Okay, we'll get started. Thank you, everyone. Today's presenter,
so today is Tuesday, April 7th, 2026. It is 1204. I hope everyone had a great Easter holiday. And with that, I will call the city district side of the meeting.
north from
the port. Let it be noted. We have four of them, so go ahead.
A joint meeting of the Board of Trustees of Denton ISD will be held at the 7th, 2026 beginning at 12 p.m. in the City of Denton Development Service with Business.
401 North Home Street, Denton, Texas, 76201. The subjects discussed. The subjects to be discussed are considered or upon which any formal action may be taken.
And our is listed below items do not have to be taken in order shown on the meeting notice unless removed from the consent agenda items identified with the consent agenda will be acted on at one time.
And so we'll do a call to order and we do have a form.
Okay.
And then so the first item on the work session agenda is 3, a ID, 2, 6, 0, 2, 0, 9 received before hold the session.
regarding Denton ISD construction at Borman Elementary School.
Brandon Boydor, Executive Director of Construction has sent an update on Borman and how ready it's going to be come August, right?
Absolutely, absolutely. I'm sure everybody knows where it's at, everybody drives by pretty often.
Mormon is coming along I would say I think we're within two weeks of the
appropriate date on the schedule. We go through it a little bit here. I don't know
that you really care about all these. We are talking about Mormon but we listed
all the projects that we currently have in our queue. If it says in
progress, obviously the project is in progress. If it says permitting, we're
either going through permitting with the city right now,
or we are going through final drawings,
but we're in the permitting phase
that all of those projects have been
did out taken to the board for approval.
But we are, that's kind of how we list them
in the progress or in the permitting.
So you can see there's quite a few projects there
on our queue for 26, 27, 28.
Unborming.
The picture here of November of 2025,
the top picture, you can kind of see where that is.
it's an ICF construction project. The walls are up, and in November we really didn't have
a roof on most of the facility. You can see on the bottom photo there, we are in the drow.
The windows are in. The roof's on. Cat sheet's not on, but the roof is in the drive. The
only portion of the building that is left open is right there in the middle, and that
really is just so that we can get to the courtyard. Since this building does have
a courtyard, we do have to get heavy equipment in and out of that courtyard.
So that's kind of why you see the courtyard there, or that front of the building that is still open.
All the work going on, I'm not bored of you with all that. You can find all of this stuff on our website.
But really what that says is there's a lot of people on this job every day working to get it to completion.
This is the inside, as well as the courtyard. The bottom photo there is the courtyard with some heavy equipment in there.
So the interior, you can see finishes are already going up in certain areas.
Certain areas, I would say, are more in the dry than others because of that center section
being left open.
But we do have temporary walls in there so that we can work on those areas.
Photo of the courtyard from the 7th floor.
The bottom photo of there is the gymnasium, or that's what we want to call it, a recreational
area.
And that is the spot that we do have an office there for the city.
We'll have an officer for after-school activities in that area.
This would have been a video of Lileover, but it just kind of gives you an idea of where
we are.
Obviously, the original Borman is this way, you can't see it, but the whole plan, after
we finish Borman, we will then go into the tearing down of the old Borman and then construct
the city's soccer field as agreed upon up in that area, and all the things that
goes with that.
Any questions on that?
I don't know if you have this information, is the oversea of the construction, but can
you talk about the capacity at the current site and then the capacity at this new and
improved?
Yeah, typically we like to say that our current elementaries, the capacity is somewhere in
the 750 range.
Obviously that is massaged a little bit, nowadays with collaboration spaces and all the special
programs that go into school, those numbers have to shake out a little bit.
But 750 is what we typically say our net design or elementaries will hold.
This building will be able to hold about nine when it's total.
It's not that it has that many more classrooms, it's that it has some small group instruction
spaces that are in the old building we're having to use, a complete classroom for 12
kids.
And we built some of those for the smaller, so we take a little bit more efficient use
of the building.
I was going to say that we are also building them for four pre-k classrooms.
