Good afternoon.

Welcome to this meeting of Denton City Council.

Today's Tuesday, February 17, 2026.

It is 2 p.m.

We'll call the meeting to order.

And the first thing on the agenda citizens' comments on the consent agenda seeing none.

That takes us to request for clarification on agenda items listed on the agenda for public hearing and individual consideration.

Questions about public hearings or individual consideration?

Seeing none takes us to work session.

First one is 3A, ID 252151.

Receive report hold discussion, give staff direction regarding audit project 047 employee performance management.

Hello, Mayor and Council.

I'm Madison Rorshaw, Denton City Auditor.

I'm here to present uh the findings from our audit of the city's employee performance management program.

So employees drive an organization's success, and employee performance management aims to achieve this success by aligning objective individual objectives with departmental and organization-wide priorities.

In general, employee performance management is a continuous cycle where performance expectations are established, performance is monitored, and based on that monitoring, employees are either coached to meet those expectations or good performance is recognized.

Some organizations also periodically rate performance to collect data on the workforce as a whole.

Employee performance management is primarily the responsibility of supervisors.

However, organizations often establish organization-wide performance management programs to ensure employee performance is managed consistently across varying positions and supervisors.

These programs are typically managed by human resources departments.

Since 2020, the city has added about 200 budgeted positions and plans to employ almost 2,000 people in the current fiscal year.

These employees' performance must be managed to ensure the city achieves its goals.

And I do want to uh take a moment to recognize that the city's HR department has experienced significant turnover in its organizational development team, and all three of the positions are currently vacant due to budgetary constraints, slowing progress on the team's ability to support the organization with performance management.

So this audit evaluated if the city's performance management program was transparent and consistent for all employees, increased employee performance accountability, and provided all employees employees with feedback on how their performance contributed to the city's success.

So the core of perform of employee performance management is establishing and clearly communicating performance expectations for each employee.

Industry standards generally agree that performance expectations should be measurable, defined, and relevant to the organization's goals and the employees' role.

In addition, employees should have the opportunity to provide input on non-essential performance expectations to ensure that they are realistic, attainable, and clearly understood to increase employee motivation and commitment.

Centralized performance management programs typically create training or guidance on establishing performance expectations and monitoring employee performance to promote consistency among supervisors.

During the 2023 and 2024 performance review cycles, HR issued guidance that included references to supervisors holding goal-setting meetings at the beginning of a performance rating period, but information on how to establish these goals was not made available until 2025 due to staffing limitations.

Still based on uh 67 responses to a survey of 258 supervisors.

About 90% described performance expectations that appeared to be generally relevant to the goals and objectives of the city and the employees' role.

About 58% of responses indicated that performance expectations were clearly defined, and about 52% indicated that they were measurable.

Further, supervisors generally communicate either individualized or general performance expectations verbally, but only 22% of supervisors who responded to the survey indicated that individualized performance expectations were communicated in writing, meaning that about a fifth of supervisors did not indicate that they provide their employees with regular communication about their individualized performance expectations, as outlined in the table on the slide.

While performance expectations may be shared generally through group meetings, trainings, or written procedures, helping supervisors establish uh specific written individualized expectations would help further ensure the performance management program is transparent and consistent for all employees.

For those reasons, we recommended that HR develop guidance for supervisors on how to establish and communicate performance expectations to their employee.

Once performance expectations are established, supervisors are responsible for coaching, providing feedback and supporting employee development through ongoing performance monitoring.

Industry standards generally suggest that supervisors identify key performance indicators or KPIs to monitor employee performance.

KPIs should be measurable and directly related to the employees' roles and responsibilities.

KPIs should be measurable and directly related to the employees' roles and responsibilities, and a mix of quantitative data such as the number of work orders completed and qualitative information such as collaborator feedback should be used to ensure all aspects of an employee's performance are considered.

While the city's policy requires supervisors to measure an employee's current performance levels against established criteria, training for supervisors on how to continually monitor employee performance against these expectations has generally not been developed.

Supervisors were required to hold mid-year check-ins with their employees, helping to ensure feedback was provided at least twice a year.

And HR provided guidance for employees on maximizing these check-ins for the 2024 2025 performance cycle.

City's human resources management system also includes a tool that allows supervisors and employees to document notes about an employee's performance throughout the performance cycle.

This tool was available for use during the 2023 and 2024 cycles, but guidance on using it was not provided until 2025 due to staffing limitations.

Despite conflicting training and guidance experiences, most supervisors indicate that they have developed relatively mature methods of monitoring employee performance against expectations.

Specifically, based on the supervisor survey, about two-thirds collect KPIs to monitor performance, and an additional 18% rely on self-collected qualitative information, improving accountability.

Still, about 15% of supervisors' responses indicated that they either did not collect information to monitor employee performance or that they relied on information provided by the employee themselves.

Supervisors should determine how an employee's actual performance compares to expectations based on ongoing monitoring and provide feedback.

Industry standards suggest that employees who meet or exceed expectations should be recognized to encourage continued similar performance.

And employees who underperform should be promptly addressed to support performance improvement.

Formal recognition is usually managed through organization-wide programs to ensure consistent application, and due to its significance, centralized performance management programs generally provide supervisors with training and centralized and guidance on when and how performance-based interventions should be issued.

Formal performance management actions should be documented in an employee's personnel file, and employees should be able to appeal major personnel actions.

The city has historically created a few formal avenues for recognizing employee performance, including providing merit-based pay increases and holding an annual honorary award ceremony.

However, these programs were eliminated due to budgetary constraints for fiscal year 26.

While these programs were eliminated, audit verified that a sample of employees were accurately awarded a merit-based pay increase during the for based on the 2024 performance cycle.

HR has generally not released any guidance for supervisors on recognizing employees for exceeding or meeting expectations informally, and the city does not currently allow supervisors to recognize good performance through promotion.

These uh though these methods are recommended by industry standards.

All but one supervisor of the 67 that responded to the survey indicated that they provide some sort of recognition for their employees, with most indicating that they at least provide verbal recognition and almost half indicating recognition was provided in writing.

A few supervisors expressed concerns about limitations on their ability to provide recognition for quality performance, which may indicate that some employees who are exceeding expectations may not be receiving enough recognition.

And about 7% of the supervisors indicated that they recognize employees who are exceeding expectations with additional responsibilities, despite this generally not being considered valid recognition by industry standards.

For these reasons, we recommended that the city consider re-implementing an organization-wide recognition program to aid supervisors in retaining high performing employees when financial resources become available.

On the underperformance side, about 90% of supervisors indicated that they provided performance feedback to their employees using more than one method, with periodic one-on-one meetings being the most common.

In addition, about 79% of supervisors indicated that they provide feedback when mistakes are made, meaning all employees are likely receiving prompt intervention when they underperform, helping to increase accountability.

Still, about 20% of supervisors did not indicate that they provide performance feedback as part of the annual performance evaluation process.

HR has generally developed guidance for supervisors on underperformance interventions, including coaching, performance improvement plans or PIPs, and corrective actions.

Standard templates for informal written interventions, PIPs, and each type of corrective action have been developed.

And formal interventions require supervisors to involve HR to issue, helping to ensure that they are applied consistently across the city.

Still, supervisors may not be using formal underperformance interventions most efficiently specifically.

While 96% of supervisors indicated that they would address underperformance with verbal coaching, only two responses indicated that the supervisor would reach out to HR if the issue continued.

Further, during the 2023 and 24 performance cycles, only seven PIPs were issued, making this the least used intervention tool apart from demotions, despite PIPs being designed to improve performance.

HR staff maintain a log of underperformance interventions that are reported to them, but the log lacks employee ID numbers and includes preferred first names, decreasing the usability of the information, and no standard operating procedures have been developed to ensure that all required information about each logged intervention is captured and retained consistently in the employee's personnel file.

HR has created an appeals process whereby employees can request that a neutral group of supervisors, managers, or directors, conduct a second review of their suspension, involuntary demotion or termination.

Templates for each step of the appeals process have been created.

However, documentation of each step is not always was not always centrally retained.

In addition to the ongoing performance monitoring and coaching, industry standards generally can suggest that employee performance be periodically rated to provide employees and the organization with clear documentation of how an employee has met their performance expectations over a certain period.

Organizations generally provide this formal performance rating annually, often referred to as the annual performance evaluation.

Industry standards suggest that this formal feedback be focused only on the critical performance elements of an employee's position, with preferably seven or fewer unique elements to ensure relevance.

One of the benefits of a performance rating in a performance management program is the ability to analyze performance across the organization.

For these reasons, qualitative rating results should be used to help create targeted employee development plans, such as what training, such as identifying what training is needing, needed, where learning or development programs should be focused, and if employees are in the right positions.

The city has adopted a policy that requires all supervisors to annually review each employee's job performance.

This annual evaluation process was most recently redesigned in 2023 with further modifications in 2024 and generally aligns with industry standards.

In particular, the redesign involved moving the process to a human resource management system, which streamlined data collection, improved tracking abilities, and allowed for trend analysis.

Most city employees are included in the centralized performance management program, though there are five employee groups that generally do not participate because they are evaluated through a different process.

While these exclusions are generally clear, there were some employees that the way that some employees are classified in the city's financial system caused some inconsistencies.

Specifically, assistant and deputy police and fire chiefs were included in the standard review process, but there's no documentation clarifying if they should be covered by this process or by the meet and confer agreements.

Two 20 DME craft employees were included in the standard review program in 2024, despite there being a separate craft process.

And some employees classified as seasonal occasionally work year-round and should be included in the standard review program, but were not due to these positions being incorrectly set up in the financial system.

Still, of the 1,500 employees that should have been rated between 2023 and 2024, only three did not have a completed annual evaluation, indicating that the ratings, assignment, and tracking processes are generally effective despite limited written guidance.

In addition, the number of standard competencies creates redundancy and muddles the connection between the rating process and the city's organizational goals.

Multiple competencies had similar themes based on HR's written guidance and could likely be merged.

In particular, based on word cloud analysis, three major themes emerged based on the example employee behavior available in HR's written guidance.

One, work quality, which is focused on if the employee meets deadlines and minimizes errors.

Two, collaboration, focused on if the employee communicates with and meets the needs of others, and three, performance ability, focused on if the employee has the knowledge needed to perform.

These major themes were also supported by a review of annual rating comments by the supervisors, indicating that staff may be duplicating their efforts due to the number and similarity of competencies.

This redundancy is particularly burdensome for the almost 9% of supervisors who are responsible for rating 10 or more employees each cycle.

In addition, only two of the city's five core values are incorporated into the standardized competencies for all employees, potentially creating a disconnect between the rating criteria and the city's organizational goals.

HR has not provided supervisors with training or guidance on how to translate ongoing performance monitoring and coaching efforts to these standard competencies, further confusing what elements of an employee's performance feedback should be focused on.

Based on a review of 80 employees with a recorded corrective action in 2023 or 2024, the corrective action did not appear to impact the employees' overall rating or any single competency.

Similarly, employees with lower ratings did not appear to have corrective actions, even though their ratings uh might be below or were below a 2.5, indicating severe or long-standing performance issues.

Likewise, a review of all ratings, including individual competency feedback completed by 55 supervisors, found that 16 did not show consistent rating practices among similar positions or lacked unique comments.

And some departments consistently score their employees higher or lower than uh meets expectations, indicating that the department's performance expectations may be too low or too high, respectively.

Or flip, sorry.

Uh finally, HR's usage of the required annual evaluation ratings limits the usefulness of the performance data.

In particular, aggregate annual ratings are generally not shared with department management, hindering comprehensive performance data analysis.

Similarly, HR does not review annual rating data or information to ensure useful feedback is provided to employees, identify potential performance management program issues, or develop learning plans to address citywide performance needs.

In summary, we issued a total of uh 11 recommendations, all of which the department agreed or partially agreed with, and we believe based on the response that the identified risk will be appropriately addressed, and we plan to perform a follow-up review in 2028, unless council would like us to do a review sooner.

However, it should be noted that all three of HR's organizational development positions are currently held vacant as part of the vacancy management program, which will likely slow progress on these items and is why there is such a is a particularly high partial agreement rate uh for this audit answer any questions.

Thank you.

Questions for staff uh representative from district six.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you for the presentation.

Uh I appreciate it.

Um I I have just a few questions.

Uh can you tell us uh is there any incentive for people to participate in these surveys?

I mean, the number 67 supervisors out of 258 participated.

So I I mean it's also hard to take that as a holistic this is really what's happening on the ground when we're getting a quarter of the or what have you of the the people participating.

Can you just tell me what is the process where you you emailed, do you follow up how how do we get people to respond to get more information?

Obviously, I'd love 100%, right?

I think that's not realistic.

Um based on kind of our research into best practices uh on doing surveys, right?

25 is not horrible, and we also looked at did we get responses from every department, and we generally did.

So we feel like the survey is representation representative, even though obviously to your point, 20 it's about 25 percent of who all could have answered.

So uh as for the process, uh yes, we um the 258 came from basically the 23-24 data who actually did rate an employee who has a clear supervise or who is clearly a supervisor in that respect.

Um, and so we collected that data, got rid of anybody who was no longer here or or any duplicates, uh, and then emailed the survey out to them.

We and used uh we basically we created the survey in a form for Microsoft, sent it to them, and we sent several reminders, um, but we don't have a budget to offer an incentive like here's five dollars, you know what I mean?

