Jun 26, 2020 City Council on 2020-06-26 1:00 PM (SPECIAL CALLED/EMERGENCY MEETING)

Welcome everybody to this emergency called meeting of the Denton City Council on June the 26th, 2020. It is 1 0 6 p.m. We've got one item on the agenda. And so we'll go through that item. I'll call the meeting to order and we do have a quorum. Item only item for consideration here's item one a consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, a Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation, confirming the effective period of the declared state of local disaster, superseding and replacing the sixth order of council of the city of Denton issued June the 23rd, 2020 approved by ordinance 20 dash 1199 to provide additional requirements and guidance, including requiring certain businesses to implement a health and safety policy, confirming the expenditures of funds, providing a repealer clause and providing an effective date. And just as a heads up, the I believe the airport committee has a meeting at 230. So what we want to do is get through staff presentation. We have one caller that we're going to take after staff presentation, and then we'll have our discussion. All right, so staff, if you're ready, you may proceed. Thank you. Good afternoon Mayor City Council, Sarah Keichler, Chief of Staff. One second while I pull up the presentation for you. Okay. So as you're aware, the city of Denton currently has a disaster declaration and a sixth order that is effective through August 31. And that was recently extended and that action was taken by council on this last Tuesday, June 23. During that same discussion on June 23rd, a staff also brief council regarding governor Abbott's recent announcement that local governments could require businesses to require employees and customers to wear masks. And just going a little bit further reviewing what that meant. It means that cities and counties may issue local orders, imposing fines on businesses for failure to require employees and customers to wear masks, but we cannot impose fines on individuals for not wearing masks. So since that announcement, more than a week ago, several of the state's largest counties have ordered businesses to require employees and customers to wear face coverings. At this time, Denton County is not considering that as a local order. And then staff just also wanted to provide a few other updates that have happened this week. Also on Tuesday, and we did include this in the presentation on Tuesday, was that for any outdoor gathering over a hundred people, the county judge or mayor in consultation with the local public health authority could impose additional restrictions and that had lowered it from threshold from 500 people to a hundred people. And then as of yesterday, governor Abbott issued another executive order, GA 27, stating that hospitals in the counties listed on the screen should shall postpone all surgeries, surgeries that are not medically necessary to preserve hospital capacity. And he did say he reserved the right to expand that list of counties. So right now it does not apply to Denton County, but that could change in the future under an amendment or another further order by governor Abbott. He also announced yesterday that he would be pausing further reopening phases. And then just this morning, staff learned as all of the public that governor Abbott issued another executive order, GA 28. And that order contained a few provisions. The first being that people shall not visit bars as of noon today. So all bars that are operating, those that have the TABC license with over 51% sales from alcohol must close as of noon today. Restaurants will go back down from 75% capacity to 50% capacity beginning on Monday, June 29th. And then the last provision was also amending his announcement from earlier in the week that all events over a hundred persons are prohibited unless the mayor of the city in which the gathering is held approves of the gathering and such approval can be made subject to certain conditions or restrictions that are not inconsistent with the governor's order. So those were kind of the recent actions taken by the state this week. Staff has put together a draft order for council consideration and discussion based upon some of the conversation that we heard on Tuesday and some further direction that we've received. So this order would include the provision that you've seen in the other counties, which would require that all commercial entities providing goods or services directly to the public must develop and implement a health and safety policy. And so what this health and safety policy is, is at a minimum, a policy, the policy must require that all employees or visitors must wear face coverings in an area or while performing an activity which will necessarily involve close contact or proximity to coworkers or the public. The policy may also include the implementation of other mitigating measures. The policy must be posted in a conspicuous location sufficient to provide notice to employees and patrons. And that the policy must be implemented within five calendar days of the adopted order or may result in a fine not to exceed $500 for each violation. Also in the draft order for consideration is that some exceptions to this face covering requirement in businesses. So the requirement for a face covering would not apply if covering the nose and mouth poses a significant mental or physical health risk to the individual or when an individual is consuming a food or beverage or receiving a service where the wearing of a face covering would impair the performance of the service. It also includes just a strong urging for all those who are 10 years or older to wear a face covering over their nose and mouth when they're in an area open to the public where it is difficult to keep six feet away from other people. So that would just be an urging in general outside of business locations. And then it further defines that face coverings may include homemade masks, scarves, bandanas, or a handkerchief. And this is in alignment with the CDC's recommendations regarding cloth face coverings. And the CDC recommends a cloth face covering that can securely fit around the nose and mouth to contain potential airborne droplets. And then lastly, this or the draft order would be consistent with the governor's orders as no civil or criminal penalty will be imposed on individuals for failure to wear a face covering. And the last thing for consideration in the draft order for city council is in regards to the events over 100 persons. So I kind of had covered this in the previous slide in regards to his announcement just today from GA 28 that gatherings of over 100 persons outdoors are prohibited unless receiving approval from the mayor of the city. And this should be done in consultation with the local public health authority. Staff spoke with Denton County Public Health Director this morning. He advises that no outdoor gatherings over 100 people should take place at this time. So we've included a provision to prohibit outdoor gatherings in excess of 100 people in the order. But that is up for council consideration. It could be that gatherings of over 100 are permitted by the mayor with certain restrictions. But this time we just included a provision that they're prohibited. And then staff wanted to share just some further information for you regarding the Chamber of Commerce survey. This was discussed by council on Tuesday with preliminary results from the chamber. This information is current as of this morning. And the chamber had 144 businesses responding to this survey. As you can see in the chart here on the left, it asks if they're currently requiring their patrons to wear masks in their establishments. And of the 144 that responded, 45% said yes and 54% said no. And then just in the second question, they were asked are you in favor of a municipal order mandating that all Denton businesses require patrons to wear masks? And almost 63% answered yes with 37% responding no. And there was a total five questions in the survey. And that survey was in the backup material that was uploaded just before this meeting. But just to share some information in regards to the chamber survey, just to keep it in perspective, this is just a sampling of our businesses. The chamber has over 670 members and then there are roughly 4,000 to 6,000 businesses in the city of Denton depending on how you calculate business. So if the council would decide to move forward with an order that would require businesses to adopt a health and safety policy, staff would move forward with some outreach and education efforts in order to inform our businesses of the order and what they are required to do. We would do so in a number of different ways including using our broad-based communications, press release, media, social media. We work with existing business networks, really the Chamber of Commerce, the various business associations in town. We would also try to get together direct mail or outreach to businesses just due to the time frame of prepping, printing, getting to the post office and then actually getting to mailboxes. That likely would not reach mailboxes until mid to late next week. And then we would continue to produce and offer signage to businesses to use. Staff has been doing that since the COVID-19 pandemic had started just to help businesses promote the safe practices of social distancing and so forth. If the order is adopted, our focus would be on education. I want to talk a little bit further in terms of what education and enforcement would look like. So if residents are concerned that the order was not being abided by by businesses, they could report those concerns through the Engage Denton app or by visiting Engagedenton.com. This is similar to the process that we did previously with the stay at home orders when we received complaints on businesses. So they could do this either way. If we did receive any complaints through another method such as by phone or by email, we would redirect the resident to enter it in Engagedenton or enter it on their behalf. Just due to the volume of complaints that we received previously and that would be expected going forward, we really need an efficient means to be able to assign to staff, make sure that we're following up on and just have a consistent way of moving those complaints to have staff go out and visit. So again, education would be the primary focus. That's kind of what the process would look like. If we did receive a complaint, staff would either call or visit the business to make sure that they are first informed of the order and what the policy must entail and what they must do. And then also, as we've done through the last three months, continue to educate them on some measures for health and safety and maybe what we've seen in other businesses and other industries and try to help give that provide them examples. Due to limited staffing, an immediate response to a reported concern should not be expected. And we'll try to get to those as quickly as we can, but it will not be an immediate discharge of a staff member to go out and respond. Code enforcement and development services staff would be the primary staff performing these outreach visits to the businesses when we receive a concern. Police would not be the ones responding to these. And then just to kind of set expectation, even if someone is not wearing a mask in a business, it's possible that they're able to appropriately social distance. They're underneath one of the exceptions. Maybe the business has tried to inform the customer, but they're worried about a confrontation. So you just want to set expectations that not necessarily because someone is wearing a mask means that the business will be fined. It does mean we can do some outreach and education and see what the circumstances are, but it doesn't mean it will automatically be enforcement and just want to set that expectation out there. So enforcement after education would be the last tool. So we believe a business has either one, not adopted the policy or two is not implementing the policy. So we would use a general guidance and framework before issuing a citation kind of really around these questions of has a business made an effort to comply with the order by adopting the policy and then implementing it? So you see the questions listed on the screen. Have they created a policy? Have they posted the policy and the location so all customers can see it? Are they posting signs on the doors to inform anyone walking into the business that masks are required? Are employees informing customers that masks are required? Has the business taken other mitigating measures such as social distancing or plexiglass or other barriers to create that safe practice? So we just want to acknowledge that there may be individuals who do not comply or try to work around the system while at the business and the intent would not be to punish the business for the actions of these individuals. So for example, even if a business had their employees at the front doors asking customers to put on masks while they enter the store, they may be in the back of the store and the customer has now removed the mask. And there's just different scenarios that you could see playing out where a business has really tried to make a good faith effort to implement the policy. It may not be expected to do strict enforcement of it. And so that's kind of an overview of how we would address the business education and enforcement aspect. And this is largely consistent with how we handled the COVID-19 business complaints previously under the stay at home orders. Education and outreach was our primary focus. We did not actually issue any citations through the last orders, but we did make over hundreds, I'd say of calls and visits to businesses. And that is the end of the staff's presentation. Yeah, we're going to go ahead and take a public comment at this time, and then we'll go into a council discussion. We have two callers. We'll get the first caller on. We have had 84 people making comments on our online form outside of the city council responses that we get through the email portal. And we've had 68 of those in support, 16 against. Six people called in at 349-7800. Four in support, two against. And there were two people wishing to speak on the phone, of which we are taking their calls right now. So we'll have the first caller on here momentarily. Caller, you're on the air. And if you wouldn't mind turning your meeting down so that we can not get the feedback. And once you state your name and address, you will have four minutes for your input. Thank you so much for joining us. Hello, Jennifer Lane, Denton, Texas 76205. I'm really glad you're arriving at this step, and it looks like it's going to pass the restrictions and particularly the mask ordinance. The points that I want to make is, you know, how many have written to you several times and very quickly even today. Please give some attention to the amend to include some sort of standard for point number 5D. This is the requirement if it doesn't apply significant mental or physical health risk, some reference somewhere. There's also a, you know, to sort of legitimize this, there's also a kind of a fraudulent card going around. I'm sure you've heard about that too. That's hit the news that people are showing up in places and even have in Denton with a fraudulent card claiming that they're exempt and no such card exists. So that would need to get out to the businesses as well as part of your educational process. The other advantage to the requirement of masking besides, you know, the sort of we have it in a very recent past here in Denton passed the smoking and non-smoking ordinance very late in the game compared to other locations, but good for us because it's in very recent memory and how that turned out. And really it takes the burden off the businesses of having to be the heavy and you've already realized that from your survey. The other issue is that this needs to be passed effective immediately, more like UNT's systems ordinance rather than Tarrant counties, because we don't want foolish actions like the Fort Worth ISD just engaged in moving their graduation ceremonies to five hours before the ordinance takes effect, thereby risking many, many, many people, including children. The other issue that I want to mention is that when you have an ordinance like this, a masking order, people will also automatically spend less time indoors around other people because masks are, as people have vociferously noted, somewhat uncomfortable and they'll want to get their business done and get out of there so they can take it off. And that too can be part of the education that, you know, this will promote, you know, expeditious shopping, expeditious behavior indoors around other people. And of course the workers, that's part of the protection, that's a huge part of the protection here. By having the customers wear masks, the employees are made safe and they are the most important consideration because without them the businesses can't function and the customers can't be served. So this all needs to be employees first. One last consideration is that, yeah, I mentioned the part about making sure that it's enacted very quickly and that it will help train people to spend less time around other people and crowds indoors. To a certain extent, masking outdoors needs to be promoted and now that you've restricted gatherings to a hundred or less, hopefully that will also be part of the education effort. The signing side of things, I doubt that you will need to exercise that much but be prepared to do it a few times until people get the idea. And then I think that's pretty much all of what I have to say except that this is really very important and I really appreciate that you're having this meeting, that you're looking to take this step. I think this is really 11th hour, given that there's been no contact tracing and the numbers are going up so rapidly to be able to do anything meaningful to prevent spread. So thank you and good luck. Thank you. All right, we have next caller. We'll be on momentarily. Caller, you