Aug 11, 2020 City Council on 2020-08-11 1:00 PM (SPECIAL CALLED MEETING)

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on August the 11th, 2020. It is 1.02 p.m. We do have a quorum so I'll call this meeting to order and we're going to move down through our agenda for our work session. Just want to give a just a reminder to council members. We've got five council members on now well now we've got just we had four at one point so just we didn't want to clear our screens if it would break a quorum but we're good now. So we'll move to our first work session item which is citizen comments on consent agenda items. We do not have any citizen comments on consent agenda items. So we'll move to request for clarification of agenda items listed on this agenda. Council member Meltzer. Yeah I'd just like to confirm my understanding and for anyone on council or from the public you know might have the same question on item on item c which is the contract for tennis golf excuse me for golf instructor services. There's no commitment of this is a question my understanding is that there's no commitment of resources that comes out of the city budget at all for this it's a it's a matter of giving a portion of fees that are collected to the golf instructor is that the right understanding of it item c. Yes oh yes assistant director for parks and recreation is correct. There's no commitment until we actually have registrations and fees are collected. Yeah and not only is it not a commitment it's it's even when it's paid it's coming out of the fees that are collected it's not something that comes from some other you know city resources it's a portion of the fees that are collected is that is that correct correct yes no yes well I don't I do want to put words in your mouth but I don't want to put words in your mouth no correct there's just on the back end we have a budgeted expenditure line for that and the fees are collected on the revenue side so they offset. Yeah okay thanks for clarifying that and then on item d there's a you know fixed no okay I'm getting some feedback I'm hearing a is there is there a phone participant that's on okay let's uh let's take a quick four minute break and see if we can't identify that and then we'll come right back it's uh 105 yep thank you all right welcome everybody back to this meeting of the density council august 11 2020 is 108 apologize for that that brief break we just made sure we had all the technical issues resolved so we'll move forward I believe we're during we're in the work session portion requests for clarification of agenda items listed on this agenda I think council member Melcer had the floor yeah thank you yeah we just clarified that the city is not paying for anybody's golf lessons and on item d we're not committing to pay primary health doing business as care now three hundred sixty thousand dollars am I correct it's it's just it's a pay as needed it's contract for them to provide drug alcohol and testing services as needed it's not a fixed contract is that correct this is Christine Taylor from procurement and yes that is correct so the contract is as needed so as employees come on board or need to be tested that is when we utilize the service and we'll expense them we're not obligated for the entire contract amount okay thank you very much for clarifying that that's all I have okay council member Briggs my question is also about item d and how it relates to our clinic because I know that we have a clinic and we approved a pretty large contract for that and I didn't know if they also did the test there and is this in addition to or separate this is a separate contract the contract for the health clinic is care here and this testing is care now oh well I know but the contract we have was rather large for our clinic and so I didn't know if they also did the the drug testing there and is this something that we needed extra in addition to yeah yes I apologize they they are two separate contracts that are needed the testing that is through the clinic is for just medical visits physicals and any type of exams that employees can utilize for free and the additional the new contract you're seeing right now is for onboarding and the random drug testing and it is a different company separate needed contract okay thank you yes councilmember Armitage yes so questions about b c and d for b can you just speak to what they what h2o plans to do with the downtown reinvestment grant hi council members I'm Jessica Rogers director of economic development so included in your backup and it details what the grant is for in the application and it's for a mural and I believe the mural is completed as well as a blade sign and and is the the mural is being done by a local artist correct the I I'm not a hundred percent I'll have to verify but I believe the mural was completed by Dan Black who is a local artist yeah excellent so about c thank you for that for item c if just someone could just speak to briefly if if you know the way that that golf lessons are going to be given through this contract will be kind of in any way different than any other rec center service is this kind of is this a public rec center function or you know that where that is open to members or is it something that is kind of public and private where non-members pay so if someone could just explain about this particular service or barons again assistant director for parks and recreation so all of these um the golf instruction is open to the public and it's primarily held at the driving range right next door to north lakes so you do not have to be a member to sign up for golf lessons or any of the clinics that they're running okay and and what is the cost or is there a range of cost you know for adults for children there is a council there is a range uh and it will vary between private lessons and group lessons and between adults and youth and the range is so the city is subsidizing at some level and so what is the range that members of the public would be paying based on you know from youth to adult the range oh i'm sorry the range is established by the instructors so i don't have that specific information in front of me but they they set that charge for the specific instruction that they're providing okay okay uh thank you um i i guess i'll be i'll be interested to know you know when that um when that's decided if that will come to can come to council that information can come to council i'll just be curious be curious to know um then for d about the drug testing i was just wondering if you could speak to how drug testing drug or alcohol testing is being done differently under covid if at all you know where do people have to go to do this to do the testing is there flexibility under covid as far as location are you referring to uh the location of the care now center is that what you're referring to well yeah i mean i'm wondering do people have to do it people have to go to the care now center to do the testing under covid or can people can someone have somebody you know come to the home or the the workplace you know is there flexibility under covid or is it just you come come there okay i believe i believe staff is ready to answer that do we have staff on the phone i'll ask christine taylor if she's got that detail otherwise we can get that back from hr to you okay uh we do not i do not currently have the detail on how testing is taking place we i do know that care now have multiple locations and then with the flexible hours having the same kind of health protocols that the health clinic has as far as the monitoring before you enter um but we can follow up with human resources on if that's changed and what that looks like during covid excellent that would be great thanks okay any other questions of clarification councillor melzer not that this is a huge deal but you know i took pains to ask about item c because i thought it was uh potentially a little confusing and the comment was made that we are sub that the city is subsidizing the fee and that's not how it works the fee subsidizes the city the city takes 20 percent of the fee it's not that the city subsidizes the fee and if i'm if i'm incorrect you know uh i invite correction okay all right anybody else okay we'll move on then to our work session reports uh 3a uh we we are not going to have a covid 19 update dr matt richerson was scheduled to be with us at one o'clock but uh the county commissioner's court had i think scheduled their budget amendments or some type of official county business at that time so uh he did want to pass along that uh he gave a pretty uh comprehensive and a detailed update during the county commissioner's uh court this morning at 9 30 and those are recorded and you're able to look at those on the commissioner's website so we won't be having an update uh agenda item a because staff has nothing else uh to present vat richerson dr richerson would have been the the presentation under 3a uh council member armator uh yeah so i i was hoping uh at that time to inquire about these this status of the hotels um that we're using uh to help uh house the homeless i know that those are expiring soon and i'm getting some questions from people but so will will there be a covid update at the next meeting instead can you count on that or well i think and city management can also make that determination but i would certainly recommend that you pose your questions to the city manager so that those questions at least could be answered in the staff report that uh is is public information and then on tuesday we can we can look at that as well so i'd hate to wait till tuesday for the public to be able to have access to that information if if you submit those questions to the city manager thanks you bet all right okay anybody else uh so 3a we're not going to be having a presentation on 3a so we'll move to 3b receive report hold the discussion to give staff direction regarding an update on options concerning the operation of residential recycling centers in the city of denton well good afternoon uh honorable mayor members of council brian burner director of solid waste for the city of denton i appreciate the opportunity this afternoon to talk to you a little bit about uh our residential recycling center specifically provide an update as uh and uh and completed an analysis for you okay excuse me all right to start off let me take an opportunity to find what our residential recycle centers are what they are are locations that are have been implemented to provide residents convenient access to recycling this is any resident that's in the city of denton we find we've got residents from elsewhere utilizing facilities also and i'll discuss that on a future slide currently we have two locations set up in the city of denton the first one is at the city of denton landfill where we accept all the programmatic materials that one would normally put in their cart excess materials things of that nature the north lakes park site again is located on the north side of town very similar to the landfill site we've got dumpster set up and residents can bring materials there 24 hours a day and dispose of materials at the site as i had stated earlier these sites are only are intended only to collect programmatic materials so anything that we would normally put in our cart so paper cans glass plastics those types of items they're not intended to take textiles or anything else that that may have recycling symbol on it but is not included in our specific city of denton program the dumpsters that are at the sites are emptied three times per week to manage that material but we do have staff that go out multiple times during the day to clean up illegal dumping at the at the sites right now we're having a significant level of illegal dumping that's occurring at the north lake site part of it is related to the covid response with people staying home and doing what i'm calling core and cleaning when they're in quarantine they're taking an opportunity to clean out garages and and closets and things of that nature and we find that people are illegally dumping those materials outside the cart or outside the dumpsters onto the ground and again we do have a crew that does go out and pick this material up on at least a daily basis if not multiple times a day and since the these sites are open we do allow residents of any city to come by and use these facilities even even the landfill to as long as they provide the materials that we are looking for in our program material one of the at the landfill site residents that that come in to recycle while they're not charged a fee we do actually take the a survey of the city that they're coming from and we find that at least at the landfill approximately 60 percent of the people that use that facility are from the city of denton proper another 35 are residents of cities and the etj outside of the city of denton but within denton county and then we have about seven seven percent of our participants that actually come from outside of denton county so we've had people come from the city of dallas gainesville decatur cities from you know cook grace and wise tarrant collin and dallas counties to participate here now while this is specific to the landfill we would be able to assume that similar type of usage is happening at the unstaffed northlake site when we look at our recycling program in its totality we find that our recycling centers actually account for only five percent of the volume that's collected totally currently a hundred percent of our residents have access to our single-family curbside program and that material accounts for approximately 65 percent of the of the recycling material that we break down and put back into the market approximately one third of all the all the commercial customers that we service here in the city of denton take in take part in our recycle program while under city ordinance we have a closed system which allowed which means that the city of denton is the sole trash provider for commercial and residential garbage in the city commercial recycling is open market so they can either choose to recycle with the city of denton or choose with another company to service those materials and when we talk about commercial customers we're not only talking about businesses but also multi-family customers anybody that may have a residential unit of five residential complex or five or more units fall into that the commercial category and as a result those are those those customers are lumped into that that category currently we have about 481 multi-family properties that are on our rolls and 170 of those actually recycle through the city of denton accounting for about 35 percent of the material of the 35 participation rate going back june 2019 to june 2020 when we look at the two sites we'll find that that they they represent and present themselves a little bit differently for those of you who may have been on the council for a while you may remember prior to us moving the landfill site back in behind the scales we were constantly having a problem with illegal dumping at that site also and as a result approximately 100 percent of the material that we were collecting there both on the ground as well as in in the dumpsters themselves was contaminated material so we're not actually recovering any material to be recycled since we've moved it back behind the scales that materials cleaned up tremendously about 85 percent of the material that we're collect at the landfill is able to be recycled 15 is either non-programmatic material it's either wet it's not empty clean and dry like we're looking for so again that material we also get a little bit of film and some styrofoam in in the boxes also that accounts for for in that 15 when we look at the north lake site and this information also includes information from the cupboard because we do go back to june 19 going through june 20 it also accounts for the first part of the covid response we find that that those dumpsters are are significantly dirtier about 63 percent of material we collect is actually recyclable 37 percent of the material in the dumpster actually goes to the landfill as contaminated material now i'd like to note that this does not include the illegal dumping that occurs at the unstaffed site that we pick up that is collected as bulk put in a bulk truck so we cannot actually pull out that volume but we do categorize and capture the the time that is spent and we'll talk about that here in just a little bit and we'll talk about the the financing on both of these you may remember as part of last year's budget presentation we have proposed to move the north lake site from its existing location west to where the the soccer fields are this is necessitated due to the fact that the dentin parks and recreation is building their competitive tennis center at this area and part of this site is earmarked for tennis courts as well as parking