Jul 28, 2020 City Council on 2020-07-28 1:00 PM (SPECIAL CALLED MEETING)

Welcome, everybody, to this special call meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday July the 28th, 2020. It is 102 p.m. We do have a quorum, so I will call this meeting to order. Our first item on the agenda. Okay, Mr. City Attorney, or Madam City Attorney, excuse me. I show that we've got an item for individual consideration a before the work session is that so that's that is going to take we're going to take that up first okay so we will then move forward with our first agenda item which is an item for individual consideration uh agenda item a is consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas extending the effective period of the declaration of disaster concerning green tree estates so if we have a staff presentation on that we can begin that good afternoon mayor members of council mario ken is our state deputy city manager let me pull up the screen she'll give me just a second maybe I can do without it because it's really pretty simple let me just do without it mayor this is uh i apologize we do not have the presentation but it was a one slide presentation if it's okay i can just verbally go through so really it's just to uh to ratify the uh the direction that council gave last tuesday in our meeting the basically the request is uh from the uh from the residents along with the community advocates and the the plumbing contractor that is working with the residents over at at the community to add an additional 30 days of time to the declaration so basically what they're requesting is that the declaration not expire july 31st as originally scheduled that it now expire august 31st and what the premise is is to do some additional or do some survey work to determine the easements in which the lines could then be laid by the plumbing contractor also the plumbing contractor has indicated that because of the amount of work that's needed uh the additional time would be would be very useful to be able to get the work done and based on correspondence that i've seen uh last week that he believes that with this additional time the work should be completed by the end of before the end of august that's all i have sir okay council member melzer i move approval council member briggs a second a couple of questions before we take the vote um and and i guess this extension is also needed to uh complete the necessarily the necessary documents and legal requirements for identification of the easements any type of recording that may needed that may that may be needed and then have we had anyone else sign up for service i think we had was it seven as of our meeting six six okay and i believe uh i believe that excuse me i believe that is still the number uh and but but residents can certainly uh sign up any any time between now and then and we'd be able to accommodate those those uh those connections pretty much almost within a few days right i guess uh i would encourage that if if they have the uh the opportunity simply because i think as the plumber gets in there to start doing their work um whether they're uh excavating a a ditch or a trench for one line or 10 lines and it's just there's a there's a synergy there that i think also could be more cost-efficient so all right so any other questions on that we do have a motion in a second for agenda item a which is id 20-1416 all right then we'll take the vote to council member melzer house au aye council member briggs yes council member ometer yes council member ryan nay council member davis aye mayor pro tem nay mayor watts is an i i believe that is five to two the ayes have it so the motion carries for the extension till that was it august 31st i believe yes sir yes all right thank you thank you okay following the completion of the special call meeting that we just had we're going to move in convene in a work session to consider the following items and that time is 107 so we will begin our work session agenda items at 107 on july 28 2020 our first work session item is citizen comments on consent agenda items do we have any citizen comments on consent agenda items i don't believe i'm being told that we do not we've got one form but no people that are waiting to make a comment on the phone our next agenda item and of course those forms those comments have been sent to us on the city council work session item two request for clarification on agenda items listed on this agenda do we have any requests for clarifications council member breaks thank you mayor um on item b under consent about the runway um is it that the one of the current runways is cracked and unusable um and this is to repair that and if that's the case how long has it been this way scott grayer i believe is on the line mayor uh council members this is scott gray director facilities um yes this this particular item is for the design work for the primary runway rehabilitation uh project which will look at the entire length of the uh the primary runway as you recall we just finished the secondary runway or the west runway construction back in december there are a number of cracks um identified in that runway um and we've been trying to work with with text dot to get this funding for the last couple of years um this will be just for the design work and we'll be moving to the the actual construction phase next year mayor yes go ahead i have a follow-up yes will the weight be the same or will it be designed to carry more weight uh the weight will be the same at a hundred thousand pounds in order to increase the weight of the primary runway we would have to ask to do an environmental study that would would evaluate the different types of aircraft that could come so this particular phase would just be to rehabilitate it at the existing pavement strength okay um next item is item d for this is maybe for the fire chief or city manager you maybe can answer this um on the reclassification everything is fine i'm just curious about the um emp so with all of the emergencies and crisis going on uh right now in in the world um i just want to make sure that the fire emergency manager doesn't do anything special or specific that abolishing this uh position is going to leave us vulnerable or our fire department vulnerable in any way i'll ask chief hedges to weigh in on that mayor council member this is chief hedges yes council member briggs in regards to your question as provided in the ais backup so without position being vacated in june per 143 as a sworn position and appointed by the fire chief head of department they only have 90 days to fill that position so we will actually go through a consultant to do a full in-depth study of what our emergency manager coordinated position consists of and actually our entire emergency management plan for the city so temporarily we are absorbing those duties in house and we do have the capacity right now until we get this study back it's hard to make a decision whether we're going to refill this position at the same rank able to lower it able to bring in civilians so it's kind of you know really going to be based on the results of that assessment and see what industry standards and best practices will be okay may i follow up yes yeah so i did read that and i saw that there was going to be an overall assessment i just was wondering about timing and you know if there were you know any concerns and if any i know we have an emergency management department so our is that department's going to stay intact and kind of absorb the duties for now yes correct so we have office emergency those days are just being temporarily absorbed by other battalion chiefs so we're not going to have one person we'll actually have more depth in our bench to be able to support perform those functions honestly okay all right thank you um and then the last one is i would like to pull item j okay all right uh yes council member melzer uh yeah i just want to get a little clarification i i think our airport director may not have heard council member briggs specific question on b which was asking whether the runway was not currently usable and i don't think that's the case but perhaps uh director can clarify mayor members of council can you hear me yes okay scott gray again um no the the existing runway is still operational and will remain in operation until we get to the construction phase so um it is still usable as is um even with some of the uh the surface cracks okay all right any other questions council member briggs on your pulling of item j did you want a presentation on that or is it just pulling it and then we'll just take it up for item for individual consideration without a presentation um well just a slight presentation on the um i know that there's been a lot of issue or not issues but businesses downtown affected by the peck four and so just a an update on um timing maybe what these change orders include in depth and where we are just as an informational um presentation highlights okay all right thank you you bet any other items for clarification on the agenda seeing none we'll move on then to our work session reports we have work session report 3a which is id 20-1047 i receive report and hold a discussion regarding an update to the city of denton's coven 19 response good afternoon mayor city council sara keichler chief of staff um so in regards to the update on the city's coven response we're going to skip that work session for today or recommend that we move on um had sent an email to city council last night that we have no major updates um from last week's update and we also included some information in the friday report and an email to council all right i'll go ahead and uh then call agenda item uh what is it three three b uh which is id 20-1446 receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the amended mending the seventh order of council of the city of dent issued june 26 2020 approved by ordinance number 20-1255 okay one second like that's the presentation hold on one second okay sorry about that okay um so this work session is to seek direction on the city of denton's current local order in regards to coven 19 um so by way of reminder the city of denton does have a disaster declaration and an order both are in effect through august 31st however there are a few specific items in the order that are set to expire sooner or that staff is recommending cleanup and some updated language in the order we have outdated or we have outlined those very few specific items in slides three through six and then as well as we received a few requests from a council member in regards to the local order and those are outlined on slide seven so our intent and goal here today for this work session is to get direction on these specific items we will then take the afternoon to redline a copy of the order and then bring it back for council consideration as an icy item later today in the meeting so i'll jump right in and see the items that are seeking direction on um so the first one is uh in the order as paragraph five regarding the health and safety policy requirement so right now businesses and non-profits in the city that provides goods and services directly to the public must develop and implement this health and safety policy the policy requires that face coverings must be worn by employees and customers the policy must be posted and a number of other factors that are there as outlined in the order it is set to expire as of august fourth so we're seeking direction if council wishes to extend this provision to require businesses and non-profits to have a health and safety policy through august 31st august 31st to align with the order and mayor do you want me to bring these down after each one or go through a few of them you're still on you we'll just take this one at a time okay and uh we'll and any yes councilmember armature yes so i think that we should extend it if it's a if it's possible to extend it you know just uh to an event certain uh and you know that being you know when it's when it's determined that it's not no longer needed or if it is if it makes more sense for a specific date to be set you know in which case i would say we could just keep extending it every month but um i i'm wondering if we could also add to that and i don't know if this would have to be in the ordinance or if there would be a legal problem with it but a way for those individual policies that get submitted to be public because they're they're already publicly posted in the are supposed to be in the business but if there was a way for people to be able to look it up on the city website by business i think that would be very very helpful for education and i think it would also kind of serve to eliminate you know certain kind of rumors that are flying around and then people could just see it in writing on the website without having to leave their houses all right any other comments oh any other comments or questions councilmember melzer i think it would be cleaner uh to just make it coterminous with the the overall emergency declaration and not have it run on its own due date and of course we can always change you know any of those things as we go um i'll just tee up you know another thought about it that you know one thing that's changed since we passed that uh was the governor's order which has an individual requirement uh you know on on everyone in texas uh except from some counties and that has uh fines up to 250 associated with it that's that's the governor's order so you know i think uh i would i would suggest that in addition to requiring the posting of the sign that that the sign include the language uh you know just per order of the governor punishable by a fine up to 250 okay uh i've got a couple of comments and maybe questions anybody else have anything yes councilmember davis i was just going to say all other things being equal i'm fine with keeping this in our extension of the order and just letting it run with however long our our order extends just as it is okay yeah i've sort of um i've thought about this from the standpoint of when we passed this it's because there was no other mechanism whereby residents were required to wear masks i mean at the time that we passed this the governor had said that you know you couldn't municipalities could not pass an ordinance requiring citizens to wear masks so this was in response to another city that that sort of found this alternative way to enforce or encourage or require people to wear masks and businesses but it put the the onus on the businesses to enforce that whereas now the governor's order i think now puts that enforcement squarely within uh the purview of you know local county and state officials so i um some part of me is almost hesitant to to continue to require businesses to you know they can post this but then to continue to put on them the enforcement mechanism on it sort of takes away the the force and authority of the government because now you have two enforcement mechanisms so i i'm i think i'm okay with it but i think i also want to make sure that we're not trying to put more on the businesses when there's another level of government that stepped in and said hey it's now an individual mask mandate that the businesses no longer uh need to necessarily be in that enforcement now there are many businesses around the country including those that are here in our city that are requiring masks as a policy of their business so i i'm almost inclined to think is this even needed in the form of of a city emergency declaration with the force of potential enforcement against a business for not requiring someone or for a business to enforce mask requirements when the governor has already ordered that so it seems like it's it's a duality here and i think the businesses are suffering enough so i certainly don't mind having a a requirement for a notice but i just want to just make my thoughts known in that regard that i think that part of what the governor did i hope would relieve the businesses from that enforcement mechanism because now it's something that's statewide so i don't have an issue with it going before going running along with our our regular emergency declaration as far as adding to their business plan the language that the governor has mandated an individual mask requirement i think it can sort of get confusing i think to people as far as who's in charge of that enforcement i don't think that enforcing an individual mandate by the governor is the purview or is within the duties of a business and so i would i would hesitate to include that only for that reason now if we can continue to provide public educational materials that state just that but unless it's a separate posting unless it's something that's separate from i don't i don't think i would want to require them to put it in their business their safety business plan because that wasn't something that we did originally and then the governor's already issued another order so i'm certainly not necessarily in favor of well not necessarily i'm not in favor of requiring or posting all those business plans on the website number one i don't even know how many that is but they're there the public can read them before they walk in so those are some of my thoughts on on the matter so to summarize i'm okay with extending the order but taking it together with i think like council member melzer said and i think davis where we just make it run with the regular order instead of having a separate termination date because then we've got to come back and do this again separately but as far as requiring the governor's language on the business plan i i hesitate to do that and i certainly hesitate and don't support the city being sort of a clearinghouse for all those plans because if those plans change it's just i just don't think it's needed so those are my thoughts any other thoughts on this one particular item because we've got a couple of different options council member briggs i'm okay with it as is and extending it with our um with our order okay all right i think that's probably what i was trying to say it just took me a little bit longer to say it go figure okay anybody else anybody uh uh who objects to it as it is and would would would not want to support it as it is council member armitter i thought i saw your hand yeah so uh i don't i don't object to it as it is uh i do though um like uh what council member melzer's uh said about you know emphasizing the enforcement but we can get to that later i'd like to ask if there's not consensus to require for businesses to publicly post their their plan on the city website can we make that optional because i know that uh that there are there are rumors going around that this business doesn't do such and such and then the business owner comes out and defends and says yes we do i think that this would for those business owners who want to say look it's up on the city website then they could have the option of of doing that that's just a suggestion if there's not consensus so let me see if we've got a consensus for as the ordinance is written making it expire as the same deadline as our as the underlying order uh council member briggs you expressed uh uh direction but that's that's you're fine with that uh council member davis did you express the same direction okay mayor watts expresses the same direction i'm talking in the third person now uh council member melzer how about you so i want to make sure i understand the question yeah i'm i'm certainly fine with the what i you know suggested the ending coterminus you're saying am i okay with also no other changes which i mean if if there isn't support for them yes right um i would yeah so i'll leave it at that okay council member ryan um i'm of the mind that since the governor has the order in place that uh it's not really needed but it looks like you've got consensus to carry it on as a as a city mandate as well well i'm not sure we have total consensus yet but uh mayor pro tem uh yeah i'm the same way i i think i have questions but it looks like that those are moved okay well they're not necessarily moved all right uh because um what we have is uh council member armature uh are you okay moving forward with as it's written with no other additional changes um i'm not okay with that but it's better than doing away with the ordinance all together as far as i'm concerned if that makes sense so i think that it needs tightening because of the way that are they the numbers are still trending but i would if if it's a choice between keeping it as is or doing away with it or rolling it back i would prefer to have it as is does that make sense yes well then what i'm hearing is uh there there is a tacit consensus outside of i mean one stating that if if there's not support for requested changes on on on two council members part that they're okay with moving forward um it's a fista five situation mayor yeah well well but the fista five doesn't necessarily provide us with direction so i'm just looking for then i'm just going to say we're going to move forward with the with the uh as it's written except making it terminate with our underlying order unless i hear right now um at least four people say that they object to that okay we're gonna move on thank you on to the next item um so the second item here um this is really just a recommendation from staff to clean up the language um and just wanted to hear if there are any concerns from council um so in our current order it says that for any outdoor gathering in excess of 100 people um would have to be approved by the county judge or mayor respectively and that was to align with the governor abbott's previous order um he did issue a proclamation on july 2nd to update that um so that it's any outdoor gathering in excess of 10 people um so we would just recommend replacing that language to reflect governor abbott's latest proclamation and then also just put in there or as further amended by the governor um in case there are any other changes in august uh yes council member armator yes so i i support that i'm wondering um if it will be clear uh who is not sure if i should even use the word enforcement but who you know who will be kind of checking up on that uh and whether it would be a good idea to to make that clear as part of the ordinance because i know that there's a lot of confusion out there on the difference between the city ordinance and its enforceability and you know versus the the uh uh statewide ordinance but from staff's perspective i wouldn't recommend including in the order um we can certainly look at our faqs make sure we're doing a best best job as possible and trying to explain um the numerous orders and also that you may see events that have more than 10 people um as they if they're permitted outright by the governor if they're allowed to happen for example a swimming pool um or so forth there are certain businesses that are outdoor that may have over 10 so we'll work on some examples maybe that we can put in our faqs to further help describe what is allowed and what is not allowed but i'd like to handle or suggest that that's handled more through public education okay council member breaks just for my clarification um last time we had this conversation i thought um well we that we put our our zone in there so that the mayor would not have that discretion to allow something or not is that but this one amending it to what the governor says would give him the ability to do so if somebody reached out and asked for that special permission the mayor and the judge yes um how we would amend it would allow for that and it would be up to mayor watts if he'd like to seek um the approval from council um for example i think it was at last week's council meeting there was a resolution for a united way event um that would potentially have over 10 people and so that was brought forth to mayor watts um suggested to bring that forth to the full city council for approval okay any other questions is this uh apply even when social distancing is obtained um i need to go back and look at the governor's order but i believe because i know there's some exception gathering so you you must yeah it just says gatherings i don't think it has a specific specific to social distancing okay all right uh so then just for my clarification is the is it going to stay the same to where uh it still needs permission still needs to be sought by uh council to hold that gathering we can include that in the language if or the mayor still can unilaterally make that decision the problem comes in is that i don't know if enough people really understand in our community this particular like there may be a gathering to for a celebration of some type i mean fill in the blank uh and with more than 10 people then that either has to come to the mayor's office for approval or come before council for approval well council meets once a week if i mean right now we're meeting once a week but we may not meet every week so then that really does put an obstacle in the approval process from a time perspective so um i think that if we're saying that we really don't want any gathering of 10 people or more without council approval is that what this council is saying because that's basically what the order says if we keep it the way it was uh council member riggs that's not necessarily what i was saying i was just making sure and clarifying that the the update and change would change that uh from council just to to your office but i would request that um council be updated weekly on how many events or if any events have come to your office sure and and i don't have a problem with that and i can and we can the office can work on a set of standard additional requirements such as uh you know mask of course masks are required social distancings and anything else that we might would be appropriate for the particular gathering to ensure uh the best compliance but i i hesitate and the reason i did this last time is i hesitate to put the mayor's office in the position of of picking and choosing because that can become very difficult however i also don't want to put the council or the community in a bind where if there's a like the united way request for a back to school function to distribute you know school supplies i would hate to create a situation where that an event such as that uh would be hampered because of a time crunch with city council meetings so i'm okay with leaving it leaving it with or adding that the mayor's office can make an exception and i would just exercise extreme caution and in doing that and then i will work with staff and any one from the dent county health department to help maybe create a standard set of restrictions or requirements in order to really facilitate the highest level of care council member briggs i do have a what if question because it also says the county judge if an individual is wanting to have a gathering and seeks an opinion from both and one says yes and one says no which one overrules it's my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong staff that in the governor's order that the county judge is prohibited from making that decision within the it's only in unincorporated areas am i correct on that i thought i read that i believe you're correct it says respectively so if it were not within the city limits it would go to the county judge right so the city the city uh controls the city official controls all right thank you okay any other questions or comments about that all right yes council member davis i was just going to say i'm fine with what you've laid out um tracking the governor's order language but then giving the mayor discretion as long as i'd like council member briggs said as long as we kind of kept apprised and know what's going on i'm just fine with that okay all right okay we'll move forward with that then okay so going on to the third item um this is also a recommended update from staff um right now in the order in section six it contains language in regards to city council committee commission and board meetings so the language is actually in these two first bullet points planning and zoning public utilities board and civil service commission shall meet according to the order and then all other boards and commissions shall meet only as necessary to consider time sensitive items for critical operations and the reason this language was included in the beginning as you remember we were quickly learning how to roll out a new virtual solution we were trying to get staffed up and trained and so forth since then we have been able to take on more boards and commissions meetings right now we can do approximately 20 meetings per month just depending upon the meeting lengths and meeting dates and availability so we'll continue to try to handle as many as possible however we still need to prioritize some of the meetings but we're recommending on updating the language that just to make it a little bit broader that other boards and commissions shall meet as necessary to consider items and then those boards or commissions that may have time sensitive items would be prioritized if we do not have the ability to staff and resource all of the what would be normal plan meetings during the month so just recommending that update and would take any questions you have regarding virtual board and commission meetings any questions all right seeing no objections we'll move on and and seems that that would be included so moving on and to the fourth item so staff is just confirming previous council direction received or if there is any alternate direction in regards to utility non-payment shutoffs so as you may remember the order does contain language that non-payment shutoffs and penalties for non-payment of utilities could occur beginning july 1st however during a work session on june 26 council had provided direction that staff should delay that date and that implementation until the end of july so right now currently staff is planning to initiate those non-payment cutoffs beginning the first week of august and so we would update this language to match that in terms of plan resumption of shutoffs unless alternative direction is requested by council and i should mention also that we do have utility assistance available for residents in need we've been updating some of the processes with our non-profit partners so we're actually streamlined it now or anyone who is in need of utility assistance can contact customer service directly and they will handle that referral to the united way of denton county which is using some of the crf funds from denton county to help with utility assistance so we will have more communications coming out soon to the community we just kind of finished up updating that process and we'll be pushing that out shortly okay council member armature so first thank you sir for mentioning that the the streamlining for utility assistance i was really thrilled to hear about that and i hope that that's something that we stick with if it works for customer service i want to propose because of we're at this critical time where our our numbers are still are still very high and school is about to begin and we have families who are you know making economic decisions about whether to stay at home or not for a virtual learning option families with children and we don't want families you know to make that decision based on necessity or the possibility that you know they might not have have wi-fi because of a utility shut off so i would recommend that we extend that to you know ideally to october but you know at least to september at least for another month because of what we're because of both what we're seeing in terms of numbers and also too because of the the unknown about what's going to happen with the start of of the school year council member breaks i was going to ask and suggest something similar because of the recommendation from denton county public health on delaying in-person school until september that if a family is struggling and their utilities are cut off then that student is cut off from access to their classroom which is a concern and learning that interfaith ministries is out of funds and that's the main source of help that our utility customers have been receiving and i i'm glad to hear that our customer service is helping direct individuals to united way but i'm not sure that i don't know exactly how that process works and how long it takes and if they have the you know that's still pretty new for us and so until we figure that out and know that it's going to work for those families i would recommend extending this a little bit longer mayor i i did have a conversation last night i think this is pretty easily remedied we have coordinated conversations with both united way and with interfaith to actually process the assistance payments right through united way so what you decide to do with the timing is fine but i i don't want to overplay and overstate the concerns with getting into the the funding that united way is is hosting i think yesterday our staff was able to work that through and i confirmed that last night with mr anderson okay all right uh councilmember davis and then councilmember davis yeah we have a really helpful email from from christa in our inbox that explains the process i thought pretty well of how you i think the policy was referred to as no wrong door as long as you go to somebody who's connected with the process you find assistance um my questions are more about eligibility are we going to have people who are eligible for cutoff who are not going to be able to get united way funds i'm not concerned about the amount of funds available because they're cares act funds i think we're going to have plenty in that fund with united way for the time being i'm more concerned about do we have people who may be cut off could their cutoff be somehow related to covet 19 and are they not going to be eligible for those united way funds okay i believe go ahead krista foster may be on the line and be able to answer a little more of those questions in regards to eligibility otherwise we can follow back up with that information i'm not i'm actually here um as of right now as long as the customer is able to show that the hardship is due to covet they should be eligible for funds um it is true that if it is a non-covid related uh hardship that there is there are not funds for that currently because interfaith has depleted those and what's being used through the county is specific for covet but there is sufficient funding for that and we will be working with customers so if they contact us and we are doing the referral to um to united way we are also making sure that their services will not be suspended or interrupted during that period of time while united way is working on the paperwork and we will at this particular juncture allow them to make modifications and still be able to create a custom pay plan for that customer in the event that they were denied for one reason or another all right uh council member breaks thank you krista did had anybody um contacted or um looked to work on their account since the last meeting we had when there were over 2000 or is it the same amount of people and shutoffs we're considering um since the decision was made to not do interruptions of service we have an additional 400 accounts that are now past due and the outstanding balances of past two bills has exceeded what it was at the beginning of june when we issued the notifications that we would begin interruptions so we have seen a lot obviously with interface funding depletion we have seen a lot of pledges we have seen customers who have been working with them i think a lot of them may have been related to the fact that they were preparing for um service suspension um which would be my one my one thought as we move forward the longer we prolong this there are customers who won't take actions until we get to that point of looking at interruptions and federal funding will continue to go down in availability until that time period where right now there are funds that are readily available go ahead so you're saying that no one from then has contacted you to work on their account but over 400 more people have been added to that number we we have i'm sure that we have had some who have contacted us to work on accounts because even before that we would still have customers who would contact us to work on accounts but the overall number of past due accounts has continued to grow and the overall outstanding balances has continued to grow at this point we actually have um 210 customers who owe greater than a thousand dollars in services we have 14 that owe more than 2000 and we have one customer who is already in excess of 3500 dollars are are any of those commercial or are those all residential this is all residential and multi-family okay council member melzer krista when uh when people are shut off how long do they tend to stay shut off i mean i think that before you answer just make a comment i think there's a sort of picture of people just sitting in the dark uh and just not having service but you know is that an accurate picture is more that's what makes people call and then you make an accommodation and they get turned back on because sometimes people just don't communicate when they feel you know economically distressed right and i think that that is really more the case um customers don't tend to be off for an extended period of time as a general rule um additionally um for this particular situation we've sent out a number of notifications however if we get to the point where we are doing an interruption we are still going to consider that like that was our hard line to say hey you've got to contact us and i'm going to give the benefit of the doubt that that customer had not had any other means of picking up the emails or the phone calls or on social media and we're going to treat that as though they had called the day before they got interrupted so if they need an arrangement we are going to work with them that day exactly the same way we would be working with them now and additionally there will be no interruption fees there will be no increased deposits off of this first interruption round as we're trying to get everybody back on track and get them plans so that they can try to get caught up and stay up but really a lot of it has to do with we really need to be able to speak with these customers so that we can get them to the united way if they need that assistance and just to be you know to put a kind of hard line around it how long do do they typically stay off between cut off and contact and making some kind of arrangement we typically hear from the majority of customers same day and we have them taking care of same day in terms of being able to provide exact numbers i would have to go and do some research for that but typically it's going to be same day yeah thank you mayor if it's any if it's any help if i could responding to councilmember davis's request if the council wanted to have me go ahead and reload the interfaith housing assistance for those customers who meet those requirements have not used the fund but aren't necessarily able to prove that they can't pay their bill because of covet related losses we could certainly establish a practice with krista where we her staff drives folks