Oct 13, 2020 City Council on 2020-10-13 12:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, October 13, 2020. We do have a quorum so I'll call this meeting to order at 1201 p.m. We'll go through our work session and then after our work session we have a closed session and then immediately following the closed session we'll go into our consent agenda and items for individual consideration. So our first item on the agenda is work session citizen comments on consent agenda items. Do we have any citizen comments on consent agenda items? Thank you. So no callers I believe. So we have on item 20-1973 we had one person making a comment they were in support and there was zero against and then on item 2i the first one was 2d. I'm getting an echo from somebody. Thank you. Then on 2d or 2i ID 20-1909 we had one person making a comment using our online form and that individual indicated support for the item and I don't believe we have any more comments on consent agenda items. So we'll move on then to request for clarification of agenda items listed on today's agenda. Any clarifications? Councilmember Davis. I just need to pull item K for a separate vote so I can recuse. All right. Which one is that? Let's see. Oh here we get an elections contract with the county. Yep. All right. Okay. Councilmember Briggs. Two questions on F. I'm wondering are we still in compliance with the SUP even though we're rejecting this bid? Councilmember Briggs, Brian Barner, Director of Solid Waste for the City of Denton. We are still in compliance. We're working to continue working on our SUP compliance and this was part of the process. We have gone out a different direction getting three bids and we should have that contract before you shortly. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mayor, just one more on I. Under administrative procedures number six, the term reasonably was added to reasonably offensive and I'm just wondering if we have a definition for this. I know that some legislation the term reasonably was added and it made it hard for anyone to know what that meant. So I'm just wondering if you can tell me why that was added and what the definition of it is. Yep. Stephanie Lang is on the phone to answer that question. Okay. Yes, this is Stephanie Lang, Deputy Director of the Human Resources Department. That language was added to ensure that we're looking at it from an objective standpoint in terms of the employee as to what they find offenses. And it helps us to be able to identify whether the average person would actually be offended by the action or the statement that's being complained of. Okay. So we do have a definition or a way to define that. Or is it just what someone feels is reasonable? It would be reasonable based on the circumstances what the average person in a position similar to that individual, how they would look at everything and consider everything based on the facts as they are presented. And so for example, sometimes you have, sometimes you may have an employee, their perception may be a little bit different from a normal individual, maybe because of a personal experience or just maybe, you know, their outlook on something would not have been seen by another person in a similar situation. They would not have taken it that way. The perception would be completely different. So if you look at the totality of the circumstances with the average individual or average employee, would they find that behavior as offensive? Okay, thank you. Does that help Tom? It does. It does. I just know that there's some other legislation that has that term in it that we still haven't really necessarily defined, but for this one, I think I understand it better. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs, where are you referencing that? I'm reviewing what I read just so I can sort of put my eyeballs on it. It's under the city's revision of the harassment prevention policy and it's the red line version. Okay, let me get to it. Let's see, because there's several, and that's I, that's agenda item I. So I see exhibit one, two, and three. Is that exhibit three or is it number two? It's the last one, three. Okay, so it's three. So go ahead. Under administrative procedures, number six. Administrative procedures is, okay, number six. Okay. Yeah, recently the standard within practice basically as to whether that behavior would be offensive to another individual in a similar situation. Would it be offensive to another individual? But it's based on the totality of the circumstances. So I guess my question on that, Stephanie, is of course, in any type of tort action, you have, you know, the reasonably prudent person test. Is that what you're describing here? Is there something different? That is exactly what I am describing there. Okay. So I guess when we talk about someone else who's, you know, the objective reasonable person standard test, is that person, a person who shares the same characteristics as the person who is claiming the harassment? I mean, if someone's claiming harassment based upon gender identity, is the test based upon then another reasonable person who also identifies in that same manner, whether it would be reasonable to them? I'm just trying to understand what factors are included in the reasonably prudent person test in this particular situation. Yes, it would be based on another individual who can identify from a gender identity standpoint. And if that person, if you look at the situation with that person, if they would feel that it's offensive as well, or the average person who can relate to the gender identity, then from that standpoint, it would satisfy that reasonable prudent objective standard test. Okay. All right. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Any other Councilmember Armitage? Yes. There are three items that I want to pull just to vote no. I don't have any questions about those for now. One is item B about some additional positions for the police department. Another one is item C about the sponsorship agreement with the rodeo. Since I voted no to having the rodeo, that's why I wanted to pull that and vote no for consistency. And then finally, item E, which includes the firing range services for the construction for the firing range. It's because of my objection to the firing range that I want to vote no for that. All right. So B, C, and E. Okay. All right. Thank you. I have a, anyone else? Any other Councilmembers with question or clarification? I've got one on item L, which is the application for the grant for the historic Denton and then with the Texas Historical Commission. Anyone available to answer questions on that? Yes. Richard Canone should be on the line. Okay. Richard, are you there? There he is. He's coming on. Good afternoon, Mayor. This is Richard. Hey, Richard. A couple of questions. I know that last time we considered this, there was a comment made that Denton may be out of compliance with something because we don't have a, what is it, a historical officer. What's the title of the? An HPO historic preservation officer. We are in compliance. We have submitted all of our annual reports. And as part of the last annual report, we did designate Ron Minguita, who serves as the board liaison to the historical landmarks commission as the interim HPO until we fill that position, which we're currently under, we're reviewing resumes now. Okay. And then I know that this particular item is saying that we're designating as a third party administrator. We're delegating historic Denton as a third party administrator. I don't believe that. I don't recall having that conversation in the past regarding this issue. I know we talked about, you know, they would be the ones submitting the application and that they would be the ones responsible for the work. And they would also be the ones that would receive the remuneration for that scope of work. So if, could you or someone in the meeting just describe briefly what that really means to be designated as a third party administrator? Yeah, quite, quite, quite simply because the city is, is the community, is the certified local government. They have to designate someone essentially to, to serve, to serve as that administrator of the grant. There's, there's no responsibility other than signing the application on behalf of the city, which would require yourself and the city manager. Otherwise, once that application is submitted, all governance of that, of that grant and the compliance component of it is, is handled between the THC or Texas Historical Commission and, and the third party. So there, there's no obligation on behalf of the city. It is, the other thing I want to remind it, it is a reimbursement grant. So those funds, those funds have to be expended by the, by the applicant initially and then submitted to THC for, for compliance and ultimate reimbursement. Okay. So if, then the, there needs to, there has to be a third party administrator if the city doesn't do this on its own. Is that correct? Like if the city chose to do this through their historic preservation officer, the cities can apply to these grants, but if, if not, if someone comes forward as historic Denton did, then the city can assign to them in essence, what they would be doing if they were the ones applying for the grant. That that's correct. And in some instances, there are some cities that in the past where the city has actually applied, but they've designated a project manager, third party administrator, even though the city's applying. So, so there's a number of ways to do it. In this instance, the way it was being prepared or requested is that there would be no central involvement, if you will, from the city other, other than assigning the application and handing that over to, to the third party. Okay. All right. Thank you very much for that clarification. Any other, thank you, Richard. Any other comments or clarifications on the agenda? So then what I have is from the, from the consent agenda, we will be pulling B, C, and E and K. And I don't recall anyone asking for a presentation on any of those. So we're not going to have any presentation. We're just going to move through them as items for individual consideration. Once we get to that portion of the agenda. Okay. Thank you. All right. Then we'll move on to our work session report. Work session 3A is receive report, hold a discussion at ID 20-1664. Receive report, hold a discussion, give staff direction regarding an update to the COVID, to the city of Denton's COVID-19 response. Good afternoon mayor, city council, Sarah Kuechler, chief of staff. This is our standing work session item to provide an update on the city's response to COVID-19. By way of background, we've held a number of these work sessions in the past and the city of Denton still has a current local disaster declaration and order that is in effect through December 31st, that was adopted by city council on September 22nd. Today we have three sections of updates for you. The first is an intergovernmental updates, including Dr. Matt Richardson with the Denton County Public Health Department will give us a situational update. Second section is city facility and program updates. So you'll hear from our library, our animal shelter and parks and recreation in regards to their proposed next phases of openings and services. And then lastly, we'll provide an update on housing and utility assistance. So I'd like to jump right in and introduce Dr. Matt Richardson and turn it over to him for a brief situational update. Good afternoon mayor and council members. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you this afternoon. I'm going to go through a really brief presentation. I finished that earlier today at commissioners court for Denton County. I'm going to hit the highlights very similarly for you and I'm very happy to answer any questions you have provided any clarity that I can offer. So I'm going to share my screen and this screen sharing just as a reminder is dentoncounty.gov/COVID19Stats. So what you're going to see before you on screen is at the very beginning, our Denton County COVID-19 statistics summary. That summary is talking about active cases, which is just under 2000 active cases for the county. Total recoveries at 12,235, total deaths at 113. As a reminder for the council, those deaths are validated and verified by our staff members. I am anticipating additional deaths to be reported this week, maybe as early as today. There are deaths that the state reports because the way they consider a death as reported as a reminder, they will use a death certificate and a notation of COVID-19. We do not take that at face value. We actually investigate every case of COVID-19 fatality. That is a validation and a verification process of medical documentation, interviews with patients, families, and physicians, treating physicians at the time of death. We really try to build that case because we've had several instances even recently where a death certificate might be someone who died in our county, but had contracted or lived in another county. Obviously, someone who was on hospice care for kidney failure, liver failure, heart condition, cardiac arrest. Sometimes these things can be confusing, and so we have our chief epidemiologist and our medical director review those cases and look for progression of disease. I just want to highlight that continues to be a question why the state's number in hours is different. Our total deaths currently at 113 total cases, 14,347. We did make a change last week and it is a substantial change. We began reporting antigen positive tests. Antigen positives are far and away. The majority of those antigen tests are the rapid tests, and the science is that antigen positives are pretty reliable. Antigen negatives still have some statistical concerns, but they have a high sensitivity for positivity, which is good news, and what we have seen is the general public is taking advantage of the convenience of rapid testing much more so in August and September than they had previously. Again, that's good news and bad. It's good news because it is very timely, and the positives are very accurate. It's a concern, though, because a rapid test is not automatically connected to an electronic health record, as when we take a sample from you and we send it to an outside reference laboratory, that sample is analyzed and then reported electronically to Denton County Public Health. So a rapid test, sometimes we lose that visibility because a doctor's office in urgent care may or may not report those tests performed, the positives realized, and the patient demographics to follow. That is the law, but again, it's very simple. If we, if a doctor's office sends that to a reference laboratory for analysis, that is automated. That happens automatically. It does not happen automatically with a rapid antigen test. The reason I'm saying all of that is that the testing behavior of the community has changed. So in September, in August and September, the community really has switched gears and I think yesterday over 30% of our positive tests received yesterday to Denton County Public Health were rapid antigen tests. So we have changed our reporting a bit and you see that here on the website, the light blue, the sky blue on our chart represents the antigen positives. The dark blue remains the PCR. That gold standard is the language used by CDC and something that we embrace. The PCR is more sensitive and more specific and has many, many fewer false negatives. However, a positive is a positive. The CDC recognizes that WHO, Denton County Public Health recognizes that antigen positives are reliable. Okay, that is that chart there. And I'll remind you that cases by date of symptom onset is really the best, what we call epi curve, the epidemiological curve. And so it's a little bit lagging because we do have PCR tests. So if you'll notice on our symptom onset chart, it looks like cases are going down. That's because we have to interview positive cases and then we verify and validate those. We do the contact tracing and that communication requires that we get the information from the reference lab that our epidemiology team then does the investigation. So as an epi curve, we'll say that sometimes that runs 10 days behind. So today is the 13th. So really once you get to the beginning of October, the epi curve is much more accurate because there is a little bit of a reporting lag. And again, that's just the mechanics of disease progression, going to the doctor, sending off for lab analysis, communicating with Denton County Public Health, and then the subsequent investigation. Okay, hospital discussions are always top of mind. So what we have here is our hospital capacity. This is reported as of yesterday, 63% of inpatient staff beds are occupied, 61% of adult ICU beds are occupied, and one in five of ventilators in Denton County are currently in use. I will note there's a second tab on our hospital capacity page. If you click on this, we have added a feature and I don't think I've spoken to you, Mayor Council members, since we made this change, but since Governor Abbott added his governor's threshold for COVID-19 percentage of total inpatient hospitalizations for the region, you'll recall that he cited and referenced this 15% threshold as really a threshold for him to take statewide action or regional action based on hospitalizations. So we've added this threshold to our chart. You see that Denton County exceeded the threshold both in the daily reporting, which is the line graph, and the seven day rolling average, which is the chart bar graph. You see that we exceeded both of those in mid-July to the beginning of August, which is really when we made a couple of recommendations. We had recommended for ubiquitous mask use and we recommended that schools delay their in-person learning. And if you want to know why, that chart's a pretty good descriptor is we were going the wrong way in hospitalizations. The good news is that some of those things have paid off. And that is realized as you see time progressing through August, September and into October. I will tell you that we are monitoring this daily, as you can see by our web representation and visualization here. And you can also see that yesterday, for the first time really since the beginning of August, we had just under 10% of our total hospitalizations were COVID-19 related. It's only 10% and yet we're going the wrong way. So yesterday was an increase. I'll note to you that don't forget that can be influenced by how many people are in the hospital. If there are fewer hospitalizations total and we have more people testing positive for COVID-19, the ratio of COVID-19 patients will increase if that makes sense. So if you have a hundred people in the hospital and you have 20 people with COVID-19, that's a 20% rate, right? If you have 50 people in the hospital and you have 20 people, that's a 40% rate. Very, very different, okay? So there's our basic high school mathematics, but it matters when we talk about percentages that matter. So this is an important chart and the one before it is an important chart. You see the inpatient occupancy, ICU, ventilator use, and then you can go to, well, how many people actually have COVID? We're watching both. And when we talk about hospitalization and infrastructure, I would highlight that both are important. Okay. This map, we have maps by location. That information is up to date. We had cases and recoveries by location, by city. We have case demographics, which is important. We have deaths by age range and pediatric cases by age range. We have weekly reported cases and next week we hope to be rolling out COVID-19 by symptom onset by week, which is different because right now we have the weekly cases by age by report, but not symptom onset. So whatever we report today, that's the weekly case count, but we will be adding a feature, which is weekly case count by symptom onset. And that is, again, probably our most powerful epidemiology curve, the epi curve, but it is delayed because it requires that investigation, whereas the date reported is just that day's reporting or the prior day's reporting. So again, we're getting more accurate with an epi curve, but we're losing some timeliness. So we're going to be reporting both and both are important. Okay. That was a lot of information. Sorry for speaking so quickly. I want to respect your time. That was a lot of information, a short amount of time, and I'm happy to answer questions for you this afternoon. Sure. We'll take just a couple of questions. Council Member Meltzer? Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Richardson. With the changes in tracking, because of including the antigen testing where you have the positives, we don't necessarily get reports on all the negatives. Are we losing track of positivity? Could you still have a read on where the positivity is rising, falling the same? Yeah, we really are losing track of that. For the reasons we've talked about previously, and in fact, I'm going to go to the Department of State Health Services website quickly, and I'm going to show you what they report as positivity, and I think you're going to see the issue. We don't have, just as you mentioned, you're accurate, we do not have a count of how many tests were performed. Again, we're harkening back to junior high and high school right with our math. We're going to have to know the denominator to know the rate, and we don't know the denominator in Denton County per se. We can get the information from the state, but that is updated every once in a while, and they will add a spike in numbers, so they will have a glut or a surge of total cases reported and total tests run. Well, whenever they do that, it invalidates prior weeks and even months of positivity, and so I'm pointing that out because when that happened to us a couple of times, we were not comfortable with the numbers on our website, and so we just removed them because they just, they lost accuracy. They lost timeliness, they lost accuracy because of the frequent changes, and I will share my screen. This is today's positivity rate on the Department of State Health Services website. I'll just share this quickly. You can see that the state has three positivity rates that they report. They report a specimen collection date positivity rate, a lab test report date positivity rate, and a case report date positivity rate. I would submit that scientifically our opinion is the specimen collection date is the best metric, because a lab test report date, very variable, because that's electronic and that can be computer driven or that can be driven by staffing levels, and in case report date, same thing. Those cases are reported because your communications team was reporting for the day, maybe someone was off. A specimen collection date is a hard and fast date that is tied to every test, but again, that lags. So that yellow line we would argue is probably the most reliable, but we still know that with a glut of cases reported today or tomorrow, that could be spread over several weeks or months and could change that yellow line. So we don't report it. We refer people to this graph and to the Department of State Health Services information because they are the collector of this data. This data is not directly reported to Denton County Public Health. We get it secondarily, just like everyone else from this website. So I hope that helps on the positivity question. Mayor, if I can just ask a follow up. Sure. Thanks. So given that, do you have a sense of are we in the middle of the woods, out of the woods? Has anything changed? What's your feeling for Trent? All the lines that you showed still all looked like a big descent off the mountain, but just to inform us as we make policy decisions, where are we in terms of them? Yeah, it's a loaded question, but yes, we're not out of the woods. Let's say that emphatically, not out of the woods, but we are plateaued a bit. Our hospitalization percentage, again, creeping up. It's not to the governor's threshold. It's not to an alarming percentage. It's not to an alarming rate. But it bears monitoring, which we are. It bears reporting, which we do. But I would say that we're holding our own. Schools are responding very well. I was on a Zoom with Dr. Wilson and DISD and some of his staff members yesterday. I think after this call, I'll be reconnecting with him. School districts are doing their best, but it's a challenge. You'll see campuses, individual campuses getting hit. You will see individual groups, group gatherings being impacted negatively by COVID-19 transmission and quarantine. And yet we see the quarantining paying off, that we can stem the tide of transmission when there are those group quarantine events. And so we applaud DISD. We applaud Denton County ISDs all across the county for complying with that. It's painful. As a father, I've had a child quarantined for two weeks. That child was unhappy. We were unhappy as parents. It's hard. And it's important to recognize. It's hard. And yet that quarantine, none of the quarantined students converted, which was excellent. But what a great effort, because we have been hearing sports teams that quarantine, and then those individuals during quarantine do convert. So imagine if they hadn't quarantined, they'd be at school, again, transmitting active disease. So it works. The epidemiology, the contact tracing, the isolation of a sick case, the quarantine of exposed cases, this works. And it's important. And so we're not out of the woods, but this is working. If we can stay the course, if people can bear wearing a mask, I'm still doing it. I'm still doing it every day in my office. I have yet to see the smile in person of my staff members. I haven't seen their teeth. Don't know if they brush or not. I see it on Zoom, but I don't see in person, because this is an important deal. And we continue to highlight the risk. I looked yesterday, according to our statistics, 7% of people in Denton County who have contracted COVID-19 in their 70s, 7% have passed. That's a big number. It's important. That's not trivial. That's not a statistic anomaly. That's just the fact. And so we highlight that risk, and it's important. And pardon me for my soapbox, but we're going to keep using the megaphone on that. All right. I'm sorry. Thank you very much. And I'm sure your staff are smiling with their eyes. Let's hope so. We're going to take one more question. Council Member Armitage. Thank you. And I hope that if somebody else has a question, they'll be able to ask a question as well. So I wanted to just, first of all, thank you so much for the increase in data and also kind of taking out some of the data or some information that could be confusing not up to date. I really appreciate kind of your sticking to data and science on that. I also want to say just real quick that I appreciate, you're acknowledging that it's hard to wear a mask. It's hard not to see people's smiles. For me, I'm a hugger. It's really hard for me not to hug them. So, and I think it's important that we acknowledge that instead of trying to make it sound like, oh, wearing a mask is super fun and awesome, you know, because it's a pain for me too, but it's a no-brainer at the same time. And when I don't feel like wearing a mask, I stay home and I try to do things from home, have my groceries delivered, et cetera. So anyway, thank you for that. Now, my question, I actually had two questions, but since it sounds like, it seems like I've got just a one question quota, I want to make sure to get the one question in. I'm curious about what you mentioned about the confirmation process at the county level for COVID deaths, because this was something that I really don't know much about, and I have not heard firsthand from families who have experienced it. But, you know, as you were describing it, I'm kind of picturing myself in the point of view of a family who's lost a loved one to COVID. And I'm wondering, and I'm sure that, you know, you're taking all precautions to make sure that you're not, you know, making things harder for families in mourning. But, you know, just curious to know a little bit more about the process and, you know, kind of confirmation that it's not onerous for the families who are grieving the loss of a loved one. Yeah, this is a delicate balance. In public health, we've done this for decades, even centuries, trying to report disease and try to be objective with the science, try to understand progression of illness with a reportable condition. There are over 80 reportable diseases by law to local public health departments. And you're right, this hard. It's difficult because any fatality of any reportable condition can feel invasive and intrusive. And we really don't resort to communicating with the family unless there's no other point of information. So really, that's a tertiary, a tertiary approach for us. We first use the hospital records as public health officials. HIPAA, there is what we call safe harbor provisions in the federal law, meaning that we can request by law through the health and safety code and through the federal law, we can request your hospital records if you had a reportable condition. One of those 80 diseases of which COVID-19 is one. So we can request that documentation to confirm. And so we want the lab report. So a lot of times people call us and say, you know, my mom died or my sister has COVID. That sounds great, but we need a lab test. And so we confirm with a laboratory test, something that's document, again, some of this documented, some of these confirmed. Then we do look for that progression of disease. And I think I've used, it's a tired analogy, but I'll quickly just use it again as a car wreck, someone having COVID-19 in a car wreck, they succumb to mass trauma and not a progression of disease from a virus. So that would be on if they tested positive, because when they're admitted to the hospital, the hospital has a vested interest in knowing whether or not you're communicable with COVID-19. So they might give you a test, but it's not related to your condition, but they're testing you. And anybody that's had surgery or had a hospital procedure knows that they're doing these testing as just a course of treatment. So that can be a secondary and really a red herring on a COVID-19 death. And so we try to negate those and we do. We've done that recently where someone just did not have a demonstrable progression of disease and had an attributable other factor. And a lot of times on the death certificate, it'll have a primary cause and a secondary cause and secondary will be COVID-19 death. Well, the state counts all of those and will attribute any of those death records to Denton County if it was signed in Denton County, and we do not. If you were visiting from LA and you died of a car wreck in Denton County and tested positive for COVID-19, that death certificate happens here. We're not going to count that one. First of all, you got COVID not here. Second of all, you didn't die of it. So there's a couple of ways we would negate that record. So that's the kind of process that we do. The state does none of that. So when you see a statewide number for deaths, they take the death certificate, no investigation, report it for the county. Okay. All right. Do you have a quick follow-up, Council Member Armitage? Well, she froze up. Real quick until she comes back and we'll let her have her question when she comes back. Dr. Richardson, I saw the report for 151 cases. I think it was either yesterday or the day before yesterday. That seems to be higher than... Council Member Armitage, we'll let you have your question. You froze up a little bit. So just real briefly, if there's some explanation of either something was backlogged and they all got dumped, that's great. Just curious. To my knowledge, yesterday was really, it was kind of a routine reporting and there are additional cases. I think over a third of those were those rapid antigen tests. Again, so there's increased utilization of that rapid testing, which is a good thing. And there is an increase in reporting, which is also a good thing. So I think our visibility and our awareness of the COVID-19 transmission and the testing status, we're getting closer to what's really happening as those reports are coming in. And that's a good thing. And there's no backlog to my knowledge. That could change in the future, again, with a dump from the state with reports that we were unaware of. So that's technically possible, but that did not happen yesterday or this week to my knowledge. Okay. So we are seeing that increased activity in those increased cases. Again, it's not what it was in July, but we're seeing that increased activity and it's a concern. It's a concern. I think we're seeing the school, the in-person learning. I think we're seeing the mask fatigue, but the good news is we're maintaining, we're holding our own on infrastructure I think that's good, but we can't let our guard down. And that guard includes a mask and it includes physical distancing. And we just got to stay vigilant on that. Yep. Okay. Councilmember Armitage, go ahead with your follow-up. Thank you so much. So yeah, my follow-up question was just something that you said in the example that you gave, I realized it was a hypothetical example, but it was something about somebody who died in a car wreck who happened to have COVID who was from out of town. I know that's a hypothetical example, but it's the cause of death, correct? That is the fact that the cause of death was the car wreck and not COVID. That would be what would not list that person in the county records for deaths. Whereas if say somebody who was not from Denton who died of COVID in Denton, I would hope that that would be a scenario like that would be listed because that's somebody who, even though they don't live here, they were here and were contagious here. Is that counted or is it only Denton residents? So likely not for the death, but would be for a case. So in what you just described, we wouldn't attribute the death to Denton County, but we likely would attribute that positive because we want to highlight the positive. It's usually the county of residence unless we know that they've been here for an extended period of time and could have again, infected, but county of residence is the convention. So if you test positive at Parkland, Dallas County is not going to report that. We're going to report it because it's county of residence. If you live in a long-term care facility and your permanent residence is in Denton, but you live in a long-term care facility in Dallas and have been there for longer than a month, we would tell Dallas, we believe that's a Dallas case. Does that make sense? And thank you for explaining. It makes sense. I'm not sure if I like that, but it does make sense and I appreciate your explaining that. Thank you. Yeah, that's both the convention and I think it's the best compromise for reporting communicable and infectious diseases and attributing them to that county of residence. So yeah, it's not perfect, but more times often than not, that is the most accurate. And I understand there's no perfect way. Thank you so much. All right. Dr. Richardson, thank you so much for being on with us and taking the time out of your busy schedule to answer some of our questions and give us some good information. And as you said, that information is available if you couldn't give that link one more time to the Denton County website. It's DentonCounty.com/COVID19Stats. And just on our DentonCounty.gov, on the splash page, there's a link for public health and you can see all things public health there as well. So you just have to remember DentonCounty.gov. Fantastic. All right. Good to see you. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you, Mayor and councilmembers, I appreciate your time. You bet. Okay. I'll turn to the presentation. Okay. Okay. So that was the update from Denton County Public Health Department. Just two other quick updates for state and federal. In regards to the state, you did receive this information last week, but Governor Abbott issued a new order last week and that is GA 32. The major difference in this order is that he did allow bars to open at 50% capacity if it meets two conditions. The area must be in a low hospitalization area and the county judge must file the paperwork with the TABC. So Denton County meets both of these conditions. We are in a low hospitalization area and Denton County Judge Andy Eads has indicated that he is filing the paperwork with TABC. So Denton County bars will be able to reopen underneath these regulations. And then there's additional information in terms of what those regulations will be for the bars, including that they must stop alcohol service at 11 p.m. We have received some questions for those bars that did open as temporary restaurants and did receive permission from the state to do so. They can continue to operate as restaurants underneath the regulations for restaurants. So that would mean they're at 75% capacity and they can continue to serve up until past 11 p.m. As far as federal updates, unfortunately we do not have much information to share in regards to negotiations on a subsequent stimulus package. Those negotiations have been ongoing, but reviewing with our federal consultant does not look like anything will take place before the election. On some positive news, our federal consultant thinks that if there is an additional stimulus package later in the year, that it may contain additional spending flexibility for some of the funding that's received by state and local governments, as both the Senate and Congress have shown that in different versions of bills. However, that's all if just kind of doing an outlook, but there has been no further discussions or even kind of some predictions if cities will receive additional direct funding. So definitely more to come. We'll stay in touch with our federal consultant to see if we can learn anything further in regards to federal updates, but not much to share at this time. So I'll take down the presentation if there's any questions on that, otherwise we'll move into the city facilities and programs update. >> Thank you. So what's up with the 11 p.m. deadline for bars? Can you explain that, that bars have to close at 11 p.m.? Is there something about -- and I know that it's a state mandate, so I'm just trying to figure out, is there something that happens at 11 p.m. when COVID gets more contagious? You know, I know that bars, you know, they've got a lot to make up for. I'm really glad that they're open now, but they've got a lot to make up for in terms of revenue. If they're at 50% capacity already, I don't see what the difference is. And again, I know that it's not a city decision, so I'm just asking if the state gave any rationale for that whatsoever. I don't understand it. >> Unfortunately, no more information was shared regarding that. We've heard nothing further in the press conference either. >> Okay. All right. Councilmember Briggs. >> I'm sorry. >> Thank you. In regards to that, the two conditions were low hospitalizations, and I know that we currently meet that, but we just heard Dr. Richardson say that those hospitalizations are ticking upward. Is the governor referring to the 15%? So is that when that threshold would have to be met, so then the judge would have to reevaluate the openings? Are we talking about a different hospitalization rate? >> I believe it is. I'm just going to look to other staff members quick to make sure. >> I'm just looking for something we can keep our eye on to see how that's evolving. >> Okay. There's a little bit more detail to that, so we can provide that in the Friday report. It's not just specific to the county, but I guess in terms of how they group together hospitals in the region overall, so we can provide you a little bit more fine detail to what that means. >> Okay. Well, if it's regional, then that will be different. Thank you. >> So Sarah, a couple questions. On that, whatever that measurement is, whether it's county, regional, on the hospitalization, is it the intent of the governor's order that if that threshold is met, that if somehow you become now part of an area that is not in that low hospitalization rate, is that an automatic rescission of the ability to stay open? I mean, is that, or is there something else that has to happen? But let's say if it's 15%, just for the sake of discussion, and it goes to 18%, does that mean notwithstanding what the county judge does that bars then have to close? I mean, what is the trigger or what are the decisions if you exceed that threshold? And if you don't have that right away, that's fine. You could include that in the status report. >> I do not have that right away. I'd like to confirm before I provide you if it's automatic or if there's a process that it goes through to average days and so forth. So let me provide more information in the Friday report. >> Okay. And then last question is the bars who have converted to more restaurant type of facility, which means that they're selling, how do I want to put that? That 51% of their sales are not alcohol. In other words, the food, if they fall below that, are they then held to the restrictions of the bars? In other words, because I know they had the opportunity to be flexible to do that, but if somehow all of a sudden there's an uptick in alcohol sales that exceeds that threshold, what happens? >> That's a great question. And I know TABC is working closely with those businesses that have gotten a temporary authorization in terms of how they applied for that temporary permission in terms of how they would try to meet that intention of 51% or more for food sales. I'm not sure how they're going to be regulating that moving forward if they're not meeting the 51%. If that means that temporary restaurant provision will be rescinded if they have time to try to adjust their strategy or not. So we can ask that with TABC and try to get more details as well. >> All right. Fantastic. Any other questions on this portion of the presentation? All right. We'll move forward with the rest of the presentation. >> So we'll go into the next part of the presentation, which is city facility and program updates. I'd like to start by introducing Jennifer Becker who will give you an update on the Denton Public Library. >> Mayor and council, this is Jennifer Becker, director of libraries. I want to provide you with a brief update of the library's reopening plans. North Branch Library opened for limited core services on last Monday, October 5th. And South Branch Library is scheduled to open next Monday, October 19th. Both of those locations are early voting sites and so those meeting rooms are open for early voting. They started at 7 a.m. this morning. Emily Fowler Central Library will open in early November. We don't have an exact date for that yet as they are going through a major moving process with shelving and it's loud and not quite safe for patrons to come in for walk-in service there yet. So we're trying to get a date once we have that. We'll post that. Limited core services includes reopening with 50% capacity and we have some new temporary hours while we're going through this reopening process. As the branches reopen, they're going to be open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Once we do get all three branches open, then we will start expanding those hours. And some detail about the limited core services, that includes a 30-minute grab and go browsing and checkout, access to library computers with social distancing on a first-come, first-serve basis, access to limited laptop internet workstation tables with time limits on a first-come, first-serve basis. The North Branch contactless drive-up hold pickup continues to operate Monday through Saturday, 10 to 5. Those hours will expand as the branch hours do expand. That service will continue ongoing. That's always a service that we've offered. As the other branches do open for Phase 3 services, however, that curbside hold pickup will cease at South Branch and Emily Fowler Central Library. Staff is available for quick answers, 3D printing requests and pickup. Patrons can come in to pick up their summer reading challenge prize books. Interlibrary loan services are available. We do currently have some areas and facilities that will be unavailable. Those include study meeting and quiet rooms, the maker space. We pulled off some lounge seating and study tables just to make sure that people are able to socially distance. And those interactive play activities for children and teens are also unavailable. As things do get better, we do anticipate adding those services back. We just don't have an exact date yet. We're keeping an eye on those case counts. As we continue to serve, library staff is available to provide phone or email reference or reduced advisory services. And we continue to serve patrons through our virtual services also. So those are the library updates. Did you all have any questions? >> Thank you, Jennifer. My question is about the North Branch Library. I know as face-to-face extends and there's going to be more kids at Strickland and usually some of the kids go over to the library. Have we addressed that or spoken to Strickland so that the parents know for the kids that there's reduced capacity and that they may not be able to go to the library after school? >> Yes. We've communicated with Strickland regularly throughout this process. And then we, our teen librarian at North Branch communicated with them about our reopening plans. They also shared a social media post explaining the 30-minute quick grab and go service that it's not, we aren't having programs to hang out after school at this time. But we do look forward to seeing them if they want to do the quick grab and go. >> Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Okay. Anyone else? All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. >> So next we have Randy Weinberg with the animal shelter joining to give you a brief overview of their plan. And I'll just pull back up the presentation. She's actually going to be joining via phone. So we'll see if she's on. >> I'm here. >> Hey, Randy. >> So Randy Weinberg, animal shelter manager, and I just wanted to go over our reopening that is slated to happen on Monday, October the 19th. For our adoptions, we have been working with our tech services department on getting the remote entry to our building as well as the Q list software implemented here so that we are able to allow our citizens to come back and kind of give them more options in order to come back. They're not going to have to call it and schedule an appointment any longer. They are able to place themselves in a queue using the Q list software to enter the building. We will be limiting the amount to 10 people in the animal browsing area and that's our front lobby area where our adoptable dogs and adoptable cats are at. This will help us assist us in maintaining the social distancing. And Q list will be able to be accessed by an app on our web page through pet finder and through Facebook links that we share with the public. As far as our animal surrenders, that's either an owner surrender or a stray surrender or a reclaim, those will be done by appointment through the Q list system as well. So residents will just have to log onto the Q list system and there will be time slots on there for them to choose and they'll schedule their time and come up to the shelter and we'll be able to let them in. As always, if residents do find a stray animal out in the community, they can always come drop that off as well. As for our volunteers, we have been welcoming our volunteers back. We are using a scheduling system called VOMO that is allowing them to come in in shifts and we are allowing three to five volunteers between two shifts throughout the day as well as customer service and our area running club volunteers. They responded well to this. They're excited to be back. The employees are excited to welcome them back. We've each missed each other. So we're happy to invite them back in and also make sure that we are keeping the capacity down in the shelter. And as far as our field calls, we are still running all calls for service and our field officers are making sure that they're using the PPE when they're doing the face-to-face interactions. So are there any questions? Any questions? Yes, Councilmember Armitage. I just wanted to thank you for your work with animal shelter during COVID and making adoptions possible even during COVID. I just wanted to also just put in a wording because this is a really stressful high anxiety time for a lot of people. And having a pet, you know, can be proven to -- is proven to reduce anxiety. And so it really can do a lot. I think pets can do a lot to help us under COVID. I also wanted to say just a minor complaint that I always appreciate when in your PowerPoints you put in a gratuitous picture of adoptable pups and kitties. So next time, I would love to see that. But anyway, like I said, that's just gratuitous. So thank you so much for all your work. Thanks. Of course. And thank you. Okay. Any other questions? I'll pull back up the presentation and introduce Director of Parks and Recreation, Gary Packin, who will take you through some updates. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, Gary Packin, Director of Parks and Recreation. I'm going to go through a number of slides and provide a summary of to where we are today, some changes that we're looking at implementing, and then an opportunity to receive some direction from City Council. First I'd like to thank staff for everything they've been working on over the past seven months, working through shutdowns and reopenings and policy developments. And they've really done a great job during COVID. As you can see on the slide, our current operations, we do have facilities and programs operating. In most aspects, they're all modified, whether it's hours or the number of participants. But North Lakes opened in June. MLK opened up just after Labor Day. The Natatorium opened up in August for DISD swim meets. And then just recently, early October, we opened up Phase 2 for some small programming that we're starting to implement. The driving range and tennis center have been open really since the early onset of COVID earlier in the summertime. And then we've had a number of our programs operating on a limited capacity. Obviously, our outdoor spaces were used more than ever. Our parks and trails were a real outlet, you know, along with pets, as mentioned earlier, people taking their dogs out outside and enjoying that the parks have been very important to our community. Some of our other facilities were closed down periodically for a short period of time, but all of those are currently open as well. As part of our COVID challenges, we did put together a reopening plan that we kind of put together back actually in April of this year. And we're starting to slowly reopen and grow programs back to hopefully at some point in time in the future that would be post-COVID numbers. But the one thing we'd like to do is restarting some senior programming. We have had our senior center members and our center members reach out asking for more programs dealing with the challenge of feeling isolated and the lack of social engagement has been a challenge. Our staff has been continued to outreach with our senior center members with conversations online and over the phone and various programs, whether it's virtual programs for bingo. So those types of activities we've continued, but we'd like to do some small group engagement for our senior citizens, some crafts, indoor senior fitness, which our silver sneakers group, we've had specific requests for that. We do have a small group of people that meet in the parks in small activities on their own to try to help with that. But we'd like to institute a walking club, some park cleanups, which are ongoing and just some general outdoor games while the weather is still nice. And the indoor programs we would host at North Lakes Rec Center and MLK through some designated times for them. So they have an opportunity to get back engaged with their friends and enhance that social engagement. And then in the future, we would consider reopening the senior centers, which I'll talk about here in a second. Some changes that we're looking for North Lakes Recreation Center would like to open at 7 a.m. on Saturdays. That's based on the requests from our community. Right now we are operating roughly at 50% capacity at North Lakes based off of our normal operating procedures pre-COVID. We are going to be doing a trunk to treat event at MLK. We typically would have a Halloween event and decorate the facility. But we're going to do a drive through this year where it would be a no touch drive through. People will drive up and then we will put candy in the trunk or the back of their vehicle to provide that opportunity for our residents. Some minor increase in capacity in our group exercise classes. We've been operating at 16% between all of our participants. And we just want to reduce that to 12 feet, still double the six foot limit and allow some more people to get into those classes. And then just some general number of increased programs offered in person as we slowly try to grow participation in our programs. These all follow our return to play plan that we have in place that we shared with you earlier this summer as well as any governor guidelines. From an athletic standpoint per GA 30 and updated as 32, there are no occupancy limits for recreational sports programs. We have been operating under a restriction for tournaments and we'd like consideration from council to change that to follow the governor's orders for baseball. Originally, we had set the limit at 100 people per area that was presented to council. Based off of these new orders, we'd like to eliminate that that capacity limits for baseball tournaments off on tennis. Tennis obviously is a little bit easier to spread out because it's an individual or a double sport. And then we're going to be having a flag football league and a tournament later this year for that type of activity. And then also, we are hosting a number of cross country meets with local DISDs at North Lakes and South Lakes Park. And we're working with those ISDs on their return to play plan and following all the guidelines that's been approved as well as any specific school guidelines that they have. And then from an indoor perspective, as the weather starts to get colder, we'd like to move some of our facilities and programs indoors, especially for soccer, basketball, volleyball and homeschool PE. Again, all following our return to play plan as well as capacity limits and safety protocols that we have in place. Our Bees group, we're doing a number of things virtually. Our Great American Cleanup Volunteer Party, our Texas Arbor Day coming up in November, we're going to have a number of programs that roll out nature classes, as well as some tours for DISD of Clear Creek. We're trying to take as much of that online during this period of time. We do have volunteers working at the Wildflower Garden in Clear Creek in small groups. And obviously with safety precautions there as well. The volunteers are very critical to our operations on a daily basis. And then the one thing that will be coming is our tree giveaway on October 24th. This is kind of the ultimate social distancing, no touch program as it's operated in the past where people line up in their cars, they drive through and then we put the trees in the back of their truck or the back of their car. We will continue doing that. That'll be a no touch program. So it'll be operated so people can still get their trees, plant those trees in their backyard this month and enjoy that for the next 20 to 100 years. Some future additional reopenings. We had originally anticipated the after school action sites to go back online when the schools came back out of the holiday break. That would be January 4th. We would be operating those on a limited capacity. We have had a lot of people reach out to us especially when school started about the need for that program. We're continuing looking at that but we're tentatively penciled in January 4th to restart that program at three locations again at a limited capacity. And if we need to based on registration, we could pull that back to two sites if we did not get a lot of registrations. The Dean Year Recreation Center, we have had a number of residents from that neighborhood ask when the recreation center was going to reopen. Originally we planned at December or January for that facility. From a budget standpoint, we did anticipate reopening in January. There's a number of factors that we look at when we look at taking the next step to open up a facility and that is programming, community need, budget, staffing, and obviously COVID status. So all those aspects are reviewed when we're looking at reopening. We know a lot of people are wanting to get out especially after the first of the year with health and wellness opportunities and New Year's resolutions. So we're looking at possibly opening Dean Year after the first of the year. If we need to, we could modify hours at North Lakes or at MLK and move staff back and forth to try to balance the budget but still have hours of availability for the community to come in and use those facilities. So that's something that we're looking at now to try to balance all of that but still provide that need. The Senior Center is another facility that we're looking at opening in the future. Obviously it's the one facility that we've been looking at opening last because of the vulnerable population and the concerns with that. But as we start some minor programs at MLK and North Lakes, we hope we could grow into that as opposed to opening up a facility and having you know five or 15 people there especially with the size of the Senior Center trying to balance that need. So that's something that we're going to continue working with our seniors and our staff to identify the best time for that to reopen. In all of these three programs we just discussed would all have various modifications that would not be operating at full full steam. Other pending future openings obviously pending governor orders is an editorial phase three that would be the addition of more programming after the first of the year. Pavilion rentals are still drop-in right now obviously with the governors of less than 10 people. We're not encouraging large parties but people can go out there and use it at no cost right now. And then indoor room and facility rentals are something that we're going to continue to look at as well as special events. I know we've had a number of special events that have gone virtually over the past seven eight months and are planning to over the next short term. But as we get back get into the spring of next year we are going to have people asking about special events. So we're working with public affairs on the process to streamline that and allow some of the groups you know example of of the arts and jazz festival. Sorry the arts and jazz festival is a huge event and they plan for that a year ahead of time. And so we need to make sure that we're not throwing things throwing opportunities or challenges at them at the last minute but want to give them the opportunity to prepare with the understanding that the event could or could not move forward based off of current local and state orders. But we just want to make sure that we have a process in place so we're helping them with their planning efforts and then same with rentals. We're looking at starting to take bookings with no deposits again just allow people to plan ahead of time and provide those COVID policies and restrictions to them. But with the understanding that everything is just on a temporary basis until we get the the the notice to proceed with indoor events and outdoor events. So some of the items we'd like to request direction from City Council is our sports programs I'd mentioned earlier with GA 30 and 32. There is no attendance limit for recreational programs for example soccer or baseball. We'd like to have that to be able to host tournaments we did have a number of tournaments go to other communities because of our current restrictions for softball specifically but for baseball, softball, tennis, disc golf, etc. as well as flag football and then the cross-country meets that are meeting right now under the 100 person limit. For programming after school action sites we're looking at the three locations decreased capacity and additional safety precautions would be in place for sure and then Dignia Recreation Center would tentatively open January 4th with modified hours again with all of our capacity governor's orders and our safety precautions in place. Mayor would you like to handle these individually? I have two slides with just some direction we'd like to seek from City Council. So this slide and then another slide on different issues? Yes sir. I know we'll take a slide at a time. So sports programs any objection to removing the limitation per the governor's order Councilmember Armitage? So I've got a massive objection but I know I'm in the minority so I'll just but I'll just make it brief that you know I as a fan of sports is someone who likes to play stuff myself who has you know kids who are athletic or at least one kid who's athletic it's heartbreaking not to be able to play but I think it's really dangerous we see kids getting sick in team sports so I you know I just think it's unconscionable I think it sucks but that we have to I think we have to do it but I just can't support opening up any kind of athletics at this time. Councilmember Briggs? Yes we heard Dr. Richardson say earlier when something like that happens and somebody is positive then everyone quarantines is that the case here with this with the athletics is that something that we require and do we require that that individual test negative before they can return say to the after school program or to the the athletics event? So we've we've had a few instances we've had five over the term of while this has been going on we've had programs up and running one instance was we had an instructor where everyone was social distance everybody was was masked during a program that person was tested positive and they they've gone to quarantine for two weeks and we took the program online and so that was an easy way to handle that situation. We've also had some third party exposures where a family member was exposed but they were on property but they didn't engage with anybody that they were there as a spectator that situation is that the family that was directly related to them they went and got tested and they could come back once they were negative. So there's a number of situations that are handed handled differently and we have all those kind of laid out in our safety protocols and our return to play plan and as we go through those we we look at it and see if there's different ways we could handle things but there's there's so many different alternatives we you know even if we had a a positive test in a program we may shut it down for for a week or until at least they're tested and that comes back positive or negative but we have not had the chance or we have not needed to shut down the entire facility for any reason at this point in time. Okay thank you. Sure go ahead. So I know that we saw a slide earlier about senior center programs but that wasn't on is that on the next slide to talk about? Yes ma'am. Okay I'll hold my questions for that but as far as what was just presented I'm okay as long as those safety protocols are are in place and guidelines are followed 100 percent. All right. Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah I would say in general based on in general let's say that you you make a change if either the environment changed you know like the positivity had kind of gone away or it gotten you know just minimal or if you have a better plan and if what we're hearing is we have a better plan then then I'm I'm okay with that. Okay anybody else? It sounds like is is the sounds like the consensus or I haven't heard at least four wanting to not move forward with that recommendation so we'll we'll move forward with that one. Are they required to are the participants required to sign a covid waiver? Yes sir everybody every one of our participants even people that are participating in a tournament they have to fill those out as well and we just recently put that online to help improve that process so they can sign into our rec one program software like they're registering for a program obviously there's no charge but they have to sign off on that waiver. Okay good deal. All right so let's pull the screen back up and we'll look at the second part of that screen for direction. So is this so the after school was part of that as well Gary? Yes sir. Okay all right. After school action site with three locations decreased capacity of about 30 people and then we could make modifications based on registration. Okay all right fantastic and then we'll go to the next one all right. Second slide is our senior programming as mentioned earlier we'd like to start some some modified senior programs small groups programs will be held at North Lakes Recreation Center and MLK until further notice when the senior centers reopen again small groups crafting needlework trivia those types of programs some indoor fitness for silver sneakers and then also some outdoor activities when the weather is good whether it's walking or park cleanups. We do have people doing park cleanups right now in cooperation with KDB and then we'd continue our senior outreach efforts with our senior conservation hotline. All right if we could pull the screen down we'll get the questions. Council member Briggs. I have a question why I'm okay with the senior programs opening up early I know I have had several calls and emails from seniors that are feeling isolated and they miss their socialization with their friends and that's understandable but why would we if they are a higher level of risk put them in North Lakes or MLK and associate with a lot of other age groups who may not be as careful. I'm going by my mom who said that she is really eager to get back to the senior center but only feel safe at the senior center because she's around people who she feels would be more careful and that the staff would take care of you know of the cleaning more efficiently. So I'm just I'm wondering why we don't open the senior center for specific smaller hours for those groups to go into just so they are more protected instead of putting them into other other facilities. Right that's a fantastic question and it's something that we're trying to figure out the best way to balance. We have our senior center staff working at various recreation centers right now try to balance budget and operations. For example MLK right now is working at 17 percent capacity there are no youth coming into that facility which we get a lot of after school kids there right now you have to be with an adult at this point in time. So we would we would restrict usage in some of the spaces for the the participants at MLK specifically for our senior group. So they would be somewhat isolated within that facility and we don't have a lot of traffic there right now. We certainly could prop open a room at the senior center we're just trying to balance programs and once they get to a certain point they start growing then we would definitely look at moving it to another site. So those are all the things that we're looking at we we certainly could go either direction based off of council's thought process and feel but that's how we looked at it is we're not operating at a capacity right now anywhere close to MLK. So we do have open space in that facility and we could use that for sure and then North Lakes which it's a little bit more it's right about 50 percent capacity. We do have some space in there in the rooms in the back that we could we could put them in and specifically kind of quarantine them back in that space. We do have seniors going to North Lakes right now using the fitness fitness areas as well obviously at their choice but we do clean those facilities on a regular basis with staff so we're trying to do our best to keep up with the cleanliness to the best we can based on our our standards. I'm in favor yeah just follow up. I'm just to clarify so those programs would start pretty immediately and then you're talking about opening the full senior center up in January. So that was the original thought process in January and we're open for discussion you know in COVID years January seems like it's a long time from now. So we would we would take it day by day and try to start those programs and if they're successful then we could you know slowly start to expand and at some point in time make the decision to move things over to the senior center. Okay all right councilmembrometer? Yeah I just want to put a word in just to say I think that councilmember Briggs's idea is a really excellent idea. You know if we're going to have seniors doing these kinds of activities at least I think we should limit them to being around other seniors who are taking precautions and I know that some young people take precautions too but that's an excellent point that I hadn't have thought of. But you know if we can't do that then in fact even if we could I'm honestly still opposed to it. I really do think that that we are not at the point where we should be be having these kinds of activities but if we do I think that that is the way to do senior activities so I really appreciate that idea. Okay anything else? Alright so it seems like the direction is to move forward with that Gary. Okay and then the let's go back to this real quick. So then as councilmember Briggs had mentioned the opening date for the senior senior center you know we'd slowly grow into that type of reopening. It could be January it could be a little bit later based off based off of COVID and health concerns again with modified hours limited scheduling and take those precautions as needed as we're doing with the rec centers right now in capacity based on governor's guidelines as well for indoor facilities. Okay alright is that are there any more presentations for this particular agenda item? Yeah let me go ahead and bring that back up for. Before we get started here let's go ahead and take a five minute break because I think councilmember Meltzer might be having some technical difficulties so let's try to get him back on board and then we'll continue with our presentation on agenda item one agenda item one. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on October the looked at the wrong agenda October the 13th 2020. It is 1 36 we are still on agenda item three a which is the first agenda item in our our work session reports and so we're going to pick up the presentation with housing and utility assistance. Councilmember Armitage do you have a question? Yeah can I just I'm so sorry I thought of a question for Gary during the break. I think Gary I think I saw Gary leave the building. I think he has left already. He did. Okay it was about Halloween I'll follow up with him separately. Okay thank you. Okay I'll take a just three slides remaining just quick update on housing and utility assistance and so this information has been provided in the Friday report every two weeks. It is an overview of the United Way of Denton County's COVID-19 Relief Fund Eviction Prevention Program using the Denton County Cares Act funding. As you can see here over 2,000 households in Denton County have been assisted with over 3.25 million dollars being expended to assist to assist those families. So continues to trend pretty evenly moving forward. Denton County has made one major change to the program moving forward in that families can only receive a maximum of three months of assistance. So that will be a change moving forward in this program. As far as utility assistance Denton customers have been over 1,100 Denton customers have been assisted with over $208,000 and this is since early August this time period of data referenced here. We are still encouraging customers if they're having troubles paying their utility bill to contact our customer service at the phone number listed here on the screen and we will help connect them to available assistance whether that be through the United Way of Denton County or interfaith or talking through with them payment plans or possibly using the pay as you go program where appropriate in the future. So just continuing to push out that messages to our customers. And then lastly in terms of emergency shelter we still have the ongoing alternative shelter arrangement at two hotels. Staff will be recommending to extend the current arrangement for an additional two months of November and December. That cost for those months is included in the city's CRF budget so those using those funds that came from the counties from the county. And we continue to work in partnership with the junction which is the newly combined organization of MKOC and our daily bread as well as Grace like rain to manage these hotels provide services provide case management work on housing for those individuals currently staying at the hotels and that will be a major focus in the next two months. The next two months is to really focus on those housing solutions as well as work with our partners in determining what a strategy looks like post December in terms of shelter some more to come at this time we're still figuring out what will be the recommended strategy and path forward with our partners and also looking at it from a county wide perspective. Due to the amount of funds that we've spent on the hotels we will need to come back to City Council next week to approve the hotel expenditures for November and December as we reach the city manager's authority limit underneath the emergency order so you will see an item on next week's agenda requesting consideration to approve the expenditures for those remaining two months again using the city's CRF budget. And then lastly and just as way of reminder the MKOC shelter is open three nights per week at this time and inclement weather whenever possible they are however very limited in terms of capacity to maintain that social distancing with about 32 beds per night when they are open. So that is the end of the presentation I'll take it down for any questions. Councilmember Briggs. Thank you. My question is because I recently also heard about the the limit of funding per household and I understand why that might be needed but I'm curious at that point when those families have reached that limit do we have any other resources or are they just on their own at that point? They'll have to work with the non-profits so right now the non-profits are still helping with that process so there may be available other funding solutions for them just depending on you know what is out there and available for those non-profits but they would need to work closely with the case managers and those non-profits. Okay I don't think there's like a whole large amount of funding out there at the moment so I was just curious about that and also my other question do we know or have we noticed an increase in encampments since COVID started? That's really difficult for me to answer and it's really hard for us to measure encampments in the first place as they may adjust and move throughout the community but no I would just say you know from our team's perspective we've closely monitored as we have done in the past couple years to ensure there's no health and safety issues as well as balancing that but I don't think we've seen a significant increase in encampments. Thank you. That's a memorandum. Yes so first I'll say when this comes back to us next week about the additional funding for a hotel extended hotel stay through December I will absolutely be a yes for that. I'm strongly in support of that people are really relieved to hear that people in the hotels so I've been trying to trying to spread the word about that. I wanted to ask about the utilities assistance. So the utilities assistance does not cover payment due for credit-based deposits is that correct or not? If you could clarify for that or some somebody staff could clarify for that. Krista Foster I believe is on the line. Yes hi Krista Foster customer service manager. So when we're talking about COVID related funding that's happening through the United Way they are only able to provide funds specifically for utility charges that were accrued during COVID. As far as interfaith ministries you know we have that as part of our agreement with interfaith that they can cover deposits and they will. So you know we are still encouraging customers who would qualify for a deposit to move to a prepaid program and any customer that is being interrupted or has been interrupted we did not