Aug 04, 2020 City Council on 2020-08-04 1:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday August the 4th, 2020. It is 1 1 p.m. We will we do have a quorum. I'll call this meeting to order. Before we go into we're going to go directly into our closed session meetings. I guess before we do that is Assistant City Manager Amari Kanazaris in the in the room and able to take the the chair it's the staff position. He is. Okay. Good afternoon. Greetings. Short timer. Yes. Hey hey I just wanted to to just let you know first of all congratulations on your appointment to the City of Nacogdoches as their new City Manager. I think job well done. You've done such a great job here at the City of Denton. You've been just an invaluable part of the team and I can certainly understand why they decided to to choose you as their new City Manager. I wish you all the best there. I know you're going to do a great job for them and I think you you went to school there so you're sort of going back to home sort of but to a place where that you've that you're familiar with. So Mario all the best to you. Thank you so much for what you've added to our community and just the work you've done and the leadership that you've provided. So just I just wanted to take a moment to express those sentiments and to congratulate you in public and also give any of the other council members an opportunity if they so wanted to share some words that they'd have the opportunity to do that. So anybody else would like to say okay Council Member Armitter. Yeah so I would just say I see why Nacogdoches wanted you. I don't see why you want to leave but you are welcome back anytime and it's not that far and enjoy. Thank you. Council Member Briggs. I just want to thank Mario for your service while you were here. It's been a pleasure working with you and you came into the city at a very interesting time and you showed us what it was like to be a really great person in response to the community and I appreciate all that you've done while you were here and I wish you the best in East Texas. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah I'll just say I mean the perfect combination of Coppell and Denton them now transitioning to Nacogdoches. Outstanding. No I do appreciate the time here. I do think we overexposed you with the one development and that got you too much airtime but it can't be understated. 50 nationwide search, 50 candidates and you're the lone finalist. I mean that says it all so congratulations and I'll be down to visit. All right look forward to it. Anybody else? Council Member Meltzer. Yeah just thank you so much Mario for just the high standard of professionalism and your patience with us too. I also want to point out that I believe you are a member of a club of something like 10 former Todd Heilman reports who have gone on as you are now going to become City Managers on their own so that's a feather in both your caps. Okay anybody else? Well like Mayor Pro Tem as I've shared with you before I've got some friends who live there so look forward to when I catch up with them catch up with you and I hope you don't get too bored there and you don't miss all the excitement here. So but again in all sincerity thank you so much for just having us as a stepping stone and just a journey onto where you wanted to go and the Denton community is much better off for that. Thank you Mario. Thank you Council Members. Appreciate your help and your support. All the best. You betcha. All right. Bye bye. Okay we will I believe our first item on the agenda is to go into closed meeting and we will convene the closed session at 1 0 5 p.m. We will consider the following items consultations with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071 and deliberations regarding personal matters under Texas Government Code section 551.074. So at this time we will go ahead and convene in closed meeting so if the host could and those that are not involved in the closed meetings if they could go ahead and exit the meeting and and we'll get started here shortly. Welcome everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council on August 4, 2020. We are resuming our meeting from earlier before. It is 3 16 p.m. We are now we've concluded our closed session we're now moving into our work session. We do have a quorum so I'll call this meeting to order. Our first item on the work session is citizen comments on consent agenda items and I do not believe we have any citizen comments that are queued for consent agenda items. So we'll move on to our agenda number two which is request for clarification on agenda items listed on this agenda. Any Councilmember Briggs. On item B is that isn't there a drop off already there or is it a new drop off for recycling? If I read the back I'm just trying to look for some clarification on on what it actually is. Okay Brian Berners here to answer that Mayor. Honorable Mayor, Member of Council, the the drop off area that we're talking about currently is located within the footprint of our next landfill cell so what will happen is it will require us to design and move it out of the cell site into another area of the landfill and where we're going to be moving it we'll keep it out of future expansion for at least 25 years. Okay Councilmember Briggs go ahead. Is there anything currently in the location that you're moving it to? No it is it is a fallow piece of property out at the landfill site. Okay all right. Okay all right Councilmember did you have another one Councilmember Briggs? Yeah yeah I have more but I thought maybe somebody had a question for Mr. okay Brian so I didn't know I was alright anybody have any questions for Brian if not we'll go through okay all right Councilmember Meltzer and then Councilmember Armitage. Yeah I know the answer to this now but in case anyone else wants to know regarding item C which says it's $220,000 for the design of a cell at the landfill that that's really not just for design right I mean design's just a small portion of that. That is correct about half of that will actually go for the engineering and design work half of it will go for construction assurance and then the then a little bit more will go for the certification paperwork that we have to file with the state. Thanks for clarifying that. Thank you. Okay Councilmember Armitage did you have a question on this topic? Yeah well I had two questions but I'm pretty sure I'm going to vote no so I want it pulled for individual item in a discussion anyway also because it's such a matter of public interest but I'd be fine asking my question here if appropriate or saving it till. Well what is the what is the presentation you're wanting just kind of an explanation for doesn't have to be a PowerPoint just you know going over the the timeline on this why this is necessary now if that's not appropriate I could just I could I could ask the question my question now but I do want to vote on it separately no yeah if you want to ask your question now and then unless anybody else wants a presentation we'll just go ahead and pull it and then just bring it up for a vote so what yeah what's your question? Okay so so my question is um if you could give us an update on the status of the TCEQs you know deliberation on on the public hearing on the landfill expansion and if you could speak to why why it's it's important that we vote on this now. Okay what we're voting on tonight has really nothing to do with our expansion currently we're in a cell it's about halfway full and in order for us to go ahead and have disposal capacity available when it when it is completely filled based on the timeline we need to start the engineering and construction work now so this is in our existing permitted area we're basically trying to get ahead of the curve to be able to have area to put waste once our current cell that we're currently disposing of ends. To answer your question about that our expansion permit on the 25th of June we did have a public meeting regarding the expansion comment was taken currently the state office of chief clerk's office is reviewing those comments they are in the process of parents of preparing excuse me Aaron are we on posting on this because this is about a landfill permit that's not really based upon I mean the one that we're talking about is for our currently existing permit so I just want to make sure that we're not sort of rolling off posting here to talk about something that this agenda item is not really meant to do. And that is correct mayor I know that he's trying to answer the question that this is related to an existing not the in the future expansion. But no I think I think the question was talking about the the future expansion permit so yeah he did answer the question about this is regarding the current permit for this particular agenda item but I think one of the questions was an update on the the expansion permit if I didn't if unless I didn't hear that correctly and that's the one that I think is outside of posting that would be outside of posting Mary you're correct. Okay. All right. The council member armored did you have any other questions about this particular agenda item. Yeah so this is a question and thank you for clarifying that. So I see connection between the our current cell capacities and future cell capacity so I'm but I'll ask the question about the current these current cells. So what percentage is this this this one cell filled right now percentage of capacity. Are you our existing cell that we're operating in now is about halfway full so about 50 percent maybe a little bit more. And so I'm sorry. But again it take it between the engineering the bidding the construction it takes away from about 18 months to two years to build for that whole process to build the next cell that when it was originally cited the current cell had about a five year life estimated into it. So at that time that this work needs to be done. Okay. And so how long has it taken for the cell to reach for this one cell to reach this 50 percent point. About two and a half almost three years. Okay. And what percentage of that is or we don't know cell by cell is just city of Denton waste versus the contracted waste that we bring in. No we I mean right now when we started this this program filling it three years ago it was the the distribution was different you know currently we're at about 50 50 between what we're currently accepting inside the city of Denton versus what is being brought to us by our contracted waste haulers as well as residents and businesses from you know independent of those haulers outside the city of Denton paying the full day rate. Okay. Thank you. So for me so I'm still going to want to pull this because I would like I would like to wait till we come up with with a zero waste plan to decide on you know investing. But I really appreciate those answers and thank you so much. All right. Okay. Anybody else for for Brian. I just want to emphasize that this is under our current permit and that this is this is this work is needed to be done to just continue to be on projection for our current timetable for our current landfill. So I just want to make the public very aware that this isn't about expansion. It's not about that. If you if you if this isn't done then we lose our landfill capacity at a much greater time rate which every council member can decide how they want to handle that. But this has nothing to do with the current expansion plans. Okay. All right. Thank you Brian. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Who had a customer bridge. Did you have some more clarifications. Yeah. I just wanted to pull item H. Okay. All right. So I'm sorry. Not not a presentation. Okay. All right. So we pulled item C and we've pulled out of age. No presentation on those. Any other clarification of agenda items. Council member armature. I would also like to pull B and if that can be coupled with with H sorry with C that's fine just for individual consideration. And then I did have a question about G and depending on the answer I might want to pull it for individual consideration doesn't need a presentation necessarily. And just that question is this is a G about the DME software purchase. If you could explain exactly what this what this software does. Good afternoon council Terry Nolte assistant general manager. This software is a software that we use to monitor the condition of the transmission grid. It gives us insight in real time into the status of generating units throughout the ERCOT grid and outages of transmission. It's necessary for us to accurately put in our offers and bids for the following day and for the intraday of purchases and sales. It's a proprietary software package that is unique to this particular provider. Okay. Thank you. And does it it it it works with with transition transmission from all of our generation sources or is it linked somehow specifically to the deck. It is linked. It's actually linked to all transmission and generating resources in the entire market. Okay. Thank you. It gives us insight into the status of like nuclear plants, other gas plants, wind plants, etc. in the market so that we can see how prices are going to change in real time. Okay. So thank you. So I don't I don't need to pull it then. Thanks. Okay. Any any other questions or clarification? All right. Thank you. All right. We'll move on to our work session reports. Work session report of 3A ID 20-1204. Report, hold discussion and get after regarding an update to the city of Denton's COVID-19 response. Good afternoon mayor and council. This is Ryan Adams with customer service and public affairs and I will be doing my best here at Keekler impersonation for this item. Let me pull up our presentation. So this is our COVID update for August 4th. Just to give you a brief, see if I can. There we go. A brief background. We last gave you an update on July 21st and since that time, we have updated our order of council to the 8th order and that was approved on July 28th. Our current disaster declaration that was adopted on June 23rd extends through August 31st. 31st is currently passed. Just know what we'll be talking about today. We do have a couple of intergovernmental updates. Laura from parks will give a programming update. We have just a brief update on housing and utility assistance and then a discussion on bars or establishments that sell 51% or more of alcohol that was requested at the last public meeting. So we do have an update to give related to early voting. On July 27th, Governor Abbott did issue a proclamation that extended early voting, whereas it once was two weeks. It is now three weeks, beginning Tuesday, October 13th through Friday, October 30th. Because this is a November election, participating jurisdictions are required to use the polling locations that are designated by the county and that's for election day and early voting. For Denton County, our city secretary's office has reached out to them and is coordinating with them. They are currently working to identify approximately 50 early voting early voting locations and plan to open a voting location on election day for any precinct where there are 750 or more registered voters. How this proclamation affects us in the city of Denton is we will need to amend our election ordinances to reflect the change to early voting and then of course with any of our city facilities that are polling locations, we will need to work to promote social distancing in those facilities. So we did send a letter prior to this item about a request that was sent from Representative Cross and Senator Hughes to Governor Abbott relating to restaurants and the definition of restaurants within GA 28, the governor's executive order. The letter poses a couple of issues that they found or that they viewed with the current definition of a restaurant and that the revenue model is based on when a permit was issued. And just as a reminder, restaurants are defined as those establishments that sell less than 51% of alcohol. So 51 and over, you're considered a bar for the purposes of the order, anything less than that you're considered a restaurant and of course bars are not permitted to be open to in-person services inside. They also found that the percentages can be skewed if establishments offer cheap food and expensive beverages and it doesn't account for any adjustments to the business model since the COVID pandemic started. So as an example, some bars have opted to provide curbside service now that that is allowed, which permits them to continue to operate. The letter requested that Governor Abbott amend his current order, his current executive order to where the definition of a restaurant would essentially be any facility that has a permanent kitchen on its premises with an exhaust hood and fire suppression system. And that kitchen would have to be operational for all business hours. So the establishment couldn't close the kitchen down at say 10 p.m. and then keep the alcohol services going through 2 a.m. And it would have to serve or it could only serve patrons who are seated in accordance with the social distancing protocols for restaurants. So people could not stand and mingle like they could, they would have to be seated and separated. And one of the reasons we bring this to your attention is that the letter was co-signed by a significant number of the state legislature. Senators Fallon and Nelson signed on and supported this letter, 17 senators in total. And Representatives Stuckey and Parker also signed on to it. 49 representatives in the legislature supported this redefinition of restaurant. We are not, our staff is not recommending council take any particular action. We did want to update you on this, that this letter is out there. The governor could respond, he could not, but we wanted to let you know that this has been requested by many members of the state legislature, including many members of the Denton delegation. So I'm actually gonna turn it over to Laura, who's gonna give you a quick update on parks programming. Good afternoon, Mayor, council members, Laura Behrens, Assistant Director for Parks and Recreation. I just wanted to give you a quick recap of where we are today in our parks department. Our recreation center at North Lakes continues to be open at modified hours with limited access and use following our designated health and safety protocols. We did start a select number of fitness classes this week under a return to play action plan that meets all of the minimum standard health protocols set by the state. We also have several programming programs continuing on the athletic side. The driving range continues to be open with instruction. Tennis courts are open to the public, also offering private instruction. Basketball courts are open throughout our park system, open to the public. We do have one youth sports association that has limited practices in games that are going on. And we have a select number of contracted youth sports that have started again under the return to play action plans. Laura, I don't know if your camera's on. Oh, there you go. There you are. There I am. Yes, greetings. Our outdoor gatherings continue to be paused at this time under the current restrictions from the most recent state proclamation, with some exceptions to that. All outdoor gatherings have a 10 person limit. This does impact our special events, which continue to be on home. We are in constant communication with event organizers, providing them with updates and information and also providing some guidance with planning for events that they're proposing to hold in the fall. We do have some scheduled reopenings coming up. Even though these reopenings are planned and we have protocols in place for them, we are constantly reviewing those plans and protocols and making the appropriate modifications to them. We are prepared to make immediate changes as needed as we continue not only to reopen, but after opening, monitoring these programs and our facilities. So for fall sports, we have a few leagues that are scheduled to reopen in September with registration starting this month. They include adult kickball, softball, and volleyball. And then on the youth side, flag football and volleyball. They will be done under modified programming, meeting again the state's minimum standard health protocols, CDC guidelines. We also have a COVID notice and specific waivers for the participants who are registering for these classes. Everything is also again contingent on the state orders and our local conditions that are in place at the time that the programs are scheduled to start. On the recreation side, recreation center side, we have the natatorium that's scheduled to open probably towards the end of August, 1st of September pending our DISD schedule. This is a joint use facility. So they would be coming in and using primarily the competition pool for their swim team activities. This recreation center will also operate under modified hours with limited operations, not only meeting the standard protocols that we've discussed, but also looking at any additional recommendations and protocols that DISD would ask us to follow as well as UIL guidelines. MLK Junior Recreation Center is also scheduled to open in September. Similar to North Lakes Recreation Center, it will operate under modified hours, limited operations and program offerings, and meet the same minimum state protocols and also evaluating the local conditions that are in place at the time of that scheduled reopening. And that's all I have for you today. All right, thank you. Who's handling housing and utility assistance? Mayor, would you like me to proceed? I didn't know if we had any questions since that was a lot of information. Oh, okay. Yeah, let's go ahead and pull it down. We'll see. I'm sorry. I apologize. Thank you. Any questions so far? Mayor Pro Tem? Yeah, for Laura, when she gets back. Yeah, there she is. Sorry about that, Laura. What is our plan as we reopen? So for example, specifically MLK Center, it opens up, we find out there's a positive test. What's the protocol to how long is it closed? What's kind of our plan? So we do have a plan for that because we have that outline for our North Lakes Recreation Center. But primarily, it would be closed for two weeks minimum. That's the recommendation. Of course, during that time, we'll continue to evaluate the exposures, the level of exposures, and then also our ability and capacity to reopen based on that. But we also have a notification process in place. So once we determine, we become aware and are notified of a positive case, we'll start working with the County Health Department in the contact tracing and making the appropriate notifications of anyone that would be potentially exposed. And we also would have a rigorous disinfection and cleaning procedure that would take place during that two week closure. And if I may? Yes, go ahead. And so then the staff that's working there, obviously why it's closed, are they, do they take part in the cleaning process? What's kind of their task during that time? In that particular scenario, we would work with facility maintenance to have someone in that would handle that disinfection for