those impacts to that business would be based upon their unwillingness to authorize the parklet. And community support, while it would not be required, strongly encouraged, so this could be from other businesses, residents, institutions, Main Street, the chamber or the like. And as I indicated, this is what we'd be looking at for a site plan. Again, this isn't something we'd look to have a CAD drawing, but we want to at least provide some basic information for folks so they have an idea exactly what we're looking for and can assist them with moving this forward. Installation, one of our recommendations would be is that we highly encourage or strongly encourage that these be assembled offsite to avoid as much time as possible within the parking space or right of way doing the work. And what we would look to do is provide a no parking sign at least 72 hours to sort of core off that space or those spaces where the parklet or street would be installed. Looking at costs, I did speak to the individual, Mr. Roberts, that did at Revelers Hall. This was the first parklet that was built as a sample, if you will, in Dallas or what they recently passed in or started with their temporary program. When I talked to him just about the cost for him to build this, and he said it was about $8,000. So these are pretty significant in cost. That's why initially when we looked at the timeframe, probably wanting to extend this maybe to the end of the year as opposed to anything shorter, just given the high cost with building these. And so they can range anywhere from $5,000 up to $15,000 and more. What we would be looking at as far as building permit, just our base permit fee of $50, and then an additional license fee for the street or eight just because they will be operating a business within that space. And that would be over the length of that pilot program. It would not be a monthly fee. We did present this at the Main Street Association on June 15. We did receive feedback. We included that, the summary of their feedback along with as part of the backup, but just really summarized it. Most of the concerns had to do with alcohol sales, location safety, parking. Some were interested in trying it. Most of those that were thought that alcohol should be allowed to be consumed on premise, if you will. Again, we would recommend that that just be limited to the streetery and if that business had the license to do so. We've come up with just a simple short pros and cons. I won't read through every single one of them, but there are obviously some pros. One in particular is it is a temporary program. One of the biggest cons is you're going to lose parking spaces. Whether or not that will have a negative effect or a positive effect, I think that's yet to be seen. Some cities have data that show that it has actually increased businesses in the area. Now, whether or not that, again, all of those cities are different, very high urban areas where not a lot of cars park to begin with. We didn't want to provide a lot of that data because it wasn't Denton specific, but at least wanted to present the pros and cons associated with the installation or this pilot program. Next slide we have is just some policy direction questions to have, depending where that lands if we get the direction to move forward. We would finalize that manual license and maintenance agreement and ordinance and then bring that back on June 30th for consideration. With discussion, I've kind of summarized them and tried to keep them somewhat brief. But one is duration, our recommendation would be that it be at least six months or to the end of the 2020 calendar year. The location, the MD district with a max of one or two per block, depending where you are. Not permitting amplified music, now you could have someone wanted to play guitar or something else as long as it wouldn't be amplified in the street. No smoking would be permitted, alcohol would be limited to the street only and only within those hours that that business is operating. And then those permit and license fees that I went over, the $50 permit fee and $50 license fee in addition for the street. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Okay, Councilmember Briggs and then Councilmember Meltzer. Thank you for the presentation. It was very thorough and I appreciate it. So the streetery and the parklet would both be an option, correct? That's correct. Okay. Because I did read through some of the comments and some of most of them were concerned. Why do this if we can't have alcohol or extend alcohol out into it? So do we know if TABC or that license would extend out or is that beyond our scope of things right now? I would have to see what type of license the current restaurant owner has. My understanding is, and maybe the city attorney can chime in, it has to be a defined area and sort of cord it off if you are going to sell alcohol or have alcohol for consumption on premise. But we would have to work through that with that business owner in the state if they were to move forward with it. I'm in support of this, especially as a pilot. The main reason is due to the COVID situation and the way we can be creative by expanding space outdoors when some individuals aren't as comfortable being indoors. Is there, I have one more question, is there a reason why it was just for the MN area or the MD and not the MN that would be next to? We looked at it, at least at this point, just given some of the interest that we had from one or two or actually a couple business owners. First we're in the downtown area and so what we thought is let's confine it to that area and then perhaps after the pilot period, do an assessment, see where we are and then bring those results back and whether or not we'd want to continue it or extend it or expand it elsewhere. My only question for that question is parking. You have more parking possibly in the other area. Thank you for the presentation. Council Member Meltzer. I think this is just super creative and very dent and I hope people want to do it. Is there anything in the concept or premise that would prevent people including shade in them just as a practical matter? I think there's like about 10 days a year when people want to sit out without shade. Absolutely not. So if someone wanted to do either umbrellas, that would be permitted. We would just ask again that they be taken down at night. Whether they wanted to do a, I've seen some where it's almost like a curtain where it's a slide where they can slide it back and forth for the shade. We didn't want to be super restrictive and so folks could be creative, but certainly that would be welcomed. Council Member Davis. Thank you again, Richard and your staff for putting this presentation together. It was very thorough and there's more to it that I think a lot of people probably initially thought. It's a creative solution, which means there's going to be some bumps and hiccups to it. So I look at this as something, Council Member Briggs asked about the MN zoning district. I look at this as something that's really tailor made for the MD district and maybe we do need to expand it later on, but it's the density and the lack of parking lots that really makes this something tailor made for MD. If you're out in a mall or a strip center with your restaurant, then you're really having a conversation with your landlord or somebody else about what parking spots you use up. If you're downtown, you're having that conversation with us. So for that reason though, too, I really see it as something that's tailor made for our new streets more than the square. I would be opposed to using any of the diagonal spots on the square for one of these, for a couple of reasons. One, those are the premium spots on the square. Those are the spots that business owners need to have available. The ones that are at a premium if you're a customer, the ones that people circle the square for 10 or 15 minutes trying to get. I'd hate to see some of those used in this way, too. There are some sidewalk options for some of those businesses, not all, but some do make good use of the sidewalk. Three, our MUSE streets are underutilized. We know that. We've had some conversation around those and making better use of our MUSE streets, helping to encourage some of our businesses to use those backer service entrances and encouraging pedestrian traffic in the MUSE. And then finally, it's really about safety for me. We're not going to have the one-way, two-way conversation today, but one of the components about a one-way street is people drive on it like it's a highway. And having one of these out in those diagonal spots, they're not going to be safe in a high-speed scenario. They're not going to be safe from a fender bender kind of scenario with some of the design features and requirements you've gone through. But somebody going 40 miles an hour down Locust Street or Hickory, I'd hate to see a tragedy out on the square. So for all those reasons, I can't really support using up the diagonal spots on the square proper, but I'd be open to folks getting creative with the MUSE streets and the rest of the MD district. Yeah, I'm excited about this too. I'm okay with them existing in both of these areas. My hope would be that just the sight of a park that or a streetery would slow people down in the way that making a street smaller and just you're shaking your head. You might be right. Which is why I said my hope. So I'm not going to pretend to know, but I would be willing unless maybe you'll show me some evidence and then I will take it back within this meeting. But I'm willing to try that, especially since it is just temporary. I too was happy to hear that businesses would be able to provide some sort of shade because I was concerned in the list of pros and cons under the cons. It said weather, no protection from sun, rain, and I thought maybe that was some permitting obstacle, but apparently that's not. So I take it misting fans or whatever would be acceptable too, as long as that was brought in at night. I was wondering, is there any difference in terms of who is responsible for the cost between a parklet and a streetery because the streetery is for public use as well when the restaurant is not in operation. But I couldn't find anything here unless I'm missing something that suggests that the city would take some expense of the streetery. What we were recommending is that whether you apply for a parklet or a streetery, those costs would be borne by that business. The only difference with the parklet, if it wasn't designated to just one business because it's open to everyone, that would not preclude one or two or three or more businesses getting together and paying for it for their loss. Thank you. Streetery, I think it gets a little complicated because of the food and alcohol sales. The decision as to whether or not to do a parklet or a streetery, unless council gives some direction otherwise, would presumably be up to individual businesses in an area where this is permitted. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay. All right. I think that that's all. That's all my comments for now. Thank you. Okay. Council member, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Thank you. I have some questions, so bear with me, I'll power through them. Let me hear you write. The parklet and the streetery, both of those are public? They would be open. Because they're using a public parking space, they would be open to the public. The only difference is the streetery would be reserved for hours of operation. It would function like an outdoor cafe. So if a restaurant on the square, off the square, put in a streetery, of course the public could go there and sit and eat, but much different than a parklet where anybody can just come and sit and hang out. It would be limited to their customers from the hours of operation. Their hours of operation, sorry. The parklet would be? The parklet would be open at all times. Okay, because that's my question, and let me just get to it. How have you processed through if someone experiencing homelessness wanted to just, was using that as a place to hang out all day? It has occurred in some of the, you know, in some of the cities. Some have not seen it as much of a problem. The business, there's still a maintenance issue that the businesses, whoever, whether it's a park or streetery, need to maintain. But there would be, just much like a park, it would not, there would be no limitations on who could sit there for how long. Right. That's a problem that we would have to tackle. Before I'm ready to move forward, I'm not ready to move forward. I need more information. I need more information also on the alcohol component. And I'd like us to understand, because I think that's a big, big driver there. So those are my questions. Those two that I'd need more information to make a decision. But here's my suggestions. I think we need to use it as exactly what it's been described, but I've not heard anyone put the problem to the solution. It is a solution, and I've heard people talk about, well, I'll just put it this way. I think it needs to have more of a detailed fix associated with it. So here's my problems and solutions. So for example, I want to drive more people to park near the Carroll County Courthouse and walk into downtown. There's plenty of parking there that's underutilized. So I would advocate that we put one there. So you can put one there on the Carroll parking lot. You can look at Carroll, the bank's going in right there. And it motivates you to go to the west side of downtown. Right now, everyone walks to the east. And so we're trying to create traffic to the west of downtown. So I see a parklet as a way to drive traffic to the west to those other businesses. I'm good with that. That fixes the problem. I think when you're talking about other options, if we connect with Scott Brown, and we've had an issue with the paid parking there. If we coordinate and work with Scott Brown, either that paid parking, we take a couple of those spots, or the Wells Fargo drive through area, there's some green space there. If we partner with him in those areas to do something like that, then that's less utilized parking, still close to the square, drives traffic in different areas. I think that meets a problem or helps solve a problem. I'd also support it being private businesses. So if there's a business that's west of the square that has parking, so Versus is there. There's a bank there. If they want to offer up their private spaces, then we authorize them to do that. Then that's an opportunity for them to activate this, and it doesn't affect parking downtown. And then I'll tell you this, I'm ready right now to offer it up for our nonprofits, nonprofits. So we have holiday lighting, we have parades, those sort of things. When downtown is closed, I'm ready to vote on that right now. If you say when as part of the parade application or part of the shutting down street applications, they're presented with the opportunity to create a parklet. So now me and my family can rent this space, and it goes to whatever charity to then participate and raise extra money. It's a revenue source that fixes a problem. I'm in for that. And then if you want to talk about City Hall West parking lot on the backside, we own that. So if you want to put it there, that then again increases traffic on the side of downtown that doesn't have that much traffic, and it's a solution to a problem in that way. So those things are turnkey for me. If we use City Hall West in the back of it, if we use it for events, parades, et cetera, when downtown shut down anyway, I'm ready to do that. But anything that would take away public spaces, I'd need to understand the alcohol component. And there's some other opportunities for fundraising there, I do believe. But that's going to be my hangup. So thank you very much. And I did go to Dallas. I did look at the one at Bishop Arts, took my own pictures, and I think I have a pretty good feel for it. And so I'll go from there. Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah, I'm sort of turning over in my head much of what I'm hearing, including Councilmember Davis's concerns about the speed, the one way around the square. And I wonder if this is going to get like some additional thought, if we might check in with streets about this. Are the spots, the spaces next to the corners where there are bump outs around the square intrinsically safer? I think that might be, but I'd be interested in a traffic engineering point of view on that. Okay. All right. Okay. I'll sort of have the... Oh, Councilmember Ryan, go ahead. Yeah, I can shed a little bit of light on the alcohol issues, since I've had a permit in the past and dealt with TABC. When you get your permit, you must show a map of your location and where alcohol will be served. So if there's any patio areas, et cetera, they know where it's going to be. However, under the governor's order, many of those rules have been suspended. So they may work for right now, but once he puts issuing orders, that will change back again and you won't be able to do it now. If it's a beer and wine only sales, the person could go inside and bring it back outside. That's allowable, but not mixed drinks is the way the current law reads, barring anything from the governor. But I don't see where for six months, the cost factor, I don't really see that there's going to be too many businesses eager to put that kind of money. I was looking at this coming forward as one night a week where we shut down some spaces that they could bring in some temporary tables just to help the businesses out while they're on their less than 100% being able to be occupied. So this one, I'm not in favor of. Okay. Okay. Real quick, we're going to go around the horn maybe one more time, but Councilmember Armitage, go ahead, then I'm going to wrap it up if we don't have any more comments. Thank you. And sorry, something that I had forgotten to mention before to ask about. So I take it that whatever social distancing guidelines are required for inside a restaurant, there would be some sort of extension of that for outside. I know that in Dallas and elsewhere, I've seen pictures of really clever and beautiful solutions to social distancing, in some cases even on benches where there are planters built into the bench so that there is space where literally somebody can't sit unless they're sitting on top of a plant or just having a single table with two chairs where you can't bring additional chairs over because there's not room for it, but there's still room for a wheelchair. I wouldn't want to restrict too much what the creative solutions to that problem solving would be, but just to hear a little bit about how social distancing would be encouraged in a park led or streetery, or would that not be something to be determined in this work session, but in our discussion of COVID emergency response. So Richard, what exactly direction are you needing today? If I can just quickly go back to ... And then I'm going to add my comments. I just want to get you some direction if we ... It really was hitting these ... One, I guess, first of all is their direction to move forward with it. Right. So then the duration, location, and then the other ... Some of the limitations, and then the key and license issue. Okay. All right. So if we can pull that down. I'm pretty bearish on this. I don't think we need to be implementing this as a response to COVID because COVID, I don't think it's going to be around, but you're only talking three parking spots. A parking space, if I'm not correct, correct me if I'm wrong, Richard, is usually about a 10 by 20 space. More or less. Yeah. Okay. So if you have three of them, you've got 600 square feet is what you're looking at, 600 square feet of city right of way. And that's really where my struggle is here because we have franchise fees that we charge to utilities and cable users for city right of way. 600 square feet, especially if you're going to use it to expand your restaurant, that's quite a bit. I mean, at $10 or $15 a foot, you're looking at $6,000 to $10,000 worth of land space. And then since it's restricted, except in hours after hours operations, the public can't sit there. So it's basically their space. And there's no way I would approve this on the square proper. And I would be hesitant to even approve it down on Hickory Street. Of course, some people would say that's a good use of the back end parking spaces because people don't like back end parking spaces. So I make a little levity there. So I've got probably more questions than I do anything else simply because I think it's going to give value and it's going to provide an advantage to some businesses who can do it over some that cannot. And I'm not quite sure exactly what interest we're trying to meet with this. So let's look at a parklet. I don't think there's going to be any parklets. I think there are going to be streeteries, because who's going to spend $15,000 to put a couple of benches out in front of their business where anybody can use it and basically maybe not even frequent the business? And when you look at the square, certainly the square has that opportunity on the courthouse lawn for people to sit and enjoy and picnic and things such as that. The only way I would ever see it making any sense is in those mew streets, as Councilmember Davis had said, because we still struggle with what do we want to do with those? I mean, we've had some say we should shut the streets down and just provide it as pedestrian traffic. So they sound good and I think in certain areas of cities and certain parts of the country, but I think if we're just looking at the square or in that designation, I'm real hesitant to start allowing people to basically build on city right away for $50 for city revenue. It's still public land and then I'm really struggling with if it's a streetery, you get free use of public land for restaurants that it's exclusive to them. And I don't see this as something that is going to solve it. I don't even know what the problem is we're trying to solve. And so Councilmember Armitage, real quick, because we're going to move on because the last thing I want to do is just get into, we've all stated our position, so I don't want to start everybody responding to everybody's comments because we've all had a chance to speak. So real quickly, please. Thank you. So number one, would love if there's time in answer to the question about design for social distancing. If there's not time, I would love that a follow up afterwards. I will say that local businesses ever since the mandated shutdown have been suffering and have made great sacrifices for the sake of public health. And they want to, generally want to protect themselves and their employees, but they also want to stay in business. And there are people who are reluctant to be indoors, like myself, who on the two occasions where I have met someone at a local place like this, I have limited it to where we can sit outside and at a time where it's not crowded and this is wearing masks and everything. So it would presumably help for businesses and I feel like this is a decision that individual business owners should be able to make on their own. The square is not really crowded right now, so it really seems to me to be an ideal time and would help our businesses at a time where they're struggling. Well number one, it's not equitable because some businesses will be able to use it and some can't, so I believe it's providing an advantage to just because of the very location that someone has and the square is busy. I don't know, I mean, unless there's something happening that I haven't seen in the last day or two, but when I go up to the square now, it's teaming with people who are enjoying what they enjoy at the square. Council Member Briggs and then we're going to move on out of this agenda item. Yeah, so one, I want to go back and see if there's consensus to do anything, even bring it back for one more discussion. Two, I'm wondering because there are restaurants who use our public right-of-way sidewalks now, and then there's restaurants who are off the square that don't have that option, so are we doing exactly what you said you're afraid these would be doing for some other restaurants who do not have an outdoor public space to use? So that's my question there, I'm not sure how we approach that currently with tables on sidewalks. And that's a good question, I'd like to know, not necessarily now, I'd like to have some information on that. Well, as far as consensus, I don't think I've heard, I've heard maybe three people, which should be yourself, and I don't even know if it's three. Councilmember Armature, maybe Councilmember Meltzer, but I think he was, he was listening to Councilmember Davis's point about the square. I don't think we have a consensus to accept the staff presentation as it is to move forward. And yes, go ahead Councilmember Briggs. Well, I'm willing to do the pilot on the Mews streets to see how it works, if that would bring consensus so that we can at least see how this project would get off the ground with the streetery, and so that it just doesn't disappear. Okay, Council, okay, Councilmember Davis, you okay with that? Yeah, I'd really be fine, we said specifically the Mews, but I'd be fine with anything except for Oak, Hickory, Elm and Locust, frankly, those are the high speed streets. And those are the folks who already have sidewalks. I think the purpose of this is organic and granular creative options to promote our local businesses and promote walkability, encourage people to get out of their cars and go sit someplace and have a bite to eat. So those are the places I think we needed. I'd be fine with anywhere in the MD except for Oak, Hickory, Elm and Locust. Okay, Councilmember Armature, real quick, are you okay with what you've heard? Oh, of course, yeah. Councilmember Meltzer? Yes, I agree with that. And it's kind of like a prelude, am I unmuted? Good. No, you're fine. We can hear you. Yes. Yeah, and it's kind of a prelude to, you know, the larger Mews street kind of redoing that we've talked about, like, kind of see if socially that works. So I think it'd be very interesting to give that a try. If you could put your slide back up, Richard, as far as the direction, the different things you wanted. I think it was the six-month we so as everybody and I can't see you all at once. So if you're if you object to it, just say something MD district maximum one or two per block. I think we didn't talk about that. Or did we have one per block based upon Main Street? Yeah, the one per block was on the square. But since since that's been eliminated, we would just stay at the recommendation would be a max of two per block. Okay. All right. Amplified music not permitted. Any objections to that? Smoking not. Mayor Watts? Yes. The amplified music is a concern because you can do your it's allowed. So I don't know how we can it's how can we disallow it when it's allowed? Well, I think you could make an ordinance that disallows it for a parklet or a streetery. Yeah. Specific. Well, you know, yeah, I don't support it anyway, so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna make it convoluted. So okay. Okay. All right. Okay. No smoking in the street area or the parklets. Do I hear any objections to that? All streetery only any objections to that. And I like Mayor Pro Tem, I don't support this concept. So I'm just not going to weigh in on these individually fees, permit and license. I've stated my opinions on that. Anybody opposed to the fee structure that was put forth by staff? Mayor, I'm not opposed to that because this is a pilot, but I want to make sure when staff talks with with folks, if we see one of these being constructed and going through the process, it's not beyond this council's prerogative to charge them rent for that later. If we went through a this went from a pilot to a permanent project or permanent option, they need to know that council could always charge rent for those spots later on or charge more than just the permit fee after the pilot. All right. I would hope to think if that is the will of this council or another council that we could have a discussion on that before people move into the process of constructing and all that, but I'm going to go with the consensus. So your points are well taken. Okay, Richard, do you have your direction on that? I do. Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. I have an answer to the question about can we give direction on social distancing requirements or is that something that would come later, be part of a separate discussion? Well, I think if I'm not mistaken, the social distancing. If you are outdoors, I think the social distancing requirements are still in play or are they not? It's my understanding they are still in play. Is that correct, Mr. City Manager or Mr. City Attorney? As far as just recommendations, there's no requirement for it that I understand. Well, since we can require for a business now, according to Governor Abbott, it seems to me that we could require for a park led or a streetery if there's consensus on that. Okay. All right. So that's the last question. Who's in favor of social distance requirement? Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, because anyway, my ask is this. We know the homeless issue is unaddressed. I'm just advocating that we do the right thing and declare our statement upfront. Whatever we're going to do about it needs to be on the application or it needs to be a discussion in on the front end. We don't need to back into this. It's a known commodity. I'm just putting that out there. Feel free to ignore it, but we're going to have the conversation sooner or later. I'd rather have it up front. Okay. All right. Okay. So, Council Mayor Meltzer? Yeah. On the social distancing issue, I think what would apply in my mind anyway, would be similar to the requirements on interiors of restaurants where you can have tables of four and tables of 10 that are six feet apart. So I think if there are barriers between groupings or they're distanced, people can still have their own family groupings. So I would just say apply whatever goes inside restaurants to that. So you're saying no special language needs to be included in this ordinance for that. It could just be what's normal anyway. Or extend the rules that apply to restaurants. Okay. All right. All right. Anybody else? Okay. Appreciate that. We'll move on then to agenda item 3G. And I believe Stuart's heading that way. Okay. Whenever you're ready, Stuart. All right. Let me pull this up full screen for us. And good afternoon, Mayor and Council. My name is Stuart Birdseye, Assistant to the City Manager. It's not full screen. Oh, I have to share the screen. That makes sense. All right. Now we have it. Stuart Birdseye, Assistant to the City Manager. Okay. We have our City Council pending request for information. Just as a reminder of how we get here, up to seven requests will be reviewed per meeting, one per council member. I'll introduce the request. And then the elected official that made the request will have one minute to make their pitch and then the remaining elected officials will have a minute each to indicate their support or concerns about that. Today we have one request. It is drafting and passing an ordinance for the Breonna Taylor law banning no-knock warrants in the City of Denton. This was requested by Council Member Armitour. In your backup, you have some information from staff about our current procedures, including a memo from Chief Dixon about that. So with that, I will turn it over to Council Member Armitour. Council Member Armitour, I'll be keeping time. So once you start, I'll hit the clock and tell you when your minute is up. Thank you. I will try to be brief. Everybody knows the tragedy of Breonna Taylor who was killed while sleeping under one of these no-knock warrants. I want to respond to the memo from Chief Dixon that seems to imply that the department's already in compliance with a no-knock warrant ban. However, his memo specifies that no-knock warrants must be approved by the chain of command, including the Chief of Police, and it has specifications for when and how they can be used. What I'm asking for is a ban on no-knock warrants altogether. There is too much wiggle room under these current conditions listed here, and I don't think that we need to wait for the Use of Force Committee to pass such a common-sense ordinance as this. So I hope my colleagues will agree to have this discussion and consider this that the public is asking for. Thanks. All right. Okay. Anybody else? Council Member Briggs and then Council Member Davis and then Council Member Mouser. When I first saw this in the public, I reached out and asked and learned that it was pretty much basically something that the department policy already complies with, and I would be more than in favor to have a work session to discuss that to make what the Breonna Taylor's Law is more official here in the city. Okay. All right. Council Member Davis and then Council Member Mouser. So just so folks at home are clear, Breonna Taylor's Law is not in every jurisdiction that's adopting it a ban on no-knock warrants. What it is, is a ban on warrants that are primarily for the purpose of preventing contraband, usually drugs, from being destroyed or evidence from being destroyed. They're still allowing police to use no-knock warrants to go into dangerous situations, and that's exactly what the chief's memo says we do in Denton, that we don't have those warrants being used in Denton for purely destruction of evidence purposes, you know, go in fast before the drugs go away. They're being used for situations where if the police were to say politely, here we are, that's going to end in a siege or a shootout, and that's precisely why Chief Dixon is the only person in the city of Denton right now who can authorize those. So I don't support having additional discussion on this or adopting a law that has a, it's being touted as a ban, it's being touted as something that will solve a problem. It's in many jurisdictions, a problem that's already been addressed and has already been addressed in our jurisdiction. Okay. Council Member Melser. Yeah, I'm happy to have the discussion. To me, the point of contention is, for me, is in what sequence and when. I have a great deal of respect for the chief and for Denton PD generally, you know, whatever the controversy may be about police departments in other places, and so I'm going to be very influenced by what he ... Uh oh, Paul, we lost you. He'll come back. Conversation with Willie Hutzpah ... Paul, Paul, can you hear me? All right. Okay. We'll come back to Paul when he fully comes back. If somebody could maybe ... And I think his minutes probably up, but we'll let him ... Paul, can you hear me? Paul, can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, no. We're going to give you about 30 more seconds because most of what you were saying, you froze up. If you'll give me just a second to start the ... Because we didn't really understand what your position was. So once you start, I'm going to go ahead and give you 40 seconds, so go ahead. Whenever you start, I'll start the clock. Paul, can you hear me? Paul. Okay. We're going to move on. We'll come back to Paul. Is there anybody else wants to speak on this item? Is there anybody else? I'm trying to see if Paul, he hasn't come back up yet. Well, I'll go ahead and let me go ahead and start my minute and maybe we can get to ... Yeah. My understanding is the request is to discuss a full ban on no knock warrants. I'm uncategorically not in favor of that. And we do have a committee that the no knock warrant will be part of that discussion because I believe that would be categorized as a use of force. That's why we put this committee together. And so I'm certainly willing to let them give us their recommendations based upon the chief description of what a no knock warrant really is and what the policies of the city of Denton are. So that's my position on it. We're going to let the committee speak on it. Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah. I just want to say the loss of Breonna Taylor is a tragedy. I just caution first that if a college professor in another city makes a egregious error, I don't know that that causes UNT to change what they do. And I'm sensitive to it. And I look forward to the committee's input, which will also have the community input. And so there's no need to rush into something without input from the stakeholders, from the community, from open dialogue. And so I'm supporting the conversation in that we voted for a committee and those two don't have to run parallel. So that's my advocacy. Okay. All right. Okay, Paul, we're going to give you one more bite at the apple. If it doesn't work, then we're out because I think I think already we've got I haven't heard from Council Member Ryan, but silence means you're not for moving forward in that. So we have our four, I believe, but I want to give you your chance to speak because you sort of froze up on it. So when you start, I'm just going to give you a full minute again. So go ahead. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. So yes, for having the discussion, as far as in what sequence, I'm very influenced by what I hear from the chief. And because I have a lot of respect for him and for debt and PD, despite what you hear about police and instances elsewhere. So I'm very influenced by that. And I would like to know that he had had that conversation with people like Willie Hutzpeth and Lillian Prado Carrillo and Cheryl English and Katrina Stone Butler. I think that's very, very valuable to have those voices, not to cut them off in the discussion. So I want that input in his input to us. So yes, and in that sequence. Okay. All right. Thank you. So we will, as far as the request that has been made, there will not be a work session on that specific request to ban, absolute ban on all no-knock warrants. So we'll move forward. At this time, we will convene into closed session, convene in closed session at 522. We will consider the following items, consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071, deliberations regarding real property under Texas Government Code Section 551.072. Can you hear me Councilmember Armitter? Yes. I think this is the one that I have to recuse myself in because my employer, is this the one? I have no idea. You'll have to take that up with the city attorney. I'm looking at the city attorney. No, it's not. We can do that. Okay. But we can do the, because we have outside council on item D that's ready to chime in, that way you can stay in and then you can recuse after the other one, but this is not the item that Councilmember Armitter. Okay. Okay. Because we hadn't seen all the details on it. Okay. All right. Okay. I'm not quite sure what you're referring to, but all right, so we will now go into convene into closed session at 523 and we'll take about a 10 minute break and then we'll come back about 530, somewhere around 530, give everybody a chance to grab a snack or dinner if they need to. Thank you. Welcome everybody to this special called meeting of the Denton City Council. We are convening after completing the closed meeting and convening in this special called meeting on June 23rd, 2020 at 747 PM. So we're just a little beyond what our normal scheduled time would be. All right. Our first item on the agenda is the consent agenda and it's my understanding we are pulling agenda item A just for an item for individual consideration vote for recusal purposes. All right, Chair would Council Member Ryan and Council Member Meltzer. I move approval of the consent agenda except for item A. Council Member Meltzer. I'll second. Council Member Meltzer, how say you? Aye. Council Member Ryan. Aye. Council Member Davis. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem. Aye. Council Member Briggs. Yes. All right. Yes. I can say something. Council Member Davis, this is the item that I believe Denton County is involved with. Yeah. We, we pull. We know this is the consent agenda and we pulled it. This is the motion to pull it to pull A. Yes. Yeah, no problem. And Council Member Armitter, we're still waiting for her to come back. So the mayor is an aye. So the consent agenda except for agenda item 4A is approved 6-0. We will now take up agenda item 4A as an item for individual consideration. I don't believe that there was any presentation on that. So Mayor Pro Tem. Move approval. Council Member Ryan. I'll second. Council Member Ryan, how say you? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem. Aye. Council Member Meltzer. Aye. Council Member Briggs. Yes. Mayor Watts is an aye. So we, the, the ayes and yeses have it. Motion carries 5-0. So we're going to move back to now our items for individual consideration. And Council Member Davis has rejoined us. Do we know if anybody's been able to get a hold of Council Member Armitter? No, I've sent her a note. I have not heard back from her. Okay. All right. Okay. So we'll move to items for individual consideration. Agenda item 5A is considered option of an ordinance of the City of Denton to Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation extending the effective period of declared state of local disaster. There she is. That's welcome. Council Member Armitter. Thank you. All right. So do we have a, okay, staff presentation we do. Thank you. Mayor, Council, Ryan Adams, Public Affairs, and I'm just going to briefly review the presentation that was presented to Council at your last meeting on June 16th, where staff received direction from the Council on the 6th order. There it goes. So again, the current order of Council that we are under, which was adopted under Ordinance 2980, that was adopted on May 29th, 2020, it expires at the end of this month. And the spending authority of our current order of Council is $850,000. The proposed declaration and 6th order of Council would extend the declaration through August 31st of 2020, and it would increase the spending authority granted to staff to $1,150,000. Also based on feedback and direction received from Council at previous meeting, the fees and disconnections for utility nonpayments would be, or pardon me, the fees and disconnections for utility nonpayment would be reinstated after June 30th. So right now, those are prohibited under our current order, and that prohibition would be removed after June 30th. These slides were presented to you back on June 16th, just outlining our anticipated or estimated operating expenses through August 31st, and it shows that we anticipate spending roughly $1,141,000 by that time. Of course, that's very close to staff's request of $1,150,000 in spending authority through this 6th order of Council. Again, just a little bit more detail that was provided to the Council. And before I end the presentation, I do want to mention that Governor Abbott did issue a proclamation today, this afternoon, that slightly modified his previous proclamation, GA 26, where in GA 26, any event over 500 people, local officials would have the ability to put in place restrictions on any event over 500 people. He has now amended that provision of GA 26 down to 100. So any event over 100 people, local officials and working with the County Health Authority do have the option to place restrictions on any event that surpasses that threshold. We do not believe that really impacts the decisions that are brought forward as part of this item, but I did want to make Council aware of that, and we will include that in your Friday report. And that's the presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Any questions for staff? Council Member Meltzer. >> Yeah, we discussed a survey that was being done by the Chamber of Businesses. Has that concluded? You know, Mayor, I think you mentioned they had something like 100 responses, but is that ongoing or is that, you know, is that still open? >> Sure. I don't know what the latest update was. The survey was sent out, and when I got that information, I think there still could have been some responses to that. So I don't think that was the end result, but I don't have what those current numbers are at this time, but no, it wasn't. Those weren't the definitive end of the numbers, at least that I'm aware of. I mean, nobody else could have responded, but yes, go ahead. >> Well, I mean, the point of my question was, can businesses still respond? >> Oh, well, I think that it was a survey sent out by the Chamber to the Chamber membership, so I don't know if the survey had an end time on it. I don't know the nature of how they structured their survey, so I don't know the answer to that question. >> Well, all right. So given just that amount of information, I would just -- this isn't a question, more of a statement. So I'll wait until others have questions, and I'll look for the same. >> Sure. Who else had their hand up? Councilmember Briggs? >> Yeah, I was just going to say, when I talked to Erica, I thought the results would be in Wednesday. >> Okay. >> So I think -- yeah, I'm not sure, but yeah, I don't think it's -- it's not concluded at the moment, or it has, and the results should be Wednesday, I believe. >> Okay. Thank you for that update. Anyone else? Okay. Councilmember Meltzer, you've got some comments. >> So many in the public are interested in the question of whether we would have a mask requirement along the lines of Dallas, and, you know, people may not have followed the work session. And several of us are interested in that, and several expressed reservations, and, you know, we all share them about putting businesses in the middle of enforcement. And I think it would be a strong indication to all of us if through the chamber they heard if it's true that small business owners and business owners in general want the city to give them that backstop behind a decision to require masks where they can't do social distancing, you know, or if they don't want that. But you know, if you haven't made your feelings known and you have an avenue to let the chamber know, I think that would be important to us to know that. And it's my understanding that that survey went out to chamber membership, and so businesses who are not a member of the chamber, of course, we wouldn't know what their responses are. >> Please let your councilmembers know. >> Sure. Of course. Councilmember Armitage and then Councilmember Davis. >> Yeah. So I'll try to be brief for those who haven't watched the work session. I was one of those who weighed in for a mask ordinance. I happen to believe that our experiment in, let's say, fair, let personal responsibility take care of it hasn't worked. And I'm deeply concerned that things are going to get worse, not only from a hospital capacity and public health point of view, but also from an economic point of view. If things continue at this rate, then we might have to roll back to a shutdown, which we had started with, and people made a lot of sacrifices for. So I'm going to be voting no to this also because, as I had mentioned previously, I think that it is too soon to start returning to utility shutdowns because residents and small businesses are still struggling. >> Okay. Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, Mayor. I don't want to rehash what we did in the work session. Folks can go wash themselves. I just want to make sure that my statements were presented clearly. I don't think Councilmember Meltzer intended to represent precisely what I said this morning but afternoon, whenever that was. But my sentiment was that I was okay with a requirement on employees of a business. If I go into McDonald's and they're not wearing masks, I'm not buying the Big Mac. I make a decision to go to a different place. I think it's an appropriate thing for a city to do to regulate places of business as to their own employees. What I said this morning was I don't think it's appropriate for us to hold the businesses responsible for the actions of the folks who walk in their doors. So that was my position this morning and it's my position this evening as well. >> Okay. All right. And I'll just -- I want to comment and I share those sentiments to Councilmember Davis. We've heard it said that the laissez-faire personal accountability has not worked. I'm going to tell you, we can put in all the rules we want. But if people don't wash their hands, if they don't congregate, if they continue to congregate in large groups, and if they make a decision not to wear a mask, that is what's going to keep us to the point where if the shutdown is required -- so if people are truly concerned that it's going to get to a point where there's a shutdown, you don't have to wait on either city, county, or state government. Each individual can take their own safety precautions. And if we -- if all of us do a little, it'll go a long way. And I think everybody that expressed a concern with implementing a Dallas type -- a Dallas county type ban, let's make sure a Dallas county type ban at the city level, I believe everybody was open to that's not something that could not be reconsidered on down the road if situations warranted. So we've got a -- I don't think I've had any action on this item. Yeah, we've got -- no callers have called in or registered online, and we don't have anybody on the phone to give any public comment. Oh, I'm sorry, seven people -- there were seven people that made comments on our online forum. I misread it. Seven people made comments on our online forum, and seven were in support of this item. Now the item is Individual Consideration A. I don't know if that means it's in support of anything other than what the posting is. Councilmember Meltzer, and then we're going to -- yes, Councilmember Meltzer. So I move approval with an amendment to add a requirement for employees of businesses in the city of Denton to wear masks where social distancing can't be achieved. Okay. Councilmember Briggs. I will second that. And just to -- Mayor, on those comments, when people were asking how they comment on face mask, I said this was the only option that they could -- those comments have to do with that. Councilmember Davis. Are you ready for discussion on the motion? Yes. So I support -- I support the spirit of the motion. I'm a little unsure as to this avenue, just because I think the language of what Councilmember Meltzer is wanting to add to the declaration maybe needs a little bit more work and tweaking, not to add exceptions and carve-outs and things, but just I think it needs to be worded a little bit more particularly maybe referencing to some of the things that the governor has put in his reopening Texas manual, there are guidelines for each individual industry, you know, your barber is supposed to be wearing a mask and food service and those sorts of things. So I'm in support of the idea, I'm just not sure that this motion quite -- quite gets us there. And maybe my lawyer brain is working overtime. I don't know. Okay. All right. Councilmember Meltzer. I would be open to referring to the other elements of the governor's recommendations by reference, you know, by referring to that -- that order. I think that might be a way to achieve what Councilmember Davis, you know, is suggesting. Okay. Councilmember Davis. I'm not trying to beat the dead horse, but other counties and municipalities that have looked at this, I think that they've done a separate ordinance. I don't know for sure, but I think our disaster declaration, our emergency declaration is a separate thing. I think it's a separate question. So it may be more appropriate that we have, for instance, this morning if our work session had been the council consensus for an ordinance, maybe we would have had a draft ordinance to vote up or down. But I just feel like it's probably a more particular thing than tacking onto the emergency declaration. I may be wrong there. Okay. All right. So we have a motion and a second for -- as the motion was presented with the additional language that employees are required to wear masks. Yeah, where social distancing is not possible. Social distancing is not possible. Councilmember Briggs. A friendly amendment, mask or face covering, whether it be a -- Face covering. Face covering. Okay. All right. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. I'll just say -- and so thank you, Councilmember Davis, for clarifying that you were okay with having employees wear masks, I wasn't entirely clear on that. And thank you, Councilmember Meltzer, for making that recommendation. Because this is the motion on the table, I will, in spite of my objections and I still think this is not enough, I'm going to vote yes on this and I hope this gets consensus. Councilmember Ryan. Well, I just want to point out that this is the longest we have extended the emergency declaration. We've been doing a little over two months on this because this is going until August 31st. And a lot can happen in that timeframe. So I can't support this motion. That's something that should probably be brought up as a separate item for consideration, if that's what is preferred. Okay. All right. All right. So we have a motion on the table for approval of agenda item 5A with the amendment that employees be required to wear a facial covering, whether it be a mask or some other type of shield, or something along those lines, if they're unable to social distance. Councilmember Meltzer, how say you? Aye. Councilmember Briggs. Yes. Councilmember Armitter. Yes. Councilmember Davis. Nay. Councilmember Ryan. Nay. Mayor Pro Tem. Nay. Mayor Watz is a nay. That particular motion for agenda item 5A fails. Mayor Pro Tem. Move approval as the draft order, the only one we have available to look at, review and vote on. Okay. All right. Do we have a second? Councilmember Ryan. I'll second. Mayor, we have a motion and a second as the order presented in the backup by staff on agenda item 5A. Mayor Pro Tem. You ready for discussion? Yes. Yeah. I just want to make clear and then have a clear record. We have, I just think to put something in front of us, tie it to a declaration that we need and then not have anything for us to read to support that is problematic. So again, I just don't want anything mischaracterized. We have nothing to read, it's an emergency ordinance that we need to pass in three minutes before we vote. There's an addition to it that I have no time to review or consider is problematic. Okay. All right. All right. So any other, any further discussion? Councilmember Davis. Yeah, I just want to make sure it's crystal clear because I don't, I don't want people to think that there's, that we're waffling on this issue. We talked about it this morning. I stated where it was this morning. What we have in front of us is the emergency declaration enabling the city to spend the money that we need to. The mask question is a completely separate issue and it is not as simple as employees should wear masks. It's complex by industry. It's complex by whether you work inside or outside. There's a lot more that goes into it and that's why I couldn't vote on the last motion line. Okay. All right. And, and I'll just add that in any employer right now can require their employers, employees to wear masks. Did I see another hand? Okay. So we, Councilmember Briggs, did I see a hand up for you? Well, yeah. I mean, any, any other time we, we take an item, we take friendly amendments. It's not like it's out, out of the blue for, for someone to make an amendment. So I just wanted to throw that out there. And also there was 83 new cases just today. So. Okay. All right. And a second for the ordinance, uh, as drafted for agenda item five a, uh, Mayor Pro Tem Haseyu. Aye. Councilmember Ryan. Aye. Councilmember Armitter. No. Councilmember Davis. Aye. Councilmember Briggs. No. Uh, Councilmember Meltzer. Uh, Governor Abbott said yesterday, COVID-19 is now spreading at an unprecedented rate. Governor Abbott said yesterday COVID-19 is now spreading at an unacceptable rate in the state of Texas and it must be corralled. I think we have to be guided by the data. This is entirely inadequate. I'm a no. Okay. Uh, Mayor Watts is an aye. So the motion carries a four to three agenda item five B consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, a Texas home rule municipal corporation, adopting a city of Denton procurement policy and authorizing the city manager is designated to administer the policy and adopt procedures to implement the policy. Good evening council mayor. I'm Cassie Ogden, director of procurement and compliance, here to talk to you about the revised procurement policy manual. Just a quick overview of the things we're going to discuss the background of the current manual and then what led us to a revising the manual, the thresholds, uh, formal solicitations and other types of procurements, contract requirements, the protests and bitter disqualification policy, and then staff's recommendations. So in way of background, the current manual is titled materials management and payment procedures manual. It was originally drafted in 2009. It was presented to city council in a work session in 2010, but no formal adoption was ever taken. Um, the manual has been updated annually up until 2018, at which time staff began drafting a revised, um, manual to incorporate all of our audit recommendations and to follow applicable statutes, city charter, the revised manual was separated into two parts. The policy manual is what is being considered before you right now, where staff is also drafting a procedure manual to be used internally. Just as procedures change, this will include our SOPs and things like that. We were trying to make the policy manual easier to read for the end user and for our vendors. So the dollar threshold of a purchase determines the procurement requirements, um, micro purchases are less than $3,000 and can be made on a P card or a PO. And purchasing monitors these expenses to ensure if collectively the city is spending more than 3000 in a fiscal year, then the small purchase requirements apply. So small purchases are between three and $50,000. They require three quotes and the opportunity to extend, um, a quote to at least two historically underutilized vendors registered in Denton County. And that's actually a state statute. So these small purchases, um, encourage the use of local vendors to provide quotes for goods and services. Purchases exceeding 50,000 require a formal solicitation process. So depending on the type of purchase, there are several procurement methods that can be used for formal solicitations. So formal solicitations have advertising requirements, which you see in the advertising days. Those are the minimum number of advertising days that we have to advertise in a, in a local newspaper. We also advertise, um, on the city's website through our electronic bidding software. This is to allow for open and fair competition. There are several exceptions, um, listed in the statutes to competitive bidding. Um, however, best practices to compete can go through a competitive process when possible. So local preference, our policy did not change in this, in this current manual before you. Um, it only applies to IFB or IFB best value. Um, and it does not apply to RFP. So an RFP requires evaluation criteria to be provided as part of the solicitation. The city generally uses project schedule price, probable performance, and how well the vendors meet specifications with the weight for each of these items differing depending on the procurement. The RFQ evaluation criteria, which are for professional services, um, include project schedule, how well the vendors meet specifications and their probable performance. These cannot be competed based on price. Other evaluation factors can include safety, which we have clarified in the manual. The other procurement types that we use, um, which are emergency procurements, which are obviously exempt from competitive bidding, their specific necessary to pull up public calamity or unforeseen damage and to protect public health. Um, if we spend over $50,000 on an emergency procurement, it requires council ratification. Sole source, as you may remember from some of our previous, um, procurement audits are, is a good or service available from only one source and it's specifically defined in the statutes. And so we did include the audit recommendations for additional due diligence and verifying sole source in the manual. Alternative delivery methods are solicitation specific for public works projects only, and they're, they're procured under a different statute. Um, they're procured under government code 2269. This does include both horizontal and vertical construction projects, um, and, um, they have very similar, um, requirements for a competitive sale bid to an IFP and competitive sale proposal is what we refer to as an RFP, but they do have some differences, um, under the public works section, mainly based on evaluation criteria. But then there's additional alternative delivery methods that we can use, including design build construction manager at risk, which we recently just did, um, construction manager agent and job orders contracting with public works contracts. There are additional, um, contract requirements that the city to protect the city. Um, so including retainage bonds and change orders bonds are included as part of solicitation and are included in our contracts. The city can require all or just some of the bonds depending on the projects. And then as you may remember, change orders, we, we did incorporate the recommendation from our internal audit report about change orders. We tried, tried to clarify that in the current manual that they are cumulative up to $50,000 and require council approval and that that, um, authority limit resets after every council approval and specific for public works, modifications or changes in excess of 25,000 do require a resolicitation of the projects. So this, the, the bid protest