the united way but there's also that other program if you want to do that so it's just a thought for you to consider it's not going to harm the utilities too much at this point but it may stop some of the bills that are going up well so i'm gonna let me share a couple of comments krista if you could again summarize you said there's so many give those numbers again of who's behind and how much you said three or four different numbers so right i looked at every account that's residential or multifamily that owes greater than a thousand dollars currently that is 210 total customers in the city and then i drilled down a little deeper and looked at those who owe more than two thousand dollars and there are 14 and then we also have one customer who has exceeded uh 3500 in charges at this point and you know our biggest concern is not the collection of the funds but not allowing a customer to get into a situation where it's going to be almost impossible to get back on track or that they're going to be on a payment plan for such a long period of time that it's going to be a tremendous hardship for them and that is really my concern here i mean when we first established this policy it was at the beginning of the pandemic when we had a tremendous amount of people laid off and the and the government shutdown order well we don't have that we still have a lot of people unemployed and if i do believe we had talked about limiting it to covid related hardships so what i'm hearing are a couple of interests one is an interest that we don't want to cut people off with students who may be needing that electricity to power their educational technology their technology for education all right i understand that and then the other was to not cut off people who are able to demonstrate that their lack of payment is covid related and i understand that as well i have to be truthful i'm not in favor of just extending this carte blanche for the next 30 days i think i think we need to be a little bit have a little bit new more nuanced approach to to moving forward to where we're really protecting the interest of those who truly have a need because of homeschooling that is is occurring because the children are not allowed to be in school and also those that are suffering a hardship because of covid unemployment we do know that the unemployment funding has been very helpful it's coming to an end and it's expiring of course the federal government is trying to determine but i i can't just without any kind of discussion about you know how is a multi-family not able to pay their bills i mean okay i get it but you know i would want i would hope to think we'd have some kind of demonstration of need because if people who don't have a covid need and they don't have students and they're just not paying i i would like to know that and i think we need to find a way to all these that are delinquent to say hey we might give a two-week extension of of the the non shut off but you've got to come in and start working out a payment plan we need you to show some effort if you're not within these factors or these interest groups that truly either can't because they can't find a job because they got laid off because of covid or they have students who are unable to attend school because of particular mandates or recommendations so as far as just an across the board continuation for 30 days of no shutoffs i'm going to need to have a little bit deeper dive into that because i think we're getting to a point where people are going to get so far behind they can't make it up and i certainly have enough confidence in our customer service department that if somebody can pay 20 a week or 10 a week or something make some attempt outside of those specific interests that we're trying to protect because of their necessity i would i would rather have a discussion about that because just to say i mean any one of us on this panel could quit paying our utilities and according to our our policy we're not going to get cut off now our bill continues to accrue and i just i think we need to get back to assessing the level of need i think that's important and how much money is in the united way fund i see mayor pro tem i just i just had a couple more questions how much has been allocated in the united way fund for utility assistance uh it is part of the housing assistance bucket from the county the crf it was 20 million dollars to begin with i need to check the update of how much is remaining a lot of money as of last night we're still about 18 and a half million okay all right thank you that's what i was going to add thank you okay and so help me understand because i think council member davis you'd mentioned that if someone and yours was a different statement than the city manager's yours if i remember correctly was what if somebody's not eligible for those funds and i don't know what the requirements are for those funds quite honestly so i i think i'd like to get that somewhere offline uh on how people are eligible for assistance through the county or united way for utility assistance what are the eligibility requirements but if somehow they don't meet those eligibility requirements council member davis were you saying if so if the if it's not coveted related let's say if it's not coveted related and they just aren't able to pay their bill then you're saying that you would want some kind of mechanism through interfaith to help with that just as we we always do i mean we've had that before the pandemic we've had that where people can seek assistance for utility bills pre-pandemic is that what you're saying is sort of have a certain amount of funds for those individuals that we normally would have so the city manager kind of anticipated where i was going with that that's not that's not specifically what i said but the interfaith fund is depleted because of coveted so it we wouldn't i don't think normally at this part of part of the year and i could be wrong on this i don't think we would be completely depleted yet with the interfaith fund so i think the logical thing to do is if there's fun funding available in the city budget to re-up the interfaith fund and then continue with cutoffs as we have them because that way you've got if you're eligible for covid assistance you've got that available through united way if you're eligible for the normal interfaith you've got that available and if you're just somebody who's not paying your bill for some reason or another then you're facing a cutoff and you've got to figure out what to do next but to me that's the logical thing to do because i think covet is what depleted the interfaith fund to the point we have it now all right mayor pro tem uh thank you yeah no for me and i'm going to phrase something and staff you correct me where i'm wrong if we disconnect someone they simply have to call and they'll be accommodated and will and will receive a payment arrangement is that is that accurate that is correct yeah then that's where and if they are indicating covid loss we will do the referral to united way yeah then that's where i stand i mean we can't protect some you can't make it so easy for for someone to uh not take the minimum step of contacting us that's what we're that's what we're advocating for if we don't say proceed with the shutoffs to me it's saying i don't want you you don't have to call us you don't have to communicate with us you don't have to tell us anything just go as you are we don't know how much rent the apartment complex is collecting that they're just putting away gaining interest i mean so that's really the hang up for me is all we're saying is simply call us and we will work with everyone and so that that to me is the most equitable most fair especially understanding we have one neighborhood that gets just short of 400 a week for nothing that they don't have to request so it's equitable to say call us okay so what i'm what i'm going to put out on the because i think this is a primary discussion we had councilmember armature talk about an extension to 30 days basically the same as we have right now what i'm hearing councilmember davis sort of in connection collaboration with city manager is that to go back to utility cutoffs but to re reload the interfaith fund with the monies that we think we depleted i mean we could i don't know what we funded it with before pre-pandemic was that the hundred was that the 125 000 from the dme okay could that also be funded with some of the covid relief funds that the city has that the city is going to obtain it could i think at this point i'd just recommend that we would fund it through the utility funds which we generally have it's more of a direct line the quite frankly i think the covid funds that we've been reimbursed for we're already going to have no trouble spending those okay so what i'm hearing is and and i can support this i'll just tell you that and i don't mind what is this established you're saying at the end of this month where the august 1st is when cutoffs would start is that right august 1st the first cycle that builds in august would be the first one that we would follow on their normal cut day which i believe is around a fifth fourth or fifth of august um it may be a little later than that so it's not on the first it would be a little later into the month okay so outside of the actual start date i'm okay with reloading the interfaith fund to a pre-pandemic level and that fund is solely for those who i'm going to say are non-covid related because if they're covid related there are funds that are not city funds that's how we got into this situation in the first place in other words return that interfaith program back to the status quo prior to the pandemic and if there's someone has a covid issue then they can move towards the county and i would assume that a covid issue would also be if you can't go to school because of your school children are having to be at home that because of the pandemic that that's also one of those particular kinds of terms so i'm okay with that um and i'm just going to put that out there and so we can sort of have our discussion around that council member melzer yeah um i i agree with that and i just to i just want to sort of draw a bright line that if if in a desire to be helpful you just extend the no shut off with the effect of that is you're giving someone a bigger bill down the road that they're responsible for and if you use you know the tactic of of uh you know basically flashing the lights to get to make them call you're connecting them with assistants now so that they don't have that bill so if your interest is being as helpful as possible it may make an awkward headline i don't know we'll see but if you're interested in being as helpful as possible into someone who's experiencing you know distress related to covid related to school starting you want to connect them with assistance sooner so that that's why i support this okay all right uh council member breaks is is there a rule or um uh i guess with interfaith or united way covid relief funds once someone is shut off are they able to help them and continue to help them or does all of the funds and assistance have to come before they are disconnected okay they would be able to receive assistance before or after they're interrupted um if someone was interrupted like that was the trigger that made them contact us we can work the exact same way as we do today which would be to put a stay on that account to give them the opportunity and time to be able to work through the process so that because again my my biggest concern here is not us capturing funds my biggest concern here is trying to work with and help our residents to stay in the best possible position and while that right now they have funding available to be able to get that assistance i want to be sure that they can my understanding in talking with united way is this isn't like you get one assistance from them i mean if you're continuing to have covid related responses and there are still covid related funds you're still eligible for those uh and if they're looking at non-covid related things through interfaith we allow up to three assistance per year right yeah yes may i follow up sure okay and so on the um the cares and the money since united way is denton county and you may have already said this but is there is it divided up per city like is there a i know that it's a large amount of funds but can they use it anywhere in the county yes no matter what okay and on interfaith for some reason in my mind i thought they once you were shut off you couldn't you you couldn't be allowed to use the funds to pay the deposit part of it but i guess i could be thinking of something else so there is nothing that would prevent a customer from going to interfaith at any point in the process um typically once on the normal situations once they've been interrupted and they're getting just the communications through the normal processes um they would in order to have their services restored would typically have to make at least 50 payment so there may be less uh outstanding charges that right now with the covid related uh suspension of cutoffs we are not going to be following that we will be working with them as if they called us and still had services on and we'll work with them to get their services back on with an arrangement or with an extension to get to a service agency so i think i just heard you say that before it would be 50 required but now with the covid emergency that is relaxed and not required would that be for um other individuals that go through interfaith now that are not part of the covid emergency they would still get that right now no right now we are going to handle all interruptions the same and that's like the best that we could work with someone typically when you're interrupted you need to pay in full and if there's an increased deposit you would need to take care of it but you know but we would we will sometimes work with people in extreme circumstances in this situation we are going well beyond that and we'll work as though you weren't interrupted at all so that we can try to get your services back on and get you where you can go for help okay and that's whether it's covered or whether it's non-covid at this point because once we leave august then everyone would have a nice fresh slate and it would be moving forward clean so question mr city manager what level of funding are we talking about to interface i would probably recommend that we put a hundred thousand dollars in there to get us through the year if if additional help is needed we can certainly talk about that through the budget process okay all right okay so i think i heard councilmember davis uh myself um i think councilmember melzer uh expressed some some support for what has been laid out uh councilmember ryan where are you on this i'm in support of it because it's been laid out okay uh that's four i can pull the rest of you if you want me to um councilmember armeter okay uh mayor pro tem okay and councilmember breaks um well if that's the majority i mean i'm much more in favor of interfaith getting more money to help those without cobit i think that's that's a good solution i'm just concerned about the deposits that are going to be required for reconnection if they don't sign up for pay as you go so i know that that's just we will not i'm sorry okay uh we will not be charging increased deposits in august for interruptions okay all right thank you we are using that i am viewing that as this was the trigger to make them contact okay okay thank you all right it sounds like we have direction on that so if we could move forward yep um just sharing the screen um so this is the last item from staff that we're seeking council direction on um so for this entire first bullet point this is the language currently contained in our order and this is in regards to bars um so when bars were shut down previously by governor abbott um the city took a step to prorate their food establishment permit fees um since they were not operating for a period of time since then at the end of june can't recall the date and the governor has shut down bars again so they have not been operating for the entire month of july and so staff is seeking direction if council wishes to leave this as is which was the prorated down to seven months or if you wish to extend that proration um for additional months um to assist those bars councilmember armature uh can you explain exactly what is involved with exactly how prorating is being defined here sure and scott mcdonald i believe is on the phone who just knows a little bit more details um so i'll wait and see if he's on um but it is depending upon the establishment in terms of how the food permit is fees are determined on average uh they're about three hundred forty dollars per establishment per year um so i'll see if scott's on to answer further scott you there i am yes so so what we did is took an approach um scott mcdonald director of development services my apologies um we took an approach that we recognized that the bars were not being able to be opened um so those establishments that are 51 are greater um the average fee for a bar is 324 we divided that by the 12 months and then said if they were not open for five months um that that was the proration so we were charging all establishments a seven month annual license rather than a 12 month annual license that answer that question um i have a just follow-up clarification and apologies if everybody else understands it and i just need clarification but so it would be 12 months but only charged for seven months correct okay we're we what we've done is we've we've contacted every bar owner those that have paid their license prior to this order um anyone that has paid we reimburse them the difference and any licenses that are due to be renewed then we would charge them at the seven month rate rather than a 12 month rate got it so extending the uh the pro rate means that we would add on uh that there would be additional months that they would get free or yes if you could clarify in essence it is it is the question if um if council wanted to change this section of the order um ultimately we we've prorated to seven months and if council wanted to change that number to six months or five months or whatever council's direction might be it was it was staff just merely um ensuring that they were abreast of of what actions had occurred and how we were attempting to take care of our businesses okay i mean i i want i want what will remove the most uh barriers for those that to help those businesses so you know whatever we can do whatever we can get consensus on to to to remove to remove those those barriers council member breaks thank you mayor yes i i'm okay with the the proration if a business cannot be opened then that vice then they're not able to to be open so charging them for use of that um only makes sense to to prorate sorry sorry sorry um i do have a question though because before the conversation we had before on the utility shutoffs um commercial wasn't in that i would like this council to consider to putting that down here under this business the bar since they are closed and cannot operate so that if um if they're not able to pay their bill they do not get a shut off um at this time so maybe we don't extend it for everyone but we put it under this category um where the governor has completely shut this um industry down i i have had some people reach out to me and ask about that and it was in our order before so i said you know that that was the case but as of today we've removed it so okay well we're going to take one thing at a time so the proration are we are we okay with the proration council member davis i'm good with it i just wanted to ask because we need to ask what's the fiscal impact of the city do we expect that that number excuse me excuse me i'm sorry um currently we have it's annually about a a nine thousand dollar a year revenue line for the the alcohol licenses um we've reduced that by uh three thousand dollars roughly um and that's that's the catalyst of where we're at today if we were to increase that number anything beyond where we're at that that would be the difference in it um if that answers the question yeah so a pretty minimal amount very minimal it is correct okay any objections to keeping the prorations the way it is i see none uh okay uh question on the the business shut off is um i think we need krista back on she's muted yeah krista you there all right now you should be able to hear me yes yes so you heard though what can i help with well council member briggs was talking about the uh on the bars you know that the the shut off uh that we just talked about applied only to residential i believe or something like that but are we shutting off uh business utilities that are coveted related currently no all right how does what we just we are not how did what we just decide in the previous one about the shutoffs how does that impact i mean are they all handled the same residential and commercial uh that is correct the only significant difference is interfaith funding and united way funding is for residential only okay so i'm not certain on assistance but yes we will absolutely work with them the same way in terms of uh not assessing an increased deposit and not you know working out a payment arrangement and that type of thing okay council member briggs you want to uh further clarify your comment my comment was to move the no shutoffs down to the the bars who have been um shut down for the time period that they are shut down so that um it doesn't necessarily mean all commercial or residential just for this one category of industry that cannot operate uh in the state of texas currently so that whatever we had before with the no shutoffs um no interest would would apply to this industry only okay council member armature yeah so i i support that and you know i would like to uh also go go a step further and just waive those fees so that it doesn't compile because you know this is a special case where as council member brig said by state order this one category of business was singled out to the shutdown so i feel like you know even though it came from the state you know i feel like uh for the sake of our local economy you know so we don't have just the big franchises left standing i i feel like that government owes them a total waiver but i i definitely support council member briggs is saying not consensus for a waiver and i'd be curious to know what the fiscal impact would be of that compared to um compared to say uh if we if if all these businesses shut down you know and we didn't get the yep okay all right any any other comments on on this council mayor pro tem yeah i i'll have to admit i don't know what we're i guess i'm just not clear i mean we didn't it's not it's not written i'm tracking best i can but can we get something written in a break or you know just i don't know i just well i'm at a loss because i can't you know we're doing this on the fly and i'm not opposed to that i just don't know that i'm tracking well and and have not had an opportunity to look at it in advance yeah so so what my understanding is is that council member briggs has proposed it for those businesses that have been shut down by the state order which are bars that have 51 percent and that they're not operating now i'm going to add that in there because some of the bars have have been creative and have been you know have retrofit to be able to do some things that will allow them to generate revenue outside of actually being a bar but the bars that have shut down and that are not operating that if they cannot pay their utility bill that they um receipt that they they're not going to be shut off under the same paradigm that we just discussed in other words there'll be a separate category we just decided that shutoffs will begin in august and we laid out all those uh parameters but what she's proposing is that for this very limited a particular set of businesses that have been shut down by the state order that they not be shut off if if they get behind and is that a clear is that a somewhat of a council member briggs is that somewhat accurate yes sir so it just takes um page five number four section six h for utility non-payment shutoffs and moves it basically down under uh section six n ta bc business establishments yeah and and i and i i agree mayor pro tem in some respect that we're trying to craft a policy right now that that has sort of you know just been proposed but there's nothing wrong with being proposed but i think there's some also some different types of nuances as one that i mentioned that i would like to see and that is how do if they're if they're generating revenue if the business is actually operating in some way outside of being a bar then i don't know if i would agree to to add that condition to it i mean to me it's what i'm hearing is if they're shut down and you can't go in that bar and create any revenue if the option is turn all the utilities off and you know you've got refrigeration you've got all these kinds of things uh so but you're right i mean this is a pretty extensive policy discussion that we really don't have any kind of uh staff presentation or staff uh information on when is our next meeting is it next week yes uh and when is the when is the what's that date fourth and when is the uh the the cutoff thing that that ends at the end of this month but yet the the shutoff procedure doesn't i mean that takes a couple of weeks i mean as far as i understand we can certainly stay that until you have your next discussion yeah let's do that so we can get some information that we can present next uh week uh to us a little bit more and councilmember briggs if you wouldn't mind getting with staff with some of the particulars about what you're what you're wanting to see and then staff can make a presentation to us and what i'm hearing is there won't be any shutoffs for uh bars um until we can have that discussion is that my understanding that's correct okay all right okay so if we could maybe toll that till next week uh we still have the same impact of they're not going to get shut off until we can have a discussion uh that's a little bit more substantive and based upon a little bit more information okay uh next okay next one and then uh what's the next one coming up uh so this that was the conclusion of the staff items okay had identified in the order that needed council direction as we were going to go back and redline a version of the order for council to consider this evening when we had sent this out on friday in the packet and in the friday report in addition to this items that staff had identified we asked if council members had any additional requests related to the order that they wanted to discuss with their colleagues and we did receive some requests from council member armator and they are listed on the screen here these first four so sarah sarah if we could uh let's take a before we get into this because i think we have some others in this particular let's take about a five minute break we've been going for almost an hour and a half let's take a five minute break and we'll come back at uh about about 2 30 welcome back to this meeting of the denton city council on july the 28th 2020 the time is 2 32 we are moving through our work session items we are on work session item 3 b i d 20-1446 we'll take up the presentation there thank you mayor watts in a second while i share my screen um so this is the last slide um and where we left off um is in terms of these are the requests received from council member armator that she would like to discuss with council in terms of adding to the order of council um so there are four um in regards to the order here there was also additional requests related to covid items that was received we did share that with uh city council uh yesterday and did inform council member armator that those could be made made as individual requests at future city council meetings as one minute pitches um so mayor at this time i'm not sure how you'd like to walk through these um but i can take down the screen or if you'd like to to take one at a time just no if you would if you wouldn't mind taking down the screen just for uh regulatory purposes um we all receive those i believe in an email so um i open the floor up for discussion i guess the question is going to be do we uh who's in support uh if any of any of the the additional recommendations to be included in the order obviously council member armator is in support of those um but council member armator real quickly if you could yeah if i could just kind of make a statement um sure go down you know each of them just the rationale um so uh amp up enforcement that's the first one uh with with with a clear uh policy uh that is following up on our discussion last time what we heard uh from from the health director for the county uh in the sense from i think three people on council two or three as i remember last time that uh that we need to to amp up enforcement to get more uh to get noticeable positive results so that is why i mentioned that um the second one about uh following the cdc recommendation and that is a recommendation by the cdc but there's not really any teeth to it that says that if a worker uh gets covid that the the place of business has to post uh and and notify employees that uh that there is a possible expo that they have possibly been exposed to covid they're not allowed because of ada um probably some hippa too although it doesn't mention that under the cdc guideline that you know they're not allowed to say you know bob in um right and you know management has it but they are allowed to tell employees you've been possibly exposed to covid i couldn't find anything that said that they can't do the same for customers and i know that i i have heard stories of people who were not aware that this was not a part of our law and of reporting to engage denton concerns that you know there's someone who has covid at my workplace and they're not shutting down so i've done my part to explain to them that's not part of the order um but but i i am requesting now that it that it should be well well now you just said something that's different than what you're asking for you just said that uh somebody said i reported on engaged denton uh somebody's reporting covid at their workplace and they don't know why they're not shutting down um that's not what your bullet point is your bullet point is simply yes yeah is a notice requirement yes yes so not only have been thank you for mentioning and so i should say not only that they're not shut down but they haven't been telling they haven't been telling uh employees so uh that is and i know that that the rumor mill you know extends from you know workplaces to the community and i think that this uh i i think it would help to keep employees and customers notified and also it would help for those businesses you know who complain about how quickly the the grapevine operates uh you know for them to be able to say look we haven't posted anything if somebody if an employee or you know employees have to have covid we will we will let you know all right if you could go through those next two yeah and and the next two um well the the the third one is related to the first i pretty much address that uh the last one um it uh was uh with you know keeping in mind how difficult contact tracing is at this point uh and how you know we don't unfortunately have the infrastructure to do a more sophisticated contract tracing so i was thinking uh along those lines in terms of for the intended result of keeping down our numbers if businesses could in a no touch way have people when they enter the business um either through you know through their cell phone register that they're there uh or through some other no touch means and some of which is is tracked by companies anyway by the way but you know not for smaller businesses for the most part but for the bigger businesses that way um if there is a potential chance of covid exposure uh the that you know businesses could notify uh customers maybe it shouldn't be the business maybe would have to be the city maybe we would have to work with the county um so i intentionally left that open because i didn't know the mechanism but at the city level i would like i would like us to require that okay all right uh any discussion on any of these council member briggs i guess this is for our city attorney and just because i know that i have had some individuals who work out businesses here in denton who um have found out through other employees that they have covid but they didn't shut down and their boss did not tell them so they potentially went back home and exposed you know their family and then their family's exposed um who knows so is it can we require a business to uh tell their employees if one of the other employees test positive and this not i'm not necessarily talking about posting i'm talking about just you know um let the employees know who um if they've been exposed or not that question i've had uh deputy city attorney katherine clifton look into that that issue so she can explain to you the results of her research in the state of texas the health and safety code dictates that for communicable disease that information is confidential there are requirements for reporting to the local health authority but what happens then with that reporting depends on the local health authority and their determination that's not our area as a municipality generally unless we had the health authority which in our case we don't um there's also a provision for employees they may elect to report they can an individual who has a disease can choose to disclose that but they don't have to so our businesses are in the position that they may not have the information they may never know and there's no requirement that they know that employee has the disease or any disease okay may i follow up sure okay so um say there's um a restaurant and some of the one of the waiters or waitresses has tested positive and that owner of that restaurant knows that but chooses not to notify any other servers um it there's no accountability there or no responsibility for that owner to um let the other employees know that one of the their own has tested positive that's something that would be dictated by the health authority the health authority is the one that has the authority to disclose that there has been a positive okay but that's not a municipal local level thing to do correct it goes with the health authority okay thank you council member armature yeah so follow-up question for that um for for this for the attorney um but there's a distinction correct between uh informing about a known covet exposure or stating the person's name versus saying you there you may have been exposed or you know letting employees know that they may have been exposed and that's what the cdc it was my sense that the cdc purposefully uh worded it that way because they wanted the broadest applicable um you know use of of that is that correct that there's a distinction there is a distinction the distinction the confidentiality goes to something that would be personally identifying um and then you have the question of the utility of informing that there may be somebody who's had it and that really depends on the business whether that would whether it creates more uncertainty than it provides utility yeah yeah and so and thank you and so i you know knowing of course that that creates uncertainty um i also know that that's how contact tracing goes and how it tends to work uh people get notified uh that they're not even told where they might have been exposed um uh they just get told you there's a possible exposure and so even though it draws the biggest possible circle around contacts and potential exposure it does have proven results so that's why i'm i'm recommending it okay all right uh any other councilman melzer do do we know i'm not even sure who i'm asking uh but do we know if the county department of health when they get a confirmed case uh whether do we know if they do that degree contact tracing to uh advise the co-workers of that person if they're employed uh that they should get tested as well i'll let sarah answer that but i will say under the law um there are certain notifications that they're required to make including for example for first responders most businesses don't fall into the into the category of being required to receive that information okay required is different than do they do it right they might and i think they're not you're not saying they're prevented from doing it so my question stands do they do it um i like that changing of the chairs safety um so we can follow up to get just a clear answer from denton county public health in terms of their current practice um i know when the pandemic first hit um that was probably a standard practice for them just in terms of now with with staffing if there's any delays we'll follow up to get just a clear up answer of what is their current practice of notifications and what they're able to handle um i do want to caution though as um i think dr matt richardson has had before we do have community spread so anyone in our community should take all of the precautions that they can um to mitigate you know and take health and safety measures um because you have to assume that it could be everywhere yeah and i would just you know a comment and i've spoken with them about that too that some of these broader contact tracing uh measures proposed make a lot of sense when cases are fairly contained and uh you know when you really get the numbers down then when something pops up you know you can kind of manage the situation and you know now you really have to assume anywhere you go you have the possibility of being exposed hence the mask order but i do think uh you know would like that question asked because i think that that's a that's a reasonable you know reasonable step certainly we can follow up and get more information from the public health department i just don't want to misspeak got some other great thank you yeah and what when while you're at it can you also ask that if there is a positive case or another positive case if the health department requires that location to clean um to to close for cleaning or what type of disinfecting is required if if any at all i just know that uh the the situation i'm talking about was that um they weren't contacted by public health and so um they were only contacted by the other employee and the the place did not close and um they had to go on their own to find out if they were infected so those would just be helpful uh questions to get answered since it's not something that we're talking about today just if next time when you come back you have that information on what they do require yeah yeah and i don't think there's any requirement uh or recommendation that if if because number one you don't know uh when somebody tests is positive for covid unless you you have a clear understanding of where they were within the last three or four days um i don't think i've heard of any recommendation where if someone is known to have tested positive that wherever they work has to shut down i know that