Oct 27, 2020 City Council on 2020-10-27 2:00 PM (AMENDED)

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, October the 27th. It is 10-27, it is 2 0 5 p.m. We do have a quorum, so I'll call this meeting to order. We're moving through our agenda items. Our first item on the agenda is work session. Agenda item one, citizen comments on consent agenda items. We have no citizen comments on consent agenda items. Therefore, we'll go to work session agenda item number two, which is request for clarification of agenda items listed on this agenda. Councilmember Armitage. See, I wanted to pull item C, credit collection. That's about the credit-based deposits. I want to tie in against those, so I want to vote no. Okay, do you need a presentation on that or no? No, just for individual considerations. Who else? Councilmember Davis. If I could pull item G for a recusal. Okay, Davis. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, I apologize for not having asked this question before, but it's just a curiosity one, I think, pretty easy. On I, I'm just curious to understand what will an escort vehicle look like and what special powers will they have? Okay. Do we have somebody on staff that's on the line that can address that question? Yeah, Sergeant Brian Coase is on the line. Chief Dixon. Good afternoon, this is Brian Coase, traffic safety unit sergeant. And I'm sorry, could you repeat the question that broke up on my end? Yeah, just what will an escort vehicle look like that's, you know, not a police car? You know, how would, how would it be sort of recognizable and what special powers would they have under this ordinance? So the vehicles will that are typically used by these companies are motorcycles, but our ordinance also allows them to use a normal motor vehicle that's equipped with amber and or blue lights on it that flash like police cars, but not in the same color. They're not allowed to have any markings that say police or officer or anything like that on it, but they will look similar in terms of lighting, most likely as a, as a police car or like a highway maintenance vehicle that you see a lot of lights on. As far as the powers, unless one of their employees is a peace officer and granted the authority to enter intersections on red lights with their peace officer license, they won't be doing that. They'll be able to enter the intersection on green lights and basically hold the intersection to allow the rest of the procession to get through. Great. Appreciate the explanation. Thank you. Council member Briggs. Yes, I would like to pull item F since it's over a million dollars for a vote, please. And I have a question about G because it mentions dark fiber and nine one one. And I know that we had issues recently with our nine one one. Is this in any way, form or fashion related or preventive or is it just not? Hi council member. This is Drew Allen. We also have toy Warner on the phone. He is the technical expert on this. So I'm going to defer to him to answer that question for you. No, the whole idea here was just to have another location in case something really serious happened, such as, you know, at the time when we were thinking about like a natural disaster. That's what our original thoughts were. It could be used in any situation where nine one one went down for some technical matter. Also. Okay. All right. That's good to know. Thank you. All right. Anybody else? Okay. So in summary, I've got we're pulling G for recusal F for an individual vote, C for an individual vote. And we've had a question on I but that was not pulled. Is that square up with the people who've requested things to be pulled and okay. All right. Fantastic. We'll move on then to agenda item three, which is work session reports. We'll go with ID 20-1615. Receive report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the economic development, strategic plan and additional funding options for economic development. Good afternoon, mayor and council members, Jessica Rogers, director of economic development. I just want to introduce Tom Stelman and Jacqueline Lee with tip strategies will be leading us through the first part of the presentation and then staff will follow with a separate presentation. And so I'm going to open up the presentation and turn it over to Tom. All right. Well, thank you very much, Jessica. And just a sound check to make sure you guys can hear me. Okay. Yes, we can. Thank you. All right. Thank you, guys. Once again, it's a pleasure to be back in front of you guys. And we when we met with you guys last month, we got a lot of great feedback. And then in the meantime, we've received additional feedback from several people and all the way up until this morning. So we've made a couple of last minute changes to the presentation that we sent out yesterday, but I'll call those out here in a moment. So Jessica, assume you'll guide the slides for me. So if you don't mind, let's move to slide two. So the agenda, we really this is an abbreviated agenda. Since we went through most of the plan last time and we shared the plan in advance, we really wanted to hit on three different areas that we thought were of most interest and where we got most of the questions. One was on the essentially the target, the target industries, what we called strategic growth areas. One was around capacity and resources. As you guys recall, there was a recommendation that the community become if it wants to become more aggressive for economic development that we need to have additional resources available to us. And then there have been a lot of questions about, you know, what's the future for the incentives policy and how does this plan direct how the community will think about incentives and tools for economic development going forward. So next slide. The task completed since last time. There were some questions about particular areas of the plan where you'd like to see more details. So we expanded detail for several different areas of the plan. Also questions about where, you know, what the actual targets were within the industry. So we have pulled out targets for each of the growth areas that we had recommended and I'll talk about those here in a moment. We also were asked, you know, could you guys be clearer about the way you see this new catalyst fund and how that would be used. So I will introduce that conversation and then Jessica also will address some of this in her presentation. There were also questions about performance metrics. So we added that to the plan. We had some, but we provided further detail. And then one of the things that we've done is to create at the staff's recommendation a scoring tool that I will describe here in a moment that will help us think about, you know, what are the types of projects that we may want to provide incentives for because you guys have had an incentives policy and have incentivized projects in the past. But what does that mean of this new plan? So next slide. Just a reminder that there were three primary goals. The first one being to accelerate recovery. And this was new under COVID. So we were kind of motoring along with the plan and COVID hits. And so we dedicated the entire first section to basically a recovery strategy. And the second was where you would typically think of traditional economic development. You know, what does it mean for Denton to direct its growth for the future to create jobs in the community? And then the third being a, you know, how do we make sure that we have the type of community that's going to be attractive to new industry to move into this area? So next slide. And I think it's important to remind ourselves that there are many facets to economic development, especially economic development as led within a city department. Many of the things that you do already through your utility, through the infrastructure are really all part of creating the product that allows for your businesses to grow and for you to be able to attract new business. One of the things that we'll be focused on today is really around that orange box at the top, which is where when most people think about economic development, this is the one they think about. What does it mean to attract new business and to help your businesses expand? So that's where we're going to spend most of our time today because that's where most of the questions were from last time. So a reminder, let's go down to slide number seven. There were four different, what we called strategic growth areas within this plan, the first one being connectivity, and that's taking advantage of the fact that you guys are at the intersection of I-35 east and west on basically at the apex of one of the biggest economic engines in the country and that is the DFW area. And a reminder that that also drives most of the economic opportunities for all of the communities within the DFW area. It's just when companies are thinking about where they're going to locate, they typically aren't thinking about McKinney or Denton or Irving first. They're typically thinking about DFW first if they're coming from outside of the region. And you guys with that intersection and West Park business park and some of your key employers like Peter Bilt are ideal in that area. But you also have other assets with your position and goals around renewable energy. I think there are opportunities there, there are opportunities for entrepreneurship, and then what we have in the competitiveness box in the bottom right-hand corner are really the things that we see being competitive in the future for such as perhaps attracting corporate regional headquarters, finance, insurance, those type of sectors that would be driven by Class A office space, which currently is a challenge for the Denton area and you compete very heavily within other markets with other markets within the DFW area. But the next slide is something that we've added, which is to take each of these areas and essentially pull out the sectors that fit within each of these that align more traditionally with the type of targets that you would consider. And we're not recommending that all of these are your targets. These are just examples of the type of sectors that fit within each one. So within connectivity, that's where transportation and your transportation equipment fits, creativity, computer services, which would also include data centers. And then on the far right-hand side, competitiveness, that's where corporate headquarters, financial intermediate services. And I will tell you that each one of these areas Denton has different strengths and weaknesses for each one. And on the connectivity side, I mentioned before, just being in the DFW area, it's being one of the largest and fastest or has been one of the fastest growing markets in the country. The demand for logistics and distribution, for transportation equipment, for communications equipment, those are all great targets for you guys. And what I've done separately but is not part of this plan is I have actually given the staff a list of all of the industry sector codes that go with each of these. So as they work with the chamber to do the actual targeting and the marketing, they will have sort of a detailed code list by which they can download any list of companies that they would use for any outreach directly to companies. But I'm happy, Jessica, to keep moving because when I -- I will come back to these targets for you in a moment as we talk about the matrix for scoring incentives. And I'll provide additional detail because we have actually prioritized these. This isn't really a -- so if you think in terms of targets, nobody has 40 targets. You really need to narrow this down to some of the four or five or six that you think would make the most sense. And I put that together in a priority list that I'll talk about here in a moment. So if you'll go ahead and move down to slide number 10. As you guys recall, we in the plan recommended that you move from the current -- I think it's around 4 million, Jessica, that you're currently expending around supporting industry through economic development. And we laid out two different options last time, kind of a baseline and a more aggressive. And so what we've done here is we've put together a list of what those purposes would be for those funds. And there would be the general economic development part, which is when you think about incentives, if you're reading about a project that's been incentivized in one of the competitor communities in the DFW area, this is where you would hope to gain some advantage, or at least be on the list if to add funds in that area. Infrastructure, utilities and development assistance. We have a category there. Innovation and entrepreneurship, a much smaller, but we think is a very important category for the purposes of this fund. And then green business incentives to support infrastructure sustainability strategy. And then the one that's a little longer term is really targeting office space development, because I think as we've talked about in the previous meeting, that's one of the disadvantages that we feel like didn't have right now. There's not a lot of Class A office space available. And this is one right now that's a little puzzling as to the timing for when we would see this type of office development. You guys are all familiar with the trend right now where companies are allowing their workers to remain at home, work from home. We've got companies at the national scale, some of the IT companies that are actually telling their employees that they may never come back into an office and they may allow them to work. And so what does that mean for Class A office space going forward? And how much of that is going to be available in the DFW area? And what will you be competing with? And as we also talked last time, the office space development that may occur as a result of the coal hunter ranch development and Hillwood's plans there, maintaining that relationship will give you a better idea of when that might happen and that represents probably the best opportunity for Denton to be competitive in the future for those types of targets. One of the requests that we got was a question around recommendations or uses for this catalyst fund and how that might compare to if you were to have type A or type B funds. And I will pause for a moment to explain, we were fully aware that you currently through the transportation authority are maxed out so type A or type B for Denton would require an actual vote for that. And I know it's complicated, Todd, feel free to pitch in because I know there are obligations. Well, yeah. Well, this is Chris, this is the mayor. I guess when you say there's, my understanding is we cannot, I mean, we got our half cent sales tax to DCTA that was available for type A or type B. But because it's levied on DCTA, if we stuck with the half cent sales tax, we can't use, I mean, when you say a vote is taken, what exactly are you referring to? I would refer to, you know, in the future, if you were to choose to opt out of DCTA funding, which my understanding based on the conversation with the city manager, Todd, that that would be a very difficult thing to do in the future based on. Yeah, Tom had gotten some feedback that, you know, whether or not that was a possibility, mayor. And so we had a long conversation about the complicated logistics of making something like that happen, perhaps going back to a referendum and if the voters wanted to do that and then split up the sales tax again. But you're talking a project that is potentially years and DCTA has leveraged the sales tax to the point where I'm not sure how practical that really is. No, I appreciate that because I didn't want to leave any sort of impression that there was another vehicle that would allow us to obtain some additional sales tax. But we would have to the community would have to decide we don't want to do it this way anymore. We want to do it this way and would require a decoupling and an untangling. So, OK, just want to make sure. OK, there is one there is one question though, Tom, because I'm trying to follow you all in the presentation. For some reason, I'm just having to look at the backup that's in the agenda to the public. So we went all the way down to the final slide. And this slide is what's what slide is this? Is it in I'm looking at the presentation. So my apologies, Mayor, I should have pointed this out at the beginning. We had additional requests that came in from right. So is this one of them? Yes. OK. All right. OK. All right. Sorry about that. OK. Yeah. And Mayor, what's what's on the slide is just a list of the eligible projects for type A and type B. Got you. And what we did is we we went through and we know that for type A, you know, manufacturing, distribution centers, R&D facilities, corporate HQ, those are the types of things that are typically supported by type A and type B has the sports facilities and parks and things related to that. Type B also allows for affordable housing, recycling facilities and some general infrastructure, you know, municipal improvements. And so the request was, could we put could we sort of share how we had envisioned the catalyst fund and how it might align. And so really, there were a number of things that we did not see as necessarily aligned with the catalyst fund, but there's several that were. And and so I think that was since you're typically competing with the communities that have type A and type B, it was important to be able to say, OK, well, we're with our catalyst fund, we would compete on the types of projects that are being recommended in the plan. Plus, there's a little more flexibility. I think that was part of the request. And then so let's move down, Jessica, to slide 13, which is considerations for incentivizing projects. And before I talk about the matrix that we put together, just to remind the minder that, you know, incentives are just one aspect of economic development. And one of the other things that I think is always important and part of the exercise today is to be able to have discussions about incentives and the city's priorities before you have a project in front of you. And many times the community, the first time they have a really heart to heart discussion about incentives is when they have a project in front of them. And so part of the discussion today was to be able to tee up a longer discussion that you guys will have over this next year as you consider realigning your incentive package to the new plan and the new direction. So that's that's the background for what what we put together here. And so slide 14 is considerations in a scoring matrix. And the list that is here is essentially the list that you currently use. We've we've there were 10 of them. And so we've taken essentially seven of them that we thought were still very relevant in the way that you would think about what types of projects you would want to incentive incentivize. And we've given a description of each one, expanding the tax base, essentially adding to your tax rolls, which at this particular point in time, we think is very, very important, especially as we're challenged a little more on sales tax with the economic downturn. Number two, generating new utility customers. You know, a big part of the advantage of having the electric utility in the city of Denton is that you generate revenue that allows for your your residents to benefit from that. But it also means that when you bring in larger electric users that can also offset investments and costs associated with that. And so having those two as priorities makes a lot of sense. Encouraging new businesses that may not be represented in your community to start up. That's a that's a no brainer in the economic development world because you're essentially growing new business or the businesses that you're attracting, engaging and sustainable practices. That's part of your community's culture and your commitment. Increasing high wage jobs is also typically a commitment. Encouraging knowledge based jobs, because we know that's part of the trend, a longer term trend where many jobs are moving toward additional specialization and digitization, easy for me to say. And also spurring infill development or redevelopment as a particular priority. And each one of these as you go forward may have thresholds associated with it may have weighting associated with it as you think through this. And other areas to consider for maybe giving bonuses when you think about incentives would include public private partnerships, community investment, and using the use of local vendors to support the project. And so I will now and I apologize if this is difficult to read in the document that you have. What before we've done before we do that, what I'd like to do is open it up to the council just for questions up to this point, because this is going to go into some some pretty detailed ideas. And I think the because over the time over the last few years on council, you know, different various economic development, and I know people don't like might not like this discussion coming up. But I think we this is where we talk about policy. This is where we talk about economic development policies. And that also and we can use from that examples from prior economic development incentives that have come before the council. So I guess what I want to do is go back if everybody can see the slide on considerations considerations and incentive scoring matrix. Because I think what we have to start from first of all is what exactly is the number one priority for economic development and for me personally, if you're going to have economic development, eventually somewhere down the line is going to have to provide something to the community, ie additional revenue that maybe the community is not going to have to supplement. Now you can you can decide how many what kind of restrictions you have on that you can decide some matrix on where we want this type of industry and we don't want this type of industry. But when I look at engage in hold on increase high wage jobs, and encourage knowledge based jobs, if we could go ahead and pull the pull the slide back down. Like the two that we did last time, the two incentives we did, which I have no no issue with that, none at all. But what we've just heard is that moving forward in a post COVID environment, there's going to be a lot of things that have changed just as our normal standard operating practices. And one is, do people really consolidate in places of work? You know, many people will begin working from home based upon the tech now. So when we start talking about how paying jobs in the end, we this council is going to have to decide the future council is going to have to decide, do you give an incentive just to break even? Or maybe even lose? And how do you make that determination on what that rate of return is? And I know there's a there's a calculation for that. So, you know, you can give incentives for 50 jobs, but if all those 50 jobs live outside of the city, and some say, well, they're inside the city, and they're going to buy dinners and lunches and all that, well, I mean, people who are making, you know, $25 an hour do the same thing as compared to making $50 an hour. So it's an overall comprehensive approach. So I've heard a lot of statements over the years about policies that people sort of use in from their own position on how to determine economic development. Now, some have said they don't want it at all, that I'm not for economic development incentives at all, which is fine. We've got some we've got some feedback coming in from somebody. Okay. We've got some feedback coming in from somebody I'm hearing if people could mute their mics, please. Thank you. So that's where I really want to start having this discussion. Because when we get into the detail, but those principles listed there are what I'm hearing the rationale and the reasons in order to even consider an economic development incentive. So, Councilmember Armitage. So thank you. So I just want to start by thanking Jessica and economic development staff and the consultant for just all these exciting changes that feel to me just so in sync with the values of the public. You know, I myself am one who you know, it's no secret has been, you know, very skeptical about past economic development arrangements and was very excited to vote yes to this recent these two recent ones which reflect, you know, these these kinds of values. So I had two questions about about this. One, so I'd love that we now have as category as priority categories, investing in businesses owned by black and indigenous people of color, and also green businesses, businesses that do not have a big footprint in our good for the environment. And I'm wondering kind of how you do and this could be a question for for Jessica or for the consultants, either one or both. How you square the on the one hand, we've got these incentives for green businesses. On the other hand, we see it as an advantage that people are using a lot of electricity, you know, so more revenue for DME. And in a limited footprint could be seen as conflicting priorities. Similarly, you know, high wage jobs, which of course I support I've never heard of anyone who has not supported more highway jobs coming to Denton. You know, my problem with some pass incentives arrangements has been that a significant percentage of these high paid jobs have gone to transfers from the company who are coming in from elsewhere. So what can we do to ensure that these high paid jobs are going to to people who live in Denton. So, so Councilmember Armitage, just for clarification, when you say that, that additional incentives to encourage additional revenue for DME, which then also helps with keeping rates low or lowering them seems to be in conflict with sustainability businesses. Could you expand on could you sort of what are your thoughts on that? I don't know exactly where the conflict is. Well, I'm actually curious. I mean, I'd be happy to if Jessica and the consultant want me to expand on that. But I would much rather hear kind of what they have to say. Well, I understand that. But my question is posed to you. Okay, I'm wanting to understand so that when I hear their answer, I'm understanding what you're trying to what your information you're trying to get. Okay, well, so, you know, I mean, generally speaking, the bigger footprint you have, you know, the more you can conserve on electricity, the better you are, the better your businesses for the environment, the greener business. So these businesses with a smaller footprint, you know, versus if you're a giant storage facility that needs to have freezers on all the 24/7, that's going to it's going to create a lot more revenue for DME. But it's not necessarily the most environmentally sustainable, even though, of course, we're you know, we've got 100% renewable contracts, etc. But we've also got the gas plant. And, you know, carbon footprint is carbon footprint, the grid has all kinds of electrons in it. So that's kind of that's where I'm going. Okay, so it's a fine balance. Sure. And I appreciate that. So my question then to you is when you talk about footprint of sustainability, your example that you use was someone who uses a lesser load of electricity. In other words, how can you say we want to have businesses come in that will have high electricity bills or higher electricity bills, but then sustainability based upon what you said, was businesses who use less conservation, businesses who use less energy. Okay, I get that. But just assuming that someone is coming in with a bigger business doesn't mean that they haven't configured something in a way that it really is conserving energy like the convention center. So, so what I'm hearing you, what you're really asking is, from what you just stated, is that it's a matter of load use, how can we say we want people to use less electricity, which therefore reduces greenhouse gases and so forth. And when I say so when I say big footprints, I don't necessarily mean architectural footprints. So for instance, the convention center and Tetra Pak, they have solar panel and solar arrays. They're big buildings, you know, that have a smaller footprint, a smaller carbon footprint because they use so much they produce renewable energy. So I'm talking about carbon footprint, not so much architectural footprint. But I'm mostly curious and you know, so I hope that answered your question. If not, I'd be happy to take it offline. But I really mostly wanted to hear from from the consultant and from Jessica just their feelings because I'm, I'm pretty sure that they've probably thought about this already about the fine the balancing on the reason I asked the question is so that they can understand because you just you just changed from a footprint to carbon footprint. So I'm glad that we got that clarified so they can give you the best answer based upon the information that you're wanting. So yes, staff or consultant. I'll take that one. So Councilmember, my response would be I think that the council has has done some really creative and unique things in the space of adopting the sustainable Denton plan and the renewable Denton plan and encouraging energy efficient efficiency, conservation and sustainability. Those are things that are very much identified with Denton. And they are marketable when we are out recruiting businesses because we can focus on industries. Well, they may not be a traditionally thought of as sustainable business, but a business that has implemented sustainable practices. And so when we look at encouraging sustainability or conservation as part of economic development, they are linked and you're right. It is a balance. We do want to attract energy users for our electric utility because that has a benefit to the system. But within that, as efficient as our big users can be makes the system that much better. So even when we have large energy users, we want to encourage them to be the most efficient they can for our system. And that also helps with the economic development component of marketing those tools to those businesses as we're here to help you. We've adopted sustainability as a value in this community. And so that's important to make sure we incorporate that into our economic development policy as well. Thank you so much. And would someone be able to address the issue of what can we do to ensure that the higher paying jobs are going to Denton residents? I apologize. I forgot that question. I apologize. I think that's a great question. And I think that part of that component and what we heard throughout this plan as we were meeting with stakeholders, what is the challenge? What's that impediment or obstacle where we're seeing higher wage jobs maybe grow in Denton, but they're not living in Denton and it's housing and making sure that we have housing that fits the needs of those higher wage positions. We got that comment directly from a number of our businesses that there's no housing for executives available in Denton. And so they're having to look elsewhere to live. And so even if they want those jobs here or they want to bring those jobs here that we're seeing that those homes and those residences migrate elsewhere. So that that's why housing is addressed in the plan as well as making sure that we have housing for that sector. So just to summarize, there's nothing in this plan that gives any specificity to carbon footprint data. In other words, we're not using carbon footprint or those calculations to determine incentive types or incentive levels. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. And then what I'm hearing you say too is because we've seen a lot in the paper and we've heard a lot about affordable housing and affordability and those kinds of things. But what I'm hearing you say is that while we're concerned about that, the reason why we're not having these higher pays jobs that are being retained is because we don't have the housing stock on the other end of the spectrum that these individuals and these families and these these workers are wanting. Is that correct? Yes. Those were comments that we received when we were conducting some of our executive level level stakeholder meetings throughout. I'm going to I'm going to go with Councilmember Briggs and then we'll come back Councilmember and then Councilmember Meltzer. Thank you. I'm excited to see the scorecard I know we're about to talk about. It was something we talked about in the Economic Development Partnership Board a couple years ago and so it's really exciting to see it come. My question is on the fund. It was divided up in the presentation. We saw the amount of funds for each of those programs. Is that something that's been decided or with that? Do we have a little bit of discussion within this Council to to talk about that? I'm just kind of wondering for me on like innovation entrepreneurship 250,000 or the green incentives only a hundred thousand after the conversation we just had what could all of these be used for one business like or is it just here is so and so out of this program. That's it or can we say well you get some of the funds from the General Economic Development Program and then here because you're using energy-efficient coolers and you have a solar panel and this then you can get you know incentive here from this green fund is do you understand I mean are we going to be able to layer those like that. The intention is that if someone were to qualify under the programs. Yes, they would be layered the amounts actually came from some very intentional discussions between staff and the consultants as to what is both feasible and reasonable and also a you know kind of that reach goal that we want to get to to be aggressive in our economic development funding and I'm going to go over in my presentation details of some of the policy parameters under each of those programs that we're recommending that might help you understand why the amounts are what they are but no those amounts are not set in anything other than that staff's recommendation based on council pursuing the aggressive model at the last work session. Okay and just a just a quick comment because we talked about residency and the the incentives we passed last week had that incentive for residency which is fantastic but a lot of the other incentives that we have haven't really had that guarantee. So even though we are creating a hundred jobs whether they be high skilled or high you know knowledge or not we still can't guarantee that those jobs are going to actual den residents without that incentive built into it the residency incentive. So I just wanted to make that statement. Thank you. Yeah Paul before and I appreciate you making that statement and my comment back last week was I think we've got that reversed. I mean if you're providing a greater incentive for the higher paying jobs that live outside the city and you're giving a $500 incentive just to live in the city I mean does that incentive go to the employee does it go to the employer. So I mean if you really want to incentivize people to live in the city you just don't offer $500 you say so many so much percentage of the people that are employed under this incentive agreement have to be able to certify and show that they live within the city of Denton. So I think I think you know if that's if that's one of the priorities and the goals you've got to be a little bit more aggressive and assertive than that. So I mean if it's left up to the employee to decide that so while I appreciate that incentive that was in the last two I don't think that in really in any sense provides an incentive for people who are making seventy five or eighty thousand dollars a year to live in the city when they can't find the housing and things such as that it really just goes to the employer. So if that's really what you want that's got to get stepped up pretty pretty dramatically. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah thanks. I appreciate all the focus on making the residency court work. I want to touch briefly on the energy issue but then I really wanted to get into a different topic on the energy issue. My way of looking at it is if there is an energy intensive kind of business that's going to be somewhere I would far prefer it to be in Denton where their where their needs would be met through our renewable contracts. So I think that's a good thing whether it's a data center or whatever. But I'd like to go to a different topic. I appreciate very much the comment before transitioning into talking about incentives that incentives are only one part of economic development. And you know that that was why I had asked about what are all the different kinds of things that that city spend on you know that and one proxy for making a list was what what are type A and type B funds allow them to spend on. And when Mayor when you talk about what are even people going to want now in terms of a place to work. I think I think that's an important place to start it may you know what you're saying suggests that what you really want to be is the place that's most desirable to live in because your job could be anywhere. So you know I wonder if we had a big fund if some part of our portfolio should be focused on whatever the things are that would make us the most attractive place to live. And I'm going to tee up just a project we've all already heard about. But just to think about in this perspective if we if we were able to bring the areas north and south of the square out of the floodplain and update all that infrastructure so that your hip fund downtown is more than a square block you know square block plus industrial. Does that open up an opportunity to create those kind of urban live work play places that young professionals might you know enjoy living in. So you know where would something like that those kind of infrastructure investments fit in a comprehensive economic development strategy. Okay. Anybody else for I go back to council member Armitter. Okay council member Armitter. Thank you. Yes I just kind of following up and I really appreciate your comments so far. You know for me there are two different categories of Denton based jobs that I think sometimes get conflated just because that wording can mean two different things. On the one hand we have jobs for people who already live in Denton and talk about high paid jobs for people who already live here i.e. the people who we already serve on council and then we can talk about jobs coming in from outside where we can get new people to come and live in Denton. So these are I just wanted to note that you know these are two different categories. For me my top priority you know just because of who I serve is high paying jobs for people who already live in Denton. So of course if somebody is transferring in from elsewhere I would much prefer for them to live here and spend their tax dollars here than elsewhere but what I would like even more than that is for people who already live in Denton to be prioritized. So I just wanted to note kind of those two differences to make sure we're not conflating them and then I wanted to ask about the question of there not being enough you know high end housing options for you know corporate executives. I believe that I mean it makes sense to me that that's what companies are telling you I don't doubt that but I wonder if the data backs that up because I know that you know on the one hand we've got well we've got these housing developments right we've got some upscale housing developments but we've also got land for sale that executives can buy and build their dream house on and at a price that's much cheaper than it would be to do so in Austin or certain other Texas cities. So I'm wondering if you know to what extent have we researched those claims to see if they're valid. You know for me I'm hearing and seeing more of a need for affordable housing than for corporate housing but I'm wondering to what extent the reality actually backs up the claim that I absolutely believe that you're hearing from these you know corporate executives. So I know we did a housing study I mean this has been this has been around for years so if somebody could forward her the housing study that it's not just the the developers or it's not just the corporations I mean we don't have. I'm intimately familiar with the housing study. So what are you saying you're what are you saying you're wanting? What are you saying you're wanting? So the housing study was focused on affordable housing needs. No no no no no we've had housing studies that that identify the different level of housing that is available in Denton and the need. And when I'm understanding from this so again I'm talking not only about the houses that are available but also land that's available that people could buy and purchase and build their own home on because not everybody wants to live in these gated communities. Of course. I'm just curious to know if staff has any feedback maybe they'll tell me the same thing maybe they'll say councilmember Armentar go look in this report that you've already read I'd be glad to go back to it. But I'm just curious to know what staff's view is since we have them here now. Oh and that's fine and I certainly want to hear staff's view but I've also been on the council for 12 years. And so I also know that what we have and what we don't have and I also know that when you talk about people who are can go buy land and develop it but I've also seen where this council and previous councils have had a real struggle with with approving projects with land and I also saw how that you know we had a discussion about taking 10 or 15,000 acres off the tax rolls to be developed as single family homes in the gaswell setback. So if we're going to have a comprehensive we have to look at the whole picture. We have to look at the whole picture. So if we have a report on the housing assessment other than the one we just completed could you forward that to councilmember Armentar and staff go ahead and just respond if you have an answer but I think we've I think you all have an answer that this isn't this isn't something that's made up by the people in corporate America that this is a situation that's existed for quite some time. Go ahead. I would just say that that particular type of analysis was outside the scope of this study. Our primary goal was speaking to companies that represented various sectors that were hiring what they were hearing from their employees and so we did not go any further than that qualitative set of data that we received from our stakeholders in terms of of how we were not investigating any data specific to housing itself. That's all I wanted to know that makes sense. Well that's in this study. Yeah that's in this study. What I'm saying is there are other studies. So that's the information I'm wanting you to forward to councilmember Armentar so she'll have the best set of information when she's looking at these different proposals. Councilmember Davis that study I'm happy to read it again. Thank you. Councilmember Davis. So I agree with some of my colleagues here that we would prefer that new jobs go to existing Denton residents first. I think the issue we're kind of forgetting is that we don't sit in a bubble. You know Denton's not a snow globe. If my wife and I move here for me to take a job she may prefer to take a job that's somewhere else in the Metroplex and we'd have to locate somewhere in between. If we move here for a job and we can afford it she might prefer that we live in South Lake or Argyle or anywhere at Flower Mound anywhere else in driving distance. We're kind of forgetting that people make decisions. They make their own decisions. They make them for lots of different reasons. They make them because of school districts. They make them because of spouses jobs. Housing is one piece of the puzzle. But I don't think that a economic development plan is the place to get really granular about where we want people to live and how they're going to make those own their own personal decisions. I don't want to see I personally don't want to see something in this plan that creates this complex incentive structure for hiring people who already can who already have a utility bill from the city of Denton or you know you get an extra an extra bump if you hire if you have a residency requirement. I don't think that's fair to employees to say this is where you're going to live. I think what we should do instead and Councilmember Meltzer kind of kind of put a finer point on this. You make a place where people want to live where they want to live and they want to work and you do those things organically and you get people moving here to live work and play and all the things that we do in our marketing. I don't think you do it with this kind of heavy-handed top-down approach in an economic development plan. You create good jobs, you build a good city, and those things come together organically. Okay and that that's going to require a lot more funding than what an economic development fund will be able to provide. That that takes a a whole comprehensive approach which I think the city of Denton does right now. I mean I think we're doing is what we can with the funding that we have to really try to create those live work and play spaces that that attract people. But housing is a component of that. I mean it certainly is a component. All right so we're ready to go on to the specific. I think the Councilmember Meltzer go ahead. Yeah thank you. You know it does sort of suggest maybe an additional little side bit of analytical work might be to just get what are what are the factors that are today you know considered to make a place desirable to live in. How does Denton score on those? Where are our gaps? I mean it might be obvious it might not especially as needs are changing you know and wants are changing. Just to help us guide policy within you know the specifically economic development conversation but you know in other areas too. I mean as you're kind of indicating a lot of the things we do contribute to economic development not just this fund. But if that's an essential issue it might be good to have a little evaluation. You know where where are the gaps? Housing is one piece but what what are the key factors sought? I think that could that could you know could be very helpful. So somebody correct me if I'm wrong. Did we just receive an award where Denton was top rated? I think was it 55 of the most livable city in the country? I think is what it was. I don't think it was in the state. Am I incorrect on that? Do y'all remember what that award was? By Texas Livability Magazine or something like that? We were named one of the livability magazine's top 100 places to live. Yep okay. So I think I think that gives an indication and and they do list some factors on what they use to score that. So I think that that goes to what you're saying is can we look at those lists that that institutions like that are using to make this decision and see where we rank against those cities that and see those cities that maybe are a little bit higher ranked than us and see how we measure up. So I think that's I think that's a good a good approach. I think we have some data that we can actually do that with. You know if you have it if you have it handy Jessica Debbie I'd love to just give it a look. I know it's probably just a google search away but a few fingers are right on it. Thanks. Okay so we're moving on to the specific I think it's scoring matrix. Yes sir another another sound check since I've been off. Yes sir we can hear you fine. Thank you. Okay all right. So Jessica I think slide 15 and so if you guys have that slide in front of you I want to pause before your eyes get too crossed looking at it and just remind you that this is really meant to tee up a longer discussion because you guys have said some things today that I'm really excited about the investment in the community to make that more attractive. There are a number of things that you're saying that I think are all in line with where we see some of the trends especially for the knowledge worker or you know many people being able to work from home and one of the trends that we've been following and we're not sure how it's really going to play out to be honest is because a lot of people are saying people are going to move out of the downtown sort of high-rise condo and look for more suburban or ex-urban or even rural places where they can socially distance or they can you know live their lives in a different way than maybe they have in the past. But you know the question we have right now is how is that going to hold you know I mean how is that going to hold up is that a longer term trend because we're definitely seeing it in the short term. But I think all the discussions that you're having are spot on in terms of how you broaden your perspective around being successful in economic development. With that said the the incentives matrix that we put together there's really two different levels that this could be used. The first level is for the conversation that we're having right now and then the question will be can this tool be refined over this next year to where it could actually be applied to projects. And right now it's really more of a conceptual tool to help have these discussions. And so if you're going to read into this you know very specific details you'll probably be disappointed at the moment. This was a first cut and a way to think about how you take those considerations and turn them into a tool by which when you have projects come before you you can at least see how you know how things score so that you can compare it. And Todd I think it was you who pointed out when we first showed this to you that the real value in this is in the conversation that you guys get to have set policy. And then over time as you consider multiple you know you've got basically a backlog of projects that you've been working on so that you can say okay this is how we scored our last one. This is the incentive we gave. Is that the kind of thing we want to do move forward. So across the across the top we put industrial office and retail hotel just to check a box if it's a project that you know is an industrial user an office user or retail or hotel type space user. And then we've taken the priority considerations and we're giving that 100 points and then to the right what we're calling the bonus considerations for giving 15 points. And so the next slide Jessica is essentially our first cut at taking that matrix and across where it says maximum points we've assigned a weighting to each one of those you know possible score that you could receive up to 100 points that's in the blue green area and then an additional 15 points for the bonus. And we took as consultants we took the list of the targets and said just based generally for the kinds of projects that would normally fit within this sector how might they score. And so once again this is a scoring of a sector not the scoring of a specific company. And so this is really meant to be a conversation starter around how you would think about actually scoring kinds of projects that would come before you. And so the first thing I'll point out is the first row computer services including data centers typically could be an industrial and or office if it's a data center that's considered an industrial user typically goes into an industrial park you can find some that that may be in an office space but sometimes they'll have office associated with it. And then across the board we have assigned scores for how each one of those would score within the range that is the maximum range for that score. And so if you look all the way across on computer services you would see we have given it a score of 71. You go to the next one manufacturing you know someone like Peter Biltore other primarily industrial they expand the tax base they would be a user of electricity they would encourage other suppliers to move into the area potentially. We put in a two with you know manufacturers typically depending on the manufacturer they could be real high on sustainable business practices or environmental practices. Once again we just took a cut at how different types of sectors might score in this type of system. The next row corporate headquarters you know office users finance insurance regional headquarters would score very well distribution and commerce scores well communication equipment and services. Oh have I lost you guys completely. If you want we can if you've got a slot or two that's associated with this or if there's just further examples we could stop and see if there's any questions about this as far as just the overall approach because I mean as far as the details of the numbers associated I mean that's all for another discussion but just this concept yes yeah. So yeah go ahead. Yes I would say I think I have one or two other slides I could show that just further demonstrate what we've done and then open it up for questions. Okay yeah so a couple hands so council members if we could if we could hold those and he'll go through these slides and we'll open up for questions. Yeah because that might make it easier. So the next slide this was the first example and these were the scores that we gave it across the top and then we if you'll go to the next slide Jessica I think we're on slide 17 in your deck. What we did is we changed up the scoring values we gave a lot more value to expanding the tax base in this case and more value to utility users and it changed up somewhat it gave the more industrial manufacturing higher scores because they would be you know larger investors more capital equipment that would be taxable than others. So all I'm doing here is just demonstrating that you and staff as you go through this can choose to have discussions about how do you score each one of these priority considerations and you can make those adjustments going forward. So the last the last two slides that I have slide 18 just a reminder that the the policies around this incentives package would be something that you would essentially go through over a period of time. As you mentioned there we're not asking to go into details here we're not asking for a decision about this particular tool and how you would use it. And then I think the last slide is slide 19 is kind of Jessica asked that we put together just a quick timeline for different incentives funds and how you would think about that going forward over the next year because I think your existing policy expires in 2022 and so you can make decisions here in the next year about how you want to actually do that and when it would be implemented. So I will back up now to maybe we can go back to the example one slide which is 16 which is where I was before we moved forward. Okay are you ready for questions? Yes. Okay all right. I believe I saw Councilmember Davis and then Councilmember Armitage. So Councilmember Davis go ahead. Thank you Mayor. I just want to say I really like the priority matrix as a tool. Obviously we'll get a chance at some future date to kind of assign the number of values that we want to and create our own but I just want to say I like the way that visualizes and gives us a metric for the priorities. I get questions all the time. Well how do we end up with so many distribution centers? Well because it's something that fits our priorities and our needs and our goals and when we can visualize that and kind of put it in that logical framework I think it's very helpful for people to understand why we're doing economic development incentives in the first place, why we're engaged in this, and why it is that a distribution center does so much more for our city from an ED perspective than the coolest startup you could think of. We need to be supporting both of those obviously but why we put a higher priority on certain things. My question for staff is I appreciate the timeline slide for I guess conceptually the whole ED framework but what's our timeline for getting into the nuts and bolts of that Denton's priority matrix and setting that policy? I think overall the idea today was to come back to you with the framework, try to answer as many of your questions as we possibly could from last time and then if we're in agreement that this is a good standard approach to move forward on then we need to start honing that scoring document and get down to those values. We tried to narrow them down to kind of a core seven and then some bonus numbers that we could provide as well since each deal is going to be different and that's something you want from an economic development perspective because these are the kind of especially your larger investments the kind of investments that will make up you know they tend to use little services, pay higher taxes, employ people that subsidizes residential and you're going to want a variety of those particularly