Nov 10, 2020 City Council on 2020-11-10 3:00 PM

Okay. Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on November 10, 2020. It is 3.02 p.m. We are starting our work session report. Our first item on the agenda for work sessions is citizen comment on agenda items, and I see that we have no callers in for consent agenda items, and we also had no online comments for consent agenda items. So we'll move on to our next item, which is request for clarifications on the agenda from my colleagues. So, yes, Councilmember Briggs. I would just like to request that we pull item C for a brief, just a brief presentation. Okay. All right. Anybody else? Okay. Fantastic. All right. So then we'll start with that. So item C is the only one that's pulled off consent, and that is for a brief presentation on, is that the rapid rehousing initiative? Yes, sir. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. So we'll go to work session item, agenda three, which is 3A, ID 20-1977. Oh, before I say that, I want to congratulate Councilmember Armitter on your re-election. So I congratulate you on that and look forward to everything else on the eighth. Agenda item 3A, receive report, hold a discussion, give staff direction regarding internal audit of health insurance options. Hello, Mayor and City Council members. I'm going to pull up the presentation. Glad you can hear me. Start from the beginning. All right. So, hello, I'm Madison Rorschach, Denton City Auditor, and I'm here to present our audit of the city's health insurance operations. This audit evaluated the health insurance operations of the city to ensure that health insurance services are provided effectively, efficiently, and economically. As a self-funded health insurance provider, the city, and more specifically, the city's risk management division is responsible for directing all aspects of the city's health insurance plans. In addition to the risk management division, the city has hired an employee benefits consultant to assist in developing and monitoring its benefits plan and a third party administrator to process health insurance claims. And I just want to clarify that the third party administrator or the TPA involved in this audit is not responsible for administering workers' compensation claims. So those are two separate entities. So as part of this audit, we evaluated the following health insurance operations processes. First, benefits plan management. Second, participant enrollment. Next, claim funding. And finally, claims administration. So I'll begin by discussing benefits plan management. So similarly to other employers, the city offers its employees and their dependents the opportunity to enroll in either its gold or silver health insurance plan. Employees can then choose to elect either plan or may not enroll in the city's health insurance at all. These two plans and their network of healthcare providers are curated by city staff with the assistance of its employee benefits consultant, which helps negotiate contracts with the healthcare providers and with the city's third party administrator as well. So each month, the city's employee insurance committee meets to review claim payments and plan and network utilization. The employee benefits consultant also provides claim analyses periodically on the plan and network utilization, claim trends and benefits plan expenses. And this helps the city to monitor its health insurance plan for effectiveness and economy. Lastly, the employee benefits consultant also tracks the city's compliance with medical information security regulations like HIPAA, COBRA, and the Affordable Care Act. And it provides updates on compliance deadlines, legal disclosures, and the city specific compliance checklist. So based on this information, we found that the city appears to have adequately established procedures to ensure its benefits plans are adequately utilized and in compliance with applicable regulations, including its fiduciary duty. These processes help the city lower costs and avoid potential non-compliance penalties. So next, we found that risk management has developed an adequate process to manage enrollment changes and verify dependent eligibility before they're enrolled in coverage. Specifically, the city's benefit system automatically sends the third party administrator enrollment updates each week. In addition, risk management staff verify that enrollment is accurate monthly as part of the administration fee invoicing process, which is a fee that we pay to the third party administrator just to have their services basically. And we verified that this fee was built accurately based on enrollment and contract price for one sample invoice from each of the past three fiscal years. In addition, risk management began requiring employees to submit documentation supporting the relationship between the employee and their dependents in October of 2019. Prior to that, the city did not verify eligibility before they were enrolled, before dependents were enrolled. However, a full dependent eligibility audit was conducted during 2019 to verify existing dependent eligibility. Between this audit and the new verification process, we found that about 96% of dependents eligibility had been verified per the city's requirement recently, like in the past year and a half or so. So that being said, the city does not have a process to continue periodically verifying that existing dependents remain eligible. So as a self-funded health insurance provider, the city has a fiduciary duty to its residents and employees to ensure health insurance coverage is provided economically. It's particularly important to ensure enrollment is accurate as it's the most critical cost driver of a health insurance plan. And while the city has generally implemented processes to ensure enrollment changes are communicated promptly and accurately, periodically verifying that dependents remain eligible would provide further assurance that the city is not inappropriately spending money. So moving to claims, on average, we found that the city pays out about $85,000 a day in health insurance claims, which is about $25 million a year. In order to pay these claims, the city's third party administrator, they pay the health insurance provider directly, and then they reimburse themselves from a city escrow account each day, each business day. Weekly risk management staff then retroactively authorize these funding transfers and finance staff record the payments manually in the city's health insurance fund. This process ensures there's adequate funding available for claims and that claim payments are promptly recorded. However, the documentation of the process should be updated to include the full process to ensure consistency and help navigate emergency circumstances. In addition, we found that funding transfers have been authorized inconsistently over the past 12 months and as part of the documentation update process, we risk management, we recommend that risk management clarify who has the responsibility and authority to authorize these health insurance claim fund funding transfers. So finally, the city's hired a third party administrator to receive adjudicate an issue payment for the city's health insurance claims, as shown in the slide. City staff does not review any specific claims due to concerns about violating patient medical information security regulations like HIPAA. That being said, the city's contract with the TPA allows the city to have an audit of adjudicated claims conducted. So hiring an external auditor to review the city's claims would help identify any health insurance plan implementation errors, could provide further assurance that the TPA's administrative controls are effective, and could potentially validate the accuracy of their performance guarantees. Likewise, the contract requires the TPA to provide its annual service organization control report. And this annual control report is performed by an independent auditor hired by the TPA. And it includes a description of their claims administration process and an opinion on the adequacy of this process and recommendations about what controls user entities like the city should employ in their own organizations. So based on our review, the city has not been regularly reviewing or receiving this report. That being said, we reviewed the report and we didn't find any control weaknesses that in the claims administration process that should concern the city in the most recent report. And we also compared the city's health insurance operations processes to the recommended user entity controls and found that the city generally had adequate corresponding processes in place. The only exception being that the city did not regularly review who had user access to the TPA's online services portal, which is how the city pulls some information about claims, claims information, sensitive health information like that. And then last, we found that the TPA also produces a performance report each year. When we reviewed this report, we found that they appear to be meeting all of their contracted performance goals. However, the city did not appear to be reviewing or receiving this report. Regular review would provide further assurance that the TPA is meeting its contractual obligations, including duly crediting the city for any non-performance penalties. So in summary, we issued a total of seven recommendations, all of which the division concurred with. And as with all of our audits, we'll perform a follow-up review in about a year to check on the status of the recommendations. And before we move on to questions, I just want to take a moment to thank risk management. They were particularly responsive and proactive during the audit. So now I'll take the slide down. There we go. Okay, any questions? Just got a couple if somebody didn't have any. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you Councilmember Barmter. Go ahead. Yeah, thank you for this for this audit. I just had a couple questions about the third party administrator. Can you speak to what is the the cost of hiring the third party administrator versus doing these doing this in house? I would have to check on exactly how much it costs for us to hire the TPA. It's it's based mostly on how many people we have enrolled. I think if we tried to do it in house, that would be fairly expensive because of concerns about HIPAA regulations and things like that. So they would some they would have to be very, very separate. I don't even know I would have to talk to legal about even if that was possible, really. And thank you. I was just wondering, because I know that doing it through a third party is pretty standard. I was just wondering what the cost of this this one is versus other third parties or not having one at all if possible. And my second question just had to do, you know, with whether or not staff satisfaction with the health care administration with the administration of health care under this system plus staff satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the third party administrator that was, you know, taken into account in this in this audit, or if not, it seems like that's a that's a separate issue. For me, that's the biggest issue of all is, you know, how satisfied or unsatisfied our staff with the level of care. I was just wondering if you could just speak to that. The TPA as part of their their performance report provides some information that they have curated on, I think, you know, customer satisfaction, right, I think they do some sort of phone call. And they talk to people and ask them how satisfied they are with their services basically, and then they report that back to the city. And it's just specifically for our employees. We looked at that and they're meeting their goals that are contractually obligated. I think it was like 98% of people I'd have to I'd have to give you that information on what exactly the goals were separately, but it's a high percentage and they're meeting them. Thank you. I would love to go ahead. Sorry. No, I just saying I would love love to see that data. I don't know if there were comments or if it was just, you know, rating people were asked to rate on a scale of one to 10 or whatever. But I would love love to see that data. I assume it's anonymous. Yeah, I I don't know that I have like the backup data but I have the the report like the customer, I guess their report on their services that I think we could send we could send to the full council. That would be great. I'd love to see the report and if they if we can get that that raw data, I would love to see it too as long as it's anonymous. Thank you. Yeah, anybody else? I've just got a couple questions and want to make a clarification that what you said medicine in the beginning of the meeting was this TPA, I believe third party administrator is not the one where we've had some concerns with or some activities with on workman comp claims. Is that correct? That's correct. All right. So this workman comp claim and the third party administrator for that is very different than what you're describing right now. And that was not part of the audit. Correct. Okay. How does the Hold on. How does the funding or the expenses medical expenses that you said we're spending $85,000 a day? Was there any? Do we have any information and as part of the audit that where that lines up with other self insured municipalities are similar to our size and sort of our scope? Or was that part of that? We did not do any benchmarking to kind of see that I think our benefits employee consultant might have some information on that. I think you'd have to ask Richmond risk management if they they had any information on that. Okay. And then on the reports that you said the city was not getting and therefore was not able to review and the recommendation is to get those into review them. Refresh my memory on the recommendation. Is that those are those reports to come to you to your office or just goes to risk management and they review them and then if there's any questions, they could consult consult the internal order. We we recommend that they go to risk management and they review and then we did offer to risk management that you know specifically specifically with the like audit report that we are asking to review if they wanted to talk to us about what does this mean? Or you know, do you see any concerns in this report? They were happy we're we welcome them to do that if they want would like to. Okay. All right. Thank you. Those those are I think those are all that I that I have. Anybody else? Oh, Councilmember Briggs. Just a clarification question on and this is the line item budget. Is it 20 million that we do annually? Is that where this is connected in our budget or is that something different? This may be a city manager question. Yeah, I believe that we're roughly in the $25 million a year range. Right, David? Offset by a few million dollars with employee contributions. Okay. Thank you. And thank you, Madison. Knowing that and how much it is in our budget annually. It's really important and critical that we do audits like this. Thank you. Okay. All right. Seeing seeing no more questions. Thank you, Madison. Appreciate that. Thank you. And we'll now go to agenda item three B, which is receive a report, hold the discussion and give staff direction regarding the funding priorities, annual grant process, processes carried out by the Community Development Advisory Committee and the Human Services Advisory Committee. Afternoon, Mayor and Council. Annie Shaw, Community Services. Are you able to see my screen? The presentation? Yes, I can see it. Thank you. Today's presentation, we're going to go through the funding priorities for the upcoming grant year for Community Development Grant in our Human Services Grant. We're going to go through the just to remind folks on the what our committee processes and the funding processes for these funds. And then also, this is an opportunity to provide the community with information about this upcoming grant opportunity. As you know, community development and works hard on getting public input to make sure we understand what community priorities are. We do public hearings with our neighborhood associations and during city council meetings, we issue an annual online survey to make sure we're collecting information from the public who are unable to attend our virtual meetings and a few other strategies in person with focus groups and email and phone where we can get feedback as well. We also benefit in our community from needs assessments that are conducted by our partners and collaborators like the United Way and Denton County, who do community needs assessments that help us inform our priorities. Staff participates in community coalitions and advocacy groups so that we understand what's happening in real time with the agencies and organizations that are serving needs. And then we have the city council appointed committees who bring their own perspective and expertise to these priorities. Our overall funding priorities from that process come from these areas. Of course, city council has its initiatives around homelessness and at risk. City council has also funded a development fee grant to help nonprofits and help increase our affordable housing supply by creating a grant that will help offset those costs of development fees for construction and development projects. We also are guided by our three-year consolidated plan in our annual action plans. Our goals in that plan include the four that are listed here, affordable housing, making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring, to fund public services in our community and to fund public facility improvements and infrastructure projects. I also did want to note that there are other human services activities that are prioritized by other departments in the city, including our police, who fund the fair share program for Children's Advocacy Center, their new funding for the mental health unit and homeless outreach team. And then DME has the plus one utility assistance program. All of these are the priorities that inform the next grant process that we're going through. Just a quick overview. In our consolidated plan, we do have some overall goals that we're trying to meet over the next three years, including this year. With affordable housing, it is our goal to preserve or create 123 new units of affordable housing. Most of that happens through repair and the preservation, so our home repair programs. We also assist our CHOTA with the rental rehabilitation program so that those units stay safe and stable for the clients that they're serving. And then we also help first-time home buyers buy a home, so they become homeowners in our community and increase the affordable housing supply there. We do have an overall goal to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring, and it would expect to serve 7,500 individuals with funding for those projects. And then public services, another 4,500 individuals outside of those that are not homelessness related. And we define that right now as in three or eight different categories of housing, food security, health, mental health, and behavioral healthcare, family stability, services for special populations like seniors, disabled, and victims of domestic violence. Again, making homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring, increasing transportation access, and economic security. So these all also inform the priorities. Our other projects with public facilities and public improvements or infrastructure projects actually benefit the entire neighborhood where those happen. So those numbers are higher here, but that represents about 24,000 households that would benefit from any projects that we do across the community in the next three years. For these two grant programs, we have two committees that are city council appointed. We have the Community Development Advisory Committee. They oversee the recommendations to council for the Community Development Block Grant. And then we have the Human Services Advisory Committee. And they oversee the recommendations for council for all the human services funding through the Human Services Grant. Each committee has a different number of members. So the Community Development Advisory Committee has nine members and the Human Services Advisory Committee has 11. This is an overview, and this is pretty standard for our process for the allocation of these funds every year. We did have a little bit of a change this last year just because of COVID and our COVID response. But generally, this is how the process works for our committees and their consideration of these funding. In October, both of the committees did approve the application and we do a collaborative joint application. In November, December and January, that's when we do attempt to hold additional virtual public hearings this year, where we'll get additional feedback on funding priorities for this coming year. In December, we will bring all of the interested applicants together and do a training on the application to make sure they understand how to apply and any other information about the priorities for what projects may be looked at for funding. In January and March, both committees receive funding presentations from the applicants. And then in March, both committees finalize their recommendations that we then bring in a presentation to council in April or May to overview the different funding recommendations that the committees have made. We do this on this schedule because our action plan is due to HUD by June. But we do look at both the federal funds that are covered under the consolidated plan as well as general funds. So in May, we also do a public hearing so the public has an opportunity to give input on our draft action plan for how we will use the funds in the coming year. And then in June, city council reviews and considers approval of the action plan so that we can submit it to HUD annually. If all goes well, HUD releases those funds to us in August once they approve our action plan. And then so the CDBG and home funds are approved at that time, and we would be able to begin contracting for the projects. The general fund amounts, however, don't get approved until city council approves its annual program services budget. This is just a key dates for anyone who might be interested in applying for the members of the public who are seeing the presentation today. We will release the application around November 15th. It will be due to community services on January 21st. At that point, we will schedule the funding hearings for the committees to hear presentations from the applicants. And then again, as I mentioned, the committees will make those recommendations by March and anyone who was an applicant will be notified that those recommendations were made but are conditional on approval from council. And then staff has already begun and will finish finalize the development of the action plan, which goes to HUD. We do have a 30-day comment period. We have the opportunity to waive that right now, but we will continue to follow through with our 30-day comment period to give folks plenty of time to review the action plan and make comment. And then we'll plan to do the presentation and public hearing in May still. And then again, you all will consider that for submission in June. And then we will begin contracting with those projects around October of 2021. As a reminder, for those who are interested, the eligible activities are these for each of the different funding sources. The ones that are in italics are those that we actually have projects either funded or for or have done in the past. So with CDBG funds, we can acquire land or facilities for either public facilities or affordable housing. We can do public facility improvements as well as public infrastructure projects. We can fund our human services activities up to 15 percent of our total allocation. That's a federal guideline. And then we can do housing assistance programs. Generally that's repair, but it can also be other projects. Also eligible under CDBG or demolition and clearance of slum and blighted areas, economic development for the purpose of creating jobs for people who are low and moderate income, historic preservation, code enforcement activities also for the same purpose of eliminating slum or blight. And then the removal of architecture or barrows that makes a facility accessible. With the home funds, the projects that are eligible are around affordable housing, including rental housing, whether it's the creation of a preservation of those, home ownership assistance. Additionally, we would eligible under this grant program would be tenant-based rental assistance, land acquisition and new housing construction. Added a note just to remind anyone who's interested, we do have to commit at least 15 percent of those funds to a community housing development organization, what we call a Chodo. That we do have a Chodo in the city of Denton. That's Denton Affordable Housing Corp. So we do allocate 15 percent of our allocation every year to projects that they have. If we didn't have those, a Chodo in our community, we just wouldn't be able to draw down that 15 percent of the funds. So we do have some estimates that we utilize. Generally, we base it on level funding for the next year. We use this to give the committee members information about what might be available to fund projects in and around the community for the following year. It's a guide for them to make sure they understand what's available for funding. So included in these numbers are not just the entitlement allocation that we receive from HUD, but we also have what we call program income that's received in previous projects where if the project doesn't stay affordable and it's sold or given back, we recoup funds on that or we have loans on homes that are partially repayable and so those modest interest rates come back. But all of those funds get reinvested in the program, so that's what you're seeing included in these amounts, as well as some unprogrammed funds from the previous year. So we expect to have about 1,600,000, almost 1.7 in funding for the Community Development Advisory Committee. Included in that figure above is 157,000 of the 15 percent of the CDBG funds that get allocated for public services. So in the box below, the Human Services Advisory Committee, 157,000 of that amount above is included and then council does allocate additional general funds for human services activities. We do that based on a population estimate and a per capita each year and so we're looking at an increase of about $10,000 over last year for a total potential allocation of 510,000 for human services activities in 2021-2022. We did want to highlight just a couple of other funding items that are out there. Again, this is information we provided the committee so that they have an understanding of all the different funding that may be being applied to other projects. So this is just a quick overview of what were supplemental funding packages a couple of years ago and are now annually funded, with the exception of a one-time that's in here. So we have the $40,000 that council has allocated for the Barriers Fund. We have the $100,000 grant for rapid rehousing, which you will consider today for approving that service agreement. The additional grant for street outreach for $64,600. We've reissued that grant application and we'll be bringing a contract back to council for consideration at a later date. We also allocate $80,000 for our public-private partnership with the United Way to oversee and work with our collective impact project around our homelessness initiatives. We have the annual allocation currently for the enhanced shelter operations of $400,000. And then this year, with the purchase of the Loop 288 building, we do have $2 million set aside for the renovation and maintenance of this one-time funding for that project. And then the development fee grant is also an annual allocation of $225,000, again, to support affordable housing and nonprofit facility development. I just wanted to show this slide. This is a unique year for our division in the amount of funding that's available. This is not typical, but wanted to give an overview of the funding that we are working with this year. You'll see we have about $500,000 for the human services grant that's leveraged with our CDBG and general funds. The police allocation for the Children's Advocacy Center is $180,000. We have our annual allocation on utility assistance is $133,000. The previous slide showed you our allocations for homelessness initiatives. That total is $703,000. And again, we have the one-time allocation of $2 million to help assist with the Loop 288 project. Now the next four items are our CDBG and home-funded projects. These are multi-year. So what you're looking at here are the balances of funds that are encumbered to projects either from previous years that are working on completion or are encumbered for this year for projects. So our city housing assistance programs, that's our homebuyers assistance, our home improvement program and our minor repair program. We have just under $2 million there being expended for those projects to assist families to stay in safe, stable homes or to buy homes. For our non-profit housing projects, like our Denton Affordable that I talked about, our Fair Oaks projects, we have about $300,000 there. We have a few city infrastructure projects still to complete and a couple of new ones for this year. So that total is around $638,000. Our public facility improvements, we have a couple of projects finishing up with our nonprofits and a couple more starting this year. We do allocate some portion of those funds that are allowable under the guidelines from the federal grants to support our administrative and operations for the division and then there's some general fund allocation as well. What's new and also increasing this year is we do have the CARES Act funding that we are looking at allocating. We'll go through a little bit of that today just to give you information on where we are with that but that's another almost $3 million that we're allocating this year. Again, a unique year for us and the amount of funding that's available. So again, just a quick overview of what we do have in the CARES Act. In April, we received an allocation. This was an entitlement allocation just based on the same formula that HUD uses to allocate our annual entitlement. In April, we received $618,000. And then in September, we were notified in the third that we received third round funding of $866,000. Just in case it's in question, the