for the facility currently we have completed the the design and permitting we have this site out for bid right now for the construction the project estimate cost estimate for this is four hundred and sixty two thousand dollars and a little bit more but again we would anticipate that staying on this track we would have completion by the end of the year one of the concerns that we have again with this site is illegal dumping we've had several citizens complaints with regards to the material that's at the site before we get to it similarly the dumpsters are always full especially with the illegal material that's put in there and it makes it hard for people that want to use this facility to do it there's been complaints of odors we're still looking into to what the potential cause of that would be but with the amount of feedback that we have been getting we thought about bringing forward a pilot that may help address some of these concerns as well to put us on a foot to clean up that recycle the recycled material and actually make a much more robust commodity that we can take to the processor converting a fixed site at North Lakes into a mobile recycling event taking a pilot program that would basically basically occur every other Saturday very short time from about nine to noon and basically hopscotch our way around the city using city recreation center park sites city facilities places that have just big parking lots that will allow us to queue folks in and out and actually have site staff on site to help folks recycle correct so we would put several dumpsters down citizens to come to recycle material the staff would help segregate the material and then use that as an opportunity to educate as we move forward as this program would show to be successful what we would want to do is start to expand partnering with the parks and recreation department to keep getting beautiful sustainability department other potential service in departments and add additional services to these weekend events like appliance collections maybe have our home chemical collection outreach at the facility do tree giveaways on the weekends at these different sites as we move our way around the city when we look at the finance portion of the operations currently at our at our unstaffed static location at North Lakes again this is just North Lakes site currently if we continue on the road we're at and continue to work to create and move the facility we're spending about a hundred and fifty seven thousand dollars a year net of the actual commodity revenue offsets we we actually make about six thousand a little bit more than six thousand dollars by the sale of the commodity that we collect as a facility based on our estimates and labor and the events if we went to every other week collection we would be able to drive that down to about 44 almost 45 thousand dollars a year and with a net annual net savings about a hundred and twelve thousand dollars a little bit north of that we did present this to the pub yesterday and the question was asked whether we could do this every week and if that's the direction of the council that would be an opportunity however it would double this cost to about ninety thousand dollars for a annual net savings of about sixty eight thousand dollars if you look at what's happening across the region like other cities their experience same thing didn't has you know unstaffed sites they're seeing increased illegal illegal dumping they're seeing a decrease in the quality of the contamination as a result it is costing a tremendous amount to operate this facility so they you'll see cities that are actually moving towards staffed locations to collect recycles and potentially other materials the services that are provided to the residents you know these are not commercial entities and again we collect they're collecting only program materials so again you'll see that that in this survey there are a few unstaffed facilities out there but with the exception of Arlington other sites are augmented by staff facilities in addition so our recommendation and options moving forward are first we would ask that council approve us to proceed forward staffing a site at the landfill remain open during current hours so Monday through Saturday 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. but close the unstaffed facility that we currently have at the North Lakes Recycle Center what we would want to do is over the next year pilot a new mobile recycling program and that would move around the town not only collecting material but also collecting data what we would use this data for is as part of the upcoming comprehensive solid waste management strategy use that to evaluate the future of either a remote cycling events or permanent recycle centers as the as the need would would dictate from a second option we would continue the to expand the capacity at the landfill and upgrade the North Lake site we would provide restrictor lids customize dumpsters to help try to minimize any contaminations in there increase our targeted education and focusing on accepting that programmatic material we would install cameras fences gates continue to clean the sites but again use a lot of the the information that we're moving forward with to help set the the stage for our comprehensive solid waste management strategy with that I would be glad to take any questions that you might have and respond to questions okay all right council member Briggs thank you mayor I have a couple of questions and then a few comments on direction so one of my my questions is that the waste contracts that we approved I know that some of the cities and some of the counties that are using our recycling I wonder are they included any of the waste contracts yes they are but you know those those cities also that that those that I know about also have very robust recycling programs for their citizens also so you know a lot of what we're seeing ourselves are residents that may have amazon shipments or something that nature have excess cardboard that they may not want to break down to put in their cart they'll bring to a facility like this I think that same we're seeing that that same customer base that may be coming to our facilities also to put material in that may not fit in their cart or they don't want to have sitting around their house for for excess periods of time well for me I think that's a benefit if the ultimate goal is to keep that waste out of our landfill so I see that as as a benefit and then the other question I have before I have a couple of comments is the item later on for the illegal dumping grant is that is that an item for for this consideration no it is not that item has to do with the call grant but it was applied for through our watershed protect protection so this it's related but it does not apply what they want to do is use these cameras take them out into the illegal dumps in the rivers and the and the streams in the city of Denton and identify those people that are dumping there as opposed to those that are illegally dumping at this site okay mayor do you want me to give my comments now on direction or sure okay so um I am I am okay I want to make sure that we leave the the landfill recycling center open for sure I am highly aware of the issues at North Lakes I I know that that is a um a big problem I'm not in favor of either item one or two really um item one mostly I like the pilot program but I also think that with um the recycling not being commercial or in multifamily that we need to have another site open that's in the city and not necessarily just at the landfill um I prefer it not to be in our parks and I would like to ask the city management to look at the um areas we have within the city city-owned properties already that um have more eyes on it that are less further away less pushed out where more illegal dumping could be um and then in the meantime you know continue with the um landfill and experiment with the the pilot program but um because of how full it is and how many times it needs to be emptied regardless of the this contamination I feel like it's a great need in our city as long as we're not doing multifamily recycling it's going to be needed or we're going to see our waste increase significantly okay I've got a clarification question on that which one when you say that um are you saying to leave open the unstaffed recycling center no I'm saying that I don't feel like we need to we we do not need to close a second location but it does not need to be in the parks so it's a mixture of both I would like for the city to explore another area to have a recycling site but not at the park location and in the meantime continue with the landfill and experiment with the pilot program so are you saying that this this alternative site somewhere else within the city is that staffed or unstaffed um it would be unstaffed with cameras okay all right okay thank you appreciate that council member Amater so I'm I'm in kind of a similar place uh I want to thank staff for coming up with these these uh this analysis and these two options um to to help me decide a couple questions uh one is you know has this been um through our sustainability department because and if so you know what their take is on the the options and number two and maybe the second question would be better to answer first I'm not sure uh is if you could explain how this uh a mobile program like this uh would work for someone living in in an apartment complex uh because those are the people who at least are who at least tell me that they value uh having an actual you know physical location where they can recycle but as council member Briggs said I'm very aware uh you know of the problems we've been having with contamination and so I'm seeing this as a meeting a need of convenience that could conceivably be met maybe even better through a mobile program so I'm curious to know how that would work for someone in an apartment well I think in an apartment it it really there there would be minimal difference uh other than the fact that instead of going to a fixed site uh you would look at at the calendar or you know go to the website and see where is the facility going to be this week uh so you may be moving around town but again you would still have the option and the opportunity to either move use this mobile site or as always come out to the landfill and utilize that facility because that's a fixed facility and you know we're there seven to four monday through saturday for any anyone to use uh again you know almost 36 percent of our multifamily residents have access to recycling and are currently doing uh using uh utilizing that so it's that other approximately a little bit more than half of the of what we're looking at that would uh be willing or we'd be focusing on to take this so as we're moving around the city try to identify areas that are within the core of where we have uh multifamily zoning uh right now where that that density supports where those people uh those are hope that answers your question yes yeah okay so that's excellent um and so would there be would there could there be a some sort of um mobile phone notification service where people could sign up just to get notified on you know whether it's weekly or bi-weekly this is where it is this is where the site is going to be or would people have to go to the go to the website to find out or is that open i think we would use the our our uh social media to its its maximum potential at this point we would put it out on on the website but again uh using you know dent recycles uh using next door using those other social media platforms push those calendars out so that uh we don't have the ability to do a reverse 911 right now basically blasting everybody saying hey the the mobile unit is going to be here this weekend uh but uh we could uh you uh look at at other opportunities that if you sign up for something or or put your name on a list we could get a email or some sort of social media push back at that point thank you and uh so and one more follow-up question um would would would uh staff be open to or or is this a matter for council of a a pilot program you know where we would say after this amount of time you know we would kind of we would assess how it's going it sounds to me like that's kind of what's planned um but but if you could just explain whether you see this as kind of more of a pilot program or this option one or a new service we'd be beginning to do and then just checking in on it every once in a while we're going to call it a pilot program in the next hopefully three or four weeks uh what will come before you is actually the uh agreement to contract with a a a consulting firm to undertake our solid waste management strategy and at that point in the same year that we run this pilot we would be implementing or we'd be putting together strategy and at the time that the strategy is is ready to implement that would be the time we'd make the decision whether this goes forward as we've been doing the pilot or whether we take a changing course and do something slightly different uh based on what the feedback from the strategy was okay so thank you very much so i'll just say for now um i'm um kind of leaning towards doing the uh mobile program to option one uh just to see how it goes kind of as an experiment to see how it goes on its own but i would only be open to that if that could be weekly i wouldn't want it to be bi-weekly i understand that increases the cost and you said the cost savings would be 60 roughly about 67 000 yeah versus um 100 so yeah that's kind of where i'm leaving but i want to hear what others have to say first thanks thank you council member uh davis and then council member melzer thank you mayor and thank you for staff for for thinking outside the box and trying to find creative solutions what i'm what i'm kind of stacking all this up against is what you had in slide six you know almost half a million dollars for building a new collection site um out at northlake that will have the same problems that we have at the current collection site it'll just be a a slightly better location in the park um and my my concern with the with the mobile pilot site it may be that that's a little a little more prone to the illegal dumping than maybe even the covered site was i don't remember having quite the same problem when we had the covered site and the covered site is the one that i hear the lack of the most that people really miss having that central location so something to throw out there and i don't know um what others will think about this but at our new daybreak building there's a loading dock area that is you know when that was an office building for another another entity it was just kind of a place where you sat and smoked or had your lunch or whatever there was no good use for that in an office facility and it's roughly the same size as the area we had at the cupboard i'm sorry jesse we need to ask you to stop for a couple minutes so billy can reboot the tv we're only seeing a couple people on the screen right now so he needs to fix that so we're so i need to take about a five minute break yeah okay sorry about that you bet no no problem let's take a five minute break it's uh 144 welcome body excuse me let's do a double take welcome everybody back to this meeting the denton city council on august the 11th 2020 it's 154 p.m we will now resume our work session reports we've just had a few little technical gremlins but uh we'll power through it all right so we are on i believe item um 2b and i can't remember who had the floor at that time council member davis yes yeah and i have been talking for a minute so i'll wrap up um what i was saying is that i think what we feel the lack of the most that i hear the most out in the community is the lack of a central dentin drop-off site we used to have one at the cupboard people feel that acutely and um i i understand what council member briggs is saying about not having them in a park unfortunately those do happen to be the places where we have the most real estate most the easiest place to site something like that and i had thrown out the the loading dock area at the daybreak building similar footprint to what we had at the cupboard uh close to you know approximate to a city facility so maybe easier to staff easier to to empty containers on a more regular schedule or a quicker turnaround schedule prevent uh illegal dumping and that kind of thing so that was all okay and uh council member melser i believe you're you were wanting to be recognized yes thank you i was uh nodding forcefully during council member davis's uh discussion because i had similar points to make including appreciation for the creativity uh that solid race continues to show uh but you know i also share the view that you know people are just not thinking about where they're going to get rid of stuff all the time and to have to like