us. But the let's say, I don't know the better word, reception. And so the people working at MLK, are they transitioned to a different department? What are they doing the two weeks it's closed? Then we would transition back to our work from home plan, which we again have a pretty robust plan for that, that was developed at the beginning of this pandemic. And so we would transition back to our work from home plan at that time. Thank you. I think is Councilmember Briggs an armature, is that correct? Oh, yeah. Councilmember Briggs, did you have a question? Yeah, just to follow up on that. So I guess I want to clarify. So if somebody had been to the gym and they use their card, and then there was a non positive, we would be contacting those individuals that came to make sure that they were aware. Correct. We would be working directly though with the county to assist us with that contact tracing and also the notification process. Okay. And other question, because there's a teen room or game room, will that be opened and if so, will it be cleaned every, every so often? At the MLK center when it opens. So right now what we're planning again are some limited operations similar to what we have at North Lakes, North Lakes only has the fitness area open and then we have again started some fitness classes. So it would be something similar to that more than likely that teen area would not be opened immediately because that's considered a high contact and high touch area. Since it's got the pool table, you know, the arcade type video games and so forth. So that would probably not be open right away, but we would start with what we've been so far very successful with at North Lakes, which is the fitness area and some, some limited programming. Okay. And the basketball courts. That would be something that we would consider. That's also a high touch area, but we do have some plans outlined that would reduce the number of people that are playing on the court at any one time and have some procedures outlined for disinfection of equipment. So that is something that we can consider at the initial phase of opening or bring it on as we, as we continue to operate successfully without any, any exposures. Okay. Thank, thank you. All right. Councilmember Archer. Oh yeah. So I have a question for legal about the, the, the bar recommendation, but first I'll ask my question for parks since Laura from parks and rec is here. So can you speak to what are our rec center child care staff doing now? What does childcare look like at present and in the, the immediate future for my rec centers? All of that right now is also paused. We're watching very closely what the schedule looks like for DISD. As you know, we suspended our youth, the majority of our youth programming over the summer. Again, those are high touch activities, vulnerable population. So as we begin to, to continue to monitor school and as it goes back into session, the first thing that we'll be looking at is our afterschool action site and how we can bring that program on back online. We again, have a very good plan in place or we had a plan in place for our summary summer camps for our youth summer camps. So it would more than likely mirror that proposed plan, but we'll be watching what the DISD schedule looks like in our capacity and our ability to put on that program safely. Okay. Thank you. And is there, has there been any kind of consideration so far of the possibility of having a very small group, social distance, child care available at the start of the school year for, for parents of essential workers who might want to say, take the online option or is that not being explored yet? I realize also we don't have the numbers for that yet on, on if there is a need or what the need is. Correct. We do have again, some proposed plans in place, but that is not one of the programs that we would immediately look at. Afterschool action site is the first youth recreational care program that's really on our radar because it does have a pretty good registration level once school starts. So that's where we normally see the need for recreational care from families and parents. Okay. And thank you. And so our, our childcare staff or that this is part of this same question follow up on our, our childcare staff, are they mostly working from home or doing other things in, in parks and rec? All of our temp seasonal workers, which we use a lot of temp seasonals for child, for our childcare programs are still, you know, are not, whether those positions are frozen, they're not with us right now. We do have a plan again to bring them in place incrementally as these programs start back up, but our full time and part time staff who monitor oversee those and in many cases are part time staff who directly administer those youth programs are continue to be with us, work with us and are primarily working at North Lakes. It's taking all of our full time and part time staff to man the operations of North Lakes Recreation Center. Thank you. Thank you. And if somebody wanted to use one of the open rec centers, just to have a place for wifi, somebody who does not have good wifi where they are an adult or a kid, is that, is that, is that welcome? Is that if you could just, just, just speak to the extent to which rec centers could or couldn't meet that need. Right now, North Lakes Recreation Center is only open to our members. And again, only the fitness area and those group fitness programs are available. As we continue to move through the reopening phases, we'll look at reopening up those individual areas as we can safely. And thank you so much. You know, I happen to believe that access to wifi is an even greater need than fitness, because fitness, one could theoretically, you could get it almost anywhere. Here's like a rec center. So, but, but, but thank you. That's good to know. So one more question about the parks and then my bars question. Can you kind of take me through what a COVID safe social distance kids volleyball will look like? Is it, is the team size reduced or their gloves? What's the, yeah, so the, the registration is greatly reduced. Right now, those programs, our sports programs are being held outdoors. So that's another component. They're not being held indoors. We're working with our contractors who facilitate those programs to have a cleaning and disinfection procedure in place. While they're playing, they are not wearing masks, but any other time they, they are required to, in some cases are also limiting the number of spectators. So only one parent can bring them or stay with them. There's a check-in process as well. But primarily, yes, the there is a disinfection process. There is the limitation on the number of registrants is being held out outdoors. And then we have also those other standard health protocols for wearing masks and limiting the number of people that actually show up. Thank you. And will it be focused more on kind of volleyball skills or will there be also games in addition to that? Right now, it's just, it's primarily skills because it's outdoors and we're using the sand volleyball pits at North Lakes. Okay. Thank you so much. And then I have a question for legal about the, the bars recommendation. Okay. Any other questions for Laura? Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Laura. Appreciate that. Okay. And so you've got a question for legal council member Armitter. Yep. So, so this is about the, the bar's letter recommendation, whatever we're calling it. So I'm wondering if for a, so if we were to sign on to this, would that in any way put a bar owner who, who wants to remain closed, you know, would that in any way, you know, compromise their ability to remain closed and have their, say their employees collect unemployment, for instance? My guess is no, I just wanted to be sure. No, the way I read the letter, it's, it's asking the governor to allow them to open under a modified definition. They certainly do not have to open, even if the governor allows that. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Anyone else before we move on with this presentation? Council member Briggs. Yeah. I know it said that it wasn't staff's recommendation to, for the city to do anything about the letter, but I'm just wondering if, if it would, if council would consider signing on or if, if a city council needs to sign on, I know there's several businesses in our town that are affected by this. So I just wanted to get some input on, on what other others thought. Okay. Any councilmembrometer? So I am, I support it, given that as, as our city attorney said, you know, it doesn't compromise those who want to remain closed because, because I happen to believe that the bars were unfairly singled out. I am concerned, of course, about, about COVID spread, but to me, I mean, it does not seem like a reasonable approach, what the, the way the governor just shut down the bars. So I think that anyway, I, I do, I do approve of this. Okay. All right. I would like, I would like to sign on to it. Okay. All right. Anybody else? Okay. All right. I think, I think it seemed like when I saw the letter, there were several, several state legislators, especially in this area that signed on to it as well. So I think that certainly carries the weight that we needed to, to, to try to present that to the governor. We, we seen some of the responses when we've sent things to the governor's office just as a city. So I really appreciate the legislative delegations who have signed onto that to try to help the, the bars in the community. Okay. Ryan, moving forward. Yes, sir. So next we'll just give a brief update on housing and utility assistance. Okay. So today, the COVID-19 relief fund has assisted 300 Denton households, countywide, a total of 1.4, a little over 1.4 million has been expended through this fund. And we have actually taken 14 individuals have been moved from temporary housing and a city provided motel to a more permanent housing with assistance from United Way. I do want to mention with utility assistance, it was discussed pretty in depth at the last meeting, the impacts of pending disconnects for a lot of our customers, $100,000 in funding for non COVID related assistance has been made available. And the city is currently working with interfaith ministries and United Way to coordinate that assistance. Our disconnects are beginning this week. And as a result, we are seeing a market increase in the number of calls to our customer service center. Really, it is about double of what we would normally see during this time period. And that has resulted in significant wait times. And we have issued I don't know if you've seen it, we send an email to the council, giving a little bit of background on that and what our approach is. We wanted to make sure that we were able to answer any questions that you might have here at this meeting related to those disconnects. We still encourage customers to call us at 817, there's a typo there, 817-349-8700 if they have any questions about their account relative to 940-349-8700. We have the correct one out on our social media, I promise. There is we still are encouraging people to call customer service. If they have any questions about disconnects, if they're concerned about an outstanding balance, we want to work with our customers to make sure that they are they know what options are available to them to avoid a disconnection. And that is through direct and indirect communication channels. Anyone who is at risk for disconnection will receive at least one letter sent to their house, letting them know that they are at risk. And a number of phone calls, automatic phone calls to let them know that they could be disconnected if their account continues to be, continues to hold a balance. So I did want to pause there if there are any questions on council, Krista Foster is here as well, and we're happy to answer questions, answer any questions about disconnects. Sorry about that. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, so I'm just now seeing an email that council got that I really appreciate about talking about customer service call volumes because I know I had heard that either it was yesterday or day before, but I heard about it yesterday that that that callers had had some trouble getting through. I was wondering just if you could speak to that issue. And what you know if there are any needs and again apologies because I'm just seeing this email now. If you could just speak to you know what what kinds of barriers there are you know what the plan is moving forward what the needs are so that so that people will will know so that the public will know. Sure not actually a good opportunity for Krista Foster to step in and answer some of those questions. So I'm going to let her respond. Good afternoon mayor council Krista Foster customer service manager. It is correct that now we have started receiving a influx of calls we got 2200 calls yesterday we should get about a thousand for this time of year. We are actively building some plans we I don't want to go through them just yet but we're putting some things in place so that we can better service all of the customers because it's very bothersome to us that we cannot physically get to all the people that are contacting us. We expect to have something out to you in a Friday report this week so that it will outline what our basic structure is for how we're going to try to manage this. Councilmember Meltzer, Councilmember Armitage did you have a follow up? Yeah so yeah follow up question to that that that you might not have an answer to but you know would it be possible would it possibly be the case that you know having more flexible deadline continuing suspension of shut off you know staggering might be a possible solution that might be either more affordable or as affordable as you know bringing on more staff or Councilmember Armitage several of those I think most all of me just mentioned are policy questions they're not necessarily operational questions and that's related because I'm thinking about oh no I understand that I'm just saying I don't I don't think staff I mean that's a question for the council and if council wants to talk about that that's I certainly understand that but I think she just said that they're looking at putting some things in place to give us an update on the Friday staff report and so I think we need to give them an opportunity to try to from an operational perspective find a solution or some mitigation to this. Okay sure I'll just I hope that that that kind of possibility is is is considered as one possible thing to look at. Okay Councilmember Meltzer and then Councilmember Briggs. Yeah kind of in the same terrain so try to be careful that first of all I think I contributed to the call line because I definitely put it out there in social media that if you're behind in your payments call because we want to get you on a plan or connected to to the assistance but my concern is that when we get to actually shutting off because I think you're getting the calls now in anticipation of shut offs right we haven't actually we haven't actually started is that right? That's correct. That would be so so I mean obviously you're going to tell us if you have some way to expand our capacity but whatever our capacity is would you potentially have the ability to kind of pace it and do the shut offs to get the calls within the capacity that we have? We actually have to do that already to work with DME because there's a certain number of customers that we have to like cap off the number of disconnects that we would do in any given day so we've been working very closely with DME that will help to control that as well. Yeah okay thanks. I remember Briggs. So do we have any any data yet I know that you said you had over 2,000 calls yesterday but of the 2,642 that we had in our update do we know how many of those individually have reached out to us already and if the message is getting out? Yeah the message is getting out I actually don't know why I didn't bring it over here but I have it with me give me one moment we actually as of today are down 250 customers off that list so we're already beginning to see them call and that's really what we want is we are going to work on getting with every one of them because right now while we can screen them and get their intake and get them to the assistance areas that they need to be in while there are funds available that's what we're trying to do and that is our number one goal. And just mayor may I follow up on those 200 that you've worked with did they pay off their balance or are they working with you? There's a mix okay some of them have paid we I was very surprised at the end of June when they were we were going through this as we were getting ready to look at interruptions in July that at the number of people who were just calling in and paying it off rather than setting up pay agreements. I really anticipated a large influx of payment agreements and they weren't there so this time it is a bunch more of a blend and I know that we have been making referrals to United Way to help people with getting those balances taken care of. And I know you said earlier when Councilmember Mansour talked about the shutoffs that they have not started but I didn't I know that you are saying when they were going to start but I didn't catch that. When they start next week the first interruption will be on the 11th okay thank you. Let me correct that there are a couple of interruptions this week but the interruptions this week are only on return payments that have been outstanding for months so. Thank you. All right any others I do appreciate what you're sharing because I know I've had to call just for my business but I've been able to get through now I've been on hold for a little bit but I was able to get through and everybody was very helpful that I spoke with so just really encourage people to continue to call and you might have to hang in there just a little bit longer but do it and also it's right at the time as well when the students are coming back even though school may not necessarily I don't know how many in-person classes universities are having but the students are still moving in and so that's this is sort of one of the perfect storms for these situations but I've had full faith and confidence that we'll get this figured out for sure. Councilmember Armitter. Yes so I'm going to throw this out here because I do think it's on posting and this is about being on hold if there's a way I don't remember if customer service has hold music but if there's a way to have no music while people are on hold so that people can put it on speaker phone you know in the workplace or somewhere else and get work done and then know really easily if somebody's there to speak to them just a suggestion. I was gonna say it's something that we'll look at and talk about I don't know for sure what the options are but yeah well and we'll leave it to your expertise in that area to determine if that's the best route that you guys need to go. Well I know you know I know that I know that customer you know I hear that from customers a lot I know myself as a customer not the customer during the workday. Well I mean yeah okay anybody else on this subject okay thank you appreciate it thank you so much. Keely do you have a question for not for her but it's it's on this page so I didn't know if you meant if we were moving on to the next the next slide or this is not for Ms. Foster this okay all right okay okay all right well we'll uh who's it what's the question the question is or it's more um the homeless to house was 14 number and that was a really good number to see uh for this amount of time and I was just curious if we know what organization placed those individuals if it were you know our daily bread or giving hope and if we don't if we can find out and and also if that information is going to show up on the data dashboard that united way has um just so and if it's not I'm just asking if it can to to be consistent. We actually have Danny Shaw I believe is on the line and she may be able to answer answer one or two of those questions okay we'll give her just a moment to join us uh yes councilmember Briggs it's a combination of our daily bread and MKC to place those folks into housing and then the information is being captured in HMIS so should it should reflect in the data dashboard through the case conferencing as well okay fantastic thank you okay all right you can move forward with the presentation if you have other slides just a few more all right there we go somehow I got back to the beginning so the last part of our presentation uh deals with utility disconnects for 51 and over establishments essentially bars establishments that sell more than 51 percent of their sales are gross sales are from alcohol uh so staff presented a little bit of information relating to this at the last meeting uh when we talked about the resumption of utility disconnections and it was requested that we bring back more information uh and an opportunity to discuss exempting bars uh from the disconnections that are beginning to ramp up and as a reminder bars have been expressly prohibited from indoor services by the governor's order um and that commercial properties are not currently eligible eligible for you for city utility assistance so just a brief background of course bars are defined by the TABC and hold the TABC and local permit when they sell more than 51 percent of their sales from alcohol and when they have more than 51 percent of their sales from alcohol I did pull out the relevant portion of GA-28 the governor's order that states that they are prohibited from being open people should not visit bars or similar establishments they can perform drive-through pickup or delivery uh where they want to and I did want to mention that Denton has 32 such establishments that meet this criteria of those 32 30 are currently uh up to date with their utility bills two are delinquent and out of those two one is on a payment plan we did want to mention to council that there may be a couple of equity implications if we go ahead and proceed with exemptions uh some bars because of that flexibility to provide other uh services like curbside pickup uh drive-through they have not closed they continue their operations uh additionally open businesses uh so those bars that have remained open could be seen as being granted uh an unneeded benefit since they can operate additionally other business types uh while not expressly closed by the governor may have been effectively closed uh so for instance a restaurant that cannot sustain itself under the current occupancy limitations of 50 percent uh and there may be other similarly affected businesses that request accommodations because they have been affected to the point where they they too have had to close so T.A.B.C. has provided operational alternatives for bars like we mentioned uh so staff does not at this point recommend attempting attempting to uh to to exempt businesses on an individual or case by case basis and I do want to mention just a call back to that earlier conversation uh the definition of a restaurant