with owning an electric utility if you've got companies for instance that can dial in their businesses when we're dumping off peak power at night that sort of thing you know that is a real benefit to the community that we don't talk about very often so there's lots of different variables for you to think about. We will try to get this back to you within the next couple of meetings if you feel like we're on target now with the general process. Well I'll just say from where I'm sitting for myself only I think the general process is very much on target. I think that matrix is very helpful and it's going to keep us from doing this kind of spitballing and incentives as they come that we do sometimes it gets us way off in the weeds. I think that matrix in particular is very helpful at helping us stay on target. Okay Councilmember Armitage. Yeah so I want to say so I like the idea of very much like the idea of having really clearly established priorities and having some sort of framework because you know that's how accountability happens so I'm really pleased. Yeah and I know a lot of work goes into that. The one kind of concern I have and this is really with any you know not just with this but with any you know kind of detailed matrix that assigns points like this is what wiggle room is there what are we leaving for businesses that might come to us or come from within us homegrown that we or a future council might really want that according to the point system you know don't quite add up you know where the hole is greater than the sum of the parts and also kind of in addition to that and I bet you've thought of this already I'm curious to know the answer when for instance so at the top of the list we've got a company a corporation headquarters right and then at the bottom list we have the bottom of towards the bottom of the list we have things like publishing and printing so but what about a publishing or printing corporate headquarters I assume that that that would get the corporate headquarters points if you could explain kind of how that works how where there's that that flexibility for a more stick approach and also what we do with these kind of surprises that might come to make sure that that it doesn't that our own point system doesn't bite us by being too rigid well I think I think the the idea would be the categories that you've seen put in front of you let's let's take as an example I'll take two of them that you just mentioned one of them would be the smaller homegrown business that might want to expand in the community we may just choose to give bonus points for that and and basically score them a little differently if they're if they're growing evolving their business here we'll give them points you just did that with those two smaller businesses right because that was important to you to grow that industry another factor if we like the way this is put together let's let's take a look at the investment the community we could start tearing that based upon if you've got a company that maybe if there's 25 points available perhaps we give them all 25 points if they're making 50 million dollars in investment or more knowing that's going to be a significant help to our tax base in terms of subsidizing our residential customers if they're making a 10 million dollar investment in the community perhaps they get half that that number to score something like that so that's how we're going to start working on it tearing those types of discussions and bringing it back for you if there's a few hot button issues that are really important to you the homegrown business is one there may be a couple sectors you really want to grow that don't exist right now we can treat those a little differently but in the bonus category and sort of address it that way but the idea would be first of all do you like the general layout and then we will break it down into how we would score those and the idea would be over time it is you get into your fourth fifth sixth one of these deals you're able to sort of pull out the chart and understand your logic and rationale how we're making decisions why we're making decisions and take what some of you I believe to feel to be kind of an arbitrary process out of it it's always going to be arbitrary based on your values however if we could show the continuity of how we're making decisions that's the entire goal here and it's easier to do that on a matrix like this yeah and thank you and that makes that makes sense to me I mean there's a fine line as you know between you know on the on the one extreme you've got a totally arbitrary process on the other extreme you've got something so rigid that you box yourself in and so as long as so I'm pleased with what you're saying you know about the flexibility of something like this you know even though looking at that chart I mean I could nitpick and say you know that I think that you know a publishing company could be much higher but I also at the same time see the flexibility in there already you know to allow for depending on what kind of publishing company again because that you know there are details that are outside of numerical assignments that really depend case by case so anyway I do like that we have a system like this and I'm pleased to know that there is some sort of flexibility and wiggle room too and that it's also somewhat of a living document right I mean this can be can come back to again and again and we'll hear public input and I'll be very attuned to what the public has to say about these categories and priorities I think probably all of our documents are living documents councilman see customer Melcer did I see your hand up or was I just seeing something out of the corner of my eye but maybe not I think when I just see thoughts across my brow okay all right fair enough mayor pro tem thank you mayor so just comments for when it comes back I would like some further analysis into corporate headquarters I think we have to reevaluate that for the reasons that have been articulated today corporate campuses are not going to look the same there's going to be more people working remotely so I don't think it's this giant building going forward and I think there's also opportunities for people to relocate we can we'll have a corporate office that has a giant footprint that's now looking to relocate to maybe a place where we have the type of shipping that sort of thing and so what what does that look like to have a large corporate headquarters that we want to come to Denton and downsize what does that look like it could it potentially be infill just I want to understand kind of what that looks like going forward now that I think there's an increase in I think the size will decrease and there's an increase in remote working then I want to also point out I think there's a note where there's a note there for distribution and e-commerce jobs obviously if you want to start if you want to support startups that goes hand in hand with e-commerce i.e. selling on amazon and distribution so here's an opportunity for us to partner with entrepreneurs and say we have logistic services almost like a stoke for logistic needs and so you bring your company here and we centralize that service we have a warehouse you can use we have a we have a system in place that allows you to manage your inventory place orders etc etc and that's kind of that fulfillment is managed for you and Denton's a place for you so I think there's and that's what we do in my business regularly so I know there's a value add there and that would help smaller businesses grow and take advantage of that opportunity so I want to kind of understand how that looks in the new norm and then just kind of take maybe a business case look at these to say well how does all this come together so if we incentivize this we anticipate they'll take advantage of the utility discounts this that and the other just kind of how it all comes together and works it would be helpful to understand so thank you Council Member Briggs sorry about that it's okay yes so I just want to recap I really enjoyed the scorecard I think that's great and be very beneficial for all of us going forward or whoever is next to look at these I want to say that I am still very in favor of the strategic strategic plan I think it's fantastic I love today that we talked about livability I think as we go forward that's going to be something that we need to continue to talk about to create the community in the city that people want to live in and that we're we're starting to talk about building wealth in our community I think that's really exciting and so I'm just in favor and ready to to keep the discussion going okay and Jessica these presentations sort of bifurcated oh I'm sorry Council Member Ryan because we're going to take a break here in just a moment I want to find a good starting point but a stopping point Council Member Ryan go ahead thank you Mayor yeah I like the scoring matrix but it I'm a little concerned whenever something's on top you always kind of evaluate a little deeper and so computer services I mean pretty much everything on this list somehow involves computers in today's world if it just said data centers I would understand it being it you know up towards the top because of the tax value to it I just think that that might need to be better described or broken into a couple of different categories because you've got software publishing further down the list which is what I would think of as being in computer services but it ends up being ranked much lower so just kind of a little better breakdown on that or a little more detail in that yeah I think I think I think the purpose was just to present the concept but all these things that you're talking about the the the weight percentage is given to the different sectors and then you know what specific types of categories and definitions and label of those categories are obviously a conversation in the future to really form up this approach but it sounds like conceptually everybody's in favor of what has been presented at this point okay all right Jessica where are we on available let's just are we get a good stopping point here yes we can pause here and I'll take the next part okay much shorter on the next part though oh no problem no it's been a good discussion all right let's go ahead and take a break it's 323 we'll come back around 330 welcome back to this meeting of the dent city council it's 334 on october the 27th 2020 we're going to have a little kind of audible we're calling it an audible we've got we're going to go ahead and move on to agenda item 3c simply because we've got someone on the west coast who's going to be part of the presentation they'll be making a presentation and they've got some time limitations on the call so we're going to come back after we do agenda item 3c and pick up the second half of the economic development strategic planning and additional funding a work session so with that I will go ahead and call that agenda item which is agenda item 3c receive a report hold a discussion and provide staff direction regarding an evaluation of regulatory sampling information for dino dirt and an overview of non-regulated contaminants and biosolids so we're ready for staff presentation whenever they're ready good afternoon mayor and council kenny banks general manager of utilities if you'll bear with me just a moment I will get this presentation loaded and we're not we're not seeing you either oh does that help yes sorry about that okay everyone see the presentation no no okay I am not sure what's going on here there is an assured function or anything oh there we go there we go thank you okay so we can see the same screen now correct yes okay good deal sorry for that good afternoon mayor and council members again kenny banks manager of utilities I'm here to give a presentation on dino dirt valuations I have two people who I will introduce here in a moment who are on the line to give their respective parts of the presentation and so I'll go through just a little bit of background and then we'll turn it over to each of the individual presenters so I wanted to just kind of give a brief history of where we're at with regards to the use of biosolids for the production of compost at the wastewater operations we converted from basically a land application of the biosolids to composting in about the mid 1990s and then began producing a product that became known as dino dirt and a related product called dino soil those are the only two that contain biosolids we have dino light and various types of alters that we produce as well we because of concerns that were that were brought up concerning basically micro constituents or non-regulated contaminants within biosolids we sought out some an external expert or experts to evaluate our program and provide some findings regarding the regulatory sampling of requirements for metals and then their opinions of risk associated with these unregulated contaminants and biosolids based on their experience their research from similar operations and then we asked them if they had any recommendations for improvement so dr sally brown university of washington and ben davis with renda environmental were identified as uh candidates to give uh us this information uh dr sally brown is a research professor at the school of environmental and forest sciences at the university of washington uh she was as a former member of the national academy of sciences committee on bio availability of contaminants and soils and sediments and a two-term uh member of the nas committee on soils and then she was also the former chair of the usda committee on the use of residuals and that group actually helped author the epa 503 regulations on biosolids and she's done quite a few presentations and publications on various topics related to biosolids then davis is an environmental program manager with renda environmental and he was the chair of the sustainable sustainable residuals use committee and basically known now as a biosolids product use and communication committee for the water environment federation's residual and biosolids uh group and during his time of service to that on that subcommittee he helped produce a document that was uh that is called micro constituents and biosolids so just real briefly on the regulatory monitoring data i believe you're all aware that we are required to to monitor for a number of contaminants within the biosolids operation i've got a a table that summarizes the the parameters that we are required to monitor for plus their respective concentrations and how that compares to the standard that we are held for uh to uh we're regulated by 40 uh cfr 503 13 and uh basically since the operation began we are required to sample for these constituents every two months we've been doing so since 1995 i've given you about the last 10 years worth of uh data and uh have provided the averages uh noting that the concentrations are milligrams per kilogram of each of these individual constituents so um i get i've also uh was able to obtain some uh information from the city of austin's dillo dirt program and i was able to get the last three years on that particular program and uh had provided a similar summary i did do some quick statistics on this to just show whether or not these values were similar or different between uh the denton and austin samples and i've tried to indicate that over there on the far right uh at a um confidence level of uh five percent meaning um uh this this result of saying that they are statistically different would not be expected uh unless they truly were uh uh only uh five percent of the time so in other words it's we're 95 confident that these results are correct so um just real briefly uh the standards are located in the um and the column right here this is the 40 cfr 503 standards uh as you can see our values are on all contaminants are substantially lower than those values and so we can kind of look through the uh the list and see uh these um i guess a few notable things to uh to point out uh there really weren't any differences uh statistically between the arsenic concentration between the two samples uh in terms of uh of cadmium uh basically denton was the higher of the two and was statistically significant for chromium copper lead mercury uh basically austin was the higher of the two was that was statistically significant for all of those except lead they were basically the uh the same between the two groups statistically um molybdenum we had a higher value with the city of denton and then nickel selenium and zinc were all lower in dentin compared to the other ones again both groups um were well below the standard uh for the application as an unrestricted application as a class a biosolid which is what the 40 cfr rules establish so with that i would like to turn it over to dr sally brown to go through her presentation i'll run the presentation on my end um i just uh got off of an email from dr brown so uh dr brown if you're on could you um uh say hi to everyone let us know that you're uh you're available it may take her just a moment to right okay as long as we're waiting um ben davis are you there i'm here oh there yes here dr okay there we go i'm here as well yeah thanks so much for moving me up are you ready for me yes great thanks very very much for moving this up i have to do a doctor's appointment with my mom so she's not new anyway one thing i want to say before i start with this um it's amazing to me the breadth of stuff that you have to deal with i was not asked to talk about this with ken but if you want to talk about being green with your biosolids for each dry ton of biosolids that you don't landfill and make compost out of landfilling emits about three metric tons of co2 whereas making compost saves you at least a half a ton of co2 so you're being very green in your biosols program i know that that's not the focus here um it's just something you should know okay let's talk about compounds of concern contaminants of concern with dino dirt second slide please um there is a long history of people putting stuff down the sewers that they're not supposed to um and with wastewater treatment centralized wastewater treatment this was realized early on chicago was famous for having very heavily contaminated biosolids cadmium that would be a real safety concern with regulations with downturns in industrial production all of a sudden chicago biosolids over the last 15 20 30 years have been so clean they're being used all over the city now and they're a great asset so um a lot of what we've traditionally thought of as contaminants um in wastewater are gone and now we have a new industry if we go to the next slide um and here you can see my husband who did all the tile work in our new bathroom and i think it's just lovely um anyway most of the stuff you worry about now the main source is your house it may not be the bathroom some of the stuff may be in the living room it gets into the toilet from the dust but all of these compounds pretty much all of these compounds that people are worried about the source is not an industry on the outskirts or edge of town the source is your home so if you're really worried move out of your house because that's going to be your primary source of exposure um realize that when you read about these compounds in the newspaper the names that you read about um are things that you don't recognize at all take p f o s um anybody know what that would be in your home probably not but think about stain master carpet i know we have a dog we just got new carpeting and we made sure to get pet protective carpeting because i yeah you guys if you have a dog you know this um but perfluorinated organic compounds are in things like dental floss popcorn bags stain master carpeting scotch guard fabrics vortex fabrics um and from these sources they end up in wastewater it's not so scary when you think of them in carpet but it's when you call them perfluorinated organics all of a sudden they get very scary okay go to the next um we hear about these things all over i had just gotten another email and seen an article in the new york times about what the three scariest compounds or something in the home are um here's just some examples when you're talking about these units they're talking about micrograms per kilogram and it's very hard to envision what that actually means because it's so tiny the amount that we're able to detect that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have an effect i'm just saying that 370 you hear that you think it's a big number but it's parts per billion or it's less than one in a million it's about half in a million and so that's less than a penny and ten thousand dollars it's it's tiny so remember to understand the units when you're talking about what level we see these compounds in and to put it in perspective if you go to the next slide this is from a paper we published on this about how to communicate bpa is bisphenol a and um this is one of the things that people are concerned about and um you can find them in biosolids uh we in fact did a survey of biosolids and detected bpa in a lot of them in some of the compost but not all of them so most likely if they're there in dino dirt they're in tiny concentrations realize that to get the same exposure as is estimated that you would get at home you would have to eat two plates of not even compost but biosolids to get what you get at your home every day in bisphenol a and however much you don't like formel chili i bet you would much rather eat that than eat the two plates of the biosolids um next slide um same thing with the pharmaceuticals here we same paper we use tylenol as an example um these are our local biosolids loop is their brand name and the logo is turn your dirt around which i think is pretty clever um but if you have a headache and you want to reach for tylenol i would recommend taking the pills because here you'd have to eat 30 wet tons of biosolids um and sort of that is enough to give you a real headache um finally people are concerned about food exposure next slide here um colgate this is an antimicrobial people are very concerned about these in the environment as well triclosan triclocarban or the two um colgate total has about five percent content of triclosan so when you've brushed your teeth even if you only swallow a smidge of that you're getting a very high exposure you wash with antimicrobial soap it shows up in your urine within three hours um plant uptake we didn't see any so we used the level of detection that's been published and figured out that you have to eat about 3.8 tons of potatoes grown in pure biosols each day to get the same amount of tc triclosan that you get from your home exposure from your soap your toothpaste your antimicrobial dish soap etc um new class of compounds of big concern are the perfluorinated organics um you read a lot about this and you see a lot of concern about these again home exposure glide dental floss has less 16 parts per billion compared to the biosolids in the picture that was 48 parts per billion but where do you have the contact the glide dental floss that you're using on your teeth every night if you're good and your dental hygienist likes you or the biosolids so realize there and finally um and study from the food and drug administration sample foods and this chocolate cake that was from a Safeway supermarket or a supermarket had again less p fast than the biosolids but which kind of cake are you going to want to eat it's um that's kind of a rhetorical question so finally um my last picture you can see my onion crop that i got from our own biosolids um these are from tag row uh another local brand of biosolids and if you guys need any onions um i in fact get my onion starts from a company a farm in texas so it would be returning them back um realizing that you can see something that you can detect something doesn't mean that it's a danger um for these compounds home exposure is your concern um if you use the dino dirt i can promise you from my experience with other biosolids compost you will get more onions more flowers more tomatoes um than you've ever dreamed of but you will not be causing yourself any risk for these compounds and so thanks again for moving it up and questions now or questions later it's up to you guys or ken we could pull the slide down so we can see if there's any questions at this point uh because i would like to get any questions addressed to dr brown just in this segment so that we could go ahead and release her for the rest of the presentation so if we could pull that down let me see if there's any questions from uh the council members that'd be wonderful i hope i got a few laughs from the bad jokes uh i think you did i think one of mine unfortunately was still audible because i was not on mute um okay all right uh we've got council member armator go ahead yeah so i was i was wondering if you could speak to the epa regulations how they came up with those i think i remember seeing the correct me if i'm wrong if were you um either involved in the team that came up with those regulations or maybe you wrote um yeah i was taught by the team that came up with those regulations and some of my research for grad school helped inform those regulations okay so back in sorry go on so back when um the epa started developing the regulations they came up with the first set of regulations that were um done based on finding anything they thought could possibly cause harm that you could find in the sewer system and setting up numbers and those got widely criticized because they weren't based in in anything they were based in tables rather than soils so um epa funded a lot of research that was done um in the 1970s and 1980s and into the 1990s and the group of scientists basically looked at a list of contaminants every ten years or so the epa sponsors a national sewage sludge survey and with a wide range of analyses on what's in the biosolids so using that what's in the material they went through the the list of the periodic table as well as a range of carbon-based things like pesticides herbicides industrial chemicals and did a range of studies growing plants looking at how a contaminant in the soil could harm a person that ate the dirt a cow that ate the dirt a cow that ate a plant grown in the dirt that was then eaten by a the person having a steak or a liver a range of different pathways that any of these contaminants could cause harm and from that they ended up decide realizing that for a lot of the organics they were considering like dioxins that had been banned at the time the concentrations in biosols were already so low that they didn't need to regulate them because the level that they'd need to set for that regulation none of the biosols had anywhere near that and the compounds were banned already but they did find metals and we heard the metals that were regulated early on and they did set limits and each of those limits are based on the most sensitive individual so for someone the the individual that they are worried about protecting is somebody that lives on a farm where all the soil is biosols they get water from a well which is underneath all the biosols mended soil they eat something like 60 percent of their food from there including their animals that they raise they are grazed on the biosolids and they want that person to have less than a one in ten thousand chance of having any harm come to them as a result of this is that more than you ever wanted to know or is that helpful or well she's got to yeah she's got a follow-up question thank you no such thing is more than I ever wanted to know but I don't want to take too much people's time but I since since you're here you know I wanted to ask two things one following up on that you know what do you have to say about people's concerns about concentrations that can build up over time and and they can also be reactivated you know when and it combined with other kinds of chemicals you know or even in some cases just when when moistened I mean also just what is what is are your thoughts on the you know the lack of testing for certain kinds of contaminants by the EPA in biosolids that where we're not allowed to you know dump these same contaminants in oceans and kind of and I'm telling on that and I'm sure you're well prepared to answer that you're asking me for a semester a class here and so I do I do dr. Brown I do want us I want us to make sure that that you know you can