track a moving target i just uh i think that's not a realistic reflection of the the thought process there's you know there's a place you can go that's always where you can go or that's regularly where you can go i think that more fits the bill we're 100 square mile municipality the idea that you know since there's one that ought to do it you know it's way on the east side of town i i don't think that's adequate now you know why why do we have to have that at all is kind of implied in something we've heard since people have access to recycling at their bins i think the very strong trend is away from from retail and to home delivery there's just a lot of cardboard piling up people's houses i think it's not um you know not uncommon that it would exceed their uh their capacity along with all the other recyclables so i think it is an important service to have i also landed on the thought of the daybreak center whether it's at the loading dock or somewhere else on that parking lot um because there is a lot of square footage and i and i think just the fact that it's at a staffed city facility whether anyone's specifically watching this or not i just think would tend to discourage illegal dumping you're a heck of a lot more visible there and you would be tucked away at north lakes uh so uh i i think if you know another set of creative insights if uh restricted lids and customized dumpsters and cameras help um you know i i would encourage uh at least thinking through applying those measures at a central at a second location central possibly daybreak center okay all right any other comments mayor pro tem no i i lean towards option one i i do struggle because when we talked about this before we're not talking about uh traditional trash we're talking about someone that is vested in uh recycling and so i think we you can't someone that's committed to recycling going through parsing it right doing the right things is going to be more active in the process of or committed to doing that i believe and so my notes the concern so it's the the apartment complexes well they can go to the landfill and then to say that well that's an extra 10 miles out of the way i just i don't know that i and i don't even know that that's true um but i think you can weekly gather and and go to the landfill i do it uh we've tried the various ways to um i've done it rather and but we tried the other various ways to uh regulate this and and i'll i'll caution we go by a camera system i wouldn't be for that because you can i i've said it my for a very long time it's easy to get a picture of who you're looking for finding them is the hard part and if you just follow the news we had someone that drove a truck off a car off a dump truck i mean off a tow truck i mean people will do what they have to do uh and i don't think you can discourage them by a camera i just don't think that's a good investment then the event schedule i think that's something simpler simple that we put in facebook people know people are aware uh and again we're talking about a group that's more interested in participating in this and so that you're not trying to sell anyone anything they're passionate about recycling as is and and so we're just educating them on where they can go um and i'll just say when you're talking about another location as i've heard people talk about uh that somehow that will limit it we have graffiti on the square now that i saw last night there was graffiti in the park that's as populated as can be uh at fred moore park so if they're willing to spray paint something there people are just as quick and easy can dump stuff or couch or you know and who do you call and who can get there fast enough to stop it so i don't think that's the answer uh so i'm fine with option one to go a step further towards the middle if there's a static location that we want to uh kind of have a central location that it's not mobile i'm sure that even helps staff to to then select the space and i but i would not advocate for the center of town i'd advocate for outskirts you have someone on west and someone on the east and so maybe uh if there's a location on the edges there or if we're looking at the uh facility that the city has kind of then you have both sides covered uh and and either people going to roverson ranch or loop 288 area pretty regular so i think those are uh two options so thank you uh council member briggs i'm gonna i'm gonna throw my support behind uh council member metzler and council member davis on the the center of town idea on the daybreak building i think that the overflow shows that we have a desperate need and all the comments that we see on social media asking about the cupboard asking about where to go it continues to show the need and the desire for people to want to recycle and um the mobile i think is a great idea but again it's a time and convenience thing that's being taken away by a a site that's constant so um i would like to see if we can explore that site as well councilmembrometer yes so thank you to everyone for weighing in and thanks again to staff for coming up with these options and i too had at the time suggested the uh when we found out the cupboard was being taken away it turned out that i think several of us ended up individually at the same time suggesting the development center building the the current the daybreak building because it is it's right there um so after listening to my colleagues um you know and being torn between uh testing option one and a hybrid approach i want to go for at the end add my vote to the hybrid approach you know that involves setting up a location that is not in a park's location that like the daybreak center again that's a great idea for a location uh and testing at testing the the mobile program to see how it goes because ultimately you know we want people to be doing more recycling um and uh i'll be very curious to see if we end up getting getting consensus on this and going with it you know how each of those models is going i don't think it's ever going to be perfect for either of them uh you know anytime we have rules or we have a system there's going to be people who you know go around it but it's a matter of you know is is is recycling happening uh and is are are we providing the customer service that that people want in recycling so that's that's the same thing okay councilman ryan any comments yeah i was originally leaning towards option one but it seems like we have more on the hybrid for two so kind of some input on that that i think it probably needs to have some time restrictions just like we have at the landfill such that it's you know fenced around and it can be closed up daily so you're not having overnight uh dumping at it uh that would make sense to me as well as i mean it's it's listed on there to be fenced and gated so i'm just trying to add to that that it's it's you know but the weekend time period is when most people are going to be doing it so it still becomes difficult to keep an eye on it i don't know if there's any solutions to that or not but that's generally when people have the time to go take something like that okay um yeah let me get back to the slide slides okay so i'm looking at slide eight which is the financial analysis brian and so the unstaffed static location i i think i i guess i'm still on the screen tv screen talking so that's it just has to be um that so unless i hear otherwise i'm going to assume that's correct until somebody tells me otherwise because i think we have to by law on the um okay on the so this unstaffed static location how many uh how many collections is this a week how many what what what's if we could pull the slide down i think the council members have the slide because i'm going to be asking you questions and you'll will need to we'll need to have how many is that a collection once a week once a day oh you're still mute brian currently we collect the unstaffed south the northlake site three times a week monday wednesday and friday we do not collect over the weekend because pratt the processor is closed we have no place to take it so we'll we'll we'll dump it as late as we can on friday and then the first thing monday morning to account for what's filled during the weekend uh in addition to that we do service at least once a day if not more uh the illegally dumped material that's taken to this site and again it's if when we talk about illegal dumping material it's not recyclables that will not fit in the bin if we're talking couches sofas uh appliances vacuum cleaners just basically people cleaning out garages that are probably not city of dent residents but uh don't want to go to the landfill so they just haul it here okay so i guess when i'm looking at this um and i'm really has i mean it seems like people already there's four that say that to look at the daybreak building i if that's definitive instead of looking at other sites because i really am going to struggle with putting a recycling collection center right next to one of our newly remodeled city buildings unless it is staffed unless it's got unless it's staffed unless it has distinctive operating hours because i don't care what you have out there people will continue to dump dump and dump all you got to do is drive around the city and see the dumpsters that are at multifamily apartments that are not in the right of way that are tucked back inside or that are close to the street it doesn't matter those things uh people will just dump them there or dump them in there make them overflow so if it's going to be at the daybreak building i'm uncategorically or categorically against it being an unstaffed kind of um facility because we don't want to have a city building that we have that is going to look like a dump ground unless we're unless we're collecting the illegal dumping every day like where i guess you said we're doing it north lakes is that correct and that's crazy that that's that that's just training people to continue to illegal dump because they know somebody else is going to come get it i mean if we're going to do that we might as well put a roll-off dumpster out there to say look if you don't have any recycles just at least throw it in the dumpster and it'd probably even save labor so i'm okay with trying to find some place in the center or close in proximity to the city i'm okay with the landfill being open and it staying the way it is uh because i notice in the financial analysis of the recycle center the debt service is in there as well so your your savings really is coming from in the staffed mobile collection your container collection because you're not collecting it as much which means quite frankly you're not really having that much opportunity you're having less opportunity to recycle your goods unless you take them out to the landfill so i'm i'm real okay with finding some location the staff can bring back it may be a staffed location i mean what do you do put a put an employee out there uh you know five days a week during regular operating hours um or you might have somebody who's working there you know a staggered shift but to have it in the middle of the city with uh unstaffed we're just going to keep so now we talked about subsidies and non-subsidies earlier in the in the uh presentation on i think it was the golf person so let's be clear this we are subsidizing this this is a subsidy and it's being paid for by the rate payers because obviously clearly our recycling if i'm if i'm seeing this correctly the commodity revenue that we're getting from the unstaffed location is a minus six thousand uh or you're just saying that's what we get and you're subtracting it off the debit that is correct so we we actually realize in the current market uh 6200 almost 6300 total for the year and we're we're really not expecting that to grow even under the staff mobile collection at least from the the figure commodity revenue offsets the same the same amount that is correct yeah so i i'm real hard pressed to agree on the the daybreak building just because if you're talking about putting the same center there that you had at north legs i mean if you want to come up with a different proposal but um to put something like that on the entrance to our our our square i mean that was one of the issues with the cupboard was it just it was just overflowing with with uh unrecyclables mr mayor if you would allow the if you'd allow staff uh i think what i'm hearing is uh somewhat support for option one with the opportunity to investigate as you had proposed an alternate site uh either staffed or unstaffed we could bring back some options related to existing city facilities uh and and locations uh that we may optimize locations of where apartment dwellers are uh and then the cost proposals and permitting requirements of such a staff facility i mean that's that's what i'm saying councilmember davis i see let me let me just make one more comment i think and i've i've said this before that on some of these smaller apartment buildings which we have predominantly as many small units four units eight units 10 units 12 units that are around our city that um and i've done this in my own business that i can provide blue recycle carts to those units they're not gonna you don't need one recycle cart for each unit if you have a one bedroom because somebody's not going to fill it up once a week but a whole community may do that once a week or two carts so i'd also continue to look at how can we provide some creative services other than saying you either have to find a place on your parking lot to put in one of these large uh roll off not roll off but your your dumpster is either side mount or or front mount where they can have some recycling opportunities because there's a curb at every one of these properties and if they've got two or three recycling carts depending on the units and they somebody puts them out there the residents are responsible the landlord's responsible it at least provides some kind of opportunity for people who aren't having to recycle and then the landlord can work it out with either the city or the resident i just think there's some real opportunity there uh that we we've tried to explore but we sort of get stuck there so um i would encourage that as well um we've done that with the dumpsters getting the dumpsters off the right away provide some green carts provide some some blue recycle carts and you can get dumpsters off the right away council member davis thank you sir yeah i want to first concur with what you just said a lot of these multi-family properties it's not a lack of will that they don't want recycling there it's how do they fit containers on the property how do they make it work logistically so i think my push back to option one and the mobile only option is that there's got to be some fixed location where people know they can always take their stuff the people who want to do it um removing that hurdle of having to figure out where it is it's going to keep them from putting stuff in the green bin as opposed to carrying it someplace um i think if i can try to sum up too one of the things i heard brian was that i i think there's a real consensus against just doing kind of a bigger better engineered version of the same thing at north lakes you know again slide six what we had talked about doing last year uh with gating and cameras and all that kind of stuff and kind of engineering a whole new collection site um that's just going to turn out exactly the same way as the one we've got so um my preference is for something central um i don't have a strong preference for the day break building i'm just putting that out there but i think we've got to have a central site that can be well managed if it's fencing if it's ours if it's a staff person um it's got to have some kind of weekend availability or it's not going to get well utilized you know a saturday morning or saturday afternoon or something um some combination of those things i think is the solution a fixed location with some kind of controls on it to control uh dubbing and i also agree with the mayor pro tem i don't think a camera is going to help us too much it'd be interesting information to see uh but it's not going to help us catch too many folks so so councilmember davis are you saying that um and and i i would say this i'm if we have a centralized fixed location that's a little bit more um engineered and geared towards really reducing the the waste i don't know if i really see a need for a mobile uh solution i think if we have a place where people can go um unless you have a specific place in your mobile collection where on this saturday we're going to be here on this saturday we're going to be here instead of it moving around all the time that there's a fixed location uh then i think that could be that could be uh certainly important but i think if it moves around then that might be a little difficult councilmember briggs when is the tennis center