second round funding went to states and so the states are using that funding for a project as well. In addition, in the CARES Act also included the emergency solutions grants and some allocations for that. This was handled a little bit differently. The city of Denton doesn't have a large enough population to receive an entitlement allocation of ESG so the balance of any allocations for these funds goes to the state and so TDHCA did receive funds from the state in different rounds of the ESG funding as well. They decided to manage it through a competitive process. So they made the funding allocations available to our local COC who ran a competitive competition for the funds. The city applied and did receive $1.4 million in the first round. You'll also have a conversation today about funding in the third round. I'm sorry, the second round of ESG that was awarded where United Way is looking at applying for those funds in a competitive application process as well. This is just a chart we wanted to kind of give you an overview of the CARES Act funding that we're working with around human services and public services only. So as you know, the county did allocate a significant portion of their CARES Act dollars through the CRF fund and those allocations went to the United Way or a portion of those went to the United Way. To date, the United Way spent almost $5 million in assisting families with emergency financial assistance, rent and mortgage and utilities. Those funds, however, do expire and so that's in this chart you'll see in each column how the funds expire and when they will no longer be available. And the limitations are also listed here. We just highlighted some of the major limitations just to kind of show what that looks like. So for the CRF funds, the limitation is that it does have to be a loss of income related to COVID in order to be eligible for that one. The second line is around the nonprofit grants. So nonprofits were also responding to this emergency and had capacity and other facility needs in order to respond to this, the coronavirus pandemic. And so they've allocated through that fund also, Denton County funding to the United Way, just over $3 million to assist nonprofits expand their capacity in order to respond to COVID. And then of course, the city received an allocation of those CRF funds. We've used a portion of those to help offset our cost for the hotels and security where we provided assistance through our nonprofit to make sure folks had a place to go in a non-congregate setting to have a safe place to stay during the COVID crisis. We're now looking at our CDBG CV funds and our ESG round one funds that I referred to earlier. A couple of things here that we want to highlight. With the CDBG CV funds, we do have to allocate those funds by August of this year, meaning we have to decide how we're going to use them, but we'll have six years to spend those. The majority of it has to be spent in the first three years, but we have six years total to spend it. A couple of nuances in this one, unlike the CRF funds in order to be eligible for these, it has to be COVID related and anyone who is eligible has to be at 51 or 80% or below AMI. And we have to serve 51% or more of folks who meet that criteria. With ESG, similar, these funds expire fairly quickly. The agencies will have seven months to spend those once we finally get the contracts in their hands. We're in the process of going through the RFQ for that and council will probably see those service agreements coming in December. And again, those expire in July, but the stipulation here on the limitation is with homeless prevention funds, which was what you would see familiar in the CRF funds to prevent homelessness in the program for ESG, generally people have to qualify at 30% of AMI. However, with the CARES Act, there was a waiver initiated that raised that to 50% of AMI, but anyone over 50% of AMI would not be eligible for ESG assistance. That will be the same for the ESG round two funding with a further limitation that while we'll be able to use those funds for street outreach, shelter, rapid rehousing and homeless prevention in the round two, they've limited that just to rapid rehousing for people experiencing literal homelessness and homeless prevention. So right now, this is how we will be allocating the funds based on our award receipt of the ESG funds. We've allocated $267,850 to emergency or temporary shelter. That could be assisting the shelters with their accommodations and or hotels. We have $311,750 in eviction prevention that's available for the homeless prevention. Another $335,400 that would assist the nonprofits with increasing their capacity to deliver these funds. It is an increase in what they would be doing now. So we would expect that they would need staff to help deliver. And then another $510,000 for rapid rehousing. So getting folks who are literally experiencing homelessness into housing as quickly as possible. As we're looking at how we leverage all the different CARES Act funding that you saw on the previous slide based on when they're expiring and all the different ways in which there are limitations on how they can be used, we are looking at the first option for ESG CV funds to fund emergency and temporary shelter to extend our ability to fund the hotels and security for a longer period of time since we are still dealing with the COVID pandemic. And that hopefully the United Way will be competitive and receive those ESG round two funds so that the eviction prevention would be covered still. And then additional nonprofit grants available for either facility expansions and or capacity through staff or other things that are needed necessary for nonprofits to continue to respond. And that we would again expect that our outreach and rapid rehousing will be covered by the ESG CV round one and round two. Our option two is another view of if we need to look at how to allocate funding differently based on any changes that we may see either from not receiving the second round of funding or some other issue that may come up that are just unknown at this point would be to reduce our hotel assistance and increase our eviction prevention assistance to cover any of that gap that may be there for that period of time. We will be coming back to you with a very quick public hearing and substantial amendment for one of these options very quickly in December. So with that I will end the presentation and take questions. Okay. Questions? Council Member Briggs and then Council Member Armitter and then Council Member Meltzer. Thank you. That was a whole lot of information and really and really good. We saw a lot of numbers. Can you just go over quickly and help explain? So if there's an organization can they accept or can we give them more than one type of funding? So can they qualify for CDBG and homes and home funding and also general fund or? Yeah from the perspective of the organization yes. Now there are some stipulations in the federal funds around duplication of benefits so how we're serving different how we're serving the same family through different funding sources would have to be looked at. Okay yeah because I do know that there's some pretty strict guidelines on the federal funds so okay thank you. Council Member Armitter? Yeah several questions. One so about the ESG funds so United Way just to make sure I understand how this works since it's important. So United Way is applying on behalf of themselves and on behalf of other local nonprofits or can local nonprofits apply for ESG separately? Yeah so the ESG round two is a competitive application process. United Way is applying on behalf of Denton County to in support of multiple nonprofits who might be providing services. It'll look probably very similar to the CRF funds as it manages now just be a different funding source but other nonprofits would be eligible to apply as well if they could be competitive. And could those nonprofits apply separately and also be bundled in with United Way or it would have to be an either or right? Well again it's a competitive grant so each application is scored independently so if if they both scored high enough they potentially both could be funded depending on how they look at this the scoring for that but multiple agencies from Denton County could technically be funded if they're competitive. That's interesting that's good to know. Another question that that came up that I've heard about is that the deadline for I forget it's a is it December but but something that I hear every once in a while is you know why can't the deadline be earlier like early earlier in November? I'm sorry I'm not sure which deadline you're referring. So I believe it's the deadline and the kind of the deadline for to for for local nonprofits to apply for I'm not sure if it's for ESG funding or for city funding. Anyway I will I will look into that that was just one of the comments I got. The deadline has already passed that was that was November 8th there is a city funding through the ESG for our ESG round one we've just issued the RFQ so there is a deadline for them to apply by the 19th for us so that we can be qualified for round one of ESG funding. Okay and it's for the 19th of November this month November so that must be the deadline that must be that deadline okay got it. And then if you could speak to you kind of the role of United and I'll just mention what my other question is my other question is about code enforcement and you know to what extent we're using these funds for code enforcement my sense is not so much which I'm perfectly fine with but I was wondering if you could speak to that and also if you could speak to you know the role of United Way and does United Way have to apply for these these funds that they receive this I think it's 80k. If you could kind of speak to their role how they are different than other local nonprofits and we do not run a competitive process on the 80k it's allocated for that specific purpose of our public private partnership for the homelessness initiatives so at this point it's just funded annually and that's just decided by the city there's no that's what you all decide each each each year yes exactly yeah and we'll be voting on that in December you mentioned you'll vote you will approve your budget in September as you would so it's it's annually in the budget at this point okay so this is what we're okay this is budgetary spending so when you stay for December that's just about the ESG funding correct okay excellent okay and so if you could just speak to just briefly code enforcement how much of this you know federal funding is being spent on code enforcement my sense is not much which I'm okay with but I was just wondering if you could speak to that since that was mentioned in one of the slides yeah I think you asked us previously too it's an eligible expense if it if code enforcement is working on eradicating slum and blight in the community we don't have those issues and so we have not used code enforcement funding for that purpose it is an eligible expenditure we just have never we have not used that okay excellent and I totally approve of that that's good to know and then finally I'll just say you know as far as if you're looking for us for kind of our to weigh in on option one versus option two you know what I would love to see is for us to assess exactly what our needs are for putting homeless people in hotels under COVID to cut down on the spread while keeping people housed and at the same time putting in what we need to for eviction assistance I understand with this limited amount of funding we're looking at you know how to balance these two issues but what I would love to see is balancing those in terms of federal funding and making up for what we lack in federal funding with general fund dollars so that's kind of where I would be for an option three you know use general fund dollars to supplement to meet our needs for both homeless temporary housing and eviction assistance is that is there a question there or just your comment okay nope that was just my my weighing in on the option option one and option two issue thank you councilmember Melcer you're on mute sir oh no oh you're talking about Paul I thought you were talking about me I'm like yeah yeah okay yep okay thank you yeah I'm sorry I didn't think to ask some of this in advance so you may not know off the top of your head that one question is the the funds that we voted a way back for what was then Monsignor King for helping them expand to seven nights and for case managers is that embedded on slide 12 in that fifth line of homelessness initiatives and we're and you know we're how has that money been applied during this time it's just so different than what we were anticipating then so the 400,000 was in your homelessness initiative the slide we showed for what council is investing in homelessness initiatives a part of that 703,000 and those are still being utilized for the shelter however during the last year they did not fully they weren't fully able to implement so they only expended half of those funds so the other half stayed in the general fund did not get um it did not get pulled for the agency and the majority of the funding was also being allocated for the hotel during since March so it just didn't have the same kind of needs for that funding at the time but it is in the budget as well to be allocated the 400,000 yeah and so the expectation is that that that approach would then be applied in the in the new facility yeah I mean technically the grant the grant that we gave Monsignor King was reassigned to the junction that they now are that through the merger and they have access to those funds for the two years and it's renewable every year for three years after that so the those funds are built in for that right now and be included in the 288 funding and just a broad question because I just like getting this question and I suppose I could have done the ad up myself but do you have a sense of of all the things we do under the so-called social services heading about how what percent of it is grant funded versus general fund we actually I do have that calculation I don't know it off the top of my head yeah that's what I should have asked right now you know we keep we keep a chart that shows the percentages of allocation including what the source funding is so it the general fund only makes up the portion of me significantly in homelessness initiatives that's a higher part of our percentage allocation and then the general fund is making up a higher percentage of that overall now so I can get that for you though in a report so it seems that you know great grant funding is a is a huge part of clearly of you know the total effort in the social service area I think it's a little over one million right now in in just the homelessness initiatives so yeah yeah and then last question is that is there a point at which you know we're spending so much because we have to and I agree that we have to on the temporary shelter during this time but is there a point at which we would say the amount that we're spending could somehow be used to create some kind of permanent shelter sure maybe that's a question not to be answered now but of course maybe you know we could think about but you know it's this emergency has been so long the funding has been so great that I you know I just wonder if there's a you know if that that's a question we ought to reflect on yes okay council member Briggs thanks mayor Danny I have a question going back to I think I see page five on the on the goals I'm really glad to see the goals there under affordable housing we have the home repair program and the home buyer assistance programs and it looks like they are increased quite a bit I think but I'm wondering do you have those numbers for this past the past couple of years I mean how they're in our caper that we presented to you so we can we can make sure you have you know you receive information on those again and I don't again maybe not remembering them all in my head right now we did not expend a lot of funding in the home buyers assistance program but we did make a change to that program for this year that you approved in October it's allowing us to do a little bit more of an investment in the principal buy down so it reduces the cost of the home overall so we think we can get based on the housing prices now we think we can get more people into housing and that's why we've increased our home buyer assistance number our goal for that program okay yeah I'm glad to see that I know those are really great programs that we have and we did some we had some conversations on how to make those better so I thought maybe that was why they were increased so much so thank you yeah I just had a couple questions on the similar to councilmember Briggs asked on that slide the goal is 123 and that's over three years what have what have we been doing well when we combine the minor repair program and the home improvement program we're we're at about 50 households a year and so we did estimate a little low in our goals this year to knowing the costs are going up for some of those expenditures but we do we do we did over 50 households just in minor repair and then we averaged between four and five households that we can do the home improvement program again at higher costs but it is you know really renovating or reconstructing a home in its innocent entirety so there's a smaller number there but it it creates a affordable home for a long term okay right and so that's why it's classified under that label is because without it it means what does that mean these people would have to move does I mean yeah just okay without likely that someone who's not in a safe stable home is at risk of homelessness because they won't be able to stay in the home because it's not safe or because they obviously can't afford the repairs and may have other issues okay all right yeah so so that's lumped into our affordable housing as far as maintaining those you know some some level of affordable housing units is not necessarily constructing new ones or things such as that it's preserving also affordable housing units the majority of our work at this point is preserving affordable housing that's correct okay and on um and my question was similar to council member Meltzer's and so if you just wanted to get that out in a just in a memo to council or just an email because when I look at the social services funding for 2021 2020 and 21 on on slide 12 I see that you do identify some of the sources of those funds uh but not necessarily like the homelessness initiative loop 38 I think that's coming from capital improvement funds is that or capital funds I believe is that right mr city manager yeah okay uh yeah so that'd just be good to to know you know where where those are coming from and then on um let me look here uh so oh well let's go back to that slide so on slide 12 then we've got a total of 10 million 347 thousand and you're saying about a million of that comes from the general fund in general a little more than that for the overall funding from the general fund when you when you factor in the children's advocacy funding from police and some other projects uh so for all overall it's about 1.5 1.6 million okay all right fund leveraged okay all right and then on so you said something I want to make sure that I when you said talking about united way and their application for this grant um so they have not received the grant no they've made application the application was due on november 8th and they're the what you'll be looking at today later on is about supporting that should they be awarded those funds okay so then the action that we're taking tonight is only is contingent upon them being awarded those funds that's correct okay I know that'll be a reimbursement mechanism they get the funds we we sort of front load the money so that there's not this time delay in being able to uh get it out into the community distributed in the community and then we will get some reimbursement right for for a nine million dollar grant it would be very difficult for any organization uh to front those funds so it's definitely helpful sure all right and then on the options uh you know I I'm good with this I I wouldn't I'm not going to say that the general fund should make up any deficiencies simply because we don't know what that is and and and we've seen uh how our budget right now we're trying to figure out how we continue to stay in our budget so I think we've got a good plan here on either one of those options and those options just represent some some flexibility correct I mean they do absolutely it's exactly what we're looking for because you know the state is implementing a an eviction prediction uh prevention program that started yesterday so there's just enough unknowns that we want to give ourselves some flexibility but we feel like this is the direction that's most useful for the limited amount of funding that we have available uh if you look at the CRF funding in the Friday report when you get that you'll see that this was the second highest week of allocations for that CRF fund and the money that we have would would barely cover a week and a half of cost of costs in that program sure just making sure we're leveraging it in the right way is important so that's why our options are listed the way they are yep and then uh lastly I think I was looking again for the figure where you said how much has been spent in Denton on the uh eviction assistance or prevention yeah I'm not sure on the dollar amount okay it was Denton County you were quoting yeah it's Denton County is uh just at 4.8 million this week this week total expended for 2,900 households okay 3,000 households now okay all right is there any way do they have that information readily available uh parsed out by municipality you know you and that report when you look at on the Friday report it's broken out by okay that's right okay number of folks are yes we'll have an update this in this Friday report fantastic all right thank you any other questions well first of all I really want to say I thank you so much for any for your work and for your staff and for everyone at the city who works so hard to ensure that these funds go as far as they can to helping those in our city and we've come a long way since six years ago or six and a half years ago when y'all first created that big old chart you know with all the arrows and things but you know what uh what a what a monumental effort and and really I really um just appreciate your work and the the staff that you have and those in the non-profit community who've really made a huge difference uh from where we were to where we are now so thank you for that and this is this this uh report is just an example and a report of that so thank you very much thank you all right agenda item 3b oh that's what we just did 3c uh receive report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the trails concept map for future identification and renovation and expansion of facilities and trails oh i need to i need to comment on something though councilmember briggs is much more technologically savvy than i am because i could never figure out how to get a background in so very very nice very nice i just figured it out fantastic it looks good i like it just don't start knocking your phone over your camera your ipad like councilmember melzer i'm just kidding you didn't fall i'm just i'm kidding you mayor gary packin director parks and recreation are you ready yes go ahead okay uh mayor uh city council gary packin director of parks and recreation today we wanted to share with you a portion of our parks and recreation and trails master plan um we've been working on the master plan for about 18 months uh we had internal staff working on it uh that one staff member left the organization and then uh covid hit so we put a pause on on that process but we have been working diligently on our trails section um so this is a chapter within our trails but it's it's a very critical piece of our planning efforts as we move forward uh for the next 25 40 years within the community uh so this is uh while i say it's a chapter eventually at some point in time we'll need to do a full-blown trails plan in getting into more detail but we've we've come up with quite a bit of detail so far so i'd look forward to sharing this with you this is the opportunity for us to uh think outside the box and and plan and wish some of these things are actually under work uh under under work right now and some things may never happen based off of planning opportunities so uh that's always a challenge but we wanted to get the ideas down on paper so we could share it with uh council in the community so overall the chapter will uh review two different items its existing trails and our proposed future trails and before i get into too much detail uh dr joseph walker uh from unt did a considerable amount of work for us uh over the course of the last year and a half uh and he's he's actually here as well if if there's an opportunity for him to chime in he'll do that as well as uh drew huffman our assistant director is online as well so our current proposed trail system right now we have a little over 21 miles of internal park trails and those are trails that are basically with inside a park uh that are retained within like south lake or north lakes park uh our creek our creek and linear trails we currently have uh 20 a little over 20 miles there uh we're proposing 17 miles and i'll get a little more detail on those and i can share a map later as well our street uh or side paths and a great example of this is the the 10 foot trail along mayhill uh that was installed earlier this year uh we put down zero because when we started this we weren't counting that so that hasn't been added into this yet but mayhill is a perfect example of how we could take an opportunity of a road reconstruction and make the sidewalk a little larger so it's compatible for trail use uh you know maybe two or three people people passing each other uh whether it's on bikes or jogging connectors these are easements or uh areas where we need to connect trails to each other a great example of that is areas that we need to go either under or over our interstates or tekstot roads paddling trails these are all on water these are fairly the easiest ones to plan and we've had some discussions already with tekstot or we have with texas parks and wildlife and i'll share with that in a future slide and equestrian trails and denton has a strong history of horses and ranches and we want to try to preserve that and provide opportunities for people uh to to use horses throughout select areas of the park system obviously very important to our plan is is inclusion and ada accessibility uh whether it's on an existing trail or crossing uh from a park into a neighborhood or these are all areas that we want to be considering we'll be working with our our city committee as well as we move forward with our planning efforts some safety concerns that have come up obviously trail crossings and this is a great example of south lakes park where people want to go from the neighborhood into the park or vice versa uh the road is is fairly busy as you know uh there's a lot of people in and out of south lakes park but this could be a location where we put a hawk signal uh to help improve safety uh for crossing park access pathways again same thing i have a slide on that as well and then call boxes in regards to uh safety if someone's out jogging we may want to look at select places within the trail system to put call boxes where it may be um you know a long path without access to a public road or something of that nature or if it's embedded within a key area like the wildlife uh wildflower trail at north lakes park could be a location so a crossing obviously we have a long linear path with the dcta trail where we have various areas where the trail crosses uh roadways and this is an opportunity for us to look at where we're crossing a dcta has put in some some zigzag um fencing to slow people down we do have stop signs um but if there's a way we can enhance those crossings by warning cars that are that someone's coming down the trail or a car is coming in that direction in any way we can do that we're going to evaluate and look at those opportunities to improve our safety of our our residents i mentioned earlier about the emergency call boxes this is an example of a trail within denton county uh but then also one recommendation that dr walker had made to us and is putting some sort of safety patrol out for the trails and some select parks and these could be volunteer efforts where people are just out providing eyes and ears in the park system uh reaching out to the community kind of that outreach type of of opportunity also reporting any maintenance or litter concerns could also be a factor of that and we have had some discussions preliminary with the police department and seeing if that couldn't be integrated into a future opportunity within the police department itself some trail concerns uh specifically obviously erosion uh one of the trail types that we will have is a natural either a dirt trail or a gravel or a crushed granite trail depending on the topography that can move um so we can have erosion depending on where the water is coming in so those are obviously some challenges uh the new dog park at north lakes we have quite a bit of grade from 77 down to the parking lot and we do have some some movement of that gravel uh trail in itself so we're working to repair that so uh that is a concern that we need to continue monitoring uh flooding obviously some of these trails will be in uh flood plains and that's a good way to actually get trails from one point to another because you can't put houses in that so it's an opportunity that exists that we'll be looking at uh in some areas we may need concrete to protect from erosion but also when flooding does occur we could get a backhoe in there and clear the the sidewalk or the trail quickly and it could be opened pretty quickly from that standpoint and obviously lighting is a concern we've had a lot of people giving us feedback in regards to lighting uh we we've used some solar lights at the north lakes dog park that we were piloting and we're going to be using some of those at quaker town park and carl young park in the near future to help improve some of the dark areas in those two two parks specifically some of the trail tread uh that we've mentioned uh concrete obviously and paved are the most expensive ones they they take a little less maintenance because once you pour them