can always change a lot can always change with these governors from with these orders from the governor uh so if a uh an exemption is established now based on the current definition we may have to come back to the table if that definition does change and of course if council wants to proceed uh with some sort of exemption for uh bars or 51 percent establishments uh staff would need direction on the scope and the duration of of that exemption okay and that is the end of the presentation okay any questions councilmember Briggs uh thank you mayor not really questions just a comment that I brought this up and I'm still very much in favor of it and would like the council to consider it I know it's been mentioned that um some bars may be open but I'm not I seriously doubt that they're able to pay all their bills and their employees on a few to go cocktails that they you know are are selling or t-shirt sales they've been forced by our governor closed for over 100 days um they're doing whatever they can at this point just to to to be open or just to to survive um for me the name the name change doesn't really matter I mean and if it did and if we were just to do bars those that were not restaurant and bars then it would be 21 instead of the amount mentioned earlier and my suggestion would be that it just go along with our current order so um we can reevaluate that or if anything comes up when the governor makes a change that usually comes to us anyway during our presentations and we can address it there my ask is just that we do what we can to help our bar owners right now as they are put in a bad position uh from the governor councilmember barometer uh thank you councilmember briggs I completely agree uh and you know in addition to that I I would like to uh to find out you know if there are any barriers uh to providing uh curbside or takeout uh at our bars that that we could help out with um I should say bars and restaurants for instance not enough you know parking space I love by the way the temporary parking on the square to enable that I think that's a wonderful solution but I do I do strongly support this and I don't think that we should place limits on it you know I do I do think that uh bars that want to be open in restaurants should know that you know we've got them the mass coordinates and um make sure that that people understand uh you know how to how to follow that uh but uh I I really think it's essential um so that we don't have nothing but you know walmart's left left standing you know after all of this that we support our local businesses as we can as member davis I have a couple of issues with this the first thing is I agree with councilmember briggs that I don't think the governor's singling out of bars specifically as opposed to you know 51 uh food sales restaurants or coffee shops or other things is necessarily fair but we also have had in this city for a long time I think a good policy of not propping up one industry over the other with either incentives or subsidies or assistance in fact we have quite a few things where we've made we've drawn a very clear distinction between supporting or offering assistance for residential rate payers as opposed to consumer rate payers there are things that are available to residential customers that are simply never available to commercial customers so uh I think it's a very dangerous policy to selectively pick which industry we're going to give assistance to because we think that political decisions have been made that we don't agree with there are businesses in this city that are suffering greatly far beyond just the bars far beyond just the restaurants I think any small business owner in this city has to have felt the impact of this pandemic and to just single out bars as the only industry that we're going to give direct help to besides the fact that I think it's legally questionable to give assistance to one industry or to one commercial rate payer when it's not available in some sort of grant program for every commercial rate payer don't forget that you are putting that subsidy to that industry on the backs of every other rate payer in the city to do that and I don't know that we've received calls from many constituents asking us to take their rates and help prop up the bars so I would like the bars to be open that's not our decision to make I like the the tack that we're taking now which is to work with our state legislators they're the ones with the influence in Austin there's the ones with the the ability to hopefully change the governor's mind but then to take our rate payers money out of their pockets and put it into a bar owner's pocket is not the way to solve this problem okay councilmember Briggs yeah I was just going to say that it's not that they don't ever have to pay the bill this has been in our existing order before it has been in there for a long time it's not something new it's something that went away and I'm just asking for it to go back in as we continue down this unprecedented path that we're on well it all that does is it prevents the disconnection it's the same thing that we're you're doing that now with the the residential the residential bills well well I think I mean first of all I want to make sure I understood the slide I thought the slide said that we have 32 establishments who fit the definition of the governor's order of quote-unquote a bar is that was that was that my understanding of the slide that's correct mayor would you allow me to pull the slide back up no I think I can remember it so my my recollection is 30 of those are current yes sir two were delinquent but one of those two is on a payment plan so I don't really see right now that there's that pressing need for that based upon that data and those facts and second of all the residential disconnect notice we we've returned back to the status quo which customer excuse me commercial customers have the same ability to call and work out a payment plan and receive mitigation as far as on time frame and to work out a payment plan is as residential does so I understand the the desire from a higher elevation the data that I just was presented doesn't to me necessarily represent that there's this this great need out there that we've got to somehow address so unless there's I mean we're going to get off this real quick unless there's four of us that you don't want to move forward with that conversation we're going to move on in the presentation councilmember armature I think you've you've had a lot to say about this if you'll just take a very very brief moment to make a comment because we're going to we're going to move forward unless I hear more people say that this is something they want to do door so for anybody who has a problem with a special exception for a special kind of business there is the possibility I know we've been over this before but not in this context of just extending continuing this grace period to all residential and commercial what grace period are you talking about I support that of shutoffs so I don't I don't okay I think I must have missed something because I thought we've returned back to the status quo I know that's what I'm saying I'm saying we could we could make okay well I think we I mean yeah if we don't have I mean I think we've talked about that many many many times and there's not an appetite for that just bring it forward in this okay thank you I appreciate that thank you mayor pro Tim yeah I just need some clarification you know I'm if we could hit maybe hear from Aaron on councilmember Davis's point succinctly on the kind of well well he raised the point about if there's legal concerns there I mean here's it over archingly we have this we have a neighborhood that we're propping up there's 14 of them and I have a hard time with that but my peers don't have a hard time with that and then one of my peers wants to shut down the city but then wants to advocate for I just need to understand the legal ramifications well and I appreciate that I guess if we don't have four that are willing to move forward in this direction even with with without that answer then I mean sure he could answer the question but I don't see that we've got any direction moving forward which would then we would it would participate precipitate and answer that because then we might be putting ourselves in legal jeopardy if we're moving forward but I don't really see for councilmember Davis well if Aaron go ahead and answer his question we just I mean it seems like we've got direction on this and so I just don't want to continue to belabor the point so councilmember Aaron if you could answer mayor pro tem's question and councilmember Mouser you can have your word I understand what councilmember Davis is coming from basically what he's saying is in the past we have treated all residential customers the same for utility disconnects on the commercial side you are now picking and choosing which businesses which commercial operations you want to benefit at the expense of the rest of the commercial operations that raises an equal protection issue under both federal and state constitution so that's where he's going to and so he was basically cautioning the council you can't get if you're going to get out there and pick winners and losers this is the issue or legal risk that you're incurring okay and so one go ahead I'm sorry mayor pro tem yeah no thank you very much mayor briefly so Aaron is there any legal distinction between accruing a bill and waiving it so for example the no disconnection but you continue to accrue a bill I I don't know legally there is a distinction it's more of a finance distinction what sure what well I mean that depends on the definition if waiver means if waiver means you don't pay it you're waiving the bill in other words you don't have to pay it that's a very different scenario than if you're not going to be cut off but your bill continues to accrue and your bill does get larger that was one of the reasons why we decided to move forward with the status quo prior to the pandemic was that we didn't want people to get to a situation where they literally couldn't afford to pay one that accrues over five or six or seven months without some time of intervention in between there so yeah that that's sort of how I see those two distinctions so so that I won't have to prolong things I'll give you I don't know where everyone else is my thing is I can get behind it if the bills continue to increase they have to pay their bills and I leave that I it's almost a policy decision I could support empowering customer service to make those decisions or say give that our blessing but um so I'm okay if the the bills continue they have to make arrangements like they've been doing uh I'm just not for waiving the bills but if it's if it's the bills continue then I'm not sure I understand what what what we're talking about here are you talking about that we we we suspend cutoffs for businesses that are defined as bars I'm saying yes that that is an option I'll put it there so yes customer service could evaluate that and say because everyone's calling in and working making payment arrangements and so I think they would need that latitude to to have that as an option well I think but in mayor pro-term I think they already have that latitude I think the question before the council is does this council make a policy that we weigh that we that we suspend disconnects for commercial customers when we're not suspending any kind of disconnects for anyone else at this time in other words uh but if you're saying you want them to have the same opportunity for a payment plan as anyone else who's calling into the city right now where it's not being waived those bills are continuing to accrue and so therefore customer service and the customer can work together to formulate a payment plan to pay that off but if they don't if they don't get into a payment plan if they don't make any effort to to work out something if it's just ignored then they will the shut the disconnect will move through the normal process is is what I'm is what I'm understanding unless council makes a decision to interrupt that process through some policy decision and I'm saying based upon the data that I saw we just don't I mean we have one customer that we don't know if they're going to get a a payment plan and work with customer service or not so we've got 30 who are current one who's got a payment plan and one who doesn't council member Melcer and then council member Briggs yeah I mean actually it's sort of it sort of made my point but so you know where I stand I I I get it that we want to just express our extreme sympathy and support for the small businesses of Denton for the bars of Denton and and we're getting into all these philosophical issues about you know we're picking winners and losers and you know all this but it's one person I mean I really don't think we should be crafting an ordinance around a phone call a phone call I think that phone call should occur and I am positive we'll work something out yeah yes council member Briggs so last comment I'm just going to say the conversation wasn't ever about waiving it was about extending the courtesy of a non disconnection so that if a individual was having an issue their supply their utilities would not get cut off and that their supplies would not go bad and it would be more detrimental to them as a as a bar owner so that that is the extent to my ask and the conversation that I wanted this council to have but it doesn't look like there is consensus on that so we can we can move on okay all right okay was that any more questions for the presentation all right let's take a quick five minute break we'll come back around 430 welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on August 4th 2020 it is 431 p.m. we're moving on to our next item on the work session reports work session item 3b id 20-1509 receive a report hold the discussion and give staff direction regarding pending 2020 non annexation agreements thank you member I'm mayor members of council Ron Mungito principal planner with development services I will be making this presentation for you all this afternoon hopefully y'all can see my screen yes there we go full screen again this is to talk about the non annexation agreements for 2020 a brief history as well as some directions at the end of the presentation from council is what we're looking for so to begin off the non annexation agreements that we've been talking about are only eligible are eligible that is for any property that currently has an ag exemption with the den county appraisal district this is the qualifying requirement in order for the city to offer the non annexation agreement so those that have an ag exemption would have received a non annexation template that we sent out earlier this summer just a quick note that the non annexation agreements that we're talking about were were provided to these property owners as early as 2010 some in 2012 or 2013 2015 2016 and again in 2020 the areas that you see here on this next slide the blue areas are the areas that were annexed as part of the 2010 annexation those that were those that are not blue are either part of the dh7 9 and 12 which were offered a three-year annexation plan and or were given a non annexation agreement so this kind of illustrates what we were like in 2010 approximately 2453 acres were annexed in 2010 fast forwarding to 2016 we again had annexations in 2013 2015 and 2016 and as part of those annexations there were also non annexation agreements that were provided to those properties again that had or currently have ag exemptions as of 2016 there are approximately 4323 acres of property that currently have non annexation agreements the total non annexation agreements that we have for 2020 is 173 again those were established either part of the 2016 non annexation agreements and or the 2012 2013 dh7 9 and 12 annexation non annexation agreements that is so in total there are 173 non annexation agreements that we have as part of the 2020 period to kind of give the council a little bit of background and understanding of where these are and how they are where they're located in relationship to land use and characteristics we put together a couple slides to illustrate where they are in relationship to floodplain for example as you can see from this illustration approximately 52 percent of the non annexation properties that we have are currently in a floodplain either a 500 year floodplain 100 year or within a floodway you can see from the table here or the illustration here approximately 30 percent is within 100 year and approximately 21 percent is within a floodway most of these are obviously are agricultural uses because obviously they are ag and therefore have ag exemptions but not all of them some of them have lost their ag exemption or have chosen to no longer do agricultural use so but again the majority of them are agricultural in nature as far as utilities we did do an analysis of utilities because most of them are along the periphery of the city they're limited but those that are within the internal donut holes there are obviously water and sewer services close by we also looked at the mobility plan both the current mobility plan as well as the draft 2020 mobility plan and what we determined or what we have found is that based on the 2020 draft mobility plan some of the areas that have roadways shown on the mobile plan no longer for example the area here or just pa three you can see in the 2020 there's not many there's one arterial shown here while in the 2015 our current mobility plan there are several roadways shown i think part of that is just to well part of what we're trying to do with the 2020 draft mobility plan is to reduce the number of lines along the periphery and concentrate on the center of town so that's why you see less but in general the number of traversed roadways in the future 2020 draft mobility plan is less in those non annexation agreement areas so as of this year we we started with city council uh april to 21st to be specific we had a closed session and at that time the direction was to offer a extension to those non annexation agreements again the ones that we have in place on april 28th the staff sent out mailed out non annexation eligibility letters basically notifying the property owners that in the summer there will be a non annexation that they will have an opportunity to review hopefully sign and return in june 29th of this year just last month or a couple months past that is we sent out an introduction letter basically explaining what is happening as well as the na template and those letters and non annexation template was including your backup as as reference to show you what those property owners received as of today we have uh she sent out 156 non annexation templates to property owners that were eligible now again those that have ag exemptions those that did not were not sent a non annexation template but we're working with them to see where they are in their ag exemption process and if they're not then that is something that we will have to consider at a later time of the 156 property owners we've received approximately 120 signed non annexation agreements submitted and we have those on hand and we are still waiting for 36 so the deadline had been july 10th we've extended that to the end of the month and again as of this afternoon we are waiting for 36 of those non annexation agreements we know that six of those 36 property owners have contacted staff and has indicated that they would like to have their non annexation agreements revised or changed for the following reasons they would like to have those non annexation agreements their non annexation agreements extend the term from five years to 15 and some have offered even more up to 45 years that is what's allowed for the city to do so they're requesting more than five years a minimum at least 15 they are also requesting that the term expiration or pawn as well as or termination as you see here be removed from section 5b of the non annexation agreement and they're not necessarily in disagreement with the breach component of it but just that they would rather not have the voluntary annexation upon expiration or termination they are more comfortable with if they are to change their use or breach the contract then they're more comfortable with that as far as being voluntarily annexed into the city this next slide i'm not going to read the entire section but it's just to illustrate to you what they're requiring or requesting that is be removed from their non annexation agreement again it's those terms that you see there in red with the strikethrough so staff also kind of also spent some time with legal to discuss what are the pros and cons related to those requests related to the term extending it from five to 15 or possibly even 45 years of course some of the pros from city's perspective is that they'll actually lock the term and extend it for a period of time whatever that time period is and if any development occurs before expiration the voluntary annexation provision is still there and we have that in place some of the cons if we do extend it further than five years is there is possibility that the future legislation could change and preempt the non annexation ability it could also you know provide larger tracks that have the opportunity to apply for a mud without annexation and if annex a nag exemption obviously would retain and would the city would not have the benefit of those tax taxes property taxes and another concern that we had is if the term was to extend past the five years those that we've received the 120 this needs to be updated what do we do with those non annexation agreements that have already been signed and submitted to the city we also did a pros and cons related to the terms that the property owners the six property owners that are requesting be removed from section 5b as far as the pros these perspective is that there is none however some of the cons by removing that expiration and or termination upon expiration the city would not have any ability to annex at that point a voluntary annexation future council does not have the ability to annex those properties because again they are not automatic under the contract or the non annexation agreement and of course none of the donor holes as well as those planning annexation areas that existed in 2010 that is would not be annexed because there would not be a trigger for the annexation that being said this is my last slide what we are looking for from council this afternoon is to give us direction related to the term of the non annexation agreement do we want to keep it at five years do we want to extend it to 15 or maybe there's another number that's out there up to 45 years cumulatively do we what do we want to do with the expiration and or termination language do we want to keep it in there or do we want to modify that and move that forward and of course if there are any changes how do we want to deal with that with regards to the existing non annexation signed agreements that we received and how we move forward with that as far as the due dates but really