supposed to open or supposed to be built like timing wise it's my understanding they will be uh opening within the next year okay um mayor the only the only reason i would see the um the mobile needed to be implemented is if there was an overlap there where um the tennis center needed to be open and this recycling center needed to be closed and we hadn't quite yet finished the central location one that this would act as an interim solution um but that that would be you know my request that at least something be open in the meantime right so how long do these things take to construct if we went with a site whether staffed or unstaffed uh how long do they take to between planning design council approve i'm assuming council has to prove it and and and you can actually start getting it off the ground get it to the city through the city process and the permit will take about eight months okay is that including construction yes okay all right um so if if now you said that the tennis center schedule will be open in a year so that means construction will start there at when uh i do not know that answer but you know we got gary packen okay mayor city council gary packen director parks and recreation um the project actually is in two phases the pro shop is under construction right now they are ahead of schedule they're supposed to be done i think early spring end of this year they're going to be done fairly soon so the courts are in the process of going out to bed working through a few last minute uh changes on the design uh so that should be going out the out the bid this fall and hopefully construction starts at the very beginning of the year if not sooner okay and and this site is literally sitting where this will be sitting the the recycling center no it's going to be to the east of that the recycling center will be overflow parking okay and i guess my question is is there is there a way that based upon the construction schedules that we're able to work out to where you can still continue to move forward and we we can continue then to build a new site and leave that one where it is until we're finished as long as it i mean in other words it's overflow parking which are you going to need that right away i guess is my question yeah so you know we have flexibility and we have that entire airfield parking lot that's immediately west of the recycling center that we could use as our overflow overflow parking um and work around the recycling center if it's still there i i think we have time i mean i'm not sure exactly how long the construction schedule is going to be for the courts itself but it probably will be until you know mid to late 21 that it actually opens up okay um so we i think we have more than enough time to work through details if we need to okay all right um yeah i'd hate to i mean council member briggs i totally agree with you that you we don't want to be left without we don't want to be left without either another site or some opportunity for people to recycle other than at the landfill so i think what would be helpful if uh todd if solid waste uh could get with parks and and have a little bit more definitive timeline and then if we can locate a a facility around the interior of the town then we might can figure out ways that we can sort of expedite that yeah we'll look at uh seeing if it can even be designed on daybreak i'm concerned that we're so restricted there with parking anyway i don't know how realistic that is um but there could be sites in that neighborhood as well that we could take a look at so we'll think outside the box and come back to you on the on the interior site that's obviously something you want us to look into mayor pro tem yeah can someone summarize where we are because i thought we were moving towards the mobile option at a static place and we're talking about building but is it staffed i just want to understand where we stand and then no one's spoken to but for uh i guess it was uh habits i just want to understand the center of town aspect of of things because that's mostly residential the apartments are on the outskirts it's harder to get downtown we're going to be having a conversation about one-way streets because it's hard to navigate there versus something that's on you know the outskirts that's easy to get to mayhill it flows a lot better now uh than before uh and so i don't understand the the draw downtown i've not heard anyone other than i've heard that it's they were used to it being there but i don't understand there's not any apartments there's not large groups of apartments downtown we say this is the benefit most people in apartments some heavy amazon deliveries uh i just want to understand that that because it's very difficult to get downtown as compared to something on the edges so summary and why are we so uh passionate about putting it on a one-way street okay i'll try the summary part but i can't speak to anybody's perspective of the second part of your question other than my own uh and i'm not sure i have a strong opinion either way i think the summary is we've got a couple things one one we know for sure is you keep the the landfill site open that stays i believe the status quo is what i'm understanding is the recommendation from staff is that correct is that correct brian okay it is correct all right and so the other two components are the mobile app and it seems like uh some are you know okay with that if it's if it certainly has a temporary stopgap measure but uh the concern with it is it's not static you don't know where it's going to be how do you let people know where it is so i think that's a question staff can look at is do we have places where we can have uh mobile recycling that is static that is at a certain place on a certain fixed timeline the second one is to the request was to ask staff to look at a site that may be sent more centrally located now i know that the first location was mentioned was daybreak which is downtown but i don't think anybody's saying that it has to be there i think is to look at other and i don't even think it has to be quote unquote in the center of the city i think is to look at city facilities to see if there's some place that might be more appropriate for either a staffed or unstaffed site similar to out at north lakes where it would provide a little bit more convenience for people to get there i think that's where we're sort of at and then to talk about the timing of the the the goldfield tennis center and are we able to leave that recycling center there for a while as we try to work this out instead of having to move it right away and as to habits and outskirts i can't you know i can't speak to that um i do know that again on the smaller complexes i think we've got a solution if we can get the property owners and the tenants on board to really advance some some opportunity for those those smaller ones but the larger ones they have to have the bigger um dumpsters yeah collectors okay got it thank you did i miss anything on the summary and then y'all staff can of course answer to the other or not staff but the colleagues can answer the other question councilmember davis and then councilmember briggs i'm not going to take the opportunity to comment on one-way streets and where we should locate those and that kind of thing but um uh the the downtown location for me the reason why i brought that up is because we hear from people who are regular users of that location whether those are primarily apartment folks or primarily overflow christmas package kind of folks that's who i hear a lot from is is the loss of that um my only concern with going further further west uh kind of closer to campus where we would have some multi-family users that would would need a a site to drop off my concern there would be uh one a lack of city property we start running out of uh you know things that we own over there where we can put something like this and have room for it and two i i certainly would not want to put an unstaffed city-owned container you know right next to campus begging to be uh you know overflowing with couches every end of every semester um so if if it was something really robust and staffed and fenced and all that kind of stuff heck put it in the middle of campus for all the apartment and dorm dwellers over there but um that's why that's why don't downtown came to mind for me okay all right councilmember breaks no i'm i'm good okay anyone else councilmember melzer yeah first of all definitely supportive of whatever we can do to expand commercial multifamily uh i'm also not opposed to west side if there's a suitable place uh as to why people liked having a downtown location even if we don't think they should i don't know they apparently did i trust they did um but as a kernel of an idea you know uh of a benefit to a downtown site if there is one maybe it is debris if it can be done in a clean and controlled way uh i just i really like those a couple of couple of bullets on slide seven about answering any questions residents have about partnering with parks keep that beautiful and sustainability you imagine it as a well controlled operation that served as a kind of sustainability education point um yeah that's that could be kind of neat oh that's all i've got to say okay all right all right mayor pro tem one quick question and point that we may want to give staff direction on uh mayor would it be worth it to give direction on whether staff should focus on a staffed location or unstaffed because i'm clearly not in support of unstaffed and if there's a majority opinion that way that at least cuts down the the research and helps them hone uh what they want to focus on and i would throw this out to the city manager as an as an addendum uh you know you may also talk to a lot of churches in the area may partner with us or you know you let us use their parking lot during the during the week uh as a static location for what it's worth but uh mayor i yield to you but i think it would be worth it to parse out if if the majority of council is for or against staffed or not staffed location well and i appreciate that i think what i would say is i would rather the analysis come back with both i would rather have uh an analysis of both of them so we can see because then we're going to it's a it's a decision of is the what's the cost benefit so i think if we have them both if there's a site that they they like and they do the analysis on staffed and unstaffed we can really compare uh the similarities and differences in that and gives us a little bit better information so i that's the direction i would give is i'd really want to see both of them yeah okay all right brian thank you so much for that um you know when you talk about recycling and trash it it uh it gets robust it does so i appreciate that all right then we'll move on to another discussion that will probably be robust is moving on to agenda item 3c receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding an update of the 2012 sustainability plan this is id 20-1352 we were just discussing id 20-1349 now i'm not on mute um good afternoon catherine barnett sustainability manager i'm happy to be back today with the sustainability plan to review with you um let me get my slides pulled up here so there we go okay let's go back from there no wait that's brian's why do i have brian's i'm sorry okay here we go we're rolling now so we're back today after going back to visit with the committee on the environment um after the june 6th council meeting we went back on june 25th and visited with the city council committee on the environment so today i just have a brief overview and of the update and the timeline we're seeking direction on two items one is the sustainability plan update and the second would be the creation of a sustainability advisory committee or council so the first option or the first thing is this is simply sustainable plan um it's a framework to guide our internal and community sustainability and resiliency efforts we usually look at these on about a five-year time frame before we start updating the framework outlines goals and strategies and it's important to note that this is a goals and strategies plan and not an action or implementation plan that would follow the adoption of the sustainability plan framework just a brief overview of our timeline we went through internal stakeholder review and update community engagement opportunities we went through several rounds of coe or committee on the environment review we were actually scheduled to come to council in the beginning of march that got postponed with covid to june 6th so we did go back and visit with the committee on the environment just a little refresher and to review some citizen feedback and that puts us back here today so the plan again it's a very it's a broad plan it's a living document it has internal and external efforts we have flexibility broad goals and strategies so that we can adapt to changing needs and opportunities as they arise we know that we will be updating the materials management section of the plan as soon as the comprehensive solid waste management strategy is complete that's one that we we did put on hold intentionally so that we could have the data from that plan to or that strategy to include two very comprehensive efforts that are included in the plan update are the municipal and community greenhouse gas mitigation planning and resiliency planning and those will be very important to our community as we grow at the june 25th committee on the environment meeting we we did review the plan we had a discussion about the time that had lapsed and making sure that we brought the plan up to date with the most current information several plans have been adopted in the interim the urban forest master plan was actually adopted on june 6th so we were able to go back and go through the entire document and ensure that everything was up to date we included the the urban forest master plan we added a glossary and a list of the supporting plans that work with the sustainability plan and that was the committee suggestion and i think that's really important to note we reviewed the citizen feedback and discussed that many of them were action items that would be included when we start the implementation and action planning for implementation of the plan and lastly we discussed changing the name to reflect that it is more of a goals and strategies document and that the action and implementation items would follow the adoption so there were some suggestions made for the name one that we we came up with was just a a little bit of a turn on the the current title and and just referring to it as a framework instead of a strategic plan felt like that eliminated the word plan and identified that it was an overarching framework the second item that we've been discussing is a sustainability advisory council or committee it would be a committee made up of citizens to advise on sustainability we looked at several structures for that committee and back in january the coe decided to recommend bringing to the full council a sustainability plan implementation committee and at that time that was pretty out of the box and we hadn't seen the structure like that but dallas actually approved that when they approved their climate action plan in april so it that is something that we're interested in pursuing we have the city of dallas template now to go back and and look at and see how they built their committee and as i said they they asked that we bring this to the full council for consideration so today as i said we're seeking feedback and direction for the adoption of the sustainability plan and then direction regarding the creation of a sustainability plan implementation committee citizen advisory committee something of that title with that i will be able to answer questions sure if we'll pull the screen down thank you okay questions council member briggs thank you um i've gone through the redline version and it's it's very helpful and it's better it's more complete it feels um i'm good with the name change i think it caused a little bit of confusion um and then i know that we received messages a message earlier about the resources management and about how it hasn't been updated in um what's it eight eight years and so an implementation of those things has not even been looked at in eight years and so what i think i heard you say is that was held off intentionally until the study uh came back yes ma'am okay and on the um i feel like having those goals and having a little bit more specific goals with that um we could have referred back to this if approved in a in a conversation like we had previously on you know um recycling to kind of help us guide us along with those decisions uh so i know that that's going to be really important as we get those updates to implement it here um and i am really i'm in favor of the implementation committee i know that uh right