That's correct.
So building, say, ten years ago, we didn't build four pre-k classrooms inside, and we've
added that into our newer footprints as well.
May I continue?
Absolutely.
Is this pre-k through fifth?
Pre-k through five.
Yes, ma'am.
Through fifth?
Yes, ma'am.
And this feeds into Calhoun, is that?
This feeds into Kalman, a little bit in the McMap.
Yeah, a little window there at McMap and that tools down there.
And are there any items or kind of relics from
the old historic rank one in school that have been able to be
repurposed in the new building? Well, one of the unique things on this side, and why it's
chosen to kind of swap land with the city is what ends up in function.
So that full school, really there's no, nothing we can do to that school
right now because we are using it as a functional school. There is very little in that school
that we would want to pull over. I mean at the high school we did some of that where
we saved the logo that was in the terrazzo and we moved it over and we moved some things
like that. The trophies and all of that that are inside Borman that were one of the students,
all of that stuff will be moved over. But actually on the facility there's really
nothing in there that I would say is salvage or usable, you know, for as
using in the building. Yeah, I don't think that there's just a ton of things
like you have at the high school or at the middle schools where you have some of
those kind of types of things. Don't know if I answered that question how you
want it. Yeah, I don't think I earned any trophies when I went to Crane
Oh, I'm sure you did.
No, no, I'm sure there's something there with your name.
We'll get everyone of those.
Go get your plate.
Yeah, and I promise you, we'll make sure we have one for you there.
Yeah, go right there.
I was going to say, Jill, I spoke to the staff at Borman recently.
And as I stood in the library at Borman, I said, you know,
y'all deserve a new building.
I went to Borman as well.
But I said, I was standing here when President Reagan was shot, and they said he was shot.
Staff here is entirely too young.
But the library looks exactly the same, but there is no memorabilia, if you will, to take in the way that we do for our high school.
We did do a little event, if you will, at Jennings before we brought it down.
So that will be a time line before we can turn it over to the city.
So we'll have another.
Yeah, just timing of that.
You know, once we move the teachers and all of their stuff out of the old
Mormon into the new Mormons, and all the new furniture gets put
in the new Mormon, there's still a little bit of asbestos
there's this abatement that we have to do before we can tear that school down.
And so then after we get all of that done, you'll start seeing the building come down timeline of that.
I think our agreement with the city built by the year, I think it was August 28th.
I think which we don't wait for that.
I mean, we're the first quarter of 27, we think we'll have that turned back over to the city so that they'll have a soft field in that location.
This partnership has just been great.
It's really working out to the benefit of the community
as far as the swap and what everyone is willing to do.
And so it's very much appreciated.
Did anyone else go to Borman here, by the way?
No, I don't know if people have been raised in the summer.
No!
The best of people.
They're great artists.
But you didn't go to Borman, and you go to Borman.
I mean, it's easy to get lost in Gorman, you know, it's just,
if you were, that building was open concept building,
then it got turned into a smaller kind of room,
sort of thing.
So it's intricate.
Mr. Saffron?
Charlie.
I know when we use SCF, we usually have some hard spaces
for wind storm.
Yeah, let's talk, do that.
If I go to that, Charlie's Williams
bringing up is the wall system here,
and obviously the new code mandates
that we built storm shelters at facilities.
So the storm shelter of this particular building is the part that's already completed.
It's the gymnasium. That is the storm shelter for this building.
However, all of the walls in this particular building are ICF.
If you don't know what that means, it's insulated concrete forms,
where there's insulation.
And insulation, if you put the rebar in the middle of the wall,
gets, you know, anywhere from 12 to 18 inches thick.
So they can all classify as hardened areas.
The great thing about this is it does make a really robust building security-wise.
You know, if you go to the old Texas A&M test where they shoot two before it's out of cannons
into walls and see what will go through it, there's never going to be a two before that
would go through any wall in this facility because it is hardened.
But the storm shelter is a gem and it has its own bathroom facilities and all that,
as ICC 500 code mandates for us to do in this particular building.