So that's the process, if that makes sense.

So it's just a number of emails.

Correct.

Okay.

And I hear what you're saying about best practices.

We I can agree to disagree with what other people believe are best practices.

Um, and then I I just wanted to make a statement that I don't think that the performance rating uh standardized uh competencies need to match up with the city core values.

I think they're different things that we are measuring.

And uh lastly, I just wanted to say that uh considering uh the responses were very helpful uh from the department, and it seems to me that they are doing very well with what they have to work with, and said that in the most polite way, but um, you know, I think I think that's just the the situation, and so uh I commend that the HR department.

I think they continue to improve things.

We continue to ask more of them, but they kind of started um in a spot with a lot of room to grow and without a lot of the budget to purchase some of the tools that are necessary to implement some of the recommendations.

So it's it's nice to have the information about others are doing, but I I'd look forward to um uh the HR department over the years being able to add to their toolbox and uh being able to uh equip them to be the best they can be.

And uh thank you.

Any other questions for district one and two?

I want to go back to those three positions that you noted uh later on in the um your statements of this next page back, I'm not sure.

Uh you talked about three positions that are not filled, correct?

Uh and they'll those particular positions would they play a vital role in pushing this further on down the road?

Yes.

So now because we know that um we know that this is uh a budget situation.

Is there any uh thought to start grooming whoever would be you know considered for a position like that?

Would that be an in-house uh fulfillment?

I'm just kind of thinking about you know, along the lines of if it's yeah, you know, I can't speak directly to like how they would fill those positions.

I think right now they are being held vacant um to because of potential budgetary concerns.

Sure.

Um I think there's opportunity for them to be filled in-house, but I think they also might need uh need to go outside to do that if they were wanted to.

It's a kind of a niche area of HR, but I'll let A Cassie answer.

Okay.

Good afternoon, Cassie Ogden, deputy city manager.

Um, the three positions in organized organizational development, we've had a lot of attrition.

Um, and so not all three of those positions are part of the managed vacancy program.

Uh we did just uh give approval to uh hire the organizational development manager position.

So that will be coming soon, and yes, we will advertise externally and try to find the best candidate for the the position, but uh we've just had some turnover and we have we've had some projects language in this area.

Are these projects that are linguishing in these areas?

Are they the priority projects or are they just projects that was just in the you know in the pipeline?

So one of them is performance management.

That's what this group um oversees is performance management.

They also oversee the city's ethics and compliance training, um, and and then all of our um professional development and training citywide.

So, yes, I would say that they are it's high priority projects.

However, we've just um due to the turnover, we just haven't had been had an opportunity to move these forward.

Okay, I think that's all that I had.

Thank you very much.

Representative district two.

Thank you.

Um so uh Madison, I I always love the the framework and the context, so thank you very much.

And I appreciate um councillor Jester.

Um I had similar questions about you know do we have sufficient analytical tools given the numbers?

So thank you, Councilor Jester.

Um so so leaping on from there, um, one of the things that when we're when we have less budget than we'd like, um it's an often an opportunity for creative uh and flexible um opportunities.

When when you were reviewing this, were there a particular recognition create creative responses that we honestly, regardless of whether we're we're flushed with cash or not, we should be implementing that you found that that we're successful and recognizing employees?

Yeah, I think I think and this I think the city actually just did it, it's not part of the audit scope, right?

But we're doing the quarterly honorary awards now, and I I think that those are probably helpful in this area of recognition, right?

Um, because they don't require a lot of budget, um, but they do at least provide opportunities for employees to be recognized for for their work.

Um, and that's kind of one of the lower cost options and a recognition.

Obviously, some of the more costly uh might impact an employees' life a little more a little more directly, right?

Um but I do think that we've started uh the city has started kind of moving in that direction.

Um and uh so I think that that's a good a good first step.

No, I it's excellent.

I appreciate that.

Um when we when we do uh budgeting for for various staff positions, um, is the potential for recognition included in those line items, or we just multiply FTE by base salary.

So I mean, if if we wanted to budget for recognition, that's always gonna be extra if we don't budget for it.

So do we budget for it?

Um not currently.

I believe that we you previously had some sort of budget, like a line item citywide for awards and recognition programs, but that was removed.

Is that correct, Cassie?

Yes, we have a specific line item, and it was reduced during the last budget cycle.

Um, but we do have kind of guidance for all of our departments about how much they should be budgeting.

Um that was just it was just one of the things that was cut during the last budget.

No, that makes sense.

But it's but it is generally in part of our process, is what I'm hearing.

Okay.

Yes, yes.

Awesome.

Um when uh supervisors and their reports, do uh the supervisor you said the supervisors definitely uh contribute to developing them the expectations and the metrics.

Are the reports also part of that process so that it's it's a it's a combined effort, or is it really just on the supervisors?

Yeah, so based on the survey responses, um the they indicated that the the employees, right?

The report direct reports you're you're referencing, um, do collaborate as part of that process.

Obviously, it can vary between supervisor, um, but the the indication that they're doing a lot of expectation setting through one-on-one meetings and kind of these more verbal um touch points indicates that the super the employee is probably having some feedback uh and collaborative effort in that uh decision conversation.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

I mean, it it may not be appropriate for every position to set expectations like that, but uh I appreciate that that's that's in there.

I'm I'm glad to hear that.

Uh and then um two more questions that I'm done.

Um for the corrective chart that you showed, and you don't have to flip back to it.

Um, but um how do we stand compared to our comparables?

Are we having more corrective actions, less corrective actions?

And and the context of the question is uh trying to understand um, you know how we're rewarding excellent behavior and how whether we're uh how we're managing less than excellent behavior.

Yeah, we did not request uh we did not go out and do benchmarking for other amounts of corrective actions at peer cities.

Um we could do that.

I think we might have trouble getting that information just because it some cities might consider.

I mean, obviously we could do a public information request and go through all of that, but it might just be cumbersome.

No, I wasn't asking that.

I just kind of how do how do we stand if we're having a lot of extra or the same numbers coming up?

Unfortunately, I mean maybe not unfortunately, but most cities and our organizations in general aren't publicly posting, like this is how many people we terminated, you know, so regularly at least.

No, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

And my last question is um in this idea that we have sort of employee metrics, and then we have our KPIs for the city writ large.

Um I know that some of our general goals for uh you know building institutional excellence and other things include innovation.

Is innovation built into the in particular, and again, it means it's not appropriate for every employee position, but is that built into the the metrics for most employees?

Um so as far as like the detailed what is on the ground, I don't know for sure.

Um some of them certainly some of the responses indicated they look at that, some of them did not.

Um I believe innovation is it part of maybe not.

Um I think it's built into at least some of these standard competencies to some extent.

Um, maybe like the flexibility um one, but I there's not necessarily like a clear we're looking for innovation in every employee's metrics, if that makes sense.

And that's that's sort of where I was going.

Okay, I I appreciate that.

Thank thank you, Madison.

Okay, any other questions?

All right, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank takes us to item three B, ID 2522 non-six receive report, whole discussion, give staff direction regarding the city utility billing process for electric service.

Good afternoon.

Mayor Council, Tony Puente, DME General Manager.

Uh appreciate your time today.

Uh just gonna go through and talk to you a little bit about uh some billing processes that we have for electric service.

Uh so just uh the objectives today, we're gonna go through some background overview, some adjustments that were made, kind of the governing order ordinances that were for the basis above of these adjustments, some best practices and some uh comparable utilities and some information that we've gotten from them as we compare ourselves to what they're doing, uh, then some findings and and recommendations.

Um I will tell you that uh because of uh winterstorm for uh Fern, we weren't able to go to the PUB first, and so we've advised them of that, and I have this same presentation scheduled uh with them for for Monday.

Uh ultimately, depending on council's directions from the uh PUB's recommendation, ultimately, if if the POV does have different recommendations, that'll come back to you because we envision some ordinance changes, and so we'll convey that to you at that time.

So a little bit of background.

So uh DME currently has a little bit over 71,000 uh meters overall, those are spread out, uh 64,000 um are residential and commercial, we're looking at you know just shy of 8,000, right?

Like the round up.

Um my staff tells me I round things to the million, but um don't believe what they say.

But uh so 7600 uh commercial meters.

Um over the last five years, we've seen about a seven percent uh growth in meters uh um for commercial, we're adding about a thousand new meters um every year.

So certainly uh a lot of growth uh within our system.

Um so the annual demand uh charge adjustments uh we're we're talking about today.

Uh we do about 80 to 100 of those um every year.

Um most of those tend to be for for new accounts.

So we have a new development that comes in, and they tell us they're gonna be a grocery store with this amount of demand, and we place them in a certain rate class.

Uh, but then once we start providing power to them, we find out oh, you know what, they're really a large, or no, you know what, they're really a small because they're efficient, there's some things that they've done.

And so we do we do those adjustments and those are customary.

Um again, that's the bulk of of the adjustments that we're doing.

Um I would say about about 10% of the accounts um uh tend to tend to see those kind of changes.

Um accounts may be reclassified up or down based on peak demand over two consecutive months, and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

That um that's certainly not uh with what other utilities are doing.

Uh we'll tell you that uh conversation I have with Garland, Garland actually started doing this where we're they're looking at demand, and if you go above your rate your rate class demand for two consecutive months, they're doing the same thing that we're doing, right?

So we'll talk a little bit more about that in some of the findings and some of the recommendations.

Uh overbilling and underbilling of electric accounts.

Uh so uh so we found uh through uh through a process that we were looking at um jointly with customer service, we identified these uh 218 commercial accounts um that over a 24 month period, and some of them varied, um, had not been adjusted for demand uh per our current uh rate ordinance.

Uh the review period did cover uh about 24 months, and again, not all the accounts had a full 24 months, some had you know less, uh, but it was around 24 months.

Um and then as I mentioned, uh staff initiated these adjustments uh as we were working through the process based on the current governing ordinances that we have.

Um however, um as as we started uh rolling out these adjustments, and certainly our intent was to communicate with our customers, both in writing and through phone calls.

Um unfortunately for some customers, we did not have accurate uh contact information, and with at least one customer, uh we did not have uh we did not do any kind of contact uh with that customer.

I will tell you I've personally spoken with that customer uh uh at least four times.

I've certainly apologized to him.

That certainly was not our intent.

Our intent was to communicate with them.

Um I did convey to the customer what our recommendations are gonna be.

Uh, unfortunately, um that customer was not satisfied.

Um and since he um has communicated with some of you, I wanted to I did want to convey to you what he conveyed to me.

He asked me to convey to you is that you know he'd like for the council to complete waive any adjustment at all, right?

And so um again, uh just want to be um honest and true to that customer and and honoring um you know what I told him that I would do today.

Um but certainly not uh consistent with our recommendation.

So uh breakdown uh of these adjustments, 218 commercial accounts, uh representing a net uh billing of 331,000.

Uh so that's money that came uh that we recovered.

Um so we overbuild uh about 32 accounts and then we underbuild uh roughly 186 accounts for the overbuild accounts.

Uh we credit the we credited those those customers um uh a little bit over 51,000.

Uh those credits range from 2119 to a little bit over 10,000, with the average credit being about uh close to sixteen hundred dollars.

Uh and just to give you some a sense, um kind of the average annual billing for these customers, about eleven thousand dollars.

Again, that's over a 12-month period.

Um these adjustments were over 24 minutes period.

So you're really looking at about a 7% kind of impact over a over a two-year period uh from these overbillings.

But we've we've paid those customers back uh that money.

And then underbuild accounts, which were the bulk, um, that represent over 382,000 dollars of back buildings that we did, those range from a little bit over 21 dollars to a little bit over 26,000, with the average back billing a little bit over 2,000 dollars.

The average annual billing for those customers is close to two $12,000 began over a two-year period, you know, roughly $22,000 is their annual billing, so about 9% impact uh for uh on average on these uh these back billings.

Um so the government ordinances that we have today, uh what really uh guided uh these adjustments was currently uh chapter 26 of the code of ordinances calls for um up to no greater than a two-year period.

So if if we make an error, uh you know, um we back build or we overbuild someone, we can go back two years currently and make that correction.

Uh so that's that's the current um governing ordinances that we have.

Um and then the other ordinance is our electric rate ordinance, uh, the latest one that was that was adopted, um uh sets out the various rate classes that we have.

Uh for commercial, we have uh three rate classes.

We have general service small um and those customers actually don't have a demand component uh to uh to their billings.

They're billed very similar uh to our residential customers, it's based on a kilowatt hour basis.

So just based on usage, obviously they also play uh pay a facility charge.

And then with general service medium and large, uh those customers uh do have a demand component, but they also have a usage component.

So it's really a a three-tiered uh billing that we do for those customers.

They have a fixed facility charge, a usage charge, and they have a demand charge.

Now, all these customers also pay the ECA for energy and the TCRF for transmission.

Uh but again today we're just talking about these base rates.

Uh so in the application in the ordinance, uh, it calls for uh two consecutive months.

So we're looking at these customers every month, right?

And so if they if at any point they hit two consecutive months where they've been above or below that rate class, then we make either we move them up or we move them down, and they go into what's called in the industry a ratchet, right?

They go into a 12-month lock-in period.