are on with the Denton City Council on our emergency hearing for public comment. If you would state your name and address once you do, your time will begin and you will have four minutes. My name is Ryan Hearn. I live at 1013 Panhandle Street in Denton, Texas. I was calling because there seems to be a glut of strange information that people are attempting to disseminate and I have relevant experience to this issue. I previously worked in bio cleanup and decontamination, establishing negative pressure chambers so that no particles could escape my area of work and I also wore full Tyvek suits and respirators per OSHA regulation. I would advise that we have something enforceable when it comes to the public protection of people from this current affliction that we're dealing with. Even though cloth masks aren't necessarily rated by OSHA, they actually change the ballistic direction of the primary of the particles emitted from your mouth when you breathe and in areas of high concentration or closed environments with recycled air as well as outdoor areas that are for communal use. Wearing a mask is a bare minimum whenever it comes to protecting one. I've also frequented Japan over the past few years where mass usage is somewhat common. Most of the time when someone is sick, they wear a mask and while it's an imperfect protection system, it's still a necessary one. It's the most accessible and effective preventative measure we have at this moment and as maybe it bears repeating, it is the bare minimum requirement to protect people and we don't have a lot of large official mandated or lawful protections at this time. So I think it would be highly advisable to enforce mask usage in an official sense so that there isn't any question of debate among citizens who might not necessarily have the relevant expertise to cite whenever they try to assert opinions about particle behavior. We've got one more caller that we'll have on here shortly. Caller, we're here with the Denton City Council on this emergency meeting. Public portion comment of our only agenda item. Once you state your name and address, your time will begin and you have four minutes. John Homan, 76207. I'm okay with a mandate as long as there's plenty of realistic exceptions. Then I have questions like how will we successfully protect people with legitimate reasons for not wearing a mask from being discriminated or retaliated against if there are those exceptions in place? I mean, people are losing family members and friends over this debate between whether they should or not and people talking about all the Constitution, etc. There's a lot of, I don't know if anybody's addressing the huge divide that's unraveling our community. I'm not saying either side is right or anything like that, but I think that needs to be talked to. We have to hear both sides of the story and try to question each other's assumptions. And then since there has to be a medical or mental mask wearing exemption in place, at least there was in Dallas, then no one can go out and assume safety because anywhere you go, there may be someone exempted from wearing a mask, thus kind of invalidating the mask mandate. And then of course the deaf and hearing impaired people cannot communicate with family members or others with masks on anywhere. And then there's domestic abuse and rape victims, often with PTSD that masks have triggered, and they still need groceries and not everyone can afford heightened prices for grocery delivery and should not be required to. The CDC declares that no masks are needed and six foot social distancing measures are maintained. I haven't had a problem maintaining a six foot distance recommended by the CDC, so I don't know if people are easily six feet away if they're still going to be required to wear masks. That seems nonsensical and against the CDC in my opinion. And then, you know, we need to look at this more illicitly like maybe offering free vitamin D and zinc that's proven so effective to boosting immune health. I don't want this. It scares me. This myopic view of everybody just wear masks and we're going to be okay for a vaccine that they're promising us by January 2020 seems just completely ignorant to try to push a vaccine on people with like just a year of time when the fastest vaccine took four years, and even our flu vaccines have a 30% success rate so it's still not going to be the cure-all. And I just want to be careful that we just don't think that everybody just wear masks for the rest of our lives. And it's also it's like replacing herd immunity with pharmaceutical immunity. It's just something to think about. And then what about the people who've recovered from COVID and developed antibodies? Would they have to wear a mask if there's no evidence of repositive getting sick with COVID again? And I think that's got it. I just don't I'm just scared of blanket resolutions and absolutes and no exceptions. That's all I'm trying to warn everybody off of and and I'm against and thank you guys for listening today. I wish you the best in your deliberations. Thank you, John. I know it's difficult. Thank you, sir. Okay, that's that's our last caller. So we will now open the meeting up to discussion or questions for staff. Councilmember Davis. And take a quick moment. I'm going to kind of withhold my questions and things, but I want to take a quick moment to thank staff for I'll call it a quick pivot. This has been a very frustrating week. We've been waiting for guidance from from Austin and those who watched our Tuesday meeting know that the conversation on this topic of masks took kind of a different turn than it is today. That was primarily because we didn't have language in front of us and because we didn't have input from our business community. We were me personally speaking only for myself. I I took a pretty strong stance that I didn't want to put something on the backs of our business community on the wake of the in the wake of the shutdown, the heels of all the other things they're dealing with. I didn't want to put a health police responsibility on them. In the meantime, since then, we have heard from our business community. You saw the ones in the in the survey earlier and the there are many more that we've heard from I believe my colleagues probably to have heard from through email, personal conversations, phone calls. They are they are begging us to keep their employees safe to keep their customers safe and to do the only thing that your city council can to slow the progress of this virus. So I want to thank staff and especially the city attorney and public affairs staff for putting this presentation together for us today for getting the language together for us and to borrow the mayor's term. I think this is going to be a robust conversation and I look forward to it. All right, comments Councilmember Briggs. Thank you, Mayor. I have I have several comments but I just want to start with one question and then we can continue for our city attorney because I know that some of the messages and phone calls we were getting is that requiring a face covering is unconstitutional. If you could, if you could address that. I certainly have my legal opinion on that because we deal with constitutional issues constantly here in the city. But my opinion is just the opinion it will ultimately be decided by the Texas courts just like the other issues that have faced. So in my legal opinion, I don't see a face covering being mandated through the businesses any different than what would happen during a natural disaster or what a major weather event like a hurricane will we impose curfews price controls the limits on goods that can be bought so there won't be a run on the goods. I don't see it any different than that. But then again, I'm not a judge and the ultimate decision will be made in the Texas courts. I do believe there will be a challenge to one of the counties or the cities that have implemented this. And then those that those challenges will then in my opinion will go all the way to the Texas Supreme Court. Yes. Yeah, if we could sort of housekeeping. If we've got to if we could go ahead and get the questions out of the way because I'm sure we each of us have some comments we want to say as we get into deliberation. But let's see if we can't get the questions posed because some of those answers might help us with our comments. Councilmember Briggs, I think still did you have any more additional questions Councilmember Briggs? Yes, go ahead. And then Councilmember Meltzer will come back to you. Okay. Um, I know in the presentation it said that we have limited staff. I'm just curious how many staff we actually do have to handle complaints. And then do you want me just to go down mayor and just keep asking or? How many do you have questions? Just just two. Yeah, if we'll just answer them as you as you ask them so that we can have real time answers. Mr. C. Major. We've probably got about 10 staff that we can kind of rotate through and deal with complaints any one point in time. But we're going to be asking is please don't email staff directly. We're going to set up the box on the on the website through the engaged Denton so we can manage these in an orderly fashion right now. So they did a good job the first time. But what we were trying to prevent this time as we were getting bombarded from all different angles with complaints. So if we didn't really try to get these funneled through engaged and I think it will make everyone's life a whole lot easier. Okay. Um, one of the other questions is what what can we do about fraudulent medical documents that are that are being shared right now and that that's even with businesses that, you know, are requiring mask on their own. All we can do is as these complaints come in, such as one of the callers that called in, I am familiar with that. Once we start accumulating examples of these types of documents, it's something that as Sarah Keighler explained, we could educate businesses to be on the lookout for these kinds of documents. These documents are fraudulent or bogus and and let them just make the ultimate decision whether to honor them or not. Okay. Um, my last one it has to do also with with enforcement because I I'm curious if we have issues currently right now with enforcing enforcing the governor's orders as far as occupancy and how we're how our staff are handling that. We are looking into any complaints that come through engaged in it hasn't been a major issue, especially since he's been loosening up the economy and loosening up the standards. This ratcheting back down, and particularly with bars, that sort of thing is we don't know what to expect at this point, but we do expect an increased workload. I just want to add in to City Manager Hellman's explanation. In the last few weeks, as the restrictions have loosened, we've really seen maybe a handful of complaints. Majority of them came when the restrictions were coming out and being tightened down. Um, and we did our best. I do want to set the expectation though, if someone sends a complaint to us, our response may be, thank you, we will look into the business and we will inform the business. So that may be our response to the residents. I just want to set the expectations. Um, you know, we will take action to do something, but it might not be the exact exact action that a resident may be looking for. Um, so I just wanted to set that expectation. Okay. Council Member Briggs, are your questions? Well, my last one was about the 100 individuals, were they outdoors? And, um, it was, do we have any sports events or anything that we need to consider or, um, without just outright banning and allowing the mayor to, um, make that, make that call? Well, so let me, I can answer that a little bit. Um, if, depending on what we decide on here today, I'm going to be very hesitant if not just stayed outright uncategorically that I'm going to be, it's going to be very difficult for me to provide exceptions to that gathering because if I do that for somebody, it just, it could really become an issue. Uh, and, um, so I just say that just to inform my colleagues that I don't have any intent to issue a lot of exceptions. If the, if the order stays the way it is, I don't have the authority to do that, which is, I'm okay with. Uh, but if it changes, I just want to let you know what my thought on that is, because once you issue an exception for one, you're going to have to issue an exception for others. And it's just, um, it could get very, very difficult. So wanted to provide at least some clarification from my perspective. This is the first time this morning that I had seen that language from the governors and I appreciate the governor providing some type of, uh, discretion, but I just wanted to share where I am with you. All right. Council member Meltzer. Uh, yes, I appreciate the, um, you know, the realism and the discussion about, uh, what enforcement would most likely look like. I didn't catch if you said if there would actually be, uh, uh, nominally, you know, as part of the order, a fine. And I also didn't catch if you said, uh, that there was a proposed implementation time, I assume there's some ramp up, you know, but maybe not. Maybe it could be sort of, uh, effective immediately. So those two questions I have, I'm going to repeat it. I'm sorry. Yeah. There's a couple other conversations. Yeah. The ramp, even though the ordinance would go into effect immediately, we'd probably want to get people. I mean, I think Sarah did point out that it's probably going to be a good, you know, three, four business days before we can canvas the community. Not everybody's a member of the chamber. Not everybody's got access to our Facebook page or watches it that closely. So I think we could basically say within the next few days, this is going to be the explanation and that will largely coincide with our ability to get a correspondence to all the businesses. We've already got the list ready to go. We'll just need to get the materials there in terms of the enforcement. I'm sorry. The fines just need to defer to our attorney's office or Sarah either one. Yeah. The question was, even if the enforcement is mostly oriented toward education and so on, would there actually be a, you know, potentially a fine at some point after a citation and did you recommend a level? Okay. So how, how, how many, how many non-compliance attempts would it take to start finding folks? Is that kind of what you're asking? No, $500, $1,000, $10. Okay. Okay. $500 is the fine, maximum fine. Okay. Same as Dallas. Thank you. Councilman Barometer. Thank you. I had had a virtual background, but I realized I couldn't see my hand when I was raising it in the background. So several questions. Um, one, so for, for Sarah, um, so you mentioned that there were a number of staff followups under the previous restriction. Um, and, and you said that no citations were, were off, were, were given. Uh, it's my understanding that even though no citations were given, that the curve was at least temporarily, uh, reduced, mitigated that, that there was an effect. Of course, you know, it might be debatable what the cause and effect was, but at least during that time, even though no citations were given, we, we did something, uh, to, to, to have an effect on the spread of COVID. Yeah. I would, I would remind you that a good part of the businesses were shut down. We had a stay at home ordering place, which really helped us. Um, and then we, we were mostly focused at that time on the big boxes and the, and the major employers. So it was a little bit easier to send two or three people out there on site, um, and, and, and talk to someone. As time started going on, we started seeing the economy open up. We started getting a lot of complaints from disgruntled employees who may not want to go back to work. Um, and, and so, and, and then we were receiving multiple emails on the same issue, which is why we, it's really critical that we use the Engage Denton app so we can triangulate and only send people one person to one business, uh, even though we might have six or eight complaints there because it was just simply running staff in circles. So that was the kind of issue that we think we've learned from and are kind of refining with this new process, but we will definitely follow up on complaints. Definitely put a call out there. I think the council member Meltzer's point, uh, point, if we just have a business that just flat out refuses to cooperate despite a few attempts, we'll get with the city attorney, um, and get his advice on how to handle that moving forward. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was my understanding of how it worked last time. Uh, and I just wanted to say thanks to staff. Uh, you know, I'm really impressed with all the troubleshooting everybody did. Um, and, and I really do loved, uh, this draft, love this draft proposal for today. Uh, other questions, um, will, uh, will people be able to include photos if they report something on engaged dentin? And if so, um, what, what kinds of concerns this might be a question for legal? I'm not sure. Should people have regarding personal privacy? Uh, it, when, you know, say taking a photograph of people at another table, uh, and people aren't wearing masks, did it be blurred? So you can't see the faces. Should you ask permission? What's the, what, what is the law say or what's your opinion regarding kind of privacy issues and sending in photos when you're out in public, including a public restaurant, there is no privacy unless there's something at the door that it's only limited to certain members of a club. But otherwise when you're out in public, anyone can take your photo and post it. Thank you. And I wanted to make, that was my understanding, but I'm not a lawyer, but I want to make sure people understood that. Um, photos are attached. It may help with how we're going to do some outreach and enforcement on what type of measures. Um, but we will not be taking an action simply off of a photo. Um, so I just want to make that clear. Thank you. Yes. And I think especially after hours, if it's, you know, uh, somewhere really late at night where staff can't come out. Um, and if you can, when you take a picture, if you can try to, uh, make sure that it shows some sign of the location, uh, so that it couldn't just be anywhere that can be hard sometimes. And again, as you said, you can't base it entirely on a photo, but it just, it helps. It helps. It would help to be, to do as much as you can with the photo. Um, what about, uh, for people who, for whatever reason, um, don't feel comfortable using apps, uh, what, uh, what phone number should they call? Because I, I know they shouldn't be calling 9-1-1. It's, it's not a, a, uh, policing issue. It's not an EMT issue. So they can use the Engaged Denton app. We also have the www.engagedenton.com, which can be used from a desktop or otherwise. Um, they can also, um, call our customer service line, uh, Monday through Friday, eight to five, and they can enter, our customer service staff can enter it on behalf of a resident into the Engaged Denton app. Wonderful. And can you repeat that for, just for anyone listening, the customer service number? Um, I don't have it handy with me. Um, but- Okay. I've got, I will, if, if this passes, I'll post it, but just- And we'll work on, if it passes, we'll have some education and outreach that will immediately go out that can inform residents. Wonderful. Thank you. Um, what about, um, you know, as, as a city manager mentioned, you know, some of the, uh, reports that came in last time, including some to me, were from what, what I would call whistleblowers who were concerned, you know, employees, uh, at, at a, uh, a business where, where they didn't feel, feel safe, uh, or just, you know, people nearby who didn't want to be retaliated against. Uh, how would you address concerns of, of anonymity for people who might consider themselves whistleblowers in reporting on, on Engaged Denton? You do not have to enter your name and contact information in Engaged Denton. It can be submitted anonymously. However, we always encourage our residents to enter their contact information, if possible, that allows us to follow up with them, um, so that we could either request more information or to let them know the outcome. That's especially important too, because when we were seeing, you know, some complaints come in previously that were submitted anonymously, for example, someone thought that, that a business was over a 25% occupancy limitation. Well, in fact, they really weren't over their occupancy limitation. It just appeared that way. Um, we had no way to respond back to actually inform them of the facts and what our follow-up words. So I, at all possible, um, it is encouraged to at least submit that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, and, uh, two more important questions. Uh, one, uh, so we know that the, uh, infection rates are higher, uh, nationally speaking among, uh, black, uh, black people and Latinx people nationwide. Is, is, is any effort been made, uh, by the, the County or the city that you know of, uh, to keep track of or, and release data on diagnoses and deaths based on race? I do not know. We can inquire with the Denton County public health department if they are tracking that information. But as you heard Dr. Matt Richardson mentioned earlier in the week, they also have some limited staff time in regards to the number or breadth of statistics that they can develop and put out there and continue to update. Thank you so much. And I would love to see that and also be interested to know, you know, maybe if there are nonprofits or grants available, either for city or for County matter to me as long as it's being kept track of, uh, we'd be really good information to have finally. Um, so under this, and this is a question that's about the state mandate that came out this morning about closing bars. Um, I, so I'm concerned, uh, about our, uh, service industry workers, particularly our bar workers and, um, my employers. And I'm, I'm wondering, and I know that this is a new ordinance. Uh, so it might take a little time for staff to figure out, but what can bar owners do under the current ordinance to say have takeout only or to maybe temporarily change their status to a restaurant by providing food and non-alcoholic beverages or changing the ratio. What, what, what options are there now that you know of and when can people expect to, to hear what, what options there are? That is regulated by the TAVC. Um, so business owner would have to reach out to TAVC, um, and determine if they have a different, uh, percentage of sales and if they can get a different classification. Okay. Thank you so much. All right. Any other, uh, council member Ryan. Thank you mayor. Uh, a few people have alluded to 5d in, in the ordinance, which grants the exception for, uh, mental or physical health risk. Um, and I think most have alluded to it from a standpoint of, you know, someone using false documents, what is going to be required of people with those who truly do have that issue and how are the businesses going to know, uh, not to cross the HIPAA line and end up discriminating against someone? Okay. Well, is that the $10,000 question? I'll take a stab at it. I think we need to, uh, you know, it's a very specific question and I appreciate that council member Ryan. I think this, that that question goes to the heart of what we're really trying to do here, what we can and what we cannot do. Because when I read the ordinance and it says significant mental or physical health risk to the individual, are we now saying businesses when someone comes in has to have some type of questionnaire they fill out and that they have to somehow provide documentation. I know in the Dallas ordinance that if someone is in a store without a mask and they meet one of these exceptions, they're the businesses obviously cannot be cited or warned or any type of cumulative type of, uh, action, uh, taken against them. So this right here, I think goes to the very heart because we've received a lot of emails from people who've said that they are unable to wear a mask for a lot of various different reasons. Do we want to now become the policy making body that tries to parse out what significant mental or physical health risk is? I think in some ways we just have to use the honor system. And if there's fraudulent documents out there, who's going to, who's going to be able to say, well, this document is fraudulent. This document is not. I mean, we, we have to at least, we can't go into this saying everybody's nefarious. We go into this ordinance saying this is what we're asking the businesses to do. And when the people walk in there, we have to trust that they're, that they're doing the right thing and that they're there. And if they don't have a mask on, they have a physical or mental impairment that precludes them from doing that. Just like we do anytime. We don't think that everybody's attempting to do something nefarious in a store when they walk in. So that's the question. And me personally, I'm not for establishing any kind of either card or documentation, or if someone says I've got a mental or physical health risk, then you know something, we have to take them at their word. This isn't like when you have a, we don't have time to develop the standards to issue some kind of significant mental or physical health risk card pertaining to a mask. Ordinance. So we're here for the attorney on that question because I like that question. As far as the documents and how to determine whether they're legitimate or not, I don't think it would violate HIPAA. I can answer that because HIPAA applies to those entities, medical entities and certain other types of entities that hold those, that personal health information in their possession. They're limited in how they can disclose those documents. The businesses, they have attorneys. They can contact the state EEOC offices, which are also maintained by TWC. They can contact the Texas Department of Health and Human Services for you to inquire into this information to see if there is type of documentation. These businesses are sophisticated. They will ask these questions of those entities that they need to do so. Certainly we can assist, but they're for profit and they know how to do these things. Okay. Council member Ryan, you had the floor and I sort of diverted, so you still have the floor. Yeah. I mean, that works. The TWC and EEOC, that's fine for their employees. But when you're talking about customers and they start getting very inquisitive, I'll put it out there. I don't own a mask because I can't wear a mask because I go into tachycardia if I put a mask on, if it's on for more than five or 10 minutes. Most of y'all know my health issue. I'm on several Facebook pages with people with that same issue and had one who posted the other day about passing out at the doctor's office because the doctor required them to wear the mask. It is a significant burden to anyone with a lung issue to have to wear a mask. What worries me is I go in, I have a legitimate reason, whether it's the business or someone else, because I've had this happen to me that I'm in some place and they're like, "Well, why aren't you wearing a mask?" Well, now they're invading my six foot space. I can manage to go to do the social distancing at Sam's, at Lowe's, at Home Depot by just avoiding and watching how other people are moving around. I move in such a way to avoid them because I can't, or turn my head a different way to avoid that concern. I'm just afraid we're going to end up with this going down in a bad way that it's going to lead to some public discourse, some discrimination on people over health issues, people trying to inquire deeper into what a person's health issue is without the right to ask certain questions. They can only go so far. I'll leave it at that. Okay. Council Member Davis. Thank you, Mayor. Now, Council Member Ryan raises an excellent point. I want to address a couple of things. First, something that he started off with and the mayor picked up on is if we're going into this with the primary concern being people presenting fake papers or how can I take the most pictures of people in the most appropriate way to send them in and report them to the city, that's not the spirit in which this is offered. The purpose of this is community safety and education and public health, not how many folks can game the system or how many folks are legitimately not wearing masks or how many folks can we report and get cited. If there's not a single ticket written in the city of Denton, I'll be very happy. I'll be very disappointed and frustrated, actually, if we had to issue citations. As far as some of the defenses to the citations, that's how some of those things would come up. If a citation were issued and they went in front of the city judge and they dealt with the city prosecutor, then the businesses would present their exceptions at that time. Listen, this person here, they had a legitimate reason for not wearing the mask. I didn't eject them from my store. But if we're in that conversation, we are too far down the wrong road. The purpose of this is outreach and education. But to John's point, I could pick up my household cat and put a vest on it and walk into Walmart and say, "It's my service animal. You can't kick me and my cat out of Walmart." They would be offensive to me if I did have a service animal to be questioned about that. And if I'm somehow trying to game the system so I can carry my cat around, well, that's foolish, but it's not really hurting Walmart at all. In this situation, it's going to be up to the individual businesses how they address those. Some of them will address it better. Some of them will do it with respect and dignity. Others will not. But it's like any other regulation. Some are going to handle it better than others. And I recognize those concerns, but I don't think those exceptions and concerns subsume the rule. I think the rule is still good, even if we have good solid exceptions to it. Right. Council Member Briggs and Council Member Melcher. Thank you, Mayor. I did have a couple more questions. And just to let everyone know, the questions I have are from emails and from constituents who have these questions. And I'm asking because I think they're also valid. It's not because it's from the place that I'm coming from. It's because I'm interested in the answer. I also, I received a message that if somebody has a license to carry or they're carrying a handgun and we're requiring them to wear a mask, is that are we forcing them to create a felony? I don't know. And that's a question that somebody wanted to ask. Does anybody know that? Is that a law in the government code? And is that an exception? The next question is, have we thought about individuals in communities that maybe cannot afford masks? And is there a way where if this does pass, we can donate masks or hand them out at food banks or clinics or other places? Is there a way that we can make sure that masks get into the hands of individuals that may not be able to afford them? Okay. Council Member Melcher. If you want to sort of get answers to those questions. I mean, I was going to comment on some of the previous issues raised, but if we're still kind of answering questions, I can hold off. Well, I mean, yeah. The first question is, and I have no idea what the state of the law is. If you have a license to carry, are you prohibited from wearing a mask anywhere? And I don't know if we know the answer to that and we might not, we might have to find out the answer. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. Nevermind. Come to me. Go ahead. Yeah, just sentiments are very similar to basically to yours, Mr. Rayer and to Council Member Davis regarding sort of honor system. And that, you know, that the primary thing we're trying to do, if we do this, I'm not afraid to complete, but if we do this is to set a standard, show some leadership in the interest of, you know, a very exceptional situation, you know, for the law abiding. And I would think that the expectation of a business owner at the most, you know, seeing somebody not wearing a mask would be to say, state with the policies that we have a policy about masks. And to me, if someone says, I understand, I can't thank you, that's enough. I think that's as far as it has to go. Okay. Council Member Armitter. So a comment with a grain of salt and a question. My comment with a grain of salt, because I am not a lawyer, but I had encountered that question too about concealed handgun license. And I looked it up. I wasn't able to find a state of Texas attorney general opinion. This was days ago. Doesn't mean that doesn't exist. I'm deferring to the city attorney and city attorney, just put your hand up if you find it, and then I'll stop talking. But from what I saw, other states, there have been opinions issued in other states that say that as long as you're wearing a mask for COVID reasons, and not with the intent of committing a crime, then it doesn't count as concealing yourself. But, you know, I would defer to an actual lawyer and especially the Texas attorney general on that, on what the law says about that. And what's your question? You had a question? Yeah, my question was, so I'm very sensitive to Council Member Ryan's concern, also one of the caller's concerns about, you know, what about people who, for medical reasons, can't wear masks, for reasons of trauma, can't wear masks. And I was going to ask, and I know this is not a solution to everybody, but if someone on staff could speak to the relative effectiveness of a face shield, I know that Council Member Meltzer might want to answer that, you know, has been involved in actually making those. And my understanding is that while it's not the same as a mask, to use the terms of one of the callers, it helps to shield against the ballistic impact of, you know, however he thought, but he's a ballistic, you know, the actual physical stuff that comes out of your mouth, that there's a physical blocker there. But I would love it if, you know, that could be accepted and maybe Council Member Meltzer can speak to, you know, how people can get those. I'll respond if you'd like, Mayor. Council Member Meltzer, when you go to respond on the face shield, I just want to make sure, because I know I saw some publications where you had been involved in some kind of initiative on that, but there's no financial, I mean, I think you don't have any financial interest in any face shield company or anything like that. No, not like that. Yeah. I mean, my role was helping organize people who made them. I didn't actually make them and funding it. So I had a financial interest in terms of laying money out and providing them at no cost. And that was during a time when they just weren't very available. There's a real sort of difficulty in getting PPE. And so to the question of how people can get them, you know, we sort of hung up our spurs once we started seeing that they were four for five dollars at SAMS. So that's kind of the answer to that. They're pretty widely available now. And I'm no, you know, technical expert, but just a little reading I did being involved in that it's more or less like a mobile sneeze guard. So, yep, it is a barrier against droplets, but it has limitations because you're not it's not kind of closely fitting around your nose and mouth. So like you'll see medical people will often wear the, you know, the fabric or the typical face mask and then the shield on top of that. But certainly, you know, helpful additional protection. Is there something else you wanted me to address that? That's what I have to offer on that subject. Okay, I've got a couple of questions and comments. I'll try to go back in the order of which I can remember them. The ordinance does not refer to anything as a mask. I believe it says face covering. That is correct. And do we define that anywhere in the ordinance in the order? I was looking for it. We do have under five C face coverings may include homemade masks, scarves, bandanas or a handkerchief. Okay. All right. But that's not an exhaustive list. Okay. Okay. All right. On the enforcement aspect, I'm going to be really hesitant to first of all, I think we