charge additional deposits to those customers. We just wanted to make sure that we could get them in touch with us so that we could help them going forward. Okay and so thank you for clarifying so much. I'm thinking about one case in particular of someone who reached out to me but I want to keep them you know the question broad because I know you know it involves policy that applies not just to them. So can you explain why United Way couldn't or why we couldn't count credit based deposits that owed where you know finances are finances are you know everybody's scrapped right no matter what you own money for. So is what is the reason is this a limitation that we're imposing ourselves or is this a federally imposed. No this is a limitation that United Way is under with the CARES relief funding. So United Way so you could explain so this is from United Way or from the feds if you could. It's part of the CARES Act. The CARES Act as I understand it that may be a better question you know for the United Way. My conversations with them that is limitations that are in the CARES Act in the way that they can distribute the funds. Okay thank you so I would love and you know I'm happy to put this in writing probably a question more for legal or legal department that I wouldn't expect them to be able to answer now necessarily but I would like to know exactly kind of what the wording is limiting or rather excluding credit based deposit payments from CARE funding because I know that you know when somebody misses a payment they get charged additional you know in many cases additional credit based deposits and so I'm dealing with the situation now where somebody got a you know one of the one of the nonprofits to be able to pay their utilities but they owe or have been told that they owe additional credit based deposit money that they have to come up with to avoid a shut off and is you know a single parent with kids and connected learning one has disabilities etc etc but I know the situation is not uncommon and so I would really like to know what the language is you know from a legal perspective and if there if there's any possibility that we could include the credit based deposits in that but thank you thank you for answering that question. Okay any other questions? All right the only question I have is this three this limitation of three assistance payments for rent that's a new policy does that mean that that three limit that that limitation of three begins now or if you've had assistance prior to the policies implementation those numbers of assistance would apply and added to the next time you seek assistance to determine if you reach that threshold or not. I believe that applies overall so even in the past I know that they've received some applications now for the fourth month of assistance and recently have had to deny that but we can confirm and include that as well. Okay thank you. All right and Councilmember Meltzer? I imagine this is remote but is there any possibility that the facility out on 288 that some portion of it might be you know habitable and and standing up at some point where it could overlap with the need for the hotel housing and you know might be able to contribute or offload some of that burden on resources for this effort. Sure that'll be part of the overall strategy and timeline moving forward however it will be sometime probably at the earliest summer fall of next year being able to be in that building as we've just signed the contract with the architect and need to go through all of those processes to design and then build out that facility. Okay thank you. Okay any other questions? Seeing none is there any additional presentation on the COVID update? There's not. Okay thank you Sarah appreciate it thank you. All right then we'll move on to agenda item number 3B which is ID 20-284 receive report hold the discussion and give staff direction on a proposed advisory board to the Chief of Police. Mayor and Council, Deputy City Attorney Michael Cronin if you'll recall last week I went ahead and presented to you a draft ordinance for the advisory board you provided some really good you gave some really good feedback so what I did was I took the draft ordinance and went ahead and made the changes that I thought were agreed upon but there's primarily five subject areas that we need at least I need and staff more direction on so what I'd like to do is just go through the ordinance just take my whole presentation probably won't even take five minutes just go through the ordinance I highlighted in yellow the changes that I made and then I have a five page PowerPoint five slides of the primarily five subject areas that we need direction on so that's what I'd like to do so just starting out with the the draft ordinance the first changes is just in the definitions and I just tried to clarify what that meant the definition of city official and confidential information I actually took that out of the city's ethics ordinance just tried to clarify because one of the issues that you brought up was someone not being able to sit on this board so that's why I wanted to define we use the word city official in this ordinance so I wanted to find what that meant same thing with confidential information because there is a provision that I'll show you that talks about a board member could be removed for revealing confidential information so I wanted to define what that is so that's just the first definitions right there it's the only change mayor if you recall you raised a question about the scope and purpose of the board and about the mental health issue and I had mentioned that we're not dealing with the specific mental health of an individual officer so number seven is just a clarification mental health and wellness of police officers in general not of a specific individual officer so I just wanted to make that clarification this is one of the other issues that I'll talk about in a couple minutes there was discussion about the number of members on the board originally there was just 10 there were going to be seven civilians and then three people from the city a representative from the police officers association a representative from the police department and a representative from the city manager's office there was some discussions about whether to add a representative from the second police association and that's part see there so that would increase it to 11 members and then there was also some discussion about whether there should be other members from who are non-voting from other entities such as UNT Texas women's university DISD so I put in part C where the chief could and this would be at his discretion up to a point up to five non-voting members from other organizations and that these people would not be subject to council confirmation and that they could be removed by the chief without cause so that's something that will you folks will need to talk about shortly another question came up about people sitting on this board and I think the discussion mainly was about elected officials but I expanded that to include not only elected officials but someone that worked for the city or even served on a board and this is taken out of the ethics ordinance as well with the two-year provision so you brought that up so I inserted that one of the other questions or issues that was brought up I believe by the mayor pro tem dealt with a confidentiality agreement some other boards around the country do have confidentiality agreements where the members have to sign that not to disclose confidential information they come in to or they learn through their service on the board so I put in a confidentiality provision and it also provides at the last sentence that a violation of this confidential confidentiality agreement would be caused removal from the board and potentially criminal prosecution there are some provisions in the Texas penal code that make it a crime to divulge confidential information that someone learns due to their position so that's one of the issues that I think you folks will probably want to debate removal this was just for clarification that members of the board that are appointed by council if someone is removed a disqualified is with the initial appointment council would have to approve or disapprove a person substituting for that former member wanted to clarify under part B that members who were appointed by the city manager are not subject to council approval so that's just a clarification and the city manager asked me what what would we do if one of the members or two of the members are going to be appointed by the or designated by the association what happens if one of those association members quits or is removed and I put in a provision that the police association that appointed that person shall nominate a replacement to the city manager it's something that really hadn't thought about when I wrote this so that's that provision about the association's replacement one of the big issues that came up that you discussed was whether or not this board is going to be subject to the open meetings act and under the city code section two dash twenty nine H council specifically stated that board city boards commissions and committees are subject to the open meetings act I'll just cover this right now since you've put that in there one of the issues you'll need to decide is whether or not you want this board and commission to be subject to the open meetings act there was some discussion about going into executive session a closed session that this board could do that however council has decided that the open meetings act is going to apply for procedural issues and going into closed session is one of those procedural issues I don't think you can just pick and choose which parts of the law are you going to apply and not and also take into consideration that one of the suggestions or recommendations from this board was transparency and if you're going to allow this board to go into closed session when other boards and commissions can't then that's going to hinder the transparency and it's going to create distrust so that's another issue that you folks will need to discuss and those are just the highlights of the changes that I made based on the conversation yesterday what I'd like to do is just pull up Sarah do you want to let me pull up the PowerPoint it's only five slides yeah Michael I do have a question before you do that a couple of things one is on the if you could go back to the well there's language where you talked about the entire city council or the entire council approves or removes I would like to maybe see that it requires approval of or some words like that because entire makes it sound like that it's a unanimous decision and it may not be a unanimous decision because I think these things these individuals will be voted on individually as they nominations come forward so I just I want to make sure that that can't be misinterpreted as that it's a that it's a seven oh vote for either approval or just or removal you're absolutely right and I will make that change okay and then just want to pull up the PowerPoint thank you so this PowerPoint is only five slides yeah and I've looked at if well what we'll do is we'll probably because I don't think these five issues are interrelated per se so I think we might could handle these in order as you present them you know we can get direction and if there's somehow some overlap we can deal with that but I think you've broken them down into five particular different ranges of options okay great yeah so the first issue really is the board composition as I mentioned originally it was just 10 voting members seven citizens three appointed by the city manager so that's one option the other one that I you folks had brought up was 11 members and then maybe some additional ones so just kind of open it up to you as far as you folks determine what you want the composition there's choice a there's choice b but you may have an option c that you'd like to consider all right yeah if we could pull that down and then we'll take discussion all right discussion who let's go with first one of the issues is the inclusion of the other board now if someone could and councilmember Davis or Michael help me understand so our Denton police officer association I think councilmember Davis you said you made a distinction between the two associations one was I'm going to use the term legal but that's I think a term of art as as used in this discussion and one was not somebody helped me understand really what that means and I'll be happy to do it the under chapter 143 the city has to recognize a single entity is the representative of the bargaining unit for meet and confer purposes and that is the Denton police officers association there is another association but they have no legal status to sit down and negotiate with the city so that's why initially I just put in the recognized agent for bargaining purposes but you can certainly put in another association member from the other organization if you want to Todd is the chief available for this on this call yes he's he's actually here okay good yeah I had a couple questions for him on this in this regard just to try to get some facts and then we can I see councilmember Briggs we'll get it right here in just a second hey chief how are you doing good to see you again as far as that particular issue on the composition I'll just ask you both questions why I'm why we're here there's there's an option of just going with the 10 as we'd originally was originally proposed and then there's one adding an officer from the other association and then allowing you to add I guess members from the other police departments I think maybe within the community UNTTW maybe or somebody from DSD just your thought real quick thoughts on either one of those pros and cons or however you would like to describe it or if you don't have to comment at all if you don't want no absolutely thank you for the question I was planning on actually recommending to the city manager that we do add someone from the DMPA there's somebody already have in mind for that role and as far as getting other people other departments from agencies here within the city I think it'd be beneficial for one we're all policing the same community and the things that we're getting the feedback that we get from this board would serve all of us well I believe because we're all charged with keeping the same community safe so I see some great benefit to both of those okay all right great I appreciate those comments councilmember Briggs I was I was just going to say that I was in favor of adding the other association they both advocate for their members and I think it's it was important to have both represented okay all right any other questions for the chief at this point councilmember Armitage yeah I just wanted to thank you for that it's I think it's really important to include both okay all right is there so we basically got a choice between option A and option B option B being the the larger advisory group with the additional individual from the second association and also those additional representatives that are non-voting members from the associations that the chief would would have sole discretion in appointing or selecting councilmember Briggs I have a question about quorum so I know that it's it's hard for when you get the larger groups it's harder for everybody to meet and sometimes meet quorum so if you have the is it just based on the voting members and not the non-voting members so no matter how many other individuals are added it would be on the is it 11 yeah I'd have to defer to city attorney on that one the answer that question is going to depend on whether or not the certain representatives are non-voting members or actually voting members so assuming all of them are and there's 16 I think like under option B then a quorum would be nine of those 16 members well I believe the proposal was that five of those members there's total 16 11 would be voting and five non-voting so you're saying the quorums based upon those who have voting capabilities exactly so that would be six okay all right the others would be treated as ex-official members not to be constant not be part of the quorum okay six and unless you wish to change that that decision is before you as to how you want to set that right okay thank you so is the quorum requirement based upon the being subject to the Texas Open Meetings Act or is it due to some other policy or procedure that we have locally or is it strictly like if we say this this advisory committee is not subject to that then does the quorum issue come up or we have to maybe put it in there because there's nothing regulating a quorum the Open Meetings Act only requires a quorum of the members to transact business you set what exactly that quorum is okay okay good all right okay so we're still on option A and B Council Member Meltzer for the makeup of the committee yeah just to cut to the chase I would be for B with the quorum requirement being on the voting members okay all right any objection to that anybody have an objection to that and it's my understanding that the chief selects the non-voting members and these the two respective associations appoint those members of course possibly in consultation with the chief is that correct yes yeah I think that's what the chief said he's already talked to them okay all right okay all right so we have direction on that one which would be option B for the first set of the five policy questions okay thank you the second one is the qualification option A is that there is no time period that you you can serve immediately after separation from the city option B is the two-year requirement pretty straightforward or something different if you want to okay all right any I think the it sounded like last time there was a strong consensus for option B which is to basically make it the same rule as we have for other particular boards and commissions that are subject to I think is the ethics ordinance but any objections to option B which is any objections okay seeing none all right councilmember Briggs no objection just a question are there any limits or guidelines or rules on who serves on this on this advisory board and if they can serve on other city boards at the same time the ordinance itself has the qualifications and disqualifications for serving on it I don't know the answer maybe the city manager the city attorney does about whether you can sit on more than one board at a time well I think in some of them you can but I didn't know if this one was under that in general councilmember Briggs nothing prevents a board member of one board from serving on another there is an exception for one or two boards in the city I can't recall those off the top of my head but the general rule is they're not prohibited from serving on more than one board I think the ethics board may be one of them right yeah it's planning and zoning and I think it's the board of adjustments which are legislative in nature in other words they can but but yeah and we could get some clarification on that and then we can decide do we want people who are serving on this board to serve on other boards so I mean that's that's something I think within the purview of the city council okay so it sounds like option B is what yes councilmember Davis sorry I was just flipping back and forth comparing a couple of different things I think our definition of city official in this draft ordinance is more expansive than the definition of a city official in the ethics ordinance we've kind of been talking about them like they're side by side but the ethics ordinance you're talking about zoning board of adjustment P and Z and the council all the kind of quasi judicial rule making power boards this one is talking about all boards and commissions so if I've got a real good appointee over here on the animal services advisory board and I want to transition them over to this board they would be a former member of that board and would not be able to serve on this one for two years so I'm a little concerned that what we talked about last time was mostly centered around former council members and maybe we want to include you know P and Z or zoning board of adjustment those kind of kind of super boards as well but I think we mostly talked about council members I don't know that we want to you know the hundred or so folks who serve on them on the city board or commission I don't know we want to exclude all of them from possible service that if that makes sense good observation your customer monitor I can't tell if you're raising your hand or not go ahead I'm not sure if I understood so please correct me councilmember Davis if I didn't understand but you know but it sounded like you were saying that you wouldn't want to exclude people who serve on other boards and committees from serving on the oversight board is that correct yeah that that's it in part it's that we have a broader definition of city official and the people we'd be excluding from serving for two years under this ordinance than what we call a city official over in the ethics ordinance which is a little bit more narrow definition the other thing we just kind of talked through with was kind of dual service so you could be qualified to serve on this board if you're currently on a city board or commission but you wouldn't be qualified if you stop serving on that city board or commission and now we're in your two year cooling off period so I just kind of want to look at that language a little more closely got it yeah so I think we yeah I think we should make sure that we've got consistent language on that across the board you know I myself for what it's worth I don't think that people should be able to serve on two city boards or committees of this nature at the same time you know within this category at the same time simply because we've got so much so many people in this city and such a need for diversification but regardless of even if we have disagreements on on that I do hope we can get consensus on having you know consistency across the board on on on the definition of that so councilmember Davis you're saying that city official in this ordinance should mimic city official definition in the ethics ordinance that would resolve the issue that you at least you're discussing right now I think that it would we'd have to know that if we do that if we mirror what's in the ethics ordinance we're excluding department heads and city manager or former we're excluding city council members former we're excluding former PNZ members and we're excluding former zoning board of adjustment members I might be missing one in there so as long as that's what we want to do then that's the language we want to to mimic if we if we really just want to exclude former council members then that's what we need to do we need to make it as we need to say what we want to say okay yeah so that that's what you're saying is why did we I mean it seemed the discussion was primarily about former council members serving and therefore when the draft ordinance came forward it sort of caught in the net all these other individuals and if our intent really was just to exclude council members then we could be a little bit more explicit in in drafting that councilmember Briggs yeah I would I would agree with that I thank you councilmember Davis for bringing that up I don't think our intention was to if we had someone we thought that was fantastic serving on a board would be to eliminate them for two years if we wanted to move them to another or a new board so however we can adjust the wording in that and if it is specifically we don't want other council members to serve for two years and we should just say that just say it okay your councilmembrometer I thought I saw your hand up no I'm sorry I was just nodding in agreement okay all right so let's take that issue up well that's part of the issue is do is there a consensus on the council to limit the two-year prohibition to council members or or in this case former council members and they'll figure out the wording for that and basically allow others to to serve even simultaneously on another board is are there any objections to that okay seeing none of no objections then we'll make that that modification to that thank you councilmember Davis the next issue was the purpose and scope of the board and the first first option is just limiting it to police department issues related to response to resistance use of force bias based policing and all the other issues there in the ordinance that directly tie into that mental health those types of things and then the other option that councilmember Meltzer had raised was do we want to expand that beyond beyond that to maybe create another public a different board public safety community relations board and maybe to even expand it beyond the police department but just the fire department as well so it's really a question of do we want this board scope to remain basically use of force councilmember Meltzer yeah I've actually you know had some conversations well with the chief and had an update on some issues with fire and my own thinking has evolved since that slide was drafted the major point in my mind is that the long-term goal of all this in my mind should not be just that the police are policed but that we have good community relations between the community and the police that they're that they're welcome and trusted and that their welcome presence that they are and are seen as a positive force i think that should be the long-term goal what i what i wasn't aware of was that there's another body that exists i just i wasn't aware that there's a training advisory board now that has representation from you know the various kind of similar constituencies that are represented on the use of force committee and i think that's maybe a better fit for the community engagement type of topics so i think you know i i'd be interested to know if other members agree that that's the larger goal and that if you know community engagement can be pursued through that training advisory board that i'm fine with letting this just focus on you know the kind of item a well just one more thing briefly if i could matter on the fire piece uh you know there was a sort of persistent issue with recruiting that made it feel like it kind of fit with this but i look forward to council getting an update uh along the lines that i've just kind of got a glimpse of that apparently in the current environment recruiting is way different right now than has been in quite a while for fire so i'm content to kind of you know leave that aside okay all right so what i'm hearing is um from your perspective you don't have an issue with removing option b off of this slide that we can keep the use of force uh scope uh contained within what the use of force scope was originally as it was planned as the committee made the recommendations uh you know and you know i think we should have as a goal a very active community outreach engagement function that could be you know pursued through that other body the training advisory yeah that's that's a that's a whole different discussion that's not really posted for this particular one on what is the scope of that and i think that i think the training committee i don't want to get outside of the scope either so um we hear you thank you yep yep you bet okay uh yes council member armander yeah i just want to say just for what it's worth you know i i think it's really important that this committee focus just on the police department you know i understand that uh the fire department and the police department are lumped together a lot in the category of public safety but i my personal opinion is that it sometimes ends up doing a disservice to both departments of course they work together a lot um but you know like all departments here all number of city departments work together but have different needs different budgets uh and so i think it's a disservice to both departments to have the same oversight board for these two slightly they're they're concentric circles there's a slight overlap but there's a lot of difference i think it's important to respect that difference any objection to option a which was the original scope that was uh proposed but in the recommendations of the the committee's report all right seeing that that's what we'll go with is option a which was those list of roles and responsibilities as you enumerated in the ordinance and the fourth fourth issue is just whether or not this board is going to be subject excuse me um to the open meetings act uh city code section 229 says all citizen board commissions and committee shall comply with the procedure requirements of the texas open meetings act so uh do you want to excuse me exempt this board from that um as i mentioned that they're doing that could raise transparency issues and why is this board being treated differently than other city boards but so that's that's up for discussion okay i have a question uh the training the training committee that council member melzer referenced in the police department i forgot what the name of it was is that subject to the texas open meetings act i mean is that is that purely a an internal committee and if so is it i mean because i don't remember appointing anyone to that committee i'm just trying to understand are there some committees we have that are not subject and some that aren't and are and if so what's the difference between them to help give us some guidance in this discussion and i'll let the chief address but that's an that's a department internal committee it's not a committee appointed by council okay all right she said that that that probably answers it for me yeah and it's probably not subject to the open meetings act is my assumption no okay yeah all right okay that helps council member melzer i think i saw your hand up is that somebody's hand was up i might and i i'm uh just curious to understand in in actual practice what the difference would be between the two paths like we're subject to texas open meetings act but we have closed meetings and it's and they're for specific reasons one of the reasons is personnel matters and council member davis commented last time it's probably 90 of what this body would do but nevertheless you know would that be inconsistent with being under toma if they were under toma and 90 of the time in closed sessions because they're doing you know employment related personnel issues the the exceptions for going into closed session would apply equally to this board as they would to any other board we'd have to find one of the exceptions that would apply and again this the purpose of this board wasn't so much to address specific officers conduct it was more in general if an officer is suspended or fired or demoted that information is public and if it was related to use of force i think that probably would be appropriate to discuss that in a public session but i do think this board could only go into closed session just like any other board could and again what would be the reason or the justification for exempting this board from all other city boards i'm sympathetic to that argument but can you address just what would the practical differences be and what they would do between option a and option b if one were the case or the other yeah no i i can take a stab at that and the difference is that under option a if you exempt it it's going to be there's going to be no requirements as to how it conducts the meeting and so they can just simply gather less than 72 hours notice to meet and discuss these issues that's the the the effect i know that that was something that this council decided years ago not to allow that practice but to be more formal following to atoma procedural requirements so that the public knows when this group is meeting or any group any city boards and commissions are meeting but we sometimes if there's uh you know a an emergency of some kind we can meet without notice wouldn't that apply to that this board as well emergency meetings if you meet the the toma requirement you can have a meeting in less than 72 hours that is correct but that is very limited into into two specific circumstances that are usually difficult to meet usually given the scope of what they would be dealing with we would have plenty of time to plan the agenda and not have to rely on an emergency meeting there's no authority that's given to them decision ultimate decision making authority it would require an emergency meeting okay thank you councilmember davis i have a couple of concerns my concerns are not so much about transparency although we talked about that quite a bit last time that we want this group to be able to deal frankly and speak frankly with the chief and advise him frankly without uh like we talked about lawyers with their legal pads sitting on the sidelines writing everything down but the other part that i'm concerned about is that the two exceptions we might imagine this committee using to go into closed session might be consultation with an attorney or personnel matters we use those terms really broadly but they're actually written very specifically in toma so would this body be consulting with an attorney that is advising that attorney excuse me that is advising his client um we meet with our attorney to get advice and to be concerned to consult consult with them we have boards that make decisions that do that this board doesn't make decisions are they consulting with an attorney or are they talking to an attorney are they hearing from a city attorney on their opinion i think that'd be open to interpretation the one i'm a little more concerned about is personnel matters if you look at toma i think it's uh section 551.074 it's talking about deliberations on personnel matters where you're talking about appointment employment evaluation reassignment duties those are all things that they're advising the chief on but they're not really deliberating on making decisions on those things so i would be concerned about if we made it specifically subject to toma and then this committee went into a closed session an executive session to discuss a quote-unquote personnel matter broadly i would be concerned that in a potentially litigious environment that surrounds these situations somebody would challenge that closed meeting and there we go with another cause of action involving the city so maybe i'm over lawyer yet maybe i'm overthinking it but i think we invite more problems with making it broadly subject to toma than and just saying that that it's subject to toma then deciding what it is that we actually want them to do with transparency or what we what we want to be transparent or what our specific concerns are rather than just saying it slides under toma because toma is not written for this kind of board it's written for city councils it's written for pnz it's written for county commissioners courts not for police chief advisory boards council member breaks um what about our other advisory boards that we have are they they toma but they don't go into a closed session like the the animal advisory board or the parks board or any other advisory board most boards don't have a reason under toma to go into closed session that the business they conduct just doesn't lend itself to one of those exceptions right so um as council member davis said if we were to apply toma to this um the open meetings act to this board they wouldn't likely have any uh reason to go into closed session um when you really read the uh reasons if i'm hearing him correctly i will let council member davis answer that question i think that was directed more towards him sure that's what you're hearing me say i'm not saying that reasonable minds couldn't differ or that an argument couldn't be made that uh the personnel exception could apply i'm saying it's subject to debate and it's open to interpretation and i'd hate for that debate to happen in the middle of a potentially litigious situation where parties are already thinking about what they do at the courthouse council member melt uh i think council member armator did you have your hand up after council member briggs yeah it's it's all right i'll skip it okay all right council member melzer well i you know i have uh just more of a question for other members uh especially council member davis and i'm hoping in the discussion i'll get some ideas too but i think the objective is uh for this whole um effort to to stand for transparency and accountability and so i'll take your point that you know maybe the best way to do that is not the easiest you know the closest tool at hand you know telma because it's got the word open right in it but what you know i guess i'm asking what suggestions can you offer that would address transparency and accountability what what do we want to be transparent and accountable about because i hear saying that we like those two words but also that for them to really be constructive we've got to do it in closed session so what can we be transparent and accountable about you know in this process i don't have the answer yet myself but i think that's the right question okay uh councilmembrometer yeah i i completely agree um i think i think telma is our best resource and uh it is and for the sake of consistency too we have other boards that have committees that apply to telma so i think actually you know for the same reason that we want the same kind of standard definitions uh across the board we should also have telma across the board mayor pro tem yeah i'd like to see if we have consensus i don't think we're going to resolve this today i mean one level of transparency another level of transparency i mean i think it's good as is i think the chief has said he wants to have uh concise conversations uh with this group that he does not have those uh restrictions and and we could get that feedback and then that feedback and that transparency is born out of those discussions it brings forth a community aspect that then the chief implements or staff implements uh and so for me i think there is just you can't have it both ways you can't have a candid conversation with full transparency because the the situation doesn't allow it and if we have four uh that are in consensus we can move forward and it can always be tweaked but we're not you know transference is a broad term and so is it 3.5 transparency is it level 10 transparency you know i just think we need to move forward get started and we can manage it