So for the next 12 months, you're locked into that rate class, whether it's a higher rate class or lower rate class, you're locked in uh for 12 months of very standard across the industry, and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

The actual monthly calculation that we do for these customers is really a three-part uh calculation.

Uh they're gonna pay the greater of the maximum action the maximum actual monthly demand uh in a 15 minute increment, right?

The or the minimum uh KW or demand for the rate class, or 70% of the maximum monthly uh demand during the previous months of May through October.

May through October is the summer months, right?

And so every month we're looking at those three calculations to determine what we're gonna build a customer.

Um and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

But some of those do vary across some utilities, but uh, but this three-part uh test uh is pretty standard um across the industry.

There's some variants to it.

Uh certainly we can talk some more about that if you'd like.

So breast, so best practices.

So we so we uh consulted with our rate consultant.

We also did our own research.

Um certainly APPA and others uh publish a lot of uh industry um information.

We reviewed PUCT information as well, and then we surveyed uh five uh city-owned utilities.

Uh you know, you have them uh listed on here, but those are pretty comparable or or maybe will we aspire to be someday, right?

Um so a couple things that we found is so the the number and parameters of rate classes vary.

Um so what constitutes a small, a medium and large does vary.

Um have uh less rate classes, some have more as an example.

Um before I think 2020 2000, DME only had a small and a large rate class for commercial customers that was then uh adjusted to include a medium.

Um and then the main finding, um, and it's something that we've talked with the council about, um, is that these other utilities already have established transmission level rate classes, uh, and and that's something we're working towards.

Um the the interesting component of that is that uh they have both transmission level rates for for very large customers, but they also have distribution rates, right?

So some of these customers are actually tied into your distribution system, not transmission, so those are differentiated, and it's something that we're working back uh um right now that we're gonna be bring back to you during the budget process.

Uh the demand application, um uh small rate classes by large uh throughout throughout the industry, and certainly these MOUs are not charge demand charge.

Um month of exceeding the maximum KW, there's maximum demand is the standard.

Um except for as I mentioned earlier, uh Garland did uh implement a two consecutive months, so it's consistent with with what we've done.

Uh one of the things that we did find with one utility, uh BTU, so Brian Texas utility, is that they that they offer a demand forgiveness.

So if you've had some type of issue in your in your system, your HVAC system, your machinery that caused that blip, then you if you provide justification, don't they'll take that into account and won't move you up.

But but they're also adjusted at a one month rate.

So uh we we certainly believe that the two consecutive months kind of allows for that.

Uh again, it's a it's a pretty steep uh threshold for somebody to actually do that two consecutive months.

Normally they're uh most businesses are pretty pretty on top of their bills and what's going on within their within their uh facility.

And the demand calculation, so for this is actually for billing purposes, uh that varies.

Um, you know, what standard is this maximum uh 15 minute anchorable interval, excuse me, and then also the minimum where you see some changes are on the percentages um in that third rate class.

Um I I told Jerry I wasn't gonna say power factor, but I'm gonna say just to get at a kick from him.

Uh but but but power factor is a big component here.

So PHCT requires that we have a system power factor of 97%, and that's something that we build our system to.

Uh if you could think about it, 97% means that you have three percent roughly a three percent loss in your system.

Um if you're familiar with on the water side, with you know, we talk about water leakage, it's the same kind of concept.

So 97% is what we build our system to.

Certainly we want to be higher than that.

We want to be more efficient, right?

I want to be able to capture every electron that we buy that we sell, right?

I don't want I don't want that losses, but three percent um is pretty standard.

Some utilities use five percent, and again, that's where you see some some variation.

Um the other thing to that I'll mention for those customers that may have a power factor below the system power factor, in our case 97%, or the utilities will set some artificial number 90 percent, 85 percent.

If that customer gets below that power factor, then for that month, there's an additional power factor penalty that's added to their bill, right?

Again, that's to try to incentivize them uh to improve their power factor.

Um if you could think about it this way.

So if so uh so the the worse your power factor is, uh I have to provide you more power, right?

Uh to have your your machinery at work um at your facility to to operate, and there's no way for me to capture that in the usage.

We capture that uh on the demand side.

And in over billings and under billings, uh, what we found here is that it varies.

Uh most utilities do a one year uh to the initiation of the service.

So if we owe you a refund, we're gonna go back right as far back as we can.

And the PUCT for um for uh private utilities um does that as well.

Again, you're erring on the side of the customer.

Uh but for under billing, so if there's an error where you underbill somebody, uh what we found is that it's six months to a year.

Um and so for the PUCT for IOUs, uh that's set at six months.

You can't go back more than six months.

And again, based on these findings, uh, certainly uh I'll share with you uh some recommendations.

Um so the findings that we had, so uh here as I mentioned, our two-year period for over billings and under uh billings of two years is not consistent with uh with our survey and what we found other utilities uh for some context.

Um the city used to have a four-year uh period, and so it has been adjusted down.

Uh so our staff recommendation here is that for any over-billing, so if we owe money to the customer, we're gonna go back as far back as that error happened.

Uh so we're gonna err on the side of the customer, uh, but for any under billings, we're only gonna go back six months, right?

Um and then uh demand application.

Oh, and I'll mention that that doesn't just apply uh to um electric uh bills, it'll apply to water bills, wastewater bills, solid waste bills again.

Uh that's that standard, uh that ordinance is uh across all the utilities and any city buildings that we do.

Um the demand application of two consecutive months, uh generally not not in line.

Um again, most utilities, certainly in the private sector, um, do just a one month over over a 12 over a year a year period, so it doesn't matter if it happened during the summer or happened during the winter or the fall uh or the spring, right?

They're gonna look at at if you go above um the maximum for that uh for that rate for that rate class, you're gonna get moved up.

Um certainly we think that's um that's pretty um uh pretty difficult for for our customers, and that 80 to 100 adjustments that I mentioned, that would likely double or triple uh if we went to that.

So our recommendation is to leave leave leave it at two consecutive months.

Um and again, as I mentioned, uh Garland is also doing that.

And Garland is pretty comparable size to to DME.

Uh the rate uh lock in period for 12 months is partially aligned with survey MOUs.

Uh, we're not recommending um any changes uh to that 12-month uh lock in period.

Again, that's pretty consistent across uh across the um uh the industry.

Uh one thing that does differentiate uh this differentiate DME is that after that 12-month lock in period, uh we only look at you prospectively.

So beginning the 13th month, right?

If in the 13th month and 14th month you go above or below, then we'll make that adjustment.

So we don't take into account what happened over that 12-month lock-in period.

That's not consistent with what other utilities are doing.

And so our recommendation will be that at the end of your 12-month period, we're gonna do an audit, right?

And so if during that 12-month period you went up or you went down, then we're gonna make that adjustment for you in that 13th month.

And so that is a little bit different from what we're doing uh today, but it's consistent with what other utilities do.

Uh the demand calculation, um, so this is that that three-part uh calculation um or or just this tiering that we do the greater of uh while there are some differences, um uh and again, not all utilities, um, while they're all mandated to have a power factor of 97%, not all of them do.

Some of them directly uh pass those costs on to commercial customers.

Um and so uh here uh we our recommendation is to make no changes uh to uh to that process uh that we have today.

And then finally, the billing adjustments associated with this review.

So uh what we're recommending to do with these 218 uh accounts.

So if if if you were a customer, if you had an account those two 32 accounts um that we gave you a refund, um we're not recommending any changes to that.

We're not gonna go back and ask those customers uh to give us back the money.

Uh but for those customers that uh that were under build, our recommendation is to look at them and see what happened over that six month period from the beginning um of the uh of uh or the latest month of the adjustment, so that would have been July of uh 25.

We'll go back six months, and so if you triggered going up or down, then we'll base it on that.

We won't base it on what happened before that period.

And so there are some customers that we've identified well that we've already billed, they've already paid.

We're gonna have to go back and make another adjustment and give them back their money.

Um I think that would be consistent uh with the recommendation here that we've made on the six-month review.

We're just recommending that we also do that with these 218 accounts or just those that were uh um under build or overbuild, excuse me.

So with that, um I know I covered a lot of information, uh, council, but happy to answer uh any questions you may have.

Okay, and can you put the recommendations?

Do you have a slide with just all the recommendations so we can I don't I don't have them all together, man?

They're over two slides.

Yeah, that's right.

That that that captures the gist of it.

So again, everyone can see the clock there where we are in the budgeted time, so direction and questions.

Uh Mayor Protoon.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Tony, thank you for this presentation.

I I'm comfortable with all of the recommendations.

I have just one question.

How do we catch when there's a billing error that somebody's been under or overbuild?

Yeah, so so that was part of this workflow process that we were working uh through with our metering group and a customer service, and so customer service does a really good job of automating things, right?

And and this has been a manual process, and that was really the the intent here is how we how can we transition that to to the utility billing people to the right people, automate it so that we don't miss these things.

But every month we should be looking at every one of these customers.

Okay, so monthly we look into that.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

That's all I have.

Anyone else?

Representative district four, then two.

Thank you.

Thank you.

What what causes these overridge and underage?

Is it is it equipment failures?

Is it is it uh miscalculation from employees?

What what causes it?

Again, the the majority of these adjustments, um, you know, um taking this these 218 aside, the 80 to 100 adjustments that we see a year, the vast majority of those are for new accounts, right?

So when we set up a new account, we misclassify them.

They've given us incorrect information, we heard incorrectly, um, you know, they had uh some power factor uh uh equipment, right?

Maybe they bought equipment that was more efficient than they thought, and so so all of a sudden that customer that we've placed at a medium really turns out to be a uh a small or or they're small, but they're really a large, right?

And that tends to not happen.

It tends to kind of grow in stages.

Um, and so uh for for these particular customers that we should have been doing that on a monthly basis, we stopped doing that right over a two-year period, and that's what caused um this issue that we have today in front of you.

It it seems to me that that these recommendations are very generous and they're and they're customer favored.

And uh, and I I appreciate that.

Um is this common in for-profit and non-profit uh electrical absolutely.

Uh demand charges are standard uh for commercial customers.

As I mentioned, generally for small customers, uh there is no demand.

Um there are some utilities uh up in the northern states that are actually looking at demand on the residential side.

We're not we're not looking at that, but uh but certainly um that's something that um that is standard across the industry.

My question actually was for the for the utility itself.

Are these are these standard uh industry standards that they're yes sir and DME has had um this structure for many, many years, uh well over 25 years.

Is there an appeal available to a to a customer?

Um if if you call him a uh uh a large and he thinks he's a medium to use your terminology, is there an appeal for that sort of thing?

Yeah, generally that conversation happens at the initial setup of the account.

Now, what ends up happening too, so you so you have a customer that you set up, and maybe that customer is gonna build three or four buildings, right?

Maybe or maybe they're building a you know 10,000 square foot building and they're only gonna build, they're gonna build in phases, and so as they ratchet up, they start moving up those rate classes.

Okay.

Um you mentioned one particular customer.

What what's what's to be done with that problem?

Well, I think I think I mean I convey to you um on his behalf what he feels uh should happen.

Um, you know, um again, the vast majority of customers that we made these adjustments for, some of them did call us, we talked to them, they understand that that's pretty um standard across the industry, whether here DME or Encore or wherever they are, it's pretty standard, they they understand that.

Um I I I think that um again, I think that the customer um certainly I understand his position, um, but certainly we think that this particular recommendation that we're making um will cut the overbilling in half.

Uh so from the amount that that that they would have paid uh about $2,900, that will come down to about a thousand dollars.

But again, but but he feels that that should be zero.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

Do you have direction while you have the floor?

Uh I'm I think the recommendations seem seem very customer centered, and I I appreciate that.

Uh uh so I I'm in favor of the staff's recommendation.

Thank you.

Representative from district two.

Thank you.

Um so um I'm just gonna confirm that we just have the three commercial rate classes, right?

Yes, sir.

So there's not sub-tiers within those, uh, they're moving up and down.

They're they're just moving small, medium, large.

Well, there are sub tiers depending on on what type of meter they have.

So there's there's some variation to uh to some of those uh medium and large customers.

So yeah, because some of these customers, I mean medium large customers may have their own uh substation, they may have certain equipment that we don't provide, so that we move them to a different sub tier within that rate class.

Within that rate, but for this conversation, we're just talking about going between the three.

That's correct.

Okay.

Um and then similar to to Councilor Holland, if there's a a concern, uh, can businesses request a re-review in in less than the six months, or they really need to wait the six months uh and and live in that six month window.

Yeah, so as I mentioned, um in our research, only BTU uh offers what we believe is a demand for giveness, right?

Um we certainly think that the two consecutive month test is a pretty big threshold.

Okay.

Uh I mean, certainly, you know, um, you know, you can go to three, you can go to six, uh, but we think that that two month consecutive, I mean we have a lot of customers that may exceed in one month and they go two months below it, and then they exceed it again, right?

And so those customers stay in the rate class that they're in.

So that two consecutive months is a pretty big threshold.

It's 30 30 percent of the six-month period.

So that yeah, no, that I I I take your point there.

Um, so then um one of the things that I know that that can go on in other REPs is that people in those summer months they they sort of do time demand and they shift their loads all around and then they lower their capacity in May through October through various things, and then the other months of the year it's it's uh more of a free range um uh use.