answer that question but I just want to make sure that we stay within posting oh yeah the city councilman bar mitre please let me finish because I understand that someone is sending questions to us to try to to to to ask these questions outside of you know what are we doing here and I'm sure you're asking those questions for that individual but we're not going to we're not going to take up you know a whole semester's worth here so if you could just real briefly dr. Brown give us an explanation here of that that would be wonderful okay can I just want to finish because I was just cut off mid sentence and just also in answering that and again I know you're prepared to answer this if you could speak to you know why certain why certain other countries have banned you know the use of these contaminants in biosolids in some cases just banned about biosolids altogether okay so first of all the water issue realize that what's in the biosolids that really hurts water is the nitrogen the phosphorus and the organic matter it's the nutrients and the organic matter that helps soils when you put it on soils that hurt the water because when you put too much food too many nutrients in water and you can see this on ponds in in home communities where they use too much fertilizer you get what's called eutrophication it turns lime green from the algae you've seen about algal blooms off the coast in florida does that sound familiar yes answer okay it's too much yes you're giving us when you see me sorry it was yeah I yeah I can look out my window I can tell you the view from the window so that that's your primary water issue okay soil is very very different from water water too much soluble copper we get worried about salmon here and soluble copper they get worried about one part per billion okay soil regular soil has 40 to 500 parts per million of copper plants need it people need it it's a nutrient so two systems very very different you have to understand them now realize that dillow dirt our loop everything is run by a municipal organization okay this is part of your city's infrastructure and it's much easier to regulate than a lot of industries that say hey don't regulate me it's too expensive I have charge two more cents per pound of chicken this is true and so every time the EPA adds another testing a regulatory requirement that costing your ratepayers more money so if EPA decided that you needed to test these contaminants that I just talked about are very expensive to test for in many cases you're talking about over a thousand dollars per sample okay and if you want them all tested for on a regular basis that means you're going to end up paying significantly more in your sewer bill and what you can realize is that what you flush and what comes into the treatment plant on a daily basis is these guys know their stuff and they know their flow rates and your flow is consistent if a new factory comes into town these guys are going to know about it so it's basically I'm going to put this in a metaphor that depending on your age you'll get or not get hopefully when it's your time you'll get it it's really important as a think of it in terms of people and medical needs you should have your colonoscopy at age 50 it's a great tool very protective it's an expensive difficult procedure do you want to have that every week just to make sure if you've had one I can tell you the answer is no it's sort of the same thing with these contaminants in the wastewater every time you add something to test you have to have a good reason and it's going to cost a lot of money to do so so it's a balance between protecting public health which is the goal of all wastewater and protecting fiscal health and I think we've had a great balance here and Ken can forward me any questions if there are more detailed questions more detailed answers and I can provide any numbers of publications but that I hope I got a smile with that metaphor there oh you did you did okay yeah I thought one of our council members is gonna anyway that's good okay we've got we've got it we've got a couple more questions and if we if we run up against your time constraint just be sure and let us know thank you council member Briggs just a just a quote a note too she asked so that she would follow up or send us some a paper or something I just would like to read that just to have and to to pass along well I think she said if there were questions if there were questions she could she could direct or or forward publications pursuant to direct questions I don't think she was saying she has a paper that's just in general I think it's if you have a specific question that she could provide data or some type of article referencing that question yeah if you just do it through Ken if he's willing that's great by me all right anybody else Mayor Pro Tem no I just want to compliment you on your presentation and and actually the the pragmatic approach and dissemination of information and I hope it settles a lot and and we can move forward especially on your your last comment is very compelling because we because we had a garden that wanted to use the dino dirt and that was directly challenged and questioned and so I think there's a lot of peace in that answer and and it confirms what we've already were told but it sometimes it's it's good to hear it twice from different people I guess so thank you very much and again you're you're you got a lot of laughs out of me I I would sit I'm not by any stretch of the means scientific but I would I think I could take a class from you and survive to the end of semester and come out with at least a c-plus thank you all and good luck and again can let me know if there's anything else for a follow-up okay thank you so much thank you thank you for being with us right so Dr. Banks and then we've got I guess additional presentations are not sure yes so just you can go ahead and move forward that's correct we have an additional presentation by Ben Davis so I can figure out how to get this back up again that's it okay our next presentation is from Ben Davis with Renda Environmental I'm assuming that Ben is on Ben are you there yeah can everybody hear me yes I believe so so similar format mayor we're we'll just we'll move right through this and and you know we'll have the time for questions if as needed so Ben you want to take it away yeah absolutely yeah if anybody can hear me just let me know I have the unenviable task of following Dr. Brown as you can she's so entertaining I'm not as entertaining as she is Ken reached out to me several months ago asking if I would do this because I was part of a group that helped put together a micro constituents fact sheet for the Water Environment Federation so and it just so happens I'm also local to Denton in fact our office is in Denton County here in Roanoke so I'm not too far away from you guys like like Dr. Brown was we manage biosolids for the city of Fort Worth for over 20 years and we manage biosolids for the Trinity River Authority land applied on you know thousands of acres and transported millions of tons of biosolids out to local farmland around Dallas and Fort Worth for many many many years but moving on to this paper we can go ahead and start you can see it's put together by two very well respected PhDs that Dr. Brown would be good friends with I'm sure Kuluk Kumar and Lachwinder Hundal and then Bob Bastion is one of the lead researchers for biosolids with the EPA next slide please oh you already you already went on I'm sorry I was reading the title I was trying to make an introduction for whoever wrote this paper so you can see biosolids are our land applied on a very very very small amount of agricultural land you know three hundred fifteen million acres of ag land you know less than point two point one two percent total harvest of the acreage is has biosolids applied to it next slide so micro constituents in biosolids so this is a result of our modern lifestyles obviously we have many people that that use a lot of products that go down the drain like like Dr. Brown indicated but as she indicated as well and I'm going to try not to be redundant you know a lot of this is due you know we have much more exposure to these chemicals of emerging concern or micro constituents in our daily lives our homes our businesses places that we visit than we ever would in any biosolids applied field or any biosolids amended soil and and I think Dr. Brown did a great job presenting that a lot of the constituents that are the are the concern for biosolids are your lipophilic micro constituents they're the ones that are going to more partition more favorably into biosolids rather than your hydrophilic micro constituents so that's what a lot of these are focusing on so and then again you've talked about units from Dr. Brown next slide please. So this patient after applications you can see this is a dilution pathway that Dr. Brown also talked about mineralization and binding with soil that's how a lot of these micro constituents even though they're in the biosolids a lot of them can't leave they're they're they're kind of stuck there you have hydrophobic hydrophobic partitioning covalent bonds ligand exchange migration and entrapment in micro sites ionic bonding there's a lot of ways that soils can can bond to these things and not allow them to leave so that it becomes a diluted media in a sense and then over time it will actually be broken down in these soil matrices as well as we'll get into certain things next slide next slide. So here we have a this was done a while ago obviously 10 years ago we have micro constituents bioaccumulation edible parts from field studies they did field studies and they compared it was a proof of concept kind of thing it seems a bit obvious but what they did is they compared your your field to your pot studies to your hydroponic studies you know again when you put in the water they were seeing a lot more take a micro constituents whenever a hydroponic study was done compared to a field study as what you might expect it goes back to that dilution thing that was on the previous slide is a proof of concept so but even then you know for the field grown crops most of them are detected in those in those plant products edible edible products 2015 so moving on next slide please so five years later they came along and took that study just a step further and they they said okay well what's the estimated daily intake from eating these products and then they said okay well let's compare that with what's an acceptable daily intake and again this was a toxicology type experiment I suppose but you know based on everything they were able to do but evaluating that estimated versus the acceptable they were able to determine a de minimis risk to human health and that's just because the concentrations in any from any uptake of any plant product is so low that they were just there was no way that it was kind of Dr. Brown saying that that you know you could eat the animals you could eat the soils you could eat them and you could eat the plants growing off that farm that's using 100% biosolids and you still would not have a risk to your health next slide please and here's a good I think this was developed up in Washington as well this graph you can see it kind of shows the years and you know she showed the potatoes that you have to eat to get a therapeutic dose or the amount of biosolids you have to eat to get a therapeutic dose but this kind of shows what your exposure would have to be to actually get there you know I mean the worst one is triclosan and luckily triclosan seems to be dropping out of favor where people are finally waking up to the fact that bacteria are not a bad thing we don't want to be destroying them so where that that particular microconstituent is falling back and I would imagine that 216 years is actually getting further and further back so but this is pretty interesting and I think for what DinoDirt represents you know the gardener here would be my guess it would actually be you know pretty welcome size at 77,000 years would be what you would need to get one therapeutic dose. Pharmaceuticals and personal care products antimicrobials again triclosan we just touched on those luckily those are going out of favor we have hormones and steroids you know hormones and steroids yeah they are in biosolids but what's really cool about them they're again those lipophilic micro constituents and they break down in soils they have a half-life of one to ten days so your compost operation and what's so cool about that is that that's actually happening before it ever leaves your property because you know a lot of these you know you have a lot of microbial processes are breaking these down into degraded products synthetic must these are just your air fresheners and things like that and they can be a problem and then they have a high persistence in soils actually so when actually this may be something you are sending out the door however it's it's not mobile in soil so you in order to get it out until you have to wash it in to a stream or creek or something like that next slide please pesticides interesting thing about pesticides you know they're the background levels of pesticides are so much higher than will be presented by a biosol with applied amendment that it would it would be a drop in the bucket compared to a lot of what farmers are using out in hay fields and farm fields and things like that so but these are commonly easier on the house your highest exposure pathways are going to be in your home and around your house definitely not through biosol's exposure next slide brominated flame retardants these are your typically the PBDEs polybrominated flame retardants these are primarily indoor pollutants they are not taken up by crops but you know they can persist out in fields but they bind strongly to soil matrices next slide please surfactants these are going to be your emulsifiers in your personal care products you know a lot of things in your bathroom that you want to see you don't want to see partitioned into different layers you know surfactants are added to those type of products again this is your greatest exposure is going to be in your house and degradation unfortunately occurs very rapidly rapidly in soils and would not be something that you'd be sending out in a composted product next slide plasticizers this includes phthalates and BPA Dr. Brown touched on BPA earlier phthalates synthetic chemicals that come off of plastics land application of biosol's could introduce phthalates in the soil environment however they are not persistent in the soils and are degraded fairly quickly with a half-life range of 20 to 25 days so again this is not something you're going to send out with your composted product for fluorinated compounds this is probably the hot topic that you know again was touched on by Dr. Brown it is again probably the most talked about of all of the micro constituents these days maybe not in Texas one thing I want was they want to mention that I've spoke with a regulator in Texas from Austin and they're doing studies on on performative chemicals and trying to see what the they want to know does this really need to be regulated or you know is it what's what's the situation here so there's a very extensive study going on with this in Texas if it isn't underway already it will be underway before too long but again this is a product that you can watch Netflix stuff on it it's it's it's not good for sure and high exposure it's really unknown what low exposure would what it does exactly but they're they're finding that there isn't a person that they can test in any developed country that doesn't have some level of this comment compound in their blood so it's it's very very persistent and does not break down very easily if it ever they call it a forever chemical next slide so in summary you know this is a diet and lifestyle issue that that we really did not a biosolid issue that we need to tackle we need to decrease or attempt to decrease our use of a lot of these chemicals that we're finding biosolids but any you know state and federal regulations and best manufacturers are protective of human health at this point and I tend to agree with that wholeheartedly I use biosolids around my home around my parents nieces all that good stuff my aunt and uncle use dino dirt pretty regularly so anyway if that's all I have you have any questions for me yes if we could go ahead and bring down the slide please questions councilmember Armitage oh Paul I'm sorry I didn't see your hand up okay yeah so yeah I'm just curious to know your perspective on why you think you know so many other cities even countries but also US cities have have banned biosolids what do you think they're seeing that that that we're not seeing that's very situational I would say I mean I don't I don't know if could you tell me what city has actually banned biosolids oh I've got a list I can I can go find the list but I know there are a number of cities and countries Paul can if you want to jump to Paul's question I can go look that up real quick no not necessarily I wouldn't be able to comment anyways I don't really know why they would do it again I think it's situational there may be some something that you know they find objectionable about it or maybe the market isn't there for it I mean there is a there's there's several reasons why they wouldn't do it and maybe it's just a you know a preference you know cities in Florida in New York some cities in New York have banned it for certain uses like for growing food well it could just be fear of the unknown I mean a lot of us are afraid of the unknown and that that may be part of it and so what is what is unknown about about biosolids and since we can test for all these contaminants okay let me let me before you answer yeah yeah before you answer that that's I mean I know you're asking for his opinion but he if he's you're asking him to make comments about things that he doesn't know all the factual situations and oftentimes it may just be political it may just be that this is what the community is wanting it doesn't mean that it's based on something necessarily so different scientifically but he doesn't know all the particulars around that so I'm not sure how he can answer that question in a way that's legitimate as far as I'm concerned but he can certainly attempt to do that okay well thank you very much then yeah I'd agree with that okay all right council member Meltzer yeah you know yeah this may actually be a question for Ken but is there any way for us to gauge how strong or whether there is a scientific consensus around these points are we hearing the only two people of you at that way or is it a kind of a 99% view or 50/50 what what's the state of the discussion in the scientific community I would say the scientific community is 100% in favor of beneficial use of bio solids you know I I would say overwhelmingly the the PhDs that study this the subject matter are in favor of its use and do not find any part of the objectionable if it meets all of the required regulatory requirements thank you all right any other questions councilmember Briggs thank you for the presentation just to clarify and I think I heard you say that a lot of the things are trapped inside oh but they will not transfer necessarily even though there may be bad stuff in the soil it will not transfer to the food and then therefore into the person is that correct yes well I mean I was I touched on a couple studies that were done that showed that a majority yeah very low concentrations could get into the plant material itself however it's it goes back to that de minimis risk that was established in that 2015 study okay and I think this may be just a question for Dr. Banks or someone if that's if I can ask it mayor sure let me see if there's any more questions for the presenter so that if not we can we can go ahead and release them any more questions for the presenter all right saying none hey thank you so much for your information I appreciate you being on with us absolutely thank you guys very much you'll have a great evening you too thank you all right councilmember Briggs go ahead so we heard earlier about alternatives about it getting some feedback from someone yeah if we could just check our make sure our mics are on mute okay go ahead councilmember Briggs so if the the biosolids didn't go into the compost and and they went into the landfill how what I guess I've never really asked for are known how much that is like how how much would actually be going into the landfill I can get you a value for that I don't know it off the top of my head I can tell you that if we if we stopped the composting operation and diverted that component of the yard waste that's used for composting as well as the biosolids to the landfill it's a little hard to gauge because the the vegetative matter doesn't tend to compact as well as as standard municipal trash but I would we ran some rough calculations and you're probably looking at taking maybe three to five years off of the total life of the landfill by that material being diverted so I don't have an exact per ton basis but that would at least give you a sense of what that what that sort of looks like in terms of landfill life okay thank you sure so I have a I have a question refresh my memory dr banks when our first presenter dr brown said that there was a disadvantage to taking the biosolids and put them in a landfill as compared to composting that had something to do with was it greenhouse gases or cyber what was it yeah that's correct essentially you're going to create a situation where you're going to produce you're adding you're adding a an organic material that will break down to the landfill and in the case of the the biosolids one that's that's very nutrient rich and so essentially what you're going to do ultimately is create a situation in the landfill where you have additional methane production and then that methane production will ultimately move into if you flare it or have some other use for that material it's going to ultimately end up in co2 and I think her point was that by doing a composting operation you're you're going to entrain more of that carbon into the soil and therefore you're if I remember what she said correctly and was following you're ultimately going to produce less co2 than if you land filled that material okay thank you councilmember armator yes so just a couple things I wanted to point out one just to make sure that we when we talk about composting obviously biosolids is one form of composting but of course there are many other kinds of composting that that don't involve biosolids so just to make sure that public listening at home understands that biosolids is just one form of composting and then I just wanted to mention just encourage people to just look up if you just even google you know scientists objection to biosolids you know you will see that there are a number of scientists you know some have signed on to letters who have expressed concerns with biosolids there are obviously some scientists you think it's safe but it is simply not true that 100 percent of scientists consider biosolids safe so I just wanted to mention that okay all right sure so what I'm hearing then Dr. Banks is outside of the opinion that was just stated and that there's some that see it one way and some to see it the other way it's probably not it's probably pretty irrefutable from a scientific perspective that if you put biosolids into the landfill you're going to create more methane and co2 than if it's used in a composting operation as we're doing it here is that what I'm hearing you say I would say that's correct as long as it's composted properly okay in other words there are some compost operations that are run in a manner that don't keep it aerobic and as a result they can produce methane so I'd want to you know be sure for accuracy's sake that I put that out there and that is a that is a process that we're doing is that aerobic that is correct okay and then what I heard you say as well is that by landfilling those biosolids it could it would reduce the life of the landfill it will correct okay all right yes two fold one from the biosolids one from the yard waste that we are currently combining with the biosolids to produce compost okay fantastic yes Councilmember Briggs last question thank you Dr. Banks I know the first the lady she mentioned testing and she said there is a lot of different types of testing some could be pretty expensive some couldn't some aren't how frequently do we do we test do we test the soil well test the compost I just want to be sure I'm clear we we are required by permit to test it every other month okay and yeah we've been doing that since 1995 and are those available those results I don't know if the we we put the information on our web page so in a sense they are available but it doesn't the web page does not have data going all the way back to 1995 okay yeah we put we post the most current data that's perfect thank you I didn't know that I appreciate it sure Councilmember Bormater yes so I just want to point out that obviously we don't want to be putting this you know human feces with all these contaminants in it into our landfill that would be terrible I don't think anybody wants that I'm wondering Dr. Banks you know what your thoughts are on alternatives including carbon sequestering with biosolids I don't know that much about it but I've been researching it and I know that that is one alternative if you could speak to that and possibly other alternatives so before you answer that I need some understanding and clarification of that when are we off posting Aaron yeah yes sir we're starting to go off we're off posting all right okay fantastic so if you could submit that question to him wait can I just ask how is it off posting because I'm asking what the alternatives are and if carbon sequestering can be done because that's it's not I'll let Aaron answer that go ahead Aaron because the presentation and the caption of the presentation has been what you saw you're starting now to wanting to go into alternatives that weren't discussed and most likely Kenny is not prepared to respond to those as well as our speaker that we would be happy to provide that information in a future status report and on Friday report or separately but here you're starting to go beyond what was presented here today and what was captioned okay all right thank you all right any other questions Dr. Banks did you have any further presentation I did let me pull that up here real quick part of the of the task associated with the the request to our two evaluators was to just provide a findings memo that's included as your backup and I just put some excerpts from that and no real need to to read through all these I know we're fairly restricted on time but our metals as we showed are within EPA regulatory limits we do we are required to meet temperature and time standards for pathogen kill we've got to demonstrate that there is a mention of nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations are high enough to be a good soil conditioner we did have a decrease in phosphorus relatively recently that's due in part to some of the permit conditions that we have to meet for the effluent but we are working on that issue right now and it still was not enough of a drop to to have a significant effect on the nutrient content and then you can read the the statement from Dr. Brown about kind of her viewpoint on the on the use of this product and then Ben Davis had a similar series of statements so we meet the metals limit our standard for excellent quality is is he pointed out we did have that one hit from arsenic in the late 1990s that was kind of interesting the the month the the monitoring period prior and after that were low we implemented a control procedure right at the beginning of this process that had just been starting to get off of the ground for controlling wood that is treated with copper chromium arsenate and we think what happened was we got a small wood chip in there we have never seen a value that was that high it was still below the the threshold value for land application but it was higher than the than the lower limit that we're subjected to so it basically was something that we we looked for it was either a laboratory error it was a small piece of cca wood that got in there basically good nutrient profile and he did mention adding iron testing to the