it's the first two that we're really needing some direction from council with that that concludes my presentation and I'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have okay if you want to pull the screen down so we're going to keep this very concise staff has asked us for two directions one is do we have any desire to change the terms of the annexation agreement and all the associated discussions with that as far as you know it changes all the ones that have already been signed and then the other one about changing the terminology so we're gonna we're gonna keep it I'm gonna keep it pretty pretty tight because we've got still some budget presentations coming up and I do want to try to make the council meeting on time so I'm gonna I'm gonna try to keep it on course so I'm just saying that in advance councilmember armature yes I just I want to give my direction since I am certain of my direction my direction is that we extend all of these annexations to the maximum these agreements the maximum 45 years and that we include in all of these agreements the language that has been recommended that that is that is included in those slides recommended by some of the property owners and I want to state briefly why well councilmember armature before you start I want to make sure I get clarification because I think some of them were requesting that language be deleted from the current annexation agreements which was oh yeah did I say added I mean I'm sorry I meant change change the changes the changes to the language um okay real quickly then if you'll state your comments for your for your rationale there I mean brief please absolutely thank you so my reasoning is this regardless of you know any other concerns you know not withstanding consent is really important and I'm not a lawyer so this is not a legal argument but I agree with it the spirit of the recent prohibition of involuntary annexations and according to my own personal not a legal argument my own personal understanding of what consent means you know there are some kinds of situations where silence might equal consent but it but there are others where consent is yes and in the absence of yes we I myself cannot take that to mean consent by default and this is one of those situations so you know I feel that in the spirit of that law in our city value and commitment to integrity which I realize it's it's relative how we interpret that correct and so and and also in terms of you know being being a good neighbor and how we look to our neighbors that is why I feel very strongly about this about doing this for all of all of the the properties unless someone comes out and says I want to be annexed that for me is an unambiguous voluntary yes okay anything other than that thank you thank you councilmember breaks thank you mayor I I'm not in favor of modifying by removing the language I would be immutable to extending the term I'm just I'm curious why it goes from 5 to 15 and if there's a reason why 10 is left out I think it's just they somebody suggested 15 on the the property owners that haven't signed some suggested 45 our current is five I think that's really the only rationale we have those numbers those are the ones that have been specifically expressly stated somewhere during the conversation oh okay all right so I to make sure you want to leave the language in of expiration and termination but you want to modify the years to well either 10 to 15 okay I prefer 10 but it's not on there as an option so well that can be an option I mean that's that's your proposal that's that's an option okay I want to go ahead and give mine if y'all don't mind take a little liberty here's the chair and I appreciate everybody's input I appreciate the citizens input I think when you look at the totality of the circumstances of this project and this initiative over a decade we've been executing these non annexation agreements they've been working very well in the sense that we've never annexed someone that didn't necessarily want to be annexed in or if we have it's been with a lot of negotiation a lot of forethought I think we need to leave it the way it is I mean I'm for the five years I'm for leaving the language in we've got 120 people who've signed it said it's okay because of the change of the law is the reason these others are coming up and I and I and I sort of disagree with councilmember armature that the the purpose of the law at the legislative Texas legislature was I think also to punish local municipalities but these agreements were executed prior to that these agreements were executed by all parties and so I think that by providing something different I think hurts the city's ability to manage its growth it hurts the city's ability to manage its tax revenue and to to manage the tax rate that it charges its citizens that it removes some local control from this community that is vitally important that is you know how we grow and these are donut holes most of these are donut holes which means they're surrounded by other jurisdictions so you know as far as going to 10 years I guess you could but to me this is this is the agreement we had this is what was submitted to the individuals every individual has a right to deny and not sign a contract that they're presented and if somehow that doesn't occur then everybody that's involved in that has various options that they can employ moving forward from there so I'm good with the status quo that let's let's move forward I'm certainly against taking the language out because we now that's the that's the only way we have opportunity if someone is if these agreements expire or are terminated to annex voluntarily and so I think the city would be giving up a very valuable opportunity and a very valuable entitlement that in no way has it shown that it abuses it in the past under these agreements that's not to say that there might not have been some involuntary annexations prior to this whole process but I'm talking about today that doesn't mean it's been a hundred percent that way but I think overall the spirit as was commented on these annexation agreements have been have been honored so councilmember Davis and then we'll go to councilmember Melcer yes sir thank you very much so my position is similar I seem to detect a feeling that we ought to be giving some more middle ground or compromising somehow more with these landowners on our doorstep to me these annexation agreements the template that we sent out to each one is already a compromise it's already an agreement that recognizes the interest that both parties have and these are neighbors but they're not residents these are potentially adverse parties in some future some future annexation action so I don't think we we owe them any any further compromise or negotiation than we've already offered and this is a process for most of these landowners that's been going on for more than a decade now the original agreements negotiations the change in the law and many of them are very sophisticated actors they're lawyered up they know exactly what they're doing and I think the danger in in kind of fooling with what we've offered is that we end up with unincorporated development on our doorstep that then the residents in those developments come to us and their residents start banging on our door demanding city services demanding annexation and next thing you know we have what they have all over Harris County a lot of newly annexed substandard development that's not up to our standards so this is the best course forward and I want to keep the agreements the way we've already offered them councilmember Melcer the fact that we've gotten 120 responses already by far the majority is very significant to me these are willingly entered into and it's you know I think it's important for us to sort of deal equitably with all comers to my understanding there's no material difference between the cases of those who have agreed and and the minority that have not yet so I'm not in favor of changing our terms I think we've got something clearly you know is is agreeable you know to the majority I think we should stick with that now I do think it's the terms are good for Denton they're good they're good for Dentonites you know the fact that if these properties develop that they'll be done in a way that's that's consistent with our standards and I think if it's if it's agreeable for five years I happen to land just where councilmember Briggs it might like it's kind of a gut feel thing that it would be too in our interest to do it for ten why not a shorter number why not a you know longer number there there's ultimately the risk to be weighed of whether legislation will be helpful or hurtful and if anything the drift is is sort of against municipalities is what I'm hearing so so I think you know ten years buys us a little more a little more protection with terms we like but without lock this into something where we can't deal with the unforeseen at some point okay all right councilmember Ryan yeah I'm for staying with the terms that we have I think it's it's worked in the past as long as these property owners don't make changes to their properties they most likely will extend another five year to them again in five years you know my concern on extending it out further is as we've seen there are some that fall off of the the exemption rolls because they have made changes but they haven't actually developed and those are the ones that we have the opportunity to bring them into the city we have in the past and I think it's good to keep that option in that five-year range as opposed to moving it out well past that because generally if they're in the process they just have not started the actual development yet when they get to that point okay Mayor Pro Tem yeah no I think I think everyone makes a good argument where Eileen is on proceeding the course we're on currently but committing to having a conversation going forward I just this doesn't give us enough time to have that substantive conversation and get to a good resolution and so I think have getting the five-year done now and committing to work that entire five years to twist and tweak as needed I think is time is the best approach going forward so but I do I do want to commend those that I that we've heard from it was it was great conversations very substantive conversations from those residents and it wasn't the kind of extreme conversations we used to it was very pragmatic very measured approach and so I'm appreciative of that dialogue and just want more time to flush that out and see what we can negotiate given the time okay all right okay I believe that we have consensus then on the five years with the real quick Councilmember Armitage we've already got direction so I know I have a question related to the direction it could be for the city attorney or for Ron or anyone else on staff and my question is this say you know this gets covered in the paper this this comes out if somebody watches the work session who is one of those properties that has not you know come out to us to say they don't want this and what if they come out they see that and they come out and say I want you know I I didn't realize this I didn't understand the contract I haven't been following the Texas State Legislature I don't have a lawyer etc. may I please request and an extension maximum extension on this what happens then but no Councilmember Armitage staff has the council has given direction to staff to move forward with the annexation agreements the way they are so if someone comes up and says all these things that you said it's no different situation than what the current six property owners have done which I commend them I would be asking for the very same thing if I were in their shoes for sure but it's no different the direction is the direction so if someone comes up and says we want this staff's direction is we're moving forward with the annex a great annexation agreements as presented to the hundred twenty and as presented to those thirty six who have not yet signed so staff and Mr. City Attorney is there anything inaccurate and what I just said no sir okay all right now now my question is having to do it so council still has to vote on this right we have to vote on it of course and so before the vote if there is additional input well that that will be made public to us Councilmember Armitage I really don't understand this line of comment of course public comment is made available to us of course there's going to be a vote in an open session and of course those people will be able to speak at that at that session I wanted that I wanted that thank you I'm glad to know that I wanted that confirmed because they have not yet had a chance to weigh in publicly I wanted that confirmed and I also confirmed in what sense that we wouldn't do it Councilmember Armitage I don't understand your question of course that's going to happen of course that's going to happen that's our procedure those are our rules that's what we do okay all right so we got we got consensus on this and certainly welcome anyone who has a concern who's a property owner to come out when we have this public discussion and share your thoughts with us all right so we're going to move on to the next agenda item which is agenda item 2c which is id 20-1499 receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding a proposed natural gas franchise agreement between the City of Denton and Atmos Energy Corporation Mayor members of council Mario Canazares deputy city manager I do have a few slides I'd like to present to you today staff has been working for quite some time with Atmos Energy to work through a a new franchise agreement for the city give you a little background and let me pull up the slides if we just bear with me just a moment do you see the slides yes okay so give you a little bit of background the gas franchise agreement that has has that's currently in place was adopted in December of 2001 at the time it was when it was adopted it was t txu gas company now called Atmos Energy Corporation the term of the agreement that was that was adopted back in 2001 was for a period of 10 years and was to expire on December 31st 2011 which obviously has happened along the way during that time frame from 2001 to 2011 the franchise had been amended a couple a few times twice in 2002 both of those ordinances were related to settlement of a lawsuit between the city and the company also it allowed for some definitions on what could be charged and the use of the right away as far as the charge for the gross receipts of revenue to the city along with the use of the right of way within the city of Denton in 2008 another amendment was made and what happened there it went from a four percent gross receipts to a five percent gross receipts which is the amount that we're currently receiving now and then in 2011 November 2011 just prior to the expiration of the franchise at the time the city manager had issued an extension to Atmos basically to continue with all the provisions that were currently in the in the franchise agreement and we've been operating under that that extension this entire time so to give you a little bit more information about what we've been working on or what's been happening over the last number of months and years Atmos has maintained their payments of the franchise fee of five percent on an annual basis excuse me of gross revenues on an annual basis that equates to one point one to one point two million dollars they have continued to make investments in Denton by replacing any aging infrastructure within the city it is my understanding that unlike portions of Dallas there is no iron pipe in Denton they do have steel pipe and then their new materials that they are using as they install new infrastructure but there is no iron pipe in Dallas which some of the issues that they experienced back a couple of years ago through those catastrophic incidents there in the north part of Dallas they have continued to maintain their system they've also instituted an enhanced leak detection program where they have driven pieces of equipment around the city late at night looking for detecting any gas leaks that may not normally be detected with the equipment they had prior to this equipment they deployed sometime last year and has been in around the region but they've been in Denton periodically to again look for those leaks and then make repairs as needed more of a preventative and proactive measure they've increased public education communication efforts to make sure the community is familiar around natural gas especially around contractors homeowners that are wanting to do land yard work they continually want to strive to push information out to those members of the community to understand that that just the need to be safe around the use of natural gas especially in digging they have worked extensively with Todd Estes and this group at capital projects as we continue to accelerate our CIP they have deployed additional crews here in Denton to ensure that as we move utilities under our underground utilities for the CIP they are working directly to make sure that they're keeping up and so that we can continue working and make progress with our CIP and then lastly the agreement that you have before you is has been modeled by other cities that have recently adopted franchise agreements those two recently are in Plano and Mesquite and they have adopted those in the last 12 to 24 months kind of briefly highlight some some of the comparisons from the previous to the proposed franchise agreement both are still for 10 years the terms are still for 10 years but the one that's proposed the proposed agreement also has two additional five-year extensions if mutually agreed by both parties with action by the city council the use of the right of way again they both describe the use of the right of way but the previous agreement the use of the right of way was very detailed in the ordinance or in the agreement and so as changes made then you would theoretically have to reopen that that that ordinance or that agreement and renegotiate those changes now many of the references in the exist or the current agreement or the presumably proposed agreement reference to right away management ordinance and so you all recently adopted that late last year and so as changes happen the right of management ordinance then it's just a very fluid thing that the the proposed franchise agreement would just follow along as far as the mapping of the distribution system previously as bills were provided on an annual basis if requested by the city then the proposed agreement provides the as bills after the completion of a project done by atmosphere so that way we have timely records of their facilities and allows us to incorporate those into our CAD system and then so that way we have more accurate records of facilities in the city as far as a relocation of lines due to capital projects both are still the same difference between the proposed versus the previous one is that we've actually accelerated the the beginning of those of that work by atmosphere by an additional 30 days so previously was 120 days and the proposed agreement is for 90 so allows us to continue moving faster on the delivery of the CIP as far as your franchise payment the original franchise agreement equated it to four as I mentioned there was an ordinance change in 2008 that moved it from four to five percent so we're basically maintaining that same same amount of revenue between the two agreements now so next steps it does require three approvals of the ordinance by city council so we are presenting this very same item tonight at your regular meeting and then proposed to present it on the 18th and September 1st the ordinance must be published in its entirety and a debt record chronicle for three consecutive weeks those those expenses are paid for by Atmos if approved by council the Atmos must provide a file an acceptance letter with the city secretary within 30 days of the adoption of the final ordinance which would be September 1st and then if approved the franchise agreement would begin October 1st and then expire of this year and would expire 10 years later on October 1st 2030 unless it is extended and then with that staff recommends approval of the proposed ordinance which will cover this evening at your meeting and if you all vote in favor of proceeding then staff would bring forward basically the same presentation and information on August 18th for vote then and then for a final vote on September 1st and with that I will open it for any questions okay questions council member Meltzer pardon me for being super basic and I have had exposure to Atmos issues during the time I've been on council but I don't really know I imagine maybe others don't really know what the nature of our relationship is is it does Atmos have a granted monopoly by the Texas Railroad Commission yeah let me just start start there you know they are we should have Atmos on the phone they can actually describe a little bit better in case you have any questions or have any answer they can provide answers to your questions but but they are allowed through the Texas Railroad Commission to operate in Texas in certain parts of Texas and and you typically have a single gas operator in most cities just because the amount of infrastructure that's laid in the ground and so I guess short answer is yes they have I mean that's where I would have gone next is do they own the infrastructure so that even if theoretically there were you know an alternative provider is it sort of so impractical because they would have to reproduce all that infrastructure I think it would be very challenging but that that's what would be required would be they they wouldn't be able you couldn't you couldn't give a non this is all a question you couldn't give a non-exclusive deal because it's not that anybody else could use that infrastructure they couldn't okay all right that that that answers my question and Mayor John McManagendale is on the phone if the council has any questions of him he's the Atmos rep yeah we'll go through the council questions and see council member Briggs thank you mayor two questions one the five percent that's current I think it's 1.1 million annually does that compare to the other cities that we just saw with Claynow and is that percentage comparable or is that just for the city of Denton I would have believed that is comparable to other cities but Mr. McAnee you would know just because I think he represents those other communities as well if the percentages are any different in those cities versus ours yeah I would I'd like to know okay sure do you want me to answer that yes John go ahead John McManagendale manager of public affairs for Atmos Energy the rate y'all receive is the negotiated rate I support multiple communities in the area part of the negotiations involves the rate some communities don't want the full five percent because that is a fee that is passed on in the bills to their ratepayers but most cities that I work with it is five percent nowadays and it's gone up that we used to be four like Mario said but five is what we would call pretty