now i know that our sustainability structure is is is changing and i'm hopeful that a lot of these things become increased and uh implemented but as it transitions and divides up i think it's imperative that we have an implementation implementation committee um especially if we are serious about achieving these goals and uh looking at these issues it will help us as we as we continue along that's it was that it councilman briggs yeah yeah i'm in favor of the committee okay uh councilmember armater so i i like the idea of a committee too and thanks so much uh for all your work on this um you know my my questions have to do or question has to do with uh you know what kind of of teeth um or you know oversight into various departments various initiatives going on citywide will sustainability uh have or rather will will this framework this this plan slash framework have so for instance and this is just as a for instance now uh sustainability is under parks under the new restructuring in before was under utilities right is that sustainability the the programmatic function of sustainability is under parks the working the plan the uh the reporting the environment is still staying in there the environmental side under came banks and we're in the process of kind of expanding that that role and um and making sure he's got the proper authority to work the plan and enforce the plan okay got okay so and and that's helpful to know and so i because i uh i don't know and maybe it's still entirely uncertain at this point and something that a committee and the department will discuss now i don't know how much it even matters or what a difference it makes what you know what department you're housed under uh and i'm glad that still some of it that what how did you put it the operational function is under still under kenny banks yes um so uh what what i'm mostly interested in is kind of how this will play out and what i would love to see uh is something kind of like the 2030 plan which i realize is imperfect in its implementation but that becomes a part of our flow chart by our i guess i mean you know city council staff processes you know planning and zoning when we're going over development on our little checklist you know does this meet the 2030 plan or contradict the 2030 plan is this so does this meet the terms of the sustainability framework so i'm wondering you know if you could speak to how this has been imagined and talked about i think we've been talking about much more robust reporting on a quarterly semi-annual basis uh that way we can tweak uh the plan as as needed making sure that catherine and dr banks have the uh internal processes in place to enforce the plan rather than just coming at the end of the year and sort of collecting ideas and what's been done making sure that we're building this into the culture and the fabric of the organization if we're going to have a plan it needs to have that that level of authority behind it so those are the types of processes that we're talking about right now is what do we what else do we need to make sure that the plan's got as many i guess teeth as you put it as possible and um it'll probably be another 30 to 60 days that we're working through all these various processes but that's exactly where we're heading excellent excellent and i would love to see something in the uh with uh development for instance in the development department you know where development uh comes comes forward you know new zoning change requests come forward even if it's not clear even if there's not a clear question as in is this okay you know these trees that are coming out here or this environmentally sensitive area just um to see if this is okay i don't know if if that's if that's a caseload that y'all can manage but that is i'm speaking ideally is what i would like to see okay all right anybody else council member davis and council member melzer i just kind of want to weigh in on the the title change i really like the red line and i really like the title change from plan to framework because i think that helps us better conceptualize the purpose of the document and what we're supposed to use it for um that it doesn't have necessarily bulleted action items for each department in the city it's a frame framework for how we look at problems and i want to put the segue using that put that committee into that framework today we don't have to figure out exactly what that committee looks like that's a future action of the council but if the framework includes that we need to have a citizen's action group a citizen's implementation committee the framework is where that idea belongs and we can flesh it out at a later time so i really like the red line changes i like you left room for growth with the um when we get to the waste management strategy no point in writing something today that's going to change you know six weeks from now or a year from now when we get that strategy in place so i like it all around okay council member melzer yeah a few comments um uh very happy with calling it a framework now with the intention that it would eventually get fleshed out into something that has action steps and dates and goals and uh you know or specific goals and when you've got that then it is a plan uh so you know my objections are calling it a plan now is some of the response we've gotten from the community has been how can you call us a plan doesn't say when you're going to do what that's what a plan is so you know i think we need to still end up at a plan uh second comment is that uh i think my committee members would concur that we would envision this framework as being kind of a uh housing that includes by way of hyperlink if necessary all the related plans that are around city government so it's it's tied with land use plan it's tied with the mobility plan it's tied with the urban forestry plan that it's you know it's not a free standing just by itself thing it's you know this stuff's got a sort of tick and tie so so that you know we're moving together in a common direction and then lastly some discussion that i would share that we had about how you might comprise the committee what i've suggested is that rather than the typical model where we just each you know each council member picks a person that'd be more like some of our committees where there are certain roles that are defined where uh and i don't know i decide you know maybe anybody can nominate but you've got areas of expertise that uh that would be you know very valuable to have on the committee you've got water air quality energy land use transportation we have we have a community that is rich in intellectual resources and i'd really like to see us define the committee so that it taps uh those specific areas we really you know pull in knowledgeable people who can help us uh you know devise real action plans anybody else council member let me see councilmember marmotor yeah so just as an example can you speak to how um something that's that is not that does not appear to be uh within the framework now could be um could become a part of the implementation such as you know for instance uh soil health or some you know something like that uh i can i feel like i could could visualize it you don't have to use that example but what what power would um where where's the room for an implementation committee to uh to add more detail like that within this broad broader framework with the document we've always treated it as a living document and as we've had opportunities arise or changes in the organization we've been able to capture those and and include them in new strategies or if it's a new plan then maybe those actions are tracked as part of the sustainability umbrella kind of 19 plans influence the sustainability plan and then hopefully that goes both ways um so so i see if someone on a committee came up with you know we would like to see this piece for soil health that would be something that we could research we could bring back ideas about how that could be included we have a land use section we have quite a bit of information about isa protection so i'm sure there's a broad category that we could implement that under and build a strategy okay anyone else okay i think we have direction i believe that uh councilmembrometer did you okay you're still on mute councilmembrometer okay now i hear you i lost the last 30 seconds of what you just said katherine i'm so sorry um but but i i like what you were saying and so it sounds like it sounds like you're saying for instance that soil health for instance that could fit in under land use so there are you know new any that uh you don't see something like that as as contradicting anything oh no that's in the framework it was just a matter of where are we going to put this in in the framework right it allows for new ideas um to come forward new initiatives excellent thank you okay anyone councilmember riggs i just want to clarify or confirm do we have a consensus on the implementation committee any objections to the implementation committee mayor pro tem i'd like to hear from councilmember davis because i fell in line with what he said that that would that would come based on the future recommendations that that's not a discussion to be had or kind of something to be nailed down now that's something that comes forward as the the plan develops if i heard him wrong then he'll correct me but that that sounds uh more in line with my expectations but i'll defer to councilmember davis so um hopefully i'm reading the red line correctly my understanding coming out of committee and reading the document was you know the document doesn't create a committee itself it says we ought to have a committee and the council will have to at some future point take action to establish a committee staff it figure out we're going to nominate and all those kind of things so that was my my point earlier is just that that's a the nuts and bolts of how that happens and how we nominate all that sort of thing is a conversation for another day all we'd be doing with this document saying i think it's a good idea we ought to have some environmentally oriented implementation sustainability committee in denton out of made up of citizens okay uh councilmember briggs okay so yeah the consensus is to have the committee but all the details of that would come back to us at a at a future date that's correct yeah all right so any objections to that all right i believe we have uh direction in that regard and on the name change and and so forth so okay thank you very much thank you our next item will be agenda item three d which is id 20-1475 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the general fund preliminary fy 2021 good afternoon mayor council i'm cassie hogden director of finance here to follow up on our budget presentation from last week let me get my slides up so today we're going to go over a brief update for you that we received from the cad also we have some revised budget timelines for you and then um follow-ups on your questions that you asked last week in our budget workshop so you may remember this slide from the last two budget discussions just to kind of give you a brief overview of where we're at with our assessed values we still do not have updated numbers um we're still at 39 percent in properties under review we're expecting updated numbers by the end of august so just a brief overview the cad did give us an updated timeline on friday and they sent us an email and they anticipate updating estimates by the end of august with certified totals being put out september 15th which if you remember we were scheduled for budget adoption on the 15th so we're proposing to push that back this timeline though is contingent on their staffing and then they are also undergoing a software implementation so with that we had an item on ic item a that we're asking to remove today and we're going to push to next week and that's to discuss the max tax rate and then along with next week we're going to bring back all of the questions that you asked at the budget workshop last week along with a presentation from dme and we're now proposing to have the tax rate and public hearing on the on the budget on september 15th with budget adoption cip tax rate adoption on september 22nd and with that i will answer any questions you have okay uh any questions if we could pull the slide down any questions council member briggs there's an item later for approval does that have any bearing on this item getting moved to a different day or that's the item we would like to remove because we didn't find out until friday that we we weren't going to have updated numbers until the end of august so we were asking for a little additional time to review the tax rate that we're proposing as the max tax rate that has to be publicized okay so i guess when we get there we'll just follow procedure mayor to to address that yeah that's fine thank you yeah all right anything else so what uh on the update on in august the seventh let's see did we get an update we didn't get any numbers on august 7 we just got the information i got you correct so we won't be getting any more numbers until august 30th that is what they told us yes okay all right okay uh anybody else all right thank you casey appreciate it all right we'll move on now to our agenda item three e which is id 20-1049 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction on pending city council requests for good afternoon mayor and council let me bring up the presentation really quickly apologize for the delay there all right i'm stuart birdseye assistant to the city manager and i'm here today for your pending request work session uh by way of reminder each uh council member has the opportunity to request an item if that's going to take over two hours or is a policy or work session request we'll bring it here that elected official who made the request will have one minute uh to present the item and then each remaining elected official will have one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support staff will respond to all requests where a consensus of council is established today we have one request that request is from council member armator it's to allow three minute comments from individual members of the public at all city council work sessions and i will take down my screen and turn it over to council member armator yeah and i'll be the time keeper so council member armator when you uh let me get my stop clock ready oh hold on when you uh start speaking i'll start it and you'll have one minute okay thank you um my request is in the spirit of texas house bill 2840 in which the opening clause states a governmental body shall allow each member of the public who desires to address the body regarding an item on an agenda for an open meeting of the body to address the body regarding an item at the meeting before or during the body's consideration of that item our current process adheres to this law so i'm not saying that we are violating it but i think that we could and should be doing more to adhere to the spirit of this law in a way that would also help us make decisions and might actually save time uh in by bringing the citizens members of the public to the table i i want to say that it would be totally up to council to decide whether to limit that to just a few uh three minute comments or unlimited i'm open but i think it's an experiment worth having and i think it could help us to make better decisions during work sessions okay thank you time's up all right anybody else wishing to speak council member briggs and then council member melzer to start the time when i start talking yeah go ahead yep okay so i think public input is vital at every stage of the discussion and generally most of the into the weeds dialogue we have goes into the work session so it seems by some by the time public vote happens most members know where they stand then the item can become more of a change my mind uh time instead of a compromise so at this point i am in favor of hearing a work session to hear more about the law and information and more information about the request okay all right council member melzer yeah i think uh the problem you know arises where you have those items that you got 50 people that want to speak and you know which is great but it just uh takes a lot of time and it's appropriate but you've got public hearings and uh and so on but you know you need we need time to actually do our work and work session that that never been said um you know to take a couple of comments where it's strictly time limited we usually have something like five items in a work session if you had two public comments six three minutes each that's that's half an hour if you have people who want to speak you don't you know when we have open mic in our general session we don't always fill it up so if it's like half an hour or less um you know i don't have a problem