as it moves forward but we had this conversation last week we're back having it again uh that's just my thought so question on um on toma like okay so let's say let's just sort of go down the the the path of it's subject to toma that means there has to be an agenda created has to be posted 72 hours before the meeting um so we also know that there's there's uh amendments that have been made to toma regarding public input that there has to be you know an opportunity for public input at these agendas is that am i correct on that you know i mean because we we've had to sort of have some discussion about that within our own body on certain types of uh you know opportunities so that's the i don't know if transparency and toma are i don't know that the argument is if you don't have toma you don't have transparency if you do have toma you do have transparency i think that that's the concern that what we seem to be having is perceived perceptually some colliding interests the interests of transparency in the public and the interest of having a board that the chief can have candid conversations with that those board members at least as the ordinance sits right now if it's not changed are uh held to a standard of confidentiality which if you're going to have a meeting in public that you can't go into closed session about things that you still want some personnel matters aren't the only thing you might want to have some confidentiality about i mean there might be some other discussions and so if we're going to make it subject to toma then we've got to really look more closely at that confidentiality term and provision in the ordinance because i don't think that that's i don't think that's going to apply i mean we ourselves as this body removed a criminal penalty for confident for a breach of confidentiality from closed sessions in our local rules and procedures a few years back so it's it's a matter of let's not get toma confused with if if you got toma you have transparency if you don't have toma you don't have transparency um but yet because toma really provides a structural framework of a meeting and also what you can and can't do behind closed door toma says every meeting is public every meeting is public unless you meet the exceptions so i think what we're wrestling with is what is the real purpose of this advisory committee you know what is the real purpose that we've that we charge this these these members of our community with to come forward and i know that they would all stand in agreement that hey it needs to be as transparent as possible to effectuate the the the higher uh purposes of the committee that is it's really just to advise the police chief on matters of use of force in those seven things that we put or eight things or ten things or however many there are in the ordinance so um i think i'm with council member or mayor pro tem it's pretty because if it's subject to toma that doesn't mean that it's sort of by um that means it's strictly subject to toma and the same penalties that a toma violation presents am i correct in that michael if we say this is subject to toma and if the committee meets and they violate a provision of toma then that then that committee and those committee members and anyone associated with it are subject to the penalties that are prescribed in toma or not or do we just say these are the rules you're going to abide by but with none of the penalties i'll answer that question michael uh mayor that question was answered back when we amended the 2-29 what we specifically said there are all our boards and commissions especially the advisory ones are not subject to the penalty provisions it's only those that have quasi-judicial rulemaking authority which is going to be the council pnc zba board of ethics that actually make final decisions those are the boards under state law that are subject to the penalty provisions your advisory boards that are strictly advisory that are not where you're not rubber stamping their decisions are not subject to that and that was the amendment that we that the council made back in 2019 to make that expressly clear and that mirrors state law yes okay all right okay well in mere state law that they're not subject to the penalty provisions this council still wanted them to follow the procedural process which is posting the notice allowing the public to attend public comment etc okay so this is my direction uh we can always this is a new committee we don't know exactly how it's going to work i think uh in the in the interest of consistency to make it subject to toma at least at this point and then if they get into situations where they find it very difficult the chiefs uh if it gets frustrated by the purposes and it somehow it can't effectuate the purposes that this committee was intended to do uh then we can take another look at that of course then it's probably harder to remove that than if you just don't do it and then you you overlay it uh in the beginning so i i'm gonna i'm gonna withdraw my my comment because i think it's it'd be much harder to take that away than to add it uh council member melzer oh let me go with council member ryan let me go with council member ryan he hasn't spoken i don't think council member ryan have you have you said anything during this whole meeting yet i'm just curious okay go ahead council member ryan well i guess my thought on it is you people are asking why this is different than other boards and why we might be treating them differently is all the other boards either are subject to our ethics ordinance and have final decision making power or they advise this council there this this board is going to be advising the police chief and that's where the difference lies is that there are certain things that he at his option should be able to to have that frank conversation that maybe is not as easy to do when it's 100 open to the public and come back out and explain my reasons afterwards but i do think that he needs to have some leeway because when you're talking about policing procedures there are some things that sometimes do need to be held a little more confidential you don't want the the criminals to know which pot you put the key under um so you know i would probably say i'm i'm in line with uh mayor pro tem and council member davis okay council member melzer and i'm not quite sure what line they're in but we're going to ask you in just a moment go ahead council member melzer well i think you know we're in an interesting spot here because you know we're sort of uh seems we talked our way into a response to this whole effort where it ends up being not really having any formal authority it's advisory and it's not visible it's private and eventually it's and it's sort of nothing but i think that that it's possible to remedy that because i you know i also don't want to make it not useful you know i'm supporting this because the committee recommended it because the chief said he thinks he would find it useful so i want to make sure that he does but how about if we uh at least build in i'm open to discussing what the period should be just a periodic report app to council while this is still new on any you know evolution in use of force observations and policy you know maybe it's maybe eventually maybe it starts out uh quarterly or semi-annual maybe eventually it's annual and then maybe it doesn't become so urgent but that's the idea that uh that okay the chief can get all this community input his own thinking may evolve he's getting advice uh and then periodically he shares with us you know uh what what his thinking is on whether there are any needed changes and it's just at this point while it's a very live issue you know that we have a little more active dialogue so that gives it some measure of exposure to the public so okay and i appreciate that councilmember melzer i thought in the ordinance there was a periodic reporting mechanism and so my my question for you councilmember melzer is if if there is that reporting mechanism to the council i.e. ergo the public are you more comfortable with at least on the outset not making it quote unquote subject to to toma as long as there's that reporting period that we can determine what it is that comes to the council and then it's obviously out in the public as well yeah yeah that's exactly what i'm saying now what uh and i'm sorry i didn't catch that uh uh perhaps we can hear what that what that provision is with that yes we'll go over that here in just a moment i want to recognize councilmember davis and then we'll get what that reporting uh interval is there are subsections nine and ten and the board reports on two different occasions there's when they're asked to when the police chief uh solicits recommendations from them and at the end of the meeting their recommendations are reduced to writing but as it's written right now that report is subject to the open records act the public information act and so that would conceivably be published either on a website someplace wherever they choose to disseminate it but if somebody wanted to ask for it it would have to be made available it's specifically that report is in the way the ordinance is written now specifically required to be released and then subsection ten is uh the police chief is supposed to give kind of a state of the union once a year on what the board is doing and its work uh the things he's put before the recommendations um he's also supposed to or anyone in that chief's role under the ordinance is supposed to respond to each of those recommendations publicly and say well i took this one i didn't take that one uh here's what we're doing with this so i i think i think if we do two things if we require agendas to be posted say they're going to talk about this at such and such a date don't make them public meetings but then stick with those reporting requirements that we have i think that gives us the transparency that at least i think i'm looking for is we the public knows who's on the board they know what they're doing what their role is they know what they're meeting about and then at the end of the meeting they know the conclusions and the chief's response to those i think that's already baked in there if we just go from telma requirement blanket to the agenda of posting requirements if that makes sense okay so what we're going to do now is we're going to ask for a direction we're not taking a vote but we're going to ask for direction on how each council member uh would land on their uh direction for subject to telma or not subject to telma given the reporting requirements that are currently in the ordinance and if we need to talk about that we can do that but i want to just get a base idea of where we are in that so i'm not going to call on each of you individually i just ask that you you know volunteer volunteer your your direction and then we'll i'll call on those who are reluctant councilmember melzer yeah i i think it's pretty palatable uh scantz member davis you know laid out and i appreciate the close read uh but i would suggest that for now that we start out with semiannual report out because it's you know we could get more comfortable over time and reduce that okay all right okay who would like to volunteer their direction next mayor protem uh issue three option a as written okay and that is what i don't have the slide in front of me yeah yeah no so just making sure uh advisory board to police chief scope limited response resistance use force based policies and issues directly related to topics so it's not the additional if i'm looking at the right issue yeah thank you no i think we're on i think we're on the fourth slide is that it yeah we're on the fourth slide which is is the is the uh committee subject to toma or not okay so not subject to toma is yes gotcha yes you're right so i slid down number four and it's option a uh not subject to toma okay mayor protem would you be amenable to uh there's only a one year a reporting once a year uh from the chief would you be amenable to maybe just twice a year in the beginning stage yes because i think the chief said that i mean from memory i think he said he committed to two anyway i mean i don't i mean from yeah that's not a problem okay all right uh so uh who would like to volunteer their their thoughts next councilmembrometer yes uh so i am for having it having toma apply to this committee i think the in fact i know the purpose of this committee is police oversight and oversight is about transparency and so i think it's it looks like a red flag an unnecessary red flag because i don't think we have anything to hide in the creation of this committee but it certainly looks like it when when we are shutting off toma so i think that's a real problem if we don't include if we don't make it susceptible to toma in the same way that our other advisory boards and committees are okay all right who else all right i'm gonna have to count i'm gonna start calling on pay councilmember briggs so on councilmember davis on your suggestion was it that the um agenda would be uh created and and posted uh for that level of transparency for that level of we're we're getting together we're going to be discussing this yeah basically just the agenda and posting requirement out of toma or our section was at 229 okay yeah i would be comfortable with that okay councilmember ryan yeah i'm i'm comfortable with councilmember davis and melter's combination of uh adjustments to it okay uh who else um am i councilmember davis i presume and i'm assuming those are with the the semi-annual reporting conditions okay yep okay you're okay with that councilmember davis yeah i like that and i like the uh the semi-annual that's a good that's a good compliment okay uh and and i'm okay with that i do want to say uh that and this may just be a nuanced word smithing but this to me this committee is not an oversight committee it's an advisory committee and so we can all have our different perspective of what its function is but based upon at least everything i've read in the report and what their roles and responsibilities are so um i just i just need to make that statement clear for the public from my perspective so it sounds like that based upon the the direction that at least for now uh we're not going to make this advisory committee subject to toma outside of the posting requirements uh but that doesn't prevent the chief from being as transparent as he would like to be starting out with two reports on a semi-annual basis and if he has things come up that he needs to uh discuss with the council report to the council i.e. therefore the public i feel very confident that the chief is more than willing to do that and will do that so uh okay so we got four we've got one more just so i'm clear mayor uh when i'm rewriting this do you want me to say that this is not subject to toma but put a requirement in there that the chief will post the agenda and at least 72 hours in advance yes okay all right and yes there's one more slide and the last one is just about the confidentiality and as we mentioned this board is not going to be reviewing internal affairs investigations that did not result in discipline the committee didn't recommend that but they may have access to other information such as medical information uh criminal history information uh so the question is going to be there it's perfectly fine for them to discuss that with each other or with the chief but they can't then go home and start discussing it at the dinner table and that those types of things so uh does the council want no confidentiality agreement that someone's required to sign before they are appointed or after they're appointed to the board or do you want one where they do have to sign such an agreement and if they violate it it is cause for removal from the board the possible criminal prosecution uh ultimately that would be up to the the county attorney whether they wanted to prosecute someone for that but so i guess it's really do you want confidentiality and do you want the clause about cause for removal okay all right councilmembers councilmember davis i i like option b i think people need to know up front the kind of material they're going to be looking at and what the expectations are um you know every situation is going to be different uh the way things may be revealed by members in the future if they did just make that poor decision may be different from case to case um what their motivations are what they reveal all that kind of thing but i prefer option b okay councilmember breaks just to clarify i thought in our last discussion that confidential information wouldn't be available to this committee there's different kinds of confidential information they will not be getting the internal affairs investigations that are confidential under chapter 143 but there may be some other information uh such as someone was arrested and you know there's a video or something and then in this discussion and a use of force no no internal affairs complaint has been made yet but it's high profile it's on the news and the chief may feel that he needs feedback from this committee so he may want to discuss with them the criminal history of this person let's say for example or the nature of their injuries they went to the hospital they got certain kinds of treatment so uh they they may get certain confidential information but it won't be anything that's confidential under chapter 143 okay then b is fine okay all right anybody object to be all right seeing none uh then option b will carry the day on that and i believe is that bring us to the conclusion of at least those those five points yes sir and the intent is to come back we're posted for an item for individual consideration next week uh my hope is to bring you back a final uh version that council can vote on those are the five issues that that i identified from conversation last week unless there's some other something else in the ordinance that council would like to address and and we'll change the entire council to some type of just approval on the initial yeah and everybody's okay with the general aspect of mental health not officer specific okay all right okay i appreciate it then we will move on to our next agenda item let's take about a five minute break and then we'll move on to agenda item three uh three c i believe it is yes welcome everybody welcome back to this meeting of the denton city council on tuesday october the 13th 2020 it is 305 pm we are now moving continue to move through our work session reports we are on agenda item 3c id 20-1470 uh review a report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding an overview of the previous february 25th 2020 council work session federal and state civil rights law summary of a recent supreme court decision regarding employment matters and research of comprehensive and non-discrimination ordinances good afternoon mayor city council sara kechler chief of staff and says the mayor just read on the caption this work session is a follow-up from the february 25th city council work session where we reviewed federal and state law in regards to civil rights law as well as comprehensive non-discrimination ordinances where we researched for municipalities and so during the first part of the presentation today i'll be giving you a brief recap of that prior presentation but not going into all of the details we went into previously and the second portion of the presentation is we'll review the recent supreme court ruling in regards to employment matters that council had provided direction to wait until after that supreme court ruling came out this summer and then lastly we'll be seeking council's direction for any further information or next steps so to start just go through a few items as way of review of what we covered during the february 25th work session and so we did review the hrc mei score card and this is an annual score card put out where the human rights campaign looks at municipalities and how inclusive they are to lgbtq individuals in terms of municipal laws services or operations so this is the 2019 score card and we are still under that score card it is expected that later this month the 2020 score cards will be released for all of the municipalities so by way of quick review there's five different categories that municipalities are scored on these last two through five categories shaded in blue here look at how inclusive municipal services and operations are so you'll see dentin scores very very highly in terms of that for municipal operations and services in terms of being inclusive this first category is non-discrimination laws so these would be city-wide laws a public policy decision that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation in three areas of employment housing and public accommodations in the state of texas there are four cities that have such comprehensive non-discrimination ordinances at the local level and they are seen here austin dallas fort worth and plano and even in the score card they do not score the full points as there's various exemptions throughout these ordinances that do not allow them to score to score the full points also during the february 25th work session we went over some of the federal and state civil rights law and how it related to the different areas of employment housing and public accommodations and we'll also review that during the presentation today so i won't go into that further right now we also summarize the research of four cities that i had just mentioned that have those non-discrimination ordinances and it went through a number of areas and i'll actually just go to the next slide where you'll visually see the four slides where we spent a lot of time reviewing in detail each one of these ordinances how they were composed how they're structured and how they're being implemented and we really broke it down into six different areas so that we could analyze each one closer and and provide some comparability between the ordinances and how these cities are implementing them so that first section that we had covered in each one of these is an overview how did their ordinance come to be when was it adopted what does it cover the second area is in regards to definitions and exempted and exemptions so how is employment housing and public accommodations defined in each one of these ordinances what may be broadly exempted from the ordinance what's exempted from the various sections of the ordinance the third area we took a look at was complaints so how does an individual file a complaint underneath the ordinance is there timelines for when they must file a complaint by what is the current volume that each one of these cities is receiving in terms of complaints filed underneath their ordinance the fourth area we looked at was in terms of investigations once a complaint is received how is it reviewed and how is it investigated further and what staffing does each one of these cities have to do that investigation process and this is one of the major points of differences between the city of Plano and the other three cities of Dallas Fort Worth and Austin Dallas Fort Worth and Austin all have offices of human rights or housing and actually have federal actually have agreements with federal agencies either the EEOC or HUD to do investigations on their behalf of federal law so they're actually defined as substantially equivalent agencies following all the same processes that those federal agencies would to investigate a complaint so they have those staffing structures in place to follow those investigation processes the city city of Plano is a little different if they had to do an investigation they would compose a five-person panel with three director level staff and then two rotating external business community representatives that would be reviewing that complaint however they have not had any complaints that have moved forward to the investigation stage since they implemented their ordinance in 2014 the fifth area here and we took a look at in each one of these cities is mediation and so if there's reasonable cause that discrimination did occur and it is covered underneath the ordinance is in terms of what does that mediation process look like and then lastly if if can if the issue cannot be mediated what would be the enforcement aspect or is and then what would be a potential penalty if it if that would be upheld and each one of these you'll see if it is not covered underneath federal state or federal law it would be just a municipal violation with a maximum of a five hundred dollar fine if it is falling underneath the ordinance in the city of Dallas Fort Worth or Austin if it falls underneath an agreement that they have with the EEOC or HUD there's further penalties but if it does not it is simply under municipal ordinance so there's a lot more detail that we went into last time I'm not going to go through through each one again but certainly happy to address any questions later in the presentation but wanted to provide that just as an overview of what we covered previously and then at the end of the February twenty-fifth work session there was some council discussion around waiting for a supreme court ruling that was expected to see if gender identity and sexual orientation were covered by title seven of the Civil Rights Act and so title seven of the Civil Rights Act does prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of sex however it did not expressly include prohibiting discrimination based upon a person's sexual orientation or gender identity even though it was not expressly stated in title seven the EEOC had for many years interpreted and enforced that the sex-based discrimination included gender identity or sexual orientation so really what those supreme court cases that were being heard in the fall of twenty nineteen were to determine if indeed gender identity and sexual orientation were included as sex based discrimination under title seven it was expected that that the case would be determined by late spring or summer and city council had provided direction to staff to wait on further discussion discussion till in their outcome of these cases as any decision by the supreme court would apply to all states and all municipalities so that is our update for today and we have provided this information to council previously but to review the supreme court did rule in june by a majority opinion that title seven does indeed cover sexual orientation and gender identity making it illegal for employers to discriminate because of a person's sex including gender identity or sexual orientation the justice who issued the majority opinion went further to state and specify that this case was on employment matters only and that did not take up any other federal or state laws so in regards to housing or public accommodations the justice also made a point to mention that religious freedom was not a question put before the court in this case so the ruling did not have to do anything with religious freedom so um coming out of that ruling and even though the eoc has interpreted this this for many years to include sexual orientation or gender identity these are ways in which individuals who believe they have been unlawfully discriminated against can contact the eoc to file a complaint and so the phone numbers are listed here on the screen as well as websites so what is covered then by federal and state law in terms of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity just wanted to take a moment to outline each one of these three areas and kind of go through what is covered by federal or state law on those two bases so with the supreme court ruling employment is covered federally it was upheld that title seven does apply and you can an individual can contact the eoc to file a complaint but they may also contact and sorry i did not put this in the slide they may also contact the texas workforce commission since they have an agreement with the eoc as well so there's two different avenues in which an individual can contact if they believe they've been discriminated against unlawfully and employment matters for housing gender identity and sexual orientation is not expressly covered the texas fair housing act and then the u.s fair housing act prohibit discrimination on sex but it is not clear if that includes gender gender identity and sexual orientation however the federal agency hud much like the eoc has encouraged individuals who believe who identify as lgbtq and believe they've been discriminated against to file a complaint as it could be sex-based discrimination and they do not provide many more details but do encourage those individuals to file a complaint with them and then lastly public accommodations is not covered so sex-based discrimination or discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation is not covered by respective state law or the federal civil rights act of 1964 so i tried to put a chart together to kind of simplify you know with all these different avenues between local state or federal if someone had a report of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity on each one of those three areas how would it be addressed in these different cities so just wanted to try to to simplify this i know it's hard to do but a couple major points to different points of difference to highlight here city of plano says that they will refer any complaints received to the respective state or federal agencies that would handle them so for employment it would go to euc housing would go to hud only if hud denies to accept or hear the complaint would the city address it under local ordinance and then they would address any complaints in regards to public accommodation underneath the city ordinance and as i had discussed earlier in the presentation it would be a staff panel of three directors then two outside business representatives so five person panel deciding whether to refer accept or deny then mediate if there is reasonable cause that discrimination exists and then if there's no agreement it could be go to possible enforcement through municipal court with a $500 fine for dallas fort worth in austin they all have these varying degrees of agreements with the federal and state agencies so they do have the power to do some of these investigations on behalf of the state or federal agencies as it relates to the employment and in housing since public accommodations is not covered by a federal agency they would be handling any complaints at a local level underneath their local ordinance local nondiscrimination ordinances and then as you can see here listed out they would also go through the review and intake investigation attempt to mediate and then if mediation is not possible it would maybe referred for prosecution depending upon the things in the case so just kind of an overview there of the different Texas cities and what would take place so this leads to the last line where staff is seeking direction from council on any next steps if council would like to direct staff to begin to draft an ordinance and an implementation and a complaint process based upon the models that exist we would also want to estimate staffing and financial resources and really walk through the specific components with city council through a detailed work session to receive direction as there's a lot more details if an ordinance were to be drafted and composed or staff may or council may provide other direction to staff to request additional information provide other direction to work on other initiatives in regards to encouraging inclusivity in our community or take no further action I've also included the city of Plano slide I'm just a little larger and there was some discussion from city council last time in regards to the Plano ordinance more specifically so I'll take down the presentation at this time and see if you have any questions okay councilmember Barometer yes so I have some direction to give maybe based on what others say to add to it but I'm ready to give it right off the right off the bat and that is well I want to say first of all thank you so much for the detailed presentation all the work that staff has done from the moment that I first brought forward the municipal quality ordinance in I think 2018 that was maybe early 2019 and then when councilmember Davis you know brought this forward as an item on its own and thank you to councilmember Davis for that for bringing that forward that was really necessary in kind of bringing this next step my direction is I noticed that you know last time as you mentioned there were a number of councilmembers who were seemed anyway to be partial to the Plano Plano ordinance I am strongly in support of a non-discrimination ordinance for LGBTQ equality at the same time I am strongly against the Plano ordinance because of the exemption that it makes for public accommodations specifically in the form of bathrooms and the reason why being that trans lives matter and when I hear from from trans people in Denton about you know their concerns yes they're concerned about housing discrimination yes they're concerned about employment discrimination as well I hear stories in all those regards but the most daily kind of event that I hear is about concerns regarding public accommodations specifically bathrooms I strongly believe that if we exempt the bathrooms from our NDO we are effectively including a bathroom bill in our NDO others might object to that characterization but for me that's what that amounts to in other words if we are to do what Plano does and exempt bathrooms which both the human rights campaign and Equality Texas had objected to by the way human rights campaign I think at first they said okay to it and then they realized that there was exempted for bathrooms and then they disapproved of it councilmember Armitage you went on mute councilmember Armitage councilmember Armitage you're on somebody's councilmember Armitage you're on mute for trans rights in Denton to exempt bathrooms would be a step backwards for trans rights so that's why I think it's extremely important that we include public accommodations include bathrooms I much prefer Austin's ordinance if we're going to model ourselves after another city but I cannot yes Plano's ordinance because that would be a step backwards not even a baby step forwards okay all right thank you all right anybody else councilmember Davis thank you mayor just to kind of have a couple things maybe to help frame the conversation and give my own thinking so I'm not terribly motivated by the activities of the human rights campaign I understand what they do and they're they're an advocacy group and they they're good advocates on behalf of the people they're they're working on behalf of but as far as setting policy in the city of Denton I'm not terribly motivated by the scorecard or what somebody else reports on I'm motivated by what is good and necessary for our people and protecting vulnerable populations in our city specifically I prefer the Plano model for a couple of reasons the first one is they address some things that are not covered by federal law they specifically talk about US military and veteran status you can't discriminate against somebody for that genetic information something we've never talked about on this council I'm not sure where they're going with that but it's not protected federally as well as the other things we're talking about with our ordinance I think that's some good foresight on their part I also like the way that they frame the religious exemptions because I think those are you know we call them religious exemptions but really what it is is enshrining the First Amendment something that's that's already present in the law in the Texas Restoration of Religious Freedoms Act that's already in the law it's making that explicit and clear because that's some of the objection to an ordinance like this is that it runs afoul of the First Amendment somehow if we're explicit about that and make it clear we kind of head some of that off you know the bathrooms issue is is it's a sticky issue because people have strong feelings on both sides I disagree a little bit with Councilmember Armenter that I feel like if you don't exempt bathrooms I think you make it she said if you do exempt then you make it a de facto bathroom bill I think it works the other way as well unless you're unless you clear that issue up then the first complaint you're going to get is well the the bathroom situation was not satisfactory I was discriminated against in one form another concerning a bathroom in this public accommodation and then we've got a complaint that gets very difficult to handle the other thing I want to make really clear too is you know Plano had to address employment we don't have to address employment what we're talking about and I've gotten emails y'all on all sorts of things that people are concerned about surrounding LGBTQ issues all we're really talking about with this kind of ordinance is housing and public accommodation can someone who's LGBTQ sit down at a bar and have a beer without being discriminated against can they be rented an apartment without being discriminated against this doesn't have anything to do with medical issues or parenting issues or any of those kind of things that I'm getting all kinds of emails about it's really a pretty narrow issue and it's filling a gap that's not present in federal state law so so I prefer the the Plano model okay all right anybody else Councilmember Meltzer the main thing that I would want to adopt from the Plano model is just simply that it doesn't require setting up a you know a separate branch of the city government to deal with it that it's a sort of I think it's just it's executable whereas the others the other cities have specific authority from other levels of government that we don't have so I think in that respect Plano is the is the one to go for as far as the religious aspect I'm not sure I understand exactly how their language works I know what I what I think you know just share that that it's not that you would I wouldn't exempt anybody from the obligation not to discriminate on the basis of these categories but what I would say is you can be presumed whether you're a church or any other kind of advocacy organization you can be presumed to favor hiring people that support the mission of your organization so you know that's different to say we you know a religious organization can favor hiring people who who support their mission is different than saying you know you could discriminate on the basis