list of analytes and that is something that we can definitely take a look at we do some limited iron monitoring now it wouldn't be hard to to pick up that it's pretty easy test we did ask them for some recommendations and as I said Mr. Davis recommended adding iron testing to the list of analytes and Dr. Brown was really focused on the idea of involving more stakeholders and having more conversations and doing more public education related to to this this issue so next steps are basically no action we can continue with current regulatory and operational sampling and explore those recommendations of evaluators there has been some discussion about analyses of unregulated contaminants with a formal risk assessment approach I if we go down that road I would my suggestion would be to look at categories of contaminants to sample and analyze so look for those that are likely to be of greater concern and likely to be in higher concentrations and then I would recommend if we do that the the groups that are able to analyze these compounds are not necessarily going to be the best group to do a formal risk assessment on them but I think it's very important to have that risk assessment so we can understand what the presence of these compounds mean as related to whether these compounds are a concern or not if we do if we go that route I would recommend a separate group to perform that risk assessment estimating the cost is is pretty difficult as you heard from Dr. Brown earlier these analyses can be expensive a reasonable estimate would be I'm guessing somewhere in the order of 100 to 150,000 or more and it is going to take some time maybe eight months to a year to complete it could easily be a lot more than that it's all going to be contention on the compounds that we choose and and then how many samples we want to have analyzed before we feel comfortable that we haven't updated to actually run through the risk assessment models so that's all I had with my presentation all right okay we could pull down the slide all right questions comments Councilmember Armitage yeah just real quickly I'll say I think my direction is to wait until after November 3rd to discuss it that's my recommendation I was I'm disappointed you know that we've got people coming out to talk to us who work for the the industry who have a history of working for the industry I might prefer hearing from our unbiased staff about their opinion so I'm happy to read whatever people have to send us for free but you know I I don't support yeah paying you know consultants who have a bias because of the industry they work for thank you well that's that's your opinion that's your opinion that's not that's not factual that's your opinion Councilmember Davis I'd just like to say that I appreciated the information I always like to learn more I appreciate it especially these experts in their fields and nationally recognized PhDs in their fields giving us this information in our own homegrown PhD that we've leaned on so much over the last almost 20 years Dr. Banks I appreciate all the work you put into this presentation and I want to apologize for the way that you've been treated and the fact that we had to go out and find a couple consultants because a council member and a citizen weren't willing to take your advice and demanded that that you be backed up basically by other PhDs in your field so excuse me I'm not getting choked up I've got allergies but I appreciate that you stuck with us on this and I'm gonna mute my camera and go cough now all right okay yeah as far as I'm concerned I think we were we're on the right track I don't I don't think we need to necessarily move forward into additional testing and and I'm really disappointed wonder why cities have different approaches is because of the comments we've heard today that it's based upon opinion it's based upon opinion it's based upon politics people have differences of opinion but to say that we're hiring people that are biased and work for the industry you know it's saying basically if you don't get the people I agree with then therefore I won't believe them or I think that their their research or their data is flawed that that kind of approach will never produce good policy ever so so anyway we're going to move on we're going to take a five-minute break unless there's any other questions all right thank you welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on October 27th 2020 it is 453 and just as a housekeeping matter I will need to be stepping out about 520 to attend to a matter and would be back about 30 minutes later 15 20 30 minutes later so Mayor Pro Tem will have the gavel we're going to go now go back to our agenda item that we bifurcated which is agenda item 3a and we will proceed with the second part of councilmember Melcher you got a question we're very attentive today yeah I did have a kind of a bridging comment that I sort of I wanted to make it the end of the first half of this of this agenda item yeah oh sure go ahead yes go ahead so you know Denton is obviously attractive like you know the growth speaks to that the question is are we more attractive in the specific ways that we need to be versus our competitors in this narrow area and you know it may well be the sort of desirable place to live metrics is the right thing I'm not sure it is but if it is it's it's good to be 55 but it all depends on who the competitors are if they're number 45 number 32 number 15 and number six you know we would want to look harder at that and see if there are any attributes that are that we could affect that could conceivably move us up in the rankings maybe there isn't any but that that's kind of what I was going for and if there may be strategic investments that you know would help us to do that so in from the point of view of economic development is more than just incentives you may need incentives for table stakes but it may not be the only thing that's all thanks for letting me say my piece oh no you bet appreciate it thank you thank you for your comments go ahead Jessica thanks for letting me come back I'll be wrapping up the presentation and today on the economic development strategic plan for this part of the presentation I'll be focusing on the programs and the funding components so there were some questions that were specific to those components from the last presentation so I'll make sure that we tackle those so let me share so for this part of the presentation and just to recap really quickly what we talked about in sort of the second half of the last presentation on August 18th and that was we went over what are all of the tools that we have available to us as we've talked about incentives knowing that incentives are just one tool there are other mechanisms that we have available we also discussed what the estimated costs were to implement the strategic plan we went over the two models the foundational and the aggressive model we also talked about various programs that were outlined for the catalyst fund I know Tom went over there's a little bit earlier I'll go into a little bit more detail into the policy questions surrounding those and we also talked about the options to increase the economic development program funding at the time council's direction was a preference for the aggressive model but wanted staff to look at some additional items related to utility system ROI so we have additional information in that area so when we look at the investment again to implement the strategic plan council's direction in August was to look at the aggressive model so our goal was to get to an investment value of seven to nine million we got to those numbers by working with tip strategies to determine what would be a targeted fund balance for the fund that we'd want to get to to fund all of the programs that we want to see in the catalyst fund so those are the funds that you saw broken down in the tip presentation earlier and I'll go into these a little bit more detail but we wanted to put this up just to remind you of what we're working towards the values that you see here again were based on really intentional conversations and analysis of what we're seeing in terms of what we think would make a meaningful impact on projects or prospects here in Denton also focusing on what types of programs would be layered on top of each other and I'll go over each of these in more detail but these funds together are just over seven million dollars would be our targeted balance again within that seven to nine million dollars that we analyzed for the aggressive model so what are each of these and I can relate each of them back to the strategic plan so the general economic development program this is what Tom had mentioned this is the traditional program this is a cash grant component that would be linked with other incentives such as a tax abatement and these are similar to how we do our projects now and that we would conduct economic impact analysis and do an ROI forecast for all projects but what I think council was asking about at the last presentation was what are the eligibility parameters what are those policy questions that we're looking at and so as you saw that matrix earlier kind of how did we determine what those priority considerations would be and so in this type of fund we'd be looking at you know the targeted industry increasing jobs capital investment and other priority considerations those bonus considerations and then I've just included a few examples of what type of grants would be made out of this fund and you would see things like a job-based grant maybe similar to the ones that we we've seen recently maybe a relocation grant for a recruitment or maybe a sales tax rebate for a large retailer there might be some cash component in that the second piece that we looked at today was the infrastructure utilities and development and assistance program so these are used to offset costs associated with development we've had these requests come in we've even seen projects that have been successful and in having this type of grant in their component or in their agreements and with that we're looking at the ROI based on both future taxes and maybe a utility demand and use profile of a prospect the eligibility parameters are going to be pretty similar priority developments in a key area in this particular case it might be an area where we've identified infrastructure improvements as a critical component to maybe that development or spurring future adjacent development in that particular area so an example of how this would be used would be offsetting costs associated with maybe an expedited development process or maybe some participation in public infrastructure maybe a public roadway that needs to be improved a traffic signal needs to be added to account for traffic analysis but really focused on that infrastructure and development assistance the other group would be the next kind of larger grouping is innovation entrepreneurship and access and these are really smaller grants that we would be looking at these are for startups for entrepreneurs and we also wanted to focus on our historically underutilized businesses in this section so in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation again very similar to the grants that we saw come through council i think even maybe last week or the week before with our tech companies but really the growth the target here is on the high wage knowledge base job growth and specific to a particular type of recruitment which are going to be growing startups tech businesses and then in particular i know this was brought up sooner there are case studies about using smaller types of incentives for remote workers and how effective that can be an encouraging knowledge base and high wage jobs i think it remains to be seen with the long term impacts of 2020 will be on that but certainly want to want to add that as a consideration in terms of historically underutilized businesses the goal here would be to explore partnerships and creative programs that exist out there but really to provide access to economic development resources for groups that have had historic barriers to those resources some examples here include job-based grants for startups or maybe a small cash grant to assist a hub with a business cost so these are much smaller in scale than when we're talking about our five million dollar that's in the general incentive fund the green incentive program so these would be funds designated to assist in recruiting environmentally friendly businesses or an offsetting cost associated with a sustainable business practice i would say we could relate this to the city's greensense program but it's slightly different and that it's used to further incentivize the recruitment of a business that aligns with the city's sustainable goals so this might be a business that wants to do those energy efficiency modifications but that might add to the cost of their development or they want to move to a different lead certification level in their development this might be something we can incentivize them to take that step to do that so some considerations that council would look at in the future on those would be low water usage renewable energy goals or zero or low waste stress excuse me a zero or low waste strategy or a green industry and then the last group was the targeted office space development again we talk about this in the plan pretty significantly but a lack of class a office space is really a challenge in a particular type of recruitment and so what we'd want to do is incentivize development or redevelopment of office space so that could be a renovation of an existing space or completely ground up new development the key priority here are key parameters here of course our priority developments capital investment and then what particular geographical areas are important for this type of development and redevelopment and so i know we talked a little bit last time about the process that we're going through with each of these and tom had a slide very similar we kind of worked together on this but to talk about that the goal that we're working towards right now is not to have every policy parameter kind of works through today but to have a timeline of work moving forward to continue these conversations in the future with city council to put together a policy that really takes into account all of these policy considerations so that when we're ready to hit go that we have a policy that's that's really addressing all of these issues and programs that the strategic plan is setting us up for and so with that kind of shifting into the funding side of this discussion and i'm going to turn it over to nick vincent the assistant director of finance jessica before you move forward i just want to clarify if we could pull the screen down right quick that um from the standpoint of the plan the strategic plan and the concepts that are presented you're going to go into the funding of it but are there any objections or changes that any council member is suggesting or requesting to the actual plan itself that we've discussed just because that's sort of what you're wanting to make sure that you know the direction moving forward at least at this point and it may change when we discuss the funding but the strategic plan has been presented and the evident the uh presentation from the consultants we're generally okay with that that we we give that a thumbs up to move forward um do i hear any objections to that councilmembrometer so i i don't have an objection i just have a question about the targeted office space uh that just came up in this slide but would later in the presentation at the end be a better time to ask that well no because if because that's part of the plan and you said you didn't have any objections but based upon maybe some answers you might change your mind so that's part of trying to give direction to move the plan forward so go ahead and ask your question sure okay um so can you just explain exactly that what the targeted means in targeted office space because i know that there are um i mean so many kinds of office space i can think of in town um of course i haven't seen the whole gamut but that are really adaptable you know where you could have a tech company or you could have a dentist office or you could have you know you could be selling something goods or services so what what exactly does it targeted mean and how would that be kind of pinned down in an agreement um considering that you know if if what you rent is office space um then you know you could uh you you could choose to rent to just about anybody will there be limitations on who they can target who they can rent see you can just define that a bit more so and my understanding is this is targeted for class a office space is that correct yes so the targeted okay which is very different than what yes yeah okay all right yeah but i just need refers to that we don't normally um incentivize any type of speculative development it usually is a prospect a specific company looking to come here what we've identified through this plan is that there is a lack of what is needed to attract those certain types of companies so if we are looking at fintech if we're looking at um financial services or even tech startups there is a need for that higher quality office space to be here first to make dentin attractive and so that's why we're calling it a targeted office space so it's to make ourselves more attractive for a particular type of prospect got it and that i understand i totally approve of i'm just wondering as far as targeted so say you've got that office space right um and say we're hoping to attract you know these and i understand that you know these these class a this particular class um but uh to what extent can we or do we limit the owner of that office space the owner of the building on who they can bring in i'm i'm i'm just genuinely curious i can i could hear that in a friday report um but it's just a question that was raised for me by the last slide that's a little more granular so if we could uh if you're in if you're in in approval if you're in uh approve of the strategic plan then this could be something that probably is good there's going to be a lot of discussion moving forward about the specific particular arities of the plan the matrix what's targeted are there limitations to people who can lease to the in these class a office space all of these things so um i think that's probably a little bit more detailed unless it's going to create an objection for you moving forward with the plan itself the strategic plan you know it doesn't create an objection okay all right yeah if we could address that either in a friday report or when it comes back to discuss the specific details of the plan in general so my understanding is unless i see some affirmative action uh and this is where silence will represent sort of agreement you know before i've said silence doesn't represent agreement but here if unless somebody has an objection then we're we're assenting to the strategic plan moving forward sort of as presented with the changes that have made as discussed here today all right seeing no objections okay and so we can move forward to the the financing of the plan um this when we get it up this slide just as a reminder were the funding options that we presented to city council previously um the recommended option and which nick will kind of walk you through is a little bit amended once we kind of dug a little bit further into this um but the recommended option at the time was the use of utility um roi with some um use of fund balance so i'm going to turn it over to nick to go over um the details thank you jessica uh nick vinson assistant director of finance um as jessica had said i do have an option here to review with you today um it is important to point out that we're not actually looking for council's direction regarding um proceeding with this option today uh we are simply wanting to put this financial option out there for your consideration with the continued discussions regarding the utility budgets in december and january of 2021 and this upcoming january to talk about um a couple budget uncertainties and i'll discuss with you here shortly um so as jessica had said we do have the recommended option here it is kind of a hybrid option and the initial funding for this fund would come from a one-time utility contribution from each of the utilities and i'll discuss that with you on the next slide and then the future of the long-term funding of this fund would be an increase or a possible increase to the return on investment for each of the utilities which would be water wastewater and electric so funding options this is the hybrid approach so recommendation this is staff's recommendation to take forward to council and to get your feedback today and answer any questions that you may have so this is one time contribution from the utilities we would come back to the city council if we receive positive comments from you today regarding this model and including it in the utilities budget later this fiscal year and next year but the initial contribution for the utilities would be what staff would propose is 300 000 from the electric fund 300 000 from the water fund and then 300 000 from wastewater so getting really close to that million dollars it was mentioned earlier in the presentation the possible future funding which would be the long-term solution to sustain this economic development fund would be an increase to the roi of 0.5 percent or one percent we've got a couple slides that will go in a little bit more detail about this shortly so currently the electric return on investment is six percent this was approved by council which increased it from 3.5 percent to six percent this last fiscal year it is scheduled to return to 3.5 percent starting in fiscal year 2023 water's current roi is 3.5 and the wastewater is currently 3.5 a couple of the budget uncertainties so in the last friday report staff did include a memo to the city council regarding a full rate filing that will be coming forward for the electric utility the public utility commission did notify the city to file an application for that filing so that does create some uncertainty on the rate of return we do receive for those transmission assets in the electric utility so i'll bring back a couple different options of what the performable look like at that rate of return was to go down from the current rate that's other funds receiving in addition as finance staff is currently working on a fund balance analysis for each of the utilities and the internal service funds we do intend to bring this back to you later this year the first of 2021 and then really quick in this table you did see this during the august presentation so the fund balance projection has a september 30th of 2021 so next september for each of the utilities and the electric utility is 73.5 million water 17.7 and then wastewater is 13.4 and to really put that in perspective and show you what the minimum fund balance target is currently for each of these utilities you can see in this column so the electric utility is 37 million which the current fund balance is well above that minimum water is 17.5 so we're right there at the minimum i do want to point out that this fund balance does increase in the future years as the debt service for the water utility continues to decrease wastewater current fund balance of 13.4 with that minimum being 10.3 you can see the current roi here in this column so currently electric at that six percent is paying 11.9 million to the general fund in return on investment water's paying 1.4 million and then wastewater is playing 1.1 and then here's this 300 000 for that long-term funding and then what this does this table basically summarizes what a 0.5 increase to the roi would be for each of the utilities for the long-term funding of this economic development you can see in 2021 each of the funds an incremental increase so water would be 198 000 waste water be 153 000 solid waste be 197 and electric being 1 million one thing i do want to point out is solid waste does not currently have an roi so this would be a new roi to the solid waste fund which would be that 4.5 percent so that one does represent there and this below represents a one percent increase to roi for each of the utilities you can see the annual amount that would come into this fund would be 3.1 million and then with that that concludes the financial portion if you have questions on these two slides i'll address them if not jessica will come up and actually go over the staff's considerations and recommendations okay if we could pull down the presentation and see do we have any questions for this portion okay cindy we can proceed apologize let me get it pulled back up just for one last slide here you're gonna have to go ahead so just to sum up the staff presentation today our goal remains to limit impacts to the city's general fund and while still finding a sustainable funding source to support the catalyst fund staff's recommendation is the hybrid option as presented by nick which is utilizing some system fund balance um in the current fiscal year and then bring forward um and ongoing support options regarding the system roi during the 21-20 budget development discussions and then lastly our goal will be to reevaluate um implementation of the programs and timelines laid out in the strategic plan as part of the annual budgeting process so that we can make adjustments as needed um and then lastly um our department will remain focused on innovation and best practices and really providing growth um in a manner that um follows the strategic plan um in hopes that we'll continue to see denton grow and develop in a way that as councilmember melter said people want to come here and it'll be an attractive place to live work and play and so with that that stop is the end of the staff presentation so i will stand for questions okay questions that councilman breaks would you uh just refresh my memory and go over again when we will discuss the um the different funding amounts for each program so the goal we don't have a specific date yet but that is not something that is laid out in the plan itself that's more of a specific discussion that we would have um in the coming months um as we're laying out those policy discussions as as uh todd had discussed with you is that there's a lot of subsequent conversations that need to be have on those policy considerations and those finer details um the the nuts and bolts if you will so i don't have a specific timeline for that conversation okay we're probably not looking before mid-december early january okay all right i just want to stay here state here i would like to see the innovation and entrepreneurship and access grants our funds a little bit higher um i think it's really important to build that community wealth and um build up our minorities and women-owned businesses and veteran-owned businesses haven't had the chance to um to to create as easily as as some others okay any other questions uh councilmember melzer yeah uh so are are we not being asked for direction at all at this point it's just information or i was a little unclear about that that point we're definitely being we're definitely asking for your direction on where we where we were with the strategic plan the last time we visited with you there was definitely a need to have more specificity in it more target industries i mean i understand that i just think specifically about this part about the funding options we we would like we would definitely like to hear any any input that you have on the funding options i think the one thing that i would say is jessica's providing you some ranges in some of these areas we can certainly come back and provide and you know further hone it down the road it is highly unlikely if not completely improbable that you would see each one of those specific areas tapped in one fiscal year we just haven't had that many projects come in that are that diversified so we have the ultimate flexibility i think that you know i'm trying i'm i think we need to learn from our tree fund experience that you know if there's if there's areas and goals that you'd like to accomplish not writing ourselves such a rigid policy that you don't have the ability to to respond to projects that you really like so you know so i think what we'd like to understand is are you generally okay with the the the ranges