with that so i'd be open to to something like that okay all right anybody else okay i see no other people coming forward so at least right now that we won't be having a work session on that at this time thank you all right uh we will now following the completion of the work session which we have just done the council will convene in a closed meeting at uh 258 to consider uh items pursuant to to consult with attorneys under texas government code section 551.071 and deliberations regarding real property under texas government code section 551.072 and we will convene the closed session at 258 so let's just take about two minutes to allow people to clear the room three minutes and we'll come back and start the closed session welcome everyone to this meeting of the denton city council we have it is august the 11th 2020 at 5 24 p.m we have concluded our work session in our closed session so upon completion of that we're going to call a special called meeting and we do have a quorum so i'll call this meeting to order we'll move through our agenda our first item on the agenda is the consent agenda council member melzer i move approval council member ryan a second we have a motion and a second for the consent agendas a b c d i d 20-1184 20-1425 20-1461 and 20-1462 uh and so uh i'll pull the council council member melzer i say you aye council member ryan aye council member briggs yes mayor pro tem husbeth aye council member davis aye council member armater i'm sorry what was that council member armater yes okay thank you uh mayor watts is an i so the motion carries for the approval of the consent agenda seven zero we'll move on now to our items for individual consideration are do we have something to approve yes okay that's 2a all right uh and then the rest of them are the non-annexation agreements so agenda item 2a id 20-1472 consider approval of a resolution of the city council of the city of denton texas placing a proposal on the september 15 2020 city council public meeting agenda to adopt a 2020 tax rate mayor yes we're moving that to next week one week okay all right so we do we do have we will be acting on item b but a will be moved until next week do we need to make have a motion to postpone on that no mayor they'll repost it for next week's agenda okay all right all right then so on item b uh to be id 20-1468 consider approval of a resolution of the city council of the city of denton authorizing the filing by the city manager or his designee of project applications for remote camera surveillance system for illegal dumping grant in the amount of twenty six thousand three hundred sixty six dollars and seventy nine cents from the north texas central from the north central texas council of governments council member briggs i move approval all right uh do i hear a second council member ryan i'll second all right we have a motion to second for agenda item 2b council member briggs how say you all right yes uh i was going to say council member leal council member ryan aye council member melzer aye council member armature yes mayor pro tem hudspeth aye council member davis aye mayor watts is an i agenda item 2b passes unanimously now it's my understanding uh so the rest that we have are annexation or adoption of ordinances for annexation agreements acceptance of eligible non-exit annexation agreements so i believe there's one short staff presentation so i'm going to call all the annexation items at once and then we're going to have a staff presentation i believe we have three total callers so what we'll do is we'll have staff presentation then we will take the public sentiment council member armature so my question is um for those members of the public who were planning on speaking on a later item that's more towards the m side of the alphabet does this mean that as soon as you call it they won't be able to call because some of them might have been planning if if they're calling on one of these items they need to call yes they need to call and we'll be we'll be no we'll we'll i mean if we're going to call we're going to call them all at once but that doesn't mean we're going to necessarily consider them all at once okay good based upon some things that okay all right thank you okay um all right so i will call these which will be a little arduous but we'll move forward agenda item 2c id 20-1426 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of a non-annexation eligible non- annexation agreement etc for generally identified as dh1 an area approximately 315 acres agenda item 2d id 20-1427 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of eligible non-annexation agreements for agriculture etc etc generally identified as dh2 an area of approximately 258 acres agenda item 2e id 20-1428 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of eligible non-annexation agreements for agriculture generally identified as dh3 an area of approximately 421 acres agenda item 2f consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of eligible non-annexation agreements for generally identified as dh4 an area of approximately 347 acres and then agenda item 2g consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of eligible non-annexation agreements for agricultural wildlife management or timberland use properties within an area of land adjacent to and abutting the city of denton generally identified as dh5 an area approximately of 2 219.127 acres agenda item 2h id 20-1432 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of eligible non-annexation agreements generally identified as dh9 an area of approximately 298 acres agenda item 2i id 20-1433 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of eligible non-annexation agreements for agriculture etc in an area generally identified as dh12 an area of approximately 1154 acres agenda item 2j consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of eligible non-annexation agreements for agriculture wildlife etc generally identified as paa-1 an area of approximately 1171 acres agenda item 2k id 20-1435 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of eligible non-annexation agreements for agriculture wildlife management generally identified as paa-2 an area of approximately 1472 acres agenda item 2l consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of eligible non-annexation agreements for agricultural wildlife management etc generally identified as paa-3 and then agenda item 2m oh i'm sorry paa-3 an area approximately 1075 acres for agenda item id 20-1436 next item is agenda item 2m id 20-1437 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas providing for acceptance of eligible non-annexation agreements for land generally identified as paa-4 an area of approximately 1555 acres and i believe i've called all those and so we will now have staff presentation and then we will take the callers thank you mayor members of council i pulled my presentation and this presentation would apply to all of the agenda items i just called is that correct that is correct okay as a part of the introduction um all the non-annexation agreements as part of the th and the paa's are included in this presentation so for um the public there are approximately 173 non-annexation agreements that were signed either as part of the 2016 non-annexation agreements or the 2013 and some others that were done subsequently we have approximately 173 making up approximately 4146 acres as you can see here identified in the mall of color shown on this exhibit here prior to the annexation expiration the non-annexation agreement expiration staff made an attempt to reach out to as many folks as possible property owners that currently had a non-annexation agreements on april 28th a eligibility letter was mailed out notifying them that their non-annexation agreements were going to expire and those that were that have a non-annexation i'm sorry an ag exemption were eligible for a non-annexation agreement and on june 29th of this year a letter as well as a non-annexation template was mailed out to those folks and as of this afternoon staff has received from 156 property owners 124 signed non-annexation agreements which is part of the items that the mayor just read we have an approximately 24 non-annexation agreements still outstanding this chart here illustrates where the breakdown is in relationship to the non-annexation areas that is and as you can see dh1 we have received one of one so we're we've got all of dh1 for dh2 we've received six of eight dh3 eight of nine dh4 six of 14 dh5 we received two of two so we've received all of the non-annexation agreements for dh5 for dh7 which is not included in the items that the mayor read because we have not received a non-annexation agreement for dh9 we received three of seven non-annexation agreements dh12 17 of 21 for pa1 27 of 29 almost there pa2 16 of 20 pa3 6 of 8 and last pa4 32 of 36 non-annexation agreements that were mailed out whereas are received and are part of your consideration this afternoon that concludes my presentation i'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have okay all right if you'll pull the pull it down that's fine all right councilmember armater so uh most or all all of these property owners have in the past signed uh non-annexation agreements correct in the past is something they've done before right correct and um and in the past uh there have been different terms that have have changed as as laws have changed correct i'm sorry i don't um understand the question if you may repeat that so different so for instance to um under the last sorry go on no i was just saying we've got three callers that are waiting so um are you wanting to to have this conversation or do you want to hear from the public i guess is my question i mean oh i i do i i do want to hear from the public um i just wanted to i just wanted to ask real quickly just just to confirm about these these uh naas um you know before we hear from the public so so people in the past have signed naas um but the law the laws have changed and so and did you get them this is my final question and so did um did anybody any members of the public uh who received these naas did anyone reach out to ask what would happen if i didn't sign or did they ask you know to ask staff questions about what were the implications of signing versus not signing um councilman armater yes there we did receive a number of calls over 100 or so calls from property owners just asking generally what this is and specifically what will happen if they don't sign them i basically provided them with the information that the city council is offering an extension and for the most part they were generally happy but again it was just generally from questions that they had that pertained to the non-extension agreements but um nothing specific as as what will happen next thank you okay all right we're going to go to the callers okay caller you're on with the denton city council uh live on agenda item two uh in the public portion comment of items for individual consideration once you start your name and address i will start your time and you will have four minutes and then when the time is up i will alert you to that thank you can you hear me okay yes sir all right so my name is nathan harvey and i live at 4353 south bonnie bray and uh so thank you for allowing me the time to talk um i am one of the owners of one of the properties being offered and non-extension agreement and i've been one of the ones that very involved in recent efforts to change uh these agreements you've all heard from me through email i've had the opportunity to speak with a few of you over the phone including the mayor this morning i want to thank those of you that have taken the time to speak with me and i thank all of you for giving this topic careful consideration it should be obvious by now these property owners purposely purchase property outside of a municipality would endure some level of financial impact of annex and do not see value in being incorporated we simply just don't want it but i want to state that my intention from the beginning has been to seek a solution that's mutually beneficial for the city and property owners i understand the city's desire to ensure these properties are not developed in a way that is inconsistent with its surrounding area but i hope council also understands we no longer want to live in fear of annexation every few years you also hear i believe today from a couple of my neighbors but we also have a number of neighbors that are on summer vacations or simply too intimidated to speak so i wanted to share that that every property owner i've spoken with has indicated to me um that they have no problem signing a development agreement that ensures the properties continue to be used for agriculture use are not developed in a way that is inconsistent with that use or the surrounding area and adheres to the city building standards at the same time every property owner i've talked to those that have not yet signed and others that have none of them like the language that potentially forces us into annexation in five years as much as current council mandate extensions will continue to be offered as long as the land is used for ag there's just simply no guarantee for us in the future that some future council would not force us into unwanted annexation based on the current language and that's really the crux of the issue for us uh we just no longer want to live with that fear over our heads so i i do feel my conversation with mayor was this morning was very productive i think we heard each other we appreciate each other's points and i feel we both want to come up with a solution that's mutually beneficial based on our conversation i believe we feel that these current agreements are not the answer i know the mayor is limited and was limited what he could discuss with me privately i know he needs to seek additional input from council and city staff but i'm confident we can work together towards a better solution one that protects the city protects property owners from unwanted annexation whether that's a much longer term or to change the language if that means taking additional time to work through it i hope you choose to do so just please keep in mind we're talking about almost 200 properties here that represents families and hundreds of individuals people that are farmers retirees on fixed incomes retired military small business owners etc uh you all have my contact information i'd be happy answering other questions um i really do thank you for your time and consideration and i'll remain on the line for any questions thank you all right all right thank you mr harvey okay um councilmember armature and i just want to we've got two other callers so i just want us to be mindful of them as well so councilmember armature go ahead yeah i was wondering uh if you've heard from and any of the people who did sign as to why they signed and if you haven't heard uh why you think someone might sign can and councilmember armature i appreciate the question but that it's really speculative on his part i mean unless he's heard from someone so i i would i would i mean i'd like for us to stick to a factual basis of certainly what is within his personal knowledge uh within his property he is calling about item c so uh if you can refine that question it'd be greatly appreciated okay sure so have you uh heard from anyone who has signed um and as you yourself decided not to sign to uh hold out for a better agreement as you were weighing the odds if you could speak more to uh you know what you saw to to lose in signing and was there anything that you saw to gain in signing that agreement as you weighed the pros and cons you still there nathan oh i think he i think he dropped off yep if he calls back in we'll come back to that question um all right we'll go to the next caller uh yes uh caller you are on with the dent city council if you are listening if you wouldn't mind turning the volume down uh because we're getting feedback okay am i speaking now or no yeah yes yes you you are on with the denton city council and once you start your name you're on agenda item two the public portion comment of our individual uh items for items for individual consideration once you start your name and state your name and address i will start your time and you will have four minutes okay thank you you bet so you didn't begin anytime yes hi it's difficult here i'm getting a cross talk well well do you have they have the meeting on somewhere else like on a uh a live stream or a laptop or something if so if you turn that down will be will be you might not get that i'll turn that off how's that yes i'll start your yes go ahead and i'll start your time over uh-huh yes hi thank you for the opportunity to address the council and staff my name is don barlow i live at 4365 south bonnie bray i've lived here since 2003 a few things to know about this property in this area and my neighbors