they're they're in pretty good shape for for a number of years unless we have some cracking or just some movement in the soil soft trails you know we have this exact uh set up at north lakes dog park this picture the trail is pretty flat but when you do have some topography you do get washouts there is a sealer that you can put on the crushed granite to try to hold it in place but depending on how quickly that water is moving it can cause some erosion and it's very attractive as well nature trails obviously pretty cheap whether it's dirt trails like we have at clear creek where you just can get in there and clear it with some loppers and a chainsaw or if we're going to backfill it with some gravel those are still pretty affordable options that can be provided and get a quick uh turn around on a trail we're also looking at doing some trails in some existing undeveloped parks where we could go in with a mower and just mow through it and it would just be a grass surface uh obviously depending on how much it's used it could turn into dirt but then eventually we could come in with gravel and then maybe come in a later date even with concrete so there's there could be an evolution to those trails as well to allow us to get the trails open quickly we could you know approach it in that direction and then a boardwalk trail is the most expensive we do have some areas at clear creek that are consistently underwater and enclosed this is an option that we could use to try to get the trail elevated in areas where we're having some some erosion or flooding flooding challenges signage is extremely important whether it's identifying the total map for the trail what's coming up where there's opportunities for rest stops or trail heads even if there's you know downtown's uh two miles ahead where you could stop and and grab lunch those types of things so communicating to the public uh where the all those opportunities are where the dcta is someone wants to jump on a train are all opportunities for us to educate people uh for things that are along the trail that they can enjoy so gary i have a question uh so which park trail does the big foot breeding area sign go on but we we're constantly looking for bigfoot this is just an example of of what was out well we can think of maybe some other thing in the community that that's really encouraged people to stay on the trail okay we're in search of bigfoot and locked nests too okay all right some of the existing trails that we have and i'm sure many of you have been on these um whether they're internal or creeks we have a little over 41 miles of trails within the park system as a whole plus some additional ones that we're we're uh clocking right now to determine the exact length um and we're looking to expand some of these we have some projects that are already in motion obviously we completed the north lakes dog park uh trail system uh last december uh mayhill trail was completed and that's the side path rager ranch property is is pretty much completed by a private developer eventually that'll be coming to you with the development agreement and turned over the city with one-year maintenance uh with with the from the developer as well bonnie bray and hickory creek are all under construction mckenna park is out for bid right now so you'll be seeing a contract for that in their future that'll be an internal park loop and then we have some planning efforts at southwest bowling green and villages of caramel for long-term construction opportunities so overall we have about 215 miles of trails that we're proposing uh 17 along creeks and drainage ways these are basically along greenways uh internal park trails whether it's southwest park or mckenna those would be those types of trails that's an additional 31 trails 31 miles of trails our side paths are along our major roadways um if funding allows you know instead of having a five foot sidewalk if we could have a 10 foot sidewalk to get people from point a to point b when major roads are being redeveloped such as bonnie bray to get people from one side of the community to the other uh there is quite a bit as part of the hunter coal ranch that's in the side paths as well the paddling trails which i mentioned is all on water um and i'll share a slide with that to give you some more detail in our equestrian trails these estimates are a really rough estimate at this point in time based on average cost of construction and then a general average maintenance plan this obviously would be a combination of city funding bonds grants that type of thing some internal proposed trails i mentioned mckenna park connecting denia so it's a continuous loop some connection to joe skiles just kind of finishing that trail so it's a little loop for that neighborhood our examples uh the mills property is something that's undeveloped right now we could go out there and eventually cut in a trail that is just dirt or grass and just maintain it a very primitive level until we completed a master plan um the mountain bike trail which i'll share with you in a slide we've actually started marking that off last week so that's kind of exciting opportunity that we're looking forward to sharing with you our creeks and drainage so we have a number of opportunities pecan creek trail i think it's probably the easiest for one for us to complete where we pretty much could start at fred moore and go all the way to lake louisville uh with almost all government property except for one large development in the middle that we've had some preliminary discussions about trails in that development so that could be completed fairly quickly we we're looking at these in small chunks or small phases that doesn't mean the phases will be done in one two three and four depending on what's going on with road construction funding availability parkland dedication and development opportunities the funding the construction could be sporadic so they won't happen all at one time obviously hunter ranch and coal ranch are good examples that would happen as development occurs and then hickory creek is another opportunity where we could go from kind of the southeast corner of the city to the northwest corner uh along one major creek greenway some proposed side street or side pathways uh vintage is under construction right now along with bonnie bray those will be 10 foot wide as well as hickory creek mingo will be a major opportunity for the city to connect from downtown all the way to clear creek that in essence would connect the katie trail all the way up to to denton and then up to lake uh lake ray roberts uh so that could be a really great connection for the the bike community and then some internal ones downtown sycamore uh carol trail we're looking to put some artwork along carol on some of the existing trail way that's that's there now and then obviously hunter coal ranch the paddling trails um let me jump actually we'll stay here so we could start at lake ray roberts and go all the way down to lake lewisville uh obviously one day there was a dam that was cleared earlier this year um and there's a another dam at the confluence right now that's that's causing some blockage but what we'd look is is work with texas parks and wildlife we had a conference call with them a couple weeks ago and they seem pretty excited about what we're looking to do uh but in essence there would be a launch ramp that already exists up by lake ray roberts go down to 428 with another launch ramp there and another one at 380 uh hopefully when when the water levels subside and then all the way down into lake lake lewisville and then obviously some opportunities to go up hickory creek and up pecan creek uh not the entire ways we need to do some more exploration but there's opportunities for at least to get up a portion of the creek and then a second opportunity is around the perimeter of lake lewisville we've reached out to a couple of the communities so far and planned for a meeting hopefully in december to brainstorm this we we did mention this to texas parks and wildlife as well the trail would would hug the shoreline and work with both public launch ramps and private launch ramps and this is a rough estimate of there's about 30 or so that are on the lake obviously lake levels will will have an impact of what's accessible but it's about a hundred mile uh paddle around the perimeter of the lake and that could be a real fun programming opportunity for for all the communities on on lake lewisville and then equestrian trails whether we identify specific properties that we can put some trails in and dedicate them for horses or multi-use or specific trails that could be built along creek ways that could be used for horses are something that we want to try to integrate within our park system for sure and then trail connectors obviously we have a number of texdot properties and roadways around the perimeter of the city and throughout uh so we put together a plan where there's major pinch points where we need to go over or under a major highway so it's it's on tex dot's radar for when they start doing some roadway improvements that we can kind of you know raise our hand and have that already in the queue where we'd like to put a pathway through here so uh we've tried to identify as many of those as we can and we'll constantly try to monitor as development occurs with our roadways in cooperation with our engineering group some specific ideas uh the mountain bike trail this this is just a draft kind of design concept we went out last tuesday and marked about two to three miles of trails and gps that we think we can get roughly five to seven miles in that property uh there is needs to be space preserved for a future pump station we put together a uh mou memorandum of understanding with utilities for us to be able to use this property so we're excited about the opportunity we've had a number of volunteers that have come out and helped us start marking it and we have people that are willing to come out and start construction whenever we get to that point but this will be a crowd sourced project we do not have dedicated funding for the construction of it but we're looking to volunteers to help us make this property happen currently we could use the north parking lot at clear creek that that's been gated and closed and there's a restroom facility there that that's been locked so we're looking that we could open that and actually have people park there across the street on heartley field and go into the property and then use that property for mountain biking activities some specialty trails whether it's a single track a pump track which you can see in the top right hand corner takes up just you know about a half acre of property but kids and people of all ages can go out there and and work on skills and biking so it's a it's a fun opportunity at a fairly low cost that we we're trying to figure out where the best place to put that is in the long-term plan and then we've had some people ask about motocross or atv trails haven't been able to finalize any ideas on that yet but it's it's on our radar as we work through our trails trails master plan and then specialty trail specialty trails from a historic and interpretive manner are we have two historic cemeteries with people that have been in numerous wars have been founders of our community and there's a lot of history there we're trying to figure out ways that we can help preserve that history whether it's a a member of the revolutionary war or just you know a father or a brother that passed away is buried there how can we preserve that history and teach people for years who those people are and really bring our cemeteries back to life and then our interpretive trails whether it's the dcta trail about some of the dentin specific history our memorial trails such as dallas park it's very fitting you know at this time of year for for veterans day people could go out there and learn about people that serve for the community and learn more about them nature trails what types of trees what types of flowers what types of bugs and animals are out there and then our dentin arts walk of fame could actually come come to life as well so integrating technology into our trail system hundred coal ranch you've seen this this map before but over 50 miles of trails that are planned long term in this section of the community so we're you know planning ahead of time with with that group so that gives us an opportunity to really start with a clean slate in that aspect and then funding opportunities whether it's texas parks and wildlife you know volunteers going out and help build some of the trails eagle scout projects working with cog for funding or any type of road redevelopment wherever we can kind of integrate these funding opportunities into it whether it's a bond for a match and then we use that to to get additional funding from the state or federal government whenever we can expand our trail system would be obviously we'd love to take that opportunity and then in summary we can't do any of this without you and that is from city council and all the staff all the way down to our residents and then special interest groups whether it's hoa's our local businesses we're talking to the bike shops specifically because this is an interest interest for them the army corps of engineers texas parks and wildlife and cog and even dorba dallas off-road bicycle association to see if we couldn't create a little dorba for denton so where we're using utilizing our volunteers and our passionate trail users so that that's it in summary thank you for dr walker for all the work he provided to to this effort both drew and i have been involved as well as a number of staff members putting this together we still have a lot of work to do but this is it gets us in a direction that we can start to move forward with long-term planning as well when we redevelop our parks or roads reconstruction is happening it gives us opportunity to seize that moment great all right before you take the slide down oh well and just the last one so i see no the last the very last one okay so i see two regular photos and then i see sort of a caricature is that is that caricature uh you is that is that what that's that's the best i have mayor okay i just i'm just checking i'm just i just that's the best it's going to get right okay all right okay all right we'll pull it down i'm sorry i'm sort of in a weird mood today um all right let's go ahead and pull it down and we'll uh councilman melzer go ahead and then councilmember briggs yeah first uh gary i want to say how impressed i am at how how empowering it seems to be for you to have done all that community input uh you know to really determined that trails trails trails you know really sir rises to the top as far as a priority you know among uh among dead residents and and you've sort of taken that run with it in such a uh you know inspiring way um uh one comment and one question uh i think there's an opportunity comment is that i think there's an opportunity to kind of um overlay the discussion we've had about about assigning the conservation value to different park parcels that we might seek you know and kind of overlay that with the trails as well i'm interested in the opportunity particularly with cooper creek clear creek hickory creek and pecan creek you know for i'm interested in the opportunity for the trails to kind of bring with them a degree of conservation of you know the canopy around our primary watersheds so i think that's kind of a you know win-win-win uh my question is in your profession uh if we're shooting for being uh you know for being a plus on outstanding livability with our trail network as being one of the drivers you know is there a metric and maybe this is something to look into for you to answer now necessarily is there a metric of you know sort of what's the impressive level of either total number of trail miles or let's say grade a trail miles or kind of miles per capita you know i wonder if there's something we should be shooting for we do have access to that through nrpa our national recreation and park association has park metrics so i can follow that up uh with an outline of kind of where it's by 25 percent percentile uh throughout the entire country and it's broken down i think nine different categories whether it's a thousand people uh the amount of square square mileage within the city uh total population so i i can definitely provide that in a follow-up and you know maybe we should be shooting for best in the region or you know uh just i don't know food for thought but thanks thank you council member riggs thank you mayor i i put up my clear creek trail picture here behind me just just for this presentation um so i i have just several comments and um just a couple of questions so i'm going to go through these really fast um the the connections i'm glad you mentioned that connections are going to be extremely important because if not we just have just segments right and um so i'm glad to see that that's going to be a focus um the mountain bike trail i'm really excited about that and so are a lot of people in our community i know they're willing to volunteer i've heard that several people actually leave our city to do this it's it's a really big deal that we're going to have one um do we have an eta on on that i'd love to be able to say we could have it done this winter but it all really depends on the amount of volunteer work that we can get we spent there were five people seven people out there marking it and took us about five hours to do two or three miles uh so it's going to be probably 20 25 hours to market um and then go out there and actually build it some of it's in an open space where you can pretty much mow it and it's ready to go but we do have some areas where we need to put some some bridges where there's some low water and then do some uh trimming of back of uh weeds and brush to get the trail through through some wooded area um so i'd like to say within within the year um as just maybe as a placeholder but don't don't hold us to that well it really depends on how much input we get and feedback or i get i guess uh sweat equity from our community okay um the next one there i saw mingo on there so i'm always going to plug for a path on mingo just because it's it's pretty important um call boxes i think that's a great idea we had a council member bring that up several years ago who's no longer here um i thought it was a great idea then um i do have a question because we looked at uh concrete we looked at crushed granite um and dirt but i haven't heard flexi pave like uh it's recyclable uh recycled tires i think it's ada compliant it doesn't crack like concrete um and it's lead certified is that a product that we are looking at to use or or not yeah um drew had reached out to them i think maybe a few months earlier earlier this summer and got some preliminary information um we that that's part of that it really depends on where and when but that's definitely an opportunity uh that will be in our arsenal okay and also are we i did see that um the art walk was on there but are we looking at incorporating public art along these um the pathways and trails the one one idea that we shared with our public art committee was to take technology and use uh image recognition with an app where you could scan you know with your photo whether it's a headstone a piece of art um or a tree or even an animal i guess and recognize what that is and take you to a website that would give you some more information so yes public art would be a major part of that as well fantastic um and other two other comments mayor if i when these are about funding um i did receive an update that on october 30th the american conservation act was signed so it's official and they award money and grants to protect habitat and wildlife conservation programs and so i know that councilmember metzer just we talked about conservation and so i don't know if any of that could be incorporated or another type of funding that we look at as we're looking for all the funding for our community the other the other comment i had is that rtc funded projects i know in my drmc committee they mentioned that bike and ped projects they're looking to to create some of those and expedite them so that might be another type of funding to to go after the last thing i want to do is thank the community and the the public for their input on this this has been a really great process and i'm glad to see all of these trails thank you councilmembrometer yeah i i second that gratitude for all your work and on this and thanks to the community for all the input it's really exciting to see especially the contact connectivity that's going on here i just had a little question about um the uh uh paddle uh trails and the the horse trails you know obviously these are you know bring your own boat bring your own horse um is uh parks and rec thinking about uh you know incorporating you know having um you know canoe canoe camps or um you know horseback riding as part of the regular you know parks and recs activities so it can be affordable to people who might not otherwise have access uh yes the short answer yes we do do some outdoor programming and kayak trips now but long term if we get the ramps and the the the launch ramps all planned we'd be working with texas parks and wildlife where we could do more programming and expand that for sure so that would absolutely be an opportunity not sure about if we want to start a barn with horses at this point in time but um that might be a source where we bring in outside groups to help provide some of those camps uh and and provide that as a subcontractor awesome thanks thank you anybody else mayor pro tem and then councilmember davis hey gary yes so thank you and this is something i hope we can move on pretty quick as as the plan develops but my ask is this to help with that um conversation well i'll go back first i'd like to see something that identifies the uh utility easements and target those because i think there's some natural connectivity there uh that we could leverage to kind of fill some gaps and so i'd love to see something that kind of highlights or overlays kind of planned trails easements and so that we can kind of see where there's some uh pooling of resources if you will and then the other ask is when it comes to the construction options gravel crush granite etc i'd love to see something that compares the two and the use for example um if one is the best you may have a one for crush granite as far as best in this particular area but then the usage being a bike trail it could be a three or something like that so and more likely like a gravel is not maybe not as great for bikes but so the kind of so i could see the kind of where they overlap and where we could save money on the actual material and then have a recommended use for this stretch okay this is loose gravel it's best for walking and then you'll go half mile up and this surface may be better for biking and walking just so i can kind of understand how the uses match the the surface we could definitely put together together are pros and cons slide for each one thank you you're welcome councilmember davis sure just really quickly um i wanted to thank you all of course for the work on this but also uh people watching at home may or may not be aware of what a change in thinking this is from parks and rec over here doing its thing and programming and engineering and traffic engineering and all that kind of stuff over here doing its thing and then in between the two of them that real estate acquisition this project uh that gary you and your folks have put together is such a a synergy between so many different departments in the city i just really want to call that out and say how much i appreciate that change in thinking and that kind of holistic way of doing things because you can't get the kind of creative solutions you're talking about you know mountain bike trails and equestrian trails and just higher quality trail system overall and the connectivity you're talking about between all of our many many assets without that kind of holistic thinking so big kudos for that and for every other department that's been a part of this conversation and and frankly also to the citizens who have been kind of uh pushing at our backs for a long time for these kind of assets in our city so thanks a lot i appreciate it thank you and mayor just just to kind of follow that up we we have two focus groups that we've been working on we put together a little trails group and we're always looking for more people to to add to that focus group and then we have a focus group of of mountain bikers as well that have been helping us the this plan i want to reassure that you know we don't have money for all this not all of it is under construction or ready to go this is a vision at this point in time and this is where we can start you know the next 25 40 years with our trail enhancements throughout the community so it it's very dynamic it takes a lot of planning and coordinating whether it's within the our own department or our own organization as well as with outside organizations and other layers of government so it it's very dynamic and challenging process to get everything kind of in one spot and we'll be diligent on trying to work on that and try to get it done as quickly as we can but this is a long-term project and some of these trails may never happen and then some could happen by next year so we're going to think on the positive side and try to make this all happen the best we can and take a little bit of that time so thank you for the opportunity to present the ideas to you this afternoon if you have any other ideas or questions or comments you know please please let us know i've just got a one comment uh make sure i'm on mute unmute uh this is a this is a great example of of we had a conversation was it two weeks ago about economic development uh strategic plan and uh you know denton was named i think it was the number number 55 most livable number two boomtown and part of that conversation we had during economic development was well you know you're going to get economic development it's like it's a synergistic approach and i think this is one of the major components that provides that livability and that desire of community and just recreational opportunities and things such as that for a city that then works together to continue to attract those economic development opportunities and then in turn those economic development opportunities help provide the funding to continue to do the things that make our city attractive to people who want to live there so i know that we make these presentations sort of uh independently or you know on different men but this is one example of how they all tie together at a higher elevation and how most everything we do ties together to create create the kind of city uh that we want to live in and that we want people to come to and live in so that then we can create the revenue to continue to do that because once the revenue stops then these projects you're talking about gary i mean yeah i know we don't have the funding now but um we certainly can continue to work on getting the funding but if we don't continue to move in that direction we won't and if we don't get the funding and if we don't build the parks then we also diminish the chances of getting you know the companies and the jobs and the economic development the corporations that we want here so uh just wanted to bring that and so thank you for that i think it's a it's a very robust vision and i really appreciate that uh that we can do that here and we're not just tied to uh what we can do but we're we're more about aspirations and then how do we how do we reach those aspirations so i appreciate your work on that thank you all right any other comments okay uh we were i think that concludes our uh work session and this is a special call meeting so what we're going to do is let's go ahead and take about it's 4 40 let's take about a five or about a five to eight minute break and we'll come back and we'll do the closed session but i'm going to go ahead and call the closed session we will be convening a closed session at 4 40 to consider uh i don't have my cheat sheet but i'm going to do this i think i should do i can do this to deliberate regarding certain public power utility competitive matters under texas government code section 551.06 and also to consult with attorneys under texas government section code 551.071 uh mr city attorney was that adequate enough for to to call the posting yes mayor okay thank you all right let's go ahead and then close out this open session and we'll reconvene in the closed executive session at about 4 45 about 4 47 thank you welcome back everyone to this meeting of the dent city council at 5 17 pm at 11 10 2020 we've just adjourned our executive session closed session so uh just so as a bookkeeping matter um special call sessions typically just move forward from work sessions but because the public hearings were posted on for 6 30 the public hearings have to go at 6 30 but we can move through the rest of the agenda which is consent agenda and items for individual consideration and then if we're not if we're through before 6 30 we'll take a break come back at 6 30 we'll take a break prior to that anyway so that's what we're going to do we're going to move forward with our agenda and then of course once the recipients of the proclamation arrive at city hall we will take a break to recognize them and and read the the uh procl the uh proclamation hold on just a moment okay all right so then we will now move on we'll we'll skip agenda item number 1a we'll go to our consent agenda and i believe we had one agenda that was pulled which was agenda item 2c and so we will uh chair with mayor pro tem move approval of the consent agenda but for item c i have a second council member ryan a second we have a motion and approval for the consent agenda and the items on the consent agenda except for agenda consent agenda item 2c which is id 20-2243 and we will take that up under items for individual consideration all right mayor pro tem house say you on that motion council member ryan aye council member briggs yes council member davis aye council member armater yes council member melzer aye mayors and i the motion carries seven zero will now take up our item for individual consideration of agenda item 2c consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager or his designee to execute a service agreement by and between the junction of denton county and the city of denton and providing for the expenditure of funds for