businesses have taken that on voluntarily but i don't know of any requirement where you've got to shut down so let's say for instance if if a big box retailer here in town found out that one of their employees had tested positive for covid during a week or or something does that mean they have to literally shut down their entire business so i don't i don't know if that requirement anyway so we've got four bullet points i believe we got four bullet points here um is there uh i guess i just open up to try to figure out if we need to include these in the order or not so if you're for any of these bullet points if you would just go ahead and express uh your your support and for which one then we'll sort of try to take care of these i could do them one at a time but i don't necessarily want to do that because um any any support for it council member melzer yeah well i you know as i mentioned last week i i think we we're not seeing any beneficial effect in the numbers here and you know if if if we just go well you know we don't want to uh offend members of the public and you know we're we don't do anything we just kind of let it develop we're we're pretty much saying we're for you know we're for the state eventually having a shutdown i think that's just sort of where that where that goes um so if we want to have a greater effect i would support i would certainly support moving toward enforcing our own rules so that would be the first bullet okay all right anybody else mayor pro tem i have a question just to understand that that last statement so our rules say we're going it's punitive towards the business then the governor's rule says it's punitive towards the individual then the bullet is kind of silent on the issue but i think it leans towards the the individual so i guess my question is for legal can we you know i guess it it matters not if i don't get any clarity then i just yeah it takes care of itself well and let me let me say here that i mean council member melzer with with all due respect uh it sounded like you posed your statement in the form that if somehow we don't adopt this language or this policy or this sentiment that somehow we're not really wanting to do anything and therefore we're we're being in supportive of a shutdown i i categorically reject that assumption i think we have the rules on the books i think we we have a staff that's certainly been looking at how do we first educate and things such as that then but to to say that if we don't adopt this that somehow we're for a shutdown is is uh i i just reject that quite frankly um so anybody else for any of these bullet points uh in regard to the four that that were mentioned council member armature if you could hold on just a moment i'm just i want to get past this you you certainly shared your your thoughts and comments about your request so uh council member uh mr city attorney i had a question on the first uh bullet point well if you support before you is this a clarifying question because if nobody's if nobody's going to support it then there's no sense in moving through with this um any any any consensus on any of these council member briggs i i have a question about the um writing the names down um when we went as a family to dine in in a restaurant in new mexico they had us um sign a slip and put our email on it and who all was there and i thought that was very helpful in case i guess one of their employees or someone was notified and i think they probably do contract tracing and they have um probably a little bit different in that state but it did seem to be very helpful so i was just wondering if if you were what all you're suggesting are you suggesting everybody does that because i think that's pretty that's a lot um or if you go and dine in if there's a page for people to sign in and um and i'm not sure you know if you if you put your email on there what type of privacy issues that that so are you saying you're supporting that that particular bullet point i'm asking her what her intention was for that if it was for every business council member armature real quick uh yeah so i i wanted to to do that for every business where customers i probably should have specified where you know customers come in to the business where members of the public come in and out so whether it's a restaurant or retail and by the way the about the first point in fact all of these points are only regarding the city ordinance for businesses none of them involve individuals so i just wanted wanting to clarify that thank you appreciate that okay does that answer your question council member briggs it does i don't support it on that large of a scale okay all right so i don't believe we've got a consensus of support on any of the four bullet points so we'll move on um to do we have any more uh do we have any additional presentation for this agenda item uh we do not we'll take the direction received um and we'll redline a copy of the order that will be emailed to city council and then added for um individual consideration uh later today for the city council meeting okay all right agenda item uh 3c which is id 20-1229 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the 2020 mobility plan update with a focus on the one-way versus two-way traffic analysis there i am good afternoon mayor members of council brian yawn city traffic engineer back with you today to talk about one-way and two-way streets and let me share my screen all right can you all see that and now we're full screen does everybody see that and you can hear me yes i believe so all right so i want to make a few opening comments just kind of to clarify what today's discussion is and was it isn't and maybe uh set the tone and offer some guidance as we work through the discussion of this item this is a discussion of the characteristics of two-way and one-way streets it is an opportunity for us to investigate some advantages and disadvantages of both street types and look at some potential trade-offs associated with both types it is not an advocacy of one-way or two-way streets over the other both are valid and valuable street types that are deployed and employed worldwide effectively based on the context and needs of that community so just wanted to identify what we're why we're here today and what we're talking about and so if you ask any two traffic engineers and i put that in that context because i am one are two-way streets better than one-way streets you will get three answers yes no and it depends and it's this middle answer that it depends and we're going to spend most of my focus today because it truly does depend on the goals of the community and the and the values that the community wants to establish and implement in its roadways safety is always our number one concern so we we look at the safety of pedestrians we look at crash history speed characteristics also mobility ped bike facilities where we are adopting our 2020 mobility plan update which is moving the community towards a complete streets orientation we're trying to provide for all modes in the corridor looking at transit the effect of parking the next item is economic vitality and what impact does a one-way versus a two-way roadway have on the viability of a business the success of a business we talk about ease of access and shorter travel distances and then the last item which historically would be from a traffic engineering standpoint would be the first item is congestion and what impact does the conversion from a one-way to a two-way or just basically what are the characteristics related to congestion in one way versus two-way streets so again starting with safety and looking at pedestrian safety one-way streets have the advantage of requiring the pedestrian if you're crossing and let's use locus as an example if you're crossing locus east to west you only have to look in one direction because cars are only going to come at you from one direction on the main street on a two-way street you need to look in both directions because you've got travel in both directions one negative on a one-way street if you've got multi-lanes and all of our one-way streets are multi-lane as a pedestrian steps off the curb that car that's closest to the curb sees the pedestrian comes to a stop but that car may shadow the pedestrian from the other lane so you have a potential conflict with the pedestrian as it crosses the street on a two-way street you don't have that opportunity and cars from both directions can see the pedestrian clearly as they enter the crosswalk another advantage of one-way streets are one characteristic is to have fewer conflict points between pedestrians and vehicles and vehicles and vehicles so if you look at the number of conflict points on your right on the right hand side of the screen for two-way street intersections so both streets are two-way you've got 40 if one street is two-way and one street is one way then you literally cut the conflict points in half and that's important because every conflict point is a potential crash and relative to safety one of our goals is to reduce the number of crashes we see at an intersection or a corridor as a whole one-way streets potentially have higher speeds and this leads to the severity of crashes two-way streets because they have that friction associated with oncoming traffic tend to have lower speeds and lower severity of crashes just a quick history of the four streets that we're looking at primary corridors are oak and hickory and elm and locust that doesn't mean that this discussion is limited to those four as far as the viability of a conversion but these are the focus of this discussion the last 10 years on oak and hickory has seen a 617 crashes and zero fatalities and 110 injuries now that's all injuries not just incapacitated elm and locust and apologize north is to the right so the the purple line that's running north south is university and then you can see the downtown area to your left in the same 10-year period 2010 to 2020 almost 1100 crashes two fatalities and 362 injuries so one of the other interesting conclusions we can make is if you look at the oak and hickory corridors the crashes are fairly consistent throughout the entire corridor there are some high spots and some somewhat lower spots but if you compare that to the elm and locust corridor where you've got if you look to the left-hand side 320 plus crashes in the downtown around the square and then it drops off about the midway through the corridor and then you're back up to 219 at university we can see there's very very very different characteristics of the north south corridor versus the east west corridor so economic vitality and how does a how does a one-way street impact a business differently than a two-way street so one-way streets are just harder for visitors to navigate it's not a intuitive characteristic or or they're not familiar with the street patterns so they're not sure which streets are going to be one way in which direction whereas two-way if your entire street grid is a two-way it really doesn't matter because they can turn left or right at any intersection and they can approach any business from either direction one of the other characteristics of it over one-way street grid or even a parallel couplet like we have on hickory and oak and elm and locust is it can increase the travel distance required to get to any given business the example i've used here is joseppi's on locust and so the red arrow if you're coming from and i'm going to go two-way first if you're coming from the east on university and if if locust was converted to a two-way you simply turn left and you arrive at your destination under the current configuration if you're coming from the east on university you have to travel to elm you have to go past the restaurant go back to the east and come back north so you add and you can add considerable distance and that adds to opportunities for crashes vehicle emissions just so the reduction in distance travel is a positive characteristic of two-way street grid mobility one-way streets typically require and i'm going to talk about bikes and for a little bit here require a bike lane in one direction because there's only one direction of travel so if you convert that same street to two-way then the expectation would be that we would have a bike lane in both directions the implication here is that because we are not reconstructing any of these roadways we're working with the existing pavement curb to curb we now have to repurpose some pavement if we're going to provide bicycle facilities in both directions we have to repurpose some pavement that might currently be used for something else such as parking so that's a consideration that has to be made as we move to this complete streets approach that we're adopting with the mobility plan update and any conversion from one way to two way let me go back i did that too quickly the next item i want to talk about is relative to deliveries but it also applies to transit vehicles so they both function similarly in that they block a lane of travel when they're loading or unloading whether it be goods or passengers on a multi-lane design such as oak hickory elmer locus we've got two lanes in one direction if a delivery or transit vehicle stops to load or unload drivers on that roadway in that corridor have the opportunity to bypass that parked vehicle using the other lane of travel on the on the right hand side of your screen if you look at a two-way street which you're not again we're not reconstructing so you're going to take the same two lanes you're going to change direction of one of them now you have a vehicle that blocks lane of travel and there's no bypass lane so you have to either wait for a gap in the traffic on coming and go around or you have to wait until that vehicle leaves so again we're adding delay we're adding some perceived congestion by converting to two-way with delivery and transit operations and then on street parking on some on both roadways both types may preclude the addition of a bicycle facility we touched a little bit on this earlier if you have to provide a bike lane in both directions we may have to give up some parking or make some other compromise in order to provide that and then on congestion one-way streets if you have two lanes such as we do traveling in the same direction you can the the capacity of that roadway is significantly greater than the same number of lanes with a shared so you've got one in lane in each direction in each corridor this is because you don't have that that friction of the oncoming traffic you've got just a better a different perception of vehicle flow and so what we see is that you again this leads to better progression so you've got a vehicle that's traveling in one direction both both lanes are the same direction you get a lot more efficiency you don't have the left turns that are associated with that the opposing direction and so you got a lot better traffic flow some people would say that's a negative or a negative characteristic of one-way streets and that's why we're here to talk about it one of the more important elements or characteristics of one-way streets versus two-way in in traffic engineering what we look at is the ability for that the traffic to remain in the corridor where you designate so think about elm and locust we've got a significant number of vehicles traveling both directions if we begin to alter that and we convert those to two-way there is an opportunity there's a potential for traffic migration from those corridors the same goes with oak and hickory so if you increase that congestion by increasing the number of left turns that vehicles make and understand that every time you have an unprotected or uncontrolled intersection where somebody's trying to turn left whether it be a street or a driveway all the traffic behind that on a two-way street with one lane in each direction has to wait for that vehicle to complete its move for them to move on so here's a little bit of numerical analysis and this is using our had our consultant use our travel demand model to see if we can determine what the impact might be from the one-way to two-way conversions so what we're looking at on this screen is an all one way this is exactly as it operates today this is a 2045 traffic volume projection and i want to point out a couple of key areas if you look at elmond locus north of university you've got between 15 and 18 000 cars in each direction and if you look at oak and hickory between carol and bonnie bray you've got between six and eight thousand cars in each direction on that couplet now if we convert all of those roadways two-way the delay that we incur are introduced into the system slows the traffic again positive for many people but those people who are not associated with a destination along that roadway if they're using that facility to get from point a to point b in which case elmond locus are very much that way and oak and hickory are to some extent as well you what you can see here is that we begin to see that migration so again going to those two locations elmond locus north of university we see a migration of 11 000 vehicles so there people are finding this is this is taking me longer than it used to i'm going to find another way many times it's not any faster but it is perceived to be faster so that's how we get that cut through traffic and what we see here is that you've got about 5 000 more people on carroll you got about 3 000 more people on bell those are corridors that are designed to carry some through traffic not so much of a concern but if we look at oak and hickory we've got another 8 000 that we're we're forcing off of those two corridors into pair onto parallel facility so this is a a significant percentage and those parallel facilities are primarily residential streets not intended to carry that through traffic with higher volumes or higher speeds that's a that is a concern and that's one of the things we wanted to identify with this model run so we you can see that we do see the migration not so much of a concern on the north south corridors but on the east west corridors we're pushing those people into residential areas and on residential streets so just in summary one-way streets typically have higher capacity a little bit less congestion and delay because they don't have those opposing left turns we've got delivery in transit space the bypass lane where vehicles can drive around we've reduced the conflict points thus the potential for crashes however we've increased the speeds so more severe crashes so we've got fewer crashes but they can potentially be more severe and then we also increase the travel distance required or potentially increase the travel is required to get to any business two-way streets lower speeds that's a plus for most reduction in severity and and increase in number of crashes so it's kind of a two-edged sword we have fewer but they're not so bad again reduction in vehicle miles of travel we make that access to businesses and homes more simple and easier we look for we see increased visibility for pedestrians and cyclists because we don't have that shadowing effect however we increase the conflict points and again the potential for crashes for all users vehicles cyclists and pedestrians and then we increase the overall delay and and some would say congestion in the system again by introducing those left turns on streets where you don't have a controlled intersection potentially doubling the need for bike infrastructure lower capacity and that the last one very important potential for traffic to migrate to parallel facilities if the parallel facility is designed to accommodate the traffic that's not a concern but if we start pushing traffic into neighborhoods it is a concern so we've taken this to four different groups we went to the downtown main street association the economic development committee we did the committee on persons with disabilities and the traffic safety commission and significant responses were in favor of leaving the roadways as they are so we did have some interest in partial conversions maybe from downtown to eagle or maybe on elm and locust or possibly north of university again on elm and locust but the the significant response was leave them as they are and we didn't there was no loud vocal support of two-way conversion so normally i would pause here and we would have a discussion that's what we did the other four prior to going through staff's recommendations but you've all seen them so i'll just go through our recommendation is to leave oak and hickory as one way between bonnie bryan and locust one twist on that is because of the intersection at hickory and locust with the two-way intersecting the one way our recommendation is to consider extending the one-way operation of hickory all the way to bell primarily that's because there's a lot of traffic that continues east on hickory past locust not so much traffic that continues east of bell so bell is a normal decision point natural turn for the majority of the traffic whereas locust we still have a significant man that wants to continue on to the restaurant and bar area even though the bars are closed right now but the restaurant area between locust and belt oak is a little bit different it it functions very well as a two-way with it's got a considerably lower volume and so we're recommending leaving that as a two-way operation between locust and bell elm and locust leave one way operation between university and eagle we see that as a very popular through connection and a lot of people are using that corridor that don't necessarily have a destination in downtown but it is a good way to get across town so we're going to recommend leaving that as one way however north of the university the character of the neighborhood and the roadways change so we would be in support of considering the conversion of those segments to two-way operation we want to qualify that with a couple of comments if a two-way scenario selected we would leave the parallel leave on street parallel parking as it is adjustments might need to be required or might need to be made around the square or anywhere we have the angle parking we're going to have to flip the direction rather than introduce a reverse angle back in so we will lose some efficiency we'll lose some parking in those areas however if those conversions are made and the parking is lost one of the things we could consider is moving the completion of the mckinney street parking lot rehab up that would provide some additional off-street parking and might help to offset the loss of loss of anything on street if a one-way scenario is selected we certainly would like to investigate the opportunity to implement some traffic calming measures to reduce traffic speeds we don't the last speed study i could find was 2009 and on elm and locust primarily and the speeds ranged to 85th percentile speeds which is a magic number for the state and determining a speed limit ranged between 27 and 32 miles an hour now that doesn't mean that we don't have a significant number of drivers that are driving in excess of that what we would like to do is to make if we continue to operate those as one-way facilities we'd like to make them as good a one-way roadway as we can again moving towards that complete street we want to enhance the pedestrian accommodations with some additional pedestrian activated crossings and some wrong way driving elements much like we've done in other parts of town and then possibly convert some of the on-street parking to provide a bike facility something similar we've done on hickory and what we're about to do on hinkle where we've got the buffer and the vertical pylons so with that i will open up questions and comments from council council member bricks i'll start i have um a question so on the traffic congestion when you said it would do cause mitigation uh mitigation so migration migration right so if cars migrated from an area where we were wanting it to be more walkable and um less vehicles traveled on it would that wouldn't that be a good thing if they they migrated over to say carol where that they can manage that right so the two the two corridors are the two couplets that we're looking at oak and hickory and elman locust are very different elman locust we have parallel facilities as you mentioned carol certainly and uh bel to some extent that it's the oak and hickory corridor or the corridor that we're primarily concerned about pushing those at migrating traffic into neighborhoods so yes um that's certainly there carol is a parallel and it does offer have the capacity now the the downside of that would be that if we did that um and if you look if we go back to that slide you're you're more than 40,000 cars a day and carol's a six lane roadway but one of the initiatives that we had previously discussed was the opportunity to to downsize to right size carol or at least we thought it was being a right size and take some of that pavement and convert that to a bicycle facility so if we're gonna if we're going to identify elm and locust as walkable which is we're that's what we want to we want to definitely provide for pedestrian and bicycle facilities and we say that carol will carry the majority of the traffic that may weigh into our consideration is whether or not we can afford to lose those outside two lanes on carol and convert them to bike facilities okay all right um council member davis thank you yeah sorry council member armature i'll catch you on council member davis yep okay a couple of questions first on on bike lanes i understand what you're saying about a complete street uh you'd have a northbound car travel lane and you'd have a northbound or i'm just picking arbitrary directions a northbound bike lane you'd have a southbound auto lane and a southbound bike lane but there's nothing to say that the bike lanes couldn't remain one-way couplets is there you could have a a locust street that has a northbound bike lane and an elm stream that has a southbound bike lane correct part cars are bikes are probably a little better able to navigate that switching back and forth between the couplets um coming through parking lots that kind of stuff to to better deal with those distances don't you think uh certainly and they again the the word i used was expectation uh if you're a cyclist and you're traveling east and west and you come to a two-way street the expectation is if there's a bike lane in one direction there would be a bike lane in the other direction it's just it's a matter of it's something we need to consider certainly if we have roadway couplets that are one way we can have bicycle couplets that are one way it's just a matter of of how you know what's the highest priority and how do we accommodate all the needs uh in each corridor my second question is about the modeling that the consultant did and i'm curious maybe you can't explain the assumptions in a way that laypeople uh could process well maybe that's why you bring us the kind of the final the final models but my question is about that east west migration onto side streets i make that east west drive every day myself when i when i go to work and when i come home and i pick a different route based on the day and i'm in a neighborhood so i can't just take one of the the major corridors directly to my doorstep or my driveway um how do we arrive what assumptions do we use to arrive at the idea that they're going to migrate to let's say the neighborhoods north of oak and hickory there just aren't any until you get to university there's not an all the way through option uh you've got a panhandle that takes you a lot of the way you've got egan that takes you part of the way you've got crescent that takes you part of the way but nothing that's nearly as good at oak and hickory and and then i'm also what i'm having trouble rectifying there is that we're not we're lowering speeds if we go two way because we have the conflict with that friction as you call it but we're not really reducing actual capacity we're we're moving it over a block so help me what am i missing there that the engineers are seeing um in the way that those things play together so okay you're you're you're correct you're not if you look at the system as a whole um you may not be reducing capacity but you're moving the demand so you're using some um currently unused capacity on a parallel street rather than the capacity because you are in fact reducing the capacity of the street that's converted there's no doubt if you've got a number of driveways or public streets where you've got left turns and there is no there's not an all way stop and there's no signal then all those left turns have to wait for traffic to clear before they can make their left turn and all the vehicles behind them have to wait for that left turn to be completed before they can proceed on so you're definitely that's the delay and that's that congestion that you introduce uh with the two-way conversion you're correct and this is our concern is that you're gonna then push potentially those people who are heavy-footed and want to get where they want to go and they may not they may not have a road that takes them all the way but you know what i can go six blocks on prairie or i can go whatever however far and i can get around this congestion that's happening here with all these driveways that migration and that utilization of capacity on a road that's currently not experiencing it we see as a negative because right now people have the expectation of oak and hickory are two-lane one-way couplet and again they enjoy that enhanced capacity they have the enhanced progression traffic moves more smoothly through there if we introduce that congestion and start pushing people out into the neighborhoods now we're pushing them onto a street that may stop every other block so between those blocks they're going to accelerate it's just a that's that's the the nature of cut through traffic and we deal with a lot of that on a daily basis and we're really not we would prefer not to introduce any more of it that's i mean and that's the the the the migration is is going to happen if you because again these these are a lot of these people are not associated with a destination anywhere possibly on oak and hickory i make the drive as well i'm headed to 35 i'm coming from the service center i get on oak and i go all the way to 35 and it's a convenient not a high speed but it's a convenient because the signals are timed and i've got good progression and i can make it fairly quickly it's a lot more comfortable of a drive than going on university if that's like our concern is that if that becomes a a longer trip is that you'll see that migration into areas that currently don't experience it and there'll be a degradation of the quality of life and potential for increased pedestrian and vehicle conflict so that's what we're trying to avoid councilmember armature so i have two questions one is a an engineering question and the other is a question about the input you got both from the business community and from the committee on people with disabilities so the engineering question is so say you're going down uh driving down university going west yeah that'll be that'll be west uh on university uh and you want to go to the downtown square um and you pass um uh you know around where uh there's there's the cvs and the walgreens and the the tw you know that area uh right now you can only go down elm uh to go towards downtown which is and that's a one-way street so everybody who wants to who's going in that direction of university who wants to go in the direction of downtown they've got only that one choice um would you say that so if whereas if um locust uh and elm or even just locust was a two-way street then you'd have two choices you could turn left down locust which if you're going in that direction that come that pops up first uh or down elm so couldn't wouldn't you say that that um that that kind of uh mitigates a or partly uh a capacity issue and that people who want to go in that direction towards downtown they would have a choice um whereas now you know you can only you know the decision is made for you and unless you want to wait till unless you want to try to negotiate down side streets or wait till you get to carol does that make sense no you're you're exactly right and that's kind of what we talked about with the the nature of the characteristics of the one way is that it increases your travel distance because you don't have those options um we we didn't touch on it but one of the other advantages of the two-way street is that it opens up visibility for businesses from a different direction so if you're right now you can only see those businesses on on locust from the south and so if you open up that alternative um so now you can travel both directions on both roadways you you increase the visibility uh up to double i would suppose for the businesses located on those roadways um it increases your choice but it may not increase your or decrease your travel time if you if we have a lot of the left turn friction um so certainly there and none of this none of what we're recommending is we're not saying the two-way streets are bad at all it's just a matter of we as a community we need to decide what we want elm and locust to look like what do we want oak and hickory to look like we can certainly make improvements to the one ways as far as bicycles and pedestrians if we want to do that two-way conversion then we're going to have to look a little harder at provisions that we're able to accommodate and incorporate because we're again we're not reconstructing we're all we're doing is restriping it's just paint and so uh the two-way option is a is a viable option there's there's no doubt and thank you for a present and i i do feel like you really presented the both sides of the issue i was trying to think about trying to separate capacity um that that is you know the the number of cars that that are on a street versus uh the speed because you could have a bunch of cars going quickly or a few cars going more slowly and uh so but that so thank you for your answer and so my question about the uh community input especially in these two groups um i'm curious about the the the business community the you know downtown was the main concern did you feel that you know the main concern was about loss of parking that that is i should say the main concern with going to two-way were people concerned about loss of parking or was it more a matter of um people not being convinced by the argument or just not being certain about the argument that uh getting people to slow down gets them to look at your businesses more and is better for business or i guess the third option would be just that fear of of change and i don't want to mess with anything right now especially if that means in the short term if there's anything going on then you know then that creates complications in the short term anything going on that is new striping or whatever what how would you characterize so of the two downtown groups that we that we met with and that's the the mainstream association and the economic development group of the people who participated and responded you hit on most of the of the responses one of the primary responses was why now and some of this may be covid related because businesses are down and they're just you know why are we why are we changing stuff at this point we also had the concern about the lack of parking because that's extremely important to those businesses and we also had some concern about as we talked about the migration if if the trip on locust and elm or oak and hickory becomes you know it's just it's taking me too long because there's too many there's too much delay which is good again we're long we're slower in speeds we've got a little bit more congestion and congestion can be good then that migration that we talked about people are going to find another way and they were concerned there was at least one person from the main street associate that was concerned about the potential i mean again covid related perhaps but the potential loss of any traffic going by my business is a negative so in in general it was just a kind of a lack of enthusiasm for the conversion to two-way now if we brought this back if or if this was in a different context different environment we didn't have a pandemic or half the businesses down to shut down we may got we may have got a different response however when we took it to the two committees we've got and i would say two-thirds to three-fourths of the committee members were very much in favor of leaving it as it is we we had some residents or one of the committee members had been a long-time resident of the city and he said it's you know why would you change it it works great so again we just didn't have any enthusiasm or overwhelming desire from any of those groups to to embrace this two-way conversion so sorry thank you for answering that about that group um so councilmember armature before i'm gonna let you go on i just want to say to the council members we we've got specific direction he's trying to get from us as well i believe at least that's what the recommendation showed on the slide so if we could be moving towards that goal as you're asking questions and discussions because i mean we could probably have this discussion for a couple of hours but we need to begin to move towards the goal of he's laid out some recommendations and if you're for those feel free to share if you're against those but so we can begin to try to figure out what direction we're going so councilmember armature thank you and i apologize for interrupting you no that's okay and and and thank you mr mayor i um these questions are for me the questions that will help me decide um so about the committee on uh persons with disabilities uh i did i got to talk to one person from that uh committee um who was concerned about uh a loss of parking from a handicap parking perspective and um i was was hoping but i wanted to check with you and see if there's something i'm missing that um that uh handicap parking that there's no reason why handicap parking couldn't be preserved even i'm just talking theoretically i'm not asking you to make a commitment to anything but even theoretically increased you could say all the parking that remains is going to be handicapped parking so i'm i'm wondering if if there is a direct impact on handicap parking or if that's totally up to council obviously you know ada has rules about what percentage but you could go above that if if you want that that was one question and then the other question was it um i liked how you showed uh and that model on a one-way street when you're crossing traffic uh there's the that that second car that's second line of car that's cars that are coming your visibility is blocked off um and i was wondering if that issue came up on that committee because and apologies if this person's listening who i talk to and if i'm misrepresenting what he told me um but but what i'm remembering you know him being concerned about about uh visibility for people with disabilities under two-way scenario that felt more confusing to him and uh was or more um you know what i mean more more confusing in the sense of less