that have been crafted and you know would you if you want us to provide a little more flexibility or hone it further that's fine but we've definitely got that ability about my comment is really doesn't address that aspect specifically and i i'm kind of inclined to take your guidance you know mostly because uh you've to my perception you so clearly understood our tastes oops sorry i got a cat here is knocking things over um you know in in just the item in just the the uh incentives that were brought forward recently that it's like i can tell we're on the same wavelength but uh the part i wanted to address was uh of the mechanisms one of them was bringing it forward in a bond election and sort of negative or you know the downside uh comment was could affect the tax rate but if you do it that way it's it's with the taxpayer's consent and what i and and it's all coming out of the same people's pockets whichever way we do it uh i mean with the exception of if you do it through utilities it's not affecting the co-surface but uh i i personally lean just because it's such a big direction of the future of debt and kind of issue i i kind of lean to putting it on the ballot uh to and because of the conversations that it would require us to have with the public you know to say to really get buy-in of you know is this a direction that we want to go uh no that being said i don't hate the recommendation but that would be my preference okay councilman bricks i also think that would be a great way to look at it and um mr homin you can answer me so if if it's done correctly if the bond is approved and the in the incentives and everything is done in a right and correct way the taxes wouldn't go up because you're using it to increase the tax base correct yeah and i and i think that's it depends on whether you're going for a specific um i i guess economic development fund to the voters or if you're just simply taking approach like we do on the bonds where you know the question is generally do we have your authority to go you know four up to four pennies above a certain rate so i think it's the way the question is is asked i'm not sure at the end of the day it means a whole lot even though we got for instance i'll use this last year even though we had authority to go up to four cents over the uh the tax rate um or to add up to four pays on the tax rate the question is becomes to which index and you know does it really mean anything um other than so i think that index is important you've got competing interests out there they're important so if the question is are we going to take a bond proposition out there saying are you okay with us establishing a 10 million dollar economic development fund that's one way of handling it the other way generally with the tax levy which is what i meant yeah it is so it's such a moving target i'm not sure that it means much to the public so it just depends on what you're if that's your intent then yeah we can certainly do something like that okay thank you uh councilmember armature i definitely support bringing it forward to a public vote i think that's a great idea thank you any other uh questions okay do you have staff you have what you need you believe please so um can i ask um mayor pro tem before we leave is there anything that the council found objectionable about the um options that jessica put together anything that you just don't like councilor armature i mean for me the um you know the way that the priorities are are listed um or the kind of different percentages given to the priorities um i i would not necessarily do it the same way myself but i'm i'm open to public input and again this is a living document um but as far as what would be coming forward to the public in a vote i mean i'm i think if if we have can have consensus on that um i i'm really just kind of ready for for public input on that thank you councilmember bricks yeah i'm still a little bit comfortable with the um the utility part of it um but i'd like to to hear hear more about what the community thinks and um and how that would look so i'm i'm still i'm still not there i was really uncomfortable with it before i'm still a little bit uncomfortable with it now but i see that it's kind of spread out and there's a lot more um there's a lot more options but so i'm just not vehemently against it i'm just not comfortable with it completely yet okay uh is that that give you what you need mr city manager we can come back with something that's much more tight now okay great okay all right thank you very much great presentation so that will uh take us to item b right because we skipped to c before so uh and let me call that that is item uh id 28 1891 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the proposed proposed prioritization and implementation of the city's capital improvement projects good evening this is cassie ogden director of finance let me find my presentation really quickly thank you this presentation is going to be a joint presentation between myself and becky divini our city engineer i'm going to kick it off and go through quickly the overview and we're going to give you an update of the 12 14 and 19 bond programs along with all of the individual projects with water wastewater the small transportation and the major roadways we're going to discuss a five percent contingency in our contracts as well as a change order concept that we've come up with and the recent council requests for with the work plan implement implement implications excuse me next steps and then question and answers so by way of a bond program update um we've combined 12 and 14 um bond programs on the left side of the screen the first column shows the approved issuances so that means the geo funds um the second column includes the additional co's that we've issued and you can see um that we have issued the 101 million of between geos and co bond funds for the 2012 and 14 bond program the the pie charts at the bottom show the percent complete of expenses and percent complete of remaining expenses so you can see we're 58 complete on the expenses between the 12 and 14 bond program on the 19 bond program we are we have 96 remaining obviously because we just started and if there's not any questions on this slide i'm actually going to turn it over to becky now for to review the the individual projects with you yeah no we can we can move forward and we'll we'll circle back to it if needed okay thank you good evening becky davini city engineer thank you for having me today um first i wanted to give an update on the street reconstruction 2012 and 2014 bond program we decided this time to show the information to you a little bit differently in a chart format versus the pie charts that we were showing you before so in the graph before you in the chart before you can see the different phases and you're going to start hearing us mention these different projects in these different phases so for 2012 and we have 20 segments still in design phase we have 17 that are in bid and award 21 in construction and 158 complete for a total of 216 uh segments two segments were moved to the 2019 bond program and for 2014 you can see that we have 31 in design 29 in bid and award 22 in construction and 145 completed for a total of 227 street segments and you can see where we have three that have been moved to the 2019 bond program just want to take a minute to explain the reasons why we move those five segments to the 2019 bond program the overall idea with the 2019 bond program is to provide more of a neighborhood approach for the projects so those street segments that were left fell in very nicely with some of the other streets that are being put forward as part of the 2019 bond program so on to the updates first on the 2014 proposition one bond i wanted to bring to your attention that the street bundle in-house design and is currently underway and is being designed in-house we mentioned the last time that the schedule was going to be a little bit slower simply from the fact that we brought that project in-house i'm going to take an opportunity here in a few minutes when we talk about the major roadway projects to do an overview of bonnie bray hickory creek and also mayhills so i'm not going to touch on those right now you'll see a little bit more information here coming soon on the more street project and that project we are evaluating looking at exactly what makes the most sense we don't want to make any movement too fast on that project until traffic actually warrants some of the design in that area and we're currently working with the county on that project and on the street rehabilitation project you'll notice that we have schedule and budget yellow on that basically that's really just kind of to let you know that the overall schedule is a few months slower than what was originally anticipated and the budget right now and that project is currently in award phase bid in award phase so right now the budget obviously we have an anticipated budget with an estimate of completion but until we actually see what those bids come in at and we just wanted to you know put that on yellow so we could make that make you aware of that situation on the rudel extension at mingo we have all of those in yellow staff is currently looking at that project along with several projects that are being done in tw and we're looking at that kind of as an overall approach as to how we're going to handle projects from a water wastewater streets drainage overall approach we have had some conversations with tw about some temporary roundabouts along bell street and so we're going to be submitting that information and going over that with our city manager's office and then moving forward with how is the best way to move forward with the rudel mingo and really looking at that whole area and the impact to the overall tw corridor now i will move on to the 2014 proposition three bond program and you will see that the schedule in the budget for the downtown storm sewer trunkline phase two is red both of those are red simply from the standpoint that that project is lacking funding at this time and due to the funding not being available obviously that slows down the schedule so we are currently looking at and evaluating that drainage project that does not have all the budget it needs to move forward with that project on the 2019 bond proposition one you will see that we have schedule yellow and the schedule shown yellow simply because there were hopes that that project would have been started earlier in the year i'm happy to announce that we have kicked that project off with a consulting firm to start moving forward and we are very excited about that and we reviewed a preliminary schedule with a consultant actually today and we're anxious to be able to share that with our stakeholders and also with you in the near future on the 2019 sidewalk improvements staff is evaluating the overall schedule currently and the reason why i have that yellow is because we're evaluating the need for temporary construction easements and right of entries on that project like i mentioned just a few minutes ago monibray phase five and six along with hickory creek road phase three i will discuss here in a little bit more detail in a few slides so on water and wastewater updates the 2181 project is taking a little bit longer than originally anticipated so i have the schedule shown yellow with the dry fork sanitary sewer i know we mentioned in our last presentation and that schedule is taking a little bit longer than anticipated the original alignment that was chosen staff has had a route study that has been completed and we're looking at a new alignment currently that project is in the decision mode as to whether or not we're going to design that in-house or whether we're going to select a consultant to deliver that project and move forward with the route study that has been proposed north south phase two and that schedule is yellow simply from the standpoint that that construction is taking a few months longer than originally anticipated and north south phase three we have both the schedule and the budget yellow and we're currently working through some construction issues on that project and our hope in hopes that we can make some resolutions to some of the construction issues that we've run into on that project but it's actually going to be a little bit slower than originally anticipated the hopes are that we still will meet the schedule and the deadlines that were originally set forward so now on the major roadway updates just so that you can see these are all the bonnie bray hickory creek mayhill and mckinney and we decided this time to do a little bit different approach and kind of walk through with you with a map so that you could see these overall phases on a map we hope that that could kind of provide you a little bit additional information and walk through each one of those projects so i'm going to start off with the first one which is bonnie bray so what you can see here is we've broken this into several phases so bonnie bray phase one is from north vintage north of vintage to rose lawn it's a four lane divided roadway with storm drain street lighting and sidewalks along with two 1200 foot bridges it's estimated to be substantially completed and traffic on that bridge hopefully sometime next month and that project is fully funded the second phase that you'll see in red is the phase two and that is vintage boulevard along with the connection north to phase one that is taking that roadway from a two to four lane and it includes storm drain traffic signal at us 377 and vintage and vintage and south bonnie bray and also includes sidewalks and a mixed use trail the schedule for that project substantially completion is around april of 2021 and that project is also fully funded with an ica with denton county phase three that you can see from rose lawn drive to i-35 is changing from a two to a four lane roadway it will have street lighting traffic signals about 5000 foot of water line replacement and around 7000 foot of sanitary sewer replacement and that project is 95 designed and we're working on some agreements with inlink and also with the kansas city southern railroad the construction on that phase is anticipated to begin in june of 2021 and that project is also fully funded at this time i'm now moving to the north of i-35e and phase four b and that is from i-35e to scripture it's a four lane divided roadway it includes street lighting traffic signals 2500 feet of sanitary sewer line about a thousand feet of water line drainage and 10 foot sidewalks and that project is currently at about 90 percent design and we are working with cog to acquire funding for the right away acquisition and the construction funding that's needed for that project it's anticipated that we are going to need that funding to include the construction and also right away for that section and phase 4a is the roundabout and you're all aware that that phase is complete phase five would be the next phase which is from scripture street to us 380 and in phase five that is a four lane divided roadway and has drainage improvements approximately 4500 feet of water line about 2200 feet of sanitary sewer street lighting and a 10 foot side path the project is currently on hold as we're working through and making some design decisions on whether to bring that project internally or have that designed by an external firm and the project is in need of right away and construction funding and we're working with cog on that section also the next section you see is in purple which we have now broken into what we call phase 6a phase 6a is from 380 to Windsor and then the section that you see in white we're calling phase 6b and that is from Windsor to us 77 and that's a four lane divided roadway with drainage street lighting traffic signals about 6300 feet of water line and sidewalks and it's currently about 90 percent designed and as you'll remember at the last council meeting we talked about right away acquisition and so that's underway and we're anticipating construction to begin in June of 2021 and we're working to have the construction coordinated with the opening of the new high school and the project currently is in need of construction funding and right away funding and so we're working through those things with our friends at the cog we also are going to have to work through we do have some funding that's already been allocated for that project but it's within a reimbursable agreement so we're going to work through exactly how to facilitate the funding on that so that's kind of an overview of bonnie bray breaking it down phase by phase phase seven that you see on the screen that's a project that actually now has been taken over by tech stock between us 77 and the loop so i'm now going to move on to hickory creek road so hickory creek road and we broke into three phases and the first phase is hickory creek phase one hickory creek road phase one i'm sorry and that consists of the extension of the eastbound lanes from 24.99 to nautical lane and an acceleration lane along southbound fm 24.99 the road is currently two lanes undivided with one lane in each direction and the project involved the construction of two new lanes both of which will be eastbound the existing eastbound lane will be converted to a second westbound lane and there will be room to construct two additional lanes inside lanes one in each direction in the future if desired we are looking at a schedule to have that project completed in september of 2021 and that project is currently fully funded and that's what you see in blue on your screen phase two is the section from west of teasley to river pass and that consists of constructing about 1.3 miles of a four-lane roadway with median turn lanes storm drain systems sidewalks and a bridge and and the new roadway will have in addition to the new roadway the project will include about 4 000 linear feet of storm drain those range in size of 18 to 48 inches in diameter and then a new portion of the 10-foot sidewalk was constructed last summer and and we've taken that out of the scope of the project so the schedule to complete that portion of the project is anticipated to be july of 2021 and that phase is also fully funded the last phase is phase three and that is from river pass to 1830 and that does include the bridge and for that section is currently in design and we're hoping to be moving forward to construction in may of 2021 and then we are working with our friends at cog to receive additional funding for this project as it is not fully funded at this time the next project is the mayhill road project as you're all aware of the first phase of the project is completed and we are working through the second phase of the project at this time which will include the dcta bridge and we are also working with our friends at cog to receive funding to finalize and finish out that project the overall scope of the project is from 380 to 35 and and you can see on the screen that it went from a two lane to a four lane divided and the phase one like i mentioned which is the brown section is completed phase two is currently what's under design and we're in hopes to begin construction in 2021 and the last project that will highlight using the map feature is the mckinney street project and the overall project is from loop 288 to grissom road phase one is currently completed and phase two is under construction and it's to construct and widen this roadway from a two lane roadway to a four lane roadway with the left turn lane and phase two estimation to be completed is approximately summer of 2022 so that's an overview of all the projects and we hope that you enjoyed looking at the map feature because it helps us kind of break down into the different phases and and so we definitely look forward to hearing your feedback on that and i'm going to move from the presentation on the specific projects into a couple of other items that we wanted to bring forward and that we talked to you about in the last council presentation first being the five percent contingency so as you're aware we are currently putting on all of our contracts the five percent contingency so i wanted to walk through some key items first of all i wanted to describe the contingency and what it is is funding that is set aside to cover the anticipated costs it's calculated at five percent of the contract bid amount and it is used at the city's discretion this would be through change orders that come through the actual construction contract the change order approval requirements so there's two different ways that you can look at this as far as the approval and if the contract changes are within the five percent contingency and the fifty thousand dollar signature authority then that does not require public utilities board if it's a utility project and then city council approval if the contract is in excess of the five percent contingency and the fifty thousand dollar signature authority then it will require the public utilities board and city council approval so just so you can understand kind of the difference of when we will be bringing change orders forward there's also a change order tracking that we're doing currently in our projects procurement tracks all the change orders regardless of the changes and there whether they're approved administratively or whether they're brought before the pub and also the city council when the pub and city council consider a contract change all prior administratively approved contractors contract changes are also reported along with the proposed amendments and i think you've seen that as we brought changes forward to you we're listing all of the change orders on the projects and this process has been vetted by our city attorney's office our procurement office and our internal auditor to ensure compliance with statutes local policies and industry best practices so i hope that helps you understand the five percent contingencies that you've seen i know we also provided some information in a recent friday report the next item i wanted to bring forward is an exciting thing that we've started with the capital projects group and it's called the change order board um and basically the purpose of this is to vet and provide additional endorsement of all contract changes and amendments on capital projects prior to the change order being processed so what happens is um you can see on here the meeting frequency is the first thirsty of the month there's an ad hoc meeting um that can be scheduled on an as needed basis but the goal is is to meet once a month with members of our finance team our purchasing team and our public works team to review change orders that need to be processed on different projects um go through talk about them um give everybody an opportunity to ask questions um try to understand the why behind those items that are being brought forward and review it with all the team members that the chain orders will be processed through so we've successfully held a couple of these meetings and um we're very excited about this new process it also allows the project managers an opportunity to know at least one time a month and then as needed um obviously that they can request a meeting but they have an opportunity to bring those types of items forward and they can be reviewed um and and have an opportunity to set aside that time to take that take care of those items as they come up so and we're really excited about this new process so kind of next steps um i know we talked last time about having the work plans finalized we're still working through works plans and we're working on those based on a category of improvement like i mentioned and they will be sidewalks uh bike lanes um traffic signals roadway um you know all the different work plans associated with um the different types of projects that uh capital projects and public works are delivering um on the estimates at completion um i know we mentioned to you that we're having that reviewed by an outside consultant and that's currently um on the street and we are hoping to receive soqs um back from those individuals um by mid november and we are hoping to bring that forward to you um for approval sometime late january so that we can um start rock and rolling with getting the estimates of completion all reviewed for all of the capital projects that we currently have and we'll continue quarterly to bring you a budget update um on all the projects that are listed there on the different bond programs water wastewater projects and the small transportation projects and the last item i have for you today i know last time you will remember we kind of walked through the communication improvements we talked to you about how staff receive um requests and how they come in and i want to remind you um you know we talked about really three basic buckets if it's a service request and there's an emergency then obviously that's something we're going to respond to i mean the next friday report if it's an informational item and then that's something we're going to gather the information on and provide a response um in one to two weeks of the friday report and then finally like we've mentioned and been talking about is if it's something that is brought forward and then we need to put that apart of a work plan and then evaluate it with our work plan then that's really the second i mean i'm sorry the third category so staff will evaluate and prioritize based on the need um and we'll continue to update and prioritize the work plan kind of as a living document and so we will acknowledge the receipt of the request in the next friday report and then we'll provide um you know the capital project updates quarterly so what i'm going to show you on the next screen um are really a list of kind of those items that have come in that kind of fall in that latter category that i just mentioned um when requests come in they come through the work plan and so um the next two slides you'll see kind of a list of items that are going to be evaluated with that work plan approach um so you can see that we've had a number of requests or commitments on speed speed study at pond hills and fm 2499 um with use of approximate um and possible traffic calming measures and what we've tried to do with this is provide you the request or or commitment the individual who's requested it the time estimate not only to do the research um in some cases also you know like for example on the traffic calming measures um you can see kind of if that is something that's warranted then it could take an additional time what departments would be involved and then the overall kind of budget estimate um of what we see from a staff time and then an improvement time frame so you can see on the screen right now there's six different requests that have been evaluated and i'm not going to read through them all i know you're all very capable of reading through all of them um several of them are speed studies some of them are stop sign a couple of them are drainage related and then obviously a trail um at the very end and then on the next slide you'll see very similarly um there's an update on historical signage um some crack ceiling some crosswalks at hercules um the historical documentation and research options for the potential trail um using the future phases of pec four um actually the gem crystal widening is something that staff brought forward as a commitment um that was actually evaluated during the bond uh program from my understanding then there's a couple other one with groundwater running along blackberry way to thistle hill and then one that just recently came in last week on site distances at broadway and fulton so i just wanted to show you some of the different types of uh requests and uh questions that our department um is receiving um and and really kind of overall kind of what public works is receiving so some of these are street related some of these are park related they really all fall under our general manager ethan cox and so we're we're looking at these all from you know the different departments that will be involved and just wanted to show you that we're actually taking those requests and putting those into our overall work plan and looking at those from a how they are you know what the implications are um to the overall work plan that not only one we're producing or one that we're currently adhering to so with that i will take any questions i'm going to stop sharing and