process, we did try to clarify each step of the process from the previous manual to allow adequate time for review and appeal and then a final decision to be made. So the contract will not be awarded until the final decision is made. Vendor disqualification process was not discussed in our previous manual. However, it was included in contract, in the contracts, in the specific contracts. Um, and it just, we tried to clarify the process and why, um, or the reasons for vendors can be disqualified. And those are the items that you see on this, excuse me, on the screen. Um, procurement must maintain a disqualification list. Legal procurement, the procurement director and the department head, um, must review and approve the decision to disqualify. The vendor would be notified in writing of potential disqualification and would have an opportunity to present their case in writing as to why they should not be disqualified before a final decision is made. They can apply to be reinstated halfway through the disqualification process. So for instance, if they were disqualified for up to two years, they could reapply, they could apply to be reinstated after one year. So in summary, um, this has been a collaborative effort between procurement staff, the city attorney's office, internal audit and our using departments. I sincerely appreciate everyone's help and work on this manual. It's been a long time coming and much needed. We've attempted to make it easier to read, easier to understand and easier to follow. We tried to provide straightforward and clear policies while incorporating our public procurement best practices. So staff is recommending approval of the procurement policy manual, but I will stand for any questions that you may have. Okay. That's, uh, once we pull the slide down, council member Armitter. Uh, yes. Can you speak to what kind of checks are in place in the new procurement manual to ensure that if, if a bid is, uh, procured of the vendor or, or, uh, one project that is not transferred over to some other project. Is that the responsibility of the, of the department who's in charge of that project or is that procurement that checks on that kind of issue? Um, that would be procurement if I'm understanding your question correctly. There is no reassignment, um, except for, you know, when there's a construction bid and they're hiring subcontractors, they, there has to go through a business assignment process through procurement, if they, you know, change companies or names or something like that. Okay. Thanks. You're muted. Sorry. Yep. I got you. Thank you. Sorry about that. Uh, any other questions? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem. Uh, I move approval. Of agenda item five B. Yes. Sorry, thank you. We have a motion. Council member Davis. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second for agenda item five B. Uh, Mayor Pro Tem, how I say you? Aye. Council member Davis. Aye. Council member Amater. Yes. Council member Ryan. Aye. Council member Melzer. Aye. Council member Briggs. Aye. Yes. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah. Were you going to, you were going to read the sites or read the statistics calls in, et cetera? I don't know if you. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, oh, uh, for this item, there were no public comments submitted online prior to the meeting and we also do not have anyone from the public call, from the public call and to register their position or speak on the item. Uh, so we, uh, uh, Mayor Watts is a, is an, I, um, I believe that was you, Council member Briggs, did you weigh in? Did you, did I ask you for your vote? Yes. My vote was yes. Okay. Um, I think we've got a unanimous decision here, uh, for agenda item five B. All right. We'll move on to agenda item five C. Uh, we are pulling five C as well as five D. Is that correct? Mr. City manager? That's correct. All right. So we'll move on to agenda item five E consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton and Texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the approval of a first amendment to a professional services agreement between the city of Denton and brand stead or Carol Inc. amending the contract approved by city council on May 21, 2019. Good evening, mayor Scott Gray, director of airport, uh, and facilities, um, the item this evening is relevant to the public safety buildings. It's an amendment to a professional services contract for the brand center Carol, um, group that is doing the pre-construction and design phase for our three buildings, including the police headquarters, the substation and the firing training range. Um, as you may recall, this contract was initially started in May of 2019. Staff did present, um, a number of items at a work study session, uh, in March of this year included, um, some options for the facade for the H HQ building, uh, the substation masonry and tower height issues, um, the firing range masonry height and signage. And then lastly, the sustainability items that were, um, uh, discussed for the HQ building and the substation. This amendment includes a number of additional services being asked of a brand center Carol, including the survey of a new acquired parcel next to the HQ facility, um, including some engineering for parking and storm drainage, um, provide some structural investigation for the headquarters buildings as we were unable to find as built for that building. Um, so they'll be investigating, um, those things for the construction phase as we talked about during, during the work session, um, facade options for the, uh, PD HQ facility and redesign option. And then, as I mentioned, the sustainability design, uh, features, uh, the addition of the, uh, firing range and some other options. The original contract was for approximately $3.1 million. This additional request is for approximately $650,000 for a new contract amount of $3,735,000 for $3,000, excuse me, $3,735,480, um, the pre-construction services are anticipated completed by the first quarter of 2021. And then the construction phase will be completed for all the buildings, um, by the second quarter of 2022. We do have on the phone this evening, um, Mr. Chris Quadra from, uh, from peak, uh, some value who can answer some questions if the council has on any of the particulars of the contract. Okay. All right. Um, if, if, if we could, yeah. Thank you. All right. Council member Briggs. Thank you, mayor. So if part of that, um, amendment was when we had our work session and council asked for to the other side options, is that how much of that 600,000 was, um, that request? Hopefully Mr. Squadra is on the, uh, on the phone and can, yes, I'm on and, um, I think the additional, the ad for facade design, um, we went through a, um, conceptual design and adding that facade work into the project, as you might remember, we added, we were going to originally add a 1.3 million that we came to you with a one point, I think 1.3 million dollar facade that was then redesigned. We had an 800,000 and a $1 million option. And I think the council, um, picked the smaller option. So it was a fairly involved design process that involved all the design professionals and incorporating those from concept design all the way through construction documents is $52,200. Okay. Cast member Briggs, any, yes, go ahead. Okay. And so, and then, um, so then the land purchase would be part of that. Um, the rest of it, along with the other items, the, um, the civil engineering for design and engineering at the acquired parcel, um, was an additional, most of that was the survey of the land that you purchased, um, that added parcel that we added to the project. So the survey, um, was $37,000. The additional engineering of the pedestrian and vehicular paving, um, and other site improvements was about, we'll call it 14,000. Um, so that was the additional, that's the portion of that money that was the additional design and engineering for the acquired parcel. Okay. I'm sorry. I was just looking for the breakdown of, of what that added up to, and I hadn't been able to see it. And so, um, that, thank you for it. You'll go to, you'll go to page 36 of 37 in exhibit D in the contract, uh, amendment. Um, I don't know if anybody has that handy on the zoom side of things, but it is the, um, it's the contract itself that that breakdown starts on two thirds of the way down on page 36. And it's continued on page 37. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Uh, does anybody have that? I mean, I'm scrolling through here, but, um, what'd you say 36 and 37 of the actual amendment? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Exhibit a scope of the project. That's it. Go down to exhibit D, page 36. Exhibit D. Page 36 of the PDF. It's actually page 39. I think. Okay. That's what I thought. Okay. Um, well, if instead of me trying to find it, I think that's a good question as far as the breakdown on the, the, um, the four items. So we've got two of them. The first one, it looks like it was 51,000. The third one was 52,000. The analysis, because we don't have as built plans for structural, uh, instead of me having to look through this, uh, exhibit again, what, what was that? 34,000. Okay. 30. Hold on. Let me get to the presentation. Uh, okay. So. Okay. I'm, I'm missing something and less than that. If I may, I'm sorry, it's, it's, it's 69 is the page on that, on the contract for us. Okay. Look at the contract in the, in the, in the AIS fast forward 69 up there, it says exhibit D. Okay. Fair enough. But we've got three numbers already. We've got 51 for the first one. I'm sorry. What was the second one for the structural investigation? Structural investigation was 34,000. And then the next one was 52 to, I believe the two facade options and the sustainable design PD training and other options. Well, the, um, firing range is a big chunk. That's a number you'll want firing range was, um, 242,500. Okay. No, what I'm, what I'm trying to understand is, um, and I apologize for interrupting. I'm seeing an amendment here for $650,000 and I'm saying that the amendment to the professional services contract, at least pursuant to the presentation. Now there may be a greater breakdown in, in the exhibit D are four bullet points. So I'm assuming that the design for the, for the firing ranges in that fourth bullet point, is that correct? Yes. So the fourth bullet point, the three before it add up to about $150,000. So the fourth bullet point is about a $500,000, um, amount. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. I, I'm going to have to have a lot more explanation on when we, when we let the contract, I mean, we didn't change a whole lot. I mean, when we talk about sustainable design, PD training and other options, are these new things that were added? And I'm, this question is directed to staff. Are these new engineering services that were added, required that we didn't contemplate? I mean, what, what's there that we didn't talk about in the beginning? The firing range. I thought we'd been talking about the firing range all along. And so this is, this is for staff cause I'm trying to understand the process here. I mean, I understand if we change the facade options and redesign, I get that if we acquired a new piece of property, I understand having a survey and do some engineering to, to provide a structural investigation because we don't have any as bad plans to make sure we, we can build what we want to build. I'm trying to understand what in the $500,000 are we asking for or that we asked for that was new back in this last work session that wouldn't have been included in our first assessment. Mayor, the, the firing range option was added in late 2019 to, to add that as part of the, is part of the three buildings, but the contract did not include that work. So this is adding that work so they can do the design, the additional design for that. When was the contract executed? May, May of 2019, actually, yeah, May of 2019. When was the bond, when was the bond election for these items of 19. So we issued a contract four months before we issue. We had the results of the election and what we actually wanted to add to it. Is that my understanding? I think what was happening is the additional, the additional firing range was added as part of the bond effort and then it wasn't part of the original skill. The initial contract did not include the architect for the firing range. That was a specialty third party architect that was brought in specific with that expertise. So that's what you're seeing is a difference there. And this contract is essentially absorbing that work into Brandstetter Carroll's contract. So when you said that it was a specialty architect, is this, is this company the specialty architect that you're referring to? They have, they have, Brandstetter Carroll has subbed with them and that is what they do is build firing and design firing ranges. Okay. All right. Council Member Briggs, I apologize. I appreciate your patience and then I'll recognize Council Member Armitter. Oh, no, thank you, I was just trying to understand, because during the work session, I don't remember any of this coming up. I thought we were just talking about facade and things like that. So when I saw that large amount, I was, I was, I wasn't expecting it. Okay. Council Member Armitter. Yeah. Yeah. So same here. I was wondering also, if staff could comment on at what point did the firing range cost go from the five million to the seven and a half million? It's listed here. Just a refresher on that in the presentation. Mr. Gray, would you like me to jump, would you like me to take that question? Whoever can answer. Okay. So I think the timeline is important to, we signed a contract with Grant Sutter Carroll in May of 2019. We told them they had to go pencils down on August 1st. We didn't want to spend any money past August 1st on a design for a project that may not move forward. So they spent schematic design money. And at that time, the only thing that they were working on was the PDHQ and the substation renovation for the police department headquarters and the substation on a smaller piece of the PDHQ is on a smaller piece of property. Subsequent they're going pencils down and before the bond election, the decision was made as I'm sure council members remember to remove fire station number eight from the public safety bond program and fund it differently and use that money to build a firing range Brent Sutter Carroll's contract original contract had those two projects in it, but did not have the fires fires station number eight in it that was done by a different design team and it did not have the firing range. A specialty consultant was engaged to do some programmatic firing range budgets. Those budgets range from a good better best options from 5 million to 7 something million. So those they came up with different lane number of lanes, different levels of firing range and their initial opinion of probable cost had a range of about $2 million. So when the bond was passed and what the voters thought they were getting and are getting was a renovation of the public to the police department headquarters, a renovation to the substation and a renovate and a sorry a new substation and a new firing range. Brent Sutter's contract at that time did not include any of that. So when they went pencils up the first thing that we did was negotiate the cost of engaging the firing range design specialist G2 and the their fee is $202,000. And Brent Sutter Carroll's architectural and