But the entire building is built of the same wall system that you have on the storm shelter.
The only difference would be the roofing system and the holes in the walls.
The wind doesn't stuff like that.
So what's the capacity?
How many people can you cram in there tornado coming?
You really put me on the spot here.
Six square foot per person is what the code requires.
And if I remember right, it is our total building population plus 20%.
Something like that.
But here's what I'm going to, I promise you that if we have an F5 tornado, I don't know
any, I'm just going to speak for myself.
I don't need six square foot.
You don't have to stand six square foot for me.
You can tell where I don't know if it's an F5 tornado because I'm not going to really
be worried about my own personal space if there's an F5 tornado and we're able
to be in a facility that can withstand it.
And this one obviously is a facility that's designed to withstand those kind of things.
I was going to ask about parking, you know, we have that soft ball field over there, we're
looking forward to soccer fields, will this school accommodate additional parking or will
we need additional parking or what are they going to work?
Right where the soccer field is, we say all of the parking lots that were to the east
of Bournemouth, all of those parking lots, the city is getting those parking lots.
So really, your soccer field now has twice the parking
that it ever did.
Handicapped accessible ramps, handicapped accessible parking
where previously, your soccer field was kind of located
in the center portion of that park.
And really, everybody had to walk to it.
Now, the parking lot is right adjacent to your rec center.
So all of that parking you ganked.
And then we also added a road to the south
of this school, Grapple Road.
I didn't make it.
But and then we also put an entrance ramp off of the new road into your parking lot so that nobody now how that the little intersection over there was kind of kind of a poor intersection and just because how things built so I would say the parking it has increased 100% from what you previously had.
Any other questions?
Okay, thank you very much.
That takes us to item B.
ID 2602-0804 hold the stuff and get it regarding
citizen construction projects surrounding
Denton ISD campus.
Also
weighing Interim Director of Parks and Rec
so our CNI will be sharing updates for
public construction projects that impact Denton ISD.
First up is Denia Park. The Denia Park Administration is a major infrastructure and amenity update.
The project consists of grading the softball fields for improved drainage, electrical and lighting updates, new fencing, new trails,
restroom renovations and ADA accessibility upgrades. This phase of the project is complete.
The final phase of the project will be the addition of the new soccer fields upon completion
of this new form of elementary and demolition of the former form of elementary.
And you can see here everything that's light in color is complete and in the new field.
You can have a time like that Snor.
Also the Natatorium opened in 2003 and has just undergone its first major renovations
since it was built. It got a new roof, was power washed inside and out, everything has
been cleaned, it's free, not going to cranny. The windows and doors have been sealed, the
restrooms and hallways painted, the sidewalks have been repaired. There's an entirely new
pump room, the pool deck.
Full shell were renewed. New landmines and reels have been installed, new lifeguard chairs, new ADA chair, new UV lights and new full lights.
This just finished off on March 23rd, and we're done.
One of those men working on the flight, John Easter Egg.
Those are the filters in the pump room.
Yes.
Good afternoon, everybody.
Seth Garcia, Director of Capital Products, is an analyst in said.
So a lot of you guys have seen this information,
so I'll run through it quickly.
We're going to start looking at our Bonnie Brae area
or your Dent High School and Reed's Elementary area.
So to start out, Bonnie Brae phase six,
so we are in active construction.
We're getting really close to being complete with our
underground work, which is our storm drain
and water line sections.
You may have seen recently we started subgrade operations there at the north end near 77.
Again our plan for this section is build what will be the future southbound lanes, get all
the traffic moved over onto those future southbound lanes, and then build the northbound lanes.
So we're hoping late April, early May you're going to start seeing the first concrete
sections going down, making good progress out there.
Again, this is a picture of the section of Rhiney Road in front of Reed's Elementary
that we expedited and almost made it before school open.
We're really close.
So this is a great update for you guys.
So Rhiney Road East is the rest of the expansion here in front of Reed's Elementary going
back to the east towards US 77.