of race or anything else so that that's the kind of language that I would prefer with regard to religion I I'd personally be willing to just move on employment and housing you always like that yeah Saturday night last year yeah yeah I frankly I think the blowback from doing a bathroom bill would ultimately lead to worse consequences for our our trans siblings and I what I what is needed in my opinion is assurance in our diverse city that there won't be discrimination on housing won't be discrimination on hiring so people start getting comfortable just knowing each other as they are and my my you know non-governmental ask is that is that we take seriously our duty to love our neighbors as ourselves and and treat each other's treat each other's who wish to be treated not to hassle each other and I think there's a lot of conversations that need to happen regarding things like bathrooms I don't really like the heavy hand of government getting into bathrooms in general so I what I favor is moving forward on housing and hiring I absolutely disagree that that it's not even a baby step I think that's I think many people will benefit very substantially housing and hiring equal food and shelter and the idea that someone could be denied food and shelter because who they are you know it's you know just not very dentin it's not very American either so that's where I am move forward on housing and hiring and and affirm the rights of advocacy organizations to favor and hiring people to support their mission and do it through the the mediation panel model thanks all right uh who else council member armature let me see if I got any more comments um I council member breaks so I'm in favor of the non-discrimination ordinance going forward and I'm listening to all my colleagues to see um I like the the play note ordinance as well I'm confused by some of the the bathroom talk I know that a long time ago we didn't want a bathroom bill and now I'm hearing that there is a bathroom bill so um I I'm just trying to as part of it so I'm just trying to understand and and come to terms with with what um that entails okay is that a question yeah I'm listening for more information I'm trying to to figure out I know that that falls under public accommodations but as far as the community and the city and fought against a bathroom bill but I'm hearing that this would include something of similar sort so I'm just trying to I think I think it's all a matter of how you approach the issue because someone would say if you exempt bathrooms it's a bathroom bill because then you're not allowing people to go into the restroom of their choice on the other hand if you if you don't exempt them you're forcing businesses you're basically it's becoming an issue and the government's telling businesses how to handle the the private restroom facility that's now public accommodation so um you say potato I say potato I mean it's you know it just depends on how you come from the issue I think what the council did and I think in some ways what the state did when there was a quote unquote bathroom bill presented that is more like you know you can't do x that was soundly rejected and didn't even I don't think got a hearing didn't even get a vote if I remember correctly because it just the government just didn't need to be in the business of bathrooms so that's that's how I took that that whole issue so I got a couple of questions of clarity or clarification and so council member Melcer when you talk about well first of all the the Mr. City Attorney correct me if I'm wrong but as far as employment the federal government has now basically in essence occupied the entire space of the employment issue I mean we we can I guess put an ordinance in place but if if right now anyone has the opportunity and and the right legally before it was sort of you know is it something we want to interpret this way or not but now it is the law of the land am I incorrect in that and why would we want to to include something in a municipal ordinance that is basically occupied almost fully by the federal government the US Supreme Court has and as was presented earlier has entered into that area and created a rule regarding discrimination based on somebody's sexual orientation or gender identity this is developing law which you will see in the coming years is the extent of how broad that rule may be but you are correct you right now that is the law and there will be many cases coming forward to the various courts of appeals courts of appeal districts that will carve out exceptions to that area law and this is what the justice who wrote the opinion for the majority signaled that to the public but but you are correct that it for now that is the rule across the country so so let me then ask you a question let's say for instance let's let's they add they clarified a classification in other words they they they talked about in the old the old oh gosh what are they I just protected classes they expanded they expanded at least what you know to discriminate on the basis of sex they added these these categories are expanded what that meant do we in in our city or do we have in our city ordinances some place where before that was done that we just had we have a ordinance that says we cannot discriminate based upon the basis of race ethnicity religion whatever those protected classes are enumerated by you know the Supreme Court earlier and or the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and all the case law proceeding do we have a local ordinance that basically parrots that and if so what are the the penalties of that so my first question is do we have anything that parrots that right now not an ordinance that applies to the general public and I believe Sarah would know the answer to this but I believe we do have that parroted in our internal employee policy or employment policy but nothing nothing that applies to the the the public in the sense of the private citizen who's not employed with the City of Denton that is correct we do have a fair housing ordinance that mirrors federal law so if any complaint is received we simply help to facilitate and refer that to HUD and we do not investigate those locally okay but as far as the employment we do not we do not have anything that applies to the private citizen or non-employee of the City of Denton correct we do not have anything except except it just applies to the to the organization administrative organization of the city that's correct okay all right so in some sense we would be providing additional ordinances or because I don't remember what the if we're I guess we'll be including all the protected classes in this so so Councilmember Meltzer are you saying that you want to have a something that mirrors federal law or help me understand why to me it just seems sort of repetitive and and duplicates that help me understand that if you would you know I'm willing to listen if we if if if there's an efficient way for people to be heard I mean I see there's a phone number it's on the slide you know if if it adds something and helps people for there to be a local review that you know kind of becomes a recommendation that goes with the case but like I said I'm willing to listen okay just so I understand on an EEOC complaint somebody files with the EEOC they determine whether they want to take the case up or not if they take it up they prosecute the case in a civil court if they don't they give a right of right to sue letter to those that they those cases that they decide not to take on is that correct that's correct all right so then whoever has felt that discrimination even though the EEOC doesn't take it up they can then go out and engage their own attorney to to prosecute that case yes okay all right okay Councilmember I just want to make sure anybody else have any comments on the first round before I move on okay so but just to be clear Councilmember Melser yours wasn't necessarily addressing you said hey we'll talk about employment you might be open to that housing and those are the two components as far as the public accommodation you'd like to maybe not include that in this particular iteration yeah I don't want to you know say put something forward saying we are explicitly not you know giving you any rights in some area I would just rather move forward on the things that we have a clear path on okay okay thank you appreciate that Councilmember Armitage yes so I wanted to respond to several points that have been raised so far one is you know just to clarify that nothing in any of these ordinances that have been put forward and I think this is a good thing by the way specifies specifies anything about the signage on bathrooms you know it doesn't say that all bathrooms have to be non-gendered so it allows there to still be gendered bathrooms so I just want to clarify not asking anybody to any business to change the infrastructure of their business not even to change a sign on your bathroom we're secondly I want to acknowledge although Mayor I think I have a different interpretation than you on this I do agree with you on the point that it's there seems to me to be little point in having a city ordinance that just kind of reiterates to federal law I believe and here's why where I might diverge from you maybe not apologies but I'll just take full credit for what I'm saying now I'm not speaking about anybody else's point of view anymore only to say that I happen to believe that the purpose of municipal laws like this including the purpose of having a municipal ethics ordinance is to raise the bar on state and federal law in this area in a way that raises the bar without contradicting state and federal law and so a city like Austin what they have does precisely that and that is why I think it's essential that we include public accommodations otherwise we're simply mirroring state and federal law I also think it's important that we raise the bar on enforceability and accountability so I think we should look to those cities that do have a stronger means of accountability stronger enforcement even involving the federal and the state level we can see that in the case of fair housing you know I think we need that in fair housing as well that's off this topic but you know when it could for instance in the case of fair housing you know we don't file her fair housing complaints as a city because we pretty much just mirror you know federal and state law in that area and we're not really making a commitment to you know civil rights in that area I want to encourage people then people don't have to answer me but just to think about privately silently you know how much trans feedback have you gotten I know of trans people in the Denton community I have only heard from one person it doesn't mean that's the only person who exists but you know one person who didn't think that we needed to you know include accommodations in this area for everybody else that I've heard from in the Denton trans community public accommodations are the biggest thing Councilmember Melzer mentioned food right food and shelter as essential you mention and I completely agree with you Councilmember Melzer that that it's not very very Denton like of us to deny someone food and shelter well you know this the science on food is that when you eat food your body digests it and does and you know you you piss it out you shit it out and you need somewhere to do that so part part I'm sorry part of my language you need somewhere to to do that otherwise it get arrested for you know public exposure and so we can't always wait to go back okay to our home to do that no my point this is really serious it's because we're talking about bathrooms this is what we're talking about okay this isn't right to relieve yourself okay so I will just say so anyway I will end it here but I will say that is what we're talking about the right to relieve yourself and I would like everybody to think every time you use the bathroom in City Hall think imagine if somebody was interrogating you or your gender every time you use the bathroom in a restaurant and I will personally I will say this filing closing I will personally if if we end up passing a an ordinance that does not include public accommodations and bathrooms you know and when we were after COVID when we returned to having our meetings in City Hall I will personally stand by the bathrooms and I will give people you know council members a hard time and question them on entering the bathrooms so that they can see what it feels like to be questioned on this thing you took for granted because of your privilege assignment to everybody thank you okay thank you all right Mayor Pro Tem yeah I'm gonna yeah I'm gonna go ahead I'm gonna demand that we issue some sort of statement an apology to those listening and that we strike this or edit this from the record so that it's not rebroadcast repeatedly that's absolutely egregious and and the language is abhorrent and so I'm embarrassed by it and I don't want it replayed about bathroom functions we're talking about bathrooms council member Armitter please he has the floor yeah so I don't we need to take that up I don't I don't know I'm not willing to let it go further without having some resolution or some consensus of how we want to deal with that but that language is absolutely not acceptable and I won't stand for it all right so let's let's take this piece by piece and and I would hope that you know my colleagues would would respect the decorum of not just the meeting but the public itself I understand that language is used often in public in many different forms and things such as that but so let's let's try to be respectful of the process and and the deliberative process in this regard so I'm this is this is where this is my direction I think I'm okay with the Plano ordinance in as far as it addresses housing I believe that the public the the employment issue has already been addressed and and I think that that will transform over time with how the case law moves forward people are now instructed they can file a complaint it's not a matter of oh take it we're going to interpret it this way this is the law of the land for any employment discrimination based upon gender identity etc then you have an opportunity to file with the EOC and of course we can provide information on how to do that we can provide direction on like we have before in regards to housing HUD has already said and encouraged people to file claims and I like the language in the Plano ordinance that says hey we can we can ask them to file a claim first and if somehow it's not taken up by HUD but I don't I don't know if I want to buy it's at the Apple where if HUD does an investigation and finds that there's no violation that somehow they can come back to the city and get some kind of redress as far as public accommodation I'm not I'm not from moving forward on that the primary reason is look we have a jurisprudence we have our our third branch the judicial branch to handle disputes and claims when you start accusing people of discrimination everyone is is deserving of the full due process that the law offers the victim and and the alleged perpetrator and so when you when you start having city processes that do not take into account the full rights of that due process for everyone then I think you do everyone a disservice because then someone may feel that they have a complaint and it's and it's not and it's not sustained it's overruled because you didn't have all the due processes that are available in our judicial system or if someone is rendered to be hey you've discriminated against them but you didn't have the full opportunity to vet your case through the processes that are afforded us through the legal system through deposition so forth and so on I don't think we need to be in that business as a city because people's reputations are important and if you're going to do something to damage someone's reputation or if you're going to do something to harm someone because you're not sustaining their complaint and you don't have the opportunity or you don't have the evidentiary rules of procedure to go through and truly examine that and you have it being decided by either staff or members of the community or those kinds of things man I just think that is a that is a slippery slope so I'm good with the Plano ordinance in as much as it addresses housing to encourage them to to file the complaint but as far as moving forward how do we process through if a complaint is made with the city I need to have some help understanding that that because I really struggle with being able to a city to determine that someone has discriminated against someone if they haven't had the full opportunity that's afforded and same goes for the victim I mean if the victim is not able to get people in depositions if they're not able to get additional documents on maybe a pattern of discrimination there's all kinds of things that determine these kinds of cases that's why you have federal government departments that primarily handle those and then if they don't want to do it they give people a right to sue letter at least EEOC does I don't know how HUD does it so that that's what I'm comfortable with and I don't as far as the religious exception was that really only because of public accommodation I mean if you didn't have public accommodation in the ordinance is the religious exception sort of a moot issue yes Councilmember Davis I think it kind of depends on the housing you're talking about the Plano exemptions apply to educational institutions they apply to so that could be parochial schools boarding schools that kind of thing they apply to religious organizations so if you had a home or shelter or something like that operated by a religious organization that could potentially apply but I'm wondering you know if we if it seems like the consensus of Council coalesces around the housing issue more so than public accommodation or if public accommodation because the bathrooms or any other aspect is a sticking point and if we already have a city ordinance that addresses fair housing and we can make some some tweaks to that ordinance and add some protection in that ordinance regarding our referrals and that sort of thing I'm not necessarily proposing this now but if that may be another avenue if that's where there's consensus if consensus doesn't doesn't exist around the Plano model for both public accommodations and housing but it does exist around housing I don't know that we necessarily need to set up a whole nother framework like Plano has if we already have a framework that addresses housing of some sort I hope that makes sense I kind of pulled that together now what you're saying is instead of create a whole new ordinance you could you could amend the ordinance that contains the the fair housing language to include the types of terms and processes and things such as that that we would do in a separate ordinance I mean is what I'm hearing you say right and I mean if there's consensus to include public accommodation and I'm not sure I've heard that yet either on to include it or a way to include it that everyone can get on board with that's at least another option is to address housing as a standalone issue in the housing ordinance we already have I think I'll be honest I think any step forward we can we can take and in keeping with the Supreme Court's guidance so far is a good step so let's do this I mean and I appreciate you give me some some help with the structure of this discussion because basically we have the question before us is number one do we want an ordinance if so what does that ordinance contain and then are we able to include that in some other existing ordinances without having to create a whole new ordinance so first thing is the three issues at least it's been presented by staff for a non-discrimination ordinance that it's on that's that's on the table is employment housing and public accommodation so let's look at those in reverse all right so I want to get people's direction on is there a consensus or not for crafting language regarding public accommodation similar to the Plano language or public accommodation period I just need some direction on that Councilmember Melser I don't want to put any words in your mouth but I think I've heard you say that right now you're you're wanting to just deal with housing and employment and I'm you know it's a work session I'm here to work so I would like to hear what others have to say all right all right well so if silence is going to be that it's not included so I'm just telling you if we don't hear but that doesn't mean that it's it's we're all in agreement yes Councilmember Davis I'll just repeat what I said earlier I'm okay including public accommodation with bathroom exception that it doesn't make any additional requirement on business owners for bathrooms okay and it helped me understand exactly what it means about public accommodation so I'm gonna flub the exact legal definition I think we have it in the backup yeah but it's basically any service or accommodation that you offer to the public you're talking about restaurants bars hotels that kind of stuff okay all right okay I think that may also I may be incorrect here but I think that may also exempt certain kinds of private services you know when you talk about doctors clubs and things yeah kind of stuff okay all right okay who else Councilmember Briggs and that's like the Plano ordinance yes that is correct okay all right okay all right yeah anybody else Councilmember Briggs I mean I'm sure I'm sorry so I've already made my direction clear I just want to say that I think since again this is because this is such a contentious issue we've got a new council coming in I think we should at least wait to vote on it until a new council comes in that's all all right but I'm presuming that you don't you're you're not your direction is not to adopt the Plano portion of a public I'm really against the Plano ordinance okay all right who else all right so as I said we've got two who have who have expressly stated direction for the Plano ordinance as written in public accommodation and we have two so do we have anybody else who's expressing support for that okay all right so then it seems like that at least to this point never say never but to this point there doesn't seem to be direction in that regard let's take the employment aspect does anyone want to include some provision of employment that goes beyond what is currently federal law I mean I just remember master go ahead yes you know I would be interested if we're going to end up having a future session on this to refine whatever we come up with today just in knowing if there is a constructive role that can be played or not I mean you know I take your point if it's really just duplicative council member armature seem to be saying that to you know okay I'm not hung up on that I want to I want to move something forward you know that you know help that night so if there's I'd be interested to hear whether there is a constructive role that could be played okay all right all right any anybody else on including the employment some some employment terms or provisions that are different than or have different I say penalties different penalties than what is currently offered under federal law council member armature yeah I think that we in terms of both employment and housing you know we need we need to step it up as much as we can to have enforceability otherwise it's going to be like just like with our our fair housing provisions here in the city where we have a fair housing coordinator but you know we're not really doing anything to take a and move forward fair housing complaints so we need to make sure we really want to make sure our folks being good and not just looking good if our focus is on making sure that civil rights get protected then we need to have some sort of enforceability so I'm open to a number of things but I do like the way Austin does it I would I would choose that as a model if you pick one okay all right anybody else on in on employment because I'm I'm not hearing a consensus on that okay housing currently the state of the law is it's really not a hard black letter law as pronounced in the Supreme Court decision but the HUD does encourage and ask people to file claims with them of housing discrimination in that regard so councilmembrometer I would just say ditto for housing just like I said for employment again I think the same for accommodation but we're not talking about that now but yeah we need we need to step it up to do what we can to ensure civil rights are protected again if we have to choose a model I like the Austin model okay anyone else now this is for a separate ordinance and so Mr. City Attorney if because I know we're talking about a non-discrimination ordinance but if there's a desire to put something with the same kind of message or the same kind of terms or language in a different ordinance that we may already have that's existing is that within this posting as I'm thinking about I think it might because it doesn't really say anything about it or it just says give direction about this discussion if you want a couple minutes to look that over we'd take a break because you know take you know take a break I think the way no I can answer that I think the way the caption is posted it's seeking direction over a whole host of information and including non-discrimination ordinances the presentation is also included various models out there for the council to consider so I believe that your question would be consistent with that posting and presentation okay all right thank you all right so we're talking about the housing portion and how does Plano handle the housing portion so they would if the complaint is received they would first refer it to a state or federal agency so in this case HUD and then if HUD would refuse to hear it I believe and I can double check with in the Plano ordinance that they would hear it then in terms of their local process being a potential violation of local ordinance if that makes sense so even in you know Plano has additional protection so covering not only gender identity and sexual orientation but some other classes such as veteran status or source of income those are currently not covered by HUD I believe as well so those would be handled through the local process that Plano has established if they received one of those to date they have not had any complaints to investigate through local process so I want to ask a real quick question because you mentioned a couple of things that you said veterans and then source of income right discriminate I could I think I recall that Austin had an ordinance similar to that and I thought the state came in and said you cannot create local ordinances requiring people to take certain types of income and so I don't I want to make sure it's not the same because I know there's a state law addressing I think what happened was in Austin Austin was saying that you cannot discriminate if someone has a housing voucher that apparently people weren't considering that necessarily sources of income and so Austin passed that and I believe the state legislature might have nullified that if I recall I think you're correct and I just need to verify I think there's the broad source of income I think they narrowed it to allow very specific exemption for veteran source of income the state can not discriminate on veteran source of income so if you have a bash voucher so forth you could not discriminate on that basis but source of income yeah I've just taken out okay so so the state law then is you can't discriminate based upon veteran source of income ie bash vouchers and other type of governmental assistance but outside of that and I don't believe it's we're gonna have to take a look at this I don't believe it's state law but it allows for municipalities to still adopt that provision and extend that protection it is not necessary it's not okay law but it allows the ability to whereas the state took away the ability for municipalities to prohibit discrimination on the source of income broadly so we can't I mean so Plano's if there's this interpreted broadly they're restricted by state law because theirs was passed I think six or so we need to if we do something like that we need to make sure that it just doesn't run afoul of state law okay councilmember Briggs and then councilmember Armitage yeah I was just gonna say that source of income broadly I think that's really important we have a lot of housing issues here in our city and if we can do anything to keep people housed I think we should locally we will not adopt that by state law they've preempted us there right yeah or a veteran it's just veteran source of just veterans yeah source of veteran source of income you can pass a law that you can't discriminate against source of income but it's it's that narrow you can't expand beyond that councilmember Armitage and then councilmember Meltzer yeah I just want to ask so maybe this is off posting the city attorney can let me know but since you mentioned the and by the way I completely agree you just described the situation exactly as I understand it Sarah that this state has prohibited cities from passing prohibitions on income discrimination in housing except in the case of veterans and I just wanted to ask I asked brought forward and I thought got consensus on a provision to have a and protections in the city of Denton for veterans to protect veterans against housing discrimination in the city of Denton do we have that yet is that a law yet when's that going to come forward to us there was consensus there was consensus for a future work session but why hasn't that happened yet when COVID hit we did have to shift a lot of our priorities and we knew we would be having this follow-up discussion where it is it is the same discussion in terms of extended protections do you want to extend protections to gender identity sexual orientation could be veteran source of income veteran status yeah well thank you so much I'm so glad that that is relevant and that's what's happening now I think it's extremely important yeah you know that that we include that that we include that in this it is something where I mean the state is literally saying Texas cities you can do it you can do this I think it's really unfortunate that we can't protect other groups from income discrimination in housing people with housing vouchers but since we can get veterans in we've got in fact I was just today talking to a homeless veteran we've got a in the city of Denton so we've you know we've we've got a mandate that says we were a goal that says we want zero veteran homelessness in Denton so yeah let's let's put that in now I hope we can get consensus on that finally now and move forward with that because it's been a really long time since I've put that forward but thank you okay yeah go ahead councilmember Meltzer yeah I certainly support you know being as comprehensive as as the law allows as far as Austin versus Plano at least the way it's presented to us the main difference is Austin is certified by HUD as a fair housing assistance program agency and Plano isn't and we're not as I don't know if that's something we would want to be if we could if there are benefits to it but that's the that's the main factor as as it's presented that would point me toward Plano is that we're not so certified okay yeah okay all right so what I'm let me just go back then to the the prohibition against discrimination on source of income for veterans are we are or is there a consensus on that so silence isn't going to be considered as agreement so I'm going to say yes I'm good with that I see hands coming up if you're so you know if you wouldn't mind indicating by the record councilmember pro tem you look a little you look like you want to ask a question yes sir could you reframe the question I just didn't hear it sure sure I'm asking that when we're talking about housing and protections that the state law allows municipalities to regulate or to create ordinances that prohibit discrimination based on the source of income for veterans in other words if someone has a let's say a veterans bash voucher veterans administrative supportive housing voucher and they go to someone at an apartment complex and say hey we you know here's the rent we've got the money to pay the rent in this form of a voucher and they say you qualify it all the way around but yet I don't accept that kind of I don't accept vouchers from any organization if we had an ordinance they would be prohibited from discriminating against a veteran based upon their source of income and so that's the question is do we have a consensus to include that in whatever we craft in this housing component whether it be in a standalone ordinance or included in our current ordinance yes mayor pro tem yeah so I'd want to see that drafted certainly but obviously I can't speak to it without seeing it you know but I do want to move it forward to have something come back sure along those lines just to see again because it goes on how it's enforced etc etc all the details is what I'm interested in seeing but to get that to that point I'm all in yeah okay all right if I could add in you know one of the reasons is that we as staff right now when we receive a fair housing complaint based upon those those classes that are protected by federal law we can reference that to HUD and they will do they have a have all the processes the staffing the structure of the investigation set up so it's just a matter of we need to if if it is prohibited by local ordinances make sure that we set up those processes that allow for that due process and what would the investigation look like what would be the mediation processes what could possible enforcement and prosecution look like because right now that would not be covered by HUD so that that's just a little bit more detail I wanted to share with you it's not is just adopting it if it's adopted then what is the right you got to have some kind of underlying mechanism or process yeah whereas if if if we refer a case where there may be discrimination based upon sex then that is something that HUD if they're taking those I mean they've already said that is a protected class whereas it discrimination based upon source of income is not a protected class is that correct yep okay all right so that's the distinction there okay so uh yeah well let's you know maybe they can give us some more information on because what I'm hearing you say Sarah is that if we want to include this in our um in our fair housing ordinance that says we will refer instead of necessarily prosecute if we when we do or if we approve the source of income discrimination local ordinance we have to create a whole policy uh and process for investigation for adjudication and enforcement correct if we by local ordinance extend the protections to something currently not covered by HUD whether that be gender identity or sexual orientation if HUD does not accept the complaint or veteran source of income we would need the process established to handle that okay which is have we have we got have we received any complaints from veterans on source of income do we know if and maybe the housing authority would would know more about that I would have to to ask and get back to you on that I do know that we are a community development staff from time to time um help our residents if they believe it is a fair housing complaint navigate with them to HUD to help them get through that process okay uh councilmember Briggs and then councilmember Armitage uh the way the Plano ordinance is set up would that help um guide the the future direction of these issues that we're speaking about you mean in terms of if they refer or handle locally yeah yes I believe that's what council had kind of has been discussing in terms of would it be referred or would it be handled locally so for fair housing if it's covered by federal law I guess the discussion is it continued to refer those out unless it there's a additional protected classes that are not covered by federal law then that could be handled by a local process if we establish one similar to to Plano or another mechanism to then review those complaints investigate them and so forth okay yeah a casting thermometer yes I just want to put another word put another word in for the veterans um you know anti-discrim anti-income discrimination in housing you know I know that for some people sometimes there are things that uh that people want to put forward that contradict each other right I know that some people on council have made commitment to veterans all at the same time making commitments to landlords this is one of these situations where you might get developers and landlords telling you don't pass this and veterans want you to pass it I would just urge everybody to go with the veteran um that is all that is where I'm going that's where my heart is it's a civil rights issue the state is allowing us to do it um this is long overdue and months and months ago long before I even heard of COVID was when I put this forward so I'm very glad this is coming forward with this I hope we can get this passed well let me rest assured I have not had anybody that I know that owns property that rents property that has expressed to me any desire not to have an ordinance that protects veterans in fact I know of many people on the contrary who open up their units to veterans who want to do all that they can to help veterans and I think that's evidenced by if you talk with Danny and Sarah and people at united way and and all these other organizations and and the veterans so the county veteran veterans agencies uh non-profits people want to help so I don't think I really disagree with that characterization uh so I just needed to to share share my perspective on that um all right so what I'm hearing is um I'm still asking is there is there anything that we want to do with housing other than referral to HUD at this point referral similar to what Plano does without necessarily then taking it on as an independent matter adjudicating it through a city process council member Davis mayor my my gut reaction is yes that we want to address the the veterans disparity as well here's the issue I know from our other conversations that vouchers of any kind are a very complicated issue it's not just as simple as this landlord accepts this and this landlord accepts that and these formulas these income formulas are can be pretty complex too so even though