i'd be happy to address any questions or concerns you have today got it and so we'll take a short break uh we we we were under uh we didn't have everyone on the screen but i wanted to wait until you finished but uh yes if we could take a short break till six uh and then we'll come back and start up with questions if that's okay does that work okay for you absolutely sir i appreciate you you're too kind no okay so we will take a break until six it is now 554 thank you okay um let's oh am i can y'all hear me y'all can hear me now okay all right uh well we did have a quorum we got one now yeah paul i can't even come back because i can't hear can you hear us paul no just you sound like an insect a mile away okay well i've been called worse all right so we've got uh i think we've got a quorum yes yes we got a quorum uh so welcome back to this meeting of the dent city council already had the countdown october 27 2020 it is 605 pm i believe we're on the questions now for agenda item 3b is that correct all right questions council member breaks thank you um thank you for the presentation and all the work that you've done uh since you've been in that position i really appreciate it um so a lot of progress really fast um i do have a few questions going back to the beginning of the presentation i was taking notes um my do we know how many uh lane miles on the low oci or poor condition we will have after all the bonds are complete including the 2019 thank you for your kind words and i don't have that information at this point um i think that's something we definitely can look into i know you asked a similar question um i believe a few months back and that was something that um mr kramer reviewed um along with several other individuals in the street department if i recall um so i think that's something we absolutely can evaluate and bring back to you with the with the improvements that have been made and kind of that percentage information um so absolutely ethan and myself can look into that and and try to bring that information back to you at some point and maybe just provide it in a friday report update if that would work for you yeah that would be really helpful i did i received the the map of all the streets and having the percentages or knowing which ones will be really helpful especially as we um are asked questions in the community about you know the bonds and and the streets just to show that you know it's actually um we can show what is actually being done i had a question about the small transportation projects but that was on your list of upcoming um so i guess we're going to see those upcoming the next question i have and i have to bring it up every single time when we talk about uh mingo um it was uh you mentioned that your some projects with twu um and that project has been on hold i'm wondering and i think last time we talked about it there was a review or a design or some discussions about mingo and a side path and um just for for safety i know that's a really main connection to downtown and i'm wondering are we still on track is that still something being discussed in in all of in all of the discussions absolutely um what we're doing currently right now is reviewing rudel mingo along with the bell implications of the temporary roundabouts i'm also evaluating any water wastewater project drainage project and then really kind of working with the overall tw master plan and then some of those roads that are really on the you know kind of the boundaries um you know of that um their core property area for their university we're also looking at um some information that they've provided us on a frame street connection into their property um off of 380 so we absolutely are looking at that that's what we're working on right now is scoping what actually needs to happen what has been um discussed to happen and then also what is the best way to execute the project kind of overall um so that you know obviously we're uh not um inundating people with different projects throughout that whole area so and we're we're working through all of that right now and really trying to provide more of a holistic approach to the overall tw um so it's something that's still being discussed at this point um and uh we'll be having further conversations on that overall rudel mingo um and tw really kind of corridor in the very near future we actually have a meeting tomorrow to discuss it so okay thank you i know it's brought up um pretty significantly and when you're asking about sidewalks that's the number one road i hear about anyway uh and on uh the roundabout uh bonnie bray it's been marked completed um is there i i did get a message or something about uh cleanup are there are there still things that need to be done in that area that where it's not fully complete that there may be some punch list items or is it is it completely finished you bring up a great question um one of the things that we really want to work on as an overall department is how we describe what complete means there's two different ways to kind of describe that um one is you know what is substantially complete well substantially complete can mean that the roadway is usable that the water line has water in it and it can be used and kind of framing that conversation that way um there are some punch list items that still need to be done kind of in that area um in coordination also with some utility work that was completed in that area um but from an overall perspective when we mean complete we mean that it's actually usable drivable and citizens and residents of the community can actually use that roadway at this time okay thank you absolutely anyone else i'm getting something in the background not sure what that was sounded like how we noises it sounded like uh councilmember davis um just just uh okay any other questions councilmembrometer uh yeah i have three questions that are all interrelated really so really one big question um it's a question about um the expansions of mayhill bonnie bray and mckinney and you know how you see those as squaring with our vision zero plan are signing on to the vision zero plan um and uh related to that also was wondering if you could kind of speak to how input on the mobility plan is going to come into play with um moving forward on these capital projects i believe and correct me if i'm wrong uh that the 30th is the last day that we're taking input uh for the mobility plan but if you could kind of talk about how these three things intersect uh you feel you're welcome to take them individually or all together the vision zero these expansions of mayhill bonnie bray and um and mckinney and and also the uh the public input on the mobility plan thanks sure no problem um as far as the vision zero goes um i would have to bring that information back to you or provide that in a friday report and that's something that i'd like to work with our city traffic engineer um to review that information and that's not something that i'm prepared to discuss today with you um as far as the overall comments to the mobility plan you absolutely are correct those are um do uh we're taking all comments until friday and as far as the overall alliance and um you know approach from the mobility plan um along with how we're uh facilitating the mayhill project bonnie bray project mckinney project and hickory creek project those are all projects that are currently um being shown and worked through with our city traffic engineer um on the mobility plan so we feel like that we're working through those projects as they're shown on the mobility plan and how's work how we are currently moving forward with the design of those roadways so i hope that answers your question okay all right anybody else okay thank you very much i appreciate it thank you for your presentation no problem sir have a great day thank you yep all right we'll move on to agenda item three d which is id 20-1758 receive a report hold a discussion to give staff direction regarding the process of establishing street limits in the city of denton speed limits that's what it said yeah good evening mayors members of the council brian yan city traffic engineer here today to talk to you about speed zoning and by that i mean the process by which we establish the posted speed limits on our roadways in the city of denton so let me pull up my well all right can you see that yes all right let me go full screen okay so speed zoning in the in the city of denton the the goals for today we're going to give you just a quick background on speed zoning and how the state of texas fairly mandates the methodology that we use and then we're going to talk about some emerging and alternative speed zoning methods and then some next steps on a little bit of timeline so speed zoning in texas i want to go back to the prima facie speed we talked a little bit about this when we did the speed the comprehensive speed limit ordinance the prima facie speed has been established by the state for every roadway in texas and it's typically that speed that is reasonable and prudent under the circumstances that existing so they have established several different limits 30 miles an hour is the typical on a city street 15 in an alley if you're on a control access freeway like 35 the prima facie is 70 and then if you're in a rural area on an unnumbered highway it's 60 but the the 30 mile an hour is is typically the prima facie that the city has the power to alter and that's so that's what we're going to focus on as we move forward through our speed zoning we can raise and lower the prima facie speed but to do that we have to conduct an engineering and traffic invasion investigation and this applies to every roadway whether it's on the state system or not so the the texas administrative code we've got two codes we're working with the transportation code which establishes the prima facie speeds and the the authority that we have to modify the speed limits and then the texas administrative code that is basically outlines the process and the process that is the background and the go-to process in the state of texas is what's known as the operating speed method and that's where we go out and we measure free flow traffic speeds during non-peak periods and we calculate the 85th percentile and that's the speed at which 85 of the motorists are driving that speed or lower that is determined to be the prudent and reasonable speed for those that roadway under those conditions this is the nerdy part this is that this methodology was established in the 60s and it's basically a comparison of the the normal curve of the average speed and that's what you see there in the gray versus a crash risk curve so they've identified that where those two intersect that's the the speed at which the crash risk is the lowest typically it's 85 to 95 or 90 percent and the state of texas has selected 85 so that just gives you a little bit of background of how it was derived but the the 85th percentile method only looks at motorists so we don't look at pedestrians we don't look at cyclists we don't look at adjacent land uses there's no driveway density considerations so most of the people in the profession see this as an outdated or certainly fading methodology to determine speed limits so once we determine that 85th percentile speed limit or speed that we calculate the the administrative code says we typically want to be five miles an hour above or below and we can adjust for site distance crash history presence driveways and other factors but what we are looking for is some greater flexibility so five if you have a 95th percentile speed of 45 then the state of texas says it should be either 50 or 40 but they don't take into consideration some of the context sensitivity factors that that our complete streets and our vision zero really are trying to focus on so we can lower the prima facie speed in on our city streets which again is 30 miles an hour on any roadway other than a controlled access facility if we conduct that traffic investigation and that traffic investigation has to show that it is unreasonable or unsafe to drive 30 the roadway has to be a two-lane undivided highway that is not numbered and we can only lower that speed limit to 25 miles an hour this is all coming out of the transportation code section 545 so let me back up so this is this is really talking about how we can lower the speed limit we can also increase the speed limit so there are some roadways that we think are based on how they're designed and the traffic function that they provide maybe need to be higher than 30 so we've got a lot of 35s we've got a lot 40s we're at 45s and some 50s so that is typically a little bit less contentious but trying to get something below 30 is we've got two challenges one we have to prove that it's unsafe from a motorist standpoint which is sometimes difficult or unreasonable and then we can only go to 25 so that's that's kind of the hurdle we're up against when we talk about lowering that prima facie speed so this is just a list of the current roadways in the city of denton that either are lower than the prima facie that 30 mile an hour speed limit or are higher so these are the speed limits that we have over the years over time determine that the 30 mile an hour speed is not appropriate just just just a little bit of context some of these are on system some of these are not most of these are in fact just city streets surface streets that are they have great intersections signals or stop signs so now i'd like to talk a little bit about the approach that we're going to take to really enhance that how far from that 85th percentile measured speed we want to actually post our speed so the the way the code is written it uses a lot of shoulds and not a lot of shalls so it gives us some flexibility but it's got to be defensible it's got to be that engineering and traffic investigation so we have to have some good solid background and reasons to either raise or lower those speeds so just a couple of methods that are that are emerging right now target speed limits and this is just basically where you set the speed at at the you establish the speed at which you want the driver to drive concept context sensitive speed zoning and this takes into account what and again just reiterate in what context you're in are you in a rural context an urban you have a lot of commercial a lot of driveways you have on street parking just where are you in the city and then there are some there's a concept called slow zones which you take basically a quadrant or a defined area in the city and say look because of the kind of land uses that we have or the context the nature of this part of the community we're going to lower those speeds or establish a different speed and then road risk message method which just really combines all of these factors land use driveways pedestrians cyclists all of that and again gives you a little bit more flexibility to adjust that speed posted speed away from the 85th percentile and so you can see the in the gray box here these are the approaches that we're going to use to modify the 85th percentile speed again this is just additional ways we can justify rather than the items that are listed in the transportation code these are additional means by which we can modify that 85th percentile speed and say we either want it lower it needs to be higher but we still cannot go lower than 25 currently on a normal posted speed limit in the state of texas it's been to the legislature many times since i've been in the industry and it's not been successful so i'm sure it'll come back and other other states have been successful in establishing a 20 mile an hour residential speed but the state of texas has not adopted that yet so part three this is just a little bit of next steps and timeline what we're going to do and and how quickly we think we can get this accomplished the first next step is data collection so we're going to collect speed volume road characteristic road classification driveway density traffic control land use we'll also conduct as part of our speed and volume because our data collection now we've specified a video data collection so we'll be able to see cyclists we'll be able to see pedestrians and there was a question we'll be able to see mid-block a certain distance away from the intersection in case people are are tempted to cross at a part of the roadway that does not have a crosswalk or any kind of pedestrian protection but we'll we'll collect all that data it's going to take six to eight months we're heading into a time of the year which is not really good for for data collection when we get into the holidays it just gets extremely odd and it's not really representative of of the normal day-to-day activity it's kind of the you don't design your facility your parking lot for the day after thanksgiving if you did you would have way too much parking same thing with with data collection we want to collect we're really we're trying to collect a typical day if there ever if there is one so we may start our data collection after the first of the year typically october is the last month where you get decent data once you get into thanksgiving and the christmas time period it gets really strange so six to eight months collect the data and and we will collect corridor data we'll collect intersection data but that's our that's our first next step and then the next following step would be taking that data massaging it comparing the the measured speeds to the land uses that are adjacent etc etc looking how much how many pedestrians we have crossing how many cyclists all of this information coming up with what we expect or what we would recommend for a non prima facie speed so we'll have to do the 85th percentile speed calculation but then we get to modify using these approach of these emerging and alternative methods to better reflect what the city really wants to see as far as a posted speed limit and my expectation is that'll take another two to three months after the data collection just because of the you saw the list and and we've got 40 or 50 streets that we know we have to examine and then we may want to once that data collection is done we may want to come back and add a few if we see some discrepancies or some missing pieces from our what we currently have is non prima facie the following step would be the ordinance update and this should not take maybe one one to two months basically it's putting all of these speed limits into a tabular form and updating and comparing and contrasting the existing speed limit ordinance and creating a new ordinance based on our recommendations we propose to do this once we get the we've got this the comprehensive speed limit ordinance already established this will be our first basically revisit to it and then i like to come back at least once maybe twice a year and revisit those street segments we'll have new roadways opening that we're going to have to come back and add to to the speed limit ordinance because they're not either they don't exist or the the the section or the type of the facility has changed significantly enough that the old speed limit is no longer appropriate so we'll be coming back to you with updates at least annually if not biannually so with that i will take any questions okay we'll pull this yeah i'm trying to there i am okay so so quick question here and this is coming to us via a um was it a one minute pitch or okay is that is that correct yes todd he actually just as a background we had already started the process prior to so it's just kind of it was it it came in at a good time okay all right okay uh i believe it's all council member melzer is that right your hand and then council member briggs yeah uh first thank you so much for this i periodically i'm sure we all you know get uh questions or complaints from residents saying people are tearing through their residential street i never hear anybody saying that they want speeds increased anywhere um i have a couple of questions one is there are circumstances where there are 20 mile an hour zones aren't there like around schools what are the circumstances assuming that's a yes uh what are the circumstances that would allow you currently to do 20 miles an hour so the if you're talking about a permanent 20 mile an hour zone i'm not convinced that those are legal i have not seen a lot of uh contest of those i know city when i was in fort worth uh we had an adjacent city saginaw the all of their residential streets are 20 and so i happen to know the city engineer the firm that was their city engineer and i asked how did you get this if the transportation code just says you can't go lower than 20 or 25 and i didn't get um right now the only way you can go below 25 and it's it's again i mentioned the two codes of transportation code and the administrative code the transportation code says you can't go below 25 the administrative code says if you're in a prima facie street with prima facie speed limit of 30 then you really shouldn't go more than 10 miles below that so that infers that you can go to 20 and yeah there are so many 20 mile an hour school zones in the state of texas uh that i would say that that determination has been made that for a time of day when you have what we call an occasional hazard which would be a school-aged pedestrian then lower that speed limit as long as you've got proper signage but as far as a permanent background 20 mile an hour i have not found any legislation that allows us to do that so so it's illegal but it happens yeah that's interesting uh yeah there's some others another city that someone mentioned me too the 20 is a standard may or may i ask a second of course thank you um so i'm very pleased that part of what you're taking into account is uh the road condition in terms of pedestrians and cyclists and presumably disabled people etc not just cars uh so uh can you share any thoughts on how you will quantify those factors in this measurement period well and again as i as i said when we when we put together our rfp for our data collection contract we specified video data collection okay allows us to get anything and everything that the camera sees we can count rabbits or whatever we want but it's it's all video documented and we'll have several days worth of of video uh and we'll just have to reduce that based on which element we're trying to quantify whether it's cyclists or pedestrians or cars we can do road we can do vehicle classification that's that's why we wanted to use video instead of the road tubes so i i could imagine that you know your first cut is count of you know these categories and then maybe where the counts are high you would actually look and see in the video what you know uh if they were encumbered or you know troubled in some way by by the traffic on that on that piece of road right we're looking nice presence but what is the experience speed at the same time um it's so i've always had the question is if you've got a flat straight roadway what's the what's the reasonable and prudent speed it's whatever you're you know if it's dry conditions and i then yes i can see that the that data collection our 85th percentile is going to come back high but that's why we want to look at these other methods that are now being adopted across the nation and really around the world is okay just because it's a flat straight roadway doesn't mean you get to go 60 miles an hour because there may be other circumstances whether it be the land use that's adjacent you've got a park nearby or school that's the we're going to take all of that into consideration as we adjust those 85th percentile speeds but we still have to calculate the 85th percentile speed sure no that's great thank you very much councilmember riggs thank you um you've already addressed a few of my questions um i i'm wondering are we going to be looking at the roadway design um because part of what encourages speed or speeding is the design of the roadways correct and that's that's really rolled into the target speed concept where you design your roadways for the speed that you want to achieve so again that flat straight roadway which texans love uh really does not it really doesn't offer the the characteristics that we want to achieve by uh for the actually post the speed that we want so that has led us into the traffic calming world where now we have to put in the narrowings or the chicanes or the speed humps because we've designed our roadways from a singular point of view and that's the car now we're we're talking about complete streets and contact sensitivity we're looking at the cyclists and the pedestrian activity and adjacent land uses and that's all going to roll into how we design our roadways certainly okay thank you that's that's good to hear i i am in favor of this if if we're looking for direction here i'm really glad to hear this presentation um earlier you saw from some of the requests and the requests that i get are for speed studies in neighborhoods you know a lot of um people are speeding down streets in neighborhoods going you know 50 miles an hour and the request is for like you said traffic calming um is this study just on the main big streets or will some of these neighborhood roads be included so that the smaller traffic um studies will we won't have to do well so for this first pass um and just for to for from a budgetary consideration our first uh effort's going to be on the roads that are already non prima facie so anywhere we've already adjusted a speed limit that's what we're going to look at first we're going to re-verify or alter those posted speeds we're not going to stop doing our neighborhood speed studies and where we find those issues with the as you say the neighborhood speeders that are using it as a cut through or for whatever reason are exceeding that 30 mile an hour we are currently and just as an aside we are currently also in the process of developing a traffic calming manual so those tools will be on our toolbox on roadways that are already constructed so we won't be able to we can't really change the roadway unless we narrow it or add a speed hump we can't change the curvature we can't change a lot of those characteristics because it exists so that traffic calming handbook will also go hand in hand with this speed zoning effort mayor may I just have a couple more so we talked about mingo earlier so mingo has three different speed limits on it it's from 30 to 40 um are we when we talk about a study like this are we looking to see if you divide one roadway up or you make that roadway all the same um depending on the length of it speed the speed limit of it so that's that's interesting that you bring that up because one of the things that we just put together our our admin team is a is a gis representation of all the speed limits in town so we can look at and i always use mckinney as an example mingo is a good one where if you travel the length of the roadway your speed changes three or four times so we have to look at that again that context sensitivity because mckinney when it gets outside of town outside of loop 288 the characteristic of the roadway changes and the speed may not need to be the same or may not we may not want the same speed limit that we do when it's in town so we will have a graphical representation i'm a visual kind of guy so i like to see how it changes and we'll do a color for each of the posted speed limits and you can see if you're going from 30 to 35 to 40 that's a natural progression but if you go from 35 to 45 to 30 why is that middle piece 45 and we have pieces of mckinney that are i think posted too fast for cert for sure because they're the narrower sections of the roadway so that will be part of the process of evaluation that's that's really great to hear last question and you may or may not know this but is there not a section of fry street that's 20 miles per hour there are sections of hickory there we have a lot of 20 mile an hour sections and so we're going to have to revisit those and either decide to keep the 20 and risk whatever risk that we have by not following the texas transportation code or find a way to establish a more appropriate speed if we took some of these 20s if we determined that that that's really not uh defensible we can always go to a 25 as long as we have that study that says there's there's a reason that it's not safe for or reason it's unreasonable to drive 30 miles an hour and our our logic can now be because we're going to a context sensitive and and more