mechanical and electrical and civil and structural consultants fee for that same firing range was $242,000. So the combination of the specialty design consultant and Brent Sutter Carroll's fee added together is $442,500 for the firing range. I think the thought Councilmember Armitage's question was and I'm sorry, I'm not gonna speak for you Councilmember Armitage. Go ahead. Go ahead. With your father. Yes, I was asking and maybe maybe you were gonna end up answering that about how we got from the five million to the seven and a half million but you were probably I'm assuming you're probably heading towards that point. I want to also make sure to ask because you met one of the things you mentioned along the way if I'm understanding correctly is that I think you said that there was some discussion or changing of minds about the number of lanes and looking at different numbers of lanes. Actually there were a number of options on the table that were as part of that scope that conceptually before the bond was passed had not been nailed down. So to the calendar as to when we went from five to seven and a half million that would have been in January as we got more design information we nailed down the budgets on the police department headquarters and the substation with enough certainty to make the decision on what we wanted to do with the fire station and that fire, I'm sorry the firing and that firing range in January ish January February ish we settled on the budget and that seven million includes contingencies and design fees for the firing range that were not included in the original five million dollar number for the building itself. And so it's it's still 10 lanes. I'm not sure the exact number of lanes off the top of my head but I could get back to you on that. Thank you. 15 lanes. What is it? I think it was originally 12 and now it's 15 but I don't want to I want to make certain before I answer them. So we went up okay so we've gone up you know there was some fluctuation it was first going to be 15 before at the time when the bond committee was still discussed was discussing it was going to be 15 lanes 15 million dollars then it was 10 lanes 10 million dollars then it was five million but still 10 lanes so now we're up to around 15 lanes at seven and a half. I don't I don't believe that's an accurate characterization when the bond committee was discussing this part of why we brought Mr. Squadra in is that we were dealing with construction costs extrapolated off recent projects at Richardson Grand Prairie there was a couple of other projects that were out there for square footage issues the firing range and if you recall during the bond process Chris and his team came back and said based on where the the current construction market is you were way under budgeting for the rehab and the substation project so we actually ended up going in and adding about 20 million dollars to the substation the rehab budgets. On the firing range side of house all they had to rely on at the time because we did not have G2 on board was simple estimates extrapolating I believe it was on a Collin County firing range I believe that's correct I was most recent when they found so when they actually got the so we put aside five million dollars plus design costs in order to get that done brought in G2 had Branstad Carroll who that's all they do is these kind of projects has Branstad Carroll absorbed in their contract and they were able to start building that budget and telling us what we could get for our money because it had been so long since the last firing range had been built that's the accurate progression kind of how that went through we've been able to get more accurate information over the last year and a half okay I and thank you I was under the impression though that that when the voter and of course I I had I voted no to it right it went that when the voters voted on it at the bond election that it was supposed to be a 10 lane range but it was am I wrong you are inaccurate the bond proposition specifically stated 15 lane fire range in the bond proposition they voted on okay we're getting we're getting sidetracked we're not talking about I mean I think we were trying to do is understand the timeline of how we got these additional four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the in the amendment to the contract so I just want to make sure I understand that when I read in the in the presentation on slide one where it says the city requested adding a seven point three million firing range to the scope of the contract that that that increased the scope of the contract that particular item I think it was two hundred and fifty plus two hundred and something almost four hundred and fifty thousand dollars now what I just heard too that that seven point three million includes the cost of those design services yes which are the four hundred and fifty million dollars am I correct on that and the contingency okay so the seven point three million dollar requested adding a seven point three million dollar firing range to the scope that included the contract amendment for the scope of the work for the for the design services correct okay I just want to remind everybody to how this works you know it in we will we will go ahead and this is the best budget estimate we have today you've got another item coming up next which is what mr squadron's contract is he is he is helping us negotiate pricing for the architects the pricing the in the guaranteed maximum pricing for the contractors so once we get through the design process we're going to be able to and get into the gmp the guaranteed maximum price process we're going to be able to further dial in those budgets so it's kind of a thing where you're locking in your design costs your professional estimating costs up front and then you sort of work backwards based on your gmp and this has been done for cost certainty to control change orders down the road and to try to lock in our pricing as accurately as we can no I appreciate that I mean I think it's just getting the detail of that breakdown and sort of an understanding just historically how that happened so I appreciate that all right any more discussion on this council mayor pro tem yeah no I just want to I think and also complicating things we went back and forth on the minor things the gate the this or that so I think those kind of conversations added to people's recollection and but I do want to compliment staff because we don't want to get into the same situation where we still have bonds from 2012 that we're trying to make hold and so I appreciate that and I appreciate your the recollection on the the bond vote because people will catch snapshots of what we hear and all of a sudden red flags go up that hey the what I voted on is not what's here and so I echo that it is important to understand everything is as presented and and and I just think we got to be careful about that so I appreciate status record recollection and clarification and I'm grateful that we'll when we say we're going to get a bond package done on time in the five years that we're working towards that so grateful for those accuracies okay here would entertain action on this item on the number of the number of lanes thank you for that mayor pro tem move approval councilmember Davis second councilmember Melzer did you have a question no I was going to just offer a comment for some people who may be watching that you know if I may that whatever conversations are being had about policing and how you think about being done differently whatever everybody imagines that that it's going to require people and the facilities that we have currently are just inadequate for people and and and it's also going to require responsiveness and the substation that we're talking about designing it's 10 to 15 or rather takes away 10 to 15 minutes of response to a whole side of town and if you accept that there are going to be situations that require lethal force you want the people who who are empowered to wield that to be as trained as possible you know in an active shooter situation to be able to be as accurate as possible and so this is all needed really whatever you think about you know how you know we manage policing going forward so okay and i'll be voting yes okay all right uh let's see mayor pro tem did you councilmember Briggs just for clarification these have already been approved this is just an amendment to those contracts correct correct it's to bring the design budget up to full authorization now that we've got things nailed down with the particularly the contractor for the the firing range as well and you know i i just want to i know this is confusing and and if we go back a year and it's a mayor i know you guys are tired but i think it's important to get on i know you are it's important to get on the record we were moving at lightning speed last year last summer trying to get a bond package put together uh chris came in helped us um you know really avoid some mistakes in terms of under budgeting for these projects to mayor pro tem's point and and in some defense of deb i mean uh we went back and forth on budgets sizes of buildings number of lanes about every meeting so this this contract tracks exactly what we told the bond committee it tracks what the voters approved we're just locking in everything so we have your full the money's there we've got your full authority to spend it the next couple contracts you're going to see coming forward are going to be gmps and then they will start bidding out the building so it's it's a it's a different process than you guys are used to seeing where we actually go into new hard bids and you can bring you some we're taking this in pieces we're trying to control this budgets very carefully okay uh we had a motion in a second let's see i believe mayor councilmember hutz but mayor pro tem you you made the motion is that correct yes sir and councilmember davis did you second it all right i just want to make sure i forgot we're going on now almost 13 hours of a meeting so my brain is not working as quickly uh mayor pro tem has say you all right councilmember davis i'm sorry i didn't hear you i okay sorry uh councilmember melzer yeah just just to add for people who are just starting to watch council meetings now uh you know this item it's a huge amount of money and it went before the entire electorate it was overwhelmingly supported and i vote aye councilmember ryan aye councilmember briggs um yeah again this was um it's by the voters and i i'm confused about the process and how it has all happened in the past year um but yeah uh yes okay so that's a affirmative vote for the proposal for the motion yes okay councilmember armature i vote no to this but i just wanted to say for the record uh to thank staff for clarifying and that uh i'm voting no for the same reasons i have consistently uh voted no for the expense but i don't think that there's any funny business going on with with the numbers uh there's a lot has been a lot of changes along the way and so this is just all of us regardless of how we're voting trying to do our due diligence and and nail things down so thanks for staff for cooperating with us i still vote no okay thank you and the mayor uh is a is a aye so the motion carries i believe six to one we'll move on to agenda item uh believe c and d have been pulled is that correct uh mr city manager no wait a minute hold on uh am i looking at the wrong thing what do we want f oh i've skipped it i'm going backwards i wanted to go backwards in the meeting holy cow jiminy uh and oh also on agenda item e there there were no public comments submitted online prior to the meeting we also did not have anyone from the public call in uh to register position or speak on the item so we're on agenda item f uh considered option of an ordinance of the city of dentna texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with peak program value llc there we go mayor and council this is sarah hensley assistant city manager and i'm going to run through this fairly quickly this is uh a stamp asking for approval for us to move forward with a professional services agreement uh and later you'll see it as a bridge contract efforts to date in working uh with peak program of value uh you can see that we conducted an rfq back in april of 2019 which were projects that you've uh recently talked about renovations constructions and facility expansions the city received very limited bids and they evaluated it but we made no contract recommendation to the city council about during that time we started working hard on the bond program as you'll recall and needed some professional expertise to help us particularly in the area of cost projections and evaluations to make sure that we were sharing not only with the mayor and council but also with our citizen bond oversight committee cost that would be uh close to being what we were going to spend on those projects also expertise in the areas of pre-construction and and overall cost management for the different parts of those developments best value procurement project controls and the delivery templates which you have seen through the cmar design bid build and design build that's when we chose to go ahead and contract with pre-program value who is the consulting services in february and we based that on after making some calls to the city of lewisville and the city of richardson who's now been on contract with them for 12 years and looking at services so peak performance i'm sorry i always say performance but it's program peak peak program value then looked at how they could help us through the bond and i think you recall that they helped us look at the cost going up from what was originally thought of around 38 million and and then looking at the cost associated with the construction that we need to conduct was much higher than that and that's how we were able to then send that information out for the bond voting from the from the public we also looked at considerations and construction procurement methods which i talked to you about particularly you got to hear from um chris squadron in regards to cmar he was here and actually did a presentation for you and then um also our design bid for the contract the design bill for the dsd building uh just to give you some uh a little bit more information just by having them on him on board in that company we were able to save approximately 600 um and 606 thousand dollars basically over the last several months in regards to the work that was performed the bridge contract that i'm asking for approval today would basically focus on the items that you see which are the pre-construction consulting that occurred work that's been performed and work that needs to be completed uh the development services construction consulting which will be completed in january of 2021 and work that's been completed of course and then work remaining and then the public safety buildings pre-construction pre-construction consulting and that is to be completed um by september 2020 what we're asking is this that this bridge contract go for just those items and pay for that remaining work and then we and we're recommending the amount which we owed is 267,105 of some we owe but also work that's remaining and then the next steps would be for us to go ahead which we're working on now a new professional services request for qualifications which would go out sometime early july for the services that you see here pre-construction cost management project controls