that's my gut reaction I'd really want to have a lot more information on the voucher discussion generally sure before I'm before I'm ready to make a decision on guess what landlords were we're pushing this down from the city level without a full understanding of how these vouchers interact with each other how these income formulas are done and all that kind of stuff no I guess yeah and I appreciate that and I think I agree with you and I so I think that will come forward in in some additional information I guess what I'm referring to is outside of that outside of that issue on a housing uh do we want to have a separate standalone ordinance that's going to do something other than just refer it to HUD as we currently do and as the city of Plano currently does councilmember Davis um I want to address the situation in the way that this council is comfortable moving forward if what we can get consensus for is adding it to what we currently have then that's what I want to do if there's consensus for um or a perceived need for something in addition if we know that HUD is taking cases if we know that HUD is being diligent and prosecuting them or taking them forward I'm comfortable with that I want to take whatever step forward this council is willing to do okay all right councilmember Briggs and then Melcer and then Armentor well for me hearing what we just heard if we do decide to do the protections for the for the veterans we're going to have to have a separate process here in the city besides a referral so if we're going to do that we might as well or for me I'm okay going ahead and discussing that system whether it be the mediation part of it with the panel or or what and then that could be decided on further how else we want to address that but if the consensus is to add that to our um ordinance then we are going to need some sort of review process here in the city and I and I appreciate that I think the difference is that with those veterans issues they cannot be referred to HUD HUD will not take them so if there's a if there's a discriminate if there's a housing discrimination issue based upon the protected classes and they say they're taking them based upon the in essence the interpretation of the supreme court's decision then those can be referred so I just I just needed to state that as a clarification or just a difference go ahead right well no that's what I understand and that's what I'm saying okay I'm saying that we are going to need something here within the city to handle that if it cannot be referred right but I thought what I heard you saying was that okay fair enough thank you uh council member Armitage or mouse sorry council member mouse yeah I would like to get you know a little insight to the to the question I asked earlier about what is involved you know what is involved in this is it a benefit or not to to dentin to be certified by HUD as a federal housing assistance program agency what's what's involved and is it would it be good or bad so that that that would add you know I don't think we're going to get that answer today I mean okay it's maybe in a future discussion yeah it may be completely you know outside of the realm of possibility I just have no idea based on what we have before us we did provide some of that information and in the February 25th work session DIS um just in terms of what it takes to become a fair housing assistance program partner I forget the exact name for it um but there is a different steps you have to meet different staffing levels you have to prove that you can do everything substantially equivalent to what how it would do yeah you're basically standing in the shoes of the federal agency so staffing staffing is required definitely staffing would be required okay right so that answers my question okay uh council member Armitage all right yeah so just want to say you know I strongly agree obviously that we need um some other mechanism uh besides just what we have at the federal level again look to what we have in fair housing veterans are protected class under fair housing by the way um and we have not put forward a single uh you know fair housing complaint to HUD for veterans or any other class so I just want this talking about fair housing well I mean you just made a statement that I need to make sure if that's correct okay so that's my understanding but but what I really wanted to say just to encourage everybody um I know you know it was mentioned kind of talking to landlords talking to united way um I strongly encourage people to talk to actual veterans and I'm sure some of you do but keep doing that make that make that cast that net as wide as you can to talk to actual veterans who are experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity in the city of Denton because I do and you know I hear that they're having a real hard time especially now uh while people are asking for all while you know landlords are asking for all kinds of documentation that even more than they used to before because they're nervous um I guess understandably you know about the about uh status of evictions um so they're nervous about that they're asking for all kind of documentation it's really hard for every all renters right now I think we've I think we've yeah we understand that issue that issue has been sort of not set aside but that's an issue that will be coming back I'm not hearing um I'm not hearing uh a consensus on basically anything on housing except maybe to add to our current ordinance um well it's not even really adding to it because I think sex is already protected class in our current uh ordinance on fair housing is that correct sex is it's just a matter of hud has said that they've encouraged those that have complaints on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation to file them with it's just a matter of hud will accept them or not okay um it's not expressly covered underneath housing law right now just the same thing you saw in employment with this report um but but I don't you know hud may not be accepting all either um eoc eoc was very strong that they were going to be interpreting and enforcing the law this that way that is somewhere in the middle of we may or we may not so can can uh and it might have been in the backup I've uh I might have missed it but um I don't think how you've broken down the data I'm sure on complaints that we've referred to hud based upon housing discrimination do we have that data I do not have that in my fingertips but no you can just send that out with the additional information that's fine um so it sounds like that what we're waiting what we're going to what's going to happen is there's going to be another work session on coming back with the the hud voucher uh source of income type of approach or non-discrimination ordinance and council member Davis has asked I mean there is some nuances to all that and so data and information is going to be very important in that and I think together with that data on how many complaints have we received that we referred on uh and then if there's a way to ask hud I don't know maybe that's public information how many complaints have they received from people within the city of dentin over the last five or ten years or something of that effect um yes council member mason I think there is uh some opportunity in there to uh uh to do a little better than the current state of affairs in that he said what the supreme court said is the role and that's you know how enforce it hud hasn't said that yet they said maybe yes maybe no so you know maybe the space to occupy the city is to say we affirm that definition if hud won't take away well we don't know yet we might say no then we would say yeah but you know at the municipal level we would go by that you know that definition of sex discrimination and I think we could that could probably be proposed in the work session that'll be forthcoming with that additional data and and those issues and discussions okay um all right then we'll we'll have another work session on that or y'all will probably have another work session on that uh and uh we'll move on then let's take about a five minute break and then we'll move on to our next agenda item welcome everybody back to this meeting of the dentin city council on october the 13th it is uh 4 34 p.m we are on agenda item 3d i believe uh yes id 20-1794 receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the creation of a sustainability advisory committee to advise city council on implementation of simply sustainable a framework for dentin's future good afternoon mayor and council i am here as a follow-up to our september 1st adoption of the sustainability framework where we discussed creating a sustainability advisory committee and let me get my presentation up here i need to do okay i think you can see that now yes so today we're just seeking direction regarding sorry he's looking at my presentation regarding the creation of the sustainability advisory committee we want to discuss the duties and the charge of the committee the membership and then the terms there we go so just some background the framework was adopted september 1st and it included the recommendation to create the advisory committee and staff has reviewed several cities with municipal citizen advisory committees and included those in your backup for review this is just a chart that compares some of the committees most of them the committee makeup is similar in size to their council we looked at cities that have universities similar in size columbia missouri ashville north carolina and durham all have universities closer in size to denton than austin and dallas there's some language in some of those that we may want to include some qualifications possibly for serving on the committee and then the committee function so the duties are a charge of the committee was outlined in the sustainability framework and that would be that the council would advise or what it would the committee would advise the city council on implementation of the framework provide an annual report to council and then provide recommendations regarding the following areas of the sustainability plan waste reduction programs community engagement prioritization of goals and strategies water energy any of the goals from the framework would be fair game on this committee to advise on to be consistent with our other boards and commissions we were looking at a seven member committee one appointment per council member qualifications some boards ask for qualifications where they may have expertise or experience in some area of the framework we could do a combination of some members with expertise in some of the areas some citizen appointees from just interested groups and then the term of two years and then staggered to start so three start on a one year term and four on a two year so that not everyone is rolling off at the same time so we can go ahead and jump in the discussion about the charge the number of members and the term stop sharing now yes Paul go ahead thank you yeah my conception was that would go much more in the direction of pulling expertise out of the Denton community so you know into all the framework areas so you've got I think eight framework areas there I would say you know we should really seek out you know you could have seven or eight you know that would one for each of those areas and and a few at large and I wouldn't say it's got to be limited to one council member you know picks an area or anything like that the point is to get the talent so I would suggest that any council members can make nominations and there could be multiple nominations in a category and we evaluate you know who's you know who will bring the most to the position that's how I would approach it on the terms I think that's that's a good approach to stagger at the start okay uh council member Briggs how is the um HLC makeup because they um certain districts are required to fill certain um professional seats correct or or no is that is that kind of how we see here where um there will be certain categories and then those members or those seats would need to be filled with that um with those qualifications and if we do it for two or three then we may need to do it for everyone and then have a couple at large so that um it's it's fair when we're we're nominating you certainly could have some requirements or you could leave it at large to citizens that are interested in this particular subject so I think that's the the question that's being asked with HLC you you would like to have some folks on that with your architectural backgrounds that sort of thing but it's not always required folks that have independent interest in these areas are just as just as important many times as folks that have the professional expertise so that's really that really is a question do you do you want certain expertises here or do you or would you rather have a committee comprised of residents where this is just kind of near and dear to their heart well yes go ahead go ahead personally expertise on this uh panel is uh would be very helpful especially if we're we're talking about you know the the science of things and establishing goals what can be what can happen and what cannot happen um my concern would be that it would be heavily one-sided if not spread out equally so you know you could have you know so many like five or six individuals who specialize or who are very knowledgeable in air quality but you know and then so you are missing or absent all the other factors so that's the kind of one that's the one thing i want to avoid here right okay uh council member melzer and then council member armature yeah if i if i wasn't you know clear my comments i would be looking for a water position an energy position an air quality position a transportation commission a waste position a land use uh and then you know maybe i don't know if we need resiliency and education engagement but that's the idea not just many people interested in sustainability but really trying to find uh explicitly recruit for uh for that breath yes council member armature yeah so i thank you council member melzer i i completely agree and i really love that idea uh we want um you know i don't know if this is how you describe it but what i'm thinking of is i'm thinking of what you're describing is kind of uh basically unpaid expert consultants you know people who would be doing it for the love of sustainability in denton um people who are experts in sustainability but aren't going to charge us people who don't have conflicts of interest um people whose passion is sustainability in these these specific areas we've got so much of that in denton and i think this is the place to take advantage of it but it's really kind of you know a tabula rossa right now this uh sustainability plan and it needs real fleshing out and these are the kind of people to do it yeah and and i i don't disagree with that i guess my uh observation is expertise that's pretty broad definition and number two i would want this committee to be balanced i mean what some people in in this town uh referred to in environmentalism and sustainability that that's a range you've got a range of what that means what that looks like just like you have a range on all different kinds of issues so i would want to ensure that somehow that that the committee is either balanced or that the deliberations are balanced instead of uh you know necessarily because just because someone's an expert doesn't i mean they're an expert in that field but that doesn't mean that you know they reflect necessarily the uh the majority sentiments or even the minority sentiments of the community so that to me is is probably as critical as anything because we've seen that on this council when it comes to uh issues regarding the environment as far as it's it's there's all different types of ranges so uh that that would be my observation council member melzer uh i i think the way you address that is by uh allowing multiple you know any number of members to nominate people and we see the bios you know and then you got a vote on it's not you know ordinarily you know be frank for the most part when we have nominations to things people just sort of say hey whatever whatever you want and it's not that much of a conscious thought process most of the time except for the person doing the nominating but here i'd say no we should see you know look at all the candidates and and and vote on them and you know choose consciously yep yes council member breaks and i just want to make a friendly reminder that the sustainability plan is what this uh committee is looking for it's an implement implementation plan for this our implementation committee and just an advisory committee um for this plan and it was put out in the community the community weighed in on it um it was put for a vote before council um and then council voted for it so uh oh i don't disagree with that but i think we see many many examples of those things that that go through that process but when the rubber meets the road and you start implementing things that's when you you realize that oh okay well there's always going to be some kind of unintended consequence so i i don't disagree with that recitation of the facts at all uh i also do know that on a lot of these plans they're they're vetted through 50 people 20 people and i mean we've all referenced the 2030 plan and many various so just because it's gone through that process doesn't mean necessarily that it is fully representative of the community but you find that out at implementation just like we did with the 1500 foot setback i mean we had 16 people talk about it when it was you know uh not very well publicized and then we had many more talk about it once it began to really get implemented and how it affected property owners so i don't disagree with that but i i think it would be a little short-sighted to think just because those facts are true that that therefore means everything will be balanced and everybody will be heard equally yes councilmember breaks and that's why i suggested the expertise come in so then you have people who know what they're talking about what can happen and what cannot happen they're not actually living in a you know in a land full of make-believe so that was a suggestion to have the expertise under each one of these items okay well expertise doesn't mean that they're without necessarily their own personal approach and perspective yes councilmember melzer i'd also point out uh that their charge is advisory sure so council is you know weighs in ultimately of course uh that's pretty much how it is always um okay councilmember davis i really like the expertise idea in theory i have some concerns about it in actual practice though you know hlc is a good example we define pretty carefully pretty clearly anyway i think what the expertise is like a person who is engaged in the buying and selling of houses you know engaged in the real estate market someone who's engaged in as a contractor on some other boards for the animals shelter board we have to have a veterinarian that's a person who holds a veterinary license if we were going to include expertise to the mayor's point i think we'd have to be really clear about what that means not just you know johnny who we hear from all the time on water issues because he's knowledge about water issues but somebody who is in that field who works in that field who understands that field beyond just you know being really well read on what's out there in the popular literature from a i guess a staffing standpoint i should say a staffing of the committee standpoint it can get really difficult sometimes to find nominees who are willing to serve and the more granular you get the more you know if there's a one water seat and there's one energy seat and there's one resiliency seat then those seats could go unfilled for long periods of time while we recruit somebody to serve so i like the idea of a mix that we have some kind of at-large environmentally minded sustainability minded folks and then we also have some seats for someone who has expertise in a field maybe you're not assigning it to a particular field but saying that they have expertise in one of these fields in water in land use in energy something like that so that we get kind of a mix of the professional expertise but also the the average citizen perspective councilmember armature yeah so you know something that um councilmember davis was saying uh reminded me you know of another important point um that might be obvious but i think we should probably be a good idea to write it in and that is that uh we try as best as we can to rule out conflict in these areas uh i think that we got you know there's a reputation or i would say a history you know but at least a reputation of assigning people um to committees who profit from so for instance we wouldn't want somebody i wouldn't want somebody anyway um who is on a sustainability committee who profits from cutting down trees or who has a fiduciary relationship to somebody who profits from cutting down trees or somebody who's in a high who is an owner of a high polluting industry um or somebody who has a fiduciary relationship with high high uh polluting business so i think that um you know we should look both kind of on the positive side for experts in these areas and also try to rule out the negative side areas of conflict because i think too often we see um on on committees this is my opinion it's subjective but uh you know conflict it is absolutely subjective conflicts of interest you know that are kind of actually described as areas of expertise um so for me that's a real problem i don't know if there's consensus on that but that's where i stand on that you make my point exactly and that is when you start talking about you don't want someone on there that's gonna that works for somebody that cuts down trees or that does this or that because not everybody shares the same values as as us on council regarding certain environmental issues and so that's what that's all i'm saying is that if we're really going to have it as an advisory committee we need to make sure that the the interests and the positions of different types of perspectives are represented in that so uh i mean sustainability doesn't mean you don't chop down one tree it doesn't mean that you you you chop them all down but that's my point is you you want to be able to have a diverse set of interests so that you can get the maximum result instead of it being one-sided so i appreciate you making that point uh all right anybody else council member melzer i would lean on referring back to councilor davis's concern that some of these you know silos might go unfilled uh i i'd like to at least start from an optimistic point of view i think uh just my judgment is that uh there's going to be a lot of enthusiasm intend to participate in this and i would rather at least start out you know uh going for for kind of the optimal uh with you know with the i said from the beginning with two or three at large seats as well uh and i i just i just think we're going to get good reaction and as far as the conflict of interest i would uh more lean initially anyway towards sorting that out through the process of letting you know members vote um on the applicants you know and if uh i i think you know i i think your values and preferences are going to be expressed in your votes yes council member breaks so for in the area of expertise and i guess for me we should define expertise does that mean work in that field or study in that field a college degree in that field or um going to school for that at the present because we do have two universities full of you know um people who want to get involved as well so is that is that what we're talking about uh katherine when we say expertise i think that denton has a lot of expertise through both universities um it could be somebody who is working in the field who teaches in the field um i i think those are good qualifiers okay all right council member melser and then council member armature yeah you know uh to to that uh council member breaks concern i i wouldn't uh try to tailor you know narrow too tightly uh let's see what the applicants are you know who like we say we want expertise and what you find compelling uh or what one member finds compelling might be different than what another finds compelling but let's i would say let's see what talents out there you know and we're each have the opportunity to to put nominees forward and you know and put forward what their qualifications are council member armature uh yeah i completely agree you know i'm all for ruling out ruling out conflicts but i don't want to limit how we define um those those specializations especially if it would and i'm not saying anyone was suggesting this um but you know i wouldn't want to rule out uh just community activists who might not have a degree uh but who uh you know when we think of the people who are sending emails to council on various environmental issues whether we agree with them or not you know there are people who are activists some people might say these are the last people we should have on our on our committees and that's fine you know but but i personally think that activists in the community um who are experts because they live they live here um and and they care and they're outspoken on these issues you know for me that's as good as any degree uh so i wouldn't want to to limit it to degree i'm i'm impressed by a degree that's cool um but that's not you know i i wouldn't want to limit it so i would just like to see who we get and to open it up to a more holistic way of determining you know what counts as an area of specialization with like i said before ruling out conflicts of interest yeah i think uh no i think we need to define expertise i think we need to give it some because to be quite honest with you there's a lot of people that hold a lot of strong opinions but that doesn't mean that those those opinions are based upon you know the science or the data or that science and data is not necessarily uh incontrifutable and you know it's there's there's debate about it so i think if we want people who are experts if we want people who are going to give us information and and help us and advise us to make decisions from a place of data and facts it's going to be critically important that we define who you know what their qualifications are because if we're going to dilute the definition of an expert well then we don't even need to put it in the ordinance i mean if all you got to do is be able to sort of have a strong opinion and be an activist about something and you're there for an expert in that area uh i'm going to need to see a little bit more than that so i think we do need to put some parameters around it yes we can say oh it's up to us to vote it eventually but no if we if our goal is to have experts on this panel to give us good sound academic real time data factual data to help us make a decision we don't i'm not asking people to be on there to give me their opinions i'm asking people to be on there to give me their expertise in that area where i don't have the time nor the knowledge or probably the brain power to even understand some of those issues and i have to rely upon them to give me their ideas based upon the data and facts and the science so uh no i think we do need to give it some definition and some some collars on it absolutely council member briggs and i i'm i really want to invite the other council members to weigh in because we're going to need to get a consensus on this so uh and i'm not sure exactly where we are so let me let me reset the discussion so katherine what exactly are you needing from us is it just simply the makeup of the committee and sort of the rules around that yes all right so we've got the terms i think are we all okay with the terms the two years is that is that okay all right so what we're primarily talking about is how do we select and what type of individual what expertise is going to be do we want for the committee is that is there something more that we're we're trying to give direction on than that that's all we have the charge and the terms okay all right okay so let's we've got the terms we've got to narrow this down to how do we you know do we want to have some type of definition on expert what kind of parameters do we want to put around that we've had some discussion from it from uh four of us i need to hear from the other three council members so we can hear your input because we're going to have to start drawing a consensus on this pretty quickly because uh we we this this this could drag out but i think we've got enough foundation that we can we can get moved through this if we can just get uh you know everybody to sort of weigh in council member rigs you've had your hand up yes now i was going to make a similar comment um if we don't want to define expertise and put individuals in there who have that then we should just remove it uh altogether um or we should define what that is and say say what we we want from the committee it is an implementation committee they are going to be advising us and with that advisement we will create policy so it needs to be something that is is tied to um some sort of foundation and education and data and that it's actually something we can implement and that will make a difference tied back to the sustainability plan so it's just not a plan set up on the shelf so um that's why it's important to me to make sure that um the people on this committee uh know and have knowledge of environmental um issues and aspects okay mayor pro tem thank you well but we've seen this time and time again we had dr banks explain to us a system a solution and then we get a phone call from a citizen and next thing you know that's all challenge so everyone has the expertise i would throw the i wouldn't i'm not going to support that uh just because it's not worked not because i have any preconceived notions i would just call everyone's attention the um the um pest control plan we weighed in we gave a decision we moved forward then we some of us changed our mind and it's just so for me i think for this process to work with staff to get it to us to make a decision i i will get if i you know if if we have seven options i can exercise my one option the way i want to and my peers can as well uh so i think that's the best way to to handle that and then just from a um and again i would the backdrop to that is a pest control plan and how all that worked out and the challenges that we get to dr banks that are not i i don't believe steeped in reality but we always go down that road so um that being said the other thing that i would add is that i think this in the process there needs to be a rebuttal process like in the um in the auditor's process so for example this group makes a recommendation that recommendation is then staff gets an opportunity to rebut that that recommendation so that they can add their input or if there's additional information so we have staff's input we have this this other uh board committee's input and we have the rebuttal and then we can consider both sides of those discussions or there's a consensus there but either way we kind of get two looks at it and then lastly i'll just for full transparency i'm going to seek out a student in the doctors or masters levels at one of these one of the great universities in town uh twu has a great program and i think that allows a student to get on the on the job training if you will uh and be active in this process and have access to resources and so that's who i'm going to target with the one position i'm allotted okay all right uh council member uh melzer to move closer to uh council member brig's position uh i would be open to saying i'm obviously still going for the categories of expertise and i'd be open to saying that the candidates in each of those areas need to have compelling and relevant academic and or work experience okay all right okay um anybody else and i think that would i mean and i think that would fit into mayor protem's if he were to to secure a student who was in a doctoral program or a master's program with expertise in this with supervisors i mean i think it i think that easily fall within that uh council member davis can be okay with something like that you know for uh three four seats whatever the will of council is i still think it's important to have those at large no no requirement seats because there are people we could all think of some folks who have relevant opinions on the subject who are very well versed in it and represent that non-expertise viewpoint from the community um i would add into that you know we could also include relevant work experience maybe there's somebody whose original degree was in a different field and then they move over to something where they're they're working more closely with different things and they can do that with the original science degree they have had even if they're doing something different professionally now so either holding a degree uh advanced coursework towards a degree um or relevant work experience in the field for some number of those spots okay all right um council member briggs yes so i'm going to say is um my suggestion would be four in the in a specialized field and some sort of teaching education you know some that we've already discussed work experience and then the three at large or is everybody okay with that and then we can just move on council member melzer uh i can live with it okay uh mayor pro tem yeah i again i go back to why can not the individual council members make that decision individually so for example if that's your that's your passion point then appoint someone that you're passionate about that fits that mix why do we have to overlap that's what i'm missing why why do why do we have to overlap and kind of have some universal approach if you're dedicated to that opinion then exercise that opinion with your selection okay all right council member armature yeah i i have an answer to that question for myself it might not be satisfactory to the questioner and it might not be representative of others who feel the same uh who have the same answer to that question but my answer to that is for the same reason why when we're talking about covid and what to do with covid i believe we need to listen to the advice of scientists and public health experts there were members of this own of this same committee that said we shouldn't play quote you know armchair epidemiologist well i don't think we should play armchair sustainability experts too now it varies what counts as a sustainability expert just like it varies what counts as a great doctor um there are ways to get multiple opinions from multiple doctors and multiple scientists but if we're serious about sustainability then we need to put people who are committed to sustainability on this committee and i know it varies in whatever we decide it will be subjective it will be just like picking a doctor and deciding which you know contradictory doctor's opinions to have but i don't think that we should just be you know picking our own friends and i don't think we should be picking people with with con with conflicts it's fine to pick your friend if your friend's a sustainability expert but if you're you know your friend is just is just somebody who you want on that committee to hold back progress then i don't think that's fair i'm not saying anybody wants that i'm just saying it would open up the possibility to that um i do think finally i'll just say in closing i think this is another area like all these committees we're deciding on where we should at least wait to whatever appointment process or nomination process we have i think we should hold off until this forthcoming election council member armater you have said that over and over again do you really think that staff is going to get all this together within the two or three weeks i mean so please we understand your position on that okay thank you thank you just putting a word in yeah thank you all right anybody else all right so it seems like we've got council member briggs put a proposal on the table for four experts and then three and we'll have to decide which areas i guess and three at large which that means is a council member going to be forced to pick someone that's an expert when they want to just pick someone who's at large so i'm not sure how that's going to how that's going to go but i understand paul council member melzer is in agreement with that is there a council member armature where are you on that and can you repeat the question i didn't quite understand well council member brig's made a proposal and i'm trying to see where we are as far as direction yeah yeah i'm fine i'm fine with that okay all right anybody else council member davis yeah i'm i'm fine with that that's similar to what we have on several other boards that uh anyone can nominate any number of members to the it's not just one for one and uh sometimes you draw the short straw you've got to find a veterinarian for the animal services advisory committee hey could happen to anybody okay all right okay all right so it seems like there's there's a consensus on that um so if you could uh bring back you know the uh sort of the precise language on that and then we'll move forward from there yes mayor pro tem well in that instance uh one i don't like that process but understanding it that's the consensus i would ask that there's a um some sort of uh throw the names in a hat and we vote on them that way it's not just the first person because traditionally we take it the first name that's submitted is voted on if that fails then we go to the next one and so i just i don't like that process in this environment it needs to be all the names are thrown in a hat to to stagger how they're they're voted on um just my thoughts i don't know if there's any traction for that i'm sure those that want to just throw a name out first and have us all vote whether we like their their individual not would won't like my idea but my i think it needs to be uh it needs to be staggered to some degree it just you can't just it should not be the first name uh that that someone can submit tomorrow hypothetically then gets vetted first in my opinion okay council member uh mouser uh i i completely agree and you know uh it could be within the same council session that you got five candidates for the air quality seat uh you know you might you might end up with a runoff process you