certain about what's going to happen more dangerous from a pedestrian point of view so i was wondering if you could just address those two and then that's all okay uh so relative to the accessible parking if we're talking about parallel it's almost impossible to provide accessible parking in a parallel environment because there's no loading area there's no protected loading area so the only accessible parking that we're really able to to mark on street is where we have the diagonal parking so either head in or back in those areas we can hatch out something adjacent to a parking space um it would be a case-by-case basis whether or not we needed to eliminate parking at all we did not do a detailed analysis of how we would convert any of these street segments from one way to two way and what the potential uh elements that we want to incorporate whether we want to keep parking or at a bike lane we did not get that deep we just wanted to bring the considerations that we knew we would have to the potential trade-offs if you wanted to provide a bike lane it might require some parking elimination if you didn't want to do anything except change the direction of that of one of the travel lanes that would require no change at all but whenever we do a remark on a street whenever we re-stripe it we always want to take an opportunity to revision what that street wants to be and what we want it to be so that's why we bring those elements forward um uh what was the excuse me um um what was the second part of your your second question uh the second part was how did the committee feel about the visibility for pedestrians yeah right so we do have some tools in our toolbox that can address that and we're deploying some uh around our school areas and that's the pedestrian activated or potentially just activated crossings with the edge lit perimeter signs the leds around the edge of the sign that when you push the button the pedestrian sign begins to strobe we were putting some of those where we took away the signals on parkway uh on locust so that's one tool that gets very expensive if you want to do the entire corridor but on key crossings we can do that other than that the there's very limited that number of things that we can do to enhance the visibility on a two-way two-lane roadway that's just that is inherent inherent characteristic and without making it an all-way stop or stopping the main street that that sign that visual cue that is associated with somebody pushing a button that's the best tool we've got so we can address that issue to some extent but probably not at every crossing oh yes uh okay mayor pro tem thank you so a couple of things just so i'm gonna i'm gonna start off at the end that i i want to leave the streets as is for a number of reasons uh but thank you mayor pro tem let's uh let's let's move on to the next caller please no i'm teasing you mayor pro tem okay go ahead because when was this study and analysis done before the four-way stop uh all across on the square uh it's it was done concurrently it's done at the same time yeah our data collection was before yeah i think that's changed a lot of habits it's changed my habits i go one block off to get where i'm going uh because it's just it's it's too onerous uh to to sit through all that which is great right that's that's it's good for pedestrian traffic it's good to slow that down all the above but then also so that's that's one thing that i think is missing other thing that's missing is the muse street conversation we need to make a decision on those streets first and then also we need to make a decision on bell going through tw uh because you you can't adjust elm and locus i think before we make a decision on bell in my estimation because that hasn't you're talking about that parallel effect well that absolutely does that uh and so we can't make a decision before that to change anything in my estimation but then also um what's also factors not accounted for carol county the carol courts building and the county courthouse on the square will be empty in november or significantly diminished in traffic and use right because the the new building uh new courthouse is set to open in november and the justice of the peace the constable and the commissioner's court are all moving so to make a decision now based on traffic counts now and activity now doesn't take that into effect so for those for that number of reasons and then lastly the thing that that we've not discussed and we need to come up with a strategy on is bike lanes we've talked about bike lanes uh being uh on main traffic or if we want to move towards uh having routes through the city that are off uh the main streets to give make everyone comfortable uh with riding their bikes or again hopefully to increase usage so if not arrived at a decision that would kind of guide that policy going forward so i'd be hesitant to to add just painted lanes that no one's comfortable riding on uh versus being purposeful and intentional about here's our plan and we're going to keep people off main thoroughfares and and navigate the city in a way that someone that has a a novice rider would be comfortable riding as well so i want to leave it as is until we can sort out those ancillary issues that that i believe tie directly into this okay uh council member Briggs and then council member Melcer and council member so let's yeah let's uh again want to really encourage people towards the direction of helping us move forward with whatever direction we need council member Briggs go ahead so my direction i have a couple questions but the one i wanted to go ahead and say was that um i'm not interested in making um hickory one way it's two way and i think that it's i know that's one of the suggestions correct and i know that the other suggestion was to leave oak as um as is but kind of although i'm tempted because i do want to get rid of the back and parking i still think that we need to to leave that as is unless i'm not um am i not reading the recommendations correctly or was that a recommendation our recommendation was to leave oak as is right but to change hickory correct go one way to move that that decision point to bell but what you're saying is just leave it leave it both streets as is right because i think the two-way works works well um there i have other other ideas on one way versus two-way um my other question is did you talk to the homeowners association um the historic district on oak or or hickory about the the changing or the ideas they receive any input no we we just met with the four groups that i identified okay um so on elman locust that that's where i'm having a hard time because i think changes need to be made there i'm not i'm not okay with um i think we need more information i'm not okay with just leaving them as is because they are raceways and i'm not sure what the traffic the calming device would be there and if it would be enough um but i i think those two streets need more conversation and i know that doing a traffic study right now would be our traffic um it wouldn't really be the truth because of the peck four and all the construction that's going on so it doesn't really give us a an accurate picture of what's happening or what has been happening i don't think do you want to talk about that or if we did a traffic study when that would occur so a lot of that would depend also on what happens with the covid environment because we still see a significant reduction on a lot of corridors people just aren't driving like they used to so we've got not only the construction but we've got the the decreased travel demand citywide whether or not that ever comes back is a question but the other element that might play into consideration there is if and when the city takes ownership of those two roadways we'll have a much freer hand of what we can and accommodate or how quickly we can accommodate some of those changes so right now we're still in a textile environment on both of those and their their rules are different than ours on on those types of facilities you see the they've got the little shoulders painted which is what we were hoping to use as bike lane facilities so i when would you when could we could conduct a traffic study that's kind of an unknown right now we just don't know because you're right if you if you go out and count cars right now you're going to get a really low and account you're going to say well that's not a problem we can accommodate that and then six months or a year from now if we come you know back out of the covid downturn with traffic and the volumes are back to what they were um we may see a negative impact so i i hesitate to answer when when is it safe to go back in the water because i don't know that anyone knows yet all right council member melzer then council member ryan yeah um i'm for leaving them as they are i have opinions about each of these streets block by block but i think a lot of this comes down to 5149 kind of decisions and i i think the general drift is the benefits aren't stacked up enough to make this issue really ripe for change right now and so i'm kind of you know with the business community like not enough reason to make a change and just if for no other reason to preserve your your new streets your uh time and attention and cycles for things where you know the benefits are clear you've got ada transition plan uh projects stacked up you have a focus on there's so many more things that have clearer you know benefit so that's my my direction is let's let's not do this one now okay council member ryan thank you mayor uh just one question before i'm kind of getting to my recommendation and that's one thing i don't quite understand how crashes on one way yes your speed would be slightly higher but you're not going to have any head-on crashes on a one way versus the two way that you said it's safer for crashes because they're at lower speeds but if you've got somebody going 30 miles an hour both ways that's a 60 mile an hour head-on crash right so what we see on on the two-way conversion is a greater reduction in speed um crash severity is almost always associated with speed of the vehicles and so what we see on uh the one-way streets is those where you have the severe crashes it's not people it's not somebody going 30 it's that person who's driving 50 in a 30 zone so most people are not comfortable doing that on a two-way street because they've got that opportunity for a head-on collision so i mean those those statistics are pretty nationwide as far as okay the speed is just typically higher on two lane one-way streets than one lane two-way streets and the severity of crashes is almost always key to the speed of the vehicles okay well and and here's i'm basically for leaving things the way that they are currently and i'll give reason on on hickory on the east side of the square is because industrial is a one way and you have to go all the way to austin to turn around that's a very long block there um but that does give me pause on on actually wanting the recommendation of instead of north of university probably north of sherman converting that to two-way on those two streets would make more sense because that again is a very long block for having to do turn around uh and based on your slide you can actually turn in the block before because just seppi's parking lot you can get in there from the side street you don't have to circle all the way around so it's not that much longer but that's that's my recommendation okay so so council member ryan yours is they had alman locust north of university drive you're saying make it north uh two-way north of sherman correct is that right just a couple blocks just a couple blocks right yeah all right uh for me i i think i'm okay with the status quo only because i think we we've heard some outstanding questions here and and things that i'm not sure that this discussion is necessarily right given number one the the circumstances number two uh bell avenue was a really big decide i mean you know tw is asking for a segment of bell to be closed to through true traffic and i'm assuming that this either did or didn't take into consideration that is that it did okay we looked at all the scenarios with the two-way and the closure of right uh yeah and i i'm really i mean i think the two-way first of all elm and locust are maybe raceways well elm maybe because you're coming from university we removed the signal light at parkway and elm and locust so i mean that was i mean there wasn't enough probably warrants going across there to justify that signal like that's probably why it was moved but i think that was one of the the things that that helped maybe slow traffic down as it as it got closer to the square but i'm okay with leaving it the way it is right now i think the north south two-way at north of sherman or university drive um i'm not so sure that right now the benefits for me add up to uh being able to make that change simply because i think you have a lot more traffic coming in off of locust street uh or heading out locust street because locust does turn two-way at uh winzer uh so i think that provides and it channels it over down so that i think we've got um council member we got i think three let's see council member melsers for leaving the status quo i believe council member mayor pro tem hudspeth is i am council member ryan is except for that other recommendation uh council member davis so mayor unfortunately i don't think we've answered the question that's really been asked yet today the question that we seem to be answering is do we want to make this change today immediately whatever the cost might be and whatever the consequences might be that's not really the question the question is how do we want to build our mobility plan just like council member davis i appreciate that but the recommendations were specific recommendations so if we've been talking for an hour and a half on specific recommendations but what you're saying is more of a policy issue of one way or two way well then we've been totally off the mark i i don't think so i think that we i think that the points that the engineers have brought to us and that we've gotten input from the community on are important but if i'm being asked to give my recommendation or my preference either regarding the mobility plan and planning for the future which is how we're captioned or regarding the actual staff recommendations those are those are two different things and the staff recommendations i have i have pluses and minuses things i like things i don't like but i think as far as an ultimate mobility plan that's going to have roads in it that don't exist yet that's going to have planning for the future for subdivisions that don't exist yet i think if the question is what do we as a council as a policy matter want to see in the mobility plan that's the question i asked that i think eventually got us to this work session i i didn't ask a question about you know do we need to make this change tomorrow i don't think anybody in town thinks this is the highest priority of mobility question for us to be answering right now i think that they're i don't think a single citizen thinks this is the highest priority for use of their streets dollars at this moment i think it's a different conversation if we're talking about planning for the future what's the downtown that we want to see what are the what's the unt neighborhood that we want to see and in my mind that stacks up very clearly in favor of the two-way streets when you factor in the cost and you fast factor in the the switch over and that heartburn that makes it a different question and for me that's not the question um i don't think anybody on council is asking us to go and spend a truckload of money making the switch now immediately um so i so my reckon my preference would be that we as a piece of the mobility plan include two-way elm locust oak and hickory not that we this isn't an action item it's a question for the mobility plan yeah all right and i can give my direction on that i i would be opposed to that i think that the the two-way right now and in the future i think uh because it's not just two-way in general i mean in some ways this conversation has been sort of conflated between two different issues one is a policy question on two-way streets in general in one way but then even as you did councilmember davis you moved it down to the specific level of certain types of streets that were asked for in the recommendation and i don't think there was a time frame put on the recommendations but it was simply do you want to keep do you want to move these and i'm hearing you say you would want to move eventually at some point elm uh hickory and oak to two-way and elm and locust to two-way is that my understanding that's correct and whatever phasing would be appropriate based on our projects okay all right so uh in light of that discussion does that i just want to you know if a council member has a different position than what they took before it's certainly want to give you the opportunity to share councilmember armature and then we're going to take a five-minute break after councilmember armature yeah just just um since i hadn't just weighed in on my um recommendation yet so i i really appreciate uh the way councilmember davis have made that distinction between the weighing in on uh should any of these any changes be made now versus a long long-term mobility plan goals um and i feel uh similarly split on that issue that is for me i agree with those who say you know now is clearly not the time to make this change but i do want to take this opportunity because this because this conversation does have to do with immobility plan and that's how it came about you know to say that i that i do uh support the uh in envisioning a immobility plan that that sees those streets as two-way streets which does does not mean i'm just going to rubber stamp oh good two-way street two-way street still the community input will be crucial for me uh but i would like to see that added to the mobility plan and i would just advise that you know just people keep in mind how uh you know short-term thinking is so you know so different from long-term thinking we need to do both um but we need to make sure that our short-term plans don't substitute for long-term plans or else we never get to to making making that that long-term plan to making a commitment um that that ends up being really best for city planning so i have a question for for you brian uh in bringing these recommendations before the council your uh approach or was similar to councilmember davis's and that is as a as a change to the mobility plan correct incorporation into the mobility plan so your recommendation was everything stayed the same except for hickory being two-way from uh locust to bell and then elm and locust being two-way from university drive on out correct and that was this okay all right i appreciate that thank you that was the mobility plan yeah yeah and i i don't think that i saw it any different i mean if this is if we're being asked how do we want these streets to be looked at in the mobility plan my my answer uh previously would still be the same um council member melser did i see your hand up well you did but you wanted a break after council armature yeah let's take a break i need a break yeah let's take a break let's take a five minute break welcome everybody back to this meeting of the dinden city council it is 402 p.m on uh july 28 2020 we are on agenda item three cid 20-1229 and i believe councilmember melser you are uh you had the floor yeah thanks i mean i i take councilmember davis's point or clarification you know that he's looking for kind of a longer-term view not an urgent thing um and i would just say as a kind of inclination uh in some future reimagining i would uh i think it would be appropriate to have more two-way between carol and bell generally i'm not sure as far as between eagle and university and then and then you know uh one way past that meets they just meet different goals and it's sort of the two ways more appropriate in that more commercial area and in areas that are kind of adjacent that have the potential to be more commercial two-way and slower but uh that's sort of longer range uh inclination and it there's a lot of other things that have to come into play like as it's as it's been mentioned the future bell i take uh your pertemps point about in general what's you know what how's the bike plan going to shape up so but as as i would offer that as some loose kind of loose kind of guidance okay all right uh councilmember ryan thank you mayor as far as policy guidance on the mobility plan i would say for me it's more important to make sure that if you're running one ways you've got two of them running in opposite directions that they starting in at the same street so that we're not crisscrossing i remember a time when from jago to bonnie bray uh oak street was two way and hickory was one way and it created a lot of confusion for people and so i think to cut back on that confusion you need to have the same break point on both streets so so for clarification uh because i've heard a couple of things here and uh thank you councilmember davis sort of bringing up the the nuance of this discussion um so my understanding is this wasn't necessarily supposed to be a a policy discussion about two way streets and one way streets in general for the mobility plan it could have been it didn't it didn't really uh that's not what occurred it was more of with these particular type of corridors that were mentioned which is alman locust hickory and oak how do we envision those in the mobility plan moving forward for in the future at some at some other date uh because i think so my answer still stays the same in fact i do remember when uh oak was two way at one point that wasn't two way all the way up to carol and i think if i'm not mistaken i thought i remember talking about hickory converting to two way as we talked about the alignment when it was coming through unt as we were doing the repaving so we've certainly had these conversations i think uh in the past and that doesn't mean they can't change because obviously times change and circumstances change and before we made any changes i think especially to oak and hickory uh for one way or two way obviously if that decision is made in by future councils then the neighborhoods will probably be uh brought into discussion as well as the university because obviously the university is a major institution along that particular corridor so so i'm going to try to sum up what i've heard for council member davis uh for the update to the mobility plan uh council member davis your uh direction is to make oak and hickory two way for the mobility plan and alman locust two way for the mobility plan is that correct that's correct on on some future schedule just like we prioritize any other project but that would but that would be an update to the in other words that update would show in the new mobility plan that that's somewhere down the line these shall be converted to two way like we have roads on the mobility plan that don't exist now but we have a dotted line to show that that would be what that is okay all right correct uh so council member melzer um where were you in that uh because i you gave a little bit of guidance but it i couldn't really understand okay yeah that uh move toward being two way between um say let's say oak and hickory being two way between carol and bell okay and and i'd agree with the guidance that uh the councilor ryan said that you know right now they don't line up in terms of where they're one way where they're two way uh so that uh but but i'm i was a little i'm a little uh less sure frankly about uh what i would do with locust and elm you know how far north to go with that but but i would say that much the inclination would be two way between uh carol and bell on oak and hickory but i'm not in a hurry to to do this so that means they would be two way coming through the square yeah so so oak and hickory would be two way coming between the square but care but elm and locust would still be one way coming through i'm just i'm just frankly just not sure what i think about locust and elm okay all right okay all right um uh council member briggs um as far as just direction on what we're talking about my my overall direction is i'm not really satisfied with the status quo i think that we still need more information and changes in the future i i'm okay with i'm not against two way i think that on some of the streets we've talked about they would be um better but again i still i'm looking for more information on on neighborhood input for hickory and oak and also for uh traffic data on elm and locust i am i am of the mind that those two especially around the downtown area would be better going two way but i'm definitely not okay with the status quo because if they are kept one way i still think we need to talk about changing them to be more um pedestrian and bicycle friendly like uh mr john mentioned so i don't know where that conversation comes in but by saying everything's fine the way that it is means that we don't want to address any of the things that we talked about and so i'm not i'm not okay with that okay so is your direction that you are okay with making a change to the mobility plan to say that oak and hickory and elm and and locust and elm are two way uh locust and elm yes i told you as far as oak and hickory i would hesitate doing that without input from the neighborhoods okay all right uh and council member ryan i i think we need more input i think from a policy standpoint i've listed what i'm most concerned with and that is making sure that we don't create confusion but uh whether it's one way or two ways is is we weren't really posted in such a way that we would have the neighborhood input that we might have received in emails had we put it a different way okay uh mayor pro tem from a policy perspective leave it as is due to lack of information and and primarily even though there's recommendations the council has to make a decision on bell and the bike lane is a big one for me because we do not have a plan uh for how we want to attack that or you know utilize that opportunity throughout our city okay uh and council member armature i don't believe i told you this last time around yeah no i i support uh having uh more information uh from uh from the community i also agree it'd be good to to um hear more uh about the bike lane question but i i do think that this is a lot a lot of really good information here including the information from various stakeholder groups in the community and i still feel like you know i i'm ready to commit to having locust and elm be two-way and i'm open to a lot of other things too uh but but those are two streets where because of safety issues uh i think those are a concern but i don't want to move ahead with anything right now because because people are aren't ready okay so what i'm what i'm hearing is that we really don't have a consensus towards uh anything in particular uh so my question becomes if at some point there was a desire to make oak and hickory or elm and locust two-way and it doesn't necessarily show that in the mobility plan does that mean it can't be done if the council goes through all the due diligence of neighborhood meetings and in other words just because it's not in the mobility plan like that doesn't mean that you can't do it or am i incorrect yes council member davis mayor i don't think you're incorrect but what i've heard today it kind of gives gives the rub to what we're talking about mayor pro tem is saying we don't know how this interacts with the bike lanes or bell street that's what the mobility plan does it brings all of those things together we're not looking at this in this caption it looks like we're looking at this in a vacuum but we're not we're looking at it in conjunction with all of those other things so i think the thing we're fighting against right now is really just inertia and i don't think there's anything in your question if it if it doesn't say one way or the other does that mean we can't change it later no but right now elm and locust are being striped uh text dot's gonna gonna stripe those whichever way we express a preference for and then eventually those are going to be our roads we're not going to make the change overnight regardless because they're going to be striped the way probably the way that they were and they're not our roads yet so no it would not prevent us from making the change in the future but it would perpetuate the the inertia that we're talking about right now well i mean i appreciate that i'm not so sure um i think that what i'm hearing based upon i think however we got to this presentation which was i think a request that you had about you know one or two way streets the problem is it was we've presented sort of a very specific question in the context of also a very broad policy discussion and so it's hard to necessarily divorce the two when you talk about one way and two way and the recommendations are do we want to change the mobility plan specifically for these particular streets we've not talked about any policy discussion of one way and two way in general like new streets that are coming on how do we have a policy discussion about whether they should be one way or two way so i hear that but i don't hear a consensus to change the mobility plan today to reflect what anybody has really recommended i don't hear it to reflect exactly what staff has recommended totally i don't hear it reflected what councilmember davis you had asked that it that your preference was for it to be changed but what i am hearing consistently is i don't think there's a a opposition or a hesitancy to make those decisions or to have that conversation it's just we might not have enough of the information overall as you said councilmember davis within the whole grand scheme of the mobility plan how does that fit in to the entire mobility plan as a whole that we can't look at these four streets in a vacuum we have to look at them in totality with the mobility plan and i think there was some presentation of that today but then also it was also very directed towards these specific street configurations so i think we we've i don't know if i would call it inertia i think we just need to try to understand exactly what specifically the conversation is going to be and what information do we need to have that conversation because as we move through this conversation to me it was are we wanting to put the mobility plan that elm and locust be two-way and hickory you know that that's your that was your suggestion but how do we want to look at those streets staff had their recommendation and then each councilmember sort of had their own recommendation for the mobility plan in other words we changed the mobility plan and so i i didn't hear a consensus so i think this conversation is going to probably occur again maybe with some additional information and feedback that that we've been able to give here today so i i think we just have to come back to this conversation with the additional information that's been requested i don't i don't hear a council having given direction to change the mobility plan right now councilmember melzer yeah i think what that conversation might ultimately look like in the context of the whole mobility plan would be some discussion of what is our what are our main east west routes through town what's our main north south what's the feeders you know it's a little more it's just a little more comprehensive so i i still think it's you know helpful that we sort of got a little bit of the conversation done yeah but uh but i think that's that's kind of what the big picture story would look like no no no yeah no way have i hope that uh in no way was i implying that this conversation hadn't been helpful i just think that yes councilmember davis i what i've heard from uh our engineers so far in the mobility plan conversation is that this conversation is the linchpin they need to know the answer to this question so that they can answer the questions surrounding these other things that we're talking about this this conversation has been kicked uh several months now and part of that's because of covet and other priorities and part of it's because they were gathering this input in this information i think the presentation we got was very comprehensive i think the people they talked to um i kind of offline talked to some neighborhood folks but the the downtown folks they talked to i think was comprehensive i think you know yes no are indifferent i think we have to tell them something to work with and they design the rest of the system around it is okay that's what my understanding was going into this so then i'm confused now because when you say the question that we're asked to discuss or to decide today is the linchpin of the mobility plan i'm not sure what the question is if the question is one or two-way streets in general okay but if the question is do we make almond locust two-way or one-way or hickory and oak one-way or two-way is is that the question you're saying is the linchpin to the mobility plan or is it the overall the higher elevation question of one-way versus two-way those those specific just as we're captioned today those specific streets because that gets us into the question we can't answer the muse street question until we know what the main streets are if the question is do they go left right or backwards you have to know how the main streets are going before you know how you have to design those so we have to decide something even if it's just leaving it how it is we have to give them some kind of direction on the mobility plan or else we're not going to see a mobility plan for the downtown area until sometime middle of next year like we we have to give them some kind of answer it's been kicked off for information gathering this long and we just we need to have a an idea really of how they can design this thing council member ometer thank you council member davis yeah and i i i agree with that and i think you know whatever additional information people want can come to us i mean i would love to hear more information but you know it can come to us at at a later point when it comes to voting on actual projects so i it sounds like i've heard i know that so two council members had a similar recommendation one way i think another two or three might have had another recommendation another way but i'm a little kind of confused on um you know who uh who has yet to to weigh in on um on a mobility plan or or is it really just or is it two who want to go forward with mobility plan a certain way and others who say well i'm leaning towards this but i i don't want to commit to anything for a mobility plan i would just be clarification from from anybody on on where the room is right now on that well i think that's what i just asked everyone when i went around the horn uh and uh asked people for their perspective and uh i mean council member davis was very clear about his his perspective and his his desire i think council member ryan was with his policy question i think we all i gleaned some type of direction from everyone the thing is it wasn't enough direction in one direction to give consensus to do we change the mobility plan to represent something whether it's staff recommendation whether it's two-way for both hickory and oak and elm and locust and so typically when we have that then it stays the status quo and if there's additional information that's wanted that might change some minds or that might change some particular perspectives well then that's another conversation that we can have at another time but if we don't have enough to change something then it then it stays the way it is uh and so we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna wrap this up council member bricks mayor you said it right there's there's a lot of other things that suggestions that were thrown out by by the engineering as far as if we keep the one ways all the possibilities um what it would look like the traffic calming these are plans that make it sound really great but if they're not happening then the two-way seat would be the fallback so i'm just i feel like this needs another conversation about if we keep things the way they are what kind of implementations will this council um be for as far as you know bike lanes and um calming those are part of the whole conversation it's it's all connected so that's i'm having a i'm having a difficulty because i don't know what the other options look like besides just everything to right so uh and uh council member melzer real quick because i'm going to wrap up some concluding comments and then we're going to move on to the next agenda item because we got seven staff budget presentations that yep yeah i hear uh so uh i wasn't actually hearing from staff i heard from councilor davis i'm not saying right or wrong but i wasn't hearing from staff hey this is the linchpin of our whole plan we need you to tell us but if that's the case then what i suggest is for the next conversation it might be a while to get to it that kind of uh maybe two alternative comprehensive visions are shared you know that that that kind of have all the the uh the knock-on effects of those choices so if you go this way we would do this here and this here and this here you know all the pieces or there's this alternative vision so we could look at like kind of how the whole city looks uh in each of those two visions i think that would i think then we'd be able to land a little more more firmly okay all right uh brian do you have enough um input from the council uh mr city manager when we uh come back for this conversation because if you if if it's question is is the decision that we're being asked to make today in which we're going to be asked to make in the future based upon additional information is that truly before you can move on with i'm not sure what in the mobility plan but that this has to be answered before you can move forward on other types of aspects of the mobility plan i would say no i this is an important element and i think it has a some domino effects on on the bell closure on uh some of the other elements that we're looking at it it's but it's not a significant enough from a from a modeling standpoint uh change to say oh we need an entire new roadway that's one of the points i would want to make sure that everybody considers is in the area that we're talking about of these four roadways there's nothing new in the future on the mobility plan so those roadways are going to we have the road that we have the infrastructure inside the loop pretty much that we're going to have so what we're dealing with is what is the impact of the conversion from one way to two way and how does that relate to the potential for us to close bell um which was considered as part of this analysis it makes it a little more congested on element locust but they're not going to they're not going to fail so we've looked at a lot of these our recommendations would probably still stand if the roads are one way we have some impacts that we need to deal with if the roads are two way we have some impacts we need to deal with