homelessness initiatives in the amount of a one hundred thousand dollars hey mayor and council uh danny shaw community services uh just briefly we'll give you an overview of the rapid rehousing grant um as you saw earlier in our presentation uh city council does fund homelessness initiatives and one of those programs is a hundred thousand dollars for rapid rehousing the city does complete a competitive application process for these funds for the hundred thousand dollars this year four applicants applied and we uh we scored those and then presented them to the human services advisory committee for consideration of funding uh they selected the junction of denton county as the recipient of those funds and today you're uh you have in front of you the agreement between the junction and the city for those for those funds for the program okay any questions for staff council member bricks thank you mayor yes i i do have a um a couple of questions so where would the referrals come from um to this to the to the junction so the individual seeking rental assistance or utility assistance how would they be referred to this organization well we have two processes one of those is is built in and with the covid response in that the junction is running the hotel so some of the referrals will come from the uh the folks who are staying at the hotel who are have gone through the coordinated entry process and then overall we have the community process of coordinated entry so applicant or clients are entered in they're on the housing priority list and they would be referred from that list to this program based on their eligibility okay so mayor may i okay so um on that so would there be an application directly from the junction that someone could fill out to receive these funds or do they have to go through a different agency uh they would go through the junction for these funds so they get referred to the junction and the junction would follow through with whatever their process is for qualification and acceptance for their funding and those processes are something that we are familiar with and that we have access to and we'll be reviewing um as well is that correct through that's correct in fact the junction is already meeting every two weeks with the folks at the united way who are funded through our homelessness initiatives as well they meet with them weekly to go through the housing priority list for the folks who are directly in the hotels and then every two weeks our case managers are coming together in a transparent process to discuss clients who are on the housing priority list and prioritizing them for housing when it comes available including rapid rehousing that's great i'm glad you said case managers mayor i have a couple more questions sure okay um on the i know that with the cares funding we just recently found out and with some other funding you can only get assisted so many times is that um are there limits to how many times an individual can be assisted with these funds we have not put any limits we we based the budget on an assumption that there would be a down payment or a deposit for a unit and three months of assistance but they could assist the person longer if they needed more stability with the goal of with these fundings of a minimum of 20 households and just another quick question because i know that in our budget and have and we have before funded interfaith for utility help and i know that this is an aspect of that as well so can someone who is experiencing issues can they apply for funds through both interfaith and through the junction for those or it would that would that not be allowed oh it would be allowed is the possibility of leveraging other funding sources so these these rapid rehousing dollars could be leveraged with our esg round one funding with existing sira funding that might be available or any other funding source as long as it's not duplicative okay so we still plan to um to allocate funding to interfaith for utility help even even with this going towards utility help yes yeah they could let that would be a way in which they could leverage these funds either to um file for no deposit or any other of the available program resources so yes okay i'll have one more but i'll wait if anybody else wants no no go ahead go ahead go ahead okay so i i read through the agreement and there are um there's so first i just want to clarify so this is there's for the partnership there would be a larger agreement right this is just for the funding basically so whenever i glance through it i thought well this may be the operation agreement and then i read more into it and so this is just for the funding and the grant the um because we're all of our agreements are written as a service agreement to deliver the specific services or funding for right an agency may have multiple service agreements with us based on the funding source and so on on it are there um so if if there's an issue with that that comes up as far as the the funding allocations or anything within the service agreement is is there a way for is there a termination clause or is there some way for um the city to get out of the the agreement yes we do have a section in the agreement for terminations and so generally they're related to the um not complying with the agreement uh specifications and also in the scope of work but we also have the ability to terminate for convenience at any time okay thank you okay any other questions councilmembrometer yeah this is kind of following up on that and i appreciate those questions okay i'm getting yeah there's some way much of a delay so yeah yeah okay go ahead okay so yes so follow following up on that um so you know sit up where to happen the reason i'm asking is because because so much you know is writing on this in people's lives um and it's such a positive um step forward for the city and uh in in was been uh dealing with these these issues that we're facing um with homelessness and housing insecurity so say that were to happen and there to be some issue um would another kind of uh funding uh another non-profit be able to step in or is kind of everything riding on you know the junction doing this so it'd be determinative on when when the i think when the contract might be terminated so just just as a hypothetical if it were terminated early we might then come back to council and and seek to reissue the grant application for the remaining funds if it's a minimal amount we may just allow those funds to be absorbed back in the general fund like we would for any unexpended funds at the end of the grant term so i think it would be dependent on the amount of funds remaining and the length of the term of the contract that's left before we make that decision okay great and i like that both of the neither of those options is the funding just disappears and everything's lost it is so that is good to hear so thank you all right anybody else don't see anybody okay uh and i guess we need to have a uh take action on this item do i have a any action by this council council member armature i i move approval uh chair would entertain council member melzer a second all right we have a motion to second council member armature house say you on agenda item 2c id 20-2243 yes council member melzer aye mayor pro tem all right council member ryan aye council member davis aye council member briggs uh yes uh mayor watts is an aye so the motion carries seven zero we'll now move on to our items i believe of for individual consideration which will be agenda item 3a consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton excuse me of the city council of the city of denton authorizing and ratifying a letter of intent for the city to support the united way of denton's county's application and proposal for emergency solutions grants this is id 20-2191 good afternoon mayor city council sara kechler chief of staff um so we've begun to discuss this item this afternoon during the work session but this item is for city council to consider supporting the united way of denton county in their application and proposed program for emergency solutions grant funding it is a very exciting opportunity for our community to try to go out and get grant dollars leverage those outside funding sources and bring them back here to help our residents in need with housing and utility assistance going forward so i want to introduce at this time gary henderson he's the ceo of the united way of denton county and he'll give you an overview of their application submitted for esg the proposed program and then the requests from the city that they are asking for so i'll introduce them at this time and then help him bring up a couple of slides okay thank you very much sir mayor council i appreciate this opportunity to share as sara described it an exciting opportunity not just for the city of denton but for residents all over the county first and foremost i have to say a huge thank you um we had tremendous support from danny shaw and her staff in determining the appropriate applicant for this emergency solutions grant coronavirus round two funding stream city manager highland heilman did i say heilman city manager heilman was tremendous not only in helping us construct a solution to a problem that we're presenting to you today but it was also instrumental in bringing city of lewisville on board as well and then thank you to the city attorney for helping to construct a manner in which we could do this in an appropriate way turning to the overview just there we go so this is hud's cares act funding through the texas department of housing and community affairs it's a request for applications from the texas homeless network you've had danny shaw present to you your award for round one funding this is a second tranche of funding for round two similar purpose but the rfa changed slightly in some of its scope we submitted a proposal on friday evening that included a collaboration not only of united way of denton county but christian community action and lewisville friends of the family of denton county grace like rain giving hope interfaith the junction who you just discussed formerly our daily bread and monsignor king outreach center metro crest services in the carolton area next steps in the colony and then salvation army in both denton and lewisville the total grant request was nine million four hundred ninety one thousand and eight hundred ninety four dollars and that's a combination of homelessness prevention and homelessness intervention services or as the grant refers to it rapid rehousing and in those two components the grant allows for 15 staff members to be procured across these non-profit organizations for client intake case management services also provides us the ability as a collaborative to provide 6.6 million dollars in rent utility assistance as we follow hud's income eligibility criteria and then in the homelessness intervention space or rapid rehousing space the grant would provide for seven additional full-time staff across some of those non-profits not all of those non-profit organizations are actively operating rapid rehousing programs and it would also provide client services for application fees for apartments rent utility deposits and utility and rent payments and that total amount would be 1.3 million hmis or the homeless management information system is a requirement of this grant so all participants in the collaborative would actively take party and our coordinated entry system across the county using hmis as the underlying database and then grant administration fees income certification effort fair market certification and grant compliance with total 474 000 unite away of denton county would share those administrative dollars with the collaborative this would allow us to serve across the county 1500 households for the homeless prevention portion of the grant and 130 135 households for rapid rehousing or homelessness intervention the challenge though that unite away of denton county and frankly any non-profit organization applying for this size of a grant a grant that is a reimbursement grant to the texas department of housing and community affairs is the working capital the non-profits have to incur the expenses united way then reimburses them for their expenses they've incurred and then united way would submit a grant report monthly to tdhca for reimbursement and in order to bring in the dollars that we felt the community really needed based on the track record we've seen through denton county's u.s treasury department cares act funds we really feel confident that 9.4 million is what the community needs to get us through the year 2020-21 and into the first quarter of 2022 march of 2022 is when these funds must be expended by so in order to assist unite away of denton county as the fiscal agent for this collaborative effort we creatively asked the city of denton city of lewisville and then we secured from a private funder from first state bank let's give credit where credit is due letters of commitment to contribute 500 000 each to serve as the working funds for the reimbursement grant of course city of denton dollars would be used only to serve city of denton residents city of lewisville dollars the same only serving city of lewisville residents our line of credit with first state bank would allow us to serve other households across the county and when you look at the track record and this is through last week you can see a trend the two charts in the upper right hand corner you can see from march april when we first began to together prevent evictions through covet 19 with your first 50 000 contribution to the covet relief fund and then a subsequent second round of 50 000 you can see that we're up to in really that last bar on the right a weekly burn rate of 359 000 and that's over 200 households nearly 250 households who have needed to turn to an eviction prevention program either for help with their rent mortgage or utility payments and if you look at the chart on the left assistance by city you can see that the assistance provided over these months march to the end of october denton residents 1015 households have been provided 1853 months of assistance and that comprises 36.3 percent of the total months of assisted assistance provided to all households across denton county and then in the bottom of this page types of assistance clearly the the vast majority of our effort has been finding a way to qualify people into the cares act funded program by commissioner's court but those funds as council member briggs has pointed out several times in other meetings those funds leave our community on december 30th so we felt with the assistance of danny shaw and her staff the city manager the city attorney we felt like what didn't county needed and didn't residents needed or was for us to write the most competitive grant possible for the largest amount possible to serve the most households that we possibly can would love to answer any questions that's a lot of information how can i fill in any missing info for you all questions council member briggs thank you gary that was a lot of information and thank you for all that you guys have done so far for our community and for the individuals needing help through this pandemic my question is because the the the blue line on that chart has increased as time has gone and we know that that the need is not going away however i mean i'm seeing more requests for for help as time goes on so it's imperative that that we get the funding will the rules and the the processes and procedures that we've implemented the first time will they stay through this second round of funding no council member we're going to revert back to a mechanism where the agencies are able to make direct payments on behalf of their clients and then we'll reimburse the agencies a household's eligibility will reset back to zero as long as they meet hud's qualifications for eligibility in this grant and when you say eligibility that means directly affected by covid directly affected by covid and household income and what we've seen through the cares act funded portion of eviction prevention for covid 19 is that we're not looking at households that have had partially impacted income we're looking at households who have lost income so it seems logical to us that they will have no problem qualifying for the tdhca funded program and we've averaged in our budget an expectation that a household would need three months of assistance knowing that some would need less some will need more the criteria in the rfa gives us the flexibility to go up to six months if needed okay thank you and just one last question if i may you may not be able to answer this i'm just curious as as time has gone on is it harder to directly tie the loss of income to covid or is it getting easier i don't think it's getting any more difficult council member um what we're seeing is a new face of households coming into the program and it's individuals and households who had some reserve at the beginning of the pandemic and have exhausted those reserves at the beginning for the first three or four months it's households that we call alice asset limited income constrained but employed and they have very little reserves they work at a level of income that quite frankly breaks even with their monthly expenses and in any given year we see whether it's a sick child a car repair a texas july utility bill kind of throws them into a financial situation where they need to reach out for help those households were early into the program what we're seeing now might be more traditionally referred to as middle income households have exhausted reserves and now they're entering into a space where they're accessing social social services many for the first time in their lives well thank you very much thanks you're welcome councilmembrometer and then councilmember melzer yeah um so gary how much time what is your sense on average that it takes for the non-profits that you're working with to be able to connect someone to funding because i know that you know a lot of people feel under the clock when they're given a timeline by the city to you know secure funding by such and such time if you could speak to if you have a sense of the what the averages or the range oh absolutely councilmember in the last two months we've seen waiting lists at our denton county non-profits grow to two to three weeks that means someone who's reaching out in the middle of the month for assistance at the beginning of the next month their time to get queued up to be served by a case manager at one of these 10 non-profits it may be up to the the first week of the next month funding has not been the challenge because of commissioner's court cares act funds it's really just been the sheer capacity for our denton county non-profits and their infrastructure and that's not unlike what we've experienced in the food insecurity space as well our denton county non-profits were never built for the kind of volume that we've seen during covet 19 so we've scaled up where we can and the denton county cares act grant gave many of our denton county non-profits the ability to add case managers throughout the year but still you have some finite footprint infrastructure limitations like office space for some of the non-profits they can only grow to a certain point once we got right sized i would say in the last really the last two months we're starting to see initial contact i'd say probably the last three weeks to be honest council member in the last three weeks we're seeing request to check fulfillment reduced to about 10 business days that means we're talking to the household within the first week and then they're providing the required documentation to comply with the funding source thank thank you so much it's really interesting to me to hear that because what and i didn't know what you would say but it just so happens that what you're saying corresponds with what i'm hearing anecdotally you know i'm not hearing a scientific sample of cases but a number of cases um that that take about that that long and i also hear from non-profits and it makes sense that it's not so much the money because we know the money is there um but it's the time that it takes and the staffing that it takes anyway so and i know that this is not what we're voting on today but i would hope just saying this to my colleagues and city manager that um you know that that that we can adjust you know expectations at customer service accordingly you know to be to be realistic um so that we're not kind of dealing with the problem of our own making you know people are going to pay eventually when they get funding but we need to make give a realistic timeline well and council member i would jump back in and say dent municipal electric customer service has been one of the easiest utilities to work with across the county so kudos to the the staff and customer service in their hearts they they understand who these households are and their their goal is to work with us as aggressively as possible to keep utilities turned on and just to point out we zoom with case managers that are on the front lines with us with these households and Sharon at Salvation Army in Denton is working six days a week and i know she's serving as many households as she possibly can as quickly as she can but the reality is it's taken all of us a couple of weeks at times to get to them all right uh council member Melcer i think did was your hand up no yeah yeah yes go ahead well i'm going to move approval but i'll just uh comment that i you know i don't know that um everyone really uh and the public understands that so much of what uh is done and you know what what's going to happen hopefully going forward if this all works out is done through the nonprofits of Denton and the city you know can play a role in partnership you know to secure grant funding and you know it's it's not that this is all it's not that all everything is met through general fund funds i was kind of trying to indicate that before that you know there's a tremendous coordination effort between the city and the nonprofits through you know the agency of uh you know the united ways anyway this is uh very much needed and uh i just really hope it works and i move approval is there a second council member Briggs i will second yeah Gary one real quick question this is a nine million dollar grant that's going to be dispersed to these various nonprofits with with i guess united way sort of acting as the conduit um let's say hypothetically you get it all right uh we're only front loading or front funding 1.5 million dollars of that correct so so help me understand is the process we've we've front loaded 1.5 million when that gets spent this are we saying that we don't get that back the city's the in other words that's not reimbursed till the end in other words that's that 1.5 million as that gets reimbursed it's sort of refundled back to the agency so you had this kind of continual flow of money yes mayor that's absolutely correct uh we will we will invoice if you will uh tdhca on a monthly basis so as we're depleting the 1.5 million tdhca is reimbursing us for the last month of work but we've moved a few weeks into the next month of work and then at that last reimbursement presumably march 2022 although i i really predict we'll probably exhaust the funds by the end of 2021 upon our last reimbursement from the state and the close out of the grant we would then contractually commit to the city to repay your funds in full with interest because we know you're losing interest on these funds and you know interest these days that that's going to be a lot of money mayor sure no what 10 percent rate is that right i don't think there's no interest really well i thought we had a predatory lending cap in the city of dent wait a minute wait a minute we did um no we we want to make sure we're being fair and whatever you're losing by way of investing those dollars for that period of time um we feel it's our obligation to keep the city whole on that what you're doing with those funds is bringing in obviously 9.4 million dollars of course benefit to the taxpayers of course tdhca cares act hud's money as opposed to city of denton money yeah i do want to address the comment about you know making sure we hire enough staff and things such as that because the grant itself has uh almost three quarters of a million dollars for additional staff with these non-profits and uh also i i really appreciate you sharing your experience with with dme customer service because it's been my experience that that's exactly what they're doing is they're they're working hard to make sure and this isn't a problem of the city's making it's not that it's a problem of customer service is making this is a problem of something that's happened that nobody really has any control over and i really commend uh your staff united way and the non-profits and also those in the city who work with these clients day in and day out to provide the best service that they can and to mitigate and remediate any impact that they have that is beyond their control as well so i really appreciate you sharing those sentiments thank you thank you all right we have a motion and a second any other questions or comment all right council member melzer how say you aye council member briggs yes mayor protem all right council member armater yes council member davis oh okay i got you he's he's an eye i believe all right uh council member ryan all right all right the mayors and i that's a motion carries seven zero uh we'll move on to then agenda thank you gary appreciate it move on to agenda item three a three b excuse me id 20-2110 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas amending the fiscal year 2020-21 budget an animal an annual program of services of the city of denton to allow for an adjustment to the animal controlled donation fund of 76 000 evening mayor city council members nick vinson assistant director of finance i'm actually going to turn this presentation over to erin win the city's budget manager she's going to walk you through this budget amendment let me get the presentation pulled up really quick okay erin whenever you're ready all right thank you thank you it's my wonderful boss for driving from you while i'm at home with my baby uh good evening mayor and city council erin win budget manager i'm here to present a proposed budget amendment for the 2021 budget typically these do not come to you this early in the fiscal year however this is for the animal controlled donation fund it's a special revenue fund that receives donations from the denton animal support foundation this funding is mission critical critical to animal services it subsidizes adoption costs and medical and operational expenses so we're asking that we can increase our expenditure budget we did not allot for sufficient expenditures by 76 000 that is the bulk of it i'm happy to answer any questions we also have randy weinberg from animal services available to answer any more specific operational questions that i might not know the answer to this is an action item for 76 000 budget amendment so let's let's move through this one fairly quickly council member melzer i was clear it was clear to me in the backup that i wasn't so much hearing it in this presentation isn't it an increase in expenditures because there's an increase there's a there it corresponds to a to a donation um we have approved the the donation revenue it's pretty much just saying we can spend the money that we've gotten donated to us yeah okay that's what i thought so i i'll move approval all right council member armature i second that for 76 000 our budget amendment so let's let's move through this very quickly okay somebody's somebody uh added some feedback on it's really weird listening to your own voice coming back at you all right so we'll we've got a motion and a second on agenda item 3b council member melzer how say you on that aye council member armature yes council member briggs yes mayor protem aye council member ryan aye i don't see council member davis did he he didn't recuse did he okay well uh we'll move on um uh okay so we've got uh motion mayor watts's and i motion carries uh six zero agenda item 3c considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton texas authorizing the expenditure of funds for the payment of wholesale transmission charges and the total amount of seven million one hundred eighty one thousand thirty nine dollars and seventy three cents good evening again mayor city council members nick vinson assistant director of finance let me get the presentation pulled up really quick uh so in front of you today i have a couple slides to review um the proposal of 7.2 approximately in transmission expenses for denton municipal electric these expenses do come forward to the public utility board and city council each year as part of the budgeting process these aren't included in the budget we are looking for the expenditure authority to pay these transmission service providers these transmission assets are theirs that dme is utilizing um a couple things i want to point out in this table you can see the entities or their cooperatives that we will be paying this money to throughout the fiscal year and this does total approximately 7.2 million um a little bit of history wanted to show you any transactions that were under 50 000 and it is important to note anything in this table is currently being approved by staff and this does not come forward to the public utility board of city council for approval um you can see that these entities these transactions total roughly twenty seven thousand dollars and anything over fifty thousand dollars does come forward to the city council and public utility board for approval um you can see what we paid these entities last fiscal year and the payments in fiscal year 1920 did total 6.6 million um i did also want to point out that the public utility board did approve this yesterday during their meeting with that mayor that concludes the presentation i'll pull down for questions okay questions council member briggs oh yeah council member briggs go ahead are these part of the funds that are reimbursed to us or or do they do they come through our rates or this is a pretty large payment if you can just kind of explain where that money is coming from and if it is refunded to us in any way so did municipal electric does get refunded for their investment in transmission assets um from the public utility commission and that is that rate of return we discussed with you dealing the budgeting process um these are actually costs that are paid out from dentin municipal electric to other