know you can look at all of them both for who you want to okay we don't have a majority you know keep going till you get till you get the nominee okay all right okay katherine do you need any more direction on what other direction do you need i think i'm good okay all right okay well thank you very much uh we will uh move on to agenda item three e which is receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the stoke denton entrepreneur center that's id 20-1476 evening mayor and council members jessica rodgers director of economic development give me one second and i will pull up the presentation while i am doing this i will let you know that i'm going to be doing the main part of the presentation but we do have uh marshall cold pepper and heather gregory on the line with us if there are any questions okay the purpose of the discussion today is to provide an overview of the stoke management and lease history with railyard partners and with hickory and rail ventures and then we'll be seeking council direction on two items first related to the sub lease terms and second related to the future management of the stoke co-working space so i'll do a brief overview of the history um just so everyone is aware of who i'm referring to throughout the presentation stoke is a reference to the actual co-working and entrepreneurship operation it is city-owned but the city does have a contract with hrv or hickory and rail ventures for the management uh railyard partners is the entity that owns the property where stoke is located the city has a lease with the railyard partners the dallas entrepreneurship or excuse me dallas entrepreneur center or dac is the previous management company for stoke and hickory and rail ventures is the current management company of stoke so on your screen right now is a timeline of of the stoke denton center and a lot of history has gone on related to the operation of stoke it actually began um earlier than the time you see up there on the screen um stoke actually began with the fiscal year 1415 budget with a supplemental request for a technology incentive and what came out of that was the agreement that city council approved on september 15 2015 which was an economic development program agreement for 380 000 funded through the downtown tours and a lease agreement for space in the railyard development and over time council then entered into into a management agreement with the with the deck for management of stoke that agreement was terminated an rfp was issued in 2017 and the new rfp included a contract with hickory and rail ventures they were the sole respondent to the rfp and and then later in 2018 city council approved an extension of that management agreement and that's the management agreement in sublease under which we operate currently so the reason we wanted to discuss the management agreement in sublease is that staff began discussions over the past few months with hickory and rail ventures related to what we thought was going to be the termination of the lease on february 28th 2021 um what we found in that process was due to ongoing construction the city actually did not move into the stoke space on march 1st 2016 as the original lease had provided so staff found on july 14th 2016 that the city had actually provided the property manager with an executed commencement letter that had changed the commencement date of the lease from march 1st 2016 to june 17th 2016 it also shifted the lease termination date from february 28th 2021 to june 30th 2021 and this is important because the change in the lease term was not reflected in the management agreement or sublease and what we found is that staff didn't have knowledge of the commencement letter or the change in terms subsequently so that lead led us to where we are today is that the change in lease term wasn't effectuated in the management agreement or sublease they specifically call out february 28th as being the end of the lease term incorrectly and both city staff and hrv have been operating under the assumption that the lease term would end on february 28th 2021 put up a quick graphic here just to summarize this for you the city has a lease with railyard partners for the stoke space that lease because of the commencement letter the term of that lease was june 17th 2016 to june 30th 2021 however staff also has a management and sublease agreement that they've reviewed and because they did not know of the commencement letter the management agreement and sublease terms match the original lease dates and not the commencement letter date so they end on february 28th 2021 so we went back and reviewed council actions meetings the work sessions and individual consideration items where this was discussed and it was clear that it was the intent of council to align the management agreement and sublease with the terms of the lease and to be clear there is no budget impact staff has included the payments of the lease obligation through june 30th 2021 as reflected in the commencement letter so staff at this point is seeking confirmation of council's intent and direction to amend the management agreement and sublease with hrv to align it with the lease with railyard partners for june 30th 2021 and so that is the first part of the presentation mayor if you'd like i can pause here for direction on that item yeah let's get direction on this um okay comments questions so my understanding is that what you're needing is do we go ahead and extend the lease out with hrv to to match the termination of the lease with railyard partners is that right okay mayor pro tem saw your hand up yes no i'm fine with that okay councilmember briggs yes same anybody have an objection to it councilmember davis i'm raising my hand to say i'm in favor not objecting okay so um it seems like that uh we we have a direction to to move forward on that okay i will go back to sharing my screen and move on to the next section of the presentation right so the next section of the presentation an area where i'm seeking direction is regarding the future of stoke so looking beyond um june 30th 2021 so this would start with july 1 2021 so i want to provide a little bit of history and overview over what the activities that have been going on at the stoke entrepreneurship center have been so under the management of hrv stoke has become a hub for tech startups entrepreneurship remote worker connectivity and small business development um a summary of a few of the great programming um activities conferences events weekly events um that are happening at stoke are listed on the screen those include things such as the big ideas conference the flint um conference for hipsters hustlers and hackers um it's a great conference put on and hosted by stoke they also have the denton innovation group which is working towards encouraging the entrepreneurship ecosystem development in denton weekly coffee and convos which allows connections to mentors at stoke and then recently launched the accelerate her um incubator program with the twu center for women entrepreneurs and just to reiterate some of the great things that are happening at stoke more than 200 events have been hosted since by hrv and 2100 attendees you know well reach well within the 30 000 for social media um some of the great events from photos you see there and i know that some of the metrics that have been required of stoke include um ensuring that there's a focus on tech and tech enabled companies 58 percent of members on average are in that category and then you see that that includes 126 people with tech or tech enabled jobs i've held membership at stoke and another key demographic is that remote workers and freelancers make up 38 percent of stokes member population and that's important um because those are individuals who could be anywhere but have chosen to be in denton and so i'm going to go through that and switch over to the contract performance review so over the past few months we've been looking at um hrv's agreement and performance um on the left side where contractor duties are listed or the primary requirements is listed under the management agreement and on the right is the performance from hrv and so i'm not going to go over each of these in detail but either just say they're there for you in your presentation if needed and based on our review hrv has complied or exceeded um with all of the elements of the agreement so with that i'm going to switch over to what we need um direction on this evening and that is the previous council direction and position was that hrv was to operate independently following the conclusion of the city lease in 2021 that included a transition of the space the brand and the operation fully to hrv and hrv presented city council in 2018 and 2019 during their annual reports and indicated that financial sustainability would be possible by march 2021 with a full takeover of the lease operation of stoke and remember that march 2021 date was tied to an assumed february 28th 2021 lease um termination and at that time hrv had mentioned the possible need for a bridge loan during the immediate transition but that they would work with the city to transition the space brand and stoke operation and then re-examine the future programming to support the transition so with that uh staff and hrv began discussions regarding the future of stoke um we reviewed financials uh forecasts and certainly know that the economic environment has impacted hrv's uh projections and growth and i apologize for that little typo there um they still were experiencing positive growth uh their forecasts in terms of revenue and membership growth were tracking on with their projections through february of this year march obviously had an impact um with with covid having a direct impact on their operations and membership um and then the other element is that hrv has also significantly increased programming above and beyond what was expected and in the contract and they desire to continue to assist the city in our efforts to create a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem so with that hrv presented the city with a proposal the proposal includes the following elements and hrv will take over the lease at the current location as of july 1st 2021 hrv in the city would enter into a partnership agreement focused on supporting the city's strategic areas and the efforts of entrepreneurship tech and small business support a copy of the full proposal is included in your backup this is just um a brief summary the term would be a one-year term july 1 2021 to june 30th 2022 the request is for financial support in the amount of 133 000 and that would support the following elements invent support such as the items uh listed on your screen the flank conf big ideas startup crawls and events associated with global entrepreneurship week program supports which include the incubators and the mentorship programs marketing support um blogs press releases videos social media all sorts of things that stoke does to promote the tech community in denton and ecosystem support which includes the groups and thought leaders and community members that are working together um to encourage development of entrepreneurs in denton and so with that there are two options for city council today um option one would be to continue the past direction and that stoke would be transitioned to hrv with no continued financial assistance or programming support and the next steps would be that the city and hrv would begin to negotiate um related to those transitions that need to occur an option two would be to accept the proposal and so certainly continuing past direction but acknowledging that the financial circumstances and even the strategic circumstances surrounding stokes operation have changed and so the city would also begin negotiating um with hrv to finalize the amount of support and develop a program agreement metrics um and all of those particulars that come with a program agreement and so with that that is the end of my presentation for today so i'm going to leave it i'm going to go ahead and take down the screen and leave this slide up in case we need to reference it okay council member breaks thank you for the update and presentation um i am in favor of option two is that uh the the new one um i see this as a a positive way for us to invest in our tech and small business and entrepreneurship in our city and i think it's a it's a good way to continue to go question jessica uh the hundred and thirty three thousand dollars or i think that was the amount or something like that it says take over the lease so right now our lease payment is what just for the space refresh my memory on that great question so we do have an our base rent right now is eight thousand six hundred and thirty dollars a month that does not then we also play pay our portion of operating costs on top of that and the hover somewhere around thirteen thousand dollars a month total so about five thousand dollars of additional operating costs the triple net cost for the lease and so so that's we're gonna have that that's on top of the hundred and thirty three thousand or is that a hundred thirty three thousand takes that over that's correct so our lease ends on june 30th 2021 hrv would assume the lease july 1 2021 and the program agreement would also begin july 1 2021 so the city at that point would only be obligated to the program agreement and not to the lease okay but the program agreement being the hundred and thirty three thousand dollars yes and so what do we what have we been paying them now we're paying the lease and i'm just trying to get an idea of it's it's an all-in so is it i mean what if we're paying thirteen thousand a month now over a year that's 150 60 thousand dollars and then what are we paying the management team on top of that what have we been what's the lease call for on that so our current expenses right now where we're paying the lease and the operating expenses for the facility is around 200 to 215 thousand dollars a year hrv pays the staff and for other operating expenses so they're spending also about 175 to 200 thousand dollars a year to operate stoke with the new arrangement the city would only be obligated for the hundred and thirty three thousand which is the program agreement and all other expenses lease operating utilities would be shifted to hrv so they're going to take on an additional 80 about 80 thousand dollars a year and uh because we're paying 220 take away the 130 80 thousand dollar difference so they're going to they're going to take that on which means that apparently whatever's going on i mean the things that are going out on out there the programs the leases and all that are making money because they're not going to take on an 80 thousand dollar additional expense without additional revenue i would presume to offset that is that a fair i would defer to marshall and heather as it relates to no no that's good i mean well i that's sort of a rhetorical question uh okay um all right councilmember briggs has said she's okay with option two uh may pro tem did i see a hand yes and then councilmember melzer yeah no i i i support option two but i i would like to and even if it if we have to put in more uh i've just been on this kind of my thought is i i would like to see us partner with the uh with the isd on this as well and so if in that we could get maybe some and this is obvious it's your first time hearing it and i'd want to hear from marshall and heather but i think if there's a way for the city to um contribute at a level that comes with so it's not specifically for kids if isd but it's we get memberships or we get access that then the city that we can you know give to uh citizens here uh to their benefit but i just think to to add to that connectivity there's so much that that kids are doing now with coding that sort of thing and this turnaround has been significant so i'd love to see uh us kind of have some crossover no different than we do with the fire department to say hey here's here's some we can get plugged in at the high school level and maybe that carries forward and those those younger young kids want to stay here in denton and work and learn to start up businesses that sort of thing so um not sure if there's any traction for that from heather and marshall but i would i'd offer that uh just to say we're extending it and what we get out of that the value add is what's listed and uh the connectivity with the with the high school kids uh whatever number that is so thank you i think we read your mind mayor pro tem hudspeth so in the proposal itself there's a specific section that talks about um part pursuing partnerships with denton isd um and how that we can use stoke to encourage that particular um growth in our in our high school students and encourage them to be involved in technology perfect yeah no and i think if we can do that without ds you know if we can support that forward the isd and call it helping our citizens i think that's all the better okay all right cat's mayor melzer uh first i would say that uh the the two um incentive agreements that we gave direction on recently you know really uh changed my my view you know the such strong candidates that that spell such a good direction for denton makes me kind of feel better about the whole you know the whole venture and i you know i understand they have roots in stoke so i mean inclined toward uh option two i'm just a little curious that figure 133 170 seems uh very specific very precise uh maybe maybe you've explained it just went by too fast but why is it that number what's that represent so that was the number that was provided to us in their proposal that was broken down in those four elements in a little bit more detail and i'll defer to heather or marshall maybe walk you through how they went through their budget and came up with that number okay yeah i'd be interested to know what exactly we're we're investing in sure um hello can you hear me yes yes hi everybody this is this is heather thank you so much um for the conversation and for for hearing our proposal um yes um council member melter to answer your question basically the way that we came up with that number for the support was really looking at the the the things that we do um the operations the staffing um to to do those works so so it's broken out in the proposal based on the events that we have taken on um you know so it's really it's really primarily related to the administrative and operational um work that goes into facilitating each of those areas um yeah so it's it's supporting the efforts of our our staff to execute um the work so it's a staffing number i understand that yeah it's more it's definitely more based on yep the the programming and the staffing so how many people is that by um it's it's i didn't necessarily calculate it in terms of people um in terms of additional jobs but i think if i were to to to translate it it would be probably oh it could be another at least full-time person um yes to do these programs okay thank you and yeah and and and also to add um one of our staff currently is is part-time and so um we're we're all stretched very very thin and in addition to the fact that we're doing all of these things as we're as we're also trying to safely operate a co-working space in the covid environment so you know some of our time currently is taken to literally sanitizing and making sure that the space is safe and so yeah we're just we're all stretched very thin so it would help um kind of balance the workload i guess if that makes sense okay thank you yeah i'll be interested to see you know as uh jessica as you you know finalize the amount and develop the program agreement of metrics uh just if you if you come back with a point of view on what activities are most likely to lead to uh you know more opportunities for for uh for actual launches or expansions of companies i know it's kind of a hard thing to gauge but but i think that that should be the ultimate goal is more of what you brought us before thanks okay any other questions excuse me councilmembrometer i will just say that yeah i'm with that just to lift up with council member melzer just said um you know i support i think it's great and exciting you know whatever um stoke wants to do and all the creative programs they have is wonderful but as far as you know what uh what the city is going to get involved in um uh it would be you know focusing on economic development on furthering economic development specifically within the city of denton um as in as quantifiable a way and i know our economic development department is so good at determining that has made so many improvements in quantifying uh success in economic development in other areas so you know i don't doubt they'll be able to do it in stoke too and i look forward to seeing what kind of metrics they come up with so i guess uh what i think what i've heard you and maybe councilmember melzer and some others say that this is sort of being viewed as as it's not being couched as that but as sort of an economic development incentive of 133 000 a year to kind of bring forward new businesses and small businesses is that i mean this is a question to my colleagues is that is that how we're framing this or is it okay all right okay uh any other questions on this um as far as it seems like option two any objections to option two and i think uh mayor pro tem had put in the the partnership with the school district but apparently that's already uh contained within the the proposal to some degree okay we'll give direction for option two then jessica thank you very much thank you thank you all so much for being with us all right we will now thank you heather thank you marshall uh we will move on then i will convene the closed session at 5 36 p.m we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under texas government code section 551.071 let's take about a uh five to eight minute break and we'll come back and do our closed session okay all right let's uh i'm going to call this meeting of the dent city council to order we've finished our work session in our closed session and now we'll move forward into our uh other portion of our agenda it wasn't posted as a special call meeting but that's typically what it is but yeah it's it's uh wrapping up the rest of our meeting we've got uh we do have a quorum so i'll call the meeting to order at 6 36 moving on to agenda item uh two which is the consent agenda chair would entertain uh council member davis mayor this is my fault entirely but i need to also pull item a i had mentioned k earlier uh-huh but i i neglected to mention item a i'm sorry john your notes there i know you've always got it okay that's fine so um all right so then we're pulling a b c e and what's the other one k k okay yeah all right okay council member breaks you're on mute yeah so i would like to uh move approval of consent agenda items except for a k b c and e okay all right council member melzer uh offer friendly amendment to include k in the exclusions as well am i right yeah i think she said yeah i think she said that i said a k yeah oh okay we did have a warden how could i know that case i'll second okay all right fantastic all right we have a motion and a second uh council member briggs how say you yes council member melzer aye council member ryan aye mayor protem aye council member armater yes council member davis aye all right uh consent agenda passes uh with those items that have been pulled we will now go through those items individually understand there's no uh presentation required so we'll move through these fairly quickly and council member davis you're going to recuse on a and k is that correct all right we'll see you when we get through with a all right agenda item a item for individual consideration id 20-1918 consider an ordinance of the consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager or his designee to execute an interlocal agreement in the form of a memorandum of understanding with denton independent school district for reimbursement to the city in the estimate of six hundred nine thousand two hundred seventy six dollars for the compensation benefit of student resource officers chair would entertain action on this item council member ryan move approval do i have a second council member riggs i'll second i have a motion a second council member ryan how say you aye council member briggs yeah council member melser aye council member armature yes mayor pro tem aye motion carries uh six zero oh and i'm an eye as well mayor watts is an eye uh six zero uh we've got agenda item to be id 20-1919 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas establishing classifications and positions for the police department creating and abolishing certain positions etc council member davis i move approval council member ryan i'll second all right we have a motion and a second uh council member davis i say you aye council member ryan aye council member briggs yes council member melzer aye council member armature mayor pro tem all right all right the motion carries uh mayor i'm gonna keep forgetting to tell my vote i'm an eye so it's six to one moving on to agenda item c id 20-2056 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing an amended and restated sponsorship agreement between the city of denton and the north texas state fair association council member ryan move approval council member davis second council member ryan house say you have a motion to second aye council member davis aye council member briggs yes council member melzer aye council member armature no mayor pro tem all right mayor watts is an eye motion carries six to one agenda see agenda item e is id 20-1995 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rural municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with peak program value llc a colorado limited liability company for program management services for the construction phase of the public safety buildings council member ryan move approval council member davis second we have a motion and a second for agenda item e which is id 20-1995 how say you council member ryan aye council member davis aye council member briggs yes council member melzer aye council member armature i'm voting no because only because of the five million dollar firing range that is bundled together with these other structures okay all right mayor pro tem all right mayor watts is an eye motion carries six to one and we've got our last consent agenda item that was pulled for individual consideration i believe this is the one that council member date well he's already gone agenda item id 20-2086 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton approving a joint election agreement and contract for election services with denton county for joint election services for the denton regular municipal election being held for the purposes of electing council members to place five and six and electing a mayor to place seven and a special municipal election for the purpose of filling a vacancy in district one and two for the unexpired term ending in may 2021 was set to be held on november 3rd 2020 within said city at a total estimated cost of 78 840 dollars and 83 cents council member ryan move approval mayor pro tem second all right we have a motion a second for agenda item k which is id 20-286 council member ryan how say you aye mayor pro tem aye council member briggs yes council member melzer aye council member armature yes mayor watts is an eye so the motion carries uh six zero all right now we'll bring back mr davis there he is magically appears we'll go on to items for individual consideration i believe that's all we we've taken care of our agenda items agenda item 3a is id 20-1994 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas a home rural municipal corporation authorizing the approval of a second amendment to professional services agreement between the city of denton and rps infrastructure good evening mayor and council my name is seth garcia project manager with capital projects all right this evening i got a quick presentation for you hopefully on bonnie bray phase six design amendment number two for a brief project overview phase six is between university drive us 380 and us 77 or north elm street it's going to be a divided four lane roadway including street lighting a 10-foot mixed use path traffic signals at winzer reiney and us 77 approximately 6100 feet of water mains and a new drainage system as i said before this is amendment number two amendment number one was passed in february of 2019 it predominantly included right away services through rps engineering amendment number two before you tonight is for a traffic noise analysis a schematic connection between loop 288 and us 77 text dot actually took over that project and we'll be moving forward with it so we won't be doing it as a part of this project any longer but it did also include bid phase services and construction phase services for phase six so for a quick schedule update we plan to have 100 design documents our plan specifications and estimate in january of 2021 we're going to move to bid the project in february of 2021 and hopefully award a construction contract and begin construction in may of 2021 so with that staff recommends an authorization of approval of amendment number two and the amount of three hundred and forty thousand dollars six hundred and nine for a contract total of just over 2.7 million and with that i can take any questions any questions all right chair would entertain action on agenda item 3a yeah okay council member ryan move approval uh mayor protem second yeah we're getting a little delay in the the internet feed so that's why it was sort of a delayed uh okay council member ryan how say you on agenda item id 20-1994 he's an i mayor protem aye council member davis aye council member melzer aye council member briggs no council member armater no mayor watts is an i motion carries five to two agenda item 3b id 20-2009 is considered adoption of an ordinance of the city of dent texas a home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with berns and mcdonnell inc for the supply of solid waste management strategy for the solid waste and recycling department excuse me one second while i get this pulled up so well good evening mayor members of council my name is brian burner i am the director of solid waste for the city of denton i appreciate the opportunity this evening to talk to you a little bit about our comprehensive solid waste management strategy this has been a long time coming we started talking about at the end of last year and we were getting real close to getting ready to award the contract and all of a sudden covid hit which put us about six months behind where we wanted to be uh but i am just thrilled to be here to talk to you a little bit about the project and and the contractor that we have selected to help us through this process as we go through today i want to talk a little bit about what a comprehensive solid waste management strategy is and really how it differs from a plan i also want to talk a little bit about the consultant that we've selected to help complete the strategy uh talk a little bit about the process of actually going through the the in completing the strategy and then talk a little about the time frame to completion when we talk about a strategy uh strategy is really a framework for making decisions about how you're going to play the game it's identifying the resources we're going to have to work with uh constraints that we have to operate within whether they be physical related directly to the city of denton whether they be a state law a federal law that we have to operate under what what the marketplace is doing so these are the things that we're going to be operating or evaluating as we identify this this strategy and really working to bring value to the undervalued in our process once we have this strategy together then what we'll do is we'll create a detailed proposal or the plan that we put in place to achieve that goal that we've been that we put together so it is really designed how we're going to win this game so again developing the strategy and then putting together and implementing the plan so as we look at this comprehensive at the proposed outline for the comprehensive solid waste management strategy we're going to be working in several arenas first and foremost we're going to be identifying the materials we need to manage we're going to be implementing some very very strategic and and detailed waste materials management evaluation going in characterizing the waste that that we find both in our our trash bins as well as our recycle bins residential commercial multifamily sectors and from there being able to to drive what the decisions may be to help develop our strategy you know identifying what markets are available to to address materials that we might divert and if there are no markets available what resources do we have to either create markets or identify or support things that are in this marketplace really creating this market helping you know identify opportunities to for waste disposal and diversion opportunities so you know if we do have waste how's the best way to manage it with trying to maximize the amount of diversion that we have in place what are our priorities what are the first things we need to be doing and in what order looking at that the cost of all this you know how do we optimize our ability to pay for this and still provide the highest value at the lowest cost for the residents and the business owners of the city of Denton with this we're going to be developing some real-time benchmarks and performance indicators for our system not just some arbitrary number that we may pull out of the air things that are tied to what we find and really the goals that we're going to be be implementing going in through a new branding marketing outreach opportunity you know when recycling really started back in the 90s it was it was flyers it was it was worksheets it was things in your water bill that's how we we did outreach and now we're in the in the in the sector of social media we're instagramming we're tick talking we're doing all sorts of things what will tomorrow bring and that's really what we want to try to outline as we move forward here and then finally really the the legal and regulatory opportunities and constraints that we have to operate within these are the rules this is the the boundaries in which we have to operate within so how do we maximize those and if there's something that needs to be changed how do we go about doing that how do we how do we create a legislative plan that helps build and promote what we're trying to do here end of the day we're trying to enhance resource recovery the policy and the services that we provide we really want to set goals to anchor a solid waste management plan through development of this strategy through the rfp process we've identified burnson mcdonnell is the most qualified firm to complete this project mostly because they have worked intimately with federal state and local partners to create similar type strategies they've been innovative in their outreach and stakeholder engagement and they really have helped define what the future existing and future solid waste markets look like and as a as a result we think their synergies and leverage between past work that they've done and future work with with state and federal partners that they have i would like to bring your attention to the graphic that's on the right of this slide it really sort of details what we're looking at here we're trying to develop something that's future oriented focused on the citizens of denton but really data driven and from that we'll be able to identify these critical trends align things align operations creatively and really think in new ways out how we manage you know materials within the city of denton and put that together to create this solid waste management strategy for the city of denton again it comes back down to people data and then future thinking if you look at the project management of of burnson mcdonnell in this leadership scott pastornak who has many years experience in the solid waste industry in the planning and the resource management he'll be leading the project team in conjunction with bob craigs and seth cunningham engineer on this they'll be partnering partnering with resort the recycling partnership as well as future iq to help identify existing goals as well as create the outreach and communication and listening sessions that are identified to help put the plan together they as i said they've done significant work throughout the the state and the nation with regard to local state and federal opportunities to create work and and to to synergize with what we're trying to do with our plan again they've done strategic analysis for a significant number of of texas cities as well as other municipalities and states they've done they are the leaders in waste quantity and projections so the waste characterization studies they've been doing those for several years for the north central texas council of governments as well as the state of texas tceq and helping define what future markets are going to be putting a fine tooth point or fine tooth comb and appointed on the the business and financial sector so identifying what the costs are going to be and how we put those in place while keeping the rates as low as possible focusing on race rate minimization and recycling they've been partners with with several cities including the city of austin helping develop their zero waste plan so again looking at what we do to implement something similar in the city of denton looking at collection and facilities and operations education outreach public outreach that's going to be key to this so as part of this we're going to be creating survey opportunities that anybody can respond to but one of the big things that that's really exciting about this is the creation of a task force so identifying somewhere between 30 and 80 folks to come together to really talk about what's happening with solid waste in the city of denton and again you know there's the old adage that a horse is a giraffe is a horse designed by committee so again we want it to be be fruitful we want to bring enough people together but we don't want to make the the the group so large that it becomes counterproductive by putting putting both people that that are very pro-recycling pro-diversion as well as those people that we have to sort of bring into the system public multi