we were just trying to get some clarification on for the plan itself so that we can bring this thing to closure how do we want to depict that in for the 2020 update okay all right okay uh fair enough i appreciate that um all right i think that that answers uh at least when you said how do we depict it in the 2020 mobility plan i mean at least if we don't have another conversation about this before you guys finalize the plan then the plan would be what it is as those roads are stated today if we have a conversation before that's finalized given what you just described and we decide to change that then it would reflect those changes correct uh from what i understand okay all right okay yes mayor pro tem very quickly certainly and i just it's just forward looking and all it is is i think instead of looking at individual streets because i take the points that were made i think you have an excellent slide that this becomes the decision point it's the slide that says it depends on goals because then the body is for it so then when you're analyzing whether a street should be one way or two way what is the policy decision should that decision be hinged on safety mobility congestion or the economic uh vitality now you have kind of an overarching philosophy or policy that then uh staff could could work towards or use as a guiding light uh as as councils in the now and in the future work on it so i think instead of taking specific streets if you take a mentality because the data seems to to separate pretty clearly along those four lines i think that's just an idea yeah i appreciate that i think i think the the one of the purposes of this posting was because the mobility plan does address specific streets that are currently existing and therefore if we if we if the mobility plan is to change them to two way and that's the desire of the council to update that plan then we would just need to reflect that but you're right i mean that how are we going to make that decision he just laid those four out and i think that's what we've been trying to talk about and it seems like there's some need more information based upon those goals the economic vitality the safety congestion and things such as that to to help them make that decision okay we'll move on from this particular agenda item thank you brian so much for that thank you we're going i think i had a work session 3d id 20-14448 i believe mr city manager you said we're moving that back a week is that correct yes we're still vetting a couple options with the owner of the property okay all right so we're going to then move into um our uh budget presentations departmental presentations agenda item 3e which is id 20-1150 receive a report and hold discussion and give staff direction regarding departmental presentations in preparations for the fi 2021 proposed budget mr where'd the city manager go i had a question there there he is uh todd what exactly are you um do you have anything specific that you're looking for from council on these departmental budgets is this just sort of informational or something's very glaring or is this a time when we're we're vetting through through all this i know this is sort of a a preliminary look at the budget what what exactly are you looking for from council in this regard yeah we've given you a high level overview of our projected budget for 2021 in terms of what the revenues look like right now and we're still working through the property tax angle on that so we can calculate exactly the effective rate is um david is working closely with the d cad in there uh the process this year has been a little bit interesting so with the department budgets uh it's pretty pretty simple i mean right now we've got a budget submittal to the council that is balanced all the utility funds are balanced with no rate increases um we've got the general fund budget has been balanced to the effective rate uh based upon our scale back revenues so each department director is basically going to be talking taking the council through a format that's abbreviated talking about uh what their staffing looks like this year we've got a some specific questions from council that um as uh positions have been either frozen or eliminated does that have any effect on uh service levels if so what what were those uh service levels that were impacted um and just given uh you know quick 15 20 minutes for the directors to kind of talk about what how they've pivoted in this economy what impacts on services there has been and to answer any questions from council so it's it's very abbreviated compared to the last three budgets you've gone through and a lot more detail with each department director primarily because we don't really have much supplemental revenue all right so but this isn't the only chance that the council will have to address that if during the the overall budget discussions we still have questions about different departments and and look at uh requests or changes and we're able to do that in case we don't ask those questions today we're not we're obviously not foreclosed on that now this is just kicking off the first uh set of departments uh next monday will be uh focused on police and then the uh following uh workshop will be and i guess thursday as well will be focused on a number of departments so we're basically running every department through the council process over the next three or four weeks if there's any questions about services rates taxes staffing levels whatever it may be we wanted to give you the opportunity to ask us those questions um and and just kind of see what if there was any questions any concerns all right thank you very much all right so we'll we'll start those presentations good afternoon mayor city council members this is nick vinson assistant director of finance let me get my presentation pulled up for you here what i want to do is just do a brief introduction into the 2021 budget process that we'll be starting here in the coming weeks i mean kind of lay out a schedule for you which departments will be presenting today and which ones will be later this week and which ones will follow next week leading up to the city manager's proposed budget on august the sixth so tentatively this is the schedule the department's no oh just a second sorry about that there we go um okay so tentatively this is a schedule the departments that are going to come forward to you starting today and they continue through september 15th through budget adoption and you can see today of course is july 28th that we have six or seven departments scheduled to be presented to you starting with materials management the health fund the risk fund public affairs municipal court human resources fleet and fire and these conversations will consider or continue july 30th august the third august the fourth and then we'll get into the city manager's proposed budget being presented on august the six with that i will turn it over to the first director to present their budget i do have one question nick if we could pull the the slide the presentation real quick there you go when uh when are the quote-unquote certified roles supposed to be presented to the city i know we've got an issue with uh this the pandemic and certifications and estimates but when are we supposed to get at least the value that we're supposed to work with until supplementals are added uh throughout the year mayor let me turn it over to david that's going to come up and address that question okay mayor city council david gaines assistant city manager uh that's a that's a great question one that we've been wrestling with over the past few days friday last friday the 24th was the day that we typically get our certified totals uh from the appraisal district the appraisal district did not give us certified totals on friday they gave us a certified estimate so a different process than we normally have what we found in the certified estimate that we were given from the appraisal district was that 40 of our value is still under protest right now typically at this time we have about two percent of our value under protest so it's fundamentally altered the way that we're looking at the budget and our property tax right now so when we bring this back to you on the sixth next thursday as proposed budget we'll be laying out where we are what information we have from the appraisal district and how we can work with that information it's been a um a long process with them um over the past number of weeks they the appraisal district not only are they dealing with the impacts of covid but they also implemented a new software that seems to have not gone well and that's combined with um increased protests due to covid and a number of other factors that have led us to this point so they're going to they give us the estimate i i believe the plan is every week from now until the end of september they're going to give us new estimates as we as we lead up to that point i i believe they hope to have a a total in september i don't know that they're going to get to a point where we're at one or two percent of those values only under protest so we'll continue to provide updates as we go along but that's that's where we stand right now so when we have the uh i think it's thursday's when we start talking about the five-year plan and all that if you could just have um maybe what their estimate was and how how we really look at that just so that the council can because i know typically they give 95 percent of the certified value at least last friday but they gave you some estimate which probably is somewhere around there but they can't certify it so yeah just some background information about that on thursday would be great i don't want to take up that time today but i just wanted to see um uh and i'll probably ask questions how does that pair with the percentage you know what you're estimating to be the percentage increase uh which is hard to do with 40 percent of your value still under protest but i just wanted to give you those heads up just ask that question i appreciate it and that's our plan is to outline out every all the information we have and and the assumptions that we're making to go along with that okay thank you appreciate it david i'll hand it over yes sorry about that good afternoon mayor council let me share my screen and get this presentation started so so for procurement and compliance some of our accomplishments from the previous years we did earn the national purchasing institute achievement of excellence in procurement award we've received this award now several years it's a it's a lot of work so staff should be committed for receiving this award annually we also um you may remember brought you the updated procurement policy manual um so with that adoption we are implementing now our we're drafting and implementing a procedures manual to go along with that we've started um implementing some cost saving metrics that we're tracking and you'll see that in a future slide and then we recently evaluated outsourcing the warehouse service just to determine what our internal costs are compared to um what a vendor would be able to provide us and we did determine that those costs are are less expensive than to to provide them in-house for some future goals just work on our safety record in the warehouse um the process manual that i just discussed and then update our purchasing training you can see that some of the pre-covid post-covid activities that procurement and warehouse have been working through our our total workload did increase during covid um you can see those workload measures at the bottom of the screen so overall two percent increase in contracts that have been brought to you during this time we did have some cost saving measures by going back and renegotiating some contracts operational data um i do want to point out fy20 so the year that we're currently in already have hit the total number of items that council has reviewed as far as contracts and solicitations as we did this last year for the entire year so we still have a couple more months to go and we're already um going to be increasing that that number this year as well as you can see the different mix between the types of solicitations that we've done over the last three years and then the bottom table really is um about our process improvements that we've made and you'll see how we've reduced the number of fte's in our fund but we are making process improvements so we're able to do to do more with less the cost saving metrics that i talked about a minute ago it's really about cost avoidance so we started tracking this this year which i think it just really goes to show the level of the increased competition can save the city money um and so with that for a total of 266 million procurements that we have brought to you over this last year um 10 million of those or cost avoidance was 10 million on that so how we calculated that is for example the lowest bid was a hundred thousand dollars the next lowest was 90 000 we were calculating a cost avoidance of 10 000 it just shows um our increased focus on increasing our number of bids throughout the year and ensuring the city is really receiving best value fte summary you can see that um we did we did lose a couple of um fte's through the vsp position uh vsp program excuse me and then um we are we did we are keeping three of our fte's in warehouse vacant due to we're looking at evaluating the the pull yard at dme and how we can change that operation so we're keeping those vacant until we determine uh the next best course of action with that purchasing we are we still have a vacant buyer and procurement assistant just an updated org chart for you there's three different components in this fund so the component in the lighter blue is the compliance component so the compliance officer contract specialist darker blue is the procurement function and then the green is warehouse so on the proposed budget the revenues the majority of our revenues come from our warehouse sales and then we have some miscellaneous fees like our p-card rebate that we do do receive as well as our um our cost allocation from the other funds expenses not much changing except for our decrease in personal personal services um and then you can see on the same side the inventory the costs of our goods that we stock in the warehouse is the main driver of our budget and with that i will take questions all right um yeah council member armature so this is a question it's a question for our procurement but i'm also wondering from the city manager if um this is the same across the board if this will be the same uh in in other presentations from other divisions so where it says uh positions vacant does that mean that in all of those cases um that somebody took the um what's it called the the uh the voluntary voluntary separation vsp thank you voluntary separation uh and it is just been decided that we're not going to rehire to replace for now or is there a possibility that um that that one of those vacancies could have been someone who you know left in some other way um it's a combination of both um the budget the way we were able to balance the budget this year is we had about 125 roughly vacancies around the city that we froze immediately that we also had another 86 employees decide to take the vsp so starting back in march we had a team of directors that were essentially working through each of their respective departments if we had to go that next level into vsp or into layoffs or whatever we had to do how would you reorganize your department was it a technology solution a process solution how we're going to do it because we simply could not commit that we would have the revenues there if we were going from the premise that we're not raising utility rates we're not raising the property tax levy past the effective rate we already had one of the field goals built so we had to back into our you know our expenses so each one of those department directors spent about two months kind of rethinking how they would do business differently what they might need to make that happen and what you're going to be consistently seeing through all these presentations is not only have they accomplished that but without exception you you're not seeing levels of service reduced and so that it's it's been a pretty impressive it's i guess accomplishment from the department head team and it just kind of shows how seriously they took it but we're not in a position to be adding positions back unless the council wants to raise the tax levy and we just assume that was a non-starter okay well well thank you very much that that really helps thanks all right any other questions okay thank you very much i appreciate it thank you um you actually have me again i'm gonna do the risk and health okay all right well let me share that presentation with you okay so for the risk and health fund um some of our accomplishments for this year we are about to um finalize our risk management policy manual we've also outsourced the safety program which you reviewed that contract last week i believe and then coming to you soon is a a new contract for a broker of record for property and casualty insurance and then we've also addressed our service level standards for our third-party administrators specifically with our workers comp administrators some future goals we're really focusing on communication and training as far as our benefits package for our employees just what is what is actually available for them to utilize as well as our reporting and then obviously implementing some safety metrics with ongoing reporting to to reduce those incidents and expenses philosophical changes so we're trying to be more proactive about reporting and identifying those trends to decrease the overall expenses just really following up on claims and being transparent in our communication with our employees in our claimants some operational data for you um number of vehicle accidents have reported um you can see for the current year we're we're on track to actually exceed last previous two years um health claims paid this one is interesting because of covid and the elective surgeries being um being stopped for a couple of months this number is actually down from what we were forecasting so um that's its overall decrease to the uh to the city's expenses and then workers comp claims you can see over the last several several years our workers comp claims have been increasing so we recently this year had two claims max out at our hundred and hundred thousand or five hundred thousand dollar max rate fte summary so the risk fund didn't change except for the safety component without sourcing those the the safety program we did eliminate three three fte's specific for safety org chart you can see risk is divided between um finance and then also the hr which the benefits piece so in our proposed budget for risk um highlights the on the expenses we the maintenance line includes our safety contract for the up for the upcoming year um you can see in our estimate we're expecting to go above budget this year to we'll be bringing back a budget amendment for you to consider we've just had an increase in workers comp claims like i showed you on the operational data we've had two claims hit our max which we've not historically ever had um it's really driving those those costs up and then the revenue side um you can see these are the the transfers in from all the other funds that pay for insurance and then just some miscellaneous expenses or excuse me income on interest and then claim reimbursements on our health fund we're not um we're not proposing any changes to our our health plan design um so you can see we've made a slight reduction for next year's budget on our um expenses due to eliminating about 85 um fte's in total for the city so that did bring it is expected to bring our budget down and then on the revenue side obviously decreased as well between the city contributions and then also the employee contributions on the health fund and i did want to point out that the employee contribution it's decreasing slightly just based on number of fte's not um there's no change to the actual employee contribution rate and with that i'll take any questions questions i've got mayor pro tem thank you just one thought and i'm not sure what it would look like or if this is the right fit for it but when we have uh hopefully we don't have them often but like a catastrophic thing uh like with uh officer rodriguez is there a way to carve out maybe and a policy that says if we have something that drastic we can have a coverage quote unquote that maybe covers one or two of those instances a year obviously it may not lord willing it won't be used but i just i i hate to depend on fundraisers etc i'd rather have a extension that we could offer in those instances uh albeit rare but what is what does that look like from an insurance perspective is that an option and not to say this year but maybe forward looking so we actually do have what's called excess coverage um we have insurance that we are only obligated to pay five up to five hundred thousand dollars per claim and then our excess coverage kicks in so any additional expense incurred on that particular claim they it will be covered by the insurance okay and that how much do we pay again we pay up to five hundred thousand dollars per claim okay and then what is the max on that that's the max no no no benefits oh benefits um the excess coverage will kick in as as much as um whatever the doctor recommends it's really based on you know the specific incident that they will cover everything um over that amount outstanding thank you very much anyone else all right okay thank you very much thank you okay so we're looking for i believe is the next presentation public affairs okay he's getting set up okay um good afternoon mayor and council i'm just going to pull the presentation real quick sure um okay i think everybody should be seeing it yes excellent mayor and council ryan adams uh director of uh customer service and public affairs this first time i've said that out loud i'm just going to walk you through the public affairs budget very briefly and answer any questions that you might have uh just to give a quick overview of some of the things that have occurred over the past year uh our biggest accomplishments i would say for for this area of operations has been primarily managing the covet 19 response and communications it's what we've been living the last four to five months uh anything that has needed to be shared with the public uh regarding uh the pandemic has in some way or another begun at or started or touched our office uh we also going back a little further in the last year had a heavy participation in our bond election communications uh and we have continued throughout the year to really emphasize and and enhance a lot of our ongoing communications particularly with construction and developing construction communication protocols to better standardize how we go about uh relaying information related to our road projects and then we deployed as a request that came through and it was part of your last budget uh process a year ago we deployed our remote meeting production uh suite so that we could put more meetings more public meetings uh on video for people to have access to and be able to view going forward in the next year just a couple of things that we're really going to be focused on uh primarily is to procure and develop a new city website the website that we currently have is dated it has some significant challenges that present obstacles obstacles to us operationally and from a communication standpoint so we're going to look at what we can do to provide a better window for residents to their local government and then of course it happens every two years the 2021 state legislative session is uh going to kick off in january uh it may look quite a bit different this year due to the pandemic however that is something that is in our sites and we're going to be preparing pretty heavily for so very brief overview of what public affairs does uh essentially we have two clients we have our external clients our external customers our residents businesses visitors who we need to share the city story with uh share information and and make sure that our messages are heard and but to do that we must work with our internal clients working with departments uh to make sure that that the appropriate information uh is gets to where it needs to go to those uh those final ears uh that they that need to hear the information that's critical for operations critical for our residents to enjoy the city services that they need uh and to be well informed of what their government is doing for them in terms of service level changes we've had a few over the past year due to the pandemic uh the easiest to identify is that we did reduce our reduce our staff by one full-time uh person this was our social media uh staff member so we have essentially taken a little bit more of a broad approach with how we handle social media and spread those duties out a little bit amongst some of our remaining staffers uh we have shifted a lot of our proactive program services communications uh to more of a response-based covid communications as you're well aware uh we aren't doing as many parks library and other programs uh due to the pandemic and so a lot of the effort that we would have put in and a lot of the resources that we would have put in to promote those programs has gone towards uh promoting the covid response and a lot of the necessary information that has has had to be put out uh due to the pandemic and of course you know we're sitting in a virtual meeting right now when this was uh when this powerpoint was developed we were averaging about three to five produced virtual meetings per week meaning that we have staff right now who are making sure that this is available on dtv and available uh in a streamed format whereas prior to the pandemic uh we were averaging probably about one to two per week and then uh but if you actually take into account uh the meeting schedule that we have in place for july and what we expect for august that is actually more of a six to seven virtual meetings per week average so every time council gets together our board commission gets together we have our dtv dtv staff in the control room uh managing the meeting and making sure that it's available to to members of the public uh and kind of the reverse of that we we have had to have a sharp reduction in our public input meetings where we go out to neighborhoods and we get the public thoughts the public's thoughts on different matters although i will mention that we are putting together a process where we can use some of our virtual resources to start those back up in the near future and what are the impacts of these service level changes been well we've we've had to put on hold or postpone some of our own programs and initiatives uh particularly those related to university neighborhood and email engagement those were some of our initiatives for the current fiscal year that essentially were put on ice when the pandemic started uh we have had to cancel our citizens academy and the mayor summer youth job program for 2020 uh updates to internal policies particularly our social media and our publication standards policies which were in the works uh in the winter time and into the spring uh again those got put on hold uh in lieu of the pandemic and all the needs that it had and then we did cancel our planned season survey for 2020 that was due to go out to the residents of denton and of course we we did not go through with that and we're continuing to evaluate the best approach for future surveys and probably one of the things that has impacted us the most is is due to the ongoing need to be responsive to the pandemic and its communication needs and its engagement needs there's very little to no capacity for any new or expanded programs within public affairs as it stands right now so this slide is is pretty busy i'm going to go ahead and admit that but i will i will draw your attention to a couple things uh this is these are essentially our metrics for the previous year uh engaged denton has uh usage has gone up significantly we have about doubled uh the total requests from the previous reporting period additionally our social media impressions and engagement when people talk to us on social media that has gone up as well over the past year and continues to trend upward uh we've increased our followers on our social media significantly uh usually in the 20 25 27 26 percent for most of our platforms so we are drawing more eyes to the things that we have to say which is important uh particularly in the environment we're in right now where a lot of the messaging that we have going on is very critical to people's health and then uh in terms of public meetings we have shown you this uh set of data down at the bottom left of your screen a couple times in previous years and this is just an update but you can see that we continue to produce quite a few meetings about 406 hours from our last reporting period of produced public meetings that does not include any of our virtual meetings we we stopped counting uh in march but we did add on the virtual public meetings to the right up through march the council meetings they were about half of our total produced hours so you can see if we have leveled off a little bit it's still a significant trend upward from say 2017 and the number of hours that we're producing in terms of public meetings as we moved into virtual public meetings as you can see on the right uh you know we dipped our toe in the water in april with a few meetings but we have grown steadily since then and we've found that the 20 to 25 range from a practical standpoint is really about what we can do in terms of staff resources and that was mentioned a little bit in one of our earlier presentations today uh because it there's a lot of coordination that goes on in the back end a lot that that has to be done to make sure that these meetings go off with a little to no issues as possible in this slide you'll see just a summary of our our staffing and as i mentioned earlier we do have one vacant position so our staffing has gone down in public affairs uh of course our reprographic staffing has gone down to zero since we did uh outsource that function uh during the past year and our cable tv staffing has remained constant uh with three positions plus one uh part time this is just an overview of our organization chart specific for public affairs and i will mention that within the staffing that we have we do have several staff members who are dedicated to specific programming areas we have two staff members that primarily work on parks programming and we have one staff member that devotes a significant amount of time to library programming communications and with this slide uh as you can see down at the bottom our total budget has gone down uh to some degree from the previous budget year i will mention that we do have an increase in our operational costs and this is due primarily to construction communications and i'll mention that in the next slide when we talk about some of our baseline adjustments but we have changed the way we actually do our our construction communications whereas instead of uh public affairs staff essentially performing the work to get the communication out and charging back to say capital projects or the utility funds we start with those funds in our budget and then we reallocate from those other departments so we're not necessarily spending more money we're simply just moving it from one place to another so we can more effectively uh get these communications out faster and have a little bit more control over them and then the the balance is is done on the back end where the funds are then received from from those other departments whether it's utilities capital projects or whatever the construction communication might warrant and a couple of changes from the previous baseline uh budget that we did last year a couple of adjustments we are requesting food and supplies for the next year this is primarily to account for food costs that we have incurred in previous years for say the citizens academy uh for a couple of those meetings they tend to go on uh for a long period of time we want to make sure that we can provide some some food for the the attendees particularly on the last meeting which is a little bit lengthy we have a secured or requested uh ten thousand dollars in interpretation and translation services and what we found in the previous year is that we do have a need for some documents to be translated particularly if they are very critical or important documents we want to make sure that's done by a third party so we can ensure the quality of that interpretation and of course what we found through the green tree estates um issue is that there are going to be meetings where we're going to need interpreters so we want to have some fun set aside so that we can have the flexibility bringing on interpreters on board who are very efficient in what they do we have allocated ten thousand dollars for legislative travel this is less than what we did a couple of years ago we we hope to restrict the times we need to go down to austin during session and only go when needed and then of course postage and outside printing those are the allocations from other departments that we would be using for construction communication primarily letters to residents those are the main cost drivers in that area and that is my presentation i'm having answered any questions that you have all right any uh we'll pull that slide down yeah any we do have some questions council member bricks thank you ryan and congratulations uh so my question is about the citizen survey and it says that it's on hold at one time was there is it the um the how is that on hold is there a not is there a way to do that internally still or is that something that we do externally we we use that we do that as a contracted service and so um what we have typically done is is partnered with an organization that uh does a lot of citizen surveys with other cities that way we can use events marketing information and so the timing of that was the main issue this year uh when we typically do the survey and really when we typically prepare for the survey was just in the heat of the covet pandemic uh and it was during the may june time frame there was a lot of uncertainty and so we made the decision that it would be difficult to deploy a survey within the community and get a get a high enough response rate for those results to be used so we decided to uh not do that this year forego it and consider it in future years and i believe we have uh some in a contract that we have with with that organization some remaining capacities for to do another survey um but we're looking at several different options and we would come back to council with an update on that uh there's just a lot of uncertainty right now when the best timing might be for for a resident survey okay i'll just say that it it is very helpful and it's been very helpful to council in the past to see um what's important and you know what's functioning what's what's not and it helps us as we go along so i just saw that it was postponed and i didn't know that um i didn't i guess i'm just wondering if it was going to come back next year or if you're thinking years out or if there's a way to bring that in house to save to save money to some capacity i i think that the the summertime is still the opportune time to do it so i think this might be something that we look at probably in the spring to determine and and it could be a different world by then but to determine what the best course of action is thank you yeah okay any other questions okay thank you very much ryan appreciate it thank you sir okay hello my name is jamie lindsey i am the court administrator for our denton municipal court and i just wanted to clarify that this budget presentation is for court services only otherwise known as the clerk's office the judge's office does have a separate budget that's not being covered in this and some of our expenses are kind of intermingled but this is just the court services side so i came on board with the court at the end of april the court's case management system had already been upgraded but at that time our court lobby was closed court proceedings had ceased and we were with also without a presiding judge as you know so luckily we have a great team and they were very willing and able to adapt so in a very short time we were able to implement new safety protocols we were able to reopen our lobby windows and we also hosted the court's first virtual court hearings and we did all of that by the first week of june so that was a very quick turnaround and we're very proud of that we also implemented an electronic queuing system on day one of our reopen and we had almost 150 visitors on that first day so that really helped us with traffic flow and helped with social distancing we have recently also added an intercom and remote door system so that helps us further monitor and control capacity in our building we have also modified our payment plan to be much shorter and easier application and we've all we've also relaxed the qualifications necessary to pay out fines and fees we feel like if someone needs more time then we should allow them more time that shouldn't be based on their income or any of the many many things that were required before when that collections program was under the oca which it is no longer so we were able to make those modifications we've also been accepting payment plan requests and compliance documentation via email so that helps prevent people from having to come in and they can take care of things remotely so our future goals really focus on those same things of increasing remote dispute resolution and also other payment options again to keep people from having to even come into our building some people that get citations obviously aren't from denton so if they can do things remotely that's even better and in addition to our citizens so some of these things are already in progress and some or at least in the research phase already additionally judge atkinson has many ideas and a lot of experience with different types of technology too that he's bringing to the table and he and i and the team are all very well in sync on what our goals are with the court and we're starting to move on those things very quickly so again my goal is to keep our momentum going and work with our newly appointed judge to leverage technology and the team's talents to strive for safety efficiency and defendant friendly guided service we can't tell them what to do but we can tell them what their options are and defendants are people they're not just citations or cases so we really want to treat them as such so i've already gone over a lot of the things that we implemented so i won't repeat those but this is kind of a timeline of what we've done again in a very short time so overall we are shifting from an in-person focus to a more remote focus that provides that safety and efficiency while also maintaining a high level of customer service so some changes were