need to memorialize in this ordinance. Some of the more basic enforcement policies that we're instructing the city manager to do. Because I think what I heard him say was the last time when we had to shut the stay at home order, there was a lot of emails, I guess from residents, I don't know, maybe from some council members. I'm not sure where they came from that seemed to keep everybody kind of racing around. There was no centralized sort of complaint vetting opportunity. I think if so, number one, I don't know exactly, Mr. City manager, I might look to you for guidance on if there's certain types of provisions in this ordinance that would, you know, be very memorialized. And what we're saying is this is how we're going to enforce this number two. I think if we have a recorded line, if we're asking people to call to utilize the engaged denton app, I don't think people need to be calling customer service live to make these complaints. If we have a phone line where we can go that is monitored on a daily basis where people can can pull those off, then I think we need we need to find a way to do that. I just don't think that as far as anonymity, people can not leave their number or not leave their name if they're just wanting to report something. Now we'll say in the order, I think this is the order in paragraph seven. It says violations of any provision this order may be enforced by Denton police officers. I don't think we want Denton police officers going out unless there's some type of disturbance. So I'm not sure how you parse that out necessarily. If that's if that's the will of the council. So that's that's one other observation. As far as the effective date, I'm going to be hesitant to to say it's effective now but then give everybody a week to implement it. I just assume say this is going to be effective. The middle of next week, you've got to have things in place by then because then you've got so there you're giving them a little forbearance but then on the the gathering of 100 people or you got so you got some things that are have an opportunity to be become active and some that don't. This is a this is a big step. As far as the University of North Texas doing it. They get to make one there's a one decision maker or a group of policymakers that make that decision. And they can make that decision fairly quickly. And it applies to just them here we are making a decision. If this decision moves forward, we're applying to every business and every individual in this community. So we weren't clamoring for this at this level a while back. So I think that if we can find an effective date that will work because you've got some things happening this weekend, either tournaments or some gatherings, you know, who knows what, I think it's just only fair to say, look, let's let's make this an effective date that we can that we can decide upon and give people a reasonable amount of time to make the accommodation. People still can wear masks in businesses, people still businesses can still require people to wear masks. So and then as far as the significant mental or physical health risk to the individual. I do want to leave that up to the businesses on how they approach that. I don't think we need to micromanage that if we're telling the businesses to create a plan, and then it meets these certain criteria, we don't need to tell them how to implement that plan. Because I don't think the goal is that I think that Councilmember Davis had had a great comment about what really the purpose of this is in its public safety, its education, it's trying to get people to understand the seriousness of this, to move forward so that because if we whether we do something or not, if things continue the way they are, we've already seen the governor begin to shut down things and decisions that he's already made in the past, we will be going back to some of those more difficult times where there's more than just potentially bars. Now I do want to say in the on the bar section on let's see which one is it? Is it in the ordinance? Or is it in the order where it gives the city manager some type of authority on am I looking at was I looking at something different? Something about issuing permits for people that have over? Where did I see that? Oh, here it is. It's an N. It says for business establishment that have more than 51% of their gross receipts from sale of alcoholic beverages, the city managers authorized to take the following actions. Now I don't know if this is new to this or this particular is this an old one? This is from an old one. Is that an old one mayor probably from like two or three orders ago, we've just continued it. Okay, but yet this year, but the governor has said anybody with more than 51% of gross receipts from alcohol beverages cannot be open. Is that did I hear that correctly? That is correct. While they cannot be open, they are allowed provided they work with TBC to operate a drive thru pickup or delivery option. Okay, yeah. So they have to get that worked out to where they don't fall under that exception of greater than 51% or greater of their correct being an alcohol. Okay. All right. Let me think here. What else? Yeah. And I too I'm not I mean, I really hope that this doesn't turn into something where we get inundated with calls saying somebody was in a store not wearing a mask because I believe there are probably many people in our community who will fall under that exception. And I think first and foremost, we need to be respectful of those who aren't automatically assume as in Councilman Ryan gave in his except his example, you people came up and challenged him on it. Well, that's how you run into some difficulty where if it goes too far, as was noted in the paper, I believe there was an article in the paper just a couple of days ago where there was a discussion about mask or no bask and before you knew it, somebody's got a gun waving around and, and things such as that. So our community is better than that. So I don't think we need to micromanage that process. Let me look one more time through here. Okay, I'm getting confused by some of them that are the older orders and some of them that are the new order. So okay, that's all I have. The only questions are enforcement, you know, and I guess I'd ask the city manager, Mr. City Manager, what would you, if anything, what would you like to see as far as just some basic basic policy provisions in the enforcement that, like, you know, you call the engaged at nap, you call a customer service recorded line. I think if it's in the order, or if it's in the ordinance and or both, I think that provides at least some additional education, because it does get picked up in the media and so forth. But is there anything in particular that that you would like to see in it that would give you guidance and sort of a bright line rule when it comes to enforcing this because we last thing I want is for your office or city staff to be inundated and trying to track down things because let's look, if somebody if there's a violation, by the time somebody gets to it, or it's reported, it's probably not going to be a violation any longer if it's a mask issue because people probably gone. And we don't know why they didn't have a mask on. So is there anything you'd like to see in that? I think no, I think we can, if you want to put in the ordinance, that's fine with me. But we will set up an online tool for folks to report into as well as a dedicated phone line if they don't have access to internet. We're just not going to be chasing all the emails around because typically what happens just a great example is, you know, just with the council email, there's somebody writes in all seven of you get something I might get five emails back immediately. And, and it's just really critical that they all get funneled same place. So people know, okay, that's one business, it was one complaint, even though we got it five times. And, and so that's really what we're trying to correct this time around. So we'll make that commitment to you. Same thing with the phone line, Sarah's got staff lined up to follow up on all those complaints, she'll document it and take care of it that way. So I think we're, I think we're good there. I wanted to address your comment about the police department. And I definitely don't endorse having them be the heavy on this ordinance. That's all I'm saying. But we have had instances, even during the first shutdown, where we had business owners that refuse to comply with the ordinance or we're giving staff a hard time, they're trying to do the right thing and force your ordinances and your orders. And I'm not going to send them into an environment where they don't feel safe. So we did, we had a couple of instances where we did have a police officer, a company staff over there, the conversation, there's something disarming, the conversation went well. But it's just something that we use very judiciously given their workloads. But I think the safety of our staff and in complying with your orders is really important too. Not everybody is not everybody believes in is taking this as seriously as everyone else. And we just need to account for that. Yeah. And my intent on that wasn't to say that they're not that they don't have to attend any call. It's that they weren't going to be the first line of response on a routine call that they would be there to address an issue where public safety was an issue with one of our other staff members who went out to try to discuss these particular issues. So my point was more, they shouldn't be the first response to a call unless it's a public safety issue, unless there is obviously a threat or something regarding physical harm or the like. You understand, I think. We're on the same page. Okay. All right. Good. Mayor, I just want to mention when staff was drafting this order, we did make one oversight for 5A. We should add in a sentence in that first sentence that a policy must be developed and implemented within five calendar days or five days. That's at the discretion of council. But just somewhere, just some time frame where we have an opportunity to first educate the businesses that this order is coming out before any sort of enforcement begins and just to get all of the things set up that we need to do. So Sarah, let me ask you then, I think you said earlier that to really get out that outreach that you would feel comfortable with or that staff would feel comfortable with that would not put many businesses, you know, behind or really in a rush. If we made the effective date of this on Monday, then that means they have to have all their business plans in place by Friday. Is that correct? Or Saturday? So we just need five business days. So if it's an effective as of tonight, that's written and within five calendar days, that would be next Friday. No, five calendar days would be Tuesday, Wednesday. Yeah, that would be Wednesday. Well, my part of it is, it's my understanding there's a parks tournament this weekend as well. And so the way that the current order is stated is that if it's over 100 people that that can't happen. And I don't I don't feel the same sense of urgency that this has to be effective tonight to really accomplish, I think what we're trying to accomplish here. But if that's the will of the council, I understand that. But I think that we're trying to do is educate and let people know ahead of time what's coming, because it is a big change. It is a big change. Councilmember Davis. You're absolutely right, Mayor. It's a big change and it's a big change that requires communication. You know, we're doing this at almost 230 on a Friday as we're having this conversation. What about what would you think Mayor about a you know, going into effect? Monday morning at midnight or Sunday night at 1159. And then they have the five the five days that would land them on Friday, they'd have all of next week to, to draft a plan and get it into a some of them have it. Some of them have it already done. They're doing it now. They're going to have it to us quickly. But that would give them the five days would give them all of next week to get that in. That's a full business week. And you mentioned events this weekend. I don't think it's fair to drop something like this on the top of an event that's happening this weekend. They don't know unless they read the paper, check Facebook, they may not have any idea. So and I'm not sure quite how that'd be covered to begin with. But anyway, what would you think about Sunday midnight something like that? Well, I'm open to any option. I just really wanted to state my sort of my my interest in what I was as far as what the effective data is. I mean, it could be you can make it effective tonight, but but yet give an exception over the weekend for events or things such as that. I mean, I don't necessarily have something in mind particular as long as just the interest that I'm trying to trying to promote. Councilmember Meltzer, I think I saw your hand and then Councilmember Briggs, did you have your hand up? Okay, sorry. So like take a couple of comments, then come back to the effective date question. I've had a lot of citizen resident feedback regarding people feeling that this isn't very serious right now, in terms of the level of overall deaths, hospitalizations cases, you know, is an absolute matter in our community. And also that, you know, this mandate would be an infringement on personal freedom. And on those two points, I would just say, great, that the level has been low. We've generally been sort of late on the development versus other areas. And measures have come into place actually, in some cases later than in other areas, but early enough for us. And I'd like to keep it that way. And if you look at the curves here, we have to be very aware when things are changing rapidly, and they are changing rapidly here. And that's why I requested this to be an emergency meeting and not to wait till Tuesday, just because we're hitting record cases every day. So it's not just, you know, through testing, the positivity is up as well. Fortunately, among younger people less symptomatic, but the change is rapid. So that leads to the last point about effective date. I'm fine with the idea of saying, you know, there's five days for business to have their plan in place. I'm not in agreement, and I know this is going to be an unpopular view, but I'm not in agreement about delaying the effectiveness, effective timing on the large gatherings. I think that would communicate that, you know, this is really just window dressing and we don't really care. I think, you know, the situation is significant. And, you know, I don't want to hear about six cases coming out of some event this weekend. I mean, I just don't. So I would personally, I would say that I know it's going to mean cancellations and it would really signal like, wow, something has changed. But I would make the ban on gatherings of a hundred or more effective with the passing of the order. That's my two cents. Mr. City Manager? I mean, City Attorney? Mayor, that's, especially the requirement of gatherings in excess of a hundred people, that is a governor's order directive and it took effect at noon today. Okay. You know, we would have to follow, we wouldn't be able to stray away and not enforce that where now it is enforceable. Okay. Yep. I appreciate that. And there is an exception in the governor's order, but in our current ordinance, we don't have that exception. Exactly. Yeah. I just stated that I'm not going to, you know, if I do one, I've got to do several. So okay. Yes. Council Member Briggs. Thank you, Mayor. This is in consideration for the bars that are actually being forced to close now. And I know that several of them in our community were abiding by the social distancing and they were doing exactly what they needed to do. And I was heartbroken to hear that they have to shut down. And I know that within our last order, we got rid of the utility grace period or the permitting payments. And I'm wondering if we can reconsider that because I'm not even sure how long they're going to be closed again. And if we gave them that consideration last time, I'd like to consider that again this time. Okay. All right. Any other comments? Council Member Armitage. I would like to move to approve this, but I also do have comments and I think others might have some comments too. Well, if you'll go ahead and make your comments, then we'll move through those. Yeah. Okay. So this shouldn't take very long. I wrote some notes on this, but it's not in an actual fully written speech. So I want to say that to thank everybody who has emailed and called and to apologize for not having the opportunity to respond to all of you in time. I'm still keeping up and we'll get to you eventually. And if I don't, please don't hesitate to remind me. I've never seen so many emails or calls in my brief two years on council about an issue. I believe that this is not because people are suddenly really interested in local politics, although it might lead to that. That might be part of it. I think it's because people know that lives are at stake and also liberties are at stake for those from whom I'm hearing who are opposed to this ordinance. So even though I disagree with you and I support this ordinance, I too am very concerned about personal liberties. And I I'm very proud that Denton is a city that is so concerned with both public safety and personal liberties. I feel like we've, we've seen that in the vote on a fracking ban what I believe to be popular opposition to turn about a curfew. But what I've seen is thousands coming to the street for black lives matter, which is a public safety issue who came out in spite of their concerns about COVID and they weighed these very issues. So there's, there's an old saying in the law that many of you are probably familiar with that your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose ends. And it's been attributed to various people. I can't quite find who exactly who said it. I think that's unknown. But in general, it conveys the principle that that your right to exercise whatever liberty you think you're entitled to ends