standard nowadays so five percent is the maximum correct okay and just for for clarification we're not talking about the rate review for for the citizens and what we pay on our bill this is just what Atmos pays to the city correct this is what Atmos pays to the cities for the use of the city right away to lay our distribution lines okay may I have one more question sure it's in regards to construction so I know I saw in there about maps and layouts and I know there's been times where lines have been mismarked and hit and it delays construction is that addressed in this agreement anywhere like who pays for those delays if the line is missed I have Todd Estes here in the room ask him to answer those questions leaving mayor and council there is language and provision in the agreement for any kind of inadvertent hit or miss whether it's due to them not marking it correctly there is precedent for that as well as if they were to not move something or cause an issue with their own construction okay so that's covered within this with this an agreement yes okay all right thank you councilmember Amater yes um can this is a question for the the city manager or anybody else on staff I guess you could answer it can you remind me what is the name of the group that we are part of that we joined that we consult with on at most rates it's it's a kind of a consortium of different cities that have joined the group yes it's the act excuse me the Atmos it's a CSC and is the Atmos cities steering committee and it's consortia CSC and act at atmos atmos cities atmosphere atmos city steering committee and coalition excuse me and it we're a member of a us plus another 170 171 or 72 cities around the area around the state that are part of this group and thank you and I'm really glad we're part of that group and so I I take it or actually I'll just ask as a question so is does this group provide advice to member cities on franchise fees or is it uh do we only get uh you know information from them uh advice from them about rates is it limited to rates if you could it's really limited to those regulatory items when say atmos does a an annual filing with the texas railroad commission on recouping um some of the infrastructure investments that they've made around wherever they may be working like for example city of dallas is not part of that group but but we are members of several other cities and so those consultants along are the ones that advise the city the consortium on on how to address those things okay thank you um and then you know another question I have uh it could be for atmo I'd be curious to hear what uh atmos uh has to say about this I'm guessing they would know the answer best um which uh in in the state of texas uh which city which city has the highest franchise fees and which has the lowest city or cities if you could kind of speak to that I would have to research that information um I don't cover the whole state of texas I'd have to reach out to our legal who manages all our franchise agreements and find out which ones have asked for less or more but I'm not aware of any that are higher than five percent okay thank you we try and keep the agreements as standard as possible right we operate in about 455 communities so the more standard we can make these agreements that the cleaner it is for us to manage them thank you and can you speak to um how in the city of denton can you speak to how many subcontractors you work with the subcontractors vary depending on the amount of work um like we met with the your city leadership a few years ago and kind of mapped out your capital plan of spending and uh we went out and got it brought in about eight additional contract crews to manage the additional work that was going to be required to do all the relocations for all the road roadway work um so the better information we get from staff and working with staff has been fantastic the last three to five years they've been really good about setting a plan early in the year that we can manage bring in the resources necessary but we we have contractors not only doing work for atmosphere energy on behalf you know for projects that are related to the city of denton relocation but we have contractors working on atmosphere energy projects for atmosphere energy as well so at any given time that contract number fluctuates pretty much okay and thank you and what would be your advice and i'd be curious if staff has a different answer i'd like to know that too but i would like to know both about if a member of the public has a question or concern about your specific subcontractor would you recommend that they directly contact atmos or the city or both or the subcontractor if you have any questions about anything atmosphere related i would highly recommend you contact me directly i'm happy to answer anything okay all right if i don't if i'm not the resident expert i can definitely reach out to somebody in our company that can get the answers necessary okay thank you and your name and your name again john and i'll spell my last name for you it's m-a-n-g-a-n-i-l-l-a and my email is john.mangonella.com thank you thank you so much council member briggs you're welcome yeah i have one question it's kind of a follow-up um i think i heard uh john mentioned something about with the five percent that that comes back to the rate payers as a fee um in some way and i just want clarification on that if that's actually what i heard and if the how much those fees are that our residents pay and if that's equal to or more than what we get back in our franchise fees the fee that is on the bill is what you get back in your franchise fees we collect it and then pass it back to the city it's a pass through right yeah oh okay so the higher the percentage that we charge you the higher the rate is going to be for the higher the bill that our customers are getting correct correct so if it's four percent they're seeing four percent if it's three percent they see three if it's five they see five and then we collect that and then we submit that to the city on the flip side you've got to remember that it's also a use fee for the city's right-of-ways helps us take care of the roadways that sort of thing so that was the rationale between um moving some of the franchise fees into the road fund so it's not just a simple tax passed on to the residents it's it's a fee that if that fee was not there we would be paying to restore the roadways and right-of-ways after they were done so that's the theory behind it okay sorry i wasn't very i wasn't very clear on that that's a good point the fee is not just a taxi and pass through it actually covers costs like right away inspectors we work with to review our plans and do the permitting and handle all the administrative functions as well okay now i just i just appreciate that because of the way that the fee um it's just really good to understand especially as we come up with the rate review process it's just good to know how how it's all there so i appreciate it thank you well and and it's no different than uh on our utility franchise fees that our own utilities pay i mean those franchise fees are built into the budget that is then used to determine the the rates for our citizens is that correct uh mr holman you're correct okay uh councilmember davis and then councilmember melser i'm just gonna point out too you know not every dentin resident is a gas customer many are but not all and so charging the gas customers uh for the right to use the streets that are owned by everyone in common i think things absolutely fair so i don't have any problem with that setup at all councilmember melzer yeah it's very interesting i actually didn't know that that's how that structure worked before and i wonder it's you know maybe at some point after the budget it's not you know that big of an item but i wonder if we have ever done a sort of reconciliation that you know like cost of service analysis are we actually covering uh under covering or over covering or recovering uh the cost of the associated right of way work just you know thought for future all right any excuse me any other questions mario do you have any more presentation on this no sir that's it just to give you a work session on it and then we'll be i'll basically be presenting uh hopefully very fast uh tonight uh for you all to take a i'll consider the the ordinance okay all right good deal all right thank you john for joining us yes thank you all right we're going to move on to our next agenda item which is agenda item 3d which is id 20-1153 receive report hold discussion you have staff direction regarding departmental presentations and preparation for the fi 2021 proposed budget these are the couple that we uh left off last week uh and then they're going to be joined by a couple more good afternoon council city um mayor city council members uh nick vinson assistant director of finance let me pull up the presentation really quick hang on just a second so real quick i'll do a quick introduction of the departments that i'll present to you today and then we'll get straight into the presentations we do have quite a bit to cover um august 4th um we have tech services public safety communication oh let me try to share it again there we go sorry about that all right so uh real quick we have several departmental presentations scheduled for you today uh technology services public safety communication customer service animal services parks and recreation engineering legal water wastewater and solid waste uh what i do want to point out is the utilities are the last presentations these presentations are a little bit different than the rest of them they're actually two parts to the presentation the first half of the presentation is an operational discussion we will have a slide about halfway through to allow you to ask questions of the director once the director is through presenting i will come back to the podium and present the financials for each of the utilities with that i will turn it over to melissa craft to present tech services good evening council uh city manager i'm melissa craft i'm the chief technology officer so as far as accomplishments overall technology services we've accomplished uh 59 projects around 12 000 service requests we also held our uptime of 99.5 some of our big capital projects that we've accomplished this past year when i start to think think and take a look back you know it's been over 15 million of uh capital asset support so i really want to take the time to also thank council and city manager support in some of these projects uh specifically the motorola radio p25 system this was a pretty significant project and we're now connected to vinton county's regional core as well so now we have that in place we've also launched our new public safety cad and records management system to also include a citywide replacement of our laptops and desktop refresh to also include if you recall we did this over the past three fiscal years was really our server infrastructure consolidation and refresh which included everything from upholing all the equipment in 50 facilities our primary backup data center including the disaster recovery components in between some of our future goals as far as projects we are uh starting to develop a citywide data warehouse uh continuing rollout to several other departments we're looking at an enterprise gis three to five year strategic plan gis is really core to a lot of functions that departments utilize specific around capital management and project management as well we're looking at a lot of cyber security upgrades and enhancements to include uh replacement of our anti-virus and continuing upgrades of our firewalls as well we are also looking at launching a new uh 3-1-1 customer relationship management system so this will take place as far as what engaged denton is used and i think there's going to be a little more discussion in our uh thursday's uh budget session to discuss that as well some of our changes uh that have happened really our key focus has been around consolidation of our wastewater and water skater resources uh previously they were kind of decentralized uh partnering up with water wastewater we centralized kind of that model so now we have a primary backup at each of those locations centrally managed under it we're also expanding our remote work from home technology solution and supported covid you know as far as kind of the ramp up for that of course technology services was a key component to that we were able to get over 650 personnel up and working within a week we can have so i really want to take the time out to really thank our staff and helping kind of implement those resources we've also been looking at insourcing small cabling projects and centralizing our fiber contract services uh so far since we've done that we've been able to save a 60k as a result of that as well some of the other things of course is continuing automation and digitization of our various public safety communications dispatch processes and services and also you know one of the things we've done over the past couple years centralization consolidation is still a theme continuation of development in-house when feasible so like our new citywide employee health report application using kind of microsoft's cloud environment leveraging existing technology to deliver those solutions as well as far as our service level changes this is where you really see kind of our workload you know at some point almost double so we took a snapshot in time so you can see from you know uh march 13th to june 1st we filled uh 3100 tickets and incidence requests this time last year that was around uh 1700 which is around a 79 percent increase in our support and services so we also took a snapshot in our previous fiscal year with our current fiscal year you can see it quite frankly almost doubles as you can see you know as far as the utilization of technology and resources and even our key customers we've really had a big emphasis around public safety largely due to a lot of their projects the utilization of technology as well and their technology adoption has increased since primarily chief has come on board so i want to point that out and thank him for that in addition to customer service parks and rec and wastewater so with that being said we are looking at uh staff augmentation services to fill some of those service need gaps to see you know is there a potential we can maybe leverage outside resources to help fill those gaps until we can continue on with our service so here's kind of a visual breakdown of who consumes uh technology services as far as our incidents and service requests you can clearly see public safety electric and customer service primarily make up of half of what we do in addition to parks and rec wastewater and then the other departments around 33 percent of that here's our service level changes around public safety communications which is our 911 operations we took a snapshot in time from this time last year to this time this year from march to may you can see there as far as our total number of 911 calls our average amount of 911 calls and also our total admin calls in our average admin calls you can clearly see it increase over time so if we start to look at our last fiscal year we're at total 911 calls in our total 911 calls this year you can see a slight increase in that really the big increase has been around our admin calls so these are calls we consider a non-emergency whether it's you know responding to another agency doing a records check calling in a record and so forth those type of activities we did see quite a bit an increase there as far as services you know one of the things is they were transitioning to a more centralized model we implemented a quality assurance program for our medical emd procedures and protocols when we first started that program we were around 20 percent compliance and you know as of june 2020 we've increased around 80 percent compliance i do want to highlight that 20 sounds scary these aren't like dramatic errors that were being done you know as far as the emd protocol and standard they're super specific as far as what they expect and in the order of the questions that need to take place with the goal of trying to get the help as quickly as possible based on our medical director's direction so i just wanted to highlight that as well but still you can definitely see kind of that trending upward over time so as far as our next steps we are looking at continue to look at staffing call load and potential partnership with other agencies as well so we're in the exploratory stages of doing that there's a highlight of our overall fte summaries including our public safety communications our 911 we have a total of 95.25 ftes we did have 17 vacant ftes we will be back filling 12 of those ftes with seven of them of course being 911 two being our support services our database architect our regulatory and also at dme as well with a total fte count of 90.25 a bit lower some of the positions we're not currently filling at this time here's our updated org chart we did make a slight change so we essentially consolidated made it a more kind of flat reporting structure so i no longer have an assistant director and in addition we reduced a management position for a radio team and we switched our radio team to report directly to our public safety communications division manager suzanne coletta so currently she oversees our 911 operations our safety training program cat rms and all of those technology services required for pd you know as mentioned in the previous discussion we really want to make sure that's kind of centralized and in that area so here's our overall proposed public safety communications proposed budget so it's pretty much a little bit of the same we did working with our denco 911 provider in our operations we were able to get thenco 911 to pay for emd service and they took that on which resulted in the operation savings for 911 on the tech services budget you can kind of see here the allocation as far as how we allocate our costs since we're internal service we definitely are mindful as far as who's consuming the service and in what capacity are they utilizing it so you can see a general fund electric really consume most of that technology to highlight you can see over here public safety taking a good portion in that so around four million alone is public safety which includes police fire and 911 communications as well as far as our vsp allocation it's one of those things we were definitely trying to keep track of is people are shifting in and out make sure we can recapture those licensing while those aren't hard costs hard cost savings per se we were able to take those same licenses take those same computers and reallocate to where those resources are needed we are seeing an increase in you know utilization of automation whether it's docuSign laser fish and projects online as well so here's our overall tech budget and we'll go in a little more detail in the upcoming slide to kind of really explain those differences on the general fund because there was a slight increase in that too as well and also you can see a decrease in electric fund that was due to a lot of our consolidation efforts as too so you'll see kind of a recurring savings there as well. So here are our personnel personnel costs are roughly the same a little bit of savings there one of the areas we really want to highlight because you can see kind of the difference here is around half a million in maintenance so isn't really existing items per se these are kind of net new items we have added over the past fiscal year so for instance one of the big projects we were doing was a consolidation efforts as far as our printer strategy that was kind of decentralized in all of these different departments we had various vendors various contractors while it's centrally located in tech we now have one vendor one firm fixed price so we were able to kind of leverage that but you do see the increase here for a 237k additionally we put a lot of capital programming to kind of public safety these are the recurring costs for the maintenance and operations of those items as well we definitely want to make sure they're under maintenance and supported by the vendor in addition to our infrastructure you know as we're transitioning from a capital to operational we want to make sure we keep up with the maintenance contracts and vendor support as well. So here are our packages baseline adjustments I can kind of see a lot of these are existing again we talked about the citywide printing one one thing to note you know as part of utilizing the county's core it really did save the city over one million by leveraging the same resources and integrating to their network there is a recurring cost for support of that which is around 76k this primarily pays for the FTE support over there so you know as part of our VSP we did have one of our radio techs retire so we were able to kind of do even wash where we're paying Denton county to facilitate those activities for us now in addition you can see some of our baseline adjustments we broke it out just to give you a little more context as to you know what what what is that half a million going towards to so 320k alone is just really for public safety body cams this past fiscal year we did approve kind of the first net project for first responders to make sure they have first net connectivity and capabilities to also include e-ticketing here are some of the other things that we're seeing kind of license increase as far as user adoption so smart sheet licenses finance licenses and city map licenses as well here's a breakout as far as licenses for support these are some of the newer technologies that PD has adopted this past fiscal year which which is around 119k as well with that i'm ready to take any questions if you have any for me all right any questions for malissa councilmember Armitter yeah so first i want to say the risk of embarrassing you malissa that um that i'm so grateful for your work and every time you come on and present to us i want to bring my daughter in i think this is the first time since we've been under zoom my daughter she wants to go into the stem fields maybe she won't i don't know but to say hey look there's you know women in head of technology in the city and so anyway um thank you that kind of thing shouldn't matter but it does so thank you uh my question is about uh and it's probably just a simple yes or no question it might be a no um and it might have to go to the city manager but i understand that um uh that you know there's not a proposal from this department for municipal broadband is that the kind of thing if that were to ever come forward you know would it be a consideration of this department or is this because this department deals with um you know the technology for city staff city buildings would that be outside of this department's scope this department or dme dme may have um they both have overlapping fiber um department so we'd have to consider that if the council ever chose to go down that path thank you okay any other questions before she goes i'm