initiated and because they were necessary due to covet but their value will remain beyond the pandemic a lot of these things are really all of these things we're going to keep as part of our services even beyond this time so the operational data that i included is our cases filed because that's really what drives our workload on the court services side there's a lot of work that goes into those cases in inside of the courtroom and out on the clerk side and again our team i can't give them more kudos they do a great job it's very lucky to become a member of their team so there are currently under 13 000 cases compared to the 32 000 from last year so we are 40 less at this point this year than we were last fiscal year and you can see a significant drop from the first two quarters to the third during the pandemic and about 71 percent of our cases are traffic citations and that's on trend this fiscal year too so we did have one position that was vacated due to the voluntary separation program and this was an assistant court representative too we had two of those positions at the time so the other court representative too actually took on the primary duties of the one that vacated and then we took a lot of her duties and we redistribute them throughout the team so we do have lower volume in our lobby right now at least and then as we implement more and more remote options we expect that to continue so our window clerks are helping out with email and mail correspondence and things like that during our slow periods which is something that the other person took care of before so we have actually decided to eliminate that position for the upcoming fiscal year because the team and everything they do and how well they work together plus our efficiencies we've been able just to absorb that position without losing any service level so this is our updated organizational chart as you can see at the bottom that's the one position that was eliminated so i have five direct reports to me as the court administrator and each of my supervisors has three direct reports under them as well so just a couple of years ago the court actually had 15 fte's so i think we're doing pretty great at this number again to be able to provide the services that we did and more and i feel like a higher level of customer service with fewer people so this is an overview of our current and proposed budgets and we estimate ending the current budget year under 1.2 and you see next year does increase to just under 1.3 and that is largely due to the transfers section previously we received what we call a credit for our tech services transfers and that was based on money that we did bring in to the court so really this is more of just an accounting change it's not that we're really spending more money it's just how it looks essentially on paper so we have a pretty bare bones budget as it is we have found some savings and we actually think some of the remote options we implement will actually save us some money in the future too we were thinking we may have to come back and ask for more later but it looks like we may actually save money versus having to spend even what we are now hopefully that is the case we're looking into that further with that i am happy to answer any questions you have okay any questions all right thank you thank you jamie appreciate it you bet okay so we have human resources yes she's getting set up okay so hello tippity thompson director of human resources good to see all of you mayor council members we can see and hear yes okay excellent all right so human resources accomplishments this year we started tracking how many customers that we serve we also rebranded human resources so we started collecting data we take care of 15 000 calls a month 10 000 emails a week and we see 100 customers into hr every single day that has changed since covid we rebranded the city of den's recruitment strategy you can see up top there that's just a snippet of what we're doing so we rebranded to we are didn't and one of the biggest things we did this year was leading the organization through the the covid 19 pandemic so quickly in march we established a email box that is man 24 7 that we're responding to the organization for people to be able to come back to work we established a return to work for anything that you went out for sick related you had to fill out a form for us to be able to give you direction whether or not to return to work to safeguard our environment and our organization and employees so we also implemented multiple policies and procedures and educated employees on the covid pandemic so for our future goals we're going to continue to work through the covid situation and help the organization we're also doing multiple project implementations with a learning management system redeveloping our training and development program and also we continue to be proactive and involved with supervisors and also employees to be able to determine their specific needs and resources so our big philosophical changes this year was really focusing on not calling our employees employees but treating them as customers both internally and externally and being more purposeful by being more human and so our goal is to serve both our internal and external customers one of the most incredible and tangible things that we did quickly in march was deploy a big part of the organization to be able to telecommute we were probably one of the first cities that did that so aggressively to safeguard again the operation how do we mitigate the risk of covid so we have done that for several months now and the way we did it was really encouraging and also flexible based off of what was going on and so we made sure that there was education tools and understanding of how to do that effectively we also surveyed the organization to determine do people like doing that and could this be a long-term strategy and we're definitely looking at that for a retention strategy competitive strategy to attract and retain our employees so our big service level changes this year october through february we worked through reorganization refocused on our customers and started tracking those data points that i shared earlier and then march through now really has been focused on not just normal day-to-day business processes and supporting the employees but also all the different covid measures that we've taken whether that was policies procedures legal things that we needed to work through we did the vsp all the contracts that we needed to do with that and agreements and then in april one of the things that we did to go back to our philosophical change of human and customers as we called the human resources department called each and every single employee what the personal phone call just to check in to say how are you doing do you need anything from us and just thank you for your service we also switched to remote virtual meetings with our civil service meetings as well so our fte summary we do have 15 fte's we did have a change i wanted to highlight some of those changes there was a reduction in force in our repro graphics department and so there was a person in that department that was going to be laid off through that reduction in force we were able to move that person over into human resources and preserve their job so that's one change and then we had a development specialist that was funded in the risk budget and we moved that over to the hr budget where it should be and then we added a deputy director of human resources uh miss stephanie line she takes care of all of our civil service director items and then also focuses on our employee relations so our organizational chart is broken out to training development hiring that's our onboarding compensation classification administrative services civil service director and secretary and then also our benefits leave in fma so for our proposed budget the biggest changes is going to be in our personal personnel services and then we had some increases in our operations as well so we do have a slight increase in our overall budget so on this this is just a couple snippets of our our people that serve the people i just want to make a highlight if you'll look in that bottom right corner there is a one-eyed pug there that is skittles so happy to answer any questions and appreciate all the support that you've given our department as well all right any questions let me go ahead and pull the slide down if you wouldn't mind yes councilmember briggs thank you for that presentation i just have i have two questions one earlier you spoke of trainings and i know how important training is um for our employees and i didn't see it on an itemized on an itemized line and i know that i just want to make sure that the funding is there for all the trainings that are needed um that's one question and the next one is um we were very successful in our work from home and i applaud you and the city manager for allowing that and for the ongoing um request and i just wanted to see if that is something that our employees can request as the school starts up and if they need to stay home and if it's possible for them to work from home if they can do that as if online learning is um uh i guess goes for a couple more weeks yes ma'am the answer the first question uh training is in that operations line so that is there we're actually funding a learning management software system now that's going to further focus on training and be able to accommodate this more remote learning so we can assign classes out like sexual harassment training ada those compliance training to make sure that we can track it better who's taking it who needs to take it within six months so yes that is still there and funded so no changes in that actually increase resources for that and then to your second question about the continued remote working and the support of our city management and the organization to do that that absolutely is a focus and a priority for us we're continuing to push that especially over the last several weeks as the cases have increased we gave direction to the entire organization if this role is able to telecommute effectively you can track productivity please keep them home and that's really going to be able to help with that situation with the modified schools and with parents trying to determine do i work do i take care of my kids at school we're removing those barriers as an organization and we've gotten a ton of feedback about our ability to be able to do that but again we couldn't do that with cmo without cmo support and your support when we did that early on so i thank you for that well i just want to say thank you for that um it helps relieve a lot of stress and i just i appreciate it so thank you any other questions yes councilmember davis i just want to say y'all are doing a fantastic job in a totally bizarre and unexpected situation um you're you're one of the departments that's really uh had to step to the forefront like the departments we heard from already today and i also want to know more about skittles the pug is that kind of like a little sebastian situation or so skittles the pug lost his eye i think on christmas day and so that's really sad story but it's a good story so that pugs are actually a breed that's known to lose eyes just so you know so that that happens they're bug eyes and and i know todd is probably looking that he is he's like why are you talking about pugs but dogs are cool and uh if you're looking for an animal i know a place animal services can absolutely help you i'm still trying to get milster to get another another cat but i'm working on you we've got one already we're good over here thanks okay okay uh anything else all right thank you very much appreciate it tiffany you bet all right so we'll move on to our next presentation i believe is that fleet is okay mayor members of council terry cater fleet superintendent um thank you for your time this afternoon i appreciate that thank you the fleet services uh has a couple of accomplishments this year we're most proud of completing an operational review of fleet services complete review and we got some high marks from the matrix corporation on some of the processes and procedures we have in place in our operation as a whole of course we do have some areas that we can improve on and we have some processes in place that we're looking at and a timeline for implementing those in the next year year and a half we'll be working on that we did a fleet utilization utilization study we were able to reduce the fleet so far by 20 vehicles some of those vehicles will be um auctioned the majority of those will be auctioned once we get them all pulled out of the fleet the older ones and the other ones will be repurposed and um i'm most proud also of the uh operational changes we made to accommodate covid in fleet we we put some processes in place to protect our employees we didn't have any disruption in service delivery during this time although our hours were reduced and and uh we've had some other processes in place to keep the vehicles clean so that our uh our workforce is protected there at fleet and uh moving forward we're gonna um focus on customer service as usual but mostly with communication with our customers and developing those working relationships we want to be completely transparent with our data and and get that to them so that any department can look and see what's going on with their their fleet maintenance as well as their acquisitions so we're working on a process and smart sheet to track that we've added several contracts for vehicle and equipment repairs that's going to expedite those repairs as well as make it more seamless in in getting those machines in and to the vendors to get repaired and we're also going to concentrate on trying to get our blue seal of excellence back this year for our shop and that requires 75 of our technicians to be certified in one area of service that we perform some of our operational data this year just through a few things up here we have about 1250 assets that we work on about 10 about 1060 of those are fueled and i put the different fuel types up here so you can see that we do have a wide range of alternative fuels although the the diesel and biodiesel equipment we have only a handful of electric equipment right now and we're working with departments now to see where we can fit more electrics into the fleet but i did want to show those numbers of course fleet is responsible for purchasing and tracking every gallon of fuel that goes through our system uh we i did some comparisons from year over year on our pms completed and you can see that we do um a number of pms each year and we're still on track this year to match what we've been doing that's the backbone of the maintenance program actually and and that's an area that we're also going to be working on uh with our customers our fleet availability is uh better this year than it has been and i think 97 98 is a very good number we've hit that number this year of course some of that has to do with our solid waste and landfill fleets that we've been building up lately so in the last two years we've replaced a lot of their equipment that's helped on the availability side immensely i put some numbers here for data for work orders completed vehicles repaired we typically do eight to nine thousand work orders uh we run a number of units through the shop and also vehicles acquired you can see year year over year we're pretty steady we didn't auction many vehicles in 1819 but we have a contract in place now that number 94 is going to jump up before the completion of this fiscal year our summary for fte's we have 26 full-time employees 19 of those are technicians and the rest are office staff we are fully staffed right now and have been for the past year and a half this is a updated organizational chart uh this chart has names on it and not just positions because these are the people that really drive fleet i'm very proud to work with this group of people they're incredible individuals very flexible during this whole covid thing where we change shifts we change hours and uh they've been they've been great to work with on that our proposed budget is at 10 million eight this year you can see it's been pretty steady we actually uh are down from our 2018-19 budget and we've made some we've made some changes in in how we do bill our customers uh it's pretty much a it's pretty much a copy of last year's budget we've made some adjustments for fuel pricing and that kind of thing and on our expense side we um it's pretty straightforward everything is is basically we haven't we haven't raised any rates and we anticipate that we'll come close to making those numbers this year so our supplemental package the um the one time uh the ongoing funding request that should actually say 36-5-20 up there at the top that's a that's a mistake i'm apologize for that um we don't have anything that's unfunded and those are just uh slight increases to some of our line items where we've been a little bit low in the past and meeting those numbers um our recommended fleet replacements for next year this is the starting point we have about 74 units which is low we typically uh run 90 90 to 110 units before it's all said and done that budget of 9.8 million we will be looking at each one of these pieces when we replace it and uh see what is the best fit what is the best right size for that unit and of course trying to fit electric vehicles in wherever we can where it makes sense for the department i'll be happy to take any questions okay uh council member briggs thank you for that presentation um my question is about electric vehicles you just mentioned it on that list it said 10 we currently have five so would you be replacing all of them with new ones or is it just an additional five on the list we just saw that said 10 for 10 electric vehicles well um we have five plugins right now we do have a number of other hybrids that are not all electric and our intention is to put as many all electric vehicles in the fleet as we can so that electric didn't mean electric vehicle it meant electric department and so depending on what those needs are for that particular unit or group in that department if we can make an electric vehicle work for instance electric metering we're going to do it yeah just a follow-up may or if i can just sure on that because it seems like i've a council member asked about electric vehicles addition to the fleet an answer was about infrastructure and it seems like we have this catch 22 where you know we need infrastructure to get electric vehicles but we need electric vehicles to get infrastructure so i just kind of wanted to throw that out there i've asked harry to touch base with chris lutrick to see what we can do about some additional planning for those stations as he agrees and terry's spending a little bit more time now trying to make we're trying to put the business case together there by taking because they don't require nearly the maintenance that some of these other vehicles do that there may be a point at which it makes some sense and evens out within a few years and so that's the analysis we're running um we're probably going to need to put two or three more stations around and so as we're looking at those business cases we'll get with chris and to see uh you know what all he's got planned to make sure that we're syncing up thanks okay any other questions all right thank you very much appreciate it thank you so i believe this is our last one is that correct on the budget presentations which is fire that's right okay so good afternoon mayor council members kenneth hedges fire chief today i guess i'll be wrapping up the budget discussions and going over fire's budget so let me just make this full screen so as the template shows some of our accomplishments and future goals so i'm not going to hit everyone some of these are pretty self-explanatory and one field i want to hit on the accomplishments is the development of the homegrown recruitment program if you recall two years ago we partnered with denton isd and nctc to start a high school program in which we take incoming juniors and place them into a program and upon completion after two years they're actually certified state firefighters and ent so with that i'd like to announce that we did graduate 10 back in may was a little alternate graduation and we weren't able to celebrate like we really expected to but nonetheless we have 10 out there that's actually ready to go into the career field so that's a huge accomplishment this will continue year after year as well and with that meeting of fir was approved by the council last i believe it was september 2019 in that we actually incentivized people that completed this program so upon completion of the fire academy portion each candidate gets one additional point on the civil service interest exam and also on any emt program to the dent isd that's another possible point so we really try to focus on not just developing and recruiting our own local but actually putting them into a position within the dent fire department the other accomplishment is just kind of our covid 19 response kind of hit fast and you know not really knowing as far as what the direction would be as far as experiencing something to this level in the past it was almost a day by day on policy changes not just within our department but working with the city organization as a whole some of the key points is really working closely with the dent state supported living center i would like to thank the mayor for his assistance working with some of the political figures out there to get some immediate action that probably really saved off a huge spread of covid there we worked with the director of dent state school even to the point to this day we still have record conversation with her and we're working on some transport update on protocols on how we actually respond to their facility for this point going forward and the other item is actually the state asked fire departments to participate in long-term care centers covid 19 testing they started seeing the influx of positive cases and the dent fire department stepped up and we went through some training with our medical director and actually went into four different local centers and tested almost 800 employees and residents so proud of the team for that future go those several things you see on the screen actually that is a picture current construction of station three that is a reconstruct which is right adjacent to the existing station we expect to move in in october of this year and then of course opening fire station eight which will be the newest fire station since 2007 on increasing service levels to the city and is expected to open january 2021 the last thing i'd like to point out is we are in the process of seeking accreditation through an industry organization called center for public safety excellence this is no small feat they estimate that a department will take 2000 to 10 000 hours of work through not just initial process improvement but actually implementing all the recommendations so we expect to be back before council in about 12 to 18 months to actually go to the final stage on accreditation moving on changes in our philosophy really on this only thing to say is how the department remains so dynamic and flexible we were i would call it process fatigue we were changing our processes our policies almost on a daily basis we were following cdc guidelines was watching what the local county health department was pushing out as well and work with them on a very close manner and i'll tell you the employees and the members the only way we were able to keep positivity in the department is open communication we were meeting two times a week via zoom to update on the latest changes so i must give my hats off to every fire department employee along with actually police department because they were part of this conversation is how flexible everybody was through this process also we did stand up the city's emergency operation center this has kind of brought to some light where we might be able to make some changes as far as how we run that organization as well in that department so what i'd mentioned earlier on a consent agenda item on some clarification we are going to bring in a consultant we're going to do a deep dive over what are the needs of a true emergency management program and where we're at and where would we do we need to be in the next five to ten years as well service level changes appear on the timelines the city implemented changes on march 13th the day after we was very proactive and we implemented two ambulances that were dedicated strictly to COVID-19 responses the goal on that was to reduce the amount of PPE usage and really kind of funnel it all to one station and also the decontamination of those medics as well it was a lengthy process after a transport of a positive patient it takes on average about 45 minutes to decon that vehicle completely as well and the personnel we went with that for a couple months few months and then you see on june 15th we actually removed those two from service the reason why is the local widespread transmission those two units were just so busy to the point that every ambulance was needing to make the calls so with that we just increased our decon procedures so now at this point all eight frontline ambulances are running on positive patients but with that on the back side of the incident they're having to spend more time in the decon stage as well pre-COVID we were kind of a group atmosphere is how every employee would go in if they had any type of medical call on the patient now we're actually restricting where one person goes in in full PPE makes a full assessment and then determines whether or not that person needs additional support from the remaining team to standing at least six feet away some operational data i'm just kind of show you as far as the training we have been training up for the past several years and in preparation i'd have a big question on as far as call volume because we have seen some of the volume decrease in the beginning stages of the pandemic in march and april i can tell you comparing 2019 january to july to 2020 we're actually up 1.24 percent on call volume so even though we were depressed during the month to month and a half we have seen call volume rise and we estimate at this point 2020 figures will be about three percent from what 2019 numbers were so looking at our ft summaries we broke this down by our different groups in our budget so administration we actually had two vacancies one was really pre-COVID is what i'll call it other we actually lost a through vsp as well a person retired so with that we've approved one refill and in operations we had eight and all eight have been approved as well and written the hiring process so in the total we had 10 vacancies and we'll be down to just one so we're refilling the back line nine of those and if you see this number right here 170 moving from 170 173 that ashley in this asterisk down here that is to include three new firefighter positions to staff station eight that was a three-year philosophy where we hire nine total but over three years three per three per year actually so we're in uh this will be year three of that to complete that staffing so this one just take a minute so this is a current org chart you see we do have a mercy manager coordinator right here in this position and you see one battalion chief so this battalion chief oversees eight stations and actually eight captains because we have i'm sorry this is the future that we have seven stations right now but it will eventually be eight and that person oversees eight captains as of today so with approval of the consent agenda item the position classification ordinance this is what this will transition to where you'll see the mercy manager coordinator position is all for now until we go through a full consultant to see what the needs are and we're actually going to be splitting our battalions into two which is probably the biggest move in command and control we've seen since 1996 when the first battalion was actually put in service so this is going to be substantial on the fire ground as far as safety and just really professional development of our people and our personnel going into the budget numbers everything is relatively flat you see some in the 2019-20 estimates were down than what the projections were and that's really just related to covid some of the activities as far as fire inspections fine cpr training even some of our training use at our fire training facility has been down so we do expect that to come back up next next year's budget some expenses we've really tried to make a note out here and the reason why you see some of the rise is obviously additional a new fte's to finish out the staffing for station 8 and then the pay philosophy that's associated with meet confer which stays five percent above market average as well and everything else we see some increases in some more maintenance contracts and really warranty on some new items so we can spend on money on warranty versus actually replacing the products or sales that is it i went through it quick so i'll pull the screen down i have one question how long did it take to get that great shot of the first slide in your presentation with all the with all the vehicles out in front of the central fire station that was actually two years ago we internally did a yearbook yeah so every employee right on pocket so that was a photographer he took 15 minutes to do it but we had to wait a certain time at that time to get oh it looks great thanks okay uh council member briggs no questions for you chief just i wanted to commend you on the homegrown program i think that's fantastic and um i look forward to more graduates and then also just for being ready and prepared for um for the situation with coven um you had ppe and all the equipment needed for um your department and i just want to commend you for that because making sure everybody is safe is is priority so i just appreciate it thank you any other questions comments all right thank you chief appreciate it thanks okay i believe that brings us to uh let's take a quick well now we're just going to roll through this when we got uh closed meeting after this so we're going to go to agenda item 3f which is id 20-848 and i believe she's getting ready yes and the caption was received report hold discussion to give staff direction on pending city council requests for a work session revisiting certain provisions of the pilot program for the parklet streeteries in the mixed use downtown core zoning district good afternoon mayor and council this is rachel ball through it mendoza assistant to the city manager let me get this up for us okay so i'll uh get started for us the pending requests for information we have one today just as a reminder um for those who may need a little bit of background or refresher up to seven requests will be reviewed per meeting which is one per council member i'll introduce each one again just one today and the elected official that made the request will have up to one minute to describe and justify it the remaining officials will then have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support and then we'll respond to all requests where a consensus of council is established today we have council member brig's request for a work session revisiting certain provisions of the pilot program for the parklet streeteries in the mixed use downtown core zoning district um just want to call your attention here to the three links that were provided in the revised version of the ais and this presentation for you so i'll uh bring this down now so okay all right council member brig's when you uh obviously you have a minute and when you start i will start your time okay so our businesses are struggling they're struggling pretty hard and i am asking just to add this as this idea as a discussion point on the next covid conversation study shows people are 19 times more likely to catch covid indoors versus outdoors i noticed in new mexico and colorado their downtown areas were thriving and discovered the city had implemented a temporary outdoor commerce air commerce area within their orders to help them uh mayor we need to pause our time and about what happens when the pilot ends and i just ask that people remember i'm sorry to interrupt you we yeah you you froze yeah you froze up you froze up you you stopped right about the time you said new mexico and and and i think colorado had started a commerce temporary commerce something so i stopped your time at 38 seconds so um whenever you start i'll start your time again okay i'll give you a few seconds to go ahead okay so i noticed that the outdoor areas were the downtown areas were thriving and discovered that the city had implemented temporary outdoor commerce areas within their orders to help them increase their revenues um i believe that this helps settle some of your concerns about what happens after the pilot if this is within our orders and the program will go away after the order expires um so i just encourage you to look at bump out for business programs okay all right thank you all right uh councilmember davis thank you mayor so councilmember briggs was kind enough to share with me some of the pictures of the places that she's seen and i got some others from people who have traveled uh during this time also in the thing i noticed about the other places was twofold one some of the streets were closed not the ones that councilmember briggs sent me but some of the other people did and two they tend to be kind of tourist destinations didn't some parts of the year or something of a destination for incoming college students but i don't know i think i don't think we're exactly a tourist destination like some of these towns i would though be really uh so i'd like to kind of leave where we're at with the parklets as we have it now but uh y'all remember my key concern was safety on those main streets i would be interested in having a conversation about um closing off portions of the square at certain hours you know during brunch time on saturdays so you could use the parking spots for seating or you know pop-up markets and that kind of stuff or saturday evening so you could have a pop-up seating area something like that to me is safer and and kind of more doable right now and also more more temporary okay all right thank you all right councilmember armature yeah i support the idea uh and you know and i too would would like to discuss you know the possibility of having some times when we have the uh downtown area shut down shut down to traffic okay all right anybody else councilmember melzer yeah definitely interested in having having the discussion including the related areas that other members have raised okay anybody else councilmember ryan thank you mayor i'm i'm interested in this discussion it's what i had originally thought we were talking about or it's what i had said when we had the one minute speech the first go around the one minute council report uh so i'm i look forward to this coming forward again as as as a temporary item not as a long-term item okay so um i need some help on clarification um excluding the closure of the streets that's i mean that's i think that's a different type of i mean that's a different topic as well but so councilmember armature and melzer i'm assuming that you all express support for the item as requested councilmember davis did you express support for the item as requested no sir i don't want to open up the parklet conversation just uh and go back to square one if we're going to do something different than the the safe plans that we've approved what i think are safe then i think we need to talk about closing the streets if it's just going to be chairs and some cones and that kind of stuff i think we have to talk about closing the street that they're on all right i think we have uh four for the the request as presented all right uh so let's make sure that when we have the work session that it's the request as presented um all right so thank you very much for that all right well that concludes our um work session so now i will convene in close session at 5 40 5 54 p.m i will convene uh will convene the closed session consider the following items consultations with attorneys under texas government code section 551.071 deliberations regarding real property under texas government code section 551.072 and deliberations regarding personnel matter under texas government code section 551.074 we're going to take these in different order we're going to take the closed session uh b first because that's where most of the staff and so forth can be involved and we'll do the personnel matter last so that the only time we have to reconvene is once the closed session ends welcome everybody to this meeting of the ditten city council on july 28 2020 it is 7 26 p.m we have moved through our work session items our special called session for our end item for individual consideration at the first of the meeting and then our work sessions and now we will move on to our special called meeting we do have a quorum so i'll call this meeting to order our first item on the agenda is the consent agenda council member ryan move approval except for item j okay all right do we have a second council member armature i second all right we have a motion and a second for the consent agenda items 1a through 1 k and we are excluding item j which we will take up as an item for individual consideration council member ryan house say you on the motion for the consent agenda aye council member armature yes mayor protem aye council member melzer aye council member davis aye council member briggs yes mayor wass is an aye the motion carries seven to zero we will now move on to agenda item j of the consent agenda which is one j but we will call that item which is id 20-1312 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the approval of change order number two to the contract between the city of denton and jago public company and i think we had a brief presentation on this is that correct yes okay presentation right down there okay good evening mayor and council my name is seth garcia i'm a project manager with capital projects and as you stated i do have a brief presentation for you for change order number two for the pec four phase one and two project this is our second change order so just a brief little project overview this project consists of approximately 1500 feet of 11 by 8 dual drainage box which is represented by the red line on this graphic we also have water and sewer relocations going on on south elm and south locust that also includes some sewer work on south on eagle change order number one was approximately 35 000 and included some tapping sleeves some different changes in drainage to from precast box to port in place box change order number two is the one before you today it includes 250 feet of waterline extension on walnut in between elm and locust that was not included in the original project scope that cost does include replacement of all service lines fire lines as well as trench pavement repair we also have some paving changes on warren court to