transmission service providers for their assets in their investments that they made into the system so to answer your question council member riggs these these costs are not reimbursed to the cities these are expenses we pay out to transmission service providers okay and so we're paying out this money um and is it does it come from our utility budget it it does absolutely so we do receive um t-cost revenue into the electric utility budget we do pay out these expenses to these transmission service providers and we do also pay debt service on the city of dentin's transmission assets so these are fully accounted for in the budget that was approved in september of this year um within within the operating budget so in the operating budget thank you yes ma'am okay uh anyone else yes council member melzer apologies for not having a quick handle on this myself but uh you you might very well we we make money on transmission too don't we for our on our assets when others use it we do council member melzer um that is that rate of return we do give from the puc and the city didn't was recently notified if you remember a couple friday reports ago that we will be going through a full rate filing to look at that rate of return for dentin municipal electric um but to answer your question we do get a rate of return for our transmission assets so other entities that utilize our assets to get power delivered to their um to their to their customers and they also pay dentin municipal electric that is correct and are we a net moneymaker on transmission or net outliers that kind of more or less awash uh we are net um council member melzer i do have a slide if you'd like me to pull it up that does show you that net income or net revenue that does come to the city if you want to see that but we do receive net income each year from those investments that that's okay that was my my impression i just wanted to kind of put this all in context thank you yeah just to reiterate that if we didn't have those transmission investments and that rate of return we're still paying this i mean there's there's no net it's this money is still being paid to those people where we to those transmission providers that we're utilizing uh pursuant to the formula at the at the state level that is correct mayor wants all right you bet thank you okay any other questions chair would entertain motion on agenda item 3c council member ryan move approval let's see a second council member briggs i'll second all right we have a motion to second for high d20-2194 i house say you council member ryan all right council member briggs yes council member melser aye mayor potem all right council member davis welcome back thank you sir aye council member armater yes mayors yes motion carries seven zero we'll move on to agenda item 3a which is considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton 3d excuse me 3d considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton amending the provisions of section 6-8 of the code of ordinances restraining animals and tethering animals to prohibit the tethering of animals with certain exceptions okay maybe i got it ready to roll yeah they're getting pulled up right now okay good evening mayor city council randy weinberg animal services and i am here today to discuss and seek direction on amending our current animal restraint and tethering ordinance if you give me just one moment i'm gonna get that pulled up sure uh background on this infer on this um ordinance animal shelter advisory committee requested that um staff draft an ordinance in october of 2019 february of this year staff drafted and discussed an amendment to this ordinance which received unanimous approval in october of this year staff presented a final draft amendment to the ordinance to the ordinance and also proposed education implementation which was also unanimously approved current regulations is that and it is unlawful to restrain or tether a dog and we do have examples of when we go out to enforce that what we're looking for it cannot be strained by a fixed point chain or tether or in a manner that does not allow the dog to have access to food or water or in a manner that would allow the dog to become entangled an exception that we do have to this ordinance is that the animal is able to be on a fixed point chain or tether and if you could just imagine like a clothesline and it has a trolley system attached to it where the animal is able to maneuver around and that does have to be mounted at least seven feet off the ground some current challenges that we are facing with the ordinance today is that animal control officers are having difficulty enforcing it one of the things that they are not able to do is determine the length of time that an animal has been tethered that is important because state law does state that an animal cannot be tethered for more than three hours in a 24-hour period also one of the main concerns it's a safety concern for the animal and that is that the animal can become tangled in the stake or tether or even with the police system and that has been witnessed by the ACOs when they have been responding to the calls staff research 15 cities and seven of those cities have provisions prohibiting tethering with one exception and that one exception is as long as the animal's owner or handler is with the animal during the time of restraint we have five cities where tethering is allowed with multiple exceptions and some of those exceptions are by a fixed point collar or using the tethering police system that I previously discussed and then we have three cities where tethering is allowed however they just strictly follow state law the proposed changes that we want to make to the ordinance we want to make it unlawful to stake any unattended domestic animal and by domestic we are talking about a dog or cat outside on a leash tether chain or similar apparatus and we did want to add that similar apparatus language in there because just recently we have witnessed a dog being tethered by a water hose and also we want to make it unlawful to tether any animal in the open bed of a pickup style vehicle that's open to the elements unless this vehicle is the purpose of is for transporting livestock the one exception we do want to have on this ordinance is if the animal's owner or handler remains with the animal throughout the period of restraint when we discuss with the animal shelter advisory committee on some community community education outreach one of the things we've already done is submitted an article in our resident update newsletter for the october november issue and that was basically educating the community on alternatives to tethering we are also visiting areas where we are receiving the most calls with concerns of tethering and we are proactively educating those residents on alternatives and offering them resources we have already launched a dedicated webpage for tethering alternatives which offers resources and education and the new ordinance if passed will be placed on this webpage as well for easy access and one of the main things we wanted to do is assist people who are experiencing homelessness and we have partnered with the hot team the homeless outreach team with the police department and what we're going to do is offer assistance we are going to be visiting those encampments with the hot team and educating them as well you know on different alternatives that we can provide providing them with resources such as food or vaccines and just being a resource for them also we've developed a hundred day education period we're going to roll out education on social media channels resident updates as well and before we issue any warnings or enforcement some partnerships that we have pertaining with this ordinance didn't animal support foundation has offered to help us fund an animal enclosure fund and we've also partnered with the freedom house and these two partnerships are going to assist and if you look at the bottom right hand corner of the slide with providing residents with an animal enclosure in the event that they you know they're renting a home and they don't they can't build a fence what alternatives do they have and they can't afford to buy one of these dog runs this animal enclosure fund will be an application-based system where they'll have to apply for it and if the funds are available we will come out and install this animal run that you see here in addition to that our ACOs will be equipped to ask those fact-finding questions to figure out you know what the resident is actually needing in order to make sure that they don't have to tether their animal staff recommendation is that we amend section six eight of the animal straight and tethering on animals to align with the recommendations of the animal services committee okay uh questions or action chair would entertain action and we'll just bring the slide down thank you uh thank you for that presentation uh yes council member briggs are individuals supposed to register their their dogs in the city of denton so would these dogs or would the homes that are visited um or animals visited would they have registration in the city of denton yes um they should have a registration with the city of denton and if they are not registered we would have that conversation at that time and help them get registered okay all right anybody else council member armature yeah oh i wanted to just thank uh staff so much for coming up with um the uh the alternative enclosure and making that available to people because as important as i think this tethering ordinance is you know it's also really important to have that um that people who don't have the means um uh to you know including people experiencing homelessness who have pets um you know this will be uh really essential for them and helping them keep their pets um i'm i'm very much in favor this of this ordinance and of that measure i just wanted to know a little bit more about the enforcement aspect um i appreciate the grace period you know i i hope that like can you speak more to what will happen on the enforcement end because i i don't want to see you know people ending up um with uh uh fees and being in jail and and you know citations that'll that'll add up to a record that'll affect their ability to get a job and stuff obviously if you're talking about an intentional animal cruelty situation but i i can tell that the way this is designed it with this educational approach you know is very much about correcting behavior so if you could speak a little more about the enforcement end yes so we are offering a uh are doing the hundred day um education period and then after that we'll transition into the six month warning period however before a warning is even issued we are still going out that out there and proactively educating offer them resources and giving them a time frame to comply if they can't we're still going to you know help them um after that six months we do have the enforcement period however it's the same we're going to our initial response is to come out and be a resource before we um issue citations wonderful wonderful i love it okay uh anything else council member briggs i move approval all right well council member armature i second all right we have a motion and a second for id 20-2235 council member briggs i say you oh i'm sorry mayor pro tem before you i'm sorry mayor pro tem didn't see you apologize for that yeah no we're sorry um so i just have one question during this discussion phase for can you compare in contrast the education in in alignment with the state law aspect versus education in line with this enhanced uh ordinance if you will um so state law gives specifics um just to give you some examples of what they ask in state law is that an animal can't be tethered between the hours of 10 and 6 no more than three hours in a 24-hour period and um what the approach that that we're taking is to take the guesswork out of that um so there are many exceptions with the state law and what we're doing is kind of removing that barrier and saying hey it's going to be easier you know to comply if we we say that there is uh it's unlawful to tether okay and has staff received any feedback from someone kind of with a dissenting opinion of the the changes so if you talk to someone that said this is not a good change and have they shared their thoughts why um it has been all positive feedback when we've gone out there um to practically talk to the to the residents um actually we are piloting the enclosure uh fund um process this friday we will be installing one of these runs on an address that continuously receives calls for tethering from from other residents so um from what we've heard it's it's all been positive and then if i may one last question so the the enclosure component is uh have we talked to or educated on that so the cleanliness becomes so the it it does it's not a cure-all right so if they're in the enclosure and it's not maintained then you have a a health issue in an enclosure versus a health issue in an open area neither are optimal i just want to understand if we've uh kind of thought about that is that part of the education what's our approach to that yes sir so part of the actual application uh with that um states that the animal control officers will be out to monitor the property um to make sure that they are staying in compliance one with not staking their animal but two just to check that enclosure just as you um mentioned with that concern to make sure that animal waste is not an issue and they're not living in an unsanitary condition okay and what is and just a follow-up to that because that's a great point and so to educate people what is what are best practices so you have animal waste i have a shovel what where do i what's what is the city of denton recommend how do i dispose of that well the the best um means of disposal is to place that waste in a bag seal it and then you can place that in the the trash can for disposal okay okay thank you all right any other questions before we take the vote councilmember davis sorry mayor something just occurred to me i sure i did hear from a resident who had just purchased one of these uh pulley trolley systems and their intention had been to uh to use it with their pet and uh it one made me think are we working at all with any of these retail places you know petco and walmart that sell tethers and sell these pulley systems uh you know put some kind of notice that you know you can still buy this product and you can still use it but you've got to be with your animal that in the city of denton it's not going to be lawful for you to use this product and leave your animal tethered without someone being there with them have we thought about doing that or is that something we have plans to do we have not done that and that's actually a great idea that we can put on our plate to make sure that we're educating those stores as well thank you okay anybody else all right so we had a motion by councilmember briggs and a seconded by councilmember armature is that correct so we'll go on and take that vote councilmember briggs i say you yes councilmember armature yes and great idea jesse i really like councilmember davis's idea councilmember melzer aye councilmember davis aye mayor protem aye councilmember ryan aye mayor wass's an aye this motion carries seven zero i believe it's my understanding that the recipient of the proclamation is here so let's take just a couple minute break to allow mayor protem to get situated in the work session room and then when you're ready mayor protem uh come on back do we need to stop require i guess we need to stop recording have a council we'll take a break we'll take a five minute break 6 13 we'll come back about six 18 6 20 that'll put us almost right at the 6 30 time welcome back everybody to this meeting of the denton city council on november the 10th 2020 it is 6 20 p.m and we'll move now to back to our proclamation uh that we uh wanted to reschedule at this time so mayor protem i believe you got the the proclamation and we have the recipients here in the work session room thank you for coming all right uh so this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of denton texas greetings whereas women of america chapter 48 was founded on june 7 2017 the chapter began with six women veterans and after three years has grown to over 100 members and whereas women of women veterans of america chapter 48 has encouraged and perpetuated the spirit of the of camarader comradeship comradeship of women veterans of denton county who have served or who now are serving in the united states armed forces through social and recreational activities and whereas women veterans of america chapter 48 has assisted in the welfare and well-being of the homeless elderly disabled and needy women veterans of denton county and those hospitalized at the local va hospitals and whereas women veterans of america chapter 48 has perpetrated perpetuated pardon me perfect it's not good uh has uh the memory of women veterans and comforted their survivors and provided entertainment care and assistance to hospitalized veterans and members of the united states armed forces and whereas women veterans of america chapter 48 accomplished many things over the last four years including participating in four homeless stand downs in denton county to assist women veterans serving as a liaison to the dallas va hospital and providing three events each year for women hospitalized at that location and whereas women of america chapter 48 established established an equine therapy program to help women veterans suffering from ptsd or military sexual trauma raised raised and donated five thousand dollars to the denton county veterans coalition to pay for rent homeless women veterans and establish a she served to program to honor women veterans of a senior age who served in vietnam korea or world war ii now therefore i gerard hutzpeth mayor pro tem for chris watts mayor of the city of denton texas with sincere and warm appreciation for women veterans of america chapter 48 formally convey in permanent manner by reading this proclamation into the official minutes of the city of denton and forward them a true copy thereof be it therefore resolved that the city of denton on this date the 10th day of november 2020 does hereby officially and sincerely extend its appreciation to the women veterans of america chapter 48 and i'll briefly say my daughter serves in the army so i sure appreciate you all that you do so and then yes so thank you very much and then if you have words you'd like to share well i want first of all thank you very much for honoring our chapter we've worked very hard for the last four years this year we've not been able to accomplish the goals that we had hoped to obviously because of covid but we have accomplished a lot as you know or probably know the number one problem for women veterans is invisibility and it's situations like this that help us get the word out to other women in our area we have over 4 000 women in denton county and if we only have a hundred in our chapter then you know we just barely touched the surface so it's very important for us to continue to build our reputation so not only that we can help these women to transition but that we can also help our community with our veterans thank you thank you i believe we got some council members that want to make some comments as well council member briggs i want to thank you and your chapter for actually opening my eyes to all the issues and troubles you face especially invisibility and i do i did bring my little pink army person here that that i have which i i keep with me at all times i think it's a testament to see and i think we're supposed to have more of these coming out hopefully eventually but i appreciate all that you do in our community and i want to thank you and for your service and also i believe i saw something where you are you and your chapter are going to do thanksgiving baskets coming up we already have about 120 signed up but that's not just for women it's for all our veterans in the denton county area we'll be distributing those on november the 22nd over at the cboc in the parking lot they do need to be signed up previously and we had united way put that out monday as well but we have put it out to all the organizations around if there's any veteran that we can help with a full thanksgiving meal that basket is a complete meal including the utilities of and a roasting pan so it is a wonderful gift to help some of our vets who might need a little hand up well that's fantastic thank you council member armature yes i just wanted to say thank you so much for your service and by that i mean both your your past service and the military and your continued service on for for the public thank you so much you live a life of service and and the people you work with you so much good for the community thank you thank you it's my honor anybody else well i just want to take a moment just to say thank you so much for having the vision four years ago to really begin to expand the services rendered to all veterans including our women veterans who've served this country well and sacrificed oftentimes their lives and and their spouses and their families also have sacrificed while they've served so thank you for doing that and thank you for the project that you did it raised five thousand dollars to help veterans homelessness and veterans other issues affecting veterans because you know that's something that we're we're really focused on and we have a great goal to really end veteran homelessness here in denton uh so thank you so much for your effort and your work in helping us achieve that goal and for truly making us more aware of as you say the invisible veterans that sometimes we overlook and those are the women in our community who have served this nation so bravely and courageously so thank you so much for for bringing this to our attention again council member briggs um could you just if there is someone watching and they want to reach out is there a way that they can make contact with you do you have a website i do we have a website we have a facebook page and they can always reach me on my number um so let me give you those the website is women uh i'm sorry the facebook is women veterans of america dash denton the website is wva chapter 48.com and they can always reach me at 214-502-4154 and i hope they will reach out especially uh coming up on this uh sign up for thanksgiving baskets if anybody needs some help please call us and let's get you signed up to receive a thanksgiving basket and i don't want to say councilwoman briggs thank you so much for nominating us uh it is such an honor for us to be recognized uh here in the city of denton for what we've done but as i said it also helps our women and makes them feel proud that they stand up thank you so much thank you very much okay we've got well actually we've got uh one minute left till we have to hit our 6 30 meeting so we're just going to let's take a quick five minute break and we'll come back at uh at about 6 35 all right thank you all right welcome back everyone to this meeting of the denton city council at 6 36 pm on november the 10th 2020 we are now going to move through our public hearing portion of our agenda our first item is uh 4a s id s 20 dash 0001 excuse me hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving a specific use permit to allow for a multifamily dwelling use on approximately 9.19 acres site before we get started just a little bit of housekeeping uh typically i'm there at city hall which makes it fairly easy to facilitate the uh recognizing the callers coming in but i'm in contact with staff there so i understand we'll have callers for this this time so what we'll do is when we take the callers though i i'm not sure if they'll show up on my zoom screen is it will show that they're speaking um is there somebody there that can answer that a technical staff but if not we'll figure it out and and i'll keep the time starting out but if it becomes too difficult then i will pass that on to someone there at city hall so just uh just sort of a idea of the process okay so uh if we're ready to begin that presentation and i'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing and we'll have staff presentation we'll have questions of staff on the presentation then be we'll go into the public comment after staff questions on presentation thank you mayor um ramagita principal planner with development services first item of for your consideration is the sqp as you had made in the introduction hopefully you all can see my presentation again this is for s20 0001 mockingbird multifamily the site location shown here you can see it's outlined in yellow generally located west of mockingbird just south of mingo road the railroad tracks this should look familiar to you all because you have considered it last year july 16 2019 to be exact there was a specific use permit that was presented and council approved it with um with conditions and the reason why this item is being brought back in a new specific use permit is because the applicant has proposed a new site plan a new program for their development and because of our condition that the changes amendments can only increase or decrease by up to five percent in regards to the number of buildings the number of dwelling units parking spaces and similar um the development the um the requirement is that they need to submit for a new application for a specific use permit so what they're proposing uh the current request is still a single family i'm sorry a multifamily development uh for the subject site the number of dwelling units has increased slightly to 149 however the number of buildings has decreased they are also decreasing the number of parking spaces that is required and that is because their number of bedrooms has decreased in terms of three bedrooms and two bedrooms so they are proposing more one bedrooms and that's why you see a lower parking requirement for backup information background information the subject site is within the moderate residential future land use designation as you see here primarily this moderate residential is to house or to have development that are a little bit higher than single-family dwelling unit density provides a transition between the commercial uses down between the commercial uses that is and the low residential developments currently the property zone r7 residential seven as part of the 2019 den development code update what you see as far as the r7 is that there's a maximum height of 40 feet the building coverage is 65 percent they have new parking requirements there's landscaping and tree preservation requirements as well that are reflected under the 2019 development code so this chart here hopefully illustrates the difference between what was approved in 2019 and what is currently being proposed uh you can see that the obviously the zoning has changed the acreage has remained the same their number of buildings has dropped from 12 to 6 uh their square footage has increased primarily because of the number of buildings or the size of the buildings their number of bedrooms has increased by by 149 versus 118 mainly primarily because they are proposing more one bedrooms versus three bedroom units in regards to the number of bedrooms that has dropped from 343 to 202 again reflective of the number of one bedrooms proposed again as a result the number of parking requirement required is much less 448 was originally proposed now they are providing 250 and that require reduction then equates to greater landscape area greater tree canopy coverage opportunity as well as the number of preservation of trees as well as part of this development to help illustrate that chart you can see from what is currently approved there are more buildings taking up more of impervious areas more parking providing less space for open space and tree preservation or tree canopy coverage the proposed sqp site plan that you see here on the right you can see there are larger buildings more condensed and the number of open spaces have increased and again just by by looking at this comparison you can see that the site plan that's being proposed has more open space than what was originally approved just going to go through these these particular site plans quickly the minimum setback for the r7 is 10 feet front yard side yard is five and then the rear yard is 10 and again as mentioned earlier the building garbage is a maximum of 65 they are within that maximum and again the minimum parking required per the number of bedrooms proposed is 250 and they meet that requirement landscaping which is a big change from what was originally approved or currently approved you see the list there they meet all of the requirements under the landscaping section of the development code they have the tree canopy requirements the minimum landscape area also the minimum open space area as well as part of their development the tree minimum the minimum tree preservation is also met they are required to provide preservation of 30 percent of heritage and quality trees and by their tree survey that they've submitted they meet those that requirement so therefore they meet the tree preservation requirement there are approval criteria for all applicable applications the list that you see here apply to all of them i won't go through all of the list i just wanted to highlight the three that's in bold is the proposed sup consistent with the comprehensive plan staff feels it does meet the comprehensive plan goals and actions and policies does the proposed sup minimize adverse impacts on surrounding property by way of analysis that criteria has been met and does the area provide adequate public service and facilities the area does meet all of the requirements in regard in regards to public utilities services and facilities the development code also has approval criteria for specific use permits some of what you see here very similar to what you saw in what was applied for all applications again compatible with surrounding areas minimal impacts to not only the current area but also future development in the area meets all other standards of the ddc and provides adequate facilities for the development and again the comprehensive plan as we discussed earlier and that the sup does not adversely impact the health safety and welfare of the citizens of them wanted just to give you a quick area a description of the area that is again the site is outlined here in red these are the neighborhoods within the area that is south of the railroad tracks you see that there are single-family residential residential developments