going to embarrass her too i mean you saw those statistics uh it's been four or five long months of keeping us up on the plate spinning with you know hundreds of employees working at home so just can't emphasize enough what her team has done during this pandemic between her and customer service and public affairs i think they uh it's really counter to their workloads have doubled in most cases and uh so i just appreciate everything she does for us thank you todd appreciate that thank you melissa and your team absolutely any other questions comments okay thank you melissa appreciate it thank you uh does council need a break y'all need a break let's take a five let's take a five minute break it's a 5 40 we'll come back at 5 45 what'd you do welcome back to this meeting of the denton city council on august 4th 2020 the time is 5 52 we are moving through our budget uh department uh work sessions uh work session three d departmental presentations for the budget that's what i was meant to say so we'll proceed on with those okay um i can't hear you if you're sorry oh there you go you're still on mute there you go there you go i just pulled a tiffany twice in a row so mayor city council's krista foster customer service manager and i'm going to give you an overview of where customer service has been the last year and where we are going in the future if i could make it move i did oh there it goes all right so we've had a lot of things that we've accomplished as well as a lot of things we're going to be doing in the future a couple of those that i want to highlight for you is in our accomplishments this year we have launched a self-help phone line for scheduling of solid waste yard collections as well as opting into and out of the solid waste yard program so that customers can do that 24 hours a day seven days a week including those collection routes that are on mondays for those residents sometimes you don't realize you're going to get out and clean your yard on a saturday or sunday we've worked out our process so that for those collection routes we can make sure as long as they get that in to our phone line by midnight sunday night that they'll be on the route for monday morning so that they don't have to wait a week to get things collected the other thing that we've done that i'm very proud about is that we have implemented our first call resolution and customer satisfaction numbers those are no longer internally derived numbers they are now customer reported numbers at the end of our calls the customer takes the survey and they tell us how satisfied they were and whether or not we resolved their call the first time as far as future goals one of the biggest things that i have on here for for me is implementation of language line services and we'll talk a little later about a supplemental that i have added to my budget for that what i've learned is that in the city of denton we do not have access to telephone translators we have two universities and a vast population of different ethnic diversity here and we have no way to service those customers easily so what we want to do is be able to implement telephone translation services so that a customer service rep can reach someone who can help every one of our customers and that is one of my biggest goals for the next year we have had a lot of philosophical changes customer service is very different in a lot of ways than it was in the past one of the biggest things that we've done well there are a couple of very big things but one of the bigger things that we've done is we have aligned our reporting and our structure of metrics to align with the benchmarks that are done in the industry for both private and public utility companies this allows us to be consistent with that industry and be able to ensure that we are meeting or exceeding all of the best industry performers in our areas the other thing that we have done is we have implemented a permanent work from home strategy we have a permanent telecommuting structure where once we are able to come back into the office with regularity based on your position you may telecommute as little as 50 of your time or as much as 90 of your time on the normal on a normal basis that has allowed us to free up seven offices 27 cubicles and three customer facing windows that can now be utilized for other city business so that we can reduce the amount of money that we're spending citywide on footprint operational data what you'll be able to see is some basic information regarding our operational performance we've seen an increase in our customer base our lobby volume even before covid we're seeing it decrease annually as we are giving people more self-help options and things that they can do without having to come in face to face the important thing to note is even though last year over the fiscal year you see that our call volume dropped slightly over this fiscal year consistently throughout the year we have seen and now it's up to over 15 percent of an increase in call volume that's very consistent but again back to the things that i'm really proud about i told you that we've got customer satisfaction and first call resolution that our customers are reporting those to us and i've included how we're performing in our lobby and our phones versus the industry best performers so you can see that we're running at least 10 higher on both areas our very dissatisfied customer rate is right about where the industry would lie and those are the two metrics that we follow very satisfied customers and very dissatisfied customers because those are the two groups that drive our reputation with the community and build the relationships that we have on our fte summary we actually had eight vacancies we're refilling six of them and we've eliminated two positions we will no longer have an administrative assistant and we have reduced the customer service assistant manager position as well you can see our updated organizational chart it's changed very little other than removal of the two positions and reallocation of the cash specialist under our revenue assurance supervisor and customer service is an internal service fund so this is going to be what our actual proposed budget is you're going to see that we have it slightly higher than it was last year we actually cut almost 500 000 out of our existing budget but we had to add back in some funds there is 225 000 that had to be added back in because of the credit card fees and having to cover credit card fees as we remove those from customers and the other 75 000 is actually related to the language line so that we can implement that service and be able to best serve our customers this is how our allocations will look so that you can see where all of the different funds are coming from and that is it are there any questions okay we'll pull the slide down and we'll see if there's any questions any questions council member armeter just a brief comment i just wanted to thank you for the philosophical direction in which y'all are moving especially the acknowledgement you know of our non-native english speaker customers that just makes such a big difference not just for customer service on utilities but really for just inclusion in the city in general so thank you and i'm so glad that you're in this position um and city manager city manager can attest to when the new org chart came out i didn't i didn't see you on it and i had a slight panic and i said oh no where's chris and he she's she's there okay good so anyway thank you so much for your work i really appreciate it okay any others all right thank you christopher appreciate it todd quick question i know that we have two council requests two pending council requests so do you know what the next budget presentation is because i'd like to how many do we have left it's animal service i would suggest we get through animal services and if you want to start it gary's waving over here i don't see that being possible but if we can get through animal services get to the council request you can still probably start at 6 30 and then we will we'll start with the utilities and whatever's left over parks and rec legal i know are a few of them on thursday okay good deal all right so we'll move forward with the animal services then yep okay so yes i think you're on me there you go hi council mayor randy weinberg animal services manager and today i'm going to go over the exciting things that we have done this year in animal services and where we want to go next year so some accomplishment that that we've had this year we've actually hit a 91 live release rate and what this means is that 91 of our animals who have entered the building have actually left with a positive outcome additionally we've added some capital improvements to our facility those are going to be some agility courses that didn't animal support foundation actually funded for us in addition to some drainage drainages to our isolation hallways these isolation hallways are connected to our most critical care rooms for our sick animals also one of the more most important things we have secured a partnership with didn't humane society that is giving us 500 a month to use towards critical care of animals so this is for any animal that might break a leg we might have to outsource and that 500 covers the payment for that animal some future goals that we want to hit this year we want to sustain that 91 live release rate or even exceed it and make it better in addition we want to do an in-depth ordinance review to make sure that we are with industry standards and we want to institute some efficient self-service tools for our residents so some philosophical changes that we've had one of the biggest ones as you see here is the hashtag happiest shelter on earth moving forward you will see this on all of our postings that we have on facebook even our email messages have it on there this came about by us doing some research and kind of sitting back and thinking what type of culture do we want to portray to our residents to our employees to anyone who has any communication with the city of den animal shelter and we found that disney world actually does a great job at this however we cannot use the happiest place on earth because we don't want to get sued so we settled on the happiest shelter on earth and we've actually started a culture committee that is staff-led who's actually going to help us internally get that started and this is also going to be for our pets as well when they come in we want them to feel like they've reached the Taj Mahal of shelters and they get the five-star treatment so some service level changes that we've had as you know pre-covid we were open for all in-person services residents could come in peruse around see if they wanted to meet with an animal for adoption our volunteers were able to come in and volunteer at their leisure however due to covid we did have to shut our doors and with that we had to get creative so we moved to an appointment-based only system because unlike humans animals did not care about covid and they still needed service so we moved to this system so that we could still have adoptions that people can still surrender their animals if they needed to and that's either owner surrender or stray surrender and as of recently we've started the appointment-based system for our volunteers so that we can incorporate them back into our organization one of the most important things i believe that we did after this shutdown is that we worked with den animal support foundation and started an emergency pet food pantry the reason for this is that we wanted anyone who came to us wanting to surrender their animal due to a financial hardship we wanted to be able to help them and not have them give our animal to us because if you understand you know that's a hard thing that someone will have to do just because they can't afford food so what we were able to do is offer them two weeks worth of food no questions asked and that coupled with our appointment-based only system has actually decreased our owner surrenders by 86 percent compared to this time last year okay i i i really apologize for interrupting i want you to repeat that again because that is quite phenomenal of course um so we have actually been able to decrease our owner surrenders by 86 percent compared to this time last year and that's the people who would come in and surrender their animals that's down almost i mean 86 wow okay wonderful sorry to interrupt you i apologize okay also we were able to scale back our surgeries our spay and neuter surgeries typically we have surgery surgeries three times a week on monday wednesdays and fridays however due to the decrease in animals that we saw we scale that back to once a week surgeries and then we slowly transition into two day a week surgeries and right now we're back at three day a week surgeries um doing this actually saved us 26 000 on our budget so some shelter data that i want to go over with you as of today we've had a little over 2000 adoptions and these are the positive outcomes that i was discussing earlier that contributed to that 91 live release rate that we have had so for our our field data we've ran a little over 4600 calls from october to june august is traditionally our highest call volume so i really foresee that we are going to surpass what we hit in fy1819 our highest call most popular call has been the stray animal call and we've also handled 229 engaged it in requests as well and for our lobby data as you see our calls we've been presented with 26 000 calls our voicemail percentage was 33 that did go down five percent from where it was last year and that was because we were able to collaborate with municipal electric dispatch who was able to help us with that call volume that increased due to us moving to that appointment only system and also i want to highlight that our volunteer hours in february we had 957 hours logged however due to us having to eliminate our volunteer program mid-march that slowly declined but however we were still able to get about 4 000 hours thus far so far fte's we started with 20 fte's this fiscal year right now we are at 19 we did decide to absorb that administrative assistant position and we also collaborated with another department in order to receive that help that we were needing and this is currently our org chart it hasn't really changed much from how it was pre-covid and for our revenues currently our adoption fee continues to be our our highest source source of revenues at 60 in adoption estimated for 2021 is based off of us actually being open full service as we were before and for our budget this year we are slightly down from next year i'm sorry we're slightly down from this year's budget that's because we did absorb two positions back into the budget however you will see that we did increase our materials and supplies hitting that 91 live release rate does come at a cost and a part that cost is going to be animal food we have looked and researched and we are feeding our animals a more nutrient rich food it's a little bit more expensive however it is letting the animals thrive and have a higher success rate when they are at the most critical age such as kittens and puppies so with that does anyone have any questions any questions let's pull the presentation down so we can oh see the council member there you go council member melzer thank you for the presentation just a couple questions i don't really understand what the transfers line is is that you know an accounting kind of transfer or is that talking about something to do with animals or and why is it up you know why is it projected to be up by so much um yes nick benson assistant director of finance council member melzer that is correct and that transfers line is a transfer to tech services so it's a cost of service transfer and they based that on you know software packages they have phones computers and different things okay and and and why would that be projected to be up so sharply we can we can get the detail for you of why the transfer generally this year usually it's because maybe they've innovated new technologies into the department they've added computers they've added telephone service and it could be any of those factors yeah okay and i and i see that in the future goals uh you talk about instituting efficient self-service tools and does that include uh online registration of pets or is that already has that already been instituted no that has not been instituted and we actually looked at that this year to implement however we are kind of running into a roadblock with being able to accept payment online finding a system that actually talks to the system that we use in-house for that so is that part of what you hope to do then yes sir coming here yes to cross that bit and just one last one uh you know i was uh struck as the mayor was by the figure about the 86 reduction in customer surrenders i think was the term you used owner surrender owner surrenders yeah but uh it's a it sounds like you virtually eliminated a category you don't really understand what that category means so uh so what is what used to happen and that doesn't happen practically doesn't happen now well so owner surrender is if you um say the cat that you have that you can't take care but you come and surrender it to us you are the owner it's not a stray so we consider that an owner surrender that was one of our goals that we wanted to prevent happening during the kovac because we knew that if we didn't we would reach capacity quickly so we found kind of drilled down as to what we could do to curb that and opening the food pantry was the one thing i do want to add though that the appointment base only system that we have did help curb that as well so so basically you help people keep their animals that's that's the idea yes sir yeah okay appreciate that thank you very much all right council member riggs yeah i'm on the 91 um library i just want to congratulate you guys on that that's really good and i know that that increases cost for um operations and service and food and the need for volunteers but i want to thank you for that and appreciate that and i know that when someone gets an animal from our shelter or takes an animal to our shelter that they feel pretty confident in the animal that they're getting do you do you foresee when the animal shelter would return back to to normal we are actually taking our direction on what the the city is doing so we have a phased approach that we are taking of course july 6th i believe is when we had to scale back because we are we're going to start with appointment only in the morning time to kind of cut down on foot traffic and then in the afternoon slowly move towards letting it open again with a limited number of limited number of people in the shelter so we're just kind of doing the wait and see approach to make sure that it's safe before we do proceed with that just one more question sure the vehicles that you have uh to to pick up the animals in are they air conditioned yes ma'am we did add um ac brackets this last last fiscal year to all of our uh animal control vehicles so when the animals are being picked up when they're being held in the kennel kennels there is ac back there so they are not hot riding back to the shelter thank you you're welcome councilor marameter and did the drivers get air conditioning too there was already air conditioning excellent excellent so ups take note so anyway thank you i wanted to thank you uh for all you've done uh to really you know this was it was a department with a troubled recent history and you've really turned things around i know you didn't do it alone but um definitely but i know i know you must have had a big role in it so thank you so much i'm really not hearing complaints if there are they're not coming to me so i'm really pleased i was my question is um do you and of course i'm thrilled with the uh dramatic reduction in uh owner um in uh owners you know giving up their pets uh and all you've done to make that happen um is you know now that evictions uh are are possible is there um you know an anticipated uh increase in that or are you looking at you know information from other cities uh um that's definitely going to be um something that we are looking at um and we know that that uh possibly if there is an increase in that um that sometimes is the first thing that happens is they they do have to give up their animal because they can't take it maybe to a shelter or if they're moving in with with someone else so we are looking at um different options as to what we can do for them to keep their animal um right now but right now we're not seeing that as a as a need right now thank you so much and please keep us posted i hope it doesn't become a need but if it does please let us know and of course thank you any other comments council member mayor pro tem husbeth thank you thank you randy great presentation couple of questions um and so i was curious do you think there's an opportunity for a volume discount so when you're purchasing the food if you then sold that to customers i know you're you know so if you bought more do you think we could get a lower rate is is the question and then projecting that forward is that something we would consider maybe selling to citizens they're there they're picking up a dog or they're visiting the vet and they we have agreement with the with the food provider um that that you you've partnered with does that thought at all is there a volume discount um actually i had this discussion this morning with um our volunteer coordinator um so the the kitten food that we order roll canine is probably our biggest expense um they do not offer the the bulk um pricing and that was something i did want to look into to see if we could possibly get a discount at as a shelter um however with uh the public possibly paying for food um with us being a shelter um it's kind of hard for us to to say hey do you want to buy some fruit from us if we're giving it away in it in another source so yeah um okay we were looking at different options great thank you and then also uh have you realized any traffic so vela's been open uh for a bit now have you have i know you can't walk in now but before then did you feel like that you realized some additional traffic from people being in the area oh of course um before we shut our doors a typical saturday would bring in over 300 people to the shelter um so of course that's dramatically uh decreased with with the appointment base only system so uh we really do hope to get get back to that um because the animals do get adopted quicker um when we have more foot traffic um but once again you know we just want to make sure that everyone's safe before we do move back to that and then i do want to compliment you the work you've done how long have you been in this position i remember the celebration there but you told me but i forget um a little over a year and a half outstanding great job great job for sure yes and so and then i have just three thoughts that i want to share with uh you and city manager uh ideas i have i'd like to see something that creates a connectivity between uh the shelter animal