accommodate drainage the original design of the street did not include concrete aprons for drainage there so this will just give us a better product with the roadway as well as some changes in pipe material as you can see and all overruns to date overall we're very low change order percent increase is only at 2.3 we are wrapping up the majority of the utility work this was awarded by council on may 21st of 2019 it's a 720 day contract so contract time would run until june of 2021 but we are currently four months ahead of a schedule and i do see that moving up to possibly as close to end of this year so with that we recommend the adoption of change order number two in the amount of 216 dollars to i'm sorry 216 418 dollars and nine cents to jago public and with that i can answer any questions okay uh we'll just pull the presentation down thank you uh council member briggs and then mayor pro tem thank you mayor yeah i had this pulled one for the amount of the change order and and also just for a timeline and the scope of the project to see how how large it was just overall um and was this is this bond funded money uh no ma'am this is funded by drainage and then utility funds as well okay thank you mayor mayor pro tem over approval uh council member melzer a second i do have a question uh on the the 216 thousand dollar change order which is the replacement of the water line i believe it was walnut and something else uh and there were two stub outs what precipitated that change so the the line on walnut was didn't have very much of a break rate um in between which is kind of how the utility department engages whether or not main should be replaced um since this project was initiated we have had some additional main breaks one as recent as this last saturday so with the approval of this change order it'll put 250 feet of new line connecting elm and locust where we just had stub outs for future while the contractor's there to eliminate the need to have to come back and do that in future years okay is the stub out for um so let me make sure i understand this so we've got a line on walnut that runs from locust to elm and it was determined that because of a recent break and just you're there we're going to go ahead and replace that infrastructure with the new fire lines the new hydrant and then two stub outs now are those taps that someone else can tap when you say stub out what exactly do you mean yeah so a stub out is typically when they lay new line like what's going in on elm and locust they do stub outs outside of the intersection so if the roadway improvement comes through we're not getting back into the new road to tie into what's already been laid so this essentially cleans up elm and locust to where when we came back to do walnut we would not have to get into elm and locust to connect the water main gotcha so it's about for future okay fantastic all right uh council member briggs and that just brings me to to another question is there any other um part of this project you can foresee that happening again with any other street or situation as far as the water mains so we do have two future phases phases three and four that will take the big drainage boxes to the north to mulberry and then move across carol um with that quite a bit of utility work is also going to be incorporated just because of the size of the boxes um but within the elm and locust area a lot of the uh replacement was done with this project this was one line segment that was caught by our inspector on the job that we took to the utilities um to say hey it might be a good idea to go ahead and incorporate this in there it is the block behind the square and that way we kind of alleviate having to go back in and disturb the businesses or residents of that area again perfect thank you okay and so mayor pro tem made a motion for approval uh do we have did we have a second i don't council member melzer did you second okay all right so we will now vote on agenda item one j a mayor pro tem house say you all right council member melzer aye council member ryan okay council member davis aye council member ryan what was your vote i'm sorry aye okay um and uh council member briggs yes council member armature yes and mayor watts is uh aye so the motion carries seven to zero we'll now move to our items for individual consideration agenda item two two a is id 20 dash 1423 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton at texas home rural municipal corporation confirming the effective period of the declared state of local disaster superseding and replacing the seventh order of council of the city of denton issued june 26 2020 mayor city council um we did staff did send city council a draft eighth order of council based upon the direction we received this afternoon during the work session i'm happy to take any questions you may have on that red line version of the order yes sarah um i think i i think i'm looking at it but it's not necessarily redlined this is the one you sent at 657 yes oh wait a minute what is this yeah i'm looking at the eighth order and then i'm looking at the actual ordinance and it may just be out it may just be the red lines not happening on my uh ipad but um yeah i don't i don't see any red here so if you wouldn't mind just very briefly uh going through what those changes are sure i can pull it up on this okay sure i can just do that very quickly thank you i apologize for that no problem let me um make sure i can find where they are okay i'm gonna go ahead and share that with you um so it updates uh the dates um to be effective uh today july 28th um as we discussed sorry zooming in and out quickly um let me try to zoom back in did you maybe zoom out a little bit curtis sorry okay yeah that's good okay perfect um we just added some cleanup language here as discussed um to reference the governor's latest orders also to reference the governor's order in relation to ga 29 for the requirement for individuals to wear face coverings um moving on um this paragraph five deals with the health and safety policy so that is making it contiguous with the order of council to have it continue until august 31st that businesses must have that health and safety policy through the order through august 31st and then continuing down um the section here in b updated it again to match the governor's latest order for outdoor gatherings over 10 must be authorized by the mayor and these are just minor just language cleanups when we get down to the 6a for um this is in reference to what we discussed in boards and commissions meetings that they can meet as necessary and as resources allow with priority given to those boards and commissions that have time sensitive items and then when we get down to 6h these updates were made in terms of the utility non-payment shutoffs and penalties um to begin uh the first august 1st moving down i think this is for i guess it would be 7n um is the proration uh of the food uh permit fees for those businesses um that are regulated st abc is having 51 percent or sales 51 percent or more of sales from alcoholic beverages so the bars that are currently shut down and that's kind of a quick overview of the changes in the direction that we had received from the work session i'll stop sharing at this point take any questions real quick um i might have missed it the the utility shut off yes we i think we now let me go back and do you want me to pull that language back up let me let me see what what uh i can pull it up what paragraph was it it is 6h 6h yes okay okay all right um now i guess do we need to because i know when we talked about that um when we talked about it in the work session we said that if they were non-covid related or eligible that they would just go through our normal process which is interfaith and i believe that funding for interfaith was back in paragraph where was it i saw it um yes go ahead the mayor that funding for interfaith in the order is actually the funding that was previously authorized back in the spring and to add to interfaith we do have a new contract with interfaith i think that was approved by council a couple weeks back so we can move forward as the city manager indicated underneath that contract with putting the hundred thousand dollars in funds to interfaith for utility assistance for other matters that might not be covered related yeah i think that i think k uh this is 6k says 175,000 and is that that's what we're is that what we're talking about that was authorized previously this is just existing language um so this is not a new item right and so i guess is this double batting for like originally we had 175,000 in there that got depleted and the council gave direction to refund to to to fund and another allocation of 175 so i guess my question is mr city attorney because this is still the same number we don't need to address that this is an additional funding that this is just language that's contained in there and so we've used 175 before now this is so the date of that funding isn't critical or dispositive in this in this is that correct that's correct all right uh okay all right and so h you said i think is was the yes okay that was the utility cut off um so i'm going back to my original question do we need to include so that's talking about shutoffs uh that may occur for non-payments of utilities may occur beginning august 1 2020 so are we saying that if they go to if it's covid related and they go to the united way fund are we saying that um because we're not saying we will not cut those people off in this in this language we're you know that's more of a behind the scenes process of if they get help they get payment but let's say for instance if they're if they if they if it's covid related but somehow they don't get payment then this is saying that we're going to go ahead and cut them off in other words all cutoffs begin and the reason you're not going to get cut off is going to be some process sort of an administrative process that we use to to avoid that is that is that i want to make sure that that's what we're we're saying that we're not wanting to put in here i mean i know the status quo for interfaith we said it's going to be just like it was before before the pandemic we've got it funded if you have an issue and it's non-covid related then you can get assistance and if you somehow don't get assistance then we're going to proceed forward in our normal fashion as we did pre-pandemic but for those that are affected covid related are we saying we're not shutting them off whether they're behind or whether they get assistance from united way utility fund or not i thought that was sort of what we had discussed was that if it was covid related they would not be shut off and we would continue to direct them for utility assistance so i guess i'm asking if yeah that was the recollection yeah let me see if it says it may occur but we really want those customers to contact us if the referral is made to united way they will not be shut off so i think krista had sent you that email to council that kind of had further outlined that process we just need to hear from them they need to contact us make that referral know that they're in process of handling trying to be connected with those funds so that's how we would proceed okay so again it's more of an administrative process than we put in the order you will not be shut off if you have a covid related past due balance in the utility department i mean i yes i remember that discussion but i just i thought there would be something in the order about if yes council go ahead todd i think we can probably add one sentence to h basically say stating that the council has authorized another hundred thousand dollars for customers who do not meet the covid related requirements in united way so at least you get the you've got the spending authority adjusted in here or you could take that 1.15 and make 1.25 so you've got the money and then we can deal with the process oh no no the money the money for me i think we've got the money thing squared away it's the 175 that was authorized or 100 you said you said 100 yeah well then we probably need to uh uh yeah up to 175,000 my question just is simply in h it states pretty clearly unequivocally that uh there'll be no non-payment shutoffs and penalties for non-payment may occur beginning august 1st when we had the conversation before of course it we didn't really talk about whether it was going to be included in the order but we did identify a two uh sort of bifurcated the process one is if it's covid related you get moved and referred to united way uh assistance funds right if it's not covid related you go through the normal process as if it was occurring before the pandemic so h is sort of the status quo pre-pandemic in other words okay we're going to start and we're going to just follow the status quo but if it's covid related we are uh going to refer you to united way and you are not going to get shut off here that's not memorialized in the order which i'm not saying it should or shouldn't i'm just opening this up for for discussion if there's any but what i'm hearing is you prefer to take care of that administratively than to have it in the order yes and we can certainly bring back a a clarifying memo how we're handling this we agreed that we would not turn shut anyone off until we came back to you on the fourth to discuss the small business issues so we can certainly certainly head down that path i've already asked krista to start working on it and next tuesday we can share with you that what that process looks like and then also get your feedback on the small businesses that have been shut down that's what we had agreed to earlier is that we would kind of stay anything until we had that feedback from you well well i thought it was we're moving forward on august 1st for not for residential and and multi-family but for the small for the small businesses we were staying that yes until we came back but on august 1st we were going to go ahead and start processing shutoffs for those that are non-covid related for residential multi-family council member davis i was just going to say that city manager said what i was going to say was my recollections that we had the email from krista and we're going to have some follow-up information from him on how that two weeks is handled but that was my recollection also is that we didn't necessarily need the the two weeks and how staff would handle that uh baked into the order okay well that was for the bars that that was for the bars we pretty much had resolved that if it was residential and multi-family which is residential that it's going to proceed forward and so i we didn't get those those weren't combined we we had this order and then we were going to come back and stay any cutoffs for the bars until we got information but doesn't matter to me but i just want to make sure that we we all have clarity uh i thought we were gonna my understanding was a little different um i thought that the order is exactly what we talked about the two weeks came into play with how they handle referral to united way that there's a two week lag there there's plenty of time to get your paperwork done all right okay uh fair enough council member armature please move oh okay council member breaks so i just want to personalize this a little bit and may have been where all the emails and stuff from staff came from but i had a young mother reach out to me who's scheduled to be turned off on august 1st and had been reaching out to interfaith and of course found out their funds have been depleted and so um reached out through united way but in that process reached out on her own to giving hope and is still trying to find out from them about the funds and so it just goes i'm i'm just concerned about the timing i want to make sure that and i did reach out to her today after our conversations and all the different changes that had been made to say get back in touch with customer service but um i just i want to make sure that all the people that are trying even if they can't get help or get overlooked and that's where my concern is if if they if they get shut off if it's not in there somewhere that um they're not going to be shut off if they're if they're trying or if um if they're working with united way if they're working through i think i think the difference is if they're working through our customer service department and that is what krista continues to ask is let let her be help help find the door you know be it through interfaith or united way um at least they're in the system they know they're trying to get paid off and i think that's the thing when in that situation is we really need them working with krista and her staff and we spent the we spent last night ironing out the processes with united way and and we get the dollars to interfaith today and we're pretty confident we've closed that loop but they really need to go through her staff and is if so if you if you have people that are contacting you please direct them to krista and we will make sure that both of those funding opportunities are vetted out to see if they're eligible yes well i did i did refer back to customer service okay okay good all right i apologize for the very circuitous route that we took to now entertain did we have a motion on this who made the motion did we have a motion for approval on this i guess nobody so chair would entertain action on this item council member davis move approval council member melzer uh it's like the comment um first that if people are hearing this i want to uh be sure that they understand the reason to shut you off if you haven't paid and haven't communicated is to get you to call and that what will happen when you call is you want to try to either work out a payment plan that you can afford or connect you to assistance because there are there are funds are funds available to assist you now so the reason to shut you off is to get you to call and if you know that that's coming just call and i second all right all right we have a motion and a second on agenda item 2a to a i d 20-1423 council member davis how say you i council member melzer aye council member briggs no council member armeter yes council member ryan no council member uh mayor pro tem hudspeth all right mayor watts is an i i believe the i's have it five to two if i've got my math correct all right we'll move on to agenda item 2b consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton approving the assignment of agreements between the city of denton and monsignor king outreach center to our daily bread and providing an effective date afternoon mayor and council danny shaw community services one moment while i share my screen so okay thank you for your patience this item is to consider council approval of a resolution that would allow us to reassign the agreements from monsignor king to our daily bread in consideration of their merger their intent to merge i did want to let you know that wendy mcgee executive director of our daily bread is also on the phone should council have some additional questions for them for this consideration we are just looking to reassign the agreements with the same conditions as set forth so the same terms the same program budget the same performance objectives and the same reporting they'll also be looking at implementing the emergency enhanced shelter model in the same manner with a little bit of modifications since they are in the hotel they're actually serving more clients who would meet that qualification for the enhanced shelter model under the current service agreements these were funded through the budget supplemental the first one is the four hundred thousand dollars for the enhanced shelter model it is written in a two-year term expiring in 2021 of september with an opportunity for an extension of three times for one-year extensions the rapid rehousing grant was also funded through the budget supplementals it's sixty thousand dollars currently it has been awarded to monsignor king through september 30th of this year there is also the human services grant that monsignor king was awarded for fifty thousand dollars which will expire in september 30th and then the other agreement that we're looking to reassign is the lease agreement for 300 south woodrow and that one actually goes through october 29th 2025 just a little information about where they are on the expenditures currently in the enhanced shelter model of the four hundred thousand awarded for this year they've they've been they've received two hundred thousand dollars of the facility improvement grant which was a one-time grant to improve the facility to accommodate for the enhanced shelter increased usage of the shelter facility for seven days a week they have expended 55,000 of that 80,000 that again is a one-time that one will not be reassigned i just put it in here just so you had the information about how much was expended for that one and then with the human services grant they've expended 37,000 of their 50,000 allocation with the rapid rehousing grant they have expended 300 of the 60,000 the total amount awarded to monsignor king for the course of this year was 590,000 they've expended 292,000 with a remaining balance of 297,000 the next steps for us is to to follow through with this reassignment if the merger goes through with mqc and odb which is expected on september 1st we'll also do some presentations to council about the progress of that merger we'll walk through council with the grant reporting for the funding and performance at the at the end of the year and then we'll also do a presentation in october discussing what the plans are moving forward with loop 288 with the plan of the facility looking to be purchased in december of 2020 and the improvements expected to start in 2021 so with that the options for council today are to direct us to go ahead and follow through with reassigning of those agreements or to not proceed with that okay questions councilmemor armature i was just going to move approval all right councilmember briggs my question is about the uh the the differences between monsignor king and our daily bread i know they have a different set of rules on on who can enter and and what and if you could bring stuff in and so if they merge do they are they going to reassign their their their rules to combine as one well our agreements will have the expectation that they will follow through with the same performance requirements including um the what's in the attachments of the enhanced shelter agreement so that if that's reassigned they will have to follow through with those items that we've agreed to as far as the rules for access to shelter and the services that are provided in the shelter environment okay all right thank you councilmember davis second the motion all right any other further discussion all right we have a motion and a second for agenda item 2b id 20-1336 councilmember armature has say you yes councilmember davis aye councilmember briggs yes councilmember melzer aye councilmember ryan aye mayor protem aye uh mayor watts is aye the motion carries seven zero we'll move on to agenda item 2c which is id 20-1328 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton regarding a special permit pursuant to section 17-20 etc of the code of ordinance for links construction llc to perform construction work at 3500 north bonnie bray street outside of times normally allowed under denton's noise ordinance okay good evening mayor and council i'm rachel wood with development services the purpose of this evening's presentation oh okay sorry the purpose of this evening's presentation is to briefly review the market denton's construction noise exception special permit request so construction noise is governed under the noise ordinance which is section 17-20 c3f of the city of denton's code of ordinances construction noise is actually seasonal so from june 1st to september 30th from monday through friday construction can take place from 6 a.m to 8 30 p.m and then october 1st through may 31st during the weekdays construction can take place from 7 a.m to 8 30 p.m weekend times are consistent so from 8 a.m to 8 30 p.m on saturdays and 1 p.m to 8 30 p.m on sundays throughout the year the city council has the option to issue special permits for anyone wishing to conduct construction outside of the permitted hours if there is a case for urgent necessity and if the city council deems it in the interest of public safety and convenience as a quick reminder the market denton is an approved multi-family project located at the corner of elm street and north bonnie bray lynx construction has been hired as the contractor for the project and they have submitted the special permit request for the noise exception to conduct continuous concrete pours from 2 a.m for the majority of the site and 4 a.m for the construction work directly adjacent to the brentwood place townhome residential properties over a period of nine weeks from july 31st to september 30th lynx is committed to only conduct these after hours pours a maximum of two days per week so this is a map of the site and lists the 13 continuous concrete pour locations the locations located in the pink which are to the east of the site directly adjacent to brentwood place townhomes are where they plan on conducting the pour starting at 4 a.m the rest of the property they plan on conducting the pour starting at 2 a.m as a part of their request lynx construction submitted a noise abatement plan so as a part of that plan they've committed to only using the construction entrance that's on bonnie bray that's a minimum of 1 000 feet from the nearest residence they've also developed an interior truck route plan that will ensure that the concrete trucks do not need to use their backup alarm during after hours and construction lighting will be oriented westward which is away from the nearest residence again the brentwood place townhomes are located to the east of the market denton site as a part of their request city staff strongly encourage lynx construction to do a significant amount of public outreach staff provided lynx with a list of addresses for all properties located within 500 feet of the market denton site lynx construction has also been in regular communication with the property management company for the brentwood place townhomes and lynx conducted three virtual community input sessions which were held last week and they placed flyers and mailboxes they also ensured that the property owners association listserv provided information on those community meetings and there was one resident who participated in the three meetings and actually the feedback from the resident resulted in lynx construction changing their request their initial request was to have 2 a.m start times for all of their concrete poor sites the resident who they heard from lives in one of the townhomes directly adjacent to the market denton site and that resident did say they would be open to a 4 a.m start time for the poor's closest to their property and so that's why lynx construction amended their request for 4 a.m for those sites located adjacent to the townhomes so the city council really has three options two of which are listed here one of course is to approve the special permit request as listed the second is you can attach additional conditions to the special permit uh request and then the third option is to deny the request and with that i will answer any questions we also have ollie grawky with lynx construction on the line if there are specific questions of lynx construction regarding the reasons behind their request okay questions council member amater yeah i would like to know from the uh from the construction company why uh they prefer this option as opposed to just doing the construction during regular hours and having street detours is it a money and time saving measure if they could just articulate what the reasoning is okay we'll wait for the caller to or them okay yes uh hey so my name is ollie grawky i'm the project manager for lynx construction and uh i understand that the question is just why why so early um there's several factors leading into that one uh concrete cures quickly in texas heat it cures more quickly and so we have to get the uh the material on the side in a certain amount of time so it that's much easier and safer when the amount of traffic on the streets is less so we do try to uh have the highest volume of construction traffic the the concrete trucks coming in before the morning rush hour there's also issues uh for worker safety the the once the concrete is placed it has to be worked before it cures uh and so there's a commitment there that you know the concrete's placed and then you're you're there for a certain number of hours uh if if it's placed even first thing in the morning then you you have a large number of workers that are working in difficult uh environment through the the hottest part of the day so worker safety is a a significant uh factor in in that math um also just what what we found is that we do get fewer noise complaints if if we're able to do it earlier it's typically not something that the folks notice or are even aware of it's just uh you know they they don't realize it's even going on does that answer your question ma'am yeah just wondering so will this street be closed down during those hours or the plan is just to have regular traffic and then they'll move out of the way when traffic comes through yes ma'am so looking at the uh where our entrance is located there's really not any significant traffic uh at that time and so and with the frequency of trucks that we have come in they could just be part of the normal uh 2 a.m traffic there would be no need to close down that street so yeah uh it would though be or what would you say to the to the argument that it would be safer to just shut down the street regardless of the of the hours is that an extraditional expense if you were to shut down let's say you were to do the same hours and shut down the street uh it wouldn't really be a an additional expense it would require some additional coordination uh yeah just we we would have to develop a traffic control plan uh i believe us 77 is a textile road and so anywhere that we uh we would have impact there so where bonnie bray connects to 77 we would have to go through a permitting process that could be lengthy okay all right uh council member breaks thank you so um i have a question about well i guess a couple of them one do how loud is it do we have a measurement in in decibels and is it over our allowed sound that's one question um why nine weeks it seems like a really long time period and if construction goes on i guess it could be longer would this order expire at nine weeks and also if there are complaints by um people who live in brentwood that weren't able to make the three hours that were put out is there any recourse for them to revisit this or is it um approved and done okay uh yeah i think i can address those so the the first question was a was how loud is it uh we did take a look at that and that's what informed uh the the sections that you saw so the the site being broken into three uh color-coded areas so the pump truck itself is approximately uh 82 decibels and then individual pump or uh concrete trucks are about 88 so in the area that was shown in rachel's presentation as green uh we we could safely operate within that area with up to the the mass road we could have up to 30 trucks adjacent to the pump and and not reach uh i believe the limit was 80 85 decibels 86 decibels at the property line uh and so that's the area shown in green there where uh our our plan at this point would result in 60 to 65 decibels at the property line that's um below the threshold and is about as loud as a normal conversation the the largest section the area that's shown in in yellow uh we'd be about 70 to 80 decibels still below the threshold but somewhere between uh vacuum cleaner average car radio and and heavy uh traffic and again that's at the property line so it'd be further attenuated if the tenants were or the homeowners were were set farther back from that property line or you know we're we're indoors uh and then the the portion in red where we did amend our request was originally the 2 a.m start and we backed that off that's the that area immediately adjacent to uh those homes we've consolidated the number of pours that we're doing there so everywhere else we're doing uh one building one day there um we're we're going to uh consolidate and and try to get two buildings at the same time just to limit the number of uh of placements and then we're also starting that requesting to start that at uh at 4 a.m that would be about 90 decibels at the property line uh which is about uh as loud as a subway or a shouted conversation so um i hope that addresses the the first question of just kind of how how loud is it um we we did look at that in depth and we did develop a traffic route internal to the site to limit the use of the truck's backup alarms which is one of the largest sources of of the noise uh the next question was why why so many placements um so it is a large site uh in in all it's about 18 acres we're limited and how many cubic yards of paving we can place at any one time just one being able to uh prepare that amount that surface area uh for placement and then two just having enough workers to actually uh finish the concrete after it's placed and before it cures it is a very labor intensive process so we've planned these with the the largest placements placed furthest away from the Brentwood uh community that enables us to have the smallest placements right next to them so that when we are pouring those uh it'll be a shorter duration so each placement is approximately 600 cubic yards until you get next to the Brentwood and then they they shrink down uh three to four hundred cubic yards um but really it's just the the reason that we have so many is is the scale of the project it's quite large so we have to place it move to the other side of the project while that side sets up uh work on the the other side of the project and then we can come back and and put equipment on the concrete that was placed previously and uh for your your third question what recourse do the homeowners have um as part of that community outreach program uh i did provide the management company with my uh personal information my email as well as uh cell phone and then also in all the literature that went out to the uh the homeowners i included that information and told them you can call me anytime uh gave hours is i believe 7 a.m to 5 p.m or anytime the concrete's pouring so if there if there is any complaint any noise issue they have my personal cell phone and does that answer your question ma'am go ahead councilman breaks yeah yeah it did from you yes i just had some more from from staff to follow up on some of the the questions because the the the 90 db which is closest to where um brentwood is is the loudest and so i guess my my question would be um in our ordinance for nuisance complaints or noise ordinance what is the allowable amount are we approving with this request a construction time allowance or also a decibel allowance or both my understanding is that the construction is based on time i'll let the city attorney answer the question regarding maximum decibel levels okay no i was only going to answer the question that this order is just to allow them to exceed the hourly restrictions it has nothing to do with the hours i don't know what the i'm sorry the the noise decibel readings i don't know what those are i would defer to staff on that but it does grant both the building official or the city council the ability to revoke this special permit in the event that they exceed those decibel ratings that are within the code or if they the extended hours are no longer justified by urgent necessity or no longer serve the interests of public safety so there is a mechanism built in to address any complaints regarding noise and whether or not it no longer serves a urgent necessity or interest of public safety okay council member melzer i have a question for for staff that we didn't really hear a reason why this is unusual and needs an exception we heard that sort of the normal operation for this phase of the work doesn't fit with our ordinance that you know that doing the normal work requires coming in very early for worker safety you know how long they have to be in this environment you know that's what we heard so my question is does do we need exceptions every time this phase of work happens with other projects or do other projects routinely do this phase of work you know within the confines of the ordinance this is the first time in at least several years that we have brought forward a special exception specific to construction noise we do know we have a few other projects in the hopper right now that may be so requesting special permits for noise exceptions but this is a little bit unique in that they have they have asked to bring the special permit request forward and they have moved forward with all their requests of staff to do the public engagement and and make sure that they were being the best neighbor as possible should the city council decide to approve this special permit request thank you so uh mr city attorney correct me if i'm wrong on this um so when i'm hearing um rachel that you said that we've got a couple more coming in to i'm reading the presentation says construction noise requirements the headings uh construction schedule construction noise abatement plan so when i hear that it's just for construction hours you know that we're asking they're asking to go uh within hours that are not authorized it sounds like at least what i'm reading is that when you have construction occurring that may not be classified as a nuisance that there's there's noise that's associated with with construction sites and that to ask for different hours of operation you're asking for hours of operation different hours of operation not just because we're telling you you can't work at that time it's also because we don't want to create the disruption that typically construction sites create noise wise outside of the normal hours that we've prescribed in the code so i think in some ways i don't know if it's a if they're not asking for a quote unquote noise variance from another uh ordinance that we have they're saying we want an exception to the working hours and so they put a noise abatement plan in here because they know that that would be one of one of the issues um because whether it's 90 decibels at two in the morning or four in the morning it's 90 decibels at eight in the morning and so if they poured it at seven o'clock in the morning or seven thirty which they're allowed to do the the noise is going to be the same they're just asking for a different hour for the reasons that they stated and that is you know work product worker safety uh and things such as that so uh do we know how many people actually live and occupy a town home immediately adjacent to this property because i i think i'm familiar with these i don't know if these are fully occupied this is a rental this is a rental property is is it not or is it also individually owned it is a town home property there are