to the south and to the southeast the major roadways in particular are mockingbird and mingo hardraw is also on the southern portion of this exhibit and then university to the north and then looped way further east the classification for mingo is a secondary arterial for mockingbird and old north as it extends further north is a collector roadway and just like i want to make mention that these roadways are currently not built to their classification as a secondary or collector roadway again part of the sup analysis we looked at again the comprehensive plan the land use element specifically is it compatible with this surrounding area does it is there a capacity for adequate public service and facilities there was a tia done a traffic impact analysis after the impact analysis was concluded or completed there were mitigation measures required and those were in terms of two right turn lanes that is part of their development and they are going to do so they're going to provide those two right turn lanes a flood study was also conducted for the area and for the development and per the the review no adverse impact was concluded per that flood study and again wanted to make sure that we the staff looked at the site plan and the landscape plan and all of the standards that comply or apply to the site does comply and therefore staff has reviewed it and made sure that it's consistent with the development code notification requirements we did send out notification requirements to property owners within 200 feet 28 to the exact 83 were sent to property residents and owners within 500 feet as of this afternoon or this evening staff has only received one in opposition response that is to the public hearing notice there were two signs posted as part of this proposed new current sup so the applicant had to post new signs for this application again and also they also held a neighborhood meeting for their new proposed site they wanted to hear and get input from the community so again on july 16th and july 20th the applicant held two virtual neighborhood meetings with that with the compliance with the development code as well as the approval criteria under the section of the development code staff recommends approval with the following condition and that these conditions are very similar to what was approved with the original sup number one speaks primarily to the preliminary site plan and landscape plan that those two plans will be part of the ordinance and will be subject to being the approval would be part of it and therefore if any change to the site plan or landscape plan they would need to apply for a new site new specific plan specific use permit that is also the same requirement that the applicant has the ability to change or amend their site plan slightly again up to five percent also carries forward and the numbers of buildings the number of dwelling units in the number of parking spaces has been updated to reflect their new proposed site plan that concludes my presentation i'll be happy to stand for any questions the applicant is hopefully online they also have a presentation if you would like to entertain okay all right any questions for council member davis um ron just for my kind of lay comparison between the old kind of aerial concept plan that you showed us on on one side side by side with the new proposal it appears that they're preserving more trees i know they'd be fine with the tree code under under either the old sup or this one but it looks like they're preserving more with the new sup because up in the i guess northeast corner of the property more trees are able to stay in place is that true and then also are those quality trees or the big stand of sugar berries or something can you kind of help us understand uh what's going on there um sure with preservation versus mitigation under each sup sure yes you're absolutely correct because of the site layout of the new buildings they've pulled them away from the railroad tracks that area to the north along the railroad tracks will be preserved i unfortunately i don't have the exact numbers for quality versus heritage tree but i do know that the area will preserve more trees because of the new site layout as far as mitigation they meet their requirements for tree preservation so and they're also planting a lot more trees to meet the tree canopy coverage so at this moment there is no tree mitigation but they do meet their tree preservation requirements okay all right who else all right then what we will do is we will go ahead and take the public caller and we'll wait for them to get on the phone patrick yeah they're they're calling they're trying to get a hold of the person now patrick if you can unmute yourself who's patrick patrick is the representative for the the property owner oh okay well we're taking public comment with the yeah we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and take the caller first yeah okay yes caller are you on the line yes i am this is patrick oh oh i'm sorry patrick if you'll hold on just a second we've got a we've got the public calling uh yes caller if you'll go ahead and uh i'm mayor chris watson you're on with the uh dent city council and the public hearing portion of our agenda and uh so you're here to speak on this agenda item once you state your name and address i'll go ahead and start your time and you have four minutes to speak all right thank you you're welcome you may you may start okay my name is nancy carson i live over uh on oakshire which is uh near the apartments in the area that we're talking about and one thing i wanted to bring up that i haven't heard anyone discuss is noise induced hearing loss and um your child's inner ear can be damaged if he or she is around extremely loud noises or around noises for long periods of time this is called noise induced hearing loss uh so children are affected by this but adults can be also normal conversation is 60 decimals regularly being around noise that is more than 85 decimals can cause hearing loss now we're right there next to the railroad tracks and according to the builders um traffic study they said that there were about 30 trains a day that came by there and trains are required by the federal law to have horns of a minimum of 96 decibels and not more than 110 so you see those the trains and that's within 100 feet from the from the train horns so you see those train horns could be uh could jeopardize a child's hearing then i wanted to uh talk about the uh plat itself i didn't care for the one that we saw last time last year however i think it was a big improvement over what we're looking at now i would like to point out to the builder that originally the council had said no three-story buildings and i just want that to be understood and expressed tonight so that the builders won't come back and decide they're going to add another story here or there on buildings i also would like to point out that this property is uh the four sides of it one of them's the railroad track which is next to a two lane road with no shoulder just a drop off and mockingbird itself is a very small two lane road with no shoulder and a drop off the other side of the property is a drainage ditch and then on the other side of that drainage ditch is the backyard of the family homes in bel air north subdivision the other side of the property has a roofing business and then it looks like an auto repair or some kind of auto servicing but actually it looks more like a auto junkyard so it's pretty undesirable across the street from mockingbird there are two slum-looking living quarters and uh so you know the whole the whole area every side of it is undesirable uh ma'am ma'am you're you're at your ma'am yes you're at your four minutes okay all right well thank you for calling in all right thank you yes and i don't show record that we have uh any more callers at this time so uh i believe the applicant you said is on the line and so certainly would entertain uh any comments from and the applicant gets uh and i'm not going to be keeping the applicant's time unless y'all want me to what what does the applicant get is it 10 minutes or 20 10 minutes unless there's more speakers 10 minutes 10 minutes okay i can i can keep that time yeah so is the applicant on i am my name is patrick philson can you hear me yes patrick go ahead i'm sorry to interrupt you the first time when you came on i apologize for that no no problem at all we're going to work through this and i certainly won't need 10 minutes here um like i said my name is patrick philson i'm with kirkman engineering i'm representing the owner and developer of this property tonight they are also on the line they'll be available for questions at the end of this deal as well um my address is 5200 state highway 121 in colleyville texas and i think ron really hit all the high points here and you know my video is a little bit behind so i will have a difficult time running through a presentation but i certainly don't think it's necessary and i think what's really necessary is taking a look at that um what we are calling before and after um the the originally approved sup and the new proposed sup layout rendering that we put together um really paints the the picture that that we're and the reason why we're back here tonight we're we're back here tonight asking for another sup really specifically um because we feel like we've got a better product to present to you and we've gone up in in units slightly we've but we've reduced the number of parkings we reduced the number of bedrooms and we we've brought you a significantly better better product um and so really we're here tonight yeah so the video is caught up now that the comparison slide that we're looking at now is exactly what i'm talking about i think you could see here just just the layout is certainly more palatable where we've got far more open space just an overall better product the amenity spaces and the open space between the buildings is really amenitized and and provides a much more communal open space that can be used by everyone in the facility um we we've had very few little opposition everyone we've talked to um in our neighborhood meetings was really positive and really appreciated the changes we've been we've made um and so we're and the planning and zoning commission felt similar we're really here tonight to uh to answer any questions and if you've got any questions for me i'm happy to answer them we'll we'll call that kind of where it is but um and i'll do my best to to get you the information that you need mayor i think you're muted thank you ron uh uh thank you patrick uh councilmember briggs i believe you had a question yeah i'm curious about the uh units that uh back up to the homes are the balconies on the the back facing those homes or are they on the opposite side the uh the balconies will actually face the west and the east they won't face directly south that makes sense okay okay all right anybody else yes councilmember melzer i did appreciate uh you know in preparation the improvement in the layout uh i don't know if you heard that previous caller how do you mitigate for 30 trains a day is there anything you can do well i think um it we can't reroute the trains or we can't avoid the trains we can't have the trains be any quieter than what they are but what we can do is preserve trees and create that barrier between the the units and uh the train tracks and i think that that the tree canopy that's there that's mature that's existing today will be our biggest advocate in producing will be our biggest advocate in producing that noise and and noise pollution that will travel into the apartment complex go ahead no no go ahead i i'm just just to be i'm just to be clear i don't know what the whole train discussion was about anyway because the trains we the city has no authority over the trains you have no authority over the trains i'm not no this isn't this isn't this isn't aimed towards you councilmember melzer in fact my my understanding is uh it could be possible that the presence of the buildings up against the train track may deflect some of that sound out to the north which may mitigate some of that uh than if there was no structure there whatsoever i mean i'm not a sound engineer but we've heard people make that argument here before so i'm sorry to interrupt your melzer councilmember melzer it's not about you i just i don't i didn't really understand that yeah yeah and i was just more coming from the point of view of uh you know attracting attracting tenants but i i take your point that probably mitigate the sound for people on the other side of it oh yes well look i mean i have seen people build multifamily single family there's a house down the road from me literally along the back fence is the railroad track and when that house went up for sale it sold in about a month so and it's right at a crossing it's literally right at a crossing so the train is blown so i understand you know that might not be something i'd want to do but for some people it's not that it's not that big issue so okay any other questions for patrick i really do appreciate patrick and city staff and also the neighbors because this is really i think how developments should really go if you were to look at it from the standpoint of to where the stakeholders are involved and it's a win-win people come together not for a zero-sum game but how can we get our interests met and also allow the other stakeholders to have their interests met as well and you know the first presentation met with some resistance and the applicant went back talked with the neighbors talked with staff came up with something that they've admittedly patrick you've said is a better plan which means it's probably a better plan for the owners and and isn't that just the way the process should work that sometimes when you get together and talk about interests you can create something that's more valuable for everybody after that process than in the beginning so i really do appreciate you doing that and and the neighbors involved and staff involved as well any other questions or comments uh we don't have any other public speakers so the chair would entertain council member armature well i had a question for staff actually about um the train noise issue because we do have quiet zones in the city and um i'm wondering if there is um council member armature i just want to make sure that we're on posting on that if it's i understand i understand but i understand we're not voting on that now but um i'm just responding to what you were mentioning before but there's nothing that we can do about that i know that in other cases we've made quiet zone so wouldn't that be um you know why why couldn't that be a possibility in the future not in this vote tonight but for this particular area would that okay council member mr city manager are we still on posting with this particular agenda item or i mean i'm responding to a caller and you mentioned it so no i just mentioned i wasn't mentioning i was mentioning it as far as the question regarding the people who are moving into the unit all right that was council member that was council member melser's company the question still stands to the city attorney are quite discussions of quiet zones in the future part of this agenda item it's not i was not i was not i was not discussing why there's a separate process for that that you know the staff can certainly provide it in a status report in the future on how that process works if that's uh acceptable to council member harman for now that's starting to stray off topic okay all right all right anybody else council member briggs yeah so i have there's i really like that they reduce the parking i think that's fantastic i like that there's more open space that's really great um when this came before us before i i voted against it because of the location that it was and the traffic that it was going to cause there um at the intersection of me it's just a very odd um place to get in and out of um is that i know that the we talked about the traffic and it was going to be fine but has anybody talked about about this getting in and out of of this area um easily it's just an odd an odd place to get in at in and out of are you saying regardless of this development or because of this development well because of this development it's already there like there's already issues there at the intersection and it's a small road i drive on it every day adding this much i mean i know that we heard it wouldn't cause any issues but i'm just thinking about about the traffic there and that getting in and out of the location okay could we put the could could we put the before and after back up because i think it this might help me understand the the thrust of your question well i think oh after it the look i'm talking about the road here on mingo that's right okay you're talking about the intersection that someone's circling right there yes okay um now is i guess my question is is this another was that another exit entrance and egress and ingress on the west side could we pull the slide back up that little circular road here on the on the west side go to the west right right there what is that no that's that's uh that wasn't uh access at one point but that's not part of the development okay so this is not an additional access correct okay all right so the access to this is totally off of mingo uh road right there just mockingbird i'm sorry yeah mockingbird okay all right okay all right thank you so has uh has the engineers or staff i mean is it just a traffic study report stating that intersection and the lack of impact is that what i mean because councilmember briggs asked i mean other than that has there been any discussion about this intersection i guess there's two answers to that the traffic impact analysis um concludes that there's not going to have any material impact on that particular intersection on the other side of that it's really not the developer's issue it's the city's um quite some time ago there was a a project that was discussed in one of the past bond packages about upgrading redel road i'm sorry redel and mingo and that project was not moved forward on because they undershot the budget so badly so what what is going on at this point is i've asked our traffic our city engineer to have a concept design done from essentially bel to university and then also including that portion of redel from mingo to university and have plans in place so we can eventually move forward and upgrade the intersection at mockingbird the intersection of bel redel and work our way up but this is really a city issue the project's going to be so significant enough that it's probably going to take us three to four budget years to get it done and budgeted for because it's not currently in a bond package and we're estimating it to be a substantial project but this is really right now this project doesn't tip the scales for the intersection the roadway project is falling outside of our current bond elections it's something that we need to talk to the council about uh in an upcoming budget year but we need to get you more data okay all right all right good okay any other comments or questions yes councilmember davis um i'm about to move approval of project but i just want to point out for any residents who are still listening they have the sup in place now for the old project they can build it right now under the old sup what we're looking at today is a much superior design it's a much smaller footprint much less permeable surface and it saves a bunch more trees and it just looks like a much nicer place to live or live next to so i'm going to move approval of the new sup the requested sup with staff's uh approved condition excuse me recommended conditions i do have one question the caller had mentioned a prohibition against three stories uh is that um i didn't see a three-story proposal here so is that my understanding if mr filson is still listening that these are all two-story buildings yeah mr mayor i'm i'm still online and you are correct the site plan and the proposal we've got before days are two story or one story buildings okay and i and i believe part of the ordinance states that that site plan will be uh that the development will be consistent with that site plan so to come in and put a third star this is really directed to you ron so to come in and they present a site plan with three stories that'd be a no-go is that correct um yes they the site plan itself has the the number bill or the height or the number stories on the site plan table and that's what's being approved okay thank you will be part of the ordinance okay sorry councilmember davis i just wanted to get that clarity based upon the caller's uh comment councilmember briggs yeah i'm curious if the the one um the the one homeowner that we had against is the same person do we know that um sent a form in is that the same person or is that someone different no no ma'am that was a different person okay all right anybody else you have a motion uh chair would entertain a second councilmember ryan i'll second all right we've got a motion in a second councilman i mean mayor protem just on a discussion component uh i i was very vocal and and concerned about that intersection um and sat down and with staff and looked further into the numbers i think the problem i'm having here is it's really a a victimless crime because the residents on the back side there didn't uh raise concerns this time either and that's kind of my um i'm using that as a as some sort of a guiding light uh it is i i don't think it fits well i think we need to find the money for mingo before we add two problems uh near mingo but i take the city manager's point that just because we're behind doesn't mean uh this doesn't fit well uh with the the number of cars and traffic generation again looked into that in in great detail uh so i will listen to the if there's any additional discussion and make a decision but i uh i do like going from the what at 40 to 70 around numbers uh tree preservation um and yes mayor watch you're spot on i've been in denton bible church which is further away and probably built more soundly and you still hear the train in there so there's no mitigation uh i i appreciate the the representatives talking about the trees but that's that's not significant uh to dampen that that amount of sound that's that's not a real thing to me uh but um again there's a market for it and if they believe and so again i'll be interested to see if there's any other thoughts and then make a decision well and let me just add uh about that intersection i mean i you know i'm familiar with the intersection do i drive over there all the time no but we require in these type of developments a traffic impact analysis performed by an engineering firm whose expertise and specialty is to help us understand what the impact is on our roadways based upon proposed development and the impact analysis said you know it's going to have minimal impact on it so uh i think that at least for me i i rely upon those expert reports that we require and to help us make that decision so i appreciate your comments all right so we have a motion which was from uh council member ryan and a second from council member no the motion was from davis and the second was from council member ryan any other discussion council member ryan how say you aye uh council member davis aye council member briggs no council member melzer aye council member armature i'm really torn um i think this is a good com a good apartment complex i'm very concerned about the noise issue the trains are loud um with the mitigation effort with us being able to discuss it we were able to even discuss it i'll be okay with that i think there's a red flag that we can't discuss it so i'm going to very sadly vote no because i think it's much improved and would be a good place for a a um apartment complex i look forward to seeing this area built up but i will vote no because we're not allowed to talk about noise that's that that is that is an that's your that's your right council member armature but this apartment developer can do nothing absolutely nothing to mitigate the sounds of the trains we can we can if you want to if you want to vote no on something for somebody that they have no control over that's certainly you're right but but so i'm not gonna i'm gonna just well okay council member armature all right uh who's left mayor protem yes sir i'll vote aye uh mayor watts is an aye we've got a it goes passes five to two all right we'll move on to agenda item 4b which is idzc 120-0001c let's take a five minute break we're going to come back at 7 22 okay all right we're back with the dent city council on november 10th 2020 it is 7 22 we are on our public hearings portion of the agenda we're on agenda item 4b which is zc 120-0001c which is hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton regarding a change in the zoning district and use classification from suburban corridor to public facilities thank you mayor uh principal planner with development services i'll be making this presentation pull up my presentation and we can get started again as as mentioned in the introduction this is a property um that is um titled loop 280 property uh the presentation will be made by myself as well as danny shaw uh community uh services manager for the city of denton it is called a loop 280 project because it's on loop 28 the aerial that you see here shows where it is located outlined in yellow the request is to go from suburban corridor sc to public facilities it's approximately 5.1 acres and currently it is an existing commercial building with associated parking lot the slide here shows what it is currently zoned sc and what is proposed to be zoned pf and you can see from the map on the right the pf would make the entire block blue which is again zoned pf public facilities as a part of our analysis we look at approval criteria for all applicable applications and again this is one of them again i won't read all read all of the criteria for approval or of approval but just highlight again the three that you see here the consistency to comprehensive plan the minimizing adverse impacts of surrounding property and also that it provides adequate public service and facilities in addition there is a zoning map amendment approval criteria and as you can see here the list that you have here is that is it consistent with the future land use map staff feels that it is being along major arterials such as loop 288 there are no small area plans in the area the purpose statement for the proposed zoning meets and it's consistent what is of what is being proposed there was no significant changes or will be significant changes other than the site itself has been vacant and underutilized and the property is currently now owned by the city of denton and hopefully will be used for whatever is allowed under the zoning district again if it is pf or if it is sc as far as the intensity adverse impact the area or the proposed site faces loop 288 there is no anticipated adverse impact to surrounding neighborhoods or surrounding properties public facilities are within the right away and within close proximity and would be adequately serving the site and this zoning district was not an error it was part of the update to the 2019 development code which transitioned it into sc against suburban corridor looking at how it is consistent with comprehensive comprehensive plan again loop 288 is a primary arterial and zoning pf would be compatible for that area the proposed use of the building something that will facilitate the opportunity to help additional programs for dense community communities in need again we talked about if the building currently not being utilized or underutilized the redevelopment of this site would be a positive thing for the city and hopefully for the citizens and last all of the development standards and setback requirements and other requirements all will be met part of this proposed development and project i want to talk a little bit about what's surrounding the property as you can see the the site again on shown on the right there is a public facility to the north currently it is undeveloped it was used prior prior as a staging area that is currently not there any longer the to the west is an electric substation owned by dme that borders the provides a border that is to the neighborhood to the west to the south is undeveloped is currently zone r7 and to the east is a planned development mixed use neighborhood as well as some undeveloped land along or on the other side of loop 28 audra meadows is the nearest neighborhood to the west we also have prominent square across loop 28 on the other side another residential development looking at the site and where it is and how it's situated related to some vicinities the shot that you see here the photo is showing towards the west towards the electric substation from loop 28 what you see here is again towards the substation and towards the neighborhood to the west i wanted to illustrate that there is a fence or there are some areas between the substation and the residential neighborhood to the west the area again between the proposed site and the neighborhood is a is a electric substation and does have some open space as well this slide here illustrates the number of allowed uses under the public facility zoning district the highlighted uses are part of what is being considered or being proposed community service homeless shelter as well as an administrative professional and government office so part of this zoning district would if it were to be approved would allow these uses again with within the pf i'm now going to turn it over to danny shaw she is the again community service manager she has a little bit more information on what is being proposed as part of the the new use of the building so if we have danny on the line if she can unmute and take over the presentation yes ron i'm here can you hear me yes thank you danny shaw community services when we talk about the proposed use for this really this facility is the next step in support of our housing crisis response system related to our overall community vision to make homelessness rare brief and non-recurring what we're looking at in the proposed project would be to provide public services for people in need of emergency assistance because of the effects of asset poverty including those experiencing and at risk of homelessness we expect that there'll be a comprehensive set of supportive services to address economic security food security housing stability for people at risk of homelessness and also those emergency assistance