um you may or may not know or care but bonnie brave was jointly owned by myself and the neighbors from 377 to vintage uh we made a mutual investment with the county and we ceded land so that they would pave and that was all done on a non-adversarial agreement made out of mutual respect also a thing to know about these properties is we have about 10 pages worth of deed restrictions things that specify minimum lot size house size construction materials no mobile homes etc also what kind and how many animals so we have some built-in regulations of our own um from the history standpoint we were surprised by a letter that arrived right before christmas 2009 of the intent to annex and a public hearing in my opinion it established a culture of fear and intimidation basically sign now or be annexed immediately apparently now with a five-year cycle although i must say staff has been much more responsive this go-around and i thank you but the 2020 non-annexation agreement has the same disingenuous language about voluntary annexation upon expiration breach or termination it's definitely an oxymoron in my opinion this version of the naa looks like it's intended to be the last that's just my speculation each iteration tightens the agreement in favor of the city and this one has language that makes it impervious to changes in state law which is clearly giving property owners more protection from involuntary annexation as to the city's rationale for annexation control growth many of us have significant floodplain and couldn't develop in any way if we wanted to we've made significant investments in our own water septic private trash collection etc and don't need city services and there are hundreds of small houses per acre in our townhouses going in on bonnie bray now so i'm just 100 yards away not to mention the whole hunter ranch basically i'm not the issue for growth second rationale given is regulation which to me is code for fees an example a drainage fee i'm in a floodplain my runoff is the lewisville lake watershed but i'll be charged a fee if i was annexed but really i think taxes are the real reason for all of this and for what it's worth half my neighbors and myself are retirees living on fixed incomes being taxed by the city would be a real financial hardship in summary i urge the council to consider a minimum change in the duration of the agreement to the spirit of the state law as outlined in the letter that i saw to you from sid miller that would be 35 additional years which may be asking too much i don't know but if such a term were adopted a lot of the disingenuous language becomes smooth again i thank you for the opportunity to address council and staff council member armeter yes question for the caller is the caller still there yes okay we've got a question from council member armeter certainly excellent um so thank you for speaking um i was wondering uh if you're aware of the city's uh 2030 plan uh and its um commitment to preserving rural peripheries uh and whether you're aware of that or not if you could speak to your sense of uh you know do you think that an extended ag exemption uh would would help to preserve and protect our our rural and semi-rural peripheries from over development i'm not exactly sure how to answer that um i think the the what we're zoned the state sort of zoning that we're in no one none of my neighbors wishes to sell or subdivide or whatever and as such the um east side of bonnie bray would pretty much be exactly what you said the west side of bonnie bray is owned mostly by the city and as you know has an intention to putting in park and other things the one piece of land across from me that's not owned by the city will be several hundred houses and at the north end will be townhouses and at the south end would be um another development and what they're building are small multiple houses per acre types of development so basically we would be the periphery we would be the refuge of what was your world and everything around us is basically being developed okay all right does that answer your question yes that answered it perfectly thank you so much all right thank you mr barlow for council member briggs i just wanted to thank the caller for uh taking the time to call into us this evening all right thank you all right thank you mr barlow i appreciate it thank you sir thank you i i believe our next caller will be uh mr harvey has called back in so councilmember armatr you will be able to ask him that question that you uh posed and when he dropped the call so we'll wait for mr harvey to join us uh mr harvey are you there yes i am okay good councilmember armatr if you do you recall the question mr harvey were you i didn't hear the question as soon as i was finished talking i got disconnected okay uh councilmember armatr if you would like to repeat that question specifically about uh what he knows and and his own impressions and not speculation sir yeah sure so i was wondering it was kind of a two-part question one uh have have you heard from any of the property owners with these naa agreements who signed it and uh if if so uh be curious to know you know what you heard about uh people's reason for signing it uh if not uh i would be curious to know as you were weighing the pros and cons of signing versus not signing if you could see any any pros uh to signing the the agreement as is and any pros for you as a property owner my guess is no but i'm just wondering if you could let him answer that you've asked him the question go ahead mr harvey sure sure i'd be happy to answer so about that's really been uh one of the big things i wanted to try to get um this last week is in touch with some of those property owners because i think the speculation on some from city council last week was that they seem to be okay with the agreement so they signed speculation on my part was well they probably felt forced into it right so i wanted to to get clear answer on that i've only been able to personally personally interact with one of those property owners that signed the conversation that she and i had she indicated to me that the reason she signed it was to avoid immediate annexation and to get five more years but that she was not happy about the fact that looked like she would likely be annexed in an additional five years and then she shared with me that her neighbors felt the same way and that that friday that she dropped off the paperwork at the courthouse there was a number of folks they're doing the same thing that had a similar sentiment so that's about the extent i can i can say on that i wish i had the opportunity to talk to more of those property owners i really was hoping that they would call into this meeting but it was hard getting the word out on short notice um to really get folks involved in this okay thank you so much thank you thank you mr harvey appreciate you calling back in sure you bet sure thank you all right i believe we've got one more caller at least at this point a caller you're on with live with the denton city council in our items for individual consideration portion of our agenda for the non-annexation agreements uh once you state your name and address i will start your time and you will have four minutes okay my name is linda cole my address is 6376 jim crystal road denton 76207 um we signed this and all our previous non-annexation agreements because in the beginning we were told to either sign it or get in annexed immediately uh so we felt like we didn't have a choice and our only choice was either get in and at immediately or you know had five years um but we want to go on the record we really didn't do this voluntarily uh with all the agreements we just had no choice it was either sign it and have five year waiting period or don't sign it and get annexed in immediately uh i'm not sure why we need a time limit on it anyway as long as we stay ag we shouldn't be annexed once we try to develop then annex i mean why does there have to be a time limit of five year or 10 year or whatever um we would just appreciate it if the council would take the time to make the proper decision that would be acceptable to both the city and the property owners thank you okay thank you appreciate it thank you very much all right that those are all the callers for now um so i guess where's aaron aaron is this sort of where we we talk about uh what we talked about earlier i guess and todd so let me uh i i spoke with mr harvey today and it was a really good conversation uh just to have an understanding of what some of their interests were and to be able to explain to him what some of the interests of the city were and uh upon that and even prior to that conversation as i read through the the what aaron what is it uh what was the old uh code that allowed the non-accession agreements to to even occur that was that 46 something i think is 43.035 which later was renumbered in 2017 to 43.016 okay 43.16 so from what i understand from talking with staff or the city manager is the primary concern uh which is different i think than when these were originally uh crafted the policies that existed at the time when this whole process began is with the proliferation of muds on our etj that's really what we're trying to protect against is is you know somebody coming in developing it so i don't have an issue with as i talked with mr harvey i can't agree to the 35 year extension because i don't think that that provides enough flexibility to councils in the future and to property owners in the future quite frankly uh because the laws change and things such as that so i can't be on board with 35 years i can be on board with more than what we uh gave direction for last time and even more than what i think council member briggs and council member mesler had talked about and that is i feel comfortable with an extension of 15 years but in addition i think i'm not sure why we have the ag exemption in there that if you lose ag that you therefore can be annexed i have no problem unless there's an issue with the law of taking that out because if somebody keeps it in the use that they have now and they're not going to develop it whether it's ag or whether it's not i don't understand why it's that important to the city council so i don't have an issue with removing that particular restriction as well from the non-annexation agreement because i'm not quite sure why i said just because you don't have ag doesn't mean that you're developing it and it doesn't mean that that you're changing it into another use other than a residential or or the use that it is at that time so i think having had the conversation let me just say mr harvey did not we did not talk about these specifics we did not talk about agreements or anything like that we just simply shared the different interests and observations that each one of us had from the different places that we sit and but i think what i did here was this notion that five years is too short five years is too short because if you've got you know five years goes by fast folks i mean we all know that so that i'm okay with that because i think that and and also part of that too is making all the agreements at that level in other words those that have signed we can execute an extension and we can go back and have a modification in other words just try to reset get everybody on the same page we've heard a lot from these individuals in the last few weeks than we have before so that's that's what i can support i can support a 15-year term an extension term i can support going back to those who've already signed and amending that term as well and i also can support taking out of that annexation agreement that the ag exemption is the ag exemption is not one of those triggers i guess miss city attorney i know in that code 43.016 that's one of the two factors is if there's a development you can have the development agreement or if there's a development pursuant to i think it's chapter 212 and or you've got an ag or wildlife exemption if we take that out does it does it is that impacted by the way that the code is written or we can take that condition out and still have a valid naa agreement if i follow you correctly mayor the the ag exemption is a statutory requirement in order to be offered the agreement the i know that a lot of cities include a provision that say that you must maintain that ag exemption throughout the term of the agreement we don't we've never put that in our naa's that that extra requirement that you have to maintain it during the term of the agreements and so okay so that's not a if you don't have an ag exemption that's not a trigger to have a breach of the agreement and therefore quote unquote annexation can occur that is correct okay all right so that's not in the current agreement that that condition okay never met in all right okay so that's uh that's sort of what i throw out there based upon the conversations and trying to get what the true interests are out on the table for both the city and the and the property owners and trying to find some amicable uh compromise council member riggs thank you mayor um i was going to offer 20 years which is not that far off from the 15 that you proposed um my question is for aaron so um what happens to those the ones that we saw that have not signed um at this point if they do not come back or they do not sign what do they just automatically get annexed into the city the the agreements that were signed in 2016 by those property owners at that time they have the voluntary or expiration language in there so if they don't sign the council the the position the council is in is to go forward with the next starting the annexation process of those properties or not okay mayor may ask one more question yeah i do need to clarify that i would still include in these in what i proposed the expiration and termination because if not then we're in the same place we were on what we discussed in closed session so that i just needed to make that uh clarification so yes go ahead council member briggs okay thank you um yeah could you speak to the ag exemption a little bit more because it was my understanding that it did have something to do with the non-annexation agreements that if it um currently if they didn't have the ag exemption then they would be um so can you just help me clarify that yes the the statutory requirement which we followed with every the initial offers as well as every extension we've done since then at the time we come back we'll verify that they have the ag exemption if they do they qualify for the extension if they've lost it then the language in in the 2015 and the 2016 controls which is they don't qualify for one anymore and therefore the city can annex the property well okay well that seems in opposite of what you just told me so i mean uh so what i'm trying to do is make that not a trigger i'm trying to make that if they if they don't have ag if they don't have ag can we even offer them the the naa under the statutory scheme and and their past practice there's there's a strong argument that they don't qualify anymore for the extension but but is the qualification i'm sorry council member riggs i just want to is the is the qualification uh something that is voluntary i mean the qualification is we can say you don't qualify but if we say we want to offer you a non-annexation agreement and you don't have to maintain ag does the status of the law saying that the only way you qualify is if you have an ag exemption does it make those agreements if we have that condition in there either voidable or void in other words is the is the is the mechanism the qualification something that defeats the naa agreement if we don't have that condition in there i'm not sure i follow okay this this is what i'm trying to say you're telling me that what what you're saying is the ag exemption portion of qualifying for the naa is not included in our naa agreement we're relying upon state law to say if you have an ag exemption then you qualify and we can give you an naa right we can offer an naa okay and if they don't have an ag exemption can we still offer them an naa even though it says you're not you may not be qualified for one can can the city still voluntarily enter into that agreement with a with a landowner and contract that we're going to give you this naa and really it only says if you develop it you're agreeing to voluntary annexation or does them not having the ag exemption i mean we can't even offer it we we can't offer it because then that at the same time that contract would be voidable and somebody could challenge okay all right that answers my question so the ag exemption needs to stay in place for it for there to be a effective naa agreement and and that is in essence in that is what happens sometimes and what we've experienced in the past properties have changed hands the new property owner the the you know you don't get an ag exemption forever it's only for a certain period