Do we have mechanisms to where you you're confident that you understand when that's happening and then you can compensate for it, or that's just part of the system and there's nothing we can do?

Yeah, I mean, I certainly think that there's customers out there that are doing peak shaving.

Um I think that's certainly their possibility.

One of the recommendations that I made um as something for customers to look at is installation of what's called a capacitor bank that can kind of help with that.

Um so uh I think from our perspective, if a customer is staying below those thresholds, then that helps us uh better manage our system, right?

And so um again um uh I I don't think that there's uh really any way to to penalize those customers for doing that.

Um I think it's actually a good thing, certainly during the summer, if they're able to manage that and not trigger them moving up to another rate class.

Um I think certainly that's a that's a good thing.

No, I guess my point was more like for the other months, not made through October.

Um they they if depending on how they if they if they just let it completely go and and and and are blowing out their rate class or maximizing the rate class in that regard, and but not doing it, I guess two months in a row is the is the check, right?

Right.

Okay, so then there isn't that that you feel like that's sufficient such that you know you you won't, you know, like in you know, certain months, you know, you won't hit the bottom of that duck curve at front from five to eleven, where and then like oh I you know you you were you peak shaved in the summer, and and I will I didn't do my contracts right because of that in the other months.

That that's not going on.

No, that's not that's I don't think that's an issue.

I mean, we have as many customers that hit that peak in the summer as hit it in the win in the winter.

All right, I appreciate that, Tony.

Thank you.

That's all, Mr.

Mayor.

Do you have direction?

Oh, sorry.

Uh yeah, I I agree with uh the staff recommendations.

All right.

Anyone else?

Representative district five.

Tony.

After a review of every uh of every customer to see if they were overbuilt or underbuild, is an actual person going to do that review, or is it gonna be some type of uh AI program?

Um no, I don't think it'll be an AI program.

Um I think Krista does a good job of uh putting together some macros and some other um you know SQL data databases of you know, probably you know something that I don't even know how to spell.

Uh but they they do they do some wonderful magic over there, right?

Um, to monitor that.

And and certainly we do quality control checks to to all of that as well.

And and I'll tell you, um, you know, if if there's an error, our customers are gonna be calling us.

If they really feel that something went wrong, we're gonna hear from them.

Sure.

Um, I guess my my last question is how much, I mean, on on average, how much additional staff time do you think is is used up in catching some of these overbillings or underbillings?

Yeah, is it are we talking a lot or not very much?

A standard amount.

I don't know how to to quantify it.

So yeah, I think what I could tell you so um in the metering group, it's been it's been a manual process, and um that was the reason why we wanted to transition over to to customer service to automate that.

Um and so I mean I I don't have an exact uh man hours for you, but certainly I could tell you it's the process is gonna be far more efficient and less man hours than we have today than we had today.

Perfect.

Okay, thank you very much.

Do you have a recommendation?

Yes, I'm going on.

All right.

Um anyone else?

Representative district six.

I agree with the recommendations.

Thank you so much.

The survey is very helpful as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Anyone else?

Representative district one.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

So you have direction uh to move forward with the change.

Uh my question is is this is the usage indicated on the bill.

So does it give a the threshold, if you will.

So do you know if I'm looking at the bill that I've exceeded this month and I gotta watch it next month?

Yes, so every bill and and uh it has a priorly mentioned to you, Mayor.

Um the the information is printed on every bill, but if but if you're not getting that hard copy of that bill, you're gonna have to go into our invoice cloud system to see it.

Um I I think there's an opportunity here for us to do some education with our customers and let them know where to find the information.

Um certainly um I think you know, working with with our Markham group, uh doing some some videos on on how demand uh works.

Um we can do all that.

Um I I can tell you uh by and large, our commercial customers are very well educated in how demand works, and many of them that have uh multiple locations across the state or others uh or others other states, um they're very familiar with how demand works.

But but certainly I think um uh an education process um is uh is something that we we need to do more of.

Okay, yeah, I I'd be supportive of of some sort of rollout or something like that.

And and for the record, I I do want to speak to the the customer.

I I'll follow up with them individually, but on the record here, just want to say, hey, I hear it, but and in a valid request, but I think this is the credit to you and and everyone that helped.

I mean, I think it is the the right in the middle of the pain point, right?

It pains everyone, right?

We got to give some money away, we gotta take some all those things.

I think it's a good middle ground uh to it to a very difficult situation, very difficult conversation, undeniable.

So um I I appreciate your work there.

All right, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Uh that takes us to uh we have this item C then we have two closed discussions after that.

So item C three C is ID 25291, receive report, whole discussion, give staff direction on the update to the mosquito surveillance and response plan.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council.

Michael Gonier with Environmental Services and Sustainability.

And as the mayor mentioned, we'll be going over the up proposed update to the mosquito surveillance and response plan.

There's a quick overview.

What I'll be covering today.

We'll go over kind of why we need a plan or why we should have a plan, some old historical mosquito information, what we do as far as surveillance, how we're going to identify risk levels, a general overview of awareness and communication we do, as well as what response options are available, and then be seeking direction.

Just to start with why do we need a plan?

One part of it is to define for the community what we're going to do and when we're going to be doing it.

So we define a season.

That's typically May through October.

We also define our surveillance program where we're going to be how we be looking for mosquitoes.

How are we going to track that?

What are we going to look for within West Nile virus?

We also outline what we're going to do awareness and communication to alert the community as we have relevant data.

And then we also talk to the response options available to the individuals as well as for the city as a whole.

A lot on this slide.

And there's one little tweak change from what's in your backup.

So I want to just go over.

I'm going to start with 2025, moving left to right.

So the West Nile virus human cases, those are the ones that are reported by the state.

So we had two in the city of Denton reported to us by, we get reported by the county, because the county is a public health official for Denton County.

They receive that information, they pass it along to us.

So it's not, we're not adding up, it's inclusive.

And then the far right is the state level.

We had 125 cases statewide.

The middle part of the slide is our West Nile virus, the mosquito traps.

What are we actually finding in mosquitoes?

So in this thing, there's a few things going on.

The first column says one.

There were 11 traps that tested positive only for one week.

If we get a positive trap, we don't move the trap for two more weeks to confirm that we don't have a positive.

So it's not like we get a positive and just move.

We keep it at that location to ensure we do that.

Then moving towards the center and the right, we had a trap location that tested positive two consecutive weeks, and we had a separate trap location that tested positive for three consecutive weeks.

The far right is just a graphic image of the state of Texas.

People wonder where West Nile virus is.

Any shaded county had a positive mosquito for West Nile virus during 2025.

Moving into surveillance and monitoring.

Again, we do this from May through October.

We see an uptick in mosquitoes starting in May, usually peak starting more to grow during June with spikes during July and August.

We do weekly trapping.

We actually work with the University of North Texas to make that happen.

Those mosquito samples are sent down to Austin and analyzed by the state of Texas through the Texas Department of State Health Services who then shares that information back with us.

As far as human case monitoring, we don't necessarily don't monitor for that.

We receive that information from the county.

The county gets that information from the state.

And to put it in perspective, it could be up to six weeks before we hear about a human case.

That takes into account there could be up to two weeks for an individual to show symptoms to actually go seek medical attention.

It could be up to two weeks for that medical professional to then report a positive West Nile case.

And then when the state talks with the county, they actually want to confirm on different things, and that can take up to two weeks.

Generally speaking, it's less than that, but I did just want to point out it could be up to six weeks before we're told of a positive human case.

The other things on this uh graphic here for you, the gravid trap.

That's the type of trap we use to actually attract it's it creates a habitat or an environment mosquitoes like.

They get in that trap, they get caught, we collect that sample, we send it off to the state.

The right-hand side is the county map.

We work with the county and do a countywide map for all mosquito trap locations.

Any little mosquito that's red on there means it was positive for any given week throughout all of 2025.

If it's black, it was negative and never turned positive during 2025.

We're proposing a change from five risk levels to three to cut out some confusion because there was some confusion over what it was.

We know there's West Nile virus activity in the general Texas area.

So we would propose to always start at risk level one, but we know that there's a possibility of West Nile virus.

We would elevate to risk level two once we have a conferred positive mosquito within the city of Denton, and we'd move into risk level three when we have a trap location that tests positive for two consecutive weeks.

And under risk level three, staff would be authorized to consider spraying, depending on a lot of different conditions, but consider spraying.

The plan itself would come forward to y'all for authorization by resolution at the start of the season.

We just wouldn't follow up later in the season with a follow-up resolution to authorize that spraying.

Awareness and communication, this is huge.

We work with the community, we need their support to make sure this is successful.

Moving from the left side during the general season, we continue basically anything we can to outreach, talk about how you can protect yourself, measures you can take to prevent mosquitoes, get rid of the habitat, things like that.

Once we get positive results, then we bring in the chance of a press release.

That's usually focused on human cases to alert that we've had it.

But we could have a huge, we could have a density of positives that might trigger a press relief as well, just in mosquitoes.

We also can use targeted social media now.

We didn't have that availability back in 2020.

Now we can use apps like next door and ping individuals who live in close proximity to where those results are coming from.

For a spray event, we continue everything we've just talked about, but then we're also gonna add in automated robocalls as well as putting signage at the primary entrances, entrances to any spray area to basically alert the residents in that area.

Response options.

Some people don't think of breeding habitat source reduction as a response, but it is.

If we prevent them from being able to breed and grow, then we don't have mosquitoes to deal with.

So that's step number one, removing standing water.

The graphic on the right side is a lot of the common backyard areas that may have standing water that could produce mosquitoes.

So when we're working with the community, we encourage them to go out and dump those things, make sure they're taking care of that.

There's gonna be standing water they can't remove, and there's gonna be standing water that don't have natural predators, and that's when we target the mosquito life cycle.

That's where you do the larvacides or the bacterial dunks that actually go in and are designed.

The bacteria eats the larva before they become an adult mosquito.

We do provide those free of no charge on limited quantities to Denton residents.

The two locations are listed there.

The last response option that we haven't had to do in quite a while, would be spraying.

In the city of Denton, we've always focused on disease transmission control.

So we focus, we only spray where we have positive West Nile virus mosquitoes.

We're not doing nuisance control, we're not spraying just to control mosquitoes.

Members of our community are moving in from lots of different areas and they're used to general nuisance spraying for other reasons and other jurisdictions.

Here we focus on disease transmission control.

Picture on the right is one of our spray units we own, they're trailer mounted.

They would be drugged behind a truck, disperse the spray down public right-away.

And again, we're recommending that we consider spraying after one trap test positive for two consecutive weeks.

The spray area is determined by a lot of different things, some general stuff on here.

You know, do we have street access?

How much open space is there?

Where can we go?

What's the geography?

Weather conditions.

If we're having high wind or heavy rain or freezing temperatures, we may not decide to spray because nature may be preventing that because we don't want to spray just to spray.

And as I mentioned, we use ultra-low volume sprayers, they are trailer mounted, and we use a third-party licensed applicator to do that for us.

We don't have in-house licensed individuals.

So to summarize a little bit, current versus the updated.

The plan that we were using had five risk levels.

Some people got a little confused over why we moved from one to the other, so we took it back to three.

Basically simple.

We don't have West Nile virus in mosquitoes.

We do have West Nile virus in mosquitoes.

We potentially have higher West Nile virus activity.

Spraying triggers.

Current plan, multiple human cases.

Proposed plan, two consecutive weeks at a trap.

One big change there is on human cases I mentioned, we have variable timing to get those results.

So it could be up to six weeks before we even know of a human case.

So we're working on really old data.

Using two consecutive weeks, we have a known timing, it takes roughly five to seven days for each sample to get analyzed and returned.

Sometimes it's quicker, kind of depends how much is in Austin.

The target area, a big difference is instead of looking at the resident's home where someone resides, not knowing where they were actually possibly bit, but where they reside, we propose that we'd go to the trap location where we're having positive West Nile virus mosquitoes.

Go attract the problem, not potentially the impact.

On here, local area characteristics, there is no change between the two plants.

We're going to use the same general characteristics to look at and determine how big of a spray area, how to manage that spray area.

The spray action, again, current is based on human impacts, kind of after the fact.

We're proposing to get go over to West Nile virus activity, not waiting.

And in the current one, we bring back a resolution during the season to seek y'all's authority to be able to spray.

I'm proposing that when we bring this forward as part of the resolution to adopt this new plan, that's already authorized in the plan, so we don't have to come back again.

We typically get results on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

Y'all meet typically on Tuesdays.

So and if we get results on Wednesday or Thursday, we'd like to be spraying on Friday or Saturday.

So I don't want to have any delay in that either.

So I'm that's a cleanup from staff's perspective.

So we're seeking direction to either update the plan as we just discussed, which would consider ground level spraying after two consecutive weeks at any single trap location.

We can update the plan given other factors.

Y'all can discuss and give that input.

Or we could make no changes and stay with the existing.

If we chose to stay with the existing, I will still have to modify slightly how we get human case information.

In the last five years, we used to get a general street name.

Then it kind of got a little more broader.

Right now, I'm basically told they only live in the city of Denton.

So there's no real way for me to say a spray area if I just know one of our residents is positive.

Okay, thank you very much.

Questions in direction, Mayor Pro Tim, then uh representative from District 2.

Thank you, Michael.

You partially answered my first question already.