So we've actually begun construction on this project.
A portion of this project was to build concrete trails through Northlake's Park
to connect the park section to the back of the elementary school.
That's where our contractor is currently working.
We're also preparing some utility relocations there on the roadway section.
They're moving some fire hydrants back along the park section.
So you'll see a subgrade work happening in that section soon as well.
So we're under construction. They started in March and we're anticipating being done Q1 in 2017.
Where are the trans, please?
So they're not shown here, but essentially from the last pavilion on Northlake's Park
that's in between kind of the soccer fields and the play areas, we will be extending a
trail along the sides of the soccer fields, in between the soccer and football fields
and then north into the back of the school site.
So hold on, first, can you repeat the question and then two, can we hold the question?
Yes, sir.
So, the question was where are the trails going through Northlake's Park?
And so, at Northlake's Park, if you're familiar with the site, there's a large pavilion just to the north of the playground area.
We're essentially going to connect onto existing trails there.
We're going to run along the east side of the soccer fields.
We'll cut in between the soccer and football fields along the existing concrete path and then run north along the parking lot to the back of the school site.
So next, our Westgate Road connector project, this is what connects Bronco Way to the service road.
So we are substantially complete. We were able to get some lanes of traffic open back right around Christmas.
They're finishing some various punch list items, but again, hopefully this is alleviated some of the traffic there in high school.
We are planning to be done by the end of this month with punch list items.
So we will be out of there and we'll have all four lanes open for traffic.
So, Neighborhood 2 and 6, this is one of our bond packages from our 2019 Street Reconstruction
Bond.
This whole package of 2 and 6 is roughly 120 segments.
Some of them impacted the areas around the old Calhoun site, and we have several street
segments around the new Calhoun site and Newton razor.
Good news here.
We're finishing up a majority of that work.
We've been waiting on activists to pick up some of their low pressure relocations.
So you'll continue to see some ongoing work in the area through the summer, early fall,
but we are on track to be complete by quarter 4 of 2026 with all the construction.
So some more good updates, safe routes to schools.
So we had four sites that we were working on, SRTS projects.
We are complete with all four.
So this is the last time you'll see these slides.
Here's some photos of the completed sidewalk segments at Pecan Creek and Schultz Elementary.
And then also along Jennings and Alexander Elementary School.
So we had various sidewalk segments that were completed with those grant funds.
We are done.
So hopefully the students are able to enjoy those pieces of site.
And then one more piece of good news.
So our Transportation Services Department has been actively pursuing some grants.
They were just awarded 4.6 million in a new Safe Routes to School program.
So this is going to be around the Calhoun Middle School Newton Racer site.
So we're in the early, early stages of initiation and planning moving into design.
So essentially we'll look at all areas within roughly a half mile of that school or both
school sites and see what we need to do for pedestrian and safety.
So that could be sidewalks, trails, bike lanes, at a minimum, I think Crescent
and Malone is going to get a refresh for some of the pedestrian infrastructure
So over the next 12 months, we'll be evaluating what all needs to happen, and then probably
at our next meeting, I'll have a good scope, a clarification update to give you guys on
what we're going to be doing.
And that is all I have.
Take any questions?
Thank you.
Mayor Perken.
Mayor, would you like us to go from base topic by topic?
Because let me have questions about all of them.
No, I don't have any questions.
Yeah, yeah.
Sure, sure.
So I did ask parents for, you know, what questions they were wondering about.
So Bonnie Brake face six.
They're still ongoing safety concerns from parents who kind of live in the King's Bridge site of Bonnie Brake traveling to reach out injury with their students.
They're concerned about lack of traffic signals temporary safe crossings and street lights.
Alright, so my question on that one is what safety measures are currently being taken and
do we have opportunities for any further safety measures at that intersection of Ryania Body Break?
Yeah, great question. So this is a challenge that we've faced. Again, there was not existing infrastructure out there.
A lot of the sidewalks came from one side to this intersection and dead ended.