and value engineering and those particularly we'd be picked up for the public safety building that we're still going to be working on and in our construction phase and any additional vertical construction projects that we've identified which may include the work at the service center that needs to be included and also we have the building that if we're able to buy the homeless day center night center facility that will need some work and ultimately city hall west that that concludes my presentation basically we're asking for approval for that contract amount the bridge contract and then we'll be back in front of you in july for the approval of the rfq questions comments motions action councilmember mayor pro tem councilmember armature i had a i had a question uh does the public safety buildings does that include the new fire station or is that just for the police no ma'am it includes the the current public safety buildings which is the headquarters the the new uh substation and the and the firing range basically complete that from to that level thanks councilmember davis second any discussion all right we have a motion and a second on agenda item uh five f how say you councilmember davis aye mayor pro tem aye councilmember armature no councilmember briggs you're muted councilmember briggs uh no not for this agreement okay uh councilmember melzer aye councilmember ryan aye uh mayor watts is an aye motion carries five to two moving to agenda oh and we didn't have any uh public comments submitted online prior to the meeting agenda item uh five g considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton the texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the approval of change order number eight to the contract between city of denton and zachary construction good afternoon or good night actually i won't try to take any more time my name is dustin draper i'm with the capital projects division i'm a program manager and i will be bringing you the deal tonight for the mayhill oh hold on if i went backwards give me i'm sorry it's been a long night as far as y'all too hold on let me get back out of this sure uh there we go i'm bringing for you the mayhill improvements project for the construction for change order number eight um just as a project overview in blue we have the section of mayhill that's currently under construction and the red will be our next phase that precedes this one in the coming months uh that will be that's part of our mayhill colorado connection with the dcta bridge project the change order number eight here's a summary of the terms we had a change of means of message due to utility conflicts also a consolidation of change order requirements that are included in the following and with the final reconciliation of all overruns and underruns for a total change order amount of number eight for 1,832,541 and 66 cents as you can see on the current screen in front of you we have a the list of change orders with that i would like to say that there is eight change orders associated with this project this project was also a project that was three years in construction having started in september of 2017 and started planning in 2010 for a project that retains this length of time this the number of changers is not that substantial for the length of time that we had the job also i'd like to bring to your point of view that down at the bottom that this change order that we're bringing brings our total to a 5.1 increase over the original contract price which is very good on a project of 37 million dollars staff's recommendation is to adopt the ordinance of the city to execute change order number eight city and zack construction corporation amount of one million one million eight hundred thousand thirty two five hundred and forty one is 66 cents well that's a mouthful let me tell you from the mayhill road improvement project you have any questions any questions if we could pull the slide down mayor pro tem i'll move approval do we have a second council member ryan i'll second i do have one question um dustin is this your first presentation i don't is this your first presentation to council or oh sir i've been with capital projects for about a year i made one before okay but it's been a while i've slept a lot since then i apologize well no no look i appreciate i think your presentation was a couple minutes so i know i'm i'm thank you so much i appreciate that i'm i'm sorry it's just it's late i'm trying to i'm trying to keep y'all from being too long i'm sorry no you i appreciate it thank you so much and i do want to i think you made a comment at the end of the last slide which i think really deserves repeating and that is this project is over budget a little bit over five percent but that's over how many what what's what's the the years or the the time frame that this is so you're looking at the job that's construction started in september of 17 all right planned in 2010 yeah so that length of time and as many people that i wasn't even with the the capital projects portion when this job was no i think that's a i think that's a great feat because we've heard about cost increases year over year and to to have a construction project uh spanning three years and and having that i think that's great i mean in some ways that's just the cost of inflation almost over those three years all right so we have a mayor pro tem made a motion did we have a second councilmember ryan yes i'd second okay all right uh okay mayor pro tem has say you all right councilmember ryan aye councilmember melzer aye councilmember davis aye councilmember armator no councilmember bricks no all right motion carries five to two all right we'll move on and we didn't have anyone calling in a register any uh comments on that as well we'll move on to our next agenda item uh and the public hearing item has been postponed so this is our last official agenda item outside of concluding items so uh and it's uh consider motion reconsider the june 16 2020 approval of an ordinance for a change in zoning district use classification this this this discussion should be pretty simple we're not going to rehash the whole substantive aspect of this uh agenda item from the last time we met so this is a simple motion for reconsider and we do have um we do have three people wishing to speak on this as well so we'll get them after the uh after the council discussion so uh yes mayor pro tem can you the question for legal i just want to understand how the public comment works before we even decide to revisit the issue obviously no shocker i don't like this uh i don't like this process at all i've advocated to to do away with it but just help me understand we're in the charter it lays out that we take public comment on something that was discussed last week that hadn't even been adopted or brought back if you will because he said there's there's gonna there's people in line to speak to it but how can they speak to it if we in the law understands that it's been passed and it's and and we have a member that's advocating to change their vote based on some private conversation the discussion that would be subject for today by the public and yourselves would be the actual motion and the reasons why a council member is bringing forward the motions if if you recall the way we've approached this in the past a council member actually goes and explains their reasons why they wanted to bring this forward and the rest of the council uh discusses it because it is an individual consideration item the member members of the public under our rules of procedure are allowed to fill out a blue card and speak on this their discussions would be limited to again what is before you those related to the actual motion itself and the reasons uh proffered by the council member and so that in essence is a separate discussion than getting into the underlying zoning and rehashing all the zoning issues that you all discussed last week which are separate and apart from the motion to reconsider today thank you all right so uh do we even have a staff presentation on this i mean motion to reconsider is there a is there a staff presentation on this there is not okay all right so uh i believe uh uh who uh council member armature i believe you you made the request for the to place this on the agenda so if you could just briefly just tell us your your reasons for asking for this motion to reconsider and then we will have discussion among council and then we'll take uh the callers absolutely so first i want to uh both thank and apologize uh to my colleagues for this motion uh to reconsider uh at the time when we voted on this project as you might recall uh i felt kind of not one way or the other about this particular project it wasn't my ideal project but i felt like my you know my job was not to to vote on was this my ideal project or not for this location but to do the least amount of harm uh after the vote i got i was contacted by two members of the public who expressed to me some serious environmental concerns about the area and they assumed that i knew this information and i did not so i was flattered that they thought that i knew but as i reminded them i i i'm very grateful for information that members of the public bring to me um and uh most most of my my decisions come from that kind of input so it just so happened that these these people had had contacted some other council members but hadn't gotten around to contacting me so i went out uh to to the area uh i i did my due diligence uh i talked to another member of the public um who i had heard had had similar concerns and wanted to talk to me uh and so i was convinced and i'd be happy to read um but i don't have to what i wrote uh to the to the city manager as to my my specific reasons but i don't have to go go into that here if if uh that's not necessary for my colleagues at this point anyway okay all right any um discussion from council council member melzer yeah i'll just comment that uh it's it's not frequent but it's certainly not unheard of for a member to ask for reconsideration uh council member armentor is the fourth member i've seen move for reconsideration uh you know the time i've been on okay all right uh yeah the only question i have council member armature and just sort of an abbreviation just a real brief description of what exactly are the environmental concerns for this tract uh that that we voted on just so that we'll have that for the record because the record distance you know the charter state that or our ordinances just say to state your reasoning i mean if you want to stick with just environmental concerns i'll certainly respect that but just real quick just if there's a creek if there's a waste dump just something real just so i can get an idea yeah so so yes there is a creek there um when i was first looking at this at this project i was looking at the parcel in connection to the general loop area but as was pointed out to me from the bird's eye view you can see the key role that this parcel plays in connectivity all the way up to lake lewisville so it impacts it's kind of a it is just one piece but a a key piece in this this puzzle of linking the connectivity in water supply uh and flood flood concerns um and uh overflow concerns that affects even lake lewisville outside of city of denton okay denton county uh also uh displacement of wildlife was brought up as a concern um and another thing that was pointed out to me because i had driven by this area but hadn't gone into it and really seen it uh in person and and set foot on that land and you can see that it really is kind of virgin territory obviously it's it's owned by somebody but it is it is uh it's very quiet it is deeply wooded uh like i said there's a creek there so it's not part of the kind of bustling urban environment that we think of when we think of the loop all right people who show that that appreciate that thank you all right any discussion before we take public comment councilmember davis i don't think it'll surprise many that i'm going to support the the motion to reconsider when it's made um i voted against the rezoning last time but i want to make it clear because we've got the three callers and maybe this will cut short their comments a little bit i'm not sure who they are um that i i'm in support of this project in general it's just i asked for additional information the last time that we were together and talking about it uh if the motion hadn't been made to approve i probably would have moved to postpone uh to a future date to get some more information and some additional context for exactly the things that councilmember armenter is talking about this developer is active in this entire area not just these parcels and to see some context with how they intend to handle some of those things in the larger development i think it'd be really important for us to know how to properly zone this so i'll be supporting the motion reconsider simply so we can get more information and i anticipate i'll be supportive of the project in the future okay all right thank you okay we're going to go ahead and take the uh the callers uh caller are you there yes sir okay you're on with the dent city council uh june 23rd in our public portion comment for this agenda item once you state your name and address i will start your time and you will have four minutes thank you sir my name is brand richter my address is 3925 north elm street denton texas 76207 okay you can proceed yes go ahead thank you sir and i understand it's been a long day for everyone so i again thank you for your consideration and time um i'll try to make this as brief as possible um i i did used to live just behind the sensor generating station in southeast denton and would frequently walk along shady oak strides and the reason why i became interested in this area is because it shows what the concrete could look like if it was kept in its natural state this is the same creek that runs right under downtown and i know all of us are very familiar with some of the issues that have arisen from paper over this watershed with concrete uh this motion to reconsider zoning change to 98 acres worth of land is not just about these three tracks but what nearly 500 acres worth of undeveloped land surrounding the pecan creek watershed would look like without strategic planning this area not only provides vital habitat for imperiled species like spot turtles or or sharp shintox but also provides dentons residents with a number of ecological services that are extremely costly for the city to replace and this is from flood prevention to stormwater mitigation once the areas along this watershed undergo development the way the water moves through this space will change and the services and value of those services provided would be diminished and now the opportunity regional water district has designated this area of pecan creek as having greenbelt characteristics i feel that it would be a waste of an opportunity for the city to allow piecemeal development along this watershed without a comprehensive plan for its preservation what i hope that this council could envision is an interconnected intact greenbelt corridor from southeast denton to lake lewisville now existing esas in the area do provide for a 100 foot buffer from the centerline of pecan creek however according to the texas a&m agri-life extension service in order to preserve both water quality protection and the forest wildlife that exists already in that space a minimum of 165 feet of preservation would be required