shelter and the dog park just a trail type you know and that may be in the works uh the other thing is uh how to what's our policy on restrooms so if you're walking your dog and then you come to the shelter uh that's the nearest restroom quote unquote but i don't know how that works is there a hitching post or something uh that we can use but just going to kind of have that that connectivity and then and it may be something that we direct to the tennis center once that once that's up and running and then lastly i kind of listening to the comments i'd like to see us start planning for the new facility on loop 288 and maybe there's a mobile opportunity that we that those experiencing homelessness we then maybe have a day that we're there to educate uh check on those pets make sure everyone's uh okay and cared for to make sure we keep an eye on that and limit the the the travel needs across across town that sort of thing so those are my three ideas but thank you again randy appreciate it and just let you know about the last idea um i have um brought that up about animal services being a resource for that facility on loop 288 um we do want to take a t cap clinic which offers the low-cost vaccinations and also provide them with temporary kennels or anything that they do need if the need arises there so those discussions are being had great thank you council member davis thank you mayor uh mayor projim that was a great idea and randy i'm glad that great minds are thinking alike and that you're already on top of that um because those mobile resources are available and coordinating getting those to the 288 facility that's been a fantastic planning ahead that you're doing um my question is about um i know we don't advertise as a no-kill shelter but we've hit a benchmark that qualifies us to kind of be among those this year and a big part of that it sounds like is what you're doing with your kind of proactive approach to people who want to surrender an animal that may at some point have to be put down if it's not adopted out so if if that's kind of the new model going forward that we think we can avoid the cost associated with housing animals long term because we're not taking in as many as owner surrenders do we think that in future years we're going to be able to continue hitting that that 90 and we're going to be able to to qualify as a no-kill shelter going into the future without the kind of the budget impact of of having to house animals long term definitely um with animals unfortunately it is kind of unpredictable as to the influx we might receive you know one day we might have a hoarding situation with 50 animals that we have to take in and their condition might be untreatable we do have to put them down so that is something that we are striving for actually as a department is to continue hitting that that 91 90 percent are above and we are looking at different ways in order to get us there so that would be a continued a goal that we will strive for in the coming years all right well thank you so much for the work that you all are doing out there i mean it's just remarkable to see the the percentages of people who are keeping their dogs and those the the 91 percent survival rate so it's just it's a great story in our city and so i really thank you for your leadership and for your team and for all that they do because i see them out every day you know as they're they're on the streets trying to you know protect the animals that are either stray or or get called on so really appreciate all the work that you guys do out there thank you so much you bet all right we're going to move on to our next agenda item then which is agenda item 2e which is receive report hold discussion give staff direction on pending city council requests and we have two of them so we we're gonna we're not going to make our 6 30 meeting depending on the comments but we'll do our best so i guess we'll have staff presentation on these two just yes sir mayor and council good evening steward birdseye assistant to the city manager i'm going to attempt to share my screen sure there we go all right so this is our standing council pending request work session for anybody who's watching for the first time the requesting council member will have a minute to present their request and then each uh remaining elected official has a minute to respond and indicate support for it staff will respond to our request when a consensus council is established tonight as you said there's two uh the first one is a work session to discuss lowering street speed limits and didn't this was requested by council member briggs uh there's some information there from staff about kind of what uh the plan is right now and i'll turn it over to council member briggs all right and when you start uh council member briggs i'll start your one minute and if we could pull the presentation down too whenever you're ready a traditional method of setting speed limits based on the 85th percentile ignores many realities of cities particularly the connection to nearby land uses traditional su transportation design has focused on designing street and roadways for speeds that are generally inappropriate and contributing to unnecessary loss of life and serious injury this guide creates a framework to move beyond setting speed limits to the 85th percentile to place where cities can set speed limits to prioritize policy goals and working to meet the intent to make streets slower and safer for everyone in line with vision zero i believe we need to have this conversation before our speed study is complete or it will not address the current issues we have with speeding in our city and every every uh district all right thank you i'm not sure what that uh was but that's all right uh i mean there's some background noise i'm not sure where it was coming from so um okay uh all right uh let me reset it uh council member armatree you have a minute when you start speaking i strongly support this measure i'm thrilled that we signed on to the uh campaign zero and i i think it's important that that uh the public see this reflected in changes to our speed limits among other things so i think this is a natural next step to have this discussion and i strongly support it okay thank you all right anybody council member davis i support this as well i'm especially excited that our engineering staff was already kind of beginning a look at we're in the middle of a speed study now i believe and um honestly for one council member to step out and propose lowering speed limits across the city is not a very tenable political situation so i'd like to get some engineering input and and take a look at some things that we can do together with expert advice to increase traffic safety okay council member melser it was actually engineering that proposed campaign zero to us which we did adopt and you know that study is underway so i think a very appropriate time to have that conversation which i'm very happy to have is when those results come in okay uh all right anybody else or i think we'll set that for staff we'll set that for a work session hopefully sort of contemporaneously with the with the findings of the i mean if it's going to be sort of with that we need to have that data sort of together okay all right next one let me reshare my screen all right our second item tonight is a discussion regarding passing a resolution expressing council's commitment to work with denton independent school district within our respective uh limited and overlapping jurisdictions resources and abilities and uh with local non-profits as needed to meet our shared goals of keeping every denton public school child staff member family and community healthy protected physically distanced housed and safe from harm under covid-19 this was requested by council member armator and i will uh turn it over to her okay your time will begin when you start thank you uh so disd school district is not reaching out to us for help but denton families are uh as news rolls in of covid spread in other state public schools we need to be be prepared ahead of time to to pledge that that we will be ready to fill whatever gaps that disd can't fill to keep kids staff and teachers safe this request initially started as was going to be a request for a pledge for wi-fi access and child care and physical technology for those families who couldn't do the online option because of their jobs but then those numbers are not yet known and they won't be known for a little while but i did want to uh while the while tension is high to make a formal commitment with a flexible range of possibilities uh wide open-ended to let families okay council member armator that's your time okay thank you council member armator that was your time uh okay um anybody else council member breaks yeah no i i appreciate uh the request and and i agree that we need to be working with our partners and i uh brought it up before um as far as working with the city and the district in the county and i do believe that those relationships are um being nurtured and we are listening and they are listening to all the needs and so i'm not i'm not sure what um what this would do and if something came up i have faith that that would be brought to us on individual level to work through so that we could discuss it as a council okay all right uh anybody else yeah i i just want to say that i agree with let me let me start this and reset it so i don't okay uh yeah i i feel very confident in the status of our relationships i know that the description of the request uh seemed to get a little bit larger than what was asked for in the in the writing so it's open-ended do whatever we can i have full faith and confidence in the partnerships that we have with the dent independent school district and the county i don't agree with the statement that was first made that uh it seems like the isd is not reaching out to us but families are i think dsd is letting us know what's going on and i feel confident that they will ask for any assistance that that they think that we can provide i don't think it's necessarily we're not able to fill in the gap wherever they cannot do it takes much more than just the city budget to do that so i i feel strongly and confident in our city manager and the relationships that we have with both the county and the school district to do all we can for everyone in our community to get through this pandemic okay uh we will now take a five-minute break that that request failed for lack of consensus uh we'll take a five-minute break to allow uh staff to get ready for the next meeting so we'll stand adjourned to about 6 35 or 6 6 40 welcome everybody to this meeting of the dent city council on august the fourth 2020 it is 643 pm we do have a quorum so i'll call this meeting to order our first item on the agenda is the pledge to the us and texas flag so if you'll stand if you're able and join me in the pledges to the us and texas flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we will now pledge the texas flag honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one and indivisible i do not believe we have any proclamations or presentations and so we'll move on to agenda item three which is presentations from the members of the public we have two types of presentations from members of the public we have pre-registration then we have open mic we we do and i'm getting a feedback from somebody um but we do have a a pre-registration which is agenda item three b one little a id 20-1394 pat smith regarding the shiloh field community garden update and partnership request and uh let me get my phone uh hold on just a moment i apologize pat i had to uh get the phone to to be the timer so um all right okay pat so you're there once you start talking state your name and address and i'll start your time and you will have four minutes good evening mayor and city council i'm pat smith 1417 cambridge laid lane denton thanks for the opportunity tonight to talk to you about shallow field community garden uh and i'm the president of a nonprofit called friends of shallow garden and we're here to give you an update and to offer a couple ideas for the council's consideration next slide so the history of shallow fields began in 2009 when jean gumphrey a very well-known local businessman started the garden as a ministry of denton bible church uh since that time it has produced over 210 000 pounds of food that's gone to be help feed people through local non-profits and is 14.2 acres in size making it the largest community garden in the country next slide please friends of shallow garden was formed as a non-profit in 2019 uh because jean felt like he needed to have a long-term plan for the garden uh should his passing occur which uh jean passed away this past may uh you can see the board members there uh it's a very diverse group including janet laminak from the county um as well as doug kerzog who's our garden administrator uh mendi white from the city of lisville dr nancy demarco cindy helm uh julie wright from texas health resources and brooke more from the parks foundation we have one staff member dean urbanek who's the garden manager and he's on he's paid through the non-profit now next slide please the garden works with several agencies as shown on this slide and we've also become an approved project to the dent county master gardener and what that has meant is that we have great relationships with these all these organizations and provide high quality fruits and vegetables to them on a daily if not weekly basis and we have a very talented pool of volunteers and the master gardeners that help us to improve the garden next slide this slide shows the garden's production over the years what is notable is the increase in the 2019 and this year uh actually as of july 31st for this year we've produced now over 24 000 pounds of food and you may ask why is why the sudden increase and the answer to that is several things but one we've gone to more raised beds and we've also adopted some techniques that are more beneficial in producing a higher yield while we're not purely organic we use a lot of organic practices and probably the biggest factor has been the use of dino dirt we are become a large consumer of dino dirt and we project this year to raise well over 35 000 pounds of fruits and vegetables on about half the acreage that we've used in the past and i'll come back to this uh slide in a little bit because of covid because of the demand for food in our pantries across the county um the board met in may and made a proposal to the county to initiate what we call project cornucopia next slide please project cornucopia is intended to help our food pantries who have seen a 300 to 500 percent increase in demand by providing high quality fruits and vegetables to them on a weekly basis the county gave us 75 000 to grow our annual production to over 70 000 pounds uh and by building raised beds and using some other technology uh to improve the quality of the soil and so we're very excited about that and are already seeing the results of that grant funding um we're going to be needing a lot of volunteers and even through though the covid crisis has impacted a lot of non-profits we're a great place where people can practice social distancing and volunteer every monday thursday and saturday at 8 a.m and i just wanted to let you know your four minutes up but but continue but i just wanted to give you an update on that just because i know this is important just wanted to yes go ahead right so the next slot two slides i'm going to go through very quickly we're also in the process of building a uh support building out there it's been through the city review and gotten favorable comments we anticipate starting construction in that on that in uh the summer of 2021 um so i'm going to skip to the very last slide uh call to action and what we're uh asking the city council to consider is a partnership with where between shallow field and the city and support of the city's sustainable strategic plan we feel like there's a lot of alignment between what we're doing out there in terms of not just growing fruit and vegetables but also expanding native species habitat expanding pollinator habitat pursuing lead initiatives and energy efficiency and conservation i would also believe that this building that we eventually will be built to be used by city programs for cooking classes other volunteer opportunities and lastly we're asking for a consideration for either a donation or a disc a further discount on dino dirt we're going to be providing for buying 650 cubic yards of dino dirt this fall we're probably one of the largest users in the area and we just want to see if the city would consider some sort of discount where we have the funding to buy the dirt and just want to open up this opportunity we believe this might be an opportunity for some co-branding opportunities if that's something the city would be interested in to show hey this is the power of dino dirt to feed hungry people not just in the city of den but literally now from louisville all the way to pilot point um we think this is a great example of community coming together to support those in need and demonstrates community resiliency thank you for your time and we'll be happy to take any questions sure yeah if we could uh pull a slide out questions uh council member armature yes so first of all thank you so much um i love shiloh farms i live relatively nearby and it just makes me happy to drive by it and know it exists so thank you for all you do i was wondering if you know about dino dirt light which is a product uh that is um safer uh to to grow uh fruits and fruits and vegetables in i'm wondering if you're aware of that if you're using dino dirt light or interested in using that instead yes uh thank you council member armature yes we're aware of dino dirt light um currently right now we're not using it um our understanding is dino dirt's been approved by the tcq it's routinely tested and we find that has the biologics in it that we're we're hoping for but we can certainly look into that oh thank you i hope you do thanks okay anyone council member priggs mayor um two two questions well one for the the city manager for discussion um would this would this qualify for cares act for cares funding um since it is due to to covid something maybe we can discuss later and also um uh mr smith is the salvation army still property um i know then bible owns the property um salvation army has a letter of intent with dent bible to eventually take ownership of it but that is sometime in the future and and that date has not been uh set um so i've been in discussions with salvation army they're still looking at it from a planning perspective but then bible owns it and they basically let the non-profit operate the garden now and so we do or we cover all the costs um except for some of the water which the church covers for us okay that that's good i um i appreciate all that everyone does there and feeding the community and um if before we end if you could tell everyone how they could volunteer if they wanted to but knowing that the um the property is still owned by dent and bible and that whatever whatever projects come in the future will not impact this program is is good thank you yep yeah uh yep yep before you get off pad just be sure and uh let us know and let the public know how they can uh where they need to go to to get information on volunteering councilmember davis yeah just come to our website um or our facebook page friends of shallow and we have all the volunteer information there and then uh just mondays thursdays and saturdays at 8 a.m show up and we'll be there uh happy to help we have about 50 to 60 volunteers on any given saturday great all right councilmember davis thank you mayor pat thank you for being with us tonight and continuing this wonderful ministry uh it's a testament to what mr gunfrey was able to build in this community that there are so many people um still doing the work and still moving it forward um and especially responding to this covet crisis that we find ourselves in my question for you is have you had any talks so far with city staff or people in city departments about some some of these specific requests to partner yet yes we have we've had a couple of meetings with katherine barnett um and she has uh indicated some significant interest and katherine and i first began the conversation literally nine years ago um and i think now the timing's right to take it to the next level but uh yes staff's been very uh involved in those discussions thank you well thank you for bringing this to the council and this isn't the time to have the whole conversation about so support and ways we can help but um i encourage you to keep keep up those conversations and if you need a council member to sponsor a a one-minute pitch to have a work session on this partnership i'd be happy and honored to do that thank you thank you i found that okay uh council member melzer yeah very briefly uh do you need skills or tools to come and uh work on building raised beds uh none of that we have all the tools all we need are elbows and and backsides i'll be giving you a call pat thanks i have i have those things uh mayor pro tem hey pat thank you very much and and i want to uh thank thank the county uh through you by proxy for partnering with you and and just echo what council member davis said um please do continue to have those conversations and i look forward to those coming to us for a decision or uh listening ways we can help and i think that you're absolutely spot on the co-branding or partnership uh aspect of that would be great because of uh the recognition uh the the the farm is receiving i think it's a great opportunity for the city to be uh recognized as well and and and just uh uh feel and i just i thank uh denton bible thank uh mr gumphrey for for his legacy uh that he established so uh just keep doing a good keep up the great work and look forward to working with you thank you sir appreciate it pat real quick question you had said something about y'all were going to be needing or purchasing 630 uh is it cubic yards of dino dirt is that right did i hear that right all right yes sir and and what at the rates i mean what are the rates that are that y'all are paying now on that yeah so we're paying over 115 dollars a hundred yards oh pardon me so 100 yards we're paying 15 dollars a cubic yard and so uh that's i think the max discount we can get so we were thinking if we could get a by going over 500 we could get maybe even a lower discount maybe okay i don't know all right you know 10 or 20 more off yep well i really do appreciate you bringing this uh opportunity to us and and and i will share share the sentiments echoed by council member davis and mayor pro tem and and probably all the council members that are just so appreciative of the legacy and just the compassionate heart that gene gumphrey had for for his church for his community and for those who are in need i mean it was just evidence throughout his whole life and to have people who will forward his ministry pick it up improve it expand it enlarge it to where it meets the needs