Um I was gonna ask how spraying works currently, and you sort of describe that in terms of we don't necessarily know where exactly this individual lived.

Have we sprayed since you've worked here?

No, we haven't sprayed since 2020.

Okay, so in 2020, we got a little more information.

We got the general block, the general area of the city they were located in, so we could make those decisions.

This past season in 2025, we were only told they're in the city of Denton, and they're trying to get more and more protective of patient rights or yeah.

Um so if we were to spray, we would just citywide basically would be our only option based on the amount of data we're getting for human cases.

Human cases would not be a good way to define a spray area because yes, we don't know now where that human case really is, other than it's within the roughly 100 square miles of the city of Denton.

Right.

So what I'm trying to solve for, and you you already probably know where I'm gonna go with this.

I had a constituent who was one of these positive cases this past year, and she was concerned that you know her spouse's case had not been reported, and part of that is just how long it takes.

So I think he was infected like early September, and it didn't get reported publicly until November 6th, I think is what I just wrote down.

Um so it can take away.

November 6 was the second case.

The first case was September 19th.

Right.

Um and so, like you said, we don't really know until much later, but also the county is not necessarily gonna tell us where in the city it was.

So in this case, I know what neighborhood it was, but that depended on the person telling me, the constituent.

Um the only thing um, thank you for uh whoever made the Gantt style chart last time we were gonna talk about this.

I just looked at that, and I guess where I'm struggling a little bit is um so there was one trap that had three consecutive weeks, and then a second trap that had two consecutive weeks.

Neither of them were in the neighborhood where my constituent lives.

Uh so it's like I I'm trying to figure out how to solve for that.

It's clear that the plan as discussed seems to be the best way to move forward on this given the limitations with data for human cases.

And what I what I would say there is your constituent could be moving throughout the city, going to a restaurant, the grocery store, the doctor's office.

Yeah, they could be bit in all different areas.

So that's one of the big challenges trying to use their residence to go do that spraying.

This is true.

Um, the second area, as you pointed out, can be the delay in getting their information.

We're never told when it was supposedly found or diagnosed.

We're only told the day they report us.

Right.

Um so I mean, I do I do like the idea of moving down to three because I think the five was a little bit confusing.

I'm good with the traps for two consecutive weeks, and if we don't like that later, if that turns out not to be a good way to do it, we can always adjust another time.

Um so I'm good with the the plan is discussed.

I appreciate all your work on this too.

Thank you, representative district two.

Thank you.

Uh I'm gonna echo that uh I do appreciate all the the hard work that went into it.

I I I I think I'm leaning towards it, but I have a couple questions.

You answered one of them, which is we went we're going from zero sprayings to if we using last couple years' data be one or two sprayings is what is that correct?

For 2025, yes.

If we were following the new plan, we would have triggered or considered spraying twice.

Twice.

Okay.

And then and how far away from the traps do we spray?

That's defined by the general characteristics.

I'm trying not to get into a number because some of the community embraces that saying, why aren't you going that far?

So if we have a community where the residential streets we can spray is only roughly a quarter mile area, the rest is open space around it, we're gonna be spraying that quarter mile area and a more densely area where we have more public streets accessibility, generally speaking, we go out roughly a mile, and that's based on the fact that mosquitoes can fly generally a mile.

Okay.

Generally.

Each one's different, just like females may live one to six weeks, sometimes longer.

Well, that was one of my questions.

As I as I thought I recalled that it was a about a two-mile flight range, but you're saying it's about a mile flight range.

Okay.

For the Texas AM.

So no, no, I I'm listening you're you're doing this.

I I haven't done that in ages.

Um so okay, so one roughly one mile, but dependent on the characteristics of the street map.

Um and yes, it might have gone up uh, but we are more quickly responding to diseases and and not waiting on maybe some level of arbitrariness in the disease reporting.

Okay.

Um because yeah, as a reminder on the disease reporting for human cases, we're basing something that may have happened six weeks ago to try to kill it today, where in a sense those mosquitoes may or not still be there.

So if we base on the traps, we're focusing in on that 15 to 20 day period to try to be aggressive if we're no, I I I appreciate that.

That that all sounds good.

The my last two questions are um we're really only doing the monitoring in, I forget the months.

May May through October.

May to October.

Okay.

So um as the temperatures vary, we will we potentially could have different life cycle for the for the insects.

Are we anticipating increasing that no?

Um we could, but right now I would say no.

And the primary reason for that is the primary driver of the the species that transmits West Nile.

Uh-huh.

They're much more active in the true warmer, warmer months.

And they start to go less active even when we start dropping into that 60s range.

Okay.

Overnight.

Oh, all right, fair enough.

Um I'm sure you'll you'll monitor that.

And then the last thing, um, do we intend to do any post spray monitoring?

I mean, one of the advantages of never not spraying, not doing nuisance spraying and and never really trigging our triggering our conditions for disease-related spraying.

Um, in except now we might, because we would have had up maybe two events.

Is for the exact reasons you you you kind of discussed it.

You know, there are there are species that eat eat the larvae that eat the mosquitoes, bats eat the mosquitoes, some swallows and other things eat eat the mosquitoes.

And so we want to be mindful not to overkill these potential food sources.

Are we gonna do post-spraying monitoring?

For mosquitoes?

For impacts of of killing these mosquitoes.

And there are even some insects that will respond to the as I mentioned earlier.

I might not have been clear enough on it.

If we have a positive trap, we keep that same trap location for at least two more consecutive weeks to we want two negatives before we say there's not a positive there anymore.

Okay.

So we'll have that information.

Um again, as a reminder, when we collect traps, that mosquito's trapped and gone, it's not there anymore.

So we if we got lucky and caught the only mosquito that was positive, it's in Austin being analyzed.

Yeah.

For I didn't I didn't so much mean the disease ones.

Um that I think you're doing fine there.

Uh I meant more of we do get species break.

Incidental species.

We get species breakdowns reactions.

We do get the breakdown on that for mosquitoes, and we do try to look at the target species the most to see how that's trending to see the uptick.

But we will have that information for mosquitoes.

Then, well, okay.

We and we don't have any other we're relying on other groups, say at UN UNT or TW or somewhere else to to monitor the other environmental impacts.

I'm not promising anything from the I can't think of a good way to do that necessarily because we're not collecting it before we trigger that.

So that's not part of the monitoring.

This plan outlines how we're monitoring mosquitoes who will transmit West Nile virus.

So we're focused in on that.

Clearly, the most important thing is disease prevention.

I'm I'm not trying to get in the way of that.

I am but you know, I'm trying to assess are we making sure we're we're only doing what we're required to do for disease prevention and not exceeding that and and how are we going to measure that in the future?

Um so um I guess I will just I will support the recommendations, but I will say it would be beneficial to stay on top of those environmental impacts.

Thank you, Ms.

Mayor.

Okay, anyone else?

Representative from District 4.

When I was growing up, I remember we when fogging started, and and my little gang of friends, we're we're out in the street playing, and the fogging truck would come and we would play in the cloud and and uh dance around.

We we had a yeah, it explains a lot, doesn't it?

Um two reported in the city of three reported in the county.

That seems extraordinary to me.

That's just the breakdown.

You know, if we go back to that same slide, we get back to the microphone.

If we go back to that same slide, you can see even when we had positive traps, we didn't have it.

Even we had more positive traps, we didn't really see an in an uptick necessarily in human cases.

I can't correlate those two.

That's just what the data shows.

You you can't offer any explanation for that.

No.

Um, because I've asked multiple, multiple other jurisdictions in the DFW area how they're trying to assess that, and we've haven't gotten a good answer either.

Um you use a third-party sprayer.

Is is that a who is that?

Who is that?

It's just a normal kind of pest name, but it's a pest control company that has a licensed applicator.

We just don't maintain those.

Um, and they go apply it.

We keep in stock the insecticide and we maintain the sprayers and provide the sprayer to them.

So the the the trailer, the the trailer mounted sprayer belongs to the city, and they hook up their vehicle and hook up their truck and I go drive through.

Is there any way to speed up the sample uh analysis?

For example, I I know that that North Texas does forensic forensic things on a on a variety of things.

Could could some kind of a vehicle like that be used instead of sending it to Austin, we could send it across town?

You can, and we have done that in some years.

Um there is um faster, but everything we base it on is based on what the state confirms or a state certified laboratory confirms on that.

So that's why we work with the state of Texas.

So we've always based it on a formal confirmation, not because again, we're splitting samples.

So let's say we get results from UNT, but it's not what comes from the state or vice versa.

We just haven't based decisions on that historically.

It's just waiting six weeks.

It's hardly.

Six weeks is for humanity.

That's humans, Kate.

That's human.

Mosquitoes we get typically in five to seven days from the day we trap them.

I see.

Sometimes shorter.

I think so.

It's usually more of you know, we trap on a Sunday, we send them on Monday.

We might be lucky and get them on Wednesday, Thursday.

It depends how much is going through the lab at that time.

I'm saying five to seven on average.

I see.

Okay, okay.

I I'm I'm so we're working in that 15-day window.

Okay.

I like the uh the plan as as discussed.

Thank you for the presentation.

Okay, anyone else?

Representative district six.

Thank you for the presentation.

It was very helpful.

You went through it very in a very detailed way.

That was also very helpful.

Thank you very much.

And my direction is number one update the plan is discussed.

Thank you so much for these recommendations.

They all make sense.

Okay, anyone else representative district one.

Yeah, I too appreciate the way that you explained that.

It was just so simple.

Um, you know, to wrap our heads around and comprehend all of that.

That's a lot of lot of work there.

So thank you.

Um my question is okay.

So we've gotten the sample back and it's a positive.

When do you uh notify the community?

I mean, how long does that take?

And should the community by the time they get this message, you know, the ones that do keep up with this stuff.

What kind of uh time frame for awareness that they should look back, you know, on whether or not they were in that area.

So we would be posting the results of positive trap results, basically the same day we receive them.

If we're trying to do spraying, we would be determining the spray area, and we try to get that down within 24 to 48 hours, depending on where we receive it, depending on the weather predictions, different things.

If the weather looks really good short term, we try to get it done as quick as we can.

So for a spraying operation, it could be more of one to two days notice that we'll be there.

Whereas we'll post the results as soon as we receive them.

They go up typically the same day.

So if you know that uh rain is coming ahead, you know, a couple of days.

You'll postpone that.

We wouldn't want to spray in the middle of rain because the rain actually dissipates and prevents the spray from being effective.

So same thing if we had high wind conditions, or like last fall we had freezing temperatures in that short period, and we had less than 50 degree temperature, which is less effective for the spray.

So nature took care of it at that point.

Sure, I hear um remember here you speak on that.

Uh yeah, those are the only questions that I have.

It everything seems reasonable that you all are recommending.

So let's go positive with that.

Okay.

Anyone else?

Okay.

Representative district five.

Um I too am a bit concerned about the lag in time from a positive case in a human and a positive test from a mosquito.

So you said so.

Is it as simple as kind of kind of of backdating triangulation?

If you find a positive case in a mosquito, you all notate kind of where you found it and then match that up with a potential human case that comes weeks later to kind of be able to triangulate.

Well, no, the plan as it was outlined back in 2020, only looked at the human case location to then trigger spraying around that location.

Uh we now are recommending moving away from that and focusing on the mosquito positives that we get in a more timely manner and be spraying and looking around where we know the mosquitoes are positive for West Nile virus and not taking additional action regarding a human case.

I will say if there was a cluster of some sort in the county reached out, we may have to do something, God forbid in that regard, but you could have that.

You could have a cluster case, and that may trigger something based on a human case, not just a positive.

Maybe we can't get any closer, but I'm thinking if there's a cluster of mosquitoes found positive in one area of town, but a human case in a different area of town.

I guess it's not gonna be an exact science, but that was that was the that's the gap that I was thinking about when you were talking to council member Holland.

The gap there, the challenge there is we don't know where that individual moves.

We don't know where they went different things happened.

It gets very difficult.

It's called contact tracing.

So it's very complicated.

That's part of what they do when they actually reach out to confirm the case.

They just want to confirm that they actually are confident they got bit in the city of Denton, at least, or in the general area, that they weren't overseas or Houston or something for the last two weeks leading up to their diagnosis.

So that's part of that back end, is they do try to confirm where they were to try to determine where they were bitten.

Budgetarily, where does money for mosquito spraying come from?

It's um within an HBU I manage.

Um it's called the watershed HBU.

It's part of a subset to drainage.

However, the mosquito money is general fund driven.

It costs roughly 25,000 per year to do the monitoring to go out and collect and sample for the mosquitoes.

A spray event for one night is gonna be less than a thousand, and it could be closer to like six hundred.

It depends on the mileage.

It kind of happens like a taxi cab driver.

The more streets we drive, the little bit more we pay.

What is the majority of the cost for a spray event um cover?

Because you said that we have to do that.

That's just the time of the actual um that cost that is quoted of less than a thousand would be this the time for that third party applicator to spray that for us.

We already have enough in stock of the insecticide itself, and we own the sprayers.

When the sprayers go out of life cycle, we'll have to come back here and have a discussion over how we want to handle any capital cost if we want to pass that on to the third-party vendor, how we want to do that.

Currently we own them.

Where I'm getting at is given that we have the the spray, we have the sprayer.

Why are we contracting this out to a third party?

I mean, we're a full service city.