of a complete streets vision zero approach we can we can my suggestion would be that we interpret that unreasonable factor is from a pedestrian or a cyclist point of view and not necessarily from a driver's point of view yeah i i thought maybe it was like that because of all the pedestrians and cyclists associated with north texas right i'm not saying that i disagree with the speed limit i just i'm not sure that we it's defensible but my my interpretation of the transportation code it clearly says we cannot go below 25 well thank you for the presentation today you're welcome okay council member armature so thank you for this um i wanted to know and it's convenient that this comes right after a discussion about the widening of roads because as you mentioned you know these uh kind of speed limit reduction measures can apparently only be taken on two-lane roads and so some of what we're doing that has been contested you know that that that i myself you know have have objected to um has been these expansions of roads uh from two-lane roads to uh to to four lane or more roads for capacity i'm wondering if you could speak to this balance between speed and and capacity now how you uh how the engineering department kind of works out those issues together um if you could speak to that and also uh if you could speak to you know to what extent um input from residents will kind of factor into these speed studies that you all are going to do because like council member briggs said i believe it was council member briggs maybe council member melzer um you know i i have been uh also so grateful uh for the experiences i've had with your department and coming to uh do studies on or and to look at to come on site uh in the cases of residents who have speeding problems in their neighborhood and you have always been so responsive uh so i i really love that and you know hope to see more of that but if you could talk to that kind of capacity versus safety mix um and how that fits into your sense of our vision zero for denton sure so the the actual relationship between capacity and speed uh and it's you you couldn't convince a typical driver of this but the maximum the peak capacity is not at the highest speed so because of the the reaction you get that accordion somebody stops and everybody has to stop behind them it gets very unstable at higher speeds capacity does so we really achieve a better and safer throughput at a lower speed because you get the driver reaction the driver has time to react and your perception reaction time is more in line with the consists the conditions of the roadway so we can we can and that's the approach that we're going to take is is looking at what's appropriate and not necessarily what's achievable the the challenge and that comes into the enforcement part is most drivers if they can achieve a speed of 50 they want to seems like when people get behind the wheel they they lose that concern for their fellow pedestrian or cyclist because they're in their car now and i've got to get where i'm going so a lot of it's going to be enforcement a lot of it's an education of just i mean as we go through this process that we'll have we will with this first update have a fairly robust public outreach campaign just saying hey look here's what we're doing here's why we're doing it most people when they're not behind the wheel of their car will say yeah lower speeds are greater they're better we like those but it's when they get in that car that they tend to change the mindset a little bit and then what was the second part i've already i've already lost the second part of your question is about the first part was capacity yeah just about you know when you do the speed studies yeah how a citizen input will fact will factor into that in addition to i'm not saying instead of doing a comprehensive approach but how will you kind of factor into resident and the so the citizen input or council input or staff input really the way we the way that rolls into this process is they identify those problem areas we don't i don't we don't have enough people to know where the speeders are you know where that speeding is occurring so that identifies the areas that we need to look at they cannot obviously we still have to go through that process of doing the data collection calculating the 85th percentile speed i will say that more often than not not all the time but quite often it is a a resident perception where they think they have a speeding problem and we go out and we collect seven days worth of data which is our norm now we collect an entire week and we'll calculate that 85th percentile as 28 miles an hour on a 30 mile an hour roadway well according to this process that the state currently uses that's 30 miles an hour is inappropriate but the way i look at it is okay how many people were exceeding 30 even if it's 15 you want to know how many are going 50 how many are going 32 but that's that's really how the citizen input is going to help us is just identifying where we need to study where we need to focus our attention we still have to go through the normal process we like to allow them to establish when we collect our data you know what's the what's the worst time of year worst day of the week that kind of thing it gets them involved in and looking at what we're actually doing and helping helping them be part of that process but so that's really how we use the citizen input yeah well thank you yeah and i will say you know i really appreciate y'all's approach to that it's really validating um you know for residents to come out you know even if the data shows well according to the 85th percentile method which as you mentioned many people you know myself included consider that kind of outdated you know you all have been really validating of just people's sense that however fast they're driving is doesn't make me feel safe as a resident um and so i just i really appreciate that and that you're taking that into account in this so so thank you i look forward to this okay anything else one thing uh it sometimes these conversations are are interesting because on one hand we're talking about speed limit which if somebody's going 50 miles an hour down a residential street that's not a speed limit problem that's a traffic enforcement problem because whether the speed limit is 25 or it's 30 somebody if that's if that's the street they're going down if they're going down a residential street that quickly a speed limit drop of five miles an hour isn't going to do anything for those people and then we also talk about how um the streets sometimes they're so narrow because you can't get people through there people are parked on each side of the road especially uh you know public safety traffic i mean um fire trucks and and the like so it's just interesting how when we try to solve one problem with something that we have to always be aware that that is that remember the old saying about the bones how the neck bones connect to the whatever the bone is that little that little children's rhyme it's the same way it is here so i appreciate you taking into consideration all those unintended consequences that uh we're not aware of uh not being engineers and that that's y'all's profession you do it every day and really do appreciate that and and trust very uh much that you'll find a solution to this that balances the interests of both public safety and the need for people to also be able to move around in our city well no matter what transportation whether it be car whether it be pedestrian whether it be bicycle whether it be public transportation so i really appreciate that uh real quick council member armature then we're moving on yeah i wanted to respond to that follow up with one other thing just to say that the vision zero plan um which i really encourage everybody to study and internalize that they actually talk about that issue of how if we see it as an enforcement issue if we look at it on the enforcement end it's already too late that what we need to be doing is designing our roads to prevent uh that kind of behavior so anyway i just encourage people to read that i want to ask on that same note you know this is the kind of issue um that a a bike and pedestrian coordinator would be really helpful um in in collaborating and guiding with this if i was wondering if maybe the city manager could speak to you know how uh a future bike or pedestrian coordinator as a a separate position um could help and assist in this in in this effort which is just kind of at the beginning stages okay so i've been told that uh that todd had to step away okay well we'll we'll come back is there somebody if there's somebody who could answer about that well basically what you're saying is you want a bike and pedestrian coordinator we do have someone i think who handles that engine in the engineering department oh yeah i mean somebody yeah as a separate position well well that's that's a different i mean that's really a different question i mean what you're saying is do we want to get a separate bike and pedestrian coordinator which that i know is off topic what you're asking is how can somebody who is working for the city now who handles bike and pedestrian coordination how can that be beneficial to this process because we're not talking about hiring a bike and pedestrian coordinator here mayor members of the city council ethan cox general manager of public works uh we do have a position that we're in the process of finalizing a job description and we intend to post that in november i saw that we did have some citizen comment on that uh the email last week we are folding in those those comments as well i believe some of the comments were kind of along the lines of making sure that the position is labeled or titled appropriately to enable us to get the bike friendly designation as well as other grant opportunities so we're working through a few revisions on the job description and then we like i said so ethan i hate to interrupt you this seems to me to be this seems to me to be outside posting we're talking about a position which has nothing to do with this particular posting so i just want to ask mr city attorney is that is this i mean that the thrust of the question was how that was my father yes thank you i appreciate that and as far as vision zero and enforcement my understanding is you want to reduce the possibility of traffic collisions and accidents as much as practicable well if we have no streets then we'll just have to worry about bicyclists but you've got to if you're going to have modes of transportation you have to have a way to move them and so i don't know if enforcement to say that enforcement plays no bearing in this is and to say you've already you've already missed the mark or you've already passed the opportunity because of enforcement i don't think it says that at all i think that's i think that's a little short side and i don't think that's an accurate representation of what that program is supposed to be doing so we're moving on all right we're done with the work sessions except for one and that is work session 3e which is receive a report and hold a discussion and give staff direction on pending city council requests for information for pedestrian bike accident data over the past two years good evening mayor and council stuart birds eye assistant to the city manager i am going to pull up the presentation sorry about this quite a few clicks all right i'm here for uh the city council pending request for information um just as a reminder staff will introduce each request tonight we have one request and the elected official that made the request will have one minute to describe and justify their request the remaining elected officials will then have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support staff will respond to all requests where a consensus of council has been established tonight's request comes from council member briggs it's a request for the pedestrian and bike accident data over the past two years in your backup we just provide a little bit of information about what it would take for staff to collect that data and we anticipate that it would take approximately four hours of staff time and so uh this would be a staff report that requires over two hours of staff time okay whenever you're ready council member breaks i'll start your time okay thank you yeah this is would be great info and base data to have as we make policy decisions on bike lanes road infrastructure vision zero and speed limits we just had a healthy discussion on i think this data should be kept up and given to us as an annual report but right now this request is for an informal staff report on bike and pedestrian incidents and fatalities um data the last two years there was a resident who has done the pedestrian data but i still would like for it to be uh presented to city council or as an informal staff report so that we have that um accessible okay all right anyone council member armater i support this okay anybody else council member melzer i think it sounds like it would fit in very well with what we just heard about you know would be useful to integrate with that so i support it okay and who else council member davis same sentiment you know what we just talked about isn't the only uh initiative we have going on right now that would involve this data and i think it's a good use of staff time okay fantastic we have four on that so and the request was for it to be in a in the uh informal staff report is that correct okay all right we will provide that fantastic all right thank you all all right we're going to move right through the consent agenda we're going to fire through here on these um all right we're now moving into our special called council meeting at 651 on october the 27th uh 2020 we did not have any closed session items so we're moving into our special called city council meeting our first item on that agenda is the consent agenda the chair would entertain action on the consent agenda council member ryan i'm approval of the consent agenda except for items c g and f to be taken up individually afterwards okay council member first i want to express appreciation for john always keeping track of what the consent agenda excludes and i second all right so we have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda except for agenda items c f and g uh council member ryan house au all right council member melzer aye mayor protem all right council member briggs yes council member arter yes council member davis aye mayor was an i motion carries seven zero we are pulling now agenda item 1c i believe that's the one uh is that the one for recusal which which one was your recusal uh council member davis uh mine was g g okay the last one all right so i don't believe anybody asked for a presentation on any of these all right so we'll move through then and we'll consider yes uh mayor protem no i thought we were the motions okay yeah i'll call agenda item c for individual consideration 1c id 20-21 24 council mayor protem move approval do we have a second council member ryan a second all right we've got a second so uh yes council member briggs yeah i'm just not discussion but a question about the question that was raised earlier on the the credit based um is that is that still part of this ordinance and are we still doing it the exact same way i thought that we had done a work session and and kind of changed changed those items i believe christ is on the line oh hi this is krista foster customer service manager um we still utilize that in part of the decision making for uh new accounts and deposits but the primary purpose of this service is so we can validate customer identity by telephone to enable customers to be able to conduct setting up of services by telephone okay thank you all right anybody else okay so we had a motion by mayor protem and a second by council member ryan so mayor protem has say you on this all right council member ryan aye council member davis aye council member melzer aye council member briggs no council member armature i vote no to this because i believe you should abolish credit based deposits okay okay all right thank you uh motion carries five to two agenda item one f is id 20-2128 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas home-ruled municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with cbs mechanical mayor protem move approval council member ryan i'll second we have a motion and a second council member melzer do you have a question all right council member breaks yeah i i had a question because it was the first time i had seen um somebody doing business as somebody else um on a on a contract i'm just wondering if somebody can speak to that sure okay uh erin uh who's who's gonna take that uh christine taylor director procurement can you okay yeah go ahead oh rick could you repeat the question council member briggs uh yeah it says um there's a main company and then it says doing business as another company and so i'm just wondering um i hadn't seen that before on the on any of the contracts that we have approved so i just wanted to somebody to speak to it sure so when they submitted their vendor information under their tax id number with their w9 they did have more than one entity listed with that tax id so we use that in our financial system to track who we're paying so that is more so uh for the city to track when there are multiple names under one tax identification number okay thank you and city mr city manager this isn't who did the city hall roof is it or is it a different i don't believe it is um i will ask scott gray though if he knows scott are you on the phone scott yes i am can you hear me yes okay um i don't believe it is the same company okay yeah good thank you thank you yeah yeah yes council member melzer yeah since since we're you know taking the time to look at them more closely um i note that that was the middle bid and that would put them over the top was the scoring on probable performance uh so uh i wonder if we could just hear a comment on what gives us confidence that they would more likely perform well um christine or scott do you want to answer that one um sir one second let the evaluation um i'm not sure scott would like to answer on that but probable performance does take into consideration a number of factors from the evaluator so if cbs mechanical has had contracts in the past we based it off their performance and how our contract management went how their performance was and the vendor relations okay thank you any other questions mayor pro tem has say you on this all right council member ryan aye council member davis hi council member melzer aye council member briggs yes council member armator yes uh mayor watts is a yes motion carries seven zero uh then the last one we have on pull the consent agenda items is item 1g and that's where council member davis will recuse himself id 20-21 29 uh chair would entertain a motion on this item mayor pro tem move approval council member melzer second we have any questions have a motion and a second for agenda item id 20-21 29 uh mayor pro tem how say you all right council member melzer aye council member ryan all right council member briggs yes council member armator yes uh mayor watts is a yes motion carries six zero and we'll move on now to items for individual consideration agenda item 2a id 20-2098 consider adoption of an ordinance considering all matters incident related to the issuance sale and delivery of up to 16 million 540 thousand dollars in principal amount of city of dentin general obligation refunding bonds series 20-20a i really like to see these when they come up i think it's what if it's what i'm thinking it is good evening again cassi augen director of finance let me pull up the presentation just a brief presentation on the refunding so you may remember on august 6th we came to you with um our bond sale and we we saved a significant amount of money due to the favorable market conditions and so we um we went back and evaluated any other refunding options and we did find the 2011 series um became recallable so they're eligible for refunding um on the screen you'll see kind of the total refunding amount the average current interest rate that we're paying as well as the refunded our estimate for the refunded interest rate and then at the very bottom you'll see the projected savings by the different um debt type so significant savings for the electric fund but still savings for general general government and solid waste okay so next steps um this is for the parameters ordinance similar to what you've done in the past with the um the bond sale the preliminary date of sale is november 17th it'll depend on the market and then we're we're estimating our close date of december 17th okay and we do have um our financial advisors and bond council on the um on the line if you have any additional questions let me see if i can pull this down all right how did i get it back i can't council member melzer uh good job i move approval second anybody have a second council member riggs i'll second real quick question i don't know if i missed it what's the expected rate on this um it was 1.43 percent and what is it right now 4.59 folks do you hear that that's just unbelievable so again i reiterate thank you so much and continue looking for opportunities like this i think what would be interesting if staff could even find a way to over what the last year or two we've done several of these to see what the accumulated savings is or has been it's i think it's we will all be very shocked uh at this but okay we have a motion in a second council uh council member melzer i believe you made the motion council member briggs you seconded council member melzer how say you all right council member briggs yes council member armature yes council member ryan all right i don't know why i just was fixing to say council member leal but i'll go with council member davis aye mayor protem all right mayor wass's an eye that passes seven zero it's just very interesting because sometimes when i'm calling for the vote the cameras will switch somebody will move or the camera uh frame just like it just did all right uh we will move on to agenda item 2b consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton at texas home rural municipal corporation authorizing the approval of a second extension an amendment to a contract for the management of the city stoke denton entrepreneur center we have a we have a brief presentation on this i believe yes okay good evening mayor and council members i have a very brief presentation just to remind everyone of our previous conversations one second okay right so the purpose of this item is to consider um the amendment to the management agreement in sublease if you'll remember on october 13th we discussed the following that the original lease term with and the railyard partners uh was set to terminate on march or excuse me on february 28th 2021 but due to ongoing construction the city could not move into the space a commencement letter was executed that shifted the termination date to june 30th 2021 and this was not reflected in the future management agreements and subleases that were executed between the city and hickory and rail ventures so just as a visual reminder the city has the lease agreement with railyard partners that terminates on june 30th 2021 in the existing management agreement and sublease with hickory and rail ventures to operate stoke ends on february 28th 2021 so as we presented on october 13th it was the intent of council to align those agreements and so the item before you tonight simply makes the changes to the management agreement and sublease to bring that termination date to june 30th 2021 and staff recommends approval as presented okay questions action council member briggs i was going to move approval council member who's going to second it council member ryan i'll second all right we have a motion to second for agenda item 2b id 20-2154 council member briggs i'll say yes council member ryan aye council member melzer aye council member davis aye council member armeter yes mayor protem all right mayor watz's and i motion carries seven zero moving on to agenda item 2c which is id 20-2189 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of dentin approving a third amendment to the employment agreement for city attorney aaron leal and providing an effective date and i believe city attorney is recusing himself is that correct from the that's correct okay thank you all right is there presentation on this or is this i mean this was decided and um you know it was deliberated in closed session is this do let me just say this are there any questions are there any questions for staff yes council member briggs um can you go over the uh the the highlight the the changes yes i believe tiffany thompson is on the line good evening mayor city council tiffany thompson director of human resources can you hear me okay we can thank you okay excellent good to see all of you uh just to haul out the changes for city attorney aaron leal we are increasing the vacation accrual from three weeks to four weeks we're adding an additional year extension to october of 2022 and then the severance pay is increasing from six months to 12 months and those are the three items for council's consideration this evening okay any questions all right uh yes mayor pro tem uh just ready to make a motion if that's it okay you're ready yes so uh move approval all right uh council member davis i'll second all right we have a motion and a second any further discussion on agenda item 2c mayor pro tem hasayu all right council member briggs did you have a question no no question i was just going to explain that i was going to be voting no only because of the the severance increase portion of the contract okay we'll go ahead and take your your vote then go ahead if you'll it was that was that it so it's a no based upon what you just stated yes sir okay uh council member davis hasayu aye council member ryan aye council member melzer nay council member armature no mayor watts is an aye motion carries four to three agenda item 2d consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton authorizing a lump sum uh merit well did we i don't i don't think that's uh okay yes all right we'll read the caption consider approval of resolution of the city of denton authorizing a lump sum merit performance payment for the city manager taut heilman equal to three percent of his annual salary uh chair would council member davis i'll move approval council member ryan i'll second any other questions any questions council member breaks uh what is the lump sum uh i believe the resolution show you talking about the actual dollar amount or the percentage amount of the dollar amount uh do we tiffany do you have that yes mayor and council it would be three percent which would equal eight thousand three hundred fifty five dollars and 36 cents and then all applicable taxes and tmrs would go against it as well okay so go ahead i'm sorry that's so it's just a one-time payment not just an increase every year over year which is different than normal correct yes and that that's correct it's a one-time lump sum it does not change anything on the base rate so that means it doesn't change anything on the contract as well thank you for clarifying yes okay council member davis said who made the motion i forgot and then uh customer ryan did you second or is the mayor pro tem okay okay uh council member davis has say you aye council member ryan aye uh council member melzer just want to comment that uh city manager's done an outstanding job posturing the ship through some very difficult times and really producing a lot of wins including everything i'm most proud of us accomplishing aye council member armature um i want to say i'll be voting no um i made it clear and have been consistent that i will continue to vote no uh on raises for uh council appointees making six figures until we can lift up our contracted workers and seasonal employees at the bottom okay all right thank you so your vote is council member okay uh mayor pro tem all right council member briggs yeah i just want to say this isn't necessarily a raise because it's not going to happen every single time um so i'm yeah i'm a yes all right yes and uh mayor watch says yes motion carries six one moving on to concluding items any concluding items all right then we will call adjourn this meeting at 7 10 on 10 27 2020 thank you all