some that are individually owned it was plotted for 180 units i believe we have issued permits for 101 of those 180 units do we know if the ones that are built that are adjacent to this project are they all there in other words that's been fully developed that has been fully developed correct okay all right um okay any other uh questions or yes councilmember briggs so it starts at four how long does it continue for um it on the on the side that's the 90 decibels he said something about being subway sound and i know it at four a.m i may be sleeping at eight i may not so that's that's the difference there um so i'm just curious how long it will go per the noise ordinance the way it's written they could go up until eight thirty p.m the special permit has been written to go until six a.m because starting at six a.m they are already permitted by the noise ordinance to conduct construction okay yeah and i think it's important um uh if if the construction manager still on the line because the noise is primarily generated with the actual pour once the pour is finished and they're finishing out the concrete outside of the the trowel the the the uh electronic trowels to to finish the surface um so how long typically does the pour take uh once you start on on probably on three three or four hundred yards of concrete i think that's what you said uh how long does the actual pour take to do that uh yes sir that that that is correct the majority of the noise is during the actual placement uh if we are able to get the trucks in uh quickly if we have a good flow coming from the the plant and that reduces the time of the pour the times that we see that drawn out is is oftentimes when you know there there is more traffic or delays coming from the plant and so we're waiting on trucks but uh for placements of of 600 yards we could expect that the the pour would be finished within three to four hours and that uh finishing would continue after that for the rest of the duration right okay yeah so this isn't eight or nine hours of this i mean and also depending on how it's being poured and like you said that the the the availability of the trucks um it could be one contiguous uh or it could be it's got to get split up because the something's happened and the concrete's been delayed that's that's correct it's not going to be the continuous roar at subway level that uh this would more than likely just be an intermediate as trucks arrive they would pour the pump would operate uh and and then when all the concrete was placed then we would just have the troweling right okay uh mayor pro tem yeah and uh yeah so i will tell you i am struggling uh with this mightily uh but i understand there's a high school being built uh across the street they didn't ask for exceptions and it's a pretty big build as well i i drove this area i understand i was just i just drove it this week uh so i get it uh i guess my my my contingency or my ask is how what in the plan how are the the the people working the ground communicate with the people in the truck do you have a walkie-talkie do you have you know because there's obviously hey turn it off turn it on move the move the boom etc etc what is the communication or are we going to have a whole bunch of people out there yelling at each other uh instructions what do you have in place for that yes sir uh these trucks are are quite sophisticated they they have a yeah i'm sure you're seeing that the large booms those are actually operated by a uh uh handset that the the driver of the truck operates from outside the truck and so he's standing at the back of the vehicle watching the the placement so his trucks come in they'll pour into his truck and he's able to manipulate that and so no sir there's there's not really uh yelling across the site it's something that he's visually uh watching and controlling uh autonomously got it and so and it's go ahead i'm sorry sir sorry i just wanted to to mention as well that um we we do see other construction sites and and they are large and i i i can't speak to whether they've put in permits or not but i do know that lynx is a it's a tenton company we're working here at home in our own backyard and we're just trying to be the best neighbor that we that we possibly can and make sure that we're complying with all the the city requirements sure and i guess to my peers i'll just be transparent again struggling mightily but i think to to the point he made i'm all in for an opportunity but i will tell you the first complaint we receive uh i would pull the trigger to to get back and get this back in front of us and terminate it so that then keeps their feet to the fire to say they're going to do what they're supposed to do they're going to encourage people to call and and handle it before it gets to us because if it gets to us uh i i will immediately one uh just full transparency it would take one phone call or one notice that that it's too loud to to pull the trigger for me to get them back and and then they can but that that's uh just i want to be open and honest okay uh councilmember melser um i you know i appreciate the uh efforts and thought and i i don't hear an exceptional circumstance that is a reason to have an exception to the ordinance so i'm going to go ahead and move denial and see how it goes okay councilmember armater and then councilmember davis i i want to second that all right councilmember davis well i'd have a little bit more heartburn and maybe be in favor of the denial if we'd heard more from the folks who've already been engaged that they're just flat out against it you know the neighbors um we haven't heard that we were likely to hear some complaints because surely they haven't engaged absolutely everyone who lives there somebody's going to find out about this permit for the first time when this concrete truck show up at two in the morning but i'm wondering if there's not a good compromise where the i guess it's red on the phase map where we don't issue the the extraordinary permit for that section of the development but the remainder of it we do allow them to operate outside normal normal hours where we're in the 70 to 80 decibel range as opposed to you know right up next to the the development 90 decibel range i i could get on board something like that but i can't support just flat out denial uh let's see councilmember uh uh ryan yeah thank you mayor having i'm probably the only one here on council that has worked one of these 2 a.m bores back when i was in in construction and i can tell you that it's it is very hard on the workers to try and do this during the day it's detrimental to the building itself to do it where you have that heat on the concrete afterwards you have to you have to keep it wet keep it covered with plastic makes smears on there um i completely understand the reason for doing this um they're asking for through the end of september usually by mid september we're cooler and so i think i could definitely support something that because the last port is the very closest to brentwood place uh is at that last end of september so that part maybe could wait until after the 6 a.m time period to to be done but i'd be in support of the other green and the yellow areas just fine okay uh councilmember uh riggs yeah so that that one section within 90 decibels there um is is my concern and i i know that the they've reached out and i appreciate that but when you're talking about individuals who may rent or work or you know get something in the mail and recycle it or have three hours individual different hours to hop on at different times may not have um had the chance to do it but then when that noise is there and they are actually feeling it and listening to it it's a lot different so um i wouldn't be i'm not in favor of of allowing the exception for the pink or red part okay well let's let's do one thing at a time we've got a motion on the table uh to deny and we've got a second so we're going to we're going to take a vote on that and if that fails then we'll we'll reset and start over uh so we have a motion and a second to deny agenda item 2c id 20-1328 uh councilmember melzer house say you yeah not having heard any friendly or other amendments i'm going to vote in favor of the motion all right so all right councilmember armater yes uh councilmember briggs is it too late to offer a friendly amendment mr city attorney motion has been made second and we're in the middle of the vote we're in the middle of the vote oh you can go back and restart the vote right okay all right uh no okay uh mayor pro tem no councilmember davis nay councilmember ryan nye uh mayor watts is a nay so the the motion to outright deny uh the the motion uh fails or to deny the the request fails so councilmember davis i move that we approve the special permit uh for the areas uh shaded green and yellow on the provided map if there's a better way to phrase that i'm hoping a suggestion but that's my motion for the green and yellow areas shaded on the map i think those are pores on the 16th of september 11th of september uh dates in late july and early august okay let me look uh is there any uh mr city attorney is that is that enough to get us what we need on the um sort of identifying what the motion is and identifying the the areas i'm looking for the reference of the exhibit in the ordinance uh first okay um i don't see it yeah i don't think there is an exhibit no we any motion would have to incorporate that exhibit as an exhibit a and then there would have to be a modification in actually section two that that makes reference to the the green and yellow areas identified in exhibit one or b a okay uh uh i don't know i don't know what five means councilmember ryan exhibit five is the map of okay that's correct right and that's in the presentation that's not exhibit five in the ordinance that's in the presentation in our backup it's right it's also separate a separate exhibit five besides being in our in our presentation right okay all right uh so what i'm hearing you say councilmember davis is that um you're making a motion to approve the uh noise exception for those items marked in green and yellow on um exhibit five of the presentation to be included incorporated in the ordinance as whatever exhibit a i guess perfect couldn't have said it better myself okay all right you probably could have but i'm sorry i didn't give you the opportunity yes councilmember ryan uh would you accept a friendly amendment that it would be that the red area can only be done if sound barrier temporary sound barriers are put up such that you would reduce to below 90 or below 80 decibels at the property edge um i don't know how much that costs but you know when when uh gas wells drag gas wells are dug a lot of times they have those fabric walls that act as sound barriers i'd be fine with that if there's an easy way to incorporate it into what we're working with here i think they have the yellow area projected to come in between 70 and 80 decibels so i i needed to come down to the 80 decibels there's some artificial way to make it 80 decibels what if uh we just said that they could not exceed 80 decibels period because if they're if they can't stay under 80 in the red area then they can't do those bores would that work city city attorney so look i mean we're talking about two hours or two and a half hours what's what when does the construction time allowed to begin up until october 1st is it six o'clock in the morning it's the clock in the morning so they can start at six o'clock in the morning and it was going to be 90 decibels or whatever i mean whatever it is is what it is at six o'clock in the morning so we're talking about two hours so i mean uh we've got a motion on the table to restrict them to the green and yellow uh per exhibit five made exhibit a in the ordinance and that that would mean that the red area just follows normal construction hours which begins at 6 a.m uh so uh we have is that a motion is that the motion um still still the motion i believe is that correct i believe that's correct yes okay may i add one detail just to make sure that we're clear in the ordinance itself i believe it's section three um the building official is actually designated that they could issue a stop work order at any time and so just wanted to make sure that council was aware of that that the way we've crafted the ordinance gives latitude so that if we do receive complaints we can issue a stop work order based on the construction noise yeah and and i'm i'm going to really sort of struggle with that if we make if we change the ordinance to what is being what's been moved because the the two sections that we're referring to are not adjacent to the property and so um if all it takes is one call and somebody goes out there at three in the morning and puts a stop worker on with 30 concrete trucks sitting in the queue that's a problem for me i think we need to have a little bit more predictability and give them a little bit more latitude i think that was in the ordinance in order to facilitate the the noise adjacent to the town homes if somehow we've excluded that and they have to start under normal construction hours of 6 a.m that means that a uh that a call after 6 a.m should not trigger a stop order from from a building official so um if that's how i understand our construction ordinance that if you're doing construction you can start it at six o'clock and i don't believe the construction ordinance has any uh noise parameters within that particular ordinance at least it's not been stated here uh so um that that's going to be my only concern with the motion that's on the floor is do we still want to give that kind of latitude when we've really resolved what i think was one of the major reasons that that term was put in there because when you look at it i mean i don't know what the the difference is there uh from the boundary of the green poor or yellow whatever that is um so anyway that's just an observation of mine uh council member briggs i'll second is that with the stop order work uh issue in there with the um uh with the building official that if somebody complains on those two that we're approving uh at three o'clock in the morning and that it's the discretion of the um who is it at the discretion of the building official the building official of course i guess they have to be reached at three o'clock in the morning uh and it's their discretion i believe so is that still with that part of that in the ordinance council member davis that's still part of your ordinance yeah that's my that's my original motion and i'm fine with sticking with that i don't um i don't expect scott mcdonald's gonna go out there until 30 concrete trucks to turn around the day of the complaint based on one citizen complaint i think there's there's gonna be more of a process to it than that so okay i'm fine with granting that discretion you bet all right council member breaks yes i'll second and and knowing that's in there makes it even makes me even more in favor of of the um the motion so mr city attorney i have a question um if at six o'clock or 6 30 in the morning uh there's calls coming in other words does the building official pursuant to this ordinance have the right to go out there and stop work if there's a noise complaint after the time in which uh construction is allowed to begin normally within our ordinance or is it just specifically for these times according to section three it is limited to level of noise during those extended hours okay all right fair enough thank you okay good appreciate the clarification all right we have a motion to second any more discussion mayor pro tem i just want to echo what was said earlier i mean i i thank links for the work they the link they went to talk to people to communicate to give out his personal sale they are local i appreciate all those things and and so i just wanted to kind of note the extra effort they've put in uh because that's appreciated okay uh council member davis houseau aye council member briggs yes council member melzer aye council member ryan aye council member armator no mayor pro tem aye mayor watts is an aye the motion carries six to one thank you appreciate the good discussion our next item on the agenda is agenda item 2d which is id 20-1406 consider adoption of an ordinance approving a settlement agreement and release between the city of denton marker stone reality partners one llc and marker stone reality partners two llc regarding issues and disputes related to a development agreement approved under ordinance number 18-2168 there it is okay good evening mayor and council sorry for the technical difficulties taught us this city engineer before you tonight we want to discuss just briefly the marker stone settlement agreement it's actually the construction of hercules west of locust in conjunction with the development agreement that council approved in december of 2018 just a little background on the location and what we're talking about locust is actually on the far right of the screen there's two different subdivisions here same developer they do have two different names for these two developments as far as their corporate names but you had the evers way development to the south this stretch of hercules was greenfield before this connection came into play so there was no connection of hercules between where this current subdivision to the west sits and then locust on the other side where hercules then continues on to sherman so this was the missing piece and then to the north the bill way subdivision as i mentioned before there was a development agreement in 2018 where the city agreed to about seven hundred sixty thousand dollars in roadway impact fee credits there was also a discussion along the way about eleven thousand dollars and oversized participation agreement for 12 inch water line that the city desired to have oversized and that never made it in the agreement and then if you recall last year early in the year somewhere around the march time frame january february march there were quite a few citizens in the it came to evers subdivision which was just south of the evers way subdivision had significant concerns about flooding they had been impacted multiple times so tonight we're construction hercules is wrapping up as part of the original agreement any construction costs that would have gone over the seven hundred sixty thousand would have been the cities to make do to make that final and complete and we're also trying to wrap in those other components here and i'll step through and remind you some of those issues that we had discussed in prior discussions so the original development agreement 2018 had the city responsible for any construction costs that went over to seven hundred sixty thousand dollars to construct hercules if you recall the city was actually doing the drainage component as dme had installed their substation there on the corner of locust and what is now hercules there was an obligation on dme's bar to put in stormwater improvements and then this development came in and actually put in the roadway that went on top of that as the progress of the project continued there were some delays in the actual construction for a variety of reasons and there were some elevated costs for some right-of-way dedication some other things that were all in the agreement that pushed the overall expense over seven hundred sixty thousand dollars we also along the way had determined that it would have gone even further than seven hundred sixty thousand there was a segment of sidewalk on the north side of hercules that had it been constructed would have been closer to a two hundred thousand dollar overage on construction but it wouldn't have connected the sidewalk from i'll go back to the drawing here it'll be easier to see the sidewalk would have stopped here the existing sidewalk stops right over here and we'll left this blank so we have incorporated that into our sidewalk program they actually started setting out erosion controls and working the construction of that entire stretch of sidewalk today and then again as we move forward in time there was that waterline participation or waterline oversized participation staff had been working with the developer developer on that the original obligation of the developer was to put in an eight-inch waterline but they did opt to put in the 12-inch waterline with the understanding that they would be able to get an opa later so this settlement agreement would roll in that oversized participation agreement a tune of about eleven thousand dollars agreed oversized cost and then if you recall last year this is the mckamey evers subdivision just to the south this is evers way the green line you see here is the retaining wall so there were several citizens that had been flooded you had significant amount of silt that had overwhelmed some erosion controls due to excessive rains that water had several several residents very concerned and the city stepped in agreed with the developer that we would take an active role in protecting our citizens to the south and putting in as much as seventy five thousand dollars towards a retaining wall that would prevent further washouts and flooding as we've seen in the past and that has been constructed to date we have not received any calls and complaints about that retaining wall or drainage issues in summary we have about twenty four thousand dollars almost twenty five thousand dollars in construction overages that we're obligated to spend to participate in the eleven thousand dollars in oversized and then the seventy five thousand dollars in participation for the retaining wall to protect those citizens to the south for a total of 110 000 so we are recommending that council approve that hundred and ten thousand seven hundred fifty five dollar settlement agreement basically to settle the original obligations of the contract and the protection there of the storm water issue and i'll be happy to entertain any questions any questions council member breaks i don't really have a question i just want to thank mr estes for working on this project and working with the homeowners i know it was very complex and there was a lot of issues and personally went out there and and helped it so i just want to tell you thank you and i'd like to move approval all right uh council member davis second yes and and i want to echo those sentiments because i remember when this came to us because of the the flooding and there's a lot of stress and distress out there but we found a solution to really maximize the interest of of everybody the city the developer and also more importantly the residents so i want to thank everybody involved for that it's good work all right we have a motion in a second council member briggs yes council member oh i'm sorry was there any was anybody signed up to speak on this item i i don't think so okay just double checking no no you're you're welcome yeah i don't yeah yeah yeah uh all right so uh let's start over council member breaks yes council member davis i mayor protem all right council member armature yes council member ryan all right council member melzer aye mayor watts is an aye the motion carries seven zero thank you all so much for resolving this issue agenda item 2e id 20-1309 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with 2l construction llc for the construction of the west hickory street paving lighting and drainage improvements which one do i do that that's kind of me yeah all right go ahead thank you good evening mayor members of city of council thank you for speaking with me tonight my name is kyle pedigo i'm a member of the cip division and i'm here to request a award of a contract for the west hickory street paving lightage paving excuse me paving lighting and drainage improvement project between the city of denton and 2l construction the this project the boundaries of this project run along west hickory street between welch street and carol street and it consists of paving improvements along with lighting small drainage improvements and sidewalk installation the engineers estimate of this project was approximately 2.32 million for the five bids that we received came in under the engineers estimate the low bidder was 2l construction with a base bid of one million eight hundred twenty eight thousand ninety nine dollars with the requested five percent contingency that brings the total to one million nine hundred nineteen thousand uh five hundred three dollars and ninety five cents for the construction schedule we're requesting award on july 28th uh we have a pre-construction pre-construction meeting set up for tuesday august 11th um we plan to issue a notice to proceed for september 1st and construction would proceed from sember september 1st through may 29th 2021 we recommend adoption of an ordinance accepting this contract um for the base bid of one million eight hundred twenty eight thousand ninety nine dollars with the five percent contingency for a total of one million nine hundred nineteen thousand dollars five hundred one million nine hundred nineteen thousand five hundred three dollars and ninety five cents any questions if we'll yeah council member uh melzer yeah uh mr pedigo was it yes that's correct uh is this your first presentation to council yes congratulations uh and uh i'm uh super excited to see this come before us um i i wish it had fallen so more of the work can be done when school's out of session but uh given the current environment you know with lower volume traffic and so on uh i think that's very acceptable uh i already asked my question so you can relax i'm moving approval and to those who say gee city of denton shouldn't you really finish other jobs before you start another this is west hickory from welch to count really i move approval all right council member breaks i don't know you guys may have missed my happy dance at the beginning of this item but i'm really excited that uh we're discussing it i did have one question if we've worked with this contractor before i know anytime we see a really low bid we want to make sure that the work is still quality um so i just want to kind of ask you about that i haven't personally worked with this contractor but we uh followed up on the recommendations provided with the bid and received nothing but positive feedback okay perfect i'll second is uh is this a local contractor is this a out of city contractor i believe they're out of rome texas okay all right um and the whole reason i ask is because i know that um and council member riggs this goes to sort of your question about being familiar with people and or not because i know mr city attorney refreshed my memory and i i'm not going to make this recommendation i just want to make sure that we that i have my understanding correctly we we used to have i think we still do a five percent local preference but does that apply to construction contract i know we don't off the top of my head i don't know if that's correct i was just curious because if there was a question about that then that that might be what we could do but uh but anyway okay we have a motion and a second um any other discussion yes mayor pro tem no i just want to i'm gonna pile on and say how excited i am to and and i was wondering what we're gonna do what are we gonna do with all the bricks from the cobblestone that's there now no never mind yeah yeah yeah yeah no it is i was driving there the other day and anyway um yes council member breaks you messed around and i have another question um will the bike lane continue from uh the fry area hickory all the way down yes the bike lane is on the south side of the street for the entire length of this section okay thank you council member melzer i'll say you aye council member breaks uh yes mayor potem all right council member davis aye council member ryan aye council member armater yes mayor is an aye the motion carries uh seven zero all right we'll move on to agenda item two f which is id 20-1310 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of dentin a texas home rule municipal corporation authorized and city manager executed contract with jago public company for the construction of the mckinney street slash mayhill intersection improvements good evening mayor council members my name is trevor crane i'm a project manager in the cip department this project is the mckinney mayhill intersection improvements it's for a ward of construction contract all right this is the project overview um the project uh area is the mayhill mckinney intersection and 600 feet both ways east and west along mckinney the improvements are there you can see there mainly what this does is close in the part that was removed from the mckinney widening phase two project so it includes the paving water improvements wastewater improvements and drainage wrong way we got three bids on this project the engineers opc is listed on the left uh 4.2 million dollars jago public was the low bid at four point uh about a little bit under that four four million one hundred eighty two thousand five hundred and five seventy five construction schedule um we're going to do a notice to proceed pre-construction conference on august 18th 2020 it'll be a year construction on this one so we are looking to be done august 18th 2021 staff recommends adoption of this ordinance in the amount of four million three hundred ninety one thousand six hundred and thirty one dollars and four cents and that does include the five percent contingency as we talked about with the previous project okay questions uh council member breaks so it's four million dollars just for the one intersection i mean a million dollars it's a lot of drainage improvements um that that kind of run on both sides some water improvements as well as sewer okay mayor may i sure i remember when we were doing the um the mayhill and this intersection was not in it and we took that out um is it around the is it kind of the same um price for what we thought it was going to be it is so it was it was it wasn't included in the mayhill section it was also pulled out of the mckinney section too and that's kind of where our opc came from was we looked at those those calls from both of those projects and it came in right right right on the same numbers as both of those projects would have been okay um is there an image of a design what it what it would is going to look like uh not in this presentation no ma'am okay but we can get that we have we have one i just didn't include in the presentation yeah i appreciate that for four million dollars sure thank you okay uh any other questions if not chair would entertain uh motion mayor protem move approval councilmember ryan a second we have a motion and a second uh mayor protem has say you all right councilmember ryan aye councilmember armatuer yes councilmember briggs yes councilmember davis aye councilmember melzer aye mayor watts is an aye the motion carries seven zero we'll move on to our next item on the agenda which is item 2g id 20-1369 consider an adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the approval of change order number one to the contract between city of denton and jago public company for the mckinney street widening phase two project i don't see this one oh here we go all right y'all got me again this is uh trevor crane with the cip department this is the mckinney street phase two roadway expansion um we just kind of touched on this a little bit this is a request for the change order number one there we go this is the project overview um phase two um this shows the water line um the 16 the 12 inch water line that we're upgrading a 16 inch water line upgrading and um on both sides of the street there was also sewer improvements um on this project as well as drainage and paving it also includes a five foot sidewalk on actually at six foot it's a typo should be a six foot sidewalk on the south side and a 12 foot mixed use path is also being installed on the north side of the street this is the change order summary we mainly have four items the top three were just items that were originally um kind of left out or missed when we um when the engineer pulled items um they're all pretty pretty small items there the the last one on the list are drainage additions these were um drainage improvements that needed to be done into um right of way on both sides of mckinney that we didn't have didn't have acquired yet once we uh when we bid the project we've been working to get those items or those those parcels acquired this this time while we've been under construction and now we have those we needed to add those drainage improvements this change order will put us at about 3.7 percent on the um on our change order uh the change order percentage for the project and we are about eight months into the project construction schedule this kind of goes through the history of the project our notice to proceed was on december 9th and we're looking to be complete december 9th of 2021 and that's um we're actually tracking to be ahead of schedule there staff recommends approving this change order in the amount of three hundred eighty two thousand three hundred eighty dollars and 48 cents and that's it for that one any questions chair when entertaining council member davis move approval do we have a second council member melzer a second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 2g id 20-1369 council member davis oh mayor pro tem yeah i have a question is it trevor right yes yes okay can you just briefly go over because across the street that's that atmos gas uh property what what security what what do we have in place to make sure that we're sure right so that uh property the right-of-way that that drainage is getting extended to right there was actually donated by atmos we had a meeting out there with them i want to say maybe three or four weeks ago to talk about the security we have to go into that property you know into that right-of-way right there to extend that and do work so we talked with them about we're putting up a permanent permanent i say but it's a permanent temporary fence that has barbed wire all the way around the outside of our right-of-way to make sure it's secure during that time and then we're also looking at um some measures to put some some bars or some some kind of security measures across those uh drainage pipes because they are going to be large enough for someone to crawl through if they were so inclined we're looking at some security measures to put across those as well okay and then what about the you know we're confident digging there i mean i'm sure there's been some work done already but we're sure there's nothing close by that gives us any any concern uh we haven't found anything to this to this point that would give us any concern right okay thank you any other questions so we have a motion by councilmember davis and a second by councilmember melzer uh we're going to vote councilmember davis i say you aye councilmember melzer aye councilmember briggs yes councilmember uh mayor pro tem hudspeth aye councilmember ryan aye councilmember armature no okay the motion carries six to one uh we'll move on to our last item other than concluding items on the agenda 2h consider adoption id 20-1371 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the approval of change order number one to the contract between the city of denton and quality excavation llc for the 2019 reconstruction project for the city of denton with geographical limits etc all right last one for the night i hope this is trevor crane with the cip department and uh the last item i have for you tonight is the 2019 street reconstruction project change order number one project overview um this project consists of water wastewater and roadway improvements on hercules lane scripture street thomas street and windsor drive this is a change order summary as you can see it's a it's a lot of little items um it mostly falls into a couple categories one is unforeseen conditions on soil um mainly on thomas street we got into an area that was soil was just very poor so we had to do some some different things to make sure the base of that street was uh was done correctly we also had some uh some utility line issues um utility line issues that were there already that we had to kind of move around and that's pretty much it there was a couple other items some items that were left off bid that we needed to add it in here this brings our change order percentage to less than one percent the reason we kind of came with this at this point where there was a lot of small items that the contractor had already done work for we wanted to go ahead and pay them for that and we had already this mainly falls into thomas street and the utility installation on scripture so it was kind of a good place to to cut those change orders off and move forward with the rest of the project construction schedule this kind of shows the history of the project we're tracking to be complete with the entire project on march 23 2022 we're about two months ahead of schedule right now mainly cove had kind of helped us in this in this case with all the schools going down early we were able to extend some some road closures and do a lot of work that we weren't wouldn't have been able to do until the uh the summer staff recommends a approving this change order in the amount of eighty one thousand eighty seven dollars and 45 cents and that's it all right any questions council member briggs do you have a question on the completion it said 2022 and i know we have four streets but say for like thomas are we not expecting that to be completed until march of 2022 i mean so each individual street may have a different completion date but they should all be finished by correct so the entire project we're saying so all four streets will be done in 2022 thomas street is done it's completed right now yeah and so then it will just go on um and then winter is there is there a location where those dates can be found for um people who are living through it right now sure we're kind of updating them as we go we kind of learned a little bit on the that first winter street closure um so so now we as we've opened that section back up and moved on to hercules we went ahead and did a mail out in conjunction with the door hangers to kind of tell them what was going on what they can expect um and that type of thing we can we can definitely put a schedule together that shows that i have that that shows them when those are are planned to be done okay i appreciate that thank you all right any other questions mayor potam move approval councilmember davis second any other discussion all right we'll vote uh mayor potem house ayu aye councilmember davis aye councilmember melzer aye councilmember briggs yes councilmember armantor yes councilmember ryan aye mayor wass's an aye motion carries unanimously we'll move on to our final agenda item which is concluding items concluding items mayor potem thank you just real quick my my neighbor is having a birthday uh and so i want to her name's tammy young and and so she's related to uh carl jean the youngs of of uh denton so uh she's an outstanding cook works in the medical field so i just wanted to say happy birthday uh to her all right any other concluding items all right seeing none we will stand adjourned at 9 10 p.m thank you