We're not licensed.

What's the uh what's the barrier to becoming licensed?

Having someone in a particular department become licensed.

Uh we'd probably spend between five and ten, I think is what we looked at.

And here a spray event is six to a thousand, so and we haven't sprayed in five years.

So if we would have had a licensed person in that time, we would be spending 25 to 50 just to have them licensed every year in the event we need them.

So the years we don't need them, it's much more cost effective to have a third party.

So licenses must be renewed every year.

Yes.

Okay.

It's my understanding, yes.

Uh, and we have not sprayed since 19.

I thought it's correct.

I think it's 20.

2020.

2020.

Uh, and last question.

And in other years, as have the majority of cases in the counties been concentrated in Denton in previous years.

Like I mean, like, you know, historically speaking.

Before 2020.

Uh no, uh, 2020, so that's when the last time we sprayed.

That's what I'm thinking about.

Well, I just did, you know, a six-year look back here, because we can go back further.

Um, I don't have the top of my head on the back.

I could provide that to you.

I would say my memory is it's a similar breakdown here, but the county usually had more cases.

And a lot of our surrounding entities, as well as the county, they are actively spraying after one positive trap.

And we haven't sprayed, and we're not seeing much of the same.

So the spray the presence of spraying didn't necessarily matter.

That's what I was thinking about.

I don't want to say it didn't matter.

Well, but sorry.

Didn't direct.

Yeah, just okay.

Thank you, Mike.

Right.

Very good.

Yeah, you have you have direction to move forward with your recommendation.

Thank you very much.

Um, so that takes us to our closed meeting.

We can set the room.

Uh, we can turn on the light switch again.

We're back in action.

The city council will now at 3 31 p.m.

convene and close meeting to deliberate the closed meeting items set forth on the agenda, which includes the following Item A, ID 251581 deliberation regarding economic development under Texas Government Code Section 551.087.

And item B, ID 260227.

Consultation with attorneys on the Texas government code, section 551.071.

We'll set the room and go right into it.

Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council.

It is 630.

Uh, we have a quorum, so I'll call this meeting back to order.

Our first item on the agenda is pledges to the U.S.

flag and Texas flag.

Please stand with me if you're able.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

For which it stands.

One nation under God.

Justice Bra.

Honor the Texas flag.

I pledge allegiance to the Texas.

One state, under God, one and indivisible.

If we could play the video for addressing council, please.

The Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure, including a code of conduct that applies to the public as well as council members.

These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum.

Speakers will have four minutes to give a scheduled report and four minutes to give an open mic report.

A bell will ring when time has expired.

If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the speaker will be asked to stop speaking.

If the speaker does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor may request to have the speaker removed from the chamber.

Speakers should not approach the dais.

If a speaker has materials for the council, please notify the city secretary in advance.

For scheduled reports, the council may initiate discussion or ask questions.

For non-scheduled open mic reports, the council may listen.

However, because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance.

The Texas Open Meetings Act prohibits discussion or decision by the council on non-scheduled items.

As a result, the council may only proceed as follows on non-scheduled items.

Propose to place the item on a future agenda.

Make a statement of factual policy or a recitation of existing policy.

Speakers are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole, and not to any individual member.

Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane, or slanderous remarks.

Anyone who violates the council rules of procedure may be immediately removed from the chamber.

Thank you in advance.

Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary.

First speaker is Miss Tracy Duckworth regarding homelessness.

You'll have four minutes.

Pardon me.

Nothing, no response.

The closest I ever came to a conversation, I guess, was um at one of the last forums, the City Council Elect forum for the last election in April, when I told Brendan Chase McGee that I had exited the permanent supportive housing program with Giving Grace because I couldn't handle the mental abuse and retaliation for me speaking out anymore.

He told me to text him the next morning and we'd talk about it.

I texted him next morning and I waited.

And when I realized that he wasn't going to respond to me and that I had been gaslit, um I went on Facebook.

I had been at that forum to support Nick Stevens, and um when I went on Facebook to blast him for doing that to me, I saw him shaking hands with Dr.

Beck over here, um, who was Nick's opponent.

So I felt like the stupidest person in the world.

I walked right into that one, didn't I?

Cute.

Um everybody wants to talk about the pit count.

So the last numbers for the last pit count were 69.

Yet, even after the audit report came out last April, and um y'all said there was gonna be major changes, which there were, y'all made it worse.

Um, y'all cut the amount of beds at the our daily bread shelter down to 120, and only for people that are in the program.

The audit report, it's 39 pages of Mama Told You So is what it is.

I um encourage anyone that has not read the audit report of the homeless response system to at least Google it and ask Google to give you a summation of it.

Umbody's being helped by the system that's in place.

The current system that's in place to help the homeless is hurting more people than helping.

It's not helping any of us.

We're the most mentally um unhealthy, and um the people that are homeless were drug addicted, we're mentally ill, we're lost.

It's not like we're behind a paycheck and we fell off into the streets.

We're messed up individuals, and nobody, there's no program, there's no help for that at all.

Um, homelessness is not rare brief and non-reoccurring, it's like a rotating um circle of abuse.

Um there's no wraparound services, and please do not tell me that there are because y'all don't even know what wraparound services are or what they should be.

Um, none of us have been heard, none of us have had any chance to speak on this audit report.

It says in here that y'all historically have not listened to the homeless, the homeless coalition.

Um, I waited three years to get into that room to see what that meeting was about.

Um, there's no homeless people involved in that at all.

Please do better.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Mr.

London Golding regarding ISO police.

London.

All right.

Uh next speaker is Dana Zoltner.

Please state your name, and you'll have four minutes.

Dana Zoltner, and I'm sure all of you have seen this, but I'm gonna go ahead and put it up there just to remind you.

Um kind of what my same song second verse is.

Rights have responsibilities, and owning property in an established neighborhood means being responsible to those who live next to you.

The developer who did this wasn't considerate.

Thus, I'm asking the city to be responsible enough to ensure we aren't surrounded by inappropriate structures.

Yes, inappropriate is a subjective word, but I defy anyone to defend what's been built across the street as appropriate.

This is a request that you propose to place on the agenda an amendment to the ADU ordinance that requires ADUs must have the same architectural design or detail, roof pitch consistency, and orientation of building materials.

Any one of you can easily do this, and it's the right thing to do to help protect established communities.

A commitment to established communities is a phrase that I've heard from more than one of you.

It's time you put your words to use and commit to those of us who are already in neighborhoods and have created a community.

As I have time, and it's just an aside.

If even one of you had reached out to give me a logical argument as to why you won't do this, I'd probably quit coming up here and nagging.

After all, while I didn't agree on your Gaza stance and still don't, I got out of the fray because I understood the logical rationale.

Feel free for any of you to explain why you won't help to keep inappropriate structures out of our yards.

And if not, I'll be back and on the and ask questions.

I expect somebody to give me some kind of reason why you won't amend this ADU ordinance.

I believe for these types of cards we can make statements of fact, put things on the agenda.

Okay.

Um, if I could, I would like to make a just a comment.

Um I think as far as what we were presented, the idea was to try to make it easier to add more small housing for people in the area, and especially like a place to have aging parents, etc.

Uh, but to be honest, I you know I am happy to have another look at the requirements around it so that it does fit in with the neighborhood.

So I mean, the initial intention was to try to make it um as easy as possible.

There were a number of criteria that they do have to abide by, but uh I am not here to tell you that that is the best thing that could ever happen.

And so I I certainly am willing to re-look at the criteria and what else we could impose to try to make it better on uh the changes happening around in neighborhoods.

So, anyways, that's my comment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Altner.

Thank you.

I appreciate the comment.

Member Dem.

Yes, sir.

Oh, Councilmember Beck.

Thank you.

Um, as a statement of fact, Ms.

Altner, I will reach back out to you and and and set up a conversation.

Okay.

Thank you.

Next up we have Mr.

Chris Watts.

There he is.

Hi.

Please state your name.

You'll have four minutes.

So the time won't start until I say my name, right?

I just got to get set up here for a second.

Okay.

Mayor.

Council Chris Watts, didn't Texas.

I wanted to come and talk about an article that I read over the weekend about the farmers, about the Evers Farm sort of controversy.

And just have some thoughts about that.

I I had followed both the work sessions and also read the backup on May 20th when it was first come before council for a vote on the consent agenda item.

I was sort of surprised when I saw that Byrd and Beck were surprised that the county would be receiving the two point the 10.2 acres.

So I'm gonna go through a couple of quotes in the article.

One of them was by Councilmember Beck.

Everyone was shocked to see it the other way.

I think I know what that's about.

The second one, Beck went back to review the May 20th agenda, and he said he was shocked to see the change deep in the fine print because it was never discussed or brought forward.

Later on, there was an acknowledgement that it was in the backup, and that he freely admitted that he might have missed it.

That is because we all thought that it hadn't changed.

So let's look at what was in the backup.

The first thing I'm going to put put up is the question, list of questions that every council member can submit to staff about clarification on the agenda.

So one of the questions was submitted by Councilmember Beck that said any updates on the county's plans other than what is in the backup.

Okay.

The city answered the county plans to preserve the buildings on site and create an historical park.

Pretty straightforward.

The second item in the backup, which is the agenda information sheet, which you can clearly see at bullet point number four.

It states the developer plans to dedicate the 10.2 acres and associated structures to Denton County to be used in an open park space and for historical preservation.

The last document is the actual agreement, which is the development agreement, which states under paragraph uh three, that the same thing.

The county's gonna be dedicated the 10.2 acres associated with the farmhouse.

So what I want to do is lay those facts upside and alongside the quote about you could say that um uh that the change in the backup was deep, and it was in the fine print because it was never discussed.

Well, I'm sorry, I don't know what the controversy is, because it's very clear in the backup that this is not a fine print, and it's not buried in the backup.

In fact, the very facts betray the opinion that somehow this wasn't already known.

Receiving the backup information four days before the meeting and asking a relevant question one day prior to the meeting, which is exactly on point to the controversy presented in the paper, really forecloses any claim that anyone was unaware that the county was acquiring the 10.2 acres.

Moreover, as you all know, you got a consent agenda item, you can pull it at any time for individual consideration.

By voting, you accept responsibility to understand what you're voting for.

The false narrative suggests that staff acted improperly, implying changes were made without informing the council.

The facts point to something totally, totally different.

However, the facts do not support that narrative.

Assigning blame to others for one's lack of oversight or attempt to rewrite history creates an environment of distrust and erodes accountability.

You had the backup four days prior, questioned directly on point.

Any council member can say, let's pull it, because I want to discuss it if you didn't agree with what it said.

So this notion that somehow something was changed and people weren't aware, no one on that day is voting that day was unaware that the county would be dedicated that 10.2 acres.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Chance Harrington.

State your name and you'll have four minutes.

Good evening, City Council.

My name is Chance Harrington and I live in District 2.

Tonight I'm asking City Council to reject any grant ordinance that allows the Denton City Police to build the proposed RTIC, also known as the Real Time Information Center.

This technology is an unnecessary expense that the people of Denton did not ask for, one that only makes the over surveillance issue in Denton worse than it already is.

It is more important than ever that this council steps up its efforts to guide how the police department operates in our city.

ICE and its partner agencies are expanding their operations across the U.S.

at a rapid clip.

We all saw the news out of Hutchins, where they tried to build a detention center there without any buy-in from the locals.

If you sit idly by and assume old rules and old regulations will stop the feds from abusing our city, it will get worse here.

We need our city manager to collaborate with our city attorney and establish proactive ordinances to increase police transparency, protect the community's data and privacy, and restrict cooperation between city police and federal agencies.

Denton is supposed to have a chief of police advisory board, but it hasn't met in almost a year.

Why aren't they meeting?

Why are all the terms of the members expired on the city website?

There is no one else who can represent the people of Denton when it comes to our police except for y'all.

In December of 2025, this city council considered a grant application to the U.S.

Department of Justice for a million dollar real-time information center, aka the RTIC.

This is public information, but what is not public is whether or not each of you voted to approve the submission.

Supposedly the point of this real-time information center is to help overall law enforcement and to help deal with large-scale events like crowd control.

But do we have riots here?

A high rate of violent crimes compared to what?

The study that says these RTICs help solve crimes is based on data from police departments in Chicago.

Yet we think our city police need to use more drones, scrape the flock cameras even more, and that will somehow solve staffing issues with what is essentially a fancy dispatch center that is paid for initially by the U.S.

government, but will ultimately become a financial burden on the city budget and create new obligations to the federal government.

Here's the real kicker, though.

This federal grant may require Denton to use the RTIC to collaborate with immigration law enforcement.

It is in the grant on the DOJ website.

Allowing this RTIC to be built may end up handing the perfect tool to abuse and harass our neighbors to these federal rogue agencies on top of just generally invading our privacy, the privacy of our citizens.

Simple rules against the abuse of surveillance tools are not enough.

We need our city council to act on behalf of the people of Denton.

The Denton City Police need to be accountable to our communities' needs, not the wishes of corporations and federal agencies that would exploit our neighbors for their own ends.

Please reject the RTIC and any further expenditures and advancements of the surveillance state in Denton, Texas.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember McGee.

Question for you, if you don't mind.

Yeah.

So this was something that we that we voted on on a consent agenda late last year, correct?

For for staff to go out and seek a grant for this.