multi-family sector commercial sector will get a good understanding of what these markets look like what our opportunities are for improvement and then creating the strategy and buying from there again between the cog georgetown texas tceq there's significant documented work one of the things that really we found interesting they worked with the city of columbia missouri on an organics organic waste management study to identify the technical capabilities of of putting in a diversion program for organic waste you know they did greenhouse gas evaluations looked at multiple options to manage manage the food waste in conjunction with wood waste and yard waste very similar to what we're wanting to do here so again looking at that information as a best practice and then trying to see what we how we can apply it to the city of denton so again key key focus areas identity issues that we have identified burns and mcdonnell have had the insight and and they have work experience promoting that so as we're moving forward we anticipate this project taking about 12 months and really the first step we're going to be taking is the waste stream characterization identifying what we're throwing away and in what volumes looking again at the residential multi-sector and commercial sectors of this process again going into visioning workshops through structured engagement with with intimate interviews with with with people and groups putting together a think tank and then looking at data management opportunities impacts education outreach and then finally the financial management piece so with that i would be glad to answer any question that you might have regarding our process and i would look forward to a approval of our recommendation tonight council member mouser thank you for the presentation i'm you know very interested in this area i just wonder do you feel that that the needs and trends vary very much from city to city i think they're going to be similar but what i do find is that a lot of the the rules and regulations from a state level they vary significantly between state and state to state similarly when we look at the cities themselves you know we're in a very heavy growth season we you know we we generate yard waste year-round there are places like phoenix which have a hard time actually managing yard waste because they have very little of it so trying to apply something that's in a very what could be considered a progressive area into the city of dentin and vice versa may not be be beneficial so that's why it's important for us to really do an evaluation of the best case and instead of looking back at what's happened over the past 25 years you know learn from that but then look forward to the next 15 or 20 years that this study is to to entertain and really look try to future trend as i as i brought up you know 25 years ago you know leaflets were the way that we we educated the community now with all this social media what will happen tomorrow and again is trying to identify those key pieces you know whether it's in education whether it's in waste processing whether it's in organics processing that's what we're really trying to to put our arms around and make a big difference in over the next 15 years with this study mayor do you mind if i keep calling just a couple more questions sure go ahead sure i mean do you think the fact that uh they they did the the firm you're recommending did basically this whole process with austin you know does that give us an opportunity to start maybe a little closer to the end i'm just you know uh uh a little concerned that uh with the 12-month time frame i think that the point of my question is that i think there might be opportunities to get us you know uh closer to the end faster and actually let me just expand a little there's the fact that they've done it for austin but then also you know we we know or i'll bet five dollars that there's going to at least be interest in in evaluating whether curbside you know food waste pickup makes sense for dentin or not you know it can scale and be meaningful and that there's also interest in whether commercial and multifamily recycling can be done more aggressively in some way that doesn't have uh you know contamination that makes it not not fruitful so you know could do we have to do it all in a totally linear fashion or could we on parallel path be more deeply investigating successful models and best practices in those areas yeah i to answer your question i think the answer is yes this will be on parallel tracks that we're looking at and again you know sort of deconstructing then re-engineering the best practices i think you know right now we're we're sort of in a in a very good place to be right now because the north central texas council governments as we outlined in the friday report is actually doing a waste characterization study at the end of next week their team is going to be here bernard mcdonnell and they basically want to roll into this at the end of october first part of november with the same team so again that is really the key to really kicking this off and if we don't hit this window then it's january february before they can get the team back here so we've actually bought three or four months in this process so again once we have that data a lot of this other stuff will start flowing into place and a lot of it will start making making sense very quickly so again we put a year out there because that's what these these studies typically take but i think there's some synergies that are going to be happening and we're going to find results a little bit quicker than that okay yep council member armature yeah can you explain why they're coming uh you know next week and why it's a matter of next week versus january well next week as i as i said you know next week they will be in uh in arlington or actually south dallas uh doing working with the cog on their waste characterization study uh they are here and if we're able to to get the contract passed then you know they will leave them here for the for the next week and then we'll just move into denton and and do it it just makes sense they're here you might as well do it if not the next time they're going to be in this area working with another city uh in the in the north texas area will be that january time period because this team they've been doing waste characterization studies for the past 10 or 12 years so again they move all around the country basically digging through garbage and categorizing it and it's you know it's not just day laborers that that you know here it is these are these are highly trained people and you know they're the people that we want to evaluate this so it's it's more of an alignment of the stars than really we're pushing because it's you know it has to be done at this time so and so are so are you saying that um you know say say we wanted say in uh you know uh three weeks from now uh a month from now um they'll be you're saying they'll be like are they booked all the way through you know are they going to be somewhere else in the country are they booked solid like a band you know i'm thinking like a band that's on tour you know and they won't hit around here until january it sounds like that's what you're describing but you know i'm a little my understanding is that you know that we could wherever they are you know unless they're booked solid every day until january that we could have them they could come here come wherever um if if we want to work with them so can you explain a little bit how that works well i think i think you're you're you're right these these this this team is in high demand and they they set their schedule out fairly far and uh as a result you know it's it's an alignment of the stars they happen to have an open week right after this week and and you know we're going to to be looking out for lack of a better term to have their ability so close to the first part of our contract instead of having to wait for that that piece of data to form okay all right thank you council member breaks thank you brian can you um explain or go into a little bit more detail about the waste characterization the stream is that only going to be for a week or how long does that take i'm worried about um if it's not a good amount of time not getting the correct data because you know if it's only done for a certain few months during with all the leaves are here you might not really get a good handle of what it looks like across our city you know other months so um how do they compensate for that well again you know they they've done this work throughout this throughout the country so they understand seasonal variations so if we can get a good baseline a statistically significant volume of trash from the different areas then again that helps them define what it looks like throughout the year understanding you know what they have a fairly good data set for north texas so they understand that in december they're not going to have as much yard waste as they might have in in march or april or may so they look at at not only that that what's in the trash can but they also tear down what's what's in the recycle bins what's in the yard waste bins all of our all of our waste streams will be going through and again looking for your organics plastics paper wood waste just tearing it all down so we can we know what's being put in the recycle bin and what's actually contamination and then what's being put in the garbage can that could have been diverted and then allowing us using that data to help us define how we create the the proper diversion and proper marketing and how long is that process how long do they do that that the the first one will be a week and then from that we'll start looking at it and then afterwards we'll determine if they need to come back to do additional work later in the process okay again they're looking at at at a significant number of cans that we're going to be pulling out yeah go ahead okay just two more questions um the next one i have is um i know at one point we did the construction uh recycle materials and then we took that off are they going to be looking at that um as well this time or they will be evaluating the construction and demolition market uh in the area but again because we don't have a significant construction and demolition program uh at the city they that won't be a focus but it will be an aside as part of the strategy for us to consider going forward and the last question is how do the outside contracts fit into this will they be looking ripping that open as well and looking at that to see how much is you know food waste recycling no they will not this is specifically inside the the the the city limits municipal limits of the the city of denton uh what we hope to though is once we get our strategy in place it will serve as a springboard for us to help educate and do outreach to these uh our waste contractors that are bringing in from other cities to be able to apply some of this knowledge and divert additional waste thank you okay anybody council member armature uh yeah if nobody has any other comments um you know i would like to actually move to postpone this uh i realize it would mean it sounds like that would mean that we couldn't get to this till january but i feel like that we have work to do as far as um kind of coming up with a you know more of a plan about uh you know more of a directive to give them you know i'm concerned that if they come within a week and if at least for me for my part i'm not satisfied exactly with the directive that they would be given so i would like to wait uh till you know mid november or late november to to do that so that's what i i am uh going to move to move to postponed till let's say you know beginning the first meeting of december is what i would prefer all right uh we have a motion to postpone is there a second is there a second motion dies for lack of a second uh any other comments uh here council member davis i want to move approval of the item we're hiring this firm to help us discover what our direction ought to be and consult with us on our policy decisions that's exactly what we're paying them to do so i move approval council member briggs oh there you are you're on you're on mute i hit the wrong button i will second okay all right we have a motion and second for agenda item id 20-2009 council member davis how say you aye council member briggs yes council member melzer aye council member ryan aye mayor protem aye council member armator a very weary yes uh mayor watts is a aye so the motion carries seven zero we'll move on to agenda item c which is id 20 and we had no callers on that uh agenda item id 20-2039 and that is considered adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton prohibiting parking on kimberly drive between morse and carina street and we do have uh on this item we had two people make comments using our online form there were zero in support of this item and two against so where's my zoom there we are good evening mayor and members of the council brian yan city traffic engineer here to talk to you today about truck parking on kimberly drive so our purpose today is fourfold we want to give you a little bit of background of the activities that we've seen the the parking activity on kimberly drive talk a little bit about our existing parking regulations and controls and then we'll propose a signing plan and then we'll talk about some next steps and timeline so the first part is the existing conditions on kimberly drive and this is the piece of kimberly that we're talking about between carina and morse over the past several weeks we've received a number of concerns and we've observed over the past several months actually a significant number of semi-trailers and trucks parking along this piece of of kimberly it's currently a about a 40 foot wide roadway it doesn't have a significant amount of activity on the southern portion because the construction is still underway and but as the as the denton county complex and this area begins to see some activity we have several concerns and here this these were taken yesterday so the activity is ongoing and and it's not related to the construction we've got a large box 18 wheelers we've got flatbed 18 wheelers mixed in with some of the normal vehicular parking along this piece of roadway and here's a another view if you the problem with the on-street parking of these large vehicles is their width and they're allowed by law to be 102 inches wide and then you add mirrors so you can have nine and a half to ten foot wide rigs mirror to mirror so if you've got and if you look on the right hand portion of the screen i've superimposed the these trucks if if the parking continues and we continue to see these long duration parking maneuvers on kimberly and the the traffic associated with the denton complex increases our concern is primarily with just the the the narrowness that's left in the pavement there's also we expect some pedestrian activity associated with the county complex and these large vehicles are not like a parked car that you can see over the top of as you're walking they create a canyon and so if you have two of these large trucks parked next to each other or across the street from each other then you have another 18 wheeler that needs to come through and a car meet somewhere in the middle it becomes very uncomfortable very quickly and our concern is primarily that of safety for not only motorists but the pedestrians and whatever potential cyclists we may have so the second part i want to talk about is a little just a few minutes on our current parking regulations this is just different sections of our code of ordinances 18-92 so one of the complaints one of the the observances we've seen have been reported is that these parking maneuvers these durations of more than one day sometimes include vehicle repair so we've already got an ordinance that says you cannot repair a commercial vehicle on a on a city street we've also got a regulation that says you cannot store a large vehicle commercial travel trailer semi-trailer on a residential street and then we've also got a restriction that says you can't park commercial vehicles overnight and so one of the pieces that's missing is we don't have a current ordinance that says you can't park these large vehicles on a non-residential roadway without going through this process where we pass on a specific ordinance for a specific section of roadway and limit that parking so our proposal is and i guess you can see that the the it's a no truck parking sign with arrows to delineate the extensive of the of the middle parking zone and we're only limiting the large semi-trailers right now the large commercial trucks these little red dots represent the the signs that we propose it's about 150 feet apart and we choose 150 feet because that's about as far as you can see and we want these signs to be for enforcement we want the signs to be visible from wherever you park your large truck or your vehicle so a little bit about the next steps in the timeline obviously first next step is adopt an ordinance and that is staff's recommendation we do recommend that this ordinance be approved and then we've got some the next step after that is to implement the proposed solution and then the final step is really the monitor and enforce so for the implementation the utility locations have already been completed the sign fabrication is complete and our teams are ready to install these signs as early as tomorrow if the ordinance is approved tonight so as early as our legal team will allow us to install these signs we're ready to go and then the follow the final step the monitor and enforce my understanding and this is coming from the pd is that the first two weeks or so they'll issue warnings so not going to immediately cite but after some period of time we will start issuing citations and then we'll monitor the the violations to make sure that we're getting the result that we expect and want and that's the cessation of the large vehicle parking on kimberly and with that i will take questions council member melser thank you so i you know i get the the picture that these big trucks are making a safety hazard and so on but uh and i'm fine with the general direction i wonder if it's holistically solving the problem maybe it's true that if we do the recommended measures they'll solve it they'll figure out where they need to go but i wonder if uh you know we might just be kind of pushing the problem to somewhere else is there any way we can figure out why they're there you know are they serving a common destination or you know what's it all about so that we make some kind of inquiry or accommodation to where they can go to meet you know the generally commercial need that they would be serving right so it's twofold there are some businesses where you've got sally beauty in this area so some of these trucks have legitimate destinations in in and around the kimberly drive but and i've again i've worked for other cities and what we found is that when you have a roadway that's not being used and kimberly's because the county complex is not really active it's free parking for them and so it's so it is opportunistic nope nobody said anything yet so we're going to continue to park here as long as we can i've i've i've created and passed similar ordinances in other cities and yes at some at some level you are simply moving the problem because a lot of these independent drivers do not want to have to pay for parking they can't park their rig in front of their house and so they just have to find somewhere and typically what they'll find is an empty street that's not really got a lot of activity on it so what we're trying to do is get out in front of this with the county complex coming online that activity is going to increase and it's just not really appropriate for these vehicles to park there okay they're there because it's free and it isn't being used right that helps thank you all right uh let's see council member uh okay we got briggs armature council member did you have did you have your hand up i had the same questions council member melzer if we were just pushing it off someplace else and trying to figure out why they were there in the first place okay all right council member armature then council member briggs uh yeah so you mentioned um uh independent truck owners is that because are these primarily independent truck owners or are they is it a mix or do we not know so most of what i've seen appears to be independent they're not branded they're not jb hunt they're not a fleet line so they're independent carriers typically who will contract a load from point a to point b and then when they get to point b they either have to develop another contract or wait for another delivery or or leave so if they're if they're here waiting for their next job opportunity and if they don't live in the area then they're just really trying to find somewhere to park their vehicle so that's most of what i have seen on kimberly is bit has at least has appeared to be independent it's not a it's not a big fleet operation and so those are the that's i think that's the issue that we're having okay okay so you know i would be curious and i'm i definitely don't think they should be parking on the street like that you've convinced me you know i'd be curious to to find out uh who sorry my dog back there um i'd be curious to find out uh you know if if they are primarily for sally beauty for instance to reach out to sally beauty and to find out uh what they're you know what their plans are so i mean i'll vote yes for this um but i would want to know you know what what's gonna what's gonna happen to this uh you know to these trucks where they're where they're gonna go right and and so my experience with these types of uh this this type of parking is it starts small and then the drivers find they talk and they oh yeah i park over here and so you know nobody seems to be okay so it's kind of a it grows and it's kind of a word of mouth uh transition where you start with one or two trucks but then everybody learns about hey it's free parking we can you know if you're here for a day or two you can park here and nobody's gonna nobody's gonna hassle you so uh i don't know that the majority of this parking is associated with the businesses in the area um i don't know that it's not but i just want to make sure that we understand that uh the type this behavior tends to grow itself so you get a few trucks and then you get a few more and then you get a bunch so that's but we can we can certainly observe and see if we see any branded or or described trucks that are associated with a given business in the area all right council member breaks thank you mayor most of my questions have been answered or addressed the the one that keeps coming back and i think you just mentioned it was where are they going to go um and i also want to to clarify make sure that they're not coming around that area for a delivery and so by eliminating somewhere for them to stop we are you know harming a business nearby where a truck at once could get to them and now they can't so um if you if you're pretty comfortable saying or thinking that that's not an issue then i'm okay with this uh my other question is is there a place in the city where we do allow uh trucks like this to park and if that is not on topic maybe we need to discuss that on a different report or something council uh mr city manager i mean city attorney is that uh within scope where we would be i think the issue that has come up is is if this is not approved then where will they go i think that question and a brief answer from brian would be appropriate okay all right okay so uh i'm not aware that the city provides any off-street and parking for large vehicles um but they can i guess uh for lack of a better word uh rent a space i mean there are i'll give an example uh if you have a recreational vehicle if you're driving it and you come to town you can't park it on a residential street our ordinance so there are they would have to make arrangements for their off-street parking but i think those opportunities exist um these types i mean i'm not aware of any city that really encourages or allows this type of parking um on any kind of a roadway yeah okay all right any any other questions all right uh we have no callers so uh have no callers but yeah we did have a couple of and we already read those uh items council member briggs did the cards again say why no it's on the online form so you could look that up i think yeah all right council member ryan i'll move approval uh i just want to make a quick note that i was wondering about uh those that were against it because the caption did not say restricting truck parking it just said restricting parking and i know a lot of vehicles that get parked on that road that are cars so but i will move approval since it is about truck right and that was the little yeah i noticed that as well and then when i read the backup it clarified it to be trucks okay we got a motion uh for agenda item hold on let me get to it uh c id 20-2039 do we have a second council member melser i'll move approval we have a second yeah second so uh council member ryan houseau aye council member melser aye council member armater yes council member briggs yes council member davis aye mayor protem all right mayor watts is an aye motion carries seven zero uh our last agenda item i believe is concluding items yes concluding items any concluding items oh no did i miss one you did oh eminent domain yep man i'm trying to get us out of here quick this will go fast too all right we're going to agenda item four a items for individual consideration consideration of the use of eminent domain to condemn real property interests id 20-2100 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton determining the public use need and necessity for the acquisition of various fee simple tracks temporary easements etc uh north bonnie bray street and just so that i can uh remind everyone so when the presentation is going on there's going to be someone who's going to eventually be reading a motion and then there's going to be a survey that is displayed i believe and is that correct and then once that there's been enough display of the survey and the motions read then we can uh take action is that correct mr city attorney that is correct and a copy of a sample motion was distributed to all council members this morning yes okay all right so we're ready for the presentation sir mayor paul williamson real estate good evening mayor and council uh before you tonight is a uh an ordinance regarding uh bonnie bray as well um it's for the widening of uh one gray phase six the limits uh being uh university drive highway 380 out to us 77 north elm street again this this item was uh discussed earlier this evening uh with all the improvements that are slated for that project uh highlighted during the engineering planning and design phase of the project there was fee tracks temporary construction easements and a drainage easement track that was identified that would be necessary for the planned street improvements in addition to the public meeting that was conducted on december 5th the landowners have all been engaged and contacted by staff and the various consultants that are working on this project to deliver it they were provided information in order to contact staff and the consultants in case they had any questions and were given a lot of information as to how the process would unfold over the course of the project approval of the ordinance before you tonight will authorize the city manager and the city attorney or their designees to make offers and for the necessary property interests and including uh you know all the offers all the offers required by law in the event that the any agreements can't be reached on either the purchase price or the terms of the purchase it also acquires the city authorizes the city attorney's office to acquire all the interest necessary uh via imminent domain upon hearing a favorable motion in a second i will uh tile through all of the survey plats and legal descriptions okay all right uh is there someone who has the motion there uh that they can read the motion council members i think i might let me anybody have the motion give me give me five minutes let's take a quick you got you got it john okay go ahead i've got it yep okay i move that the city of denton having made the offers required by law use the power of imminent domain if needed to acquire various fee simple tracks temporary construction easements and drainage easements generally located along north bonnie bray south of u.s highway 77 north elm street in north of u.s highway 380 university drive situated in the f batson survey abstract number 43 the nh meisenheimer survey abstract 810 the j collard survey abstract number 297 and the north or the n wade survey abstract 1407 all in the city and county of denton texas and being more particularly described in exhibit a to the ordinance now under consideration on the screen okay all right so we're gonna uh do you have anything else to read john yeah there is more i was waiting for him to put it up on the screen since can and john i'll still be showing on the screen on the live stream which i believe was required by the state statute right if we've got something on the screen whoever's talking needs to be seen yep all right if we could go ahead and put council member armature i'm gonna have you hold your question um mayor this is trey um if he'll go ahead and finish the motion then we will cycle okay okay all right fantastic thank you uh trey now being displayed for the audience all of which are for valid public use necessary to provide for the construction operation and maintenance of the municipal roadway system improvements necessary for the bonnie bray street widening and improvements project phase six said project to serve the public and citizens of the city of denton okay so now we're ready to display yes mayor there there are quite a few slides i will be going through them rather quickly okay as long as it satisfies the legal requirements mayor yes if i could if i could ask you for a minute here we're having some technical difficulties i'm hearing from billy that we're not on the screen so we need to verify that okay let's take about a two or three minute break and we'll figure out where we where we left off so we can come back and repeat that yep we'll take a five minute break welcome everybody back to this meeting of the dent city council we got a we've got sort of a ghost visitor there on council member melzer set uh cat's sort of being transported in uh we're going to call this meeting back to order at 7 37 pm we do have a quorum and uh just a couple comments i believe we're going to have to restart at least some of that last agenda item i think the presentation we got but we might have to go ahead and start back at reading the motion and i'll let the city attorney sort of if he wants to add any comments about that to go ahead now thank you mayor i know that for the meetings that we had live we had both the as the speaker was making the motion in the background on screen for the public in in the audience as well as at home can see is the actual necessary information that needs to be displayed in connection with the motion that didn't appear while council member ryan was speaking my recommendation is that we would start the motion all over again the images or the slides will be in the background as he reads the motion and council member ryan will be viewed by the public and a little small image that will be in the upper right or left hand corner of the screen so okay all right okay so quick question is the are the images that are going to be displayed in the background are they going to be displayed on our screen so they're going to be displayed here and you're going to be running through them as the as he's reading the motion again yes okay all right so then let's go ahead and pull the screen up and then council member ryan that was just sort of your audition for the reading of that motion so we'll uh yes we'll go ahead and uh uh if you'll go ahead and be so kind to reread that motion i'd greatly appreciate it but this time it's feeling yes do what i said but this time it's feeling okay gotcha all right okay i move that the city of denton having after having made offers required by state law use the power of imminent domain if needed to acquire various fee simple tracks temporary construction easements and drainage easements generally located along north bonnie bray street south of u.s highway 77 also known as north elm street and north of u.s highway 380 also known as university drive situated in the f batson survey abstract number 43 the nh meisenheimer survey abstract number 810 the j collard survey abstract number 297 and the n wade survey abstract 1407 all in the city and county of denton texas and being more particularly described in exhibit a to the ordinance and now under consideration and on the screen now being displayed for the audience all of which are for valid public use necessary to provide for construction operation and maintenance of the municipal roadway system improvements necessary for bonnie bray street widening and improvements project phase six said project to serve public and citizens of the city of denton okay and i'm seeing 32 of 119 so we've got to display all those 119 is that correct all right okay well we'll uh we'll just uh do we do we have any background music jeopardy music all right i'm gonna go ahead and meet myself before i get myself in trouble so so for those who are just now joining us to reset we've got the surveys being shown on the screen for the motion of annexation or i'm sorry not annexation eminent domain for agenda item 4a they all have to be displayed during the motion in order to have an active and legally appropriate motion okay so all right thank you thank everyone for their patience and if we could pull the screen down that would be wonderful all right so we do have a motion chair entertains a second council member melzer yeah first i'd like to just make a comment uh council member ryan might actually remember the dates more precisely but the reason the state is putting so much into this whole project the whole bonnie bray project and why it's a priority even though we talk about maybe not widening every road and making people drive fast is that 35 is going to have a lot of construction on it over several years at the merge and going north from 380 uh and this is in large part to create an alternate route and i think we're going to be glad we have it and i will second okay and council member obiter you had a question i believe um during the uh i think it was the reading of the motion or before the reading of the motion yeah uh it's okay i think my i think my question has been answered actually okay all right okay all right uh so yes council member briggs i'm trying to go from memory but is this the same project where um there was a a meeting and then there was a an article about it in the debt marker chronicle um the individuals that lived here were just now we're finding out about the project is this the same yeah there was a there was a public meeting uh council member briggs in december early part of december and i believe that's the meeting you're talking about okay thank you so december a year ago almost number 2019 29 yeah mayor protem uh along those same lines i'm gonna vote for uh so that we can have the conversation but i want to tip tip my hand early i we've talked to those uh folks back in in the good old days when we could meet in chambers and uh if they're not uh if we can't work a deal that's gonna put me in a tough spot i i mean those those houses have been there for a while so just tipping my hand that i have consternation about moving forward but i want to give them the opportunity to advocate for their own purposes and have conversations with staff but uh if we get down the road and we can't negotiate something i just want to declare early it's that's going to be a tough uh tough decision for me yep council member armater oh i was holding my hand up no okay yeah well and and i and i appreciate those comments uh i think we also have to understand that uh yeah if if basically it's a vote for or against the project so i mean we'll we'll sort of see what we can work out with people but uh once we get down to that road then you're talking about whether we actually move forward or we don't given the situation and and maybe forfeiting a tremendous amount of money from cog but uh go ahead council member ryan yeah i just wanted to you know council member melzer is correct that for within the city it's a good alternate routes are the citizens of denton don't have to use it but more importantly is that's where the new denton high is going to be and we're trying to get this project wrapped up before the high school opens so we don't end up with what we've got going on on mckinney with with ryan high and down on teasley lane with guyer high that that road the road improvements are done prior to the students getting started at that school yep okay all right council member breaks um i i know that the plan is to have that done before um is there a way if not to do a sidewalk ours i mean a side path for kids ahead of it or no is that would that be separate or different amendment or probably a different item to discuss it but i just like to put that information out there okay all right good okay uh let's see uh council member ryan motioned council member melzer seconded council member brian house say you on agenda item id 20-2100 aye council member melzer aye council member davis aye mayor protem uh council member armater no council member briggs no uh mayor watts is an aye motion carries five to two uh now we're down to concluding items any concluding items council member ryan yes thank you mayor i just want to remind everybody that uh to that today is world thrombosis day uh dealing with blood clots and you can go to world thrombosis day.org to find out more information it's uh one of the untold of killers in our nation okay thank you thank you council member ryan council member armater and just want to remind people that uh today was the first day of early voting uh and everybody should go out and vote and let your voice be heard and you get one of these great stickers and they're stickier than okay all right uh anybody else all right we will adjourn the meeting at 7 49 thank you all