of a greater number of people uh that that is truly dentin and so i really appreciate what you guys are doing out there and i look forward to the conversations continuing thank you sir appreciate it thank you pat take care you bet bye bye all right we'll move on then to now uh our next agenda item which is the i don't think we have any open mics or any other presentations from the public so we'll move on to our consent agenda chair would entertain action on the consent agenda council member briggs i think it's i move approval of all items except for b c and h okay is that uh the recollection of the rest of the that's what i've got b c and h and my understanding is there was no presentations required on any of those so we have a motion for approval of the consent agenda except for b c and h council member ryan i'll second all right so we'll go ahead and uh pull the council council member riggs how say you on the motion yes the council member ryan all right council member armater yes mayor protem all right council member melzer aye council member davis aye mayor watts is an aye the the ayes have it seven to zero and yeses uh seven zero we will now take up the items for individual consideration that were pulled and i'll just read the caption and then i'll just the chair will ask for a motion in a second and we'll proceed on with the vote agenda item four b is consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with biggs and matthews environmental for design services of the drop-off area located within the public disposal facility of the city of denton landfill uh chair would entertain a action on that item council member ryan move approval mayor protem second all right we have a motion and second for agenda item uh four b which is id 20-1315 council member briggs you have a question i i do is the designs i mean is it going to be similar i mean are we going to have um similar to all the drop-off that is currently there i mean we're not we're not eliminating any any drop-offs are we council member briggs no we are we are continuing all the services that currently exist at the the landfill proper uh allowing the citizens to come have a safe place to dispose of bulk material as well as recyclables and other materials so that they don't have to go directly to the working face okay thank you thank you all right we have a motion and a second uh for agenda item four b id 20-1315 i believe councilman ryan you made that motion is that correct that is correct all right and mayor husbeth uh mayor uh mayor protem husbeth seconded that councilman ryan house say you aye mayor protem aye council member briggs yes council member armater no council member melzer aye council member davis aye mayor wass is an aye the ayes have it six to one we'll move on to agenda item four c which is id 20-1407 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with park hills park hill smith and cooper inc for the design of landfill cell four at the city of denton landfill chair would entertain action on this item mayor protem move approval council member ryan i'll second any questions council member briggs so i i know this wasn't is within our current permit um it has nothing to do with the future expansion um but i am curious because the one that we have currently is 50 full is that um anticipated percentage or is it um did it fill faster than than we thought it is in line with projections that were made at the time that the uh uh landfill was or this cell was was begun uh we are we can part of the the improvement uh even though we are accepting more waste we are having greater compaction uh with the new equipment that we are currently using so it's a net wash end of the day we're actually uh putting more waste in the same space we were you know a couple of years ago and just a mayor may i follow up sure and so um having the having the space and approving the cell um that's within the current permit it doesn't mean that we are going to lessen our um education or enforcement or anything on recycling and um and and other programs that we have just by approving this correct that is correct we will continue to move forward with enforcement education outreach everything to support the programs that we have here at the city of denton thank you thank you councilman barmiter yes so i just wanted to say i'm going to be be voting no on this uh because i want to us to wait until we come up with a zero waste plan for for the city of denton um this is cell as i understand it we're at kind of 50 capacity uh and and so i think it's it's just a really good opportunity um to uh talk zero ways before we move forward on that that's why i'm okay all right thank you uh all right uh council member or mayor pro tem hudspeth council member ryan all right uh okay they messed up my my polling because we just changed all the cameras council member melzer uh yeah i'm all i'm all for uh the forthcoming strategy discussions we're trying to get to zero ways this is about just continuing to operate uh you know our current our current business i'm i but i all right council member davis council member briggs uh yes uh council member armature no i think i've got everybody but myself i'm an i uh yeah and i don't think that proving this is inconsistent or is in opposite to continuing to promote recycling and sustainability so i'm not sure how that narrative's gotten out there that anything to do with the landfill sort of means that we're moving away from that but that's absolutely not true uh so the motion carries seven to one uh and we'll go to agenda item h which is considered option of an ordinance authorizing expenditures and excuse me that's id 20-1484 considered option of an ordinance authorizing expenditures of an additional 100 000 and previously budgeted funds for outside council and other trial expenses and the litigation style city of denton versus robert p donnelly pending in the probate court of denton county texas chair would entertain an action on this item mayor pro tem move approval council member ryan i'll second all right okay uh any question mayor pro tem has say you on the motion to approve council member ryan aye council member melzer aye council member davis aye council member briggs no council member armature no motion carries uh five to two we'll now move on to our items for individual consideration uh agenda item 5a consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton appointing madison rochoc help me with that name rochoc rochoc okay is that right yes mr uh city attorney um you didn't actually vote oh i didn't yes on the last one okay well i i vote aye so a motion carries on agenda item four h id 20-1484 5 to 2 thank you very much uh mr city attorney all right agenda item five i sure thought i said that but okay agenda item five so um thank you council member melzer for that and i apologize for um my inability to protect uh correctly pronounce that madison please forgive me uh and uh so would entertain some action on this item council member melzer i move approval and i look forward to many opportunities to practice saying that since last name yes thank you all right uh do we have a second uh mayor pro tem uh gladly second all right any discussion all right council member melzer i'll say you on the motion for approval of 5a aye mayor pro tem aye council member briggs uh yes council member armature yes council member ryan aye council member davis aye mayor watts is an i motion carries seven zero and we all send out a big congratulations to madison and look forward to her continued work as the new uh internal auditor for the city of denton all right agenda item 5b consider adoption of an ordinance considering all matters incident and related to the insurance sale and delivery of up to 70 million 435 thousand dollars in principal amount of city of denton general obligation refunding and improvement bonds series 2020 good evening mayor members of council david gaines assistant city manager and mayor actually i have one presentation to cover both items b and c okay let me go ahead and call it and then we'll present them uh simultaneously but then we'll vote on them separately agenda item 5c consider adoption of an ordinance considering all matters incident and related to the issuance sale and delivery of up to 64 million 370 thousand dollars in principal amount of city of denton certificates of obligation series 2020 okay so both of these items are our bond sales for this fiscal year this this has been a long process you've seen these these projects a number of times starting with last year's budget so about a year ago you saw most of these projects we we had reimbursement ordinances at the beginning of the fiscal year and then we had our notice of intents for the certificate certificate of obligation projects as well that you saw a couple months ago so i i'm going to go over the products at a very high level um but definitely we we have staff available we also have our financial advisors and bond council on the line as well if there's any specific questions um but again just a couple brief slides to cover the material that was included in the agenda so in total you can see there a summary of of the debt that we'll be issuing the certificates of obligation in total of 64.4 million close um close to 64.4 million and then our general general obligation bonds of close to 70.4 million and that includes 42.6 million of bond refundings which i'll i'll touch on as well so our notice of intents this was back in june city council approved our notice of intents to issue co's and just as a reminder of what that process is for to to sell that for co's we have to have at least 46 days prior to to the bond ordinance we have to have those notices um published in the paper and so you can see there on june 18th and 25th they were they were published following that approval from city council here are the general government projects that were approved um in those notice of intents and that will that we're moving forward with the debt issuance for you can see those there most of those were included in the initial budget some added after the budget but we've had numerous discussions with council on each of these projects but again are available for any questions you may have our utility projects you can see are the number of electric projects that we have listed there in total of 26.6 million and then our wastewater projects of 10.2 million i will know as we reacted to covid we did um at the covid 19 pandemic we did reassess all of our utilities and our general government projects and we're able to reduce our co issuances slightly from what we had in the initial budget and also you'll note that we don't have any debt issuance now for solid or water in this fiscal year so moving over to our geo projects obviously these are the projects related to bond programs we have this is our final issuance for the 2014 bond program in total of 14 point uh close to 14.7 million dollars to close out the the issuance for the streets program and close out the issuance for the parks program and you can see the streets projects listed there and then our parks include the park acquisition uh close to a million dollars and then our master plan design we do have our first issuance for the 2019 bond election program obviously this was approved in november so this was uh added to our plan so really we could focus on designs you can see those projects there from the street street reconstruction through hickory creek focused on design of those projects as we begin to move forward and then our two million dollar issuance for sidewalks which we plan for each year of the program and as noted before we did have an opportunity for debt refunding for some 2020 10 issuances total of 42.6 million dollars that we're able to to refund and you can see there noted the average interest rate of the the bonds outstanding is close to four percent and we're projecting to sell these bonds at close to two percent interest rate and in total that equates to about 4.4 million dollar savings in in per in total debt and you can see them broken out by fun with a savings of 344,000 estimated for the general government so next steps we're again at the end of the process here so august 4th today council will consider adoption of the of the two items you have in front of you and then in two days from now on thursday we would be it would be the preliminary date of sale if the market conditions are favorable and then about a month from now we would close on the sale and and have delivery of funds in this fiscal year all right that's it for these items okay all right questions i've got a quick question the amortization schedule for the bonds that we're refunding those stay the same i mean we're not increasing the the term on that correct we're just basically refinancing at the current payoff that's left the term that's left and we're getting we're cutting the interest rate basically in half absolutely correct that's phenomenal actually i mean that's just uh thank thank you for for your you and your staff are really looking out for those opportunities because that's just literally money sitting on the table that just you know the cost of that sale uh far the savings far exceed the cost of of refunding those so thank you for for that diligence that's that's great money management any other comments or questions uh council member armature yes so i i just i also want to thank staff for managing all of this um and doing the best uh to you know control our our costs um most of the uh items in this in this little individual items i support um there are some uh that i don't and if if i thought that it was dependent on my vote to you know to make this pass for the things that i care about then i i would vote yes um but because i suspect this is going to pass anyway i'm going to vote no because i i am not uh because there are some items that that i've spoken on in the past i don't need to go over now that i don't support but i do want staff in the public to know uh that i support the vast majority of this and that you know bonds are essential um to to provide the services that we provide so i wanted to just make clear what my no vote is for and what it's not for okay well um all right okay anybody else council member ryan move approval of item five b council member davis second uh council member ryan any more discussion council member ryan how say you aye council member davis aye mayor pro tem aye all right council member armature no council member melzer aye i do not see council member briggs um so uh mayor watts is an i mayor she recused herself from this item oh okay so i don't see okay i didn't know that so council member briggs has recused from item b and c and this is for agenda item 5b that we just had the motion on for id 20-141 1451 and the mayor is an i so therefore the motion carries uh five to one all right we'll take the vote on agenda item 5c consider adoption of and we've already had the presentation so agenda item 5c id 20-1455 chair council member ryan move approval council member davis second council member melzer did you have a question are you going to second it i would have seconded okay all right any questions discussion all right council member ryan how say you aye council member davis aye mayor pro tem aye council member armature no council member melzer aye mayor watts is an i the motion carries five to one we're moving on to agenda item 5d which is id 20-1467 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas a texas home real municipal corporation granting to atmosphere energy corporation mid-text division a texas and virginia corporation to its successors and assigns a non-exclusive franchise to furnish transport and supply natural gas to the general public in the city of denton etc mar uh mayor members of council this is mario cancerous deputy city manager this presentation is exactly the same thing that i presented at work session so mayor would you like for me to go through the slides again or or just i don't necessarily have a need for that if other council members want to they can they can uh request that all right uh okay well first of all i want to make sure uh is this your last official presentation to this city council i mean is no i'm smiling but not smiling yes sir i am okay okay all right all right just wanted to make sure that we all understood this and just and just so you know uh and i'm not going to go through through the slides but just so you know that in the coming weeks because it has to be read and voted on by the council three different times so if you voted in today uh staff will be bringing it forward to you on august the 18th which is your next regular meeting and then september 1st which would be the final reading and approval and then it would go into effect october 30 excuse me october 1st 2020 okay council member briggs where where does that uh come from bringing to council three times is that um through the state through our through city or what requirement is that my understanding is the charter the charter our charter yes okay okay councilmembrometer oh question about that uh so if so say um that a council member votes no or the you know there's an a no vote um and then you know changes the vote for the next in the next uh for the second time or the third iteration you know is there which is it the last vote that counts are they all is it cumulative are they all added up how does that work with the voting three times how is that tallied up you know those those individual votes well okay i i guess uh mr city attorney i think what the i mean these are these are individual votes uh so does do all of them have to pass they don't have to pass unanimously as long as they pass but do they all three have to pass on the three separate readings for it to be active i've got first assistant larry colester on the line on actually on zoom he can chime in he's been working with mario on this specific issue all right um is he here is so is he on site here in the city hall or is he off he's coming to me i think he was just logging in okay gotcha just give him just a few seconds if you don't know we can't let you go that quick mario how do you spell nakadoches while we're waiting can you know without cheating with an n uh just helps uh n a c o g d o c h e s so that sounds right okay is uh is mr colester ready all right we have a little song in his head to remember okay and your camera's not on if you were if you're meaning to be by video as well there you are okay all right yeah it's gonna have to pass on each vote but but if oh okay so if if one vote fails then that means that the whole thing fails i mean if you yeah okay so it's a it's a unanimous vote over all three votes not unanimous per individual vote but unanimous as far as approval okay all right any other questions yes mayor pro tem uh understanding the new dynamics yes mario i want to see the presentation and then i have 13 questions and a statement to follow well i'm sorry but the chair is going to override that um yes councilmember melzer i mean just out of curiosity what what is the point of the three votes are there is there any difference between any of them it's like a strange railroad commission marriage ceremony or something well if you'd like me to go and answer this goes back to the original charter of 1959 okay and it talks about three votes at three regular meetings and its majority um that has to pass at each time okay all right uh okay good uh any chair would entertain action on this item mayor pro tem move approval councilmember ryan second any other discussion councilmember briggs yeah well i was earlier in the conversation i i was thinking about the five percent and how that sounded little but as i realized that it was a pass through i'm i'm pretty happy with it and i don't want to increase that um maybe eventually talk about you know the rate structure but so yeah um i'm going to be voting in favor of this tonight okay all right uh all right any other questions or discussion councilmember armature will the second vote come at the next subsequent meeting and then the third one subsequently it'll be at your next it'll be at your next regular meeting so it won't be next tuesday it'll be the 18th and then the september 1st it'll be it'll be on the first third uh first and third meeting and then the first meeting in september so it's your regularly called meetings thank you councilmember melzer um yeah for the uh for the benefit of the public i reiterate the you know our learning from the work session that it's a pass through that funds related costs to do with with giving access to right of way and making related repairs and and i would like to at some point i'm reiterating something i said earlier at some point i'd like to see a reconciliation of the revenue that comes in through the franchise fee and the associated expenses and i'll be voting yes okay all right mayor pro tem i believe you made the motion how say you all right councilmember ryan aye councilmember davis aye councilmember armature yes councilmember melzer aye councilmember briggs yes mayor watts is an i motion carries seven zero oh we now are on to concluding items concluding items councilmember melzer um i caught the tail end this morning of uh dr richardson's presentation to the commissioner's court uh and for those who haven't gone to look and see on the denton county department of public health coronavirus uh dashboard you can see that our cases appear to have peaked uh around july 22nd about three weeks after our mask ordinance went into place it was still rising and it now appears to be on its way down not to the level it was before memorial day you know instead of 200 plus cases a day it's more like 40 to 100 and i i just encourage those who even if you don't like wearing a mask even if you object to wearing a mask uh i just appreciate you for doing it anyway uh it appears that us all doing this together with social distancing maybe having the effect that we need uh and you know i just uh encourage you to stick with it thanks everyone all right you bet okay wonderful uh any other concluding items councilmembrometer uh yeah i just i wanted to say since we've got uh our teachers coming back to the classroom um you're in my thoughts i'm sure i'll speak for all of us um and i wanted to add that when i gave my one-minute pitch in the work session today and i mentioned that disd isn't reaching out to us for help i did not mean that as in they're not in cooperation with us they absolutely are cooperation communication my intention was when i said that that uh they're not uh feeling insecure you know they feel very confident um and so councilmembrometer uh i mean i'm i'm i'm struggling you're clarifying something that we've already gone over which is is a continued deliberation so i'm really concerned with this okay so i'll just finish so i will just that is to say um thank you for all the work that you've done disd thank you to the teachers uh thank you to the students and please all of you let us know because we are all in this together whatever needs you have that are being unmet thank you okay anybody else all right okay thank you all so much we will will adjourn at 7 26.