of time and when that lapses and you don't renew it then you've got to go back and renew it that could be after the agreement was signed into and and we those are the situations run into so when we notify the as in this case property owners you have an ag exemption if you still qualify go renew it because your ag exemption is lapsed and they can do that and that's why we've we've waited until they got the ag exemption again but it does not have to be kept during the term it's only after the expiration and we want to offer them a new extension okay that they has to it has to be in place so if it expires in the midst of the term with the same owner right let's say it's 15 years and in year seven the ag exemption is given up you know they've got some cattle or something or however they've qualified for it and it's no longer ag that doesn't defeat it at that time it just means at the time of renewal then that would become an issue if it's if it's not ag that is correct okay perfect that that answers my question i'm sorry it took me a long way to get to that answer i apologize erin thank you all right councilmember briggs you had the floor i'm sorry well that was the i was trying to understand that whole conversation so now i do i'm good okay all right okay uh councilmember barmiter oh yeah so just to respond to uh just a couple things that were said so about the issue of muds um it's my understanding and mr city attorney is this correct or another member of staff might want to answer that uh if you want to keep your ag extension you can't develop a mud a municipal utility district on your property that would be a development right that you would lose the ag exemption exemption if you did that correct that is correct if they develop on a naa property they lose the the agreement is then voided and we can go in and actually annex the property yes thank you and and not just and that's not just the case for an a property but any property that has an ag exempt an exemption would lose it you know in the state of texas if they want to build a mud on is it correct only if there's a relevant naa in place so that that's the that's the point if the naa's go away you don't have that authority but you still got the ag exemption well yeah but councilmember barmiter what you're conflating is properties that are under an naa with an ag exemption and properties that are not under an naa with an ag exemption the only difference is of course if somebody comes in and develops you're going to lose your ag exemption but in the case of those that don't have an naa it's no impact to the city or the property or they lose it but there's not any type of agreement in place that allows that property now to be voluntarily annexed based upon an naa if you have an naa agreement then okay well that's fine so i just didn't know i didn't understand where you're going with that because we're not talking about properties that don't have an naa agreement we're talking about these naa agreements well so and here's thank you so here's where i'm going with that um in my opinion uh the maximum time 40 the 45 year maximum uh would be best although i like the suggestion of 20 as because it's better than uh better than 15 obviously 15 is better than five um but this is why i think that this is advantageous not only to the property owners uh but also to the city um because if we can get prop if property owners willingly voluntarily would commit to those 45 years uh that would mean that if they or a future property owner uh wanted to continue to be ag and get that that tax uh you know not not not have to pay the taxes that they would have to pay under annexation then those areas will be preserved as agricultural areas and uh and for me this is really important and of a benefit to quality of life within the city and outside the city and i see it as a way of of preserving uh and doing the most that we can to secure i should say our 2030 plan now i do understand that individual property owner could decide to sell to a developer and then they would lose their ag exemption but that's the case anyway that is uh a fact of personal uh you know property ownership however what is at what this does is it incentivizes a preservation uh of these rural and semi-rural peripheries so that is why i think it's beneficial to the city uh and i want i want to share it although i can wait till later if you if you'd rather i wait till later uh that to add to what a previous caller had said about um about uh her you know not not understanding when she signed exactly what her options were exactly what was at stake well i mean so but i think i can read that later well if we get to that we're gonna we're gonna give direction to staff because what's your what somebody what they thought they were signing what they weren't thought they were signing that's not necessarily the the city's issue i mean if people were signing something it's an issue to me it was a chief concern for me i'm talking please i'm talking we're going to go to council we're going to go to mayor pro tem hospice and we're going to get direction from the council if you're going to want to have some comments we'll give you a couple of minutes to have some comments but we need to move from this agenda item we spent a lot of time on this whether people know what they were signing or not 10 or 15 years ago it does not have a lot of bearing on this conversation all right so count mayor pro tem if you will if you will give us your thoughts yeah well i want to call the question i this i i perceive this would be a soliloquy and i want to see if there's votes to call a question so that we can move forward with direction okay uh so you would need a second for that i believe and i believe it takes a super majority of council to call the question uh i think councilmember melzer we have to resolve this issue first before we take uh further discussion but there's there's no motion there's no motion on the table well and that that is true there's there's no motion i think i think i think the call to the question also cuts off debate i think then you do come before the motion is that correct mr city attorney yes the moving to the previous the previous question ends the debate if the speaker makes the motion seconded and then it's voted if it's approved by two-thirds then basically we go back to the thing is there as councilmember melzer and said there's no underlying motion right now right so that's the process but we need a main motion in order to have the motion a subsequent motion to go back to the previous motion councilmember question okay sure mayor pro tem hudspeth yeah and here's the point i'm happy to not cut off debate but i'm not happy to listen to unending uh comments from one person i understand i think the gravity is known i think the positions are known but we're getting into third party conversations and areas that it's i talked to a person that might have talked to a person and it just it to me uh this is not the forum for that so if i i'll i'll wait and but i'll get back in line if i if i feel uh moved to do so okay all right uh any other comments mayor councilmember melzer yeah i'm that's i'm i'm not you know supportive of the direction that uh both you mayor and councilmember breaks were we're going in but i just i don't really understand what the impact would be you know we've already got the item right let's say if we want to go in those directions what would the impact be i want to go in those directions does that does that stall action on the posted items or yes yes i mean if if we go in that direction what would happen is uh then i'm not sure about uh i mean obviously we have some unexpired go ahead you give direction to extended 15 20 years with the including the expiration termination language as was suggested then we would have to go back out and contact all the property owners again both those have signed naa's and those who haven't give them the new offer of 15 or 20 years have them sign it turn it in within a reasonable period of time and so that end date could be mid to late september if that's the direction you give and that would require a motion to offer those yes yes it would require a motion to change the terms to either 15 or 20 years with the expiration termination language remaining and that anyone who's already signed they will get a new annexation agreement to consider with the modified terms because we because they haven't been countersigned right well yes but also i suspect even if they had we might just go ahead and say hey yeah okay well i i saw move i move uh uh to be um uh offer 20 year terms uh you know without the expiration termination language with the expiration and termination language with the expiration yes that is what i meant yeah 20 year term thank you for your budget 20 year terms with the expiration termination language okay uh council member davis i can second that if it's got the expiration and termination language and in all other respects is the same as what we already put out there it just changes it to 20 years and i can be on board with that i'll second that all right so we have a motion and a second council member brig i saw your hand up i was gonna second all right uh council member barmiter uh so and so would this just only apply to would this apply to all of the items c through m uh for everybody who has not everybody who who has not yet signed council member i mean uh mr city attorney would you like to answer that the council hasn't answered that specific question but given where you're going it's probably that the movement and the seconder intends that everybody gets contacted again and offered the 15 i'm sorry 20 year extension term yes that that is my intention okay all right so just to be clear the motion is to uh provide a new uh non-annexation agreement with the term of 20 years with the expiration and termination language in it and that would be offered to all those who uh have either not signed or who even signed their current nna agreements uh pursuant to the agenda items posted is that correct that is madam seconder is that correct i'm madam seconder this time oh i'm sorry you are i thought keely was she said she was gonna say i apologize council member david she's gonna try to i'm sorry yes council member david is that correct sir yes that's that's correct that's the only action i think we can take okay and change anything otherwise we're just moving on what we've gotten our back up okay council member ryan thank you mayor i think this should actually be a motion to table until these agreements can be brought back to us with those terms in it because we were not necessarily posted for just changing the terms center or for for what's been mentioned because because they they haven't signed their side of the agreement yet i don't know is it possible for us to sign our side before they sign theirs council member ryan you're correct is the effect of melzer's motion is to actually postpone these items because you can't you're not going to be acting on them but if council member melzer wants to uh no i'll accept the edit to motion to table until uh the terms that we just described have been offered to uh you know potential parties is that is that adequate mr city attorney i think the oh actually wait it's postponed and you might want to give some type of date certain and that's the date when i explained earlier how much time do you want to give property owners the time to review and return them back to the city it is august the 11th so mid september so so you're postponing to a date certain well i was you know postponing to an event certain of offering um but i but i take your point that if we've offered there's no response right you need to allow opportunity to respond so i'm sorry you're suggesting mid september that is up to you all i yeah but i'll accept some guidance on what's practical because there's more work that has to be done and contacting and why don't we give folks until september 30th to work with staff we'll bring an item back to you on october 6th that should be plenty of time to get all those agreements done so postpone to october 6th we'll bring back the agreements october 6th okay all right so uh i'll amend my uh motion to move to postpone until i in fact i don't even have to talk about the conditions then really it's postponed till october 6th right and then you understand the direction so i i'm i move postponement to october 6th council member davis will you i do second um with the conditions out of the motion i think we want to make sure after the motion that's the actual direction of council because now the motion will tell us that we all agree we want to postpone the motion will not tell us that we're all on the same page with the conditions i just want to just again october 6th okay i move every postpone to october 6th so that staff may offer uh revised agreements to all potential parties uh that uh include a uh a 20-year extension with all other terms remaining as have been presented today and i'll second that wires mr mr leo is that uh is that what you understand is that correct yes yes that's that is sufficient okay all right okay we have a motion and a second council member so uh two questions that i think we should answer uh have have answered for those who are listening and i think it would be up to staff to answer those questions uh you know even if the answer is that has yet to be determined or that will be determined at the next meeting is better than not knowing and so the questions are um uh number one uh will those for those who have signed uh their agreements already uh when they see those of them have signed the five-year term if they hear a discussion of a you know possible 20-year term or more uh and if they want to approach the city to redo those naa's uh would it be at the discretion of council to decide uh to allow that to happen of course i think i think that they should be allowed that but i'm wondering from from a legal perspective councilmember armatero we we we will be proactively reaching out to those folks letting them know that we did not sign the five-year agreement we're going to offer them a 20 instead so what we're going to do we're going to do that proactively okay so thank you though that is very good good good to hear uh and then another question is so um somebody one of the property owners had written i don't remember if they wrote to you all of council or just to me but it was a question that i forwarded to staff because i thought it was a good one and i didn't know the answer um and the question was essentially uh if this was somebody who didn't sign um and they were asking uh if i don't sign or rather how long can i remain without signing until my property gets automatically i'm hearing feedback does somebody have something on in the background does somebody i'm mute in case okay okay all right go ahead council yes so if there could be clarification on that you know what what happened for those who haven't signed um is there a so you mentioned you know september 30th date when this would come before us again uh but what is their status now uh and uh you know what what options do they have so i was told it would be up to council to decide and if that's the case i would like to know what this what decisions we're going we're going to put a letter to them telling them that we want everything back signed by the 30th we'll place something on your october 6th agenda if they choose not to sign it's going to be up to council whether to pursue annexation and enforce the naa's to enforce the naa's whether to whether to annex them it's going to it's going to be up to a majority of this council okay i see that okay so there is so in other words so there is no automatic and then you're you're annexed is what is what that would be before okay excellent for all the properties that signed 2016 naa's and they do not sign back after the september 30th extension those properties according to the expired 2016 naa's are subject to annexation and the council just needs to decide whether it's going to go forward with the annexation start that process or not so uh i will and we have to weigh that very carefully if we approach with that decision so all right we have a motion and a second for postponement till i think october 6th with the 20-year term being offered to the current language of the non-annexation agreement all other language being the same which includes the termination and expiration um we've got our discussion so council member melzer house say you aye council member davis aye council member armature yes mayor pro tem all right council member briggs yes council member ryan hi uh mayor watts is an eye the motion carries unanimously that brings us to our last item which i believe is concluding items all right concluding items anybody have concluding items no concluding items fantastic then we will uh adjourn this meeting at 6 24 thank you all