when that liberty threatens my life and safety. And that's how people feel who encounter people not wearing masks. It's also how people feel who are told to wear masks who can't for a legitimate health reason. So, you know, we need to keep in mind the size of the issue. And I really like this ordinance and the flexibility it allows, you know, there will be troubleshooting along the way, but I appreciate that. I want to shout out to all those businesses. I'm only going to name one example. Harvest House, which is it was my first and really one of only two instances of meeting somebody outside for a social date under COVID. And I was very nervous. And we chose Harvest House. And as soon as I stepped inside, I was greeted at six feet by a staff member wearing a mask and saying, "Have you been here before?" I said, "Yes, many times." "Have you been here since COVID?" "No." And they explained the rules and they pointed to the sign. And I was so impressed. We went and sat outside. Everything was done in such a way. And I should say this was when this was not required at all. So when it's done right, it'll really help businesses stay open as well as helping public safety. So I wanted to read somebody who has cancer, was really concerned about this issue. And she just wanted me to read and just to say that I'm a cancer patient and shouldn't be considered collateral damage mandatory mass. I promised her I would read that. And I apologize to her that I can't read the entire statement. But thank you to all of you on all sides for weighing in. And I so appreciate the concerns for public safety and health and for personal liberties. And even if you disagree with my support of this issue, I hope you understand that personal liberties are really important part of my decision on this too. Thank you. - You made your motion. So do we have a second and then we'll open up for any further discussion? Council Member Davis. - I wonder if Council Member Armenter would accept a friendly amendment to insert the line that Sarah mentioned earlier about implementation, excuse me, that the business would develop and turn in a plan within five calendar days? - Yes. - If that's accepted, then I can second the motion. - Okay. So now I guess my question is this motion, this order shows going through August 31st, 2020. So is that how long we want this to last on this first go around? Or do we want to shorten it month by month? Or how do you want to, I mean, we can always come back and change it if it's August 31st. We can always rescind it, but... - Mayor, that's a very good point. We left in five, the introduction to five, we just said August and left a space for council to fill that. - I was looking at the paragraph one. - Yeah. - Paragraph one. - Okay. - That can be filled in by council's direction just for some comparison. Dallas counties is in effect until August 4th and Tarrant counties is in effect till August 4th. - Okay. So almost a little over a month. Yeah. Council Member Briggs and then Council Member Davis. - Yeah. I was gonna say that it could be August 4th as well, just to align with the other orders and then we could reevaluate as we go. That would be my suggestion. - Okay. Council Member Davis. - I was gonna say the same thing. And if anybody's not looking at a calendar that I believe is a Tuesday and that's, we can take it up either at the end of July or that day. I'd be just fine with August 4th. - And I'm going to, and so August 4th it is. We do have some big events coming. - Point of order. - Yes. Go ahead. - That'd be an amendment, right? - Yeah. Amendment. Well, it was a friendly, is that a friendly amendment that was accepted by the movement August 4th? - Oh, you're asking me? - Yes. - So Council Member Davis, what you were offering that as a friendly amendment? - Sure. - Or Council Member Briggs, whoever. So yes. So I accept that. I personally, I would prefer till the end of August knowing that we could change it, but that's not a sticking point for me. And that's mostly because I'm concerned about our schools, but we can always choose to extend it. So I'm fine with that. - Okay. All right. Yeah. Because we do have some big events coming up in August, I believe middle towards the last week of August. So we'll have to address this again, most likely depending on the circumstances. So it's my understanding there's been a motion made with a friendly amendment of adding the text of that the businesses have five business days, I believe from the effective date. Was that correct? - So Mayor, if we could, if we can get directions, take a five minute break and we can mark up the order. - Perfect. - Council votes on it. That is the question. If it would be effective today or effective on Monday, and then if it's five calendar days. - Okay. I think I don't, because of the information that the city attorney gave me about the order from the governor, if it's effective today, I'm okay with that because I don't really have any opportunity to do something different because I've said at the beginning of this meeting, I'm not going to be making exceptions to this. And this ordinance is written in such a way that I don't have the power to make that exception. So it's my understanding that's the way this is written. Is that correct? Am I right on that? - If we could take a five minute- - Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. - I want to make sure that we can talk. - We'll take a five minute break. Absolutely. All right. - And we'll try to mark up a red line of the order as well. - Hold on just a moment. Council Member Davis. - Just for consistency sake, when I made the friendly amendment, it was kind of informally offered, but I think I said calendar days. So I think, I don't want to send staff back to mark something up and then we have to work it out again later. So I said calendar. I don't know if there's strong opinions one way or the other. That's just what's currently been on. - That's what I accept of calendar. I prefer that to business days. - Okay. All right. Council Member Briggs, did you have something before we wrote? Yes. - My question is, did we need to add in face shields as an exception or is that included or assumed in face coverings? - Face coverings, as we have listed right now, they include masks, scarves, mandanas, or a handkerchief. And according to the CDC, a face cloth face covering should be something that can fit securely around your nose and your mouth just to make sure there's no gaps. So it would not include a face shield. - Okay. Council Member Briggs, any comment on that? Or if not, I'll recognize Council Member Meltzer. - Yes. Well, I know that we had some requests for those who could not wear one that a face shield be accepted. But again, I'm not a professional doctor and so I will digress to the guidelines on that, but I would like for that to be in there as an option. - Okay. Council Member Meltzer, did you have a comment? - Well, yeah. I guess I wanted to see if that's accepted as amended language, but I'll chip in just also in that area. I think if we don't explicitly say covering the nose and mouth, I know that's what's intended, but I think we ought to say that. Another thing we frequently hear is people have face coverings, but they wear them as a chin strap. That doesn't meet the intention. So covering the nose and mouth is the point. - Okay. All right. I think it says that, does it not? Mayor Pro Tem. - I was just going to say, that's already in there. - Okay. Council Member Armitage, Council Member Armitage. - So Council Member Meltzer, were you offering that or Council Member Briggs as a friendly amendment because I do accept that. I would like that to be in there about a face shield substituting if somebody can't wear a mask. - Council Member Briggs? - Well, I would like discussion on that suggestion. - Okay. Council Member Davis. - Sure. I think it's fair to bring up. I think though, maybe the best way to address it would be to leave most of the language exactly how it is with face masks and the, excuse me, face coverings as the CDC uses the term. We're talking about nose and mouth. I think that gives the best guidance. If it's not possible just to say, maybe in the exceptions or maybe somewhere adjacent to face coverings, that a face shield is not a substitute for a face mask, but maybe acceptable if someone can't wear a face covering. Maybe that's available as an option. And that gives the business a little bit more guidance. Somebody walks in with a face shield and the ordinance doesn't say face shield, it says face covering. And that person can then say, well, I'm wearing this because I cannot medically wear a face covering. If there's a way to very succinctly bake that in to the exceptions that we could even just say a face shield is advised in the event that a face covering cannot be safely worn, something like that. I would agree with that. Okay. Does the staff have enough clarity on that to be able to draft that in an upcoming, you know, in the next modified ordinance? If that was a, was that a friendly amendment? We got to figure out, this is what I'd like to do. We'll come back with the ordinance. Council Member Armitage, you'll be able to review the ordinance because you've made the motion. And if the ordinance still complies with what you want it to be, to move for it, then I'll ask Council Member Davis if his second still stands and then we'll move forward on that. Because I don't think we need to resend the motion. I think we just need to say there's a motion on the table for an ordinance and now we'll review the ordinance once it comes in to see what it is. All right. Is that okay? Okay. We'll take a five minute break. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on June the 26th at 3.02pm. We are continuing in our emergency called meeting to discuss agenda item 1A. All right. Council Member Armitage has not, oh, there she is. Council Member Armitage, have you had an opportunity to read over the revised ordinance based upon council comments after your motion? Yes. And I do support it, but I would first like to hear if anyone else has caught anything that I didn't. So many eyes on it. Okay. Well, so are you are you ratifying or resubmit, republishing your motion for approval of this motion? Yes. Yes. Okay. And Council Member Davis, I believe you seconded it. Are you republishing your second for this motion? I am. All right. So we have a motion in a second for the motion as presented recently. We all got a copy of it and we will now open it up for any kind of closing comments or discussion. We'll go with Council Member, I think Council Member Pro Tem and then Council Member Melser and then Council Member Briggs. Yeah. So specifically to the document, I do have other concerns that I'm going to raise, but specifically to the document, I'll direct one question, I'll just go in order, question for staff affected. So this is section number two, item A, the word is outdoor spaces. My question is, does that address protest downtown? So this is the language that has been in our prior orders, recommended changes to this. I think that's probably going to be a question for the city attorney. And also, to sort of tag on to that, you know, we do have a, I think the governor had a 100, 100 person gathering limit. So if you could just address that and, and is that okay, Council Member, Mayor Pro Tem, but by all means, okay. And city attorney, the audience, it is recommended. So it is not must, but a recommended practice. So, so just to clarify, 100 is recommended, but not a, not a mandate. So if you move into 5B, outdoor gatherings in excess of 100 people would be prohibited. However, if you're in an outdoor space with less than 100 people, it's recommended that you maintain social distancing of at least six feet between other people. Okay. So yeah, we can, we can, we'll get, I'm gonna ask the same question at 5B, but we can work through it in order. So then if you look at 2B, is there any discussion on signage outside of the city? And I'll give you an example. I'm driving in from Carrollton, going north to Oklahoma. I want to stop indenting at Buc-E's, but I'm against the mask ordinance. And I have no knowledge. I exit and then I'm, I'm kind of caught off, you know, whereas the whole goal was to go to Buc-E's, but if I know that the city of Denton has this prohibition, I want to, I don't want to support that. I want to go further or stop sooner. Do we have some plan to place signage on the outside of the city? In a physical location before the borders of the city? Sure. I'm not sure what our ability is to do that in our public right of ways. Okay. So, so nothing planned right now? Nothing planned right now. Thank you. And then if we could go to, this is two, still in two, no, no, pardon me. It transitions to three in that title there, in that main subject there, it says lawfully available enforcement tools. Is that a carryover from before? Is this new? That is correct. That is the language that has been there. Okay. And can you help me understand that please? Or so that people watching or if they go back and review this, they have an understanding of what's been in place? Sure. And I'll allow our city attorneys to weigh in if I misspeak, but it's just really kind of restating the enforcement tools that we may have available to enforce this order and the state's orders as well. Okay. And that's fines, that's tickets, that's the governor's not, well, the governor's prohibited fines, I think, is that new? Because of the instance in Dallas, something was removed. Yeah, he prohibited fines on an individual person for not wearing a face covering. Okay. But we can still find businesses? That is correct. Thank you. Okay. And then looking at section five, it talks about, this is five a, about the middle, well, two lines under your addition of, if you see the underlined addition there, that reads that cover, the nose and mouth, two lines, one line under that, it says involve close contact. Should that not be six feet? So we've seen it written both ways. So this is a mirrored Tarrant County's language. It would allow enforcement and prosecution to be, it'd be easier a little bit to do that instead of the six feet requirement. The six feet requirement is in Dallas County's ordinance. So there's just two different ways of doing that. But after speaking with our attorneys, decided to go on the language that Tarrant County had used, which is a little broader. Okay. And then the next line, the policy may allow individuals within operational need. I would think there we'd probably want to give some guidance, or maybe examples, maybe in the parens, just a thought to help people follow. And then I'll note in this entire section, it lays out what is expected of the business, but it does not normalize the font or size. And I just think that's important to then give some stipulation as to, so that it's uniform. Is it 12 font, 14, eight and a half by 11 legal size, because someone walks in, it's posted on the door, it's too small, couldn't read it. It just opens the door, I believe. And I'm just an individual, but just giving you my thought. Now we're to 5B. So Aaron, do you want to speak to that? Yes, 5B is specifically provided in the governor's order. The governor today prohibited any outdoor gatherings in excess of a hundred people. There is an exception that allows the mayor to authorize that event, and also additionally authorizes the mayor to impose any conditions or restrictions on that approval. So using the last week, as an example, if 1000 people gather downtown to protest, what is the city's position on enforcing this 100 person rule? And under the governor's order that would be prohibited. And I imagine that if there is some large gathering like that, which this is something that the police department would actually go out and try to peacefully disperse the crowd, such as they've done during the curfew, during the protests where they worked with the people to try to enforce the curfew. So I would imagine, I'm not the chief of police, but I imagine that he would probably follow the same process. Okay. Before I can vote on it, I need to understand what our policy is going to be on that. And I think the people deserve to know that we're going to strictly enforce this and or we're not. And so I understand the rule. I just need to understand if we're going to enforce it. And I can hear after the fact, but that's going to guide my decision. And then I think in 5D, I would suggest the face shield additional language where it also says when possible, just so people don't think that it's a mandate. And then I'll tell you, I'm a little confused, Sarah, you can help me 5C, first sentence says strongly urged, but then 5D says requirement of face covering. Although I see those as conflicting, but am I reading it wrong? So 5A is the requirement for face covering for businesses to require face coverings. 5C is more in general, just education for best practices that all individuals 10 years or older are strongly encouraged to wear a face covering when working in areas or in the public. So this would be, so 5A is effective to those commercial entities that are directly providing goods and services to the public. 5C can more apply to just general guidance that if you work in an office environment where you could maintain six feet of distance, I mean, you're not providing direct goods and services to the public, but still are urged to wear a face covering. Okay. And so 5D is that speaking to what group? I'm sorry for not understanding. 