assistance items for people experiencing literal homelessness i think what we're looking at are services that will include things like housing focused case management food hygiene assistance such as showers and laundry health care mental health care behavioral health care education and job training assistance assistance with transportation access and and those other emergency systems items specific to vulnerable populations as well as a as a 24 hour seven day a week facility it will essentially be a safe place for people to be during the day a place to access vital housing and supportive services and really provide access to overnight emergency and enhanced shelter services for people who are unhoused thank you danny then we'll be back in a little bit as we talk about some of the public outreach efforts that staff conducted for this project staff did send out notices as required per the development code there were approximately six public hearing notices sent to property owners within 200 feet again per the development code we also sent out courtesy notices to property owners and residents within a thousand feet we recognized that within the 500 feet area that you see in blue there were no residents or any other property owners outside of what was already sent to the folks with internal feed so staff decided to extend that public outreach to folks up to a thousand feet of the subject site and you can see that area is outlined in yellow i'm sorry purple and we did receive responses from these folks by email or phone call and i tried to note them on this illustration we also reached out to apart the sorry apartment complex to the south further south along loop 28 as it's shown off just off this the the aerial here as of this afternoon or this evening staff has received one opposition this person owns this particular property here and you can see it's within partly within the turning foot buffer so again as of this evening only one person submitted a response in opposition of the public hearing notice on june 4th this summer staff conducted a virtual neighborhood meeting and i'm going to turn it back over to danny to kind of talk about what was discussed and how staff responded thanks ron as you said we did host a neighborhood meeting and invited the community to come in and comment on the zoning change request and on the proposed uses the comments that we heard from the folks who were who joined us on the virtual call included concerns over declining property values increasing crime and the safety of residents there were also questions about how the city would could prevent walking traffic through the neighborhood and how the city might prevent people from living unsheltered in the area around the facility and adjacent to the neighbors at the time staff were also asked to share if there were any other locations that may have been considered for this project and during that virtual meeting we affirmed that the city would not allow camping around the facility we did provide an overview of some initial planning that we had started around fencing lighting and other considerations that would help contain the activities within the property boundaries we talked about the steps we had already taken in engaging with the transportation and mobility planning to to plan for how people may get to the facility and exit the facility including sidewalk access there is a bus stop in front of the building and then our considerations about how mobility may be different with the 24/7 facility as compared to the types of facilities we have now that open and close at certain time we also discussed at that point some generalizations in our plan for our what we've been calling our good neighbor expectations and what our commitment will be to ongoing neighborhood engagement throughout the design and construction process with the neighboring community as we got closer to the october 7th planning and zoning meeting staff also provided a letter to remind the neighborhood of the upcoming pnz meeting where the commission was going to be considering the zoning change request and we included some additional information in response to the comments we received and we shared some more of our plans as the project moves forward i believe council has that letter in backup that was shared with those folks and then i don't know if you want to go into the next slide ron just to go in a little bit more detail about what those good neighbor practices and expectations are starting to shape up to be the city's currently developing a management agreement which will cover some contractual requirements for the operation of the facility including what i said we are earlier that we're calling our good neighbor practices and expectations and that will set out a number of requirements and expectations for the non-profit to establish and maintain positive relationships with the neighbors and preserve the safety and well-being of all the neighborhoods some of these include staff being expected to inspect the property boundaries daily and engage people in services who might not be accessing the facility the way it's intended and then to require coordination with our police resources like the mental health unit and the homeless outreach team so that anyone found in the area they will first be expected to engage with services and they will not be allowed to to be within the set boundaries unless they are accessing the facility services and then also setting our expectations for our ongoing engagement with the neighborhood and and with the non-profit that we engage for this to do regular communication and schedule neighborhood meetings to maintain that ongoing relationship with the neighborhood as the project grows and evolves thank you danny just to recap a little bit on what happened at pnz the pnz was held on october 7th this year the staff did receive 49 virtual white cards 34 were in support 15 were in opposition of the rezoning request seven callers called in during the planning zoning commission and three were in support and four were in opposition with the staff analysis and with the public outreach efforts and understanding of what this project is and as well as the rezoning specifically staff is recommending approval of this as it meets the criteria of section 245e and 272d the planning zoning commission also recommends approval seven zero of this rezoning request with that staff will stand for questions all right i'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing so the public hearing is now open to any questions for staff council member briggs well i guess i have a a bigger question so once this is passed then the space can be occupied as the shelter and food center is it okay for us to discuss the things that we saw in the community neighborhood good community neighbor discussion and the issues that were brought up from the neighborhood even though it's not about the zoning it's about the actual um shelter i believe that's a question for the city attorney city attorney bill those issues regarding the uses and so i mean what's going on inside the facility so yes it's it really depends on how much those issues will impact the overall use of the entire facility as this impacts the surrounding neighbors so if if your questions are going in that direction then it's permissible okay okay well my my questions i guess i can just start mayor and then if it's okay then yes and sure if not then yeah some if we think it's out of posting somebody will probably speak up or at least ask the question okay um well because the the issues and i think that were shared also in the community meeting are crime loitering in encampments so my question is do we know or have an idea about the occupancy of the building or what it would be for individuals like total who were there for um eating and shelter councilmember riggs all that will probably be covered in the design process by the architect so we won't definitively have that at this point it's a shell so not quite sure we could give you estimates based on those receiving services currently at the different facilities but those would just be based on as those those facilities exist and not the size of this one okay and so on the in the good neighborly program so you talked about crime is there a way to ensure that there are reports run for for crime in the area yes and the police department has already made improvements in their new system which is new any longer to track those calls that are related to homelessness and homelessness impacts so we would be able to track that i think we would work with them certainly to make sure that those are tracked okay in the dcta line that's outside um that's great for the public transportation um will there be free access for the individuals using that shelter to go anywhere or will they have to um pay for it certainly that will be a programmatic thing that we will look at as well as opportunities to shuttle between that facility and the serve a facility that's to the south so certainly we'll look at dcta for options for how to allow people to to receive transportation free or reduced okay thank you um and may i may i keep going or sure okay and so also it was mentioned lighting and fencing so would the which would i think you said something like establish boundaries so the fence would establish boundaries around the facility is that correct yeah the goal would be to look at what type of fencing would give a strong uh a strong uh boundary for the facility itself but when i talk about the good neighbor boundaries we're also talking about setting about an informal boundary that will be evaluated to ensure that there's no activity in that boundary as well okay and that's probably because you um might not be able to be answered yet but i'm curious because it is a a um facility that it's a 24 hour a day facility is it come and go 24 hours a day or will there be certain times where um individuals just the the doors are locked and you can't come in or or leave and again that would be a programmatic question but i think those are those are recommendations that are under consideration so that there's not 24-hour traffic to and from unless it's an emergency say the police department needed to drop someone off overnight yeah if we could if we could stay away from the i don't think operational components are part of this so if we could try to make sure that because number one i don't think number one we're not going to be running the shelter it's going to be someone else so um those are all things to be figured out i think in the future and certainly the city can have some input into that but um and and honestly i think all of these questions and all these concerns from the neighbors we were aware and could pretty much implicitly understand that given that when we instructed staff to go by this building so that we can put in a homeless shelter so um i mean if we i mean these are all great questions and i think the city can do all it can to mitigate it but i'll i'll hold my comments i'm sorry councilmember riggs for interrupting go ahead i just wanted to make sure we weren't getting out of posting well all right correct i know and but there are real concerns by homeowners that are in the neighborhood and in the area and if there's some answer that would alleviate some of those concerns with the passage of this um zoning i wanted to make sure and get those out into the public you mean as far as a condition on the zoning um no just as far as the agreement that's forthcoming or or requirements or even the the fencing or the lighting any anything like that that was mentioned in the in the community uh meeting okay all right okay anything else no i'm good for now okay i thought i saw another hand did i see another hand councilmemorometer is that a hand or is that i mean okay all right that's what you usually do when you want to raise your hand you'll put it up by your shoulder so i was just anticipating you to raise your hand all right anybody else before we take i don't believe we had any public callers but we did have i believe it was three callers on our online i just want to verify it before i don't get it wrong i believe it was two in support and one in opposition but if you'll just give me one moment to double check that we did have three that commented via the online form excuse me two were four and one was against uh and i believe i did open the public hearing so are there any mayor pro team go ahead i do have a question for staff but if you want to close the public hearing first so you want to should i yeah i don't i don't think we have any other callers or people commenting so yes okay i'll close the i'll close the public hearing at this time thank you um danny i have a few questions for you and then i'll save my comments after the motion in the second um i i heard you touch on it briefly but want to make sure i understand it for anyone to participate in the day center are the wraparound services required or when are the wraparound services required so uh mayor pro tem just like with council member briggs i think we're getting into operational component of this of the of the actual facility which i believe i remember sort of hearing from the city attorney that that might be a little bit off posting so i wanted to to check in with the city attorney on that okay well then okay let me let me reread what we're let me reread then because maybe i'm because here's here's my how it's managed be it a fence be it what you know the how the property's managed is going to guide my decision so i mean i'm happy just to vote no uh because i don't know and i'm not going to sign on for something that that i don't understand how it's managed because that that's the that's the key element for me if if we're so for example for example let me one one one example then you can speak directly to it staff said we're going to manage the outside of the the property we're going to make sure no one lives on the outside of the property that to me is similar so now i'll let you speak to to that i'm just i'm sort of just shocked i'll be honest with you i mean not not with your comments but just this discussion in general because we've been talking about this facility for months we've it's been in the paper this is what we're going to do and i'm not discounting the issues and the questions but i think these should have been the questions that came up when we before we told staff to go pay three million dollars for this building so i mean we can vote no to rezone this and then we're going to have a building for three million dollars that we're not going to know what to do with so if the city attorney says that based upon and that's a good that's a good persuasive argument mayor pro tem that that some of these questions are palatable for your decision on the zoning and i'll let the city attorney weigh in on that but so i mean it doesn't matter to me i'm just saying that if that's fine if we don't want to rezone this well we've got us a building that is certainly not going to be used for the intended purposes that we instruct us to have to go pay three million dollars for so whatever this council wants to do so mr city attorney if you would sort of weigh in on mayor pro tem's kind of discussion that his questions really go to the heart of his decision making process for this rezoning and i see the hands up so we're going to get to you guys to this rezoning and i can certainly understand that there's a lot of questions regarding how this this facility is going to be operated how it's going to be managed to ensure safety and these types of issues you know once we start going down that that route we're getting away from the actual zoning we're trying to determine whether this particular use is compatible in this area as under the request of rezoning and what are the adverse impacts that this particular use may have on surrounding properties that's more in a nutshell of what we're looking at tonight how it's going to be operated who's going to be living there how many people are going to be living there what is the security internally those are starting to stay straight away from the actual rezoning itself if those questions are very important to the decisions that you all make i mean nothing prohibits the council from postponing this item and if they're sufficient for a future day in which you know management and the community or danny come forward with some type of plan of how they plan to manage which would be a separate work session item on the same day you can certainly do that and that may answer a lot of your questions that may help you in your decision tonight or in the future on the zoning item but once we start going on that path and we walk away from the actual what's before you is yeah this is the appropriate zoning okay well that's a that's a very good explanation and i think recommendation too as well i really do appreciate that thank you for for those comments council member davis and council member armature thank you mayor i'm a little perplexed by the conversation as well and um i think your comments are are welcome that you know we should have been talking about some of this before some of this we did talk about before when we purchased the land some of this was part of the conversation before how's the neighborhood going to react to this kind of use what are we going to do to mitigate that but here's what i think makes the conversation even more asinine even if we rezone it we will still be the owners we will still be the landlords so if we lease the facility to someone we can put whatever restrictions we choose to and danny said that we have contractual arrangements that we will make in the future we can put whatever whatever restrictions we want to if we think the facility needs a fence then we can vote ourselves a fence it's our property we can build it so we don't have to do any kind of zoning conditions it's all our decision later on down the road so i i'm going to move approval if the public hearing has been closed i think we rezone it and we manage it ourselves as the property owners and eventual landlords and we manage it through contractual arrangements and just being good property owners and good neighbors so i move approval okay councilmember armature and then councilmember melzer um i want to second that motion um i'm really excited about this project i'm strongly in favor of the rezoning but i want to um distance myself you know from the the um dismissal of these these questions uh about operations um because i believe that they do pertain to these kinds of you know quality of life and safety issues that are the kinds of issues that come up in zoning discussions um and so i believe you know for the sake of of transparency in the process even though yes we could have asked those questions before um i'm satisfied i don't have questions on these areas but it's important to me that my colleagues questions um on these areas get answered uh and that they be able to voice them even if i disagree i think it's important for public trust so that people can see we we did this the right way we did it transparently so i'm very proud of this project and excited about it but i i would like to see those questions answered uh councilmember melzer yeah i was um i was uh prepared to move approval or second approval or vote in favor of approval for the reasons expressed that it's entirely under our control all of these issues uh and i think they're uh they're already being dealt with in a very responsive and thoughtful way and we can go even further than that uh and that is all controlled by us uh but you know uh having heard the suggestion from the city attorney that it's possible for us to deal with it all together uh i i think i think that would be a better way to go for the public to sort of not get it in dribs and drabs with the questions raised you know that when they see a vote you know that that could be in the same evening uh that we approve the zoning and we approve a sort of a an operating plan and i don't see that there's any rush unless i'm missing something i think there's any rush to do the zoning separately what's going to happen there if i could hear the the zoning is really it's it it opens up the actual negotiations with um the junction to start working on an agreement we don't have a contract in place to design yet because we've been waiting for the uh for the design so if we take that approach you're putting this back two or three months and you're moving this project back easily into 2022 right so i think it's a mistake right so um as council member um davis stated um you have and you've stated this as well council member melzer you have complete control over the design concept if you want more lighting if you want more you know fencing that whatever that the design contract is one way of handling it that will be written in with the expectations with whoever's going to operate it so you're going to have many opportunities to control the site how it's built screening the neighborhood concerns that sort of thing but we aren't bringing you contracts for anything until we know that we've got a zoning in place to rely on so if you do that you're moving us back into q1 and easily into 2022 well you i think you know that's not my intention i i do i just wanted i just wanted to kind of lay out though that there's lots of contracts lots of negotiations i i exactly understand your your issue but i just want everybody to understand the city attorney is absolutely correct but we've got a real uh chicken and the egg thing here and the thing that's really different with this versus any other zoning case you control every step of the way why is that the case that i mean i just help me understand why is it that we couldn't do everything we want to do with the junction uh whether we act on the zoning tonight or not and i mean tomorrow like why why would it change any conversation that we have because it's not as if we don't know you know that we can do the zoning later so why is that why is it so on the critical path you have multi agreements being worked out at one time right now there's agreements where we're asking them to give up rights we're asking for other parties to contribute to the project all of this it's a string that you pull and then all these other agreements come place you've probably got five or six different contracts that start getting worked on the minute the zoning goes into place and it all every one of those agreements is dependent on whether or not you approve first the design contract when we're done and then we get to the next steps but that's that's not something we can bring forward to you until the zoning is at least enabled all right okay then i'm we have a motion and a second and i'll be happy to vote in favor to enable the process to go forward council member breaks yes so i'm not looking to postpone the the item or you know not vote on it i just i i know that we started this process a long ago but i in that since that has happened i have talked with several homeowners and i have heard them and what their concerns are are valid and i wanted to open it up so that um they know they've been heard here and i didn't see that's why i asked ahead of time would it be okay if i asked these questions and so i appreciate those questions being answered i would like to know when the agreement is going to come back to council or that the agreement or design i heard that we have complete control so what is that process so that we can have an open conversation to to talk about those contracts when will the contract be coming back todd you're not muted so it would be a contract conversation so that's when that would be yeah we will have the uh we're going through the process right now to pre-qualify the design team we'll have something back to you in february we are currently working on four or five different contracts in order to even enable this project there's a couple with the county there's some with mk oc the design engineers that sort of thing so it's it's very uh it's very much intertwined i think the one thing we can promise you given the feedback i'm hearing from every single one of you is that when we get when we workshop the the building the contracts that sort of thing we can certainly nothing prohibits us from not having other public meetings to get input on the building design on what we're doing on the property that sort of thing we can absolutely do that i'm hearing that from all of you so uh we're happy to to do that but we need that we need to get the zoning in place before we start bringing new contracts and once once once we start working on design your questions can get answered mayor pro tem uh yes just want to just want to touch on um again i i i hear the city manager i hear you moving forward get it i was simply responding to what's in front of us so i'm going to sit quickly uh i'll make a suggestion maybe we need to look closer at our at our backup material as far as what we include to limit the discussion but i'll point you to page five where it says approval criteria applicable to all applications and it says minimize adverse impact surrounding property and then i'll direct you to slide number uh let me get there neighborhood meeting that's 15 it listed i'm not going to read them all but it lists a number of of concerns that are topical and then and so this is all in the backup that we would be prepared to discuss this in a neighborhood meeting response to community input i'll just point out right there good neighbor contract requirement establish maintain positive relationships blah blah blah before that though it talks about dcta which the city attorney would say is not allowed it talks about sidewalks that has nothing to do with the zoning uh and then it talks about a perimeter fence barriers uh lighting etc etc all has nothing to do with zoning all in the backup so that's my frustration and my consternation is it's everything that staff talked about it but we don't get to respond and that's frustrating to me okay all right anybody else okay all right we have a motion uh by councilmember davis and a second by councilmember armator for the approval of this public hearing agenda item which is uh we're just on b we're just on b 4b uh yes councilmember davis how say you aye councilmember armator big enthusiastic yes uh councilmember ryan aye councilmember briggs yes councilmember melser aye mayor protem aye mayor watson's aye motion carries seven zero we're moving on to agenda item agenda agenda item um 4c s20-0005 b hold a public hearing consider an ordinance of the city of dent texas approving a specific use to allow for a minor automotive repair use on approximately 0.201 acres of land generally located on the west side of south elm good morning mayor i'm sorry good evening mayor and members of council my name is sean jacobson assistant planner the planning department i'll be presenting item s20-0005 b i'm just going to start the powerpoint here all right so this item is a request for a specific use permit to permit a minor automotive repair use on approximately 201 acres in the mn district this site has had a wide range of uses in the past including automotive repair air conditioner repair legal office and auto sales but because of the current zoning it does require a specific use permit in order to have a minor automotive repair use at the site as you can see here it is an existing commercial building it has an existing opaque fence it would be providing the minimum required six parking spaces for the use the use would be a my apologies i apparently failed to share the screen so just repeating briefly you can see here actually you can see here this is the site plan provided by the applicant six parking spaces minimum this is proposed for an existing building with no changes proposed to the building there is currently an existing visible dumpster along the right of way that's proposed to be replaced with a rolling dumpster on casters that would be stored behind the existing fence the surrounding development is primarily commercial although there is duplex residential to the south and to the west as you know we have both general approval criteria for all development as well as specific approval criteria applicable to specific use permits we'll focus primarily on some key highlight issues one of the most important is compatibility with the surrounding area so this is located on a mixed use corridor with a variety of commercial and residential uses the proposed use as we discussed is similar to previous uses on the site it's located in an existing building that's been in the area for over 25 years neighborhood serving commercials such as minor automotive use is an important part of a mixed use area the surrounding property is zoned similarly and is all developed there's certainly potential for redevelopment in the area in this proposed use is not expected to limit that future redevelopment that may come it's also important to discuss how the site mitigates potential negative impacts of the use so one of those key potential negative impacts is noise in response to that all bays are designed to face away from the adjacent residential area and staff has also recommended and the applicant has agreed to a condition of approval that all work will be performed inside bays not outdoors in terms of mitigating visual and refuse area negative impacts use specific standard applies this use that storage of equipment parts supplies has to be indoor in addition staff has recommended conditions of approval that no wrecked or inoperable vehicles can be stored on site and also that the dumpster which is currently on site on screen along the right of way must will be replaced at the expense of the property owner with a wheeled dumpster that will be stored behind the fence except on the day when solid waste is scheduled to come pick it up and will be returned out of sight you can see here that's the location the current dumpster right along the right of way and adjacent to the residential next door so that would no longer be there it's also important to look at our future land use map and the compatibility of this use with it it's located properties within the downtown compatibility area that area is intended to provide compatibility between downtown adjacent residential and commercial uses in a scale form that's sensitive to the surrounding built context of course this building has been in the location for over 25 years it's a commercial use in a commercial building and this proposed specific use will be consistent with providing neighborhood serving commercial in a scale that fits the area it would be aligned with the idea of developing along corridors and