According to the city website, yeah.

And your opposition is based on the fact that if we get the grant from the federal government, we will have to share the information with the federal government and could potentially also be sharing it with immigration's customs enforcement.

Correct.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

And next up on our agenda is consent agenda.

No items were pulled.

Do I have a motion?

Uh Councilmember Jester.

Uh I move approval as presented.

Councilmember Holland.

Uh a second the motion.

I have a motion and a second.

Any discussion?

All right.

Well, with that, we'll vote on the screen.

Motion passes 60.

Next on the agenda is four items for individual consideration.

First item is A.

A twenty five-005.

Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas regarding a municipal services agreement pursuant to Texas Local Government Code Section 43.0672 between the City of Denton and Victor and Leticia Lopez for the provision of city services to approximately two acres of land, approximately located 300.77 feet north of Mills Road, approximately 1,453 feet west of South Trinity Road, approving a schedule of annexation, authorizing the city manager to execute the agreement and providing an effective date.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and members of Council.

Angie Mengler is assistant planning director here to present A250005.

This is 5811 Mills Road.

So the request before you tonight, this is the first of several annexation items that you all will see related to expired non-annexation agreements.

Non-annexation agreements were initially offered by the city between 2010 and 2016 for properties that the city was interested in annexing according to state law.

If the property was used for agricultural uses or as a single family residence, we did have to offer an NAA agreement.

Those expired in 2020.

Upon expiration, owners were provided the opportunity to extend those agreements until 2040.

Agreements that were not re-entered into per the original NAA were to be annexed into the city.

So after you know several years of working with property owners and at council direction, we are bringing forward the remaining expired non-annexation agreements for their initial annexation.

So that's a bit of background on the entire process as it relates to this specific property.

This is two acres of land located approximately 300 feet north of Mills Road and approximately 1400 feet west of South Trinity Road.

As part of this agreement, we'll be approving the municipal services agreement as well as uh the schedule of annexation.

Um as we said, this is um operating under an expired NAA.

The owner has not indicated an intent to renew their non-annexation agreement.

Uh so we're before you this evening.

This particular piece of property is developed uh with a single family home and several accessory structures.

The new municipal services agreement is an agreement between the city and the property owner saying that upon annexation we will provide our standard standard menu of services that we provide any piece of property within the city of Denton.

Uh, this agreement has been reviewed by all of our uh departments, as you see on your screen here.

And this is the proposed annexation schedule.

Uh so this is the first meeting.

We will have three items for this case this evening.

This is the only one which requires action.

Following that, we'll conduct a public hearing and then first reading of the ordinance into the record.

The ordinance will then be published in the Denton Record Chronicle.

We cannot act on that for 30 days, and so it'll be back for its second reading and action in March for you all.

I'm happy to answer any questions you all may have.

Questions for staff.

Any questions?

All right, Angie, I may have one or two.

Um this was in the backup, but can you do a baby version of the process of notifying these property owners that their um non-annexation agreement has lapsed and sure?

What amount of I guess effort we put into to letting them know that there's opportunity to renew sure.

So upon the initial expiration, staff did make um several attempts to contact owners between 2020 and 2021.

Um these were remaining, uh, this particular case, I'm sorry, was um still expired as of 24 when we began the process of seeking to annex these properties.

Um we sent letters personally to these addresses three times stating that um that the annexation agreement has expired and that annexation will be forthcoming.

Um the most recent letter was sent in December.

Um following this meeting.

Should the MSA be approved and the annexation is moving forward.

We will provide one more courtesy notice to ensure we've done our due diligence.

Um but we've we've reached out several times.

Okay, so we just do mail.

Yes, we do mail.

Okay, so we don't.

Do we do do we know that it's been delivered to the address and all that?

Like, do we have not done certified mail?

Um, no.

Okay, we haven't received letters back either.

Okay, so so for this individual, we just haven't heard from them at all.

We have not heard from them.

All right, thank you.

All right, any other questions or a motion?

Councilmember Beck.

I'll move approval as presented.

Thank you.

Do I hear a second?

Councilmember Jester?

I'll second.

All right, we have a motion and a second.

Any discussion?

Okay, seeing none, let's vote on the board.

That passes 60.

Next on the agenda is item B.

A2-003.

Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas regarding a municipal services agreement pursuant to Texas Local Government Code Section 43.0672 between the city of Denton and Victor Lopez for the provision of city services to approximately 1.03 acres of land generally located on the north side of Mills Road, approximately 1,453 feet west of South Trinity Road, approving a schedule of annexation, authorizing the city manager to execute the agreement and providing an effective date.

Good evening, Mayor Potem, members of council.

Ashley Extat, associate planner.

This is A253.

This is the municipal services agreement for the Mills Road annexation.

Their request is to consider adoption of an ordinance to approve the municipal services agreement for approximately 1.03 acres of land.

It is located on the north side of Mills Road, approximately 453 feet west of South Trinity Road, and also approving the schedule of annexation.

This is an additional property that did not re-sign their non-annexation agreement that expired in August of 2020.

This property is currently developed with a single-family home and outbuildings.

The municipal services agreement outlines all the services that the city will provide to this property upon annexation, and this has been reviewed by all city departments.

The schedule of annexation is similar to the previous case.

This is the municipal services agreement, and action is required tonight.

There'll then be a public hearing in the first reading of the annexation ordinance.

We will then publish the ordinance in the newspaper, and then it will be back before this body in March for the second reading.

Questions for staff.

Councilmember Holland.

I move the approval of this uh item.

Thank you, Councilmember Jester.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

Seeing none, let's vote on the screen.

That passes 6-0.

Next item on the agenda is CA25-004.

Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas regarding a municipal services agreement pursuant to Texas Local Government Code Section 43.0672 between the city of Denton and J.

Doss Phillips for the provision of city services to approximately 1.09 acres of land, generally located 740 feet south of Edwards Road and 290 feet west of Swisher Road, approving a schedule of annexation, authorizing the city manager to execute the agreement and providing an effective date.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem.

Council.

This is a request to consider an adoption of an ordinance approving a municipal services agreement for a property that is approximately 1.09 acres, located about 290 feet west of Swissure Road and 740 feet south of Edwards Road.

Additionally, this will also approve the schedule of annexation.

The background for this property is that this annexation or the non-annexation agreement expired on August 1st of 2020.

The new NAA has not been signed.

And this property is currently undeveloped.

The municipal services agreement provides all of the basic city services, which any property within the city limits do receive.

This has been reviewed by all relevant departments.

The annexation schedule is very similar to the cases presented before me.

Today we will have the municipal services agreement, the first the public hearing and the first reading of the ordinance.

Then we will publish the annexation ordinance, and 30 days later, we will have a second reading of that annexation ordinance.

Questions for staff.

All right, do I have a motion?

Councilmember Beck?

I move approval is presented.

Councilmember Holland.

Second this item.

We have a motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

Seeing none, let's vote on the screen.

That passes 60.

Next up we have public hearings.

First is item A, A25-005A, pulled up public hearing and consider a petition for voluntary annexation of approximately two acres of land, approximately located 377.

Well, 300.77 feet north of Mills Road, approximately 1,453 feet west of South Trinity Road into the city of Denton Denton County, Texas, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annexed land in providing for a savings clause and an effective date.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, members of Council, Angie Manglaris, Assistant Planning Director.

This is the public hearing portion of the annexation for 5811 Mills Road.

So just a reminder this is two acres of land located 300 feet north of Mills Road and 1400 1,400 feet west of South Trinity Road.

The subject property is currently in the city's ETJ.

It was subject to an NAA which has expired and it has a future land use designation of low residential.

The purpose of this item is this is the public hearing portion of the annexation.

So we're on the second of three items this evening, and the schedule remains unchanged from the last item we just considered.

I'm happy to answer any questions you all may have.

Questions for staff.

This is a public hearing, so I'll open public hearing.

If you are in the audience and you haven't filled out a card, you are welcome to come down and speak on this item if you would like to.

Seeing no movements, I'll close the public hearing.

Do I have a motion?

Oh, no action.

Thank you.

All right.

So next item on the agenda is B A twenty five-003A.

Hold a public hearing and consider a petition for voluntary annexation of approximately 1.03 acres of land, generally located on the north side of Mills Road, approximately 1,453 feet west of South Trinity Road into the city of Denton Denton County, Texas.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, members of Council, Ashley Extet, Associate Planner.

This is the public hearing for the Mills Road annexation.

Um this is the public hearing for a voluntary annexation of approximately 1.03 acres of land located on Mills Road west of South Trinity Road.

The existing surrounding zoning is mostly RR, and this property is currently in the ETJ, and the future land use is low residential.

This is the second item on the public hearing schedule.

No action is required on this item tonight.

And following this will be the first reading of the annexation ordinance.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Questions for staff.

This is also a public hearing, so I'll open the public hearing.

Anyone wishing to speak on this item?

Seeing no movement, I'll close the public hearing.

Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is CA25-004A.

Hold a public hearing and consider a petition for voluntary annexation of approximately 1.09 acres of land, generally located 290 feet west of Swisher Road, approximately 740 feet south of Edwards Road, into the city of Denton Denton County, Texas.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Bryce Van Artistale Assistant Planner.

This is A25004A related to this the annexation of Swiss Road, the property office of Switzerland Road.

This is the public hearing portion for the petition of annexation of approximately 1.09 acres.

This area is located roughly 300 feet off of Swisher Road to the west and approximately 740 feet south of Edwards Road.

The current zoning in the area is largely largely residential with rural residential to the south and east, as well as res residential six to the west and a public park, which is villages of Carmel Park to the north.

The future land use for this area is moderate residential.

The annexation is continuing as scheduled based on this schedule provided in both for our presentations.

And I'm happy to stand for any questions.

Questions for staff.

Seeing none, thank you.

This is a public hearing, so I'll open the public hearing.

Anyone wishing to speak?

Okay, with that, I will close that public hearing.

Next item on the agenda is item D, CA 25-005A.

Hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton regarding Texas regarding a comprehensive plan amendment from the agriculture and low residential future land use designations to the regional mixed use future land use designation on approximately 24.941 acres, generally located on the northwest and northeast corners of the intersection of West University Drive, US 380 and Golden Hoof Drive in the city of Denton, Denton County, Texas, adopting an amendment to the city's official future land use map, providing for a penalty and the maximum amount of $2,000 for violations thereof, providing a severability clause, an effective date, the planning and zoning voted 501 to recommend.

This is, I do have one presentation for both projects.

Typically, we call them at the same time if they're at the same time.

Thank you.

If you want to do that, I will also call item E, Z25-002 to A.

Hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, regarding a change in the zoning district and use classification from residential to R2 district to suburban corridor SC District on approximately 24.941 acres of land, generally located on the northwest and northeast corner of the intersection of West University Drive US 380 and Golden Hoof Drive in the city of Denton Denton County, Texas, adopting an amendment to the city's official zoning map, providing for a penalty in the maximum amount of $2,000 for violations thereof, providing a severality clause and an effective date.

The planning and zoning commission voted 5-1 to recommend.

Evening Mayor Pratim, members of the council, Mia Hines, and this, as stated in the caption, is a presentation to cover both a comprehensive plan amendment and a rezoning request.

The property is approximately just under 25 acres, located just north of West University Drive, sort of at the northwest corner of West University Drive and Thomas J.

Egan Road.

The existing future land use map designation for this property has a mix of agriculture and low residential.

And the proposed future land use designation here is regional mixed use.

The existing zoning is residential two or R2, and the proposed zoning is suburban corridor.

The purpose of this rezoning and comprehensive plan amendment is to entitle the property for anticipated commercial development in association with the Hickory Grove development that is occurring to the north and west of this property.

So I won't go over this too much.

I think you guys are familiar with this.

We've we've had a couple of cases come forward for this project over the past, but essentially this is related to the Hickory Grove Municipal Utility District.

While this property is not, or these properties are not within that district, it was anticipated with the development agreement and with that MUD that this property and these parcels would develop according to uh commercial development and provide services, um, retail and commercial services to the uh residences that are proposed as a part of that MUD.

So here's a map um showing that existing future land use designation.

Of course, these are the two properties in your backup.

I refer to the larger parcel is tract one and the eastern parcel is track two.

Um as you can see, the uh future land use designation has a combination of low residential and agriculture, um, and then they're proposing to change that to regional mixed use, uh sort of consistent with what we did uh uh about a month back for the property to the west.

Um that regional mixed use flume to give you guys a reminder applies to areas that serve as regional destinations within the city of Denton.

I highlighted a couple of uh sort of corridors and spotlights or highlights where we have those around the city, um, namely most or mostly around our major thoroughfares like US 380 and I-35, um, north, uh I-35W and I-35E.

Um, the land uses within this regional or this future land use designation are intended to uh include residential, commercial, office entertainment, and other uses except for industrial at the highest level of scale and intensity with the city.

Um, the future development within this area is intended to complement and embrace existing viable uh uses and raise the standard of design to uh increase their regionality and their regional draw.

So we put this uh request up against our criteria for approval and ultimately found that the regional planning and development trends reflect the need to plan for the development of this area beyond just what the agri uh agriculture, which is the current future land use designation.

Um additionally, uh this request is compatible with the existing and proposed developments occurring both with it in the city and within the city DTJ.