5D goes back to the requirement in 5A. So if you're in a business and the business is requiring face coverings, but the exceptions are, if the two exceptions are, if you cannot, if you have a significant mental or physical health risk or if you are consuming a food or beverage. Okay. Well in the business. Got it. Okay. I think that Reed, that's all I had. I think that's a little confusing, but if I'm alone in that, that's fine. I don't see it naturally syncing up together like that. I think it's maybe that, you know, but anyway, I'll hang up and listen. Okay. Anybody else? A couple of comments in there. Yeah, we had a list. I'm sorry. I had a list. Council member Meltzer. I was kind of more in the concluding remarks zone. If people have kind of substantive issues, they want to work out. Okay. I'll wait. Okay. Council member Briggs. Yeah. I'm in the same concluding remarks zone. So if you have other changes to this to talk about, then I can. Okay. Council member Armitter. Yes. Yeah. I'd like to know the about, about protests. So the, the, the governor's order today, which is, is relatively new. So I was still getting to understand it. Can you explain again that the difference between what he's mandating for gatherings, large gatherings of indoor versus outdoor spaces? I'm sorry. Could you repeat the question? Okay. So can you explain regarding the governor's new mandate from this morning, what is the distinction he's making between large gatherings or gatherings of a hundred or more or a hundred less in indoor versus outdoor spaces? It does not speak to indoor. This is only in regards to outdoor gatherings. So any indoor gatherings would be subject to the other orders that are in effect right now. So the occupancy limitations that are still in effect and otherwise. Yeah. Okay. And so, and so Mr. city attorney, so so regarding protests, do you have a response to any, I'd be curious to know your response to a council member, sorry, mayor Pro Tem Hutzpah's concern or a question before, before I weigh in on it. I want to hear your thoughts on those concerns. I just said that the way to approach it, and I don't want to speak for chief Dixon is, is the police would, that would be a decision on how they would address a large gathering as a protest of 500, a thousand people. Cause it would be a violation of the governor's order. And, and they are the people who are properly trained and make to, to, to decide how to approach and, and, and resolve that protest. And so what I would like, what I would like to amend to that, and if I can't get support for this today, that's not going to sink my motion, but I will want to take it up because it is a concern, you know, with all the concerns now about policing, I would, I want, I would want the police to only respond if there is violence, whereas, whereas as long as the, I'm going to just say, as long as a gathering of more than a hundred constitutes a public health concern, right? Which is the spirit of the government's mandate of a public health concern, then I would prefer for it to be addressed in the same way that a situation at a restaurant would, would, would be handled in that police would only be involved if, if there was violence or, you know, breaking of some other, some other kind of law, but I don't want, you know, police to be used to enforce the health ordinance. And to me, the government, the state mandate is a health ordinance, if that makes sense. So I don't know how others feel, if I can get consensus on that. To me, that's an operational issue. That's not a, that's not an issue for the ordinance. I mean, the governor's order, when you said that you don't want it enforced unless it's a public health situation, but I think the governor's an order. I'm sorry. Not that I don't want to enforce because that's not up to me. It's an order, but I mean by, by police. So we don't have to have no, no, I think, I think what you said was if the gathering of a hundred people doesn't pose a public health threat, then you would, would not want a certain response to that. I think the very nature of the governor's order, putting it as a, as a prohibition is saying that it is a public health threat for people to gather in more than 100 people. So, but as far as, as far as operationally, as we did before, we can lead that up to the police chief to make those. So you're, you're right. You're, you're right about what the governor was saying. But what I was saying, and apologies for not making it clear, is that precisely because the governor's mandate is a public health mandate, precisely because of that, I would like a protest to be addressed in the same way that any other gathering, if there was a music festival, you know, anything like that music festival, too many people in a restaurant, you know, I, I don't see, and there was no language that I saw in the governor's ordinance that made an exception for protest. So I think that, you know, police, police are not, are not health enforcement. They're not code enforcement. So, and I understand that in the past it'd been used for protest. Councilmember Armitage, I'm not really understanding what, what are you, what are you asking for? I don't understand what you're asking for. And maybe somebody else who understands what I'm asking for, whether it, regardless of whether you disagree, might or not, might be willing to rearticulate what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is because the governor's mandate is a public health mandate, right? It needs to be enforced by us. But unless I'm missing something, I don't see anything in there that says that police are the ones who have to enforce protests, whereas health inspections or other staff, development staff have to mandate restaurants, music festivals, et cetera. I don't see any language in there making a distinction between protests and other kinds of large gatherings. So I would like to see any large gathering handled the same way. And the reason why I'm okay with passing the ordinance as is because I don't see an exception made in there for protests and I don't want there to be one. But, but, so I'm willing to continue this discussion at another time. But I do feel pretty strong. And I understand that. And I appreciate that. You've kept saying that the governor's order is a public health mandate. It is not. It is an executive order by the governor of the state of Texas relating to the targeted response to COVID-19 disaster as part of the reopening of a public. It's a public health disaster. And so, uh, as we have in all of our ordinance, the even in this ordinance, it says the people who are able to, because if that's the case, you're basically wanting to say if you have over a hundred people, if it's not a public health crisis, then there's no big deal. And that may be the case, but take this up at another time. Okay. So you're, you're accepting the ordinance as it is as it is. Okay. I don't see any exception for protests made in there, and we can take that issue up at another time if people don't want to talk about it. Okay. Sure. You bet. All right. So the question I do have based upon Mayor Pro Tem's observations, and I think they were, there were some good observations as far as just readability and things such as that. 5D, which states about the exception to the mental or physical health risk to the individual. This isn't something that is going to affect either way how I view this, but because this is directly related to 5A, my understanding is this is an exception to 5A because 5A is the only face covering requirement that we have in this ordinance. Is that correct? In this order? That is correct. I would probably, and if we could, we don't necessarily need to redo the ordinance to pass it, but I would probably say just from a stylistic point of view or read, is move that up into A because it's really only pertains to A, and it's an exception in 5A. So I think it would look better there, and it would give it a really concise instead of somebody's reading it and they're thinking, oh no, it just stylistically is probably just more appropriate. We can do that. And also just one other error. I'm sorry, we've just been preparing these things so quickly. Sure. Mayor Pro Tem brought up the question, realized that we left out one phrase that's important. So if I can share my screen quickly, so I can show you what's proposed, what we left out. In 5C, it's the recommendation. All people 10 years or older are strongly urged to wear a face covering over their nose and mouth when in an area open to the public where it is difficult to keep six feet away from other people or working in areas that involve proximity. So this whole paragraph I see is just the recommendation, but we did leave out that part, which is important, obviously, in relation to kids 10 years or older. Okay. Can I, I need to respond to that. Yep. So let me make sure I'm understanding what this is saying. This is saying all people 10 years or older, I'm going to read it. I know so everybody can read it. Are strongly 10 all people 10 years or older. That means that means me. I'm 25 years old. So that means that this is this applies to me. Obviously, I'm not 25 years old. So this applies to anybody 10 years or older is strongly urged to wear a face covering over their nose and mouth when in an area open to the public where it is difficult to keep six feet away from other people or working in areas that involve proximity or areas that involve proximity with going. This seems in direct contradiction to five a because an area that is open to the public, unless unless I'm thinking of area is different if it's an outside area, then if it's outside, we need to put that in there. Because if not, it could be an in an indoor area. And it could be sorry, I can bring this back down if you'd like. Sure. It could be definitely an outdoor area, trying to think of an indoor area that would not be underneath five a which five a only applies to commercial entities and nonprofit entities are providing goods or services directly to the public. Okay, but in another indoor area that may not fit that quality, but you need to you need to you need to define that because if I'm going into and I'm going to use a business, if I'm going into this isn't an advertisement, I'm just gonna I'm going into business a business a is a commercial business. All right, five a applies. I'm 10 years or older. I'm going into I don't have the language up. I'm going into an area where the public is invited or where the public can be. I'm the public. I'm going into an area where I can be which is business a because I'm invited there so I can be there. Now, if you're talking about a public area, that's still if we're trying to nuance between what is a commercial private business, the interior of a commercial private business, and some type of other area, but a public area is to me one where the public is is able to go in as an invitee, it might be a private property, but you're still invited there. And you can you can. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think the intent was just to say it's required in these instances where it's a business that is providing direct goods and services. However, in all other circumstances, when you leave your home, you're urged to wear a mask if you cannot maintain that distance with an I would say subject to five a, I would somehow say Councilmember Davis, you might be able to provide some assistance. Yeah, because this is the recommendation section. What if we just said because all we're saying is a recommendation. What if we just said encouraged to wear a mask in public when it's not when you're not able to socially distance, I don't have the language in front of me anymore. But yeah, back up. But what if we just said, if you're in public, we recommend that if you can't social distance, you wear a mask. Because I'd be real hesitant to get, you know, too particular and specific in a recommendation when all it is is a recommendation. No, no, I understand that. What I'm saying is someone could interpret this. When you say in an area open to the public, a private business is an area open to the public. I mean, it's a commercial entity, but it's still an area that is open to the public that I can go into. What if we took out those highlighted words that she has on the screen there, and then change the word where to win? Does that does that alleviate either that or you could either that or you could say subject to five a, because what you're saying is subject to five a, which means if you're in a commercial business that does provides goods and services to the public, this is the one that overrides if you're in anywhere else, then, then this language applies. So something that hurts anything to get the reference. I mean, yeah, five a is going to be their reference to it or not. Yeah, because then they can't they can't well, they can't say my only concern is, is that those words, any area open to the public, whereas if you have subject to five a, in other words, somebody could say I'm walking into the to an area open to me, which is a private business. Oh, but you know what, this language is subject to an inferior to five a, if we take out the area or make it public areas. Anyway, I think people could really use that in a way that it's not a recommend. It's not a requirement to go into public areas, which are commercial businesses, it could just be a requirement. May I just recommend if Sarah, you can bring up the language. I think it might be easier just to word it this way. It's it's consistent expands a little what Councilmember Davis said, but on five c, in all other public areas, not subject to five a above all people, comma, all this will start the sentence. Oh, okay. So at the beginning, at the beginning of that sentence, in all public areas, not subject to paragraph five a, comma, little a, all people 10 years or older are strongly encouraged away some fairies covering over the nose and mouth. Delete the where it is, when in public, those words, where it is difficult to keep six feet away from other people or working in areas that involve proximity with co workers, I think that might address the issue well enough. No, I think that I think that resolves it. That's what I was trying to say is that it further it further restricts that we're only talking about the requirement for face coverings to paragraph five a. Okay, thank you. So the other one is I think those are the two as far as font size and sign. If I mean, I, I think that we certainly probably need to have some type of standard requirement whether it's memorialized in the ordinance or this it's a it's a it's an operational issue with city staff, I guess this council can make that decision. Let me look at there's anything else. Oh, there is in paragraph three and I had this conversation earlier. Let me go to the last paragraph. The enforcement piece. Where's the enforcement piece? Seven, seven. Yes, we took out with state law or city ordinance. We talked about that. But when I look at paragraph three, it says this authorizes the use of all lawfully available enforcement tools found in Denton code chapter nine, state laws, gubernatorial orders or federal laws. So y'all don't see any conflict with that. If we take out in state laws, sort of redundant, I guess. Hi, the provision in section three has to do with authorizing all actions that are available to be taken under any available law, including our chapter nine of our code ordinances, the gubernatorial orders and so forth. The provision of seven is about the orders that are the specific orders within our within the council's order. So the things that are changed. So it's it's Aaron could probably explain this better than I am, but it's two different things. And seven is to provide for enforcement of five principally or anything in six. Three is to allow for enforcement of any other orders or any other provisions in our emergency management code that become that are necessary to enforce in the course of this local disaster. Okay, so I want to make sure I understand because if what I'm hearing is that number seven primarily applies to five, a other words, it's is that what my understanding is, that is the primary application and it was added. We put it instead of putting it five as a point under five, we put it in seven so that it could have a more global application if there was anything else that might be caught in that. And that it was originally drafted as part of five. So this hasn't been in any of our other orders. No, no. So help me go ahead. I suggest mayor that we probably will have to move seven under five and create it as a new five e that specifically makes this enforcement because of this to five a and the rest of the order would be the general. We can do it that way or simply leave. No, go ahead, Aaron. Or just simply leave paragraph three as it is. One of the things that we were concerned about was the ability of our building enforcement officers, zoning compliance officers and CIS officers to enforce the actual plan, the health and safety policy because they're not certified peace officers and the governor's order PD can certainly enforce that, but our non certified police officers or certified non police certified officers, which are these three could not enforce the governor's order. So we were trying to give them the ability to enforce the governor's order with respect to the plan because there as was mentioned in the presentation, they're the ones who are going to be responding to the complaints to businesses that may not have a plan or not enforcing the plan requirements that they set out there for. Okay. So let me make, let me summarize what I thought I just heard. Yeah. Obviously police officers can enforce any one of these orders, our local orders, our governor's orders, our county orders. Yes. What you're saying is the building enforcement officers, zoning compliance officers or community improvement surface off service officers can only enforce what they can afford our city ordinances with respect to their specific ones. They don't have the authority to do outside their boundaries. So your building enforcement officers can enforce building code, the building codes. Your CIS officers are only authorized to enforce certain city code chapters, not the entire city code. And the same thing goes with the zoning compliance officers only enforce zoning, our zoning chapter and our development chapter under the DDC. This was an opportunity to give them the authority just for this purpose to respond to those complaints by people in connection with 5A. And so I, what we could do is we could move paragraph seven as 5E and specify that this violations of 5A may be enforced by Denton PD building codes. We can simply do that. And that would be a little bit clearer that we're limiting it just to 5A. Okay. I guess, and that's fine. I guess to me, I didn't see how paragraph three really still didn't allow that. I didn't see how paragraph three, I mean, cause if they can't enforce state laws and gubernatorial orders, they can't enforce it, but they could certainly enforce Denton city code. They have certainly responded to some complaints and educated the folks, but as far as issuing, if we have to go forward and issue that citation, that would have to come from a police officer. This proposes to change that, to allow them to do that in the repeat offender context, not under the preferred method, which would be to educate the businesses. So if chapter seven, if paragraph seven was not in this at all, let's just say it's taken out and someone gets a call about a violation for 5A and the city manager has a protocol in place, a process in place where they send out a, I don't know, a building enforcement officer, one of these three categories. I mean, they're on rotation, they go out to the business, they see a violation and it's a repeat violation. And so they're going to wanting to, to write a citation. Okay. Are you saying that if seven is not in there, they're unable to do that pursuant to paragraph three? That is correct. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, yeah, I think, I think if you're wanting that to be specifically for five, then it needs to be in paragraph five. Yeah. Mayor, based on some of these changes have been coming, we may need another five minute break. Sure. No, that's fine. I'd rather, I'd rather get it. I'd rather get it right. Yeah. I think council mayor pro tem has, but has some possible questions or comments. Yeah. I want to pick up where you left off because I may have missed it or I didn't read it. So forgive me. But Aaron, you touched on not preferred method of enforcement. And then you both touched on repeat violation with trigger citation. Where's that language? That is just a general officer discretion and being exercised pursuant to an ordinance or state law. For example, if you're stopped for speeding, the officer doesn't have to give you a speeding ticket. They could give you a warning or just let you go. That is the discretion piece. The same thing would apply with our non peace officers, enforcement officers that would be able to, instead of going out, they could issue a ticket or what they typically do. They will work with the property owner to try to gain compliance through education. If that owner continues to be refuses to comply, then at some point in the future, we have to look at possibly giving them a citation. That's what I would, that's what I, when I reference repeat offender, that's what I was talking about. Someone who just doesn't want to comply for whatever reason, then we may have to go to that step. Got it. And thank you. And then what is the maximum fine? Is that noted here somewhere? Because we don't, we don't have that, that, cause that would be up to the municipal judge and we can't talk to the municipal judge. So what is the max? Is that noted? We have that set forth in chapter nine of the city code, which is the emerging management statute. And then we also have chapter one, which also provides a general penalty provision. Most of our ordinances are classy misdemeanors up to $500 offenses. We have some that are for certain types of, of, of, and I can't recall them off the top that we can seek a penalty of $1,000, but here we would exercise a classy misdemeanor, which a maximum $500 fine only offense. Okay. So that's what, that's what's on the table now. $500 fine for the business owner. Yes, sir. Thank you. Okay. Okay. So it is 339. We'll come back at four 45. All right. We'll adjourn till four 45. Welcome back everybody to this meeting of the Denton city council on six 26, 2020. It is four Oh two PM. We are on our only agenda item for this emergency called meeting. Um, all right. Uh, we do, we did receive an additional order with the changes. So wanted to see if people have had a chance to review that. I did have one question that I meant to ask last time, but it slipped my mind. Uh, cause I know that mayor pro tem had brought up something on five a about, um, will necessarily involve close contact. So I'm trying to help me understand what the plan now was to follow. If you could explain it again, the Fort Worth order, which had that language, whereas the Dallas order specifically said six feet, which is the social distancing kind of CDC guideline. I think we're getting the answer here. Yes. Sure. Sorry, mayor. I was just conferring with another staff member. Sure. If a citation, um, was the last resort and it did have to be issued, uh, if that did go forward to municipal court and in terms of prosecution, um, we're not trying to measure out, was there exactly six feet or not? Um, and that being the standard and rather just more in general close contact. So, okay. I guess my question then, does that mean there's more flexibility for, uh, a, uh, a guilty verdict in a prosecution or is that more beneficial to a defense? I mean, if, if, if the distance is six feet, I mean, how do you divide, define close proximity? Because I just want to make sure because if I guess if you had six feet, if someone didn't take a tape measure and measure it out and you have evidence of that, then it would be very difficult. Is that, I mean, and I know we have one of our colleagues who, uh, handles those, uh, not those type of cases, but cases regularly like that. Council member Davis. Do you have any comment on that? My overall comment would be this. Again, if we are in a situation where the city prosecutor is standing in front of the city judge talking about how many inches away from six feet, we were, we are down the wrong road. Um, I, I'm happy with, uh, I'm happy with the way it's written. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think this is a good guideline for everybody and I don't think we're going to have that kind of problem. Okay. All right. Okay. So, uh, I will then pull the movement and the second or one more time. Uh, councilman barmiter, have you had time to review, uh, the last order that was presented to us? Um, I'm, I'm looking over it now and, uh, let's see if that is, uh, member of the public mentions change and five C change the word coworkers to others. And I'm looking to see, um, what, uh, let's see in five C, uh, all people 10 years or older strongly urge to wear face covering over their nose when working in areas that primarily involve proximity with others. Yeah. I think that's reasonable unless anyone can think of an exception because I mean, it doesn't matter, right? Whether they're a coworker or a member of the public or a code enforcement officer. Right. Okay. All right. So do you, do you re republish your motion for the, uh, for approval for this ordinance? Yes. Yes. This, this one looks good. Although I am curious to know if, you know, it's good to have all these eyes on it. So if anyone else sure, we'll, we'll go, we'll go around the horn. Uh, council member Davis, uh, same question to you. You republish your second on this motion. Okay. Council member Ryan. Well, but by switching it from coworker to other, and I agree that coworker may not be the best choice words. Um, you are now starting to bring in whether or not it's a family member, someone from their household that's other includes, you know, people from that same household as well. So we're not being specific enough on it. In that case, we went from overly clear to too vague. So maybe, um, with, uh, with non immediate family members also, you know, it says 10 or 10 or older with coworkers and, you know, people under a certain age, under a certain age are not going to have coworkers. So, but yeah, that may be better to specify, uh, with, uh, others other than immediate. Let me, let me, let me recognize council member Davis. I'm only popping up to say, I don't want perfect to be the enemy of works. Um, and this is in the recommendation section. Um, if, if somebody, if we've got somebody quibbling with us over what it says in the recommendation section, again, we're too far down the wrong path. Good point. Good point. Okay. All right. So we got a motion in a second. Uh, council member Meltzer, did you, is this a question for the ordinance or is these your closing remarks? No, it's more of a, a wordsmith thing. Happy to let it go to, uh, but just for, for consideration, uh, we're talks about where the policies got posted and, uh, member Tam question. Yeah. Should we say point size and so on? I don't think, you know, for a short term order like this, we're going to work it out to the degree of fineness of, you know, like a development code kind of thing. But, um, uh, a couple thoughts for consideration. Would we want the word conspicuous before, uh, posted or posted conspicuously, uh, and then, uh, it also says at the entrance would, would, uh, the motioner and the seconder be open to the idea of, and then maybe this is too much of saying of all entrances. Cause you get situations like a Walmart or even like a CVS on Oak street where you can enter from, excuse me, on Hickory. You can enter from Hickory or from the parking lot, you know, so should it be at all entrances? Uh, I'm not real stuck on it, but, uh, you know, I'd be interested in whether people find that persuasive. Okay. Councilmemorometer. Um, I'm, I'm fine with changing that, uh, to all entrances. Um, although I know that because businesses are going to be responsible now, they're going to want to make sure that, uh, it's that it's conspicuous. I know for that, for many businesses, for instance, in my example of the one place harvest house, they might've had something on the door, but I didn't see it on the door. I didn't, but as soon as I came in, there was a staff person there who was pointing towards a, you know, a host person who was pointing to the assign. So they were making sure, and that was even without an ordinance, just cause they were concerned about public safety. Uh, so, um, I'm fine if, if, if others would want to specify that, uh, though I would hope that that businesses would, would want to look at other places, you know, in their facility to post it. So it would be conspicuous, but I like the idea of adding conspicuous and all entrances. Okay. Well, do you want, I mean, are you including that in your motion as a friendly amendment from council member Meltzer? Yes. If he was offering that as a friendly amendment, I accepted council member Meltzer. I'm happy to make it a friendly amendment if you insist, but I frankly just like to hear what people think about it. Well, um, okay. Well, anybody else want to comment on that? Council member Davis as a seconder. Yeah, I'm popping up for that reason. I can think it can head us off. Um, I'm fine with that. That language is very easy to add. We don't need another red line for it. And it's very, uh, it's standard for a lot of government sign requirements conspicuously posted at all entrances. Um, that makes perfect sense. Okay. Easy to add. So given, given that easy support, I'll, I'll offer that as a friendly amendment. Okay. All right. Um, mayor, I may interrupt. I was just informed by the city secretary that she sent you version two at four or five and that version three, which you just sent it for 10. So it appears you all have been looking at version two and that version three. Okay. All right. Can we have some, a few minutes? Of course. Yeah. We'll take, uh, we'll take another five or 10 minute break. Can someone just speak to what, where the differences are, where we should look or. Sure. I can, I can do so. Let me just pull it up really quick. It'll be quick. Once I can share my screen, having trouble sharing this now. Hold on one second. I don't know if I have too many things open on my share screen. Okay. I've got it. Okay. Um, so the difference between version two and version three, um, is in, uh, section five D, um, just some clarifications for their language for the enforcement of paragraph five a, um, so you can see that the cross out changes here. It would read violations of paragraph five a may be enforced by dent and police officers, building enforcement officers, zoning compliance officers, or community improvement services. Officers violations of paragraph five a may be enforced in accordance with city ordinance. That was the change from two to three. Okay. Do we still need time to peruse over this councilmemorandum? Just, just had a quick question about that wording, uh, you know, not being a lawyer, not knowing exactly how much that would change anything, but, uh, if somebody, if, uh, someone who makes a complaint might choose to, you know, even though we're, we're encouraging people to report on engaged dental, which I think is absolutely the right way to do it. Um, but if somebody didn't know and called the police, called the police, called 911 and said, you know, send the police there's a restaurant would, uh, do under the way it's worded now would either dispatchers or police have the authority to say, this is a, uh, code enforced an issue for the code enforcement or development, depending on the situation or are they, would they be compelled to come? We will put a process in place with the chiefs, letting them know that any of those types of calls be routed again through the engaged dent map and we'll assign those out accordingly. Wonderful. And I mean, I support that so strongly because I know, you know, they're expected to do so many things that are by their purview. So I really appreciate that. Okay. Anybody else? So, uh, again, so council member Armitter with the latest version of the, uh, order presented to you, do you still republish your motion to, for approval of this ordinance? Uh, yes. Although I want that the change that we agreed on or the, I guess, two changes changing coworkers to others and, uh, and then about, uh, all entrances and conspicuous. Yep. All right. Uh, council member Davis, same question. Sorry. I thought the, the two quite, I thought we left coworkers as it, as it was because it was a recommendation section and, uh, and we said conspicuously and all entrances for the two changes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. So I'm fine with, yeah. Okay. All right. So council member Armitter, uh, ratifies, uh, republishes her motion for, um, uh, approval of that, given those changes and council member Davis, you second it as well. Okay. Any other questions on the actual ordinance? Okay. We're going to, uh, now open it up for, uh, public, not public comment for just closing remarks. I'm trying to figure out how I want to do this because everybody's going to raise their hand at once. So I'm going to start down from the bottom and work up the rows. Uh, so council member Meltzer, you're first up. Yeah. Uh, just, I want to just address, uh, all the people have communicated to me that they really feel strongly about this as an infringement on their freedom. And I just want you to know, I hear it. This is not, this is also concerned. People express it as we're not children. We don't want you to tell us what to do. Like we're children, uh, and we're not anybody's parents or I'm not, uh, you know, we're just your neighbors and you know, we're here trying to do what we think is the best we can for the community as a whole. And I just ask that you, you know, try to, uh, participate in, in just as public spirit in a way as you can with this effort to corral the virus, to use the terms of the governor. Uh, and if I can just say a little more, um, you know, I, I, in the last 24 hours, I did a lot of, uh, thinking and talking and with, you know, some members of the public and business owners about, you know, is there a way that we could have more flexibility and how to, for instance, protect the safety of employees, people who, you know, just have to go to work to live. And we prefer that rather than a shutdown. And the problem that we kept running into is, uh, unless we bring a uniform approach to it, it really just makes it tougher for businesses. Uh, you know, if, if, if one wants to require mask wearing, customers can say, but the guy down the street doesn't and, and this one over here doesn't, you know, it just doesn't give them the backstop that they need. So I, I'm influenced by the survey at the chamber and I just ask, uh, as you say, ask you to please, you know, accept that this is a temporary measure and I wish it weren't an infringement under freedom. It is, uh, but, you know, please try to join in a public spirited way and it won't be forever. Council member armature. Um, so for just closing remarks, I just want to thank again, everybody who called in, uh, and for those who can't wear a mask, a cloth mask, uh, for health reasons, um, I hope that, I hope that the city will in some way make at least a link available, how to get a face covering. And of course you have the option of social distancing. Uh, again, for those who are concerned about personal liberties, I'll quote again, you know, the famous saying that your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins. I believe that very strongly. So it's a bit really a balance of public liberties and, uh, people should have the right to be able to go to a grocery store and have their health protected. And there's a way in this ordinance for everybody to be able to do that. Nobody's going to be perfectly happy. I myself feel terribly uncomfortable wearing a mask. Um, but I know that it's for the right reason. Uh, and there are options for people who can't wear masks. So thank you so much to staff for working hard on this. Thank you to my colleagues. Uh, and, uh, most of all, thank you to the public council member Ryan. Thank you, mayor. Um, I'm not going to be able to support this. And many of my fellow council members have talked along the way about, we need to watch the numbers, but that's been the thing is watch the numbers. And if you just look at the big number, the number of new cases, yeah, it's, it seems like there's something that needs to be done. But if you dig down into the numbers and you look at where the new cases are coming from, what age groups, et cetera, those are the types of activities. That's why the governor, uh, obviously closed bars is because one of the biggest groups, at least in Denton County is the 21 to 29 year olds, uh, over the past week have had a 42% increase. Uh, the under twenties who are, you know, just now getting back and active into sports, uh, are a 40% increase. But as you go up, once you get into the upper numbers, there's above 70 is a 10% above 80 is no new cases. So we are in for, we are implementing something that even our county hasn't decided to do yet. Uh, and it's a county health department. We're implementing a requirement on all people when it's a certain segment that is, uh, accounting for the majority of these increases. Uh, the, the under thirties 20 up to 29 are 44% of all new cases. Yet in the past, it's been the upper age groups, the upper age groups have learned how to properly social distance and take care of themselves and not contribute to additional cases. But it's an educational issue for teaching the 20 somethings and teaching the kids how to properly social distance. One thing I haven't heard anybody all along that to me wouldn't just make common sense is teach people to keep right when they're walking down large aisles in the grocery store. You know how difficult it is when you are, when you can't wear a mask and you are trying to social distance and you've got people on all over the place on these aisles. I mean, that was something I was taught as a kid is always whether you're on a street or you're in the grocery store, you keep to the right hand side. These are the types of things that could probably help us out as well, but we're not implementing those. We're not necessarily, while there's a quick line in here, it talks more about employees, about just checking temperatures as opposed to implementing this strong of a measure on the people. You know, you could have the touchless thermometers. There's two of them inside city hall here by the entrance that you could check everyone as they came in. If you're above 99 to sorry, we can't treat you. Now that could probably be an issue in Texas because we're about to get in the summer heat and just being out in the heat, your temperature is going to go up when you walk in that building. But I just see this as way too much of an overreach. We know where the new cases are and it's, it should be done in a control of where those new cases are, what they're most active in. Those are the areas that we need to work on cutting back in. That's it. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. So there's a couple of things, but I'll be brief as possible. The just of it is, I agree that basically I've read a UT Southwest separation myth realities with regards to masks. I think we can affirm that masks help and not then agree on the best methodology to address that concern. I'll pick up where council member Ryan left off. If we're trying to address the issue, the two spikes are this is according to the Denton County health department site. And I'm going to give you a bunch of numbers because everyone said we're making data decisions and we're trying to flatten the curve and we're trying to make sure we have hospital capacity. So when, when, when we get emails that say this is no worse than the flu or this is the death rate, et cetera, our answer has consistently been it's to make sure we have hospital capacity. And so I'm anxiously waiting for someone to speak to hospital capacity. I've not heard it. Maybe I missed it earlier. I've heard a site from a survey from the chamber, but I'm going to base my comments on the data. So the spikes in ages are exactly what council member Ryan said ages 20 to 20, 20 to 29 and 30 to 39. Yet in this order, there's no mention of social media. There's no mention of marketing to that, to that group. It's a broad swipe at a problem that is very specific and we have the data to support a data driven decision and we're not doing it. And I don't know of many in that age range that, that follow the messaging we're giving. We can, we can truly address it in a more surgical way. And then it goes on to say in the county side, it says the most dangerous to those this COVID-19 is most dangerous to the chronically disease. That's diabetes, that's heart conditions, cardiovascular disease, and that seniors. Well, again, look at that age group, that age group isn't going to have those diseases and not affected by those. So by and large. So then Dr. Richardson goes on to say the matrix he looks at there's two, but I'm going to highlight the epidemic epidemiology epidemiological tracing. And so he says acute, acute cases by day is a matrix. He looks at, and this was just Tuesday. He said we, but I looked at it and so we're 2.41 per 1000 and that's lower than Dallas. Why are we not doing what Dallas did because we're not having the same problem as Dallas is by the data. It's lower than Tarrant County. Why are we not doing what Tarrant County is doing? Because we're not the same as Tarrant County. We're, we're, we're not that high. Why are we not doing what the state is doing? Because we're lower than the state average. The only county that no one cited that, that is a slightly, we're slightly above is Collin County. They've not been mentioned today. So again, database decisions. So then in last, I'll just say hospital beds. That's the narrative we've gone with. That's what we've said. And I believe it to be true. They're only 50.5% occupied and the vast majority of that is not COVID-19 patients. ICU is only half full and the ventilators, there's only 14% being used. And so based on the data, I can't support being punitive to a group of people as though there's no data that leads us to do something different. I wish my peers would have advocated for something along social media or different DTV ads that would then target the group that we need to address versus punishing everyone and threatening businesses with $500 fines. Council member Briggs. Thank you mayor. And yeah, just so individuals that are in that category are the ones who, who go to work. They're in the service industry. They are worried about going to work and coming home. And so I just want to add that in there, but I also have some comments. I did read through most of the emails today and I appreciate all of them. There was some confusion. We got emails from individuals in Sanger, Little Elm, Frisco, Argyle, Corinth, and Prosper who thought this was a, a Denton County ordinance. And I let them know that this was just the city of Denton and those were some of the ones that reached out and said they were against it. And so there was a little bit of confusion there and I can understand if some of them were against it. If their data in their County is a little bit different than ours, but the past seven days, there were 111 cases here. And then the previous week there were 72 cases in Denton. That's a 54% increase in just in one week. And if COVID wasn't serious, we would not be going backwards in our reopening phases. If we don't do something to slow the spread, it will hurt more people and more businesses. And a healthy economy begins with a healthy people. Someone wrote that to me in an email and it, it clicked. I mean, we have to have healthy people and we have to protect them. If there were any other known safety risk and it was hurting others, we would be here and we would be discussing every way we could do everything we could do to implement measures to reduce that risk for them. This is no different. And it just, it really makes me sad that it has become so partisan and we have to sit here and face threats for our decision to help people. It is, it's gross and it's frightening because I don't want to do this, but I don't want to hurt my family. It's just, I'm sorry. We shouldn't have to face threats from the community for doing what we think is best. Council Member Davis. Thank you, Mayor. Anybody who doesn't know what Council Member Briggs is responding to there is there have been threats against your council members. The same kind of threats that we talked about on Tuesday, not wanting our business employees and business owners to be subjected to. And the elephant in the room is that this has become a political hot potato that the president tossed to the governor and the governor tossed us in the county and here we are. And so your city council has to make a choice on how we best address that political hot potato. And it's uncomfortable. Council Member Briggs isn't the only person who feels that discomfort. And I know each of my colleagues here has had their share of discomfort, comments from the community, people that we like and respect and usually agree with, had some harsh things to say. But I want to quickly address some of the things that have been pointed out today. They're all good points, but the predicament we're in is the only lever we have. The only thing we can do as your city government, within our role as your city government, to not have to shut down again, to get the kids in school in the fall, to slow the spread of the virus. The only thing we have is these stupid little masks. It's the only thing we have any kind of control over. And it's the only thing that the doctors tell us short of staying at your home and staying locked down. It's the only thing that's going to slow down the virus. So we wear the sneeze guard. We wear the little spit cover and we don't spread our droplets at the grocery store. And it's what we do. The hospital capacity, it's an excellent point. The problem is, just like Dr. Richardson told us, the reason why Texas is in a good spot with hospitals is because it's regional. When Dallas overruns, here's where they come. To Louisville and to Denton. Our 60% could become 75% or 85% in the blink of an eye if Dallas's cases go up and their occupancy goes up. Same for our ICUs and our ventilators. And we're not going to withhold those things. Our hospitals aren't going to turn people away. We're not a closed system. Denton is not by itself up here. We're affected by everybody else around us. This to me is a common sense measure right up there with seatbelts and turn signals and all the other things that the government makes me do that I really don't like that I do for other people's safety as well as my own. Healy already spoke to the folks who we sent back out into the workforce. And they're the essential workers. They're the people you run into at the Walmart and the McDonald's and everywhere else. I think that's a big part of why their cases are not not just because they don't take it as seriously or don't know what to do. But they're the people you that you rely on for the services you enjoy. So I will be supporting this measure. Obviously, I seconded it. I asked for it to be on today's agenda. And I'm proud to support it. Thank you. You know, this is I share the sentiments of really everybody that that spoke. I mean, I've been thinking about this for longer than when we even considered it on Tuesday as far as you know, this began to circulate and percolate throughout the country. And it's a it's a difficult decision because in in a large part because it has been politicized, we politicized public health. And that's not to say anything against the comments of those who may vote against this because I think those those comments are very pertinent. I mean, how many times have I added advocated for data driven decisions? And so when I hear that in the city of Denton, the rates have gone from 72 to 111 in a week, it's a 54% increase. And that 54% sounds large. It's it's 30. It's additional 30 or 40 people. But I think the most important thing is what in some degree what Councilmember Davis spoke of and that is, this is a regional health system. I'm not sure how many of us really realize that. Why have we ever had to know that? Why have we needed to know that? But if something happens somewhere else, people other than ourselves may have some control over who accesses our health care system here in the city of Denton and in Denton County. So we could have very few cases. But that doesn't mean that in some ways that we wouldn't overburden our health care system. But we certainly need to make sure that they are available for our our citizens and those who need help. And what's sad to say is there are people that need help that are non COVID related. Some people need quote unquote elective surgeries. Fortunately, the governor I think gave some some leeway to hospitals to be able to still allow some of those things. But yet, there's there's other illnesses that are occurring besides COVID-19. And this is a difficult decision for me because I do value personal liberty. I do value the role of government and the role of the individual. But I also know that there is a role for government. There is a role when we have a situation and a health crisis like we have now, it would be no different than when we've had tornadoes that have come through our city. And then if it were bad enough that we could declare emergencies and put people or the city apply different rules and regulations. It's unfortunate that it has been so politicized because the mask it's amazing to me that something that we put on our face to give us some level of protection has become sort of a symbol of something that's much deeper right now in our community and in our nation. But I will tell you what helped me as I thought about this decision is when I went to my own physicians for just a regular checkup, and I just asked him simply, without any preference without any preamble, what do you think about these masks for this situation? He was very clear and emphatic. I mean, there wasn't one step that he missed in his answer. That is, well, they're what we have today to be able to fight what we're fighting. And I recognize that now we see the many emails as you all have and I've read I've read pretty much all of them. And I really want to make sure everybody understand if you don't want to wear a mask or if you're opposed to wearing a mask because you you believe that it infringes upon your personal liberties. As an American citizen, I understand that. And I have no dispute with that. I totally get it. I totally get it. But I'm hearing and I'm seeing a lot of people who are concerned that masks create medical conditions that mask for people who have asthma, COPD, and these kinds of illnesses and some that get triggered by mass. You know, we put an exception in our ordinance for that. We also stated during the course of this dialogue that the purpose of that exception wasn't to give people permission to all of a sudden quiz you and give you sort of a large questionnaire about why are you not wearing a mask, not just for the businesses, but for the individuals as well. That's part of this conversation, a very major part of this conversation, that this ordinance is to provide an opportunity, number one, for employees to be safe and also to provide some medical some form of safety, some form of prevention for the public that go into commercial businesses that are open to the public and to nonprofits. There's no way and I don't think any of my colleagues would sit here today and say that we know that masks prevent 100% of transmission. Nobody says that. The science doesn't say that. The medical community doesn't say that. Nobody says that. However, they do say that it can prevent transmission more effective than not wearing a mask. And right now we do have our cases going up. Right now we do have two counties, both to our south, that have had a tremendous increase in their cases. And of course, people drive to and from the different counties. So this is a very difficult decision for me. I've thought about it. I've taken everybody's comments into effect. I mean, people have posted our cell phone numbers on Facebook pages. I've received texts, as Councilmember Briggs noted, we've received a threat, a threat of potential bodily harm, people showing up at our homes armed. And it's unfortunate that when we're trying to do what we believe is best for the community, that we have to face that. Now, for those that are opposed to it, I don't know, I don't have any problem with people who feel differently about this than I do. I understand they're following their conscience and they're following their values and they're following the way that they deliberate on important matters that is the way they do it. So I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate the robust conversation. I appreciate staff support in this. I think, though, that what we need to begin to think about as well is when does this thing end? We put an end date on it. But if we can end it before then, I think we need to begin to talk about what metrics are we using? Because quite frankly, I really don't understand what metrics we're using. I mean, yes, there's a movement across the country. But what is the data that we're using? Is it 50 cases a day? Is it 25% increases at hospitals? We really aren't, we don't have a set of data or criteria that are at least giving us some guidance, not just so much a line in the sand. So I would encourage us to begin to also have policy discussions about that. So those are my comments. Sorry, they're so long. I haven't really said much during this discussion today. But again, appreciate all the emails. I've read them. I've answered phone calls about this. I've received texts about it from all perspectives. And I can respect that. And in no way do I believe there's an absolute right or an absolute wrong decision here. It's a decision that we're making that we believe is best at this time. So with that, we have a motion and a second. So we will now take the vote. Councilmember Armitage, I believe you made the motion. How say you on the motion on the floor? Yes. Councilmember Davis, how say you on the motion on the floor? Aye. Councilmember Meltzer, how say you? Aye. Councilmember Ryan? Nay. Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem? Nay. Mayor Watts is an aye. The motion carries five to two. I believe that's our last agenda item. I don't believe we have concluding items. Is that correct? I don't have my agenda in front of me. So, okay. All right. So we will stand adjourned at 442.