also meets goal lu3 to strengthen commercial areas by facilitating non-residential adaptive reuse of commercial buildings that may currently be vacant which is the case with this building we also want to make sure that we have adequate public facilities to serve the use traffic is expected to be a morning peak of 11 trips evening 13 since it's located along a primary arterial and similar to previous uses it's expected that transportation can more than handle this proposed use solid waste can be serviced using the proposed dumpster on casters provided by the applicant water and wastewater service is already available for the site won't need to be changed in order to serve this use public outreach is of course very important to consider along with the newspaper ad and property posting we sent out both the 200 foot notices and 500 foot notices we did receive two letters in opposition both of which were included in your backup the applicant held a neighborhood zoom meeting one person attended expressed opposition related to noise and traffic that individual did also submit a letter which i noted is in your backup taking all of this into consideration the planning and zoning commission recommended approval seven zero with the following conditions as the proposed use meets our criteria for approval and those conditions are that the dumpster currently on the property shall be removed property owner shall provide at property owner's expense dumpster on casters of the same capacity as the current dumpster on site property owners should be responsible to maintain this dumpster in good working condition this dumpster shall be stored at all times out of public view behind the fence shown on exhibit b except on the one day per week when the dumpster may be rolled out for emptying by the city of dentin solid waste all work on vehicles will be conducted inside vehicle base shall not be performed outside and there shall be no storage of wrecked or inoperable cars on site i do want to note that the applicant is available and has provided a presentation is online and with that my presentation is concluded okay all right thank you so much i appreciate that are there any questions for staff at this at this point we still have not opened the public hearing but are there any questions for staff yes mayor pro tem hey shawn thank you very much question what was the discussion about tires being stored uh outside brought up or during the either planning and zoning or staff's analysis that question was not raised sir but that would not be permitted based on the use specific standards for this use okay thank you all right thank you mayor pro tem any other questions for staff all right i will now open the public hearing and it's been reported we have no callers that have called in and we also have not received at least what's being reported to me any one that's filled out a card on their on the online form stating any opposition or approval but we do note in the backup the official notices that are not official but the notices they're all official the notices that have been sent in that was presented by staff so is the does the applicant have a uh presentation or i do have the opkin's presentation okay all right lee on the phone yes i am good evening this is lee allison with allison engineering group uh hold on let me start your time lee hold on just a sec okay sorry no you're good that just means you want to get through it um well where's my clock here it is okay all right lee go ahead all right i believe shawn's going to help with a powerpoint slideshow yes he's got yes he's got it up all right i'm not seeing it on the screen yet but this is sup 2005 we did have a neighborhood meeting as shawn indicated on september 29th with one owner and member of the city and ourselves um you know that's the next slide shawn i'm not sure if we're tracking here i guess probably going to be a delay lee so okay uh and as a result of that we had the one neighbor attending we also have the written comments and the concerns that were raised had to do with noise traffic land use and sight appearance regarding noise primary concern of the tenants in the newly constructed duplex eight-bedroom duplex next door which is a very nice development the property owner raised concerns about air compressors and impact tools and of course noise caused by traffic we took a look at this existing situation we actually went out there with the decibel meter and made some measurements and next to the site with no equipment and with no traffic the maximum noise level was 61 decibels and on the south property line where the concerned property is it was 56 decibels with no equipment running and with traffic we were at a maximum of 71 and 69.5 with equipment running inside the building we were at 61.5 both maximum and south property and with equipment outside we were at 66.3 and 66 real noise concerns are really about 85 decibels but i think we've shown that the noise situation here is manageable and by keeping the equipment inside it's even going to be more manageable and as a result of that our mediation remediation is to keep the equipment inside to keep the work inside and to limit the tire service to the two front bays that are existing wouldn't be around on the other side we wouldn't open up other parts of the building the traffic the tire shop with two bays is so limited on a one-way street it's probably going to generate less traffic than other allowed uses in this district would such as restaurants or clubs and we're going to have eliminated operating hours club noise may be more more desirable but we're not going to be changing tires at 11 o'clock at night and 12 and one in the morning the land use we see this part of town as a transitional area and it's identified by the city is the downtown compatibility i think the intention by making these sups is the intention is to decline the development of auto service use to see that go down and see other things increase such as residential retail office entertainment etc however these other allowed uses would compete with one of the neighbors in opposition so it would tend to slow his business in an area that's already suffering declines right now because of covid and other reasons and the sup requirements do control the expansion of auto service if we were trying to establish an auto service on a vacant lot i think it would be a very difficult pitch to make but we're talking about an existing building that's had this in it before and was designed for those purposes as far as site appearance you can see from the photographs when it's vacant it tends to get a little run down signs aren't taken care of and other things occur so we we think by having an occupied building it's going to have better appearance than a vacant building with a certificate of occupancy there will be inspections and certain things will have to be brought up to standards there is a city does have a property maintenance ordinance and items could be enforced too that would affect the general appearance and with the sign ordinance for any new signs or maintaining the existing the owner has already applied for a sign permit to fix one of the signs and i think he's working on the other and i'm not trying to to oversell this project this is not a marquee project it's a mom-and-pop business trying to establish themselves in town and continue activities here it's not something special come in that everybody's running around looking for for incentives to bring to town it's in a transitional area it has an existing use it's been that way for a while it has gone to be vacant over time if it sits too long it could be abandoned and not cared for then it could be repurposed or it could be demolished and redeveloped in these transitional areas and that's driven by the economics of the transitional development versus continued use as more and more of these new uses come into town this land may become have a better cap rate and be more of a candidate for redevelopment the rationale is this building was established for minor auto service in 1964 the duplex was constructed in 2020 even though the property was vacant at time it's obvious what the type of use would go in there so it shouldn't be a surprise to the neighbor the retail center was constructed in 1965 but it's actually up the street a ways with some vacant properties in between an occupied building will be kept up better vacant building could result in neglect and maybe needing to use code enforcement city can prevent expansion of auto service it's not something that could just continue to happen here time after time i will point out too that i think in this part of town the very small tracks of land discourage redevelopment some better redevelopment might occur if there was a way to to bring multiple tracks of land into larger tracks and and have more of a multi-use type activity the site will redevelop as the area transitions to a higher economy and an investment in repurpose requires more economic growth to redevelop so to sort of totally redo this building and repurpose it or to tear it down and start over just requires a much greater investment and particularly in troubled economic times it's not going to be as easy to do as we see it the options are you can approve the sup which is sure as an active site you can deny the sup which means it would be vacant and neglected for a while it could be vacant and have property maintenance issues and have to bring in code enforcement could be an opportunity for repurpose with cost but that will come later in time as the area tends to grow and and is a no active vibrant community rather than a than a vacant and dying community and opportunity redevelopment with cost as well questions to ask ourselves is what is the current projected economic opportunity for this particular site and i don't think the city has economic incentives to help overcome a transitional cost so maintaining a current use would be a good decision for this piece of property in our mind obviously or we wouldn't be here and i'm available for any questions if you have any at this time okay any questions for mr allison okay seeing none thank you lee appreciate it all right all right so we'll uh we we don't have any more callers or card comments on cards electronic cards so we will now close the public hearing and open it up for discussion council member davis and then council member breaks just want to say that i appreciate the concerns raised by some of the neighbors but i also appreciate staff and then mr allison addressing those for instance what in the world is this place going to be if we don't allow this business to move in and put it to good use and contribute to its upkeep and the fact that the residential property next door went in in 2020 next door to a vacant auto repair place so uh understanding their concerns um but thinking that they're addressed and well addressed i'm gonna move approval okay all right council member breaks yes so i will i will second but i also want to clarify and make sure that um what i heard i heard that there was not going to be any outdoor storage of tires on the property and that broken down cars would not be allowed to be parked there is that correct yes ma'am that is correct okay thank you so yeah i'll second okay council member armature yeah i just want to point out that i noticed i went and looked because i always like to see the opposition is there were two letters of opposition and they had their issues but um neither of them lived in city of denton one was from argyle one was from another city of course they're welcome um to share their input and their that input is important to me but we don't we don't have residents who are living near there who are complaining so i'm okay with this okay council member melzer no no i oh you okay sorry mayor pro tem thank you um yes i the timing of the the the residential is an issue for me and so i'm just adding transparent uh not transparency but just kind of adding kind of narrative to my vote so i'm going to support it and here's why and one of the most compelling reasons is uh the the letter and what guides me is a letter uh in opposition actually because i'll drive you down to the last paragraph of the first page and summarizing it mentions hugo's auto repair across the street that does tire work but does not mention the noise so you mentioned the same use directly across the street and you say uh you're worried about their business as a from a financial aspect but you don't say this building using the same thing is a noise impediment already and you're adding to that so that's compelling to me the same use across the street with no restrictions i assume isn't does not generate a noise or it's not raised in this letter so that guides me then just a half block down the street you have a similar scenario a little more space but you have briscoe tire on the corner working to the north you have our apartment complex uh there so i think there's a use case uh for this on this in this particular stretch i i do um respect the concerns and i'll try to be an area and and and make sure we keep an eye on those things the tires are really a concern for me and so i i respect their concerns but i think in this instance i'm okay with it okay anybody else councilmember davis sorry just so it's clear my motion was for approval but that's approval with staff's recommended conditions yes i i accept that okay all right okay any other comments councilmember melzer yeah i wonder um yeah i wonder how how do we keep track of whether these conditions are being followed i mean you can't obviously you know can't be a huge fixation but i mean in the ordinary course of business uh i guess i'm asking the city manager or or or or or planning uh how would we keep track we would whether it's being done in the right place the storage is being done appropriately and so on our development services director would generally send out folks to make sure that they're complying with the zoning approvals if we get any complaints um that uh we'll investigate those if they're not following the uh it's very similar very similar to an sup process if they're not following the requirements they're put in place the promises they've made to the council you've always got the ability to rescind the approval and discuss that at some point in time okay thank you that's all okay anybody else all right so we had a motion who made the motion councilmember davis and councilmember brig seconded all right so uh we have a motion for agenda item which one is that is that c yes c s 20-0005b councilmember davis how say you aye councilmember briggs yes mayor protem all right councilmember ryan aye councilmember melzer aye councilmember armater yes mayor watts is a nine motion carries seven zero moving on to uh the last pub well i say the last public hearing because the others have been postponed but we'll get into that agenda item what is this 4d pd 20-0006a hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas regarding a change in zoning district and use classification from mixed use regional to plan development all right good evening haley zagorski development services this is case pd 26 for texas health resources the request before you tonight is a rezoning from the mixed use regional district to the planned development district on a property that is just over 38 acres you can see the boundary of the property outlined in yellow on the map this is the texas health regional campus that's located just off the i-35 service road it's bounded by bonnie bray street to the east and then oak street and scripture to the north and south this is just a comparison for you to see the current zoning map versus what would what is proposed so currently this entire area is zoned mr as i mentioned and the proposal is to go to pd with a base zoning of mr this is a bit of a unique request compared to how we would normally see a pd for vacant property this site is largely developed today this map shows you what is on the ground today with the existing buildings being in white there are two areas i wanted to point out that have been recently approved for expansion the area shaded in blue is a new tower that's going to be added to the hospital this is currently under construction on the site or will be soon i should say and then the area in orange is a medical office building that is to be demolished and redeveloped with a a new upgrade at a medical office medical clinic use you can see as well the existing parking areas in white the area shaded green are all landscaping today at this time the hospital is is just seeking to make these upgrades that we've looked at here on the map but they do know that they have a need for future redevelopment on this site and future expansion and this pd is intended to set the groundwork for that and enable them to do those future developments as the need arises so what they've proposed for this pd would restrict the uses within the mr district it's one of our most permissive districts in terms of commercial and residential uses that are allowed what they are proposing is to restrict that menu of uses down to what you see here on the screen so the typical hospital service uses and the supporting medical uses like clinics medical offices as well as professional offices some other supporting uses such as daycares and hotels that are more commonly being seen with hospitals across the country they're introducing accessory uses as well specifying the use of helipads as well as wanting to make sure that they in the future as the need arises would be able to put a parking garage on site if if they feel the need to do so they have introduced some new uses that we don't have specifically defined in our ddc that being the ambulatory or outpatient care facility a wellness or rehab facility and then a senior care these are things that could fit within definitions in the ddc but might require a use determination so they wanted to go ahead and define those specific uses that they anticipate someday being on this site this table is to compare the more numeric standards that they're deviating from with this pd with respect to landscaping i wanted to point out they are not proposing to reduce the overall landscape area or tree canopy coverage required for the site that would stay at 25 percent and 30 percent respectively what they're proposing are changes within the the landscaping for the parking areas primarily because the existing parking lots were developed under a previous code and they want to ensure that those can stay in their current configuration so new parking areas would be required to meet the landscape standards that they've proposed with one one landscape island per 10 spaces for example and one right-of-way screening element but those existing lots again are intended to stay as they are with respect to parking this is a large driver for for this pd because the existing campus has well in excess of the amount of parking that our code would permit just the hospital alone for example has over 1 000 spaces even after they remove some parking to add that new tower and our code with its current rate of five spaces per one patient bed would only allow them 500 spaces by right so this pd again is intended to help them meet the demands that they're already struggling with and seeing on campus today so the ratio they've proposed is one space per three patient beds design capacity i'm sorry it's five spaces per one patient bed that would be an increase of four four point six and then they would propose to also increase the ratio for medical clinics and medical offices so increasing one space per thousand square feet for clinics and just under three spaces per thousand square feet for offices some of the other things that they're proposing to change with this would be to eliminate some of the front parking design front parking design requirements as you saw with their existing campus they do have a substantial amount of front parking that doesn't meet the design criteria of our code the code requires for example corner pad sites to be at any intersection that's more of a commercial design standard that we would expect to see that's not necessarily appropriate at the hospital so they're looking to eliminate those and again allow that existing configuration to remain with respect to bicycle parking the code requires one space per 20 vehicle spaces that is in excess of what they feel is necessary for the hospital so they're seeking to reduce that to one space per 100 vehicle spaces and then again i mentioned they do expect some somewhere in the the future to need a parking garage on campus so they've proposed some design standards for that the code doesn't have the code would allow a parking garage but it doesn't specify any criteria so they're establishing that that would be five levels maximum and that it wouldn't be permitted to be in front of the main hospital building along i-35 as you're familiar with we do have the 13 general criteria for all applications those are outlined in your backup just to summarize we found them to be consistent with all of these standards again this is a largely already developed site they're looking to to just set the groundwork as i said for future expansions on site but we wouldn't expect to see any significant adverse environmental or fiscal impacts from this seeing as the campus is already largely developed today the six criteria specific to a pd we'll go through in a little more detail so the first criteria is consistency with our comprehensive plan this area is designated for regional mixed use you can see the the lighter pink color on the map is the the razor ranch area as well as the hospital campus our comp plan specifically calls out that hospital facilities having the regional draw that they do are appropriate in these mixed use areas so this pd allowing the continuation of that use would be appropriate criterion two is compliance with the dentin development code as we looked at previously this pd is intended just to allow for the future expansion of the hospital they're not seeking to deviate from any any significant aspects of the dentin development code except those that we looked at so primarily related to parking and landscaping that would facilitate them keeping their existing parking as it is but allowing other other areas of the site to redevelop over time the third criterion is the compatibility of building design amenities and connectivity again the site is already developed they are looking to continue with the existing development pattern adding on to the hospital in ways that are consistent with how it is today those modifications for parking and landscaping are not intended to to reduce the standards of the code just to allow them to work with what they already have and continue growing and those would be the only deviations permitted with this pd the fourth criterion is is for residential uses which are not a component of this the fifth criteria is whether non-residential uses are appropriate in terms of their location and planning again the site is already developed with this use so this would just be facilitating that continued growth to meet the needs of the city this site is highly accessible and highly visible with its location off of i-35 which is what you would expect and find suitable for a hospital campus so again allowing this future expansion would be appropriate given this prominent location and i did want to point out that as they they seek to increase the development on site in the future the code does specify certain parameters that would send them back to pnz and council for those larger developments so generally anything that would be an expansion of more than 10 of the existing building square footages would result in them coming back to pnz and council to update these plans and and show you all what expansions they're looking to make at that time the sixth criterion is rather there are public facilities in place to support the development given that it's already developed there are water and sewer in place already that's the blue and red lines you see on this map respectively and they do already have all of their access points established and are not looking to change that so you can see here in blue or their more prominent access points off of 35 and an oak street to the south they do have some entry points off of scripture as well and then they share some entry points with the other developments along bonnie bray notices were sent out regarding this case and we received no responses given the nature of this area they they did not hold a neighborhood meeting the planning and zoning commission recommended approval seven to zero and staff is also recommending approval as we found it to meet all of the criteria and i'm happy to stand for any questions okay are there any questions council member melzer thank you i don't know that the hospital would necessarily want to do it any differently but why the requirement that the parking garage not face the highway i would think of all the possible uh components that might face the highway parked cars would have the least objection yes i believe their goal there was to ensure that the if they do and put a parking garage in the future it wouldn't be the prominent feature of the site that the hospital itself would still be that main thing that you see uh from the freeway there is room on the eastern part of the site um closer to bonnie bray where i i believe they would anticipate putting that in the future again at this time it's not something they're looking to develop on site um their representative indicated that that would be a long-term um development on the site you know 10 10 or more years in the future most likely um but why do we care or or maybe i misunderstood this i had i thought we were saying that's a condition that we would care whether the parking garage faced the highway i mean whether they want that to be their their you know uh sort of primary aspect of their presentation or not i mean it's a different question but why would we care um it's not something that staff recommended the the applicant actually proposed that um as part of the pd themselves um our dent and development code would not speak to where a parking garage could go on site it is permitted and they they could feasibly put it anywhere on site so with this pd they wanted to set those ground rules for themselves that um that they don't intend to put it in front of their building they would they would expect it to go elsewhere on site okay so they're expressing their preference it's not a requirement of ours correct okay and uh if they if they did choose to build that you know would that be uh considered a substantial petition that you know we would want to have design criteria for or its height or uh you know do we have any any thoughts at all about how it fits nearby property or you know is that something that we would want staff to have the opportunity to review should they choose to make such a change in the future for other reasons you know would we want to have an opportunity to review that certainly so so if they proposed that um it would definitely come to staff for review as a plan development amendment at that time it would be um essentially the the director would have the ability to determine whether it's a major or minor amendment to a pd um for the code specifies um based on square footage primarily what's major versus minor with that not being a habitable building it wouldn't necessarily fall within that but the code does allow for the director to make that determination um and if if it was a sizable five-story parking garage as they proposed um i would imagine that that would be deemed a major amendment and come back to pnz and council rather than being a staff level approval but either way it would be fully reviewed by staff engineering staff everyone would be part of that process okay thank you okay anybody else all right this is a public hearing so i will open the public hearing we don't have any callers wishing to speak or any online comment forms that have been completed was there a staff present i mean an applicant presentation on this or um the applicant is available if there are questions but they don't have a presentation okay all right council member briggs do you have a question for uh well the public hearing i'm going to go ahead and just close the public hearing and then uh you'll go ahead and ask your question yes okay so i'm closing the public hearing council member briggs go ahead yeah i don't have a question i was just going to move approval oh okay all right okay uh we have a motion uh council member armater second okay any discussion all right uh so council member briggs i'll say you on the motion for agenda item 4d yes council member davis aye mayor protem aye council member ryan aye council member armater yes and i i seconded but i don't think it matters that i don't vote second no i just i just totally just spaced out so yeah that yeah i don't think that's a yeah it's not it's not a standard it's not a law that's just usually what i practice so yeah i appreciate that council member melser well i'm just gonna third it but anyway okay all right and mayor watts is an aye motion carries seven zero i believe that brings us to the end of our agenda except for uh oh well agenda items 4e f and g do i need to call those mr city attorney uh because they're being postponed indefinitely no just recognizing that they've been postponed indefinitely all right okay thank you so we're we're now down to concluding items concluding items council member breaks well tomorrow is uh veteran's day and so i just wanted to thank everyone out there who have served men and women i've served our country um so just i don't know if there's any events tomorrow specifically but i did want to um offer my thanks to those who have served okay thank you mayor pro tem thank you so the red kettle kickoff for salvation army is saturday 10 30 they're doing it at the square this year so i'll be a part of that so i'm inviting people to come out they do a really good job with that and then uh your beautiful luncheon is this saturday i do believe from 12 to 6 at east side so always good to support john and that group and they do a great job uh celebrating those uh and honoring those it's five camps so that's good um and so just wanted to point out those two things okay all right yeah and uh yeah the reason uh mayor pro tem thank you for stepping in on the the kettle because i'm not able to do that on saturday so or at that time so i really do appreciate that okay any uh any other concluding items all right thank you we will then stand adjourned at 8 39 thank you