this degree of conservation is not currently within denton's development plan now a pause or or delay in any development in this area would allow this council to pass critical pieces of preservation language such as the urban forest master plan as well as a simply sustainable plan i would urge also for this council to seek guidance on cost sharing or matching programs through the army corps of engineers continuing authorities program uh to seek funding from non-profits such as the opportunity conservation trust or the texas nature conservancy or to use approved bond money for public land acquisition of floodplain or upland habitat properties along this watershed or in the very least coordination with all the stakeholders along pecan creek to develop a plan that conserves to the greatest extent the continuity of this existing greenbelt i want to thank you guys for for your time and reconsidering this motion uh and and that they have been a very long day for all of us and so again i thank you for that consideration thank you brand i appreciate you calling thank you uh mayor pro tem before we take the mayor pro tem before we take the next caller yes sir i i need a i have a point of clarification and i'm gonna ask legal to step in again okay sure go ahead then we'll take the next caller after your question so point of clarification the caller mentions pecan creek which is outside of the area we discussed so pecan creek is on the north side of shady oaks and so i would need staff to look at google maps and tell me how pecan creek is relevant to this track and then i'm going to appeal to councilmember davis if the if if councilmember armator is pointing to a green green belt that is not germane to this topic i'm going to appeal to him to say hey don't allow uh someone to reference something not looped into this project to then ask this developer to go do it all over again understanding the information you want that's just my appeal that i where so if you look at to the west of this subject property you have the dme uh plant so there's no way that there's a creek that runs through this portion of it and so uh and erin already spoke to the fact that the caller should be talking about the subject property not outside of that okay uh mr city attorney i agree with what the mayor pro tem has has described you know this the creek itself is not part of this property and what the caller has described is more of what other cities will do is an overlay district that would impose some type of conservation restrictions on development within that area but that is part of a a separate item that that planning staff and consultants would be working on for the entire corridor uh it would be for this particular track outside of the scope of the property that's being considered to that extent i agree with the mayor pro tem okay well so i'm going to need something else on the record as to why we're we're revisiting council member uh i want to get through the public comment we've got these people they've been waiting and we can have this discussion because we haven't had the vote yet uh as far as my read on it was that this individual caller was stating the reasons for his support of the motion to reconsider was because he was not in favor of zoning this piecemeal but to look at it more in a uh holistic and comprehensive way which i don't think necessarily is outside of the scope of the motion to reconsider because we had that very kind of discussion during this work session uh last time so uh i i understand that but i i'm going to be hard pressed to try to govern that public comment when they can tie it to some degree to this tract as it uh was being zoned and if they say it's part of a larger area that they would like to see looked at differently that's one of the very reasons why we had some council members express uh you know a desire to not support it in the last meeting so i'm going to take the next caller um if the caller could come on please the caller you're on with the dent city council uh on this agenda item for public comment if you'll state your name and address once you do i'll start your time and you will have four minutes thank you mayor rob rainer 607 south locust street denton texas 76201 i wish to talk about the more along the procedure of what i saw last tuesday it was quite informative uh it uh talks about uh landowners that own the land for what i understand close to 25 years of the single ownership which is quite rare in denton and the time has come for their request for the mixed used regional zoning or mr as i guess you all remember and remember it by you know they have uh collaborated with the city planning in order to meet the city's zoning guidelines and according to staff from uh medium tuesday that i heard uh exceeded some of those items dnz approved this zoning uh known as the mr after reviewing the city guideline and it was mentioned last tuesday the canopy trails which i understand that's what this is called is the last large uh adjacent track of land to the retail centers on loop 288 and it was also mentioned by staff that the zoning request complements uh existing mr zoning along the loop to radiate corridor uh last tuesday you voted and approved the zoning now you're considering a motion to reconsider this approved zoning the zoning uh request was vetted by the planning department and approved the city planning and zoning who by the way are approved by each of the council members on the screen and they approved the request six to one now is the time to show your faith and trust with both entities that followed guidelines you council members created please don't ostracize or penalize this is only your quest the owners respected your wishes to provide a product that enhances the lives of dentin citizens i asked you to vote down this request for reconsideration let the mixed use region stand thank you very much thank you rob all right we have uh one more caller is this the uh is this the last caller okay we have uh the last caller on this agenda item and we'll wait for the caller to join us caller you're on with the denton city council and the public uh comment portion of our agenda uh once you state your name and address i will start your time and you will have four minutes this is clay thurmond 1524 snider street denton texas 76209 in the 38 years that i've lived worked and raised a family in denton i've watched and sometimes argued against the loss of open green natural areas these areas are crucial to the health of our city from the cleaning of our air through carbon sequestration to the diversity of flora and fauna in a self-sustaining biome to the betterment of our water through a vibrant functioning watershed people need this also on a variety of levels with the increasing urbanization and density these green natural areas are more important than ever once lost they cannot be recovered without great expense and a result is often less than what was originally though canopy trails is only dealing with three plots those three are connected to a larger hole we should slow down and consider that hole in context of maintaining connected viable riparian and upland habitat if the project is allowed to continue as currently envisioned then the piecemeal approach is easily fracture and disrupt those habitats what is broken cannot be put back together in the same form and quality too much time and too many opportunities are passed to spy or rather we have permitted it whatever one thinks of razor ranch it is meaningless and connecting to our heritage no brass sculpture or bas relief sculpture of steers can replace the living longhorns that greeted visitors to death and similarly if we have a development called can be trails that eliminates canopy and provides no trails then it is another fantasy that benefits only developers while potentially degrading necessary natural infrastructure leaving only a banner to what was lost we need a more comprehensive and holistic approach the development and conservation of natural spaces this is a good place to start to pull back and look at the big picture picture and ensure that we protect the largest canopy within the boundaries of i-35 in loop 288 all right thank you sir appreciate your call thank you thank you all right i see no more callers there were we just had three people who requested to speak we had none that called for the 349 7800 to register their position and we had zero people making comments using our online form okay so um council we got either discussion or council take action on this item chair would entertain action on this item council member melzer so do we take it that council member armature has already moved to reconsider or no we need a motion in a second for to yes okay yeah so uh so i'll move reconsideration uh i um and just to be clear it's on it's on loop 288 that frontage uh is gonna develop somehow uh but i think we can do a better job at the overall approach to land use given how rare that bit of virgin you know uh green space and its connectivity you know how rare that has become so i look i look forward to the opportunity to just do a better job uh better than leaving it at where it's at with gio and l i and better than just saying mr we're done so i okay council member armature i second okay council member melzer how say you hi council oh uh mayor pro tem yeah can i get a clear record we're reconsidering this because of the creek that's in the general area is that is that the record because before it was stated we're reconsidering because of the green space that's on the other side of the street that wasn't part of the original vote i just want to make sure i understand the purpose for the re the motion sure sure okay uh council member armature if you could briefly state your reasons that you stated before so it's for a number of reasons it's about connectivity uh the water uh is one part of the connectivity uh you've got the creek and you've got connectivity all the way up to the lake louisville uh and then there's also the connectivity of green space and there is the wildlife issue there's also the recreation uh issue the human enjoyment of it in addition to the natural services that is the color mentioned that that green space and uh water uh provide and when you know just as in traffic engineering if you change um you know one one street it affects not only that street but areas around it uh water flow is the same way and some of this water is going underneath yeah yeah so we've got a motion in a second uh council member davis and then council member ryan let's look this is a motion to reconsider so if okay council member davis i'm not sure the city attorney will have to tell me on this that council member melzer's motion is in order i think council member armature has to be the one to make the motion to reconsider having been the person who voted in the affirmative on the first motion that's what i thought okay but i will draw my motion but before we do that uh we we sort of anyway the petitioner is available and wanted to make public comment as well on the motion reconsider i think uh we just forgot to to pull him up so uh we're going to call him up as well and then we'll go back and we redo the motion in second uh caller you are on the line with the denton city council for this uh agenda item the public portion section of this agenda item once you state your name and address your time will begin and uh mr city attorney i believe this is the the applicant uh this really isn't a public hearing do they just still get four minutes as a item for individual consideration speaker yes okay all right so speaker you'll have uh four minutes once you state your name and address danny mccormick 720 north post oak road houston texas 77007 thank you mayor posam council members we have and will continue to work closely with the city of den we are sensitive to the same environmental concerns you are and we will continue to follow city's environmental guidelines one example of this commitment was our choice this year to cap the gas wells on our property at the corner of shady oak and woodrow due to environmental impacts to gas wells although it will ultimately result in a loss of revenue for us we wanted to show denton that our values and the city's values are aligned we would like for you to know that we have been partners with the city of denton for over 25 years and hope to continue that partnership our master plans are consistent with denton's vision for our property and and create a sense of place for denton with our new mixed youth regional development in closing we respectfully would request that any motion to reconsider consider be denied the mixed use regional mr zoning approved on june 16 2020 is consistent with the city's comprehensive plan and does maximize the development of this property any environmental concerns related to this property do not impact the mr zoning and will be addressed as part of the development process then adequately regulates environmentally sensitive barriers and floodways as part of the development process as such the motion to reconsider is not supported by environmental environmental concerns and should be denied okay thank you thank you sir appreciate your call all right so um we'll go back and uh council member armature so i move to reconsider do we have a second council member melzer yeah i'll second and i look forward to uh working with uh with the owner i think it's going to be very productive and i you know take him at his word uh and council member davis thank you for pointing out that procedural uh point i appreciate that all right so we have a motion and a second for agenda item 5h council member armature how say you yes council member melzer aye council member davis aye council member briggs yes mayor protem nay council member ryan nay uh mayor watts is a nay the motion to reconsider passes uh four to three all right that brings us to concluding items i believe because we do not have any public hearings because it has been postponed uh concluding items anyone have any concluding items council member armature uh yeah just just very briefly um i'm going going to be sending in another request another reminder uh to ask uh to see the the information that i missed in the the closed session about the curfew and security matters so i look forward to uh when that's gonna uh come come back on the the agenda as i understand it council has to deliberate uh according to the city attorney so anyway i look forward to that happening i was disappointed to see it wasn't happening this week i hope it's happening next week thanks uh any other concluding items i've got just a couple and and just in reference to that i think we need to have a little bit of clarification mr city attorney as the time goes by regarding that last request uh i would like to see um get get maybe just an idea and some some ideas of how we can continue to double up our educational efforts for uh you know the the guidelines for the covet 19 pandemic um it seems like we're we're hearing uh that people are scared but then we're also seeing behavior that doesn't is not indicative of that so if we could if there's something else we need to be doing that we we should be doing from an educational perspective i know that fort worth has a has a really a good i think kind of a logo regarding that and if we more signs i mean just just want to understand what we're doing and if there's anything else that we could be doing at this stage any other comments for concluding items okay we will stand adjourned at 9.32