And the proposed uh mixed use um regional mixed use plume is intended to encourage development at the highest density along regional corridors such as US 380, uh, which is what we have here.

So just the picture uh image of that regional draw or that regional development and how uh this is sort of feeding or um um benefiting or contributing to uh providing service within this area.

Again, I've shown this exhibit a couple of times with previous projects, but as you can see, we have developing single family uh properties uh developments within the city's ETJ 1 and 2, north and uh north of US 380, um, and then west of the city limits.

Um, and then we also have the recently approved um uh multifamily development uh zoning uh just west of the property within the city's uh limits.

Um further to the east, we have that razor ranch area that's been developing over the course of some time.

Um and then we also have some uh pretty significant industrial development that we see bringing jobs and other draw um serving as other draw efforts to the city.

So with that, staff is recommending approval of this comprehensive plan amendment as it complies with the criteria uh in section 2.4.5E.

Uh and the planning and zoning commission recommended as approval as well.

Next, I'll go over to the uh zoning request.

The current zoning here is residential two as shown on the exhibit to the uh on your left side, and then the requested zoning is a suburban corridor as shown on the image to the right.

Um the main difference, of course, is that uh the residential two zoning is intended to uh provide for uh the construction of residential development, and then the suburban corridor uh is more suited for uh commercial development.

We put this request similarly up against our criteria for approval and ultimately found that the proposal intends to allow is intended to allow property to develop in according with the prior approval.

So some of the projects that we've talked about this evening as well as um over the course of the past couple of months uh related to Hickory Grove.

Um and then additionally, the proposal is intended to allow development compatible with surrounding developments in the city and the ETJ.

Um similarly, it is generally consistent with the goals and policies of the proposed future land use map amendment uh and the uh regional mixed use requests that I covered earlier in this presentation.

Um and then finally it does uh uh again uh contribute to that regional growth that we're seeing in this area, uh, which does reflect the need to allow for retail and commercial services given the the residential development that's occurring around this area.

Um that suburban corridor district uh is intended to provide moderate to high intensity commercial uh along such uh high traffic corridors like what we have here.

Um additionally, that suburban corridor district is intended to provide an elevated building and landscape design and provide for appropriate buffering from adjacent neighborhoods, which in this case we do have that residential single family residential development to the north of this property.

Um and then finally the SC district is primarily auto-oriented, but it also provides for a safe environment for pedestrians and cyclists.

Um I did put this up just to show uh a little bit of comparison of the existing zoning that we have here in the R2.

Um the development agreement mentions that property along uh US 380 should uh uh potentially be developed in accordance with the uh uh HC district.

We ended up going for the SC district because we felt that it ultimately provides for uh more protections with regard to the adjacent single family residential development to the north.

So as you can see, some of the main differences here is the max building height in HC does allow for property or commercial development to go up to 100 feet, whereas that's capped at 55 feet in the SC district.

Um additionally, it does ensure that we are getting more commercial uses because um items such as the the more intense uh residential development such as multifamily would require a specific use permit come back before the planning and zoning commission uh and this body.

Um and then lastly, um this request is in line with prior approvals.

Again, this is not a part of the Hickory Grove Municipal Utility District, but the thought with the whole master planning of that Hickory Grove MUD was that these parcels would develop according to with commercial land uses to support the residential that we see coming within that mud.

We put um or we sent out notifications for both of these requests, and as of the uh time of get me giving this presentation to you, we have not received uh any responses in opposition or in favor.

Um, with that, staff is recommending approval of the rezoning requests in conjunction with the comprehensive plan amendment that came before you or that's also before you at this time, and the planning and zoning commission similarly recommended approval 5.1 of this request.

Um so this is just a recap of of the items that uh I need uh some action from you guys on this evening, and that is uh 5D and E.

My apologies.

Comprehensive plan uh amendment um from agriculture and low residential flume to regional mixed-use flume, and then the last one is that zoning change from residential or R2 to suburban corridor.

At this time, I will happily take any questions you have.

Thank you, Mia.

Questions for staff.

We've got council member Beck.

Yeah.

Mia, I really appreciate you uh including the uh the East and Flip Plain maps uh on this one.

Um it's I mean it's the same corridor that we've talked about for a couple of meetings now, and so it's really really useful to me.

Um it looks like, and uh, you know, only sort of a the western 15-20 percent of tract one is is in the floodplain.

Is that approximately correct?

Sounds about right.

And so by and large, the the the bulk of the property to the east in tract two are right along University 380 and um you know not uh not concerning in terms of a of a floodplain uh categorization.

Okay, thank thanks, Mia.

I appreciate it.

Any other questions?

Anyone have a motion?

It's a public hearing, thank you.

I'll open the public hearing.

Uh anybody wishing to speak on this item.

You can come down if you would like.

All right, seeing no movements.

I'll close the public hearing.

Now does anyone have a motion?

Thank you.

Councilmember Holland.

Uh I'll move.

Are we gonna do both of these?

We're gonna start with the comprehensive plan update.

So that's item D.

Okay, then item D.

Um CA250005A approve is approval motion is approval.

Thank you, Councilmember Holland.

Councilmember Beck.

Uh yes, I uh I uh mo um second.

Thank you.

Um we have a motion and a second, and just one more time.

This is on the um comprehensive plan amendment.

And any discussion.

All right, seeing none, let's vote on the screen.

That passes 6-0.

Do I have a motion for item E?

That is the rezoning from residential two R2 district to suburban corridor, same property.

Councilmember Byrd.

I'm a champion.

Thank you.

Do I see a second?

Councilmember Jester?

Second.

Thank you.

This is a public hearing.

I forgot about that one too.

So I'll open the public hearing on the rezoning as well.

Anyone wishing to speak?

All right, I'll close the public hearing.

We have a motion, we have a second.

This is on the rezoning.

Any further discussion.

Seeing none, let's vote on the screen.

That passes 6-0.

That moves us back to items for individual consideration.

The next item is A25-005B.

Conduct the first of two readings of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, annexing approximately two acres of land, approximately located 300.77 feet north of Mills Road, approximately 1,453 feet west of South Trinity Road, approving a schedule of annexation, authorizing the city manager to execute the agreement and providing an effective date.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and members of the council.

This is the last item this evening for 5811 Mills Road annexation.

Uh, this is to conduct uh first of two readings of the ordinance, um annexing approximately two acres of land into the city of Denton.

Um as a reminder, it's approximately 300 feet north of Mill Road Mills Road and approximately 1400 feet west of South Trinity Road.

Um we're here because there is an expired non-annexation agreement and a new agreement has not been um signed.

Uh this is the final step uh that we'll consider tonight following this reading into the the record.

The full ordinance will be published in the Denton Record Chronicle this weekend.

The second reading and final action uh will occur on March 24th.

Um so I will just read this caption into the record.

This is an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, annexing approximately 2.00 acres of land, approximately located 300.77 feet north of Mills Road, approximately 1,453 feet west of South Trinity Road, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annexed land and providing for a savings clause and an effective date.

I'm happy to answer any questions you all may have.

Any questions for staff?

This item has no action.

So we'll move on to the next agenda item.

Item B A 25-003B.

Conduct the first of two readings of an ordinance of the City of Denton annexing approximately 1.03 acres of land, generally located on the north side of Mills Road, approximately 1,453 feet west of South Trinity Road, into the city of Denton Denton Tech, Denton County, Texas, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annexed land and providing a savings clause and an effective date.

Mayor Patem, members of council, Ashley Extit, associate planner.

This is A253B, the Mills Road annexation.

This is the first of two readings to annex approximately 1.03 acres of land located on the north side of Mills Road, west of South Trinity Road.

This is uh property with the nine annexation agreement that has expired.

This is the last item on the agenda tonight for this property, and it is the first reading of the ordinance, and no action is required.

I will now read the caption into the record.

An ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, annexing approximately 1.03 acres of land, generally located on the north side of Mills Road, approximately 1,453 feet west of South Trinity Road, into the city of Denton, Denton County, Texas, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annexed land and providing for a savings clause in an effective date.

Happy to answer any questions.

Questions for staff?

Seeing none, thank you.

This also has no action.

Next item is item C, A25-004B.

Conduct the first of two readings of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, annexing appropriate approximately 1.09 acres of land, generally located 290 feet west of Switzer Road, approximately 740 feet south of Edwards Road, into the city of Denton, Denton County, Texas, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annexed land and providing for a savings clause and an effective date.

Good evening, Mayor Far Tim, Council Bryce Men Arsdale, Assistant Planner.

This is the final item for A25004 tonight.

This is the first of two readings of an ordinance to annex approximately 1.09 acres of land into the city of Denton.

As a reminder, this property is located 290 feet west of Swissure Road and approximately 740 feet south of Edwards Road.

This property owner has not re-signed the expired annexation agreement, which expired in August of 2020.

2020.

Yeah, sorry.

This annexation, the annexation schedule, this is the final item tonight where the uh ordinance will be published this weekend in the Denton Record Chronicle, and 30 days later, we will conduct a second reading.

Already that ordinance captioned into the record.

An ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, annexing approximately 1.09 acres of land, generally located 290 feet west of Swissure Road and 740 feet south of Edwards Road, into the city of Denton, Denton County, Texas, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annexed land and providing for a savings clause and an effective date.

I'm happy to stand for any questions.

Thank you.

Councilmember McGee.

I'm just curious in general about some of these.

All the letters you send them personally and trying to reach out.

I'm sure it's very situational and varies, so we don't have a strong feel for each, and then I would be cautious to make a broad statement about all of them.

Okay, appreciate it.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

All right, this requires no action.

So thank you, Bryce.

All right.

That brings us to our final item, which is concluding items.

Councilmember Beck.

Microphone.

There we go.

Um thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Um, I would be remiss if I didn't remind everyone that uh early voting starts today through uh February 27th.

So I encourage everyone to go out there and do their civic duty.

Um please vote.

Every election, every time your voice really does matter, the more people's voices that are out there, the more we we have a consensus understanding of the way our community wants us to behave.

Um also I will remind folks that we, you know, as we all know, we are an arts and culture oriented town.

Um Moonlight Monster Ball is coming up this Saturday.

Uh it's a fundraiser to support uh Day of the Dead and uh Cirque de Horror.

So I uh encourage folks to come out to that uh at GDAC on uh Saturday.

And and then the following day, I will be 57 years young.

So it will be my my birthday, and uh I it it just is uh yay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Jester.

Uh yes, um, I just wanted to mention TWU gymnastics.

Uh there's a meet here in town at 2 p.m.

Those are always so fun, and they do so well on their great women.

Uh, that's a good time.

And the Denton Box Society also has a concert at 4 p.m.

Uh this Saturday as well.

And then I also wanted to say I think this is a record for the shortest city council meeting ever.

And so well done, Mayor Pro Tim and everyone else.

Thank you.

Councilmember McGee.

Thank you, thank you.

Um as you all know, um, Reverend Jackson made his transition this morning.

And uh given the fact that we are an inherent political body, I know a lot of people are gonna talk about the legacy of Reverend Jackson.

I wanted to make note of one thing.

Um, I'm glad that uh a couple years ago I was in community with Reverend Jackson at the DNC convention.

And as we all know, he ran for president in 1984 and 1988, and he won several states.

But back then he did not get any of the delegates because we did not appropriate apportion um delegates in a proportional way.

So because Reverend Jackson ran, and because he won so many states, the DNC was then therefore compelled to change their rules.

So now, based on primaries and caucuses, anyone who runs for president, even if they don't win the state, they can still be granted a certain number of delegates based on the proportion of votes that they get in the primary caucus.

So I just want to say shout out to Reverend Jackson's family.

And uh, as someone who is participating in the process in the franchise, I'm glad that he paved the way for me to sit here and literally help change the rules to make this process more fair for all of us to run, particularly people who look like me.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Um so last week, at the beginning of last week, I got to celebrate uh an anniversary in District Three.

Um on February 10th, 2001 was the first time that uh the Price Master occurred.

So I don't know how many know about this.

If you don't know about it, go to YouTube, look up Price Master.

Uh but it was another district three resident put together a meetup where uh people brought random items to be priced.

Uh there was somebody brought, I don't know if it was actually their mother's ashes or not, but it was a bag of something that said mom, so I don't think it was real, but I don't know.

Uh there were there was all sorts of interesting and strange items.

It was delightful.

It I what I really enjoyed about it is it mixed the the Gen X folks with the Gen Zers, like all the Gen Zers have learned about this on YouTube and stuff, because it keeps going viral.

Um I was one of the couple of millennials there.

But I just I really enjoyed the celebration of some of the cultural things that makes Denton such an interesting place to live, and it made me really happy and it reconnected me with Denton and why I love Denton so much, is all that weird stuff.

So um, you know, at the end of we marched to the house through construction, actually, but um we marched to the house, and there was uh a talk by the leader at the end, and he just kept saying, you know, if you have a weird idea or a creative idea, do it.

Right?

So you never know who might show up.

Um so I would encourage everybody, you know, be a little weird.

If you have a crazy idea, try it out.

You know, some other people may come along.

Like we, as a community, we need to have stuff like this to build community with each other, feel belonging and feel really proud of our of where we live.

So I would encourage everybody to go out there, be weird, be yourself.

All right.

And with that, uh it is 7 26 p.m.

And I'll conclude this meeting of the Dent City Council.

Thank y'all.