So we try to provide as much access as much as safe access as we could as quickly as possible.
Again, we were able to install some temporary crossings to come across at this intersection
to focus the students towards the schools.
We can evaluate it and see what else can be done.
Again, as we go through and actually start our painting pieces, you'll see sidewalks
and other pieces that will come in along North-South Bonnie Brake.
Again, that will provide more opportunity for us to do additional pieces.
Again, the last thing we want to do is put students in an unsafe area because
this is an active construction zone.
So just north and south of this intersection. We're going to have paving operations going on on both sides
So the safest thing for us is to keep students out of those areas so we can work
But again any time we can evaluate and open up an area
Safely for students to get through we'll continue to do that
Kind of still on that intersection
I think some residents thought that the city was saying by August 20th that that intersection would be fully complete
like 100% complete. What what completion did the city actually mean and when with the traffic lights
and all the final final stuff we added? Yeah no great question. So what we meant by complete was
permanent painting installed through that intersection. So part of our phasing plane
initially had this broken out with several closures. We kind of remodified that phasing
plane with our contractor to build it in halves with a little shoe fly if you all
remember around the existing intersection that was there. Sidewalks, ramps, traffic signal
conduits are typically some of the last things that you're going to see towards the end of
the project. So as we go through and complete out the paving, we want radiuses, we want
ramps put in. So as they start boring conduits for signals, we make sure that they're
out of the way of where the pavement improvements are. I don't have an exact off the top of
my head when that will fall into the exact schedule. Again, it's kind of dependent
and on setting some of those permanent pieces with the paving. But again, we'll work to
expand everything that we can to get that signal out.
I assume the signals will go in after the north-south lanes are constructed.
That is correct. And then the closure, I guess,
intermittent closures between Conquest and North Elm. I think there was a closure
up until March 23rd, and I guess it's intermittently still closed. Do we have
an estimated timeline of when those intermittent closures would go? Yeah, so if it's not
open already. It should be getting open pretty quickly. We were installing the final pieces
of drainage infrastructure that were crossing perpendicular. There's a couple of waters
of the U.S. right there. There are some small creek channels that probably shouldn't be
waters of the U.S. that are. So we were getting our final box culverts through there.
As soon as that's open again, we wouldn't have another closure until we get that south
side poured and everybody moved over. So again, we're trying to minimize those
And then what accommodations will there be on Bonnie Brae for people using scooters like
students?
Yeah, so part of our entire Bonnie Brae program from phase 1 to phase 6, we're going to have
at least a 10 foot trail on one side.
So for this section on the east side of the roadway from US 3 on all the way to US 77,
there will be a 10 foot trail on the west side of the roadway.
we're going to have a six foot and eight foot sidewalk just depending on which section that
grant. So you're going to have larger than normal sidewalks on both sides. Again, on the east side,
on the park side, you will have a 10 foot trail that will accommodate bikes, pedestrians, anything.
Second to last, lighting. Is there any lighting plan for the side pass
and also a long body brake racing? Yes. So not specific to the side pass,
but our street lighting will accommodate for lighting across those trails. So we'll have
of lighting all the way from US 382, US 77,
the section of Reining Road.
They're actually putting in conduits right now
in front of the elementary school.
And then with the Reining Road East project,
we extend that lighting all the way to 77 on the East side.
So full lighting everywhere.
I'll pass it back to Mayor on this Albany brand,
Reining, in case anybody else has questions.
OK, come for a bit.
I had some of the same questions that my pretend did, I guess, as we stage these things and
we have temporary access as the phasing goes forward,
what's the plan for the phasing of
various temporary biped measures, if you know it, and how are we going to communicate
that?
Yeah, so great question.
A lot of the communication, the best place to go is our disgusted website.
There, you'll get frequent updates at least monthly.
You can also ask project managers or it'll have project manager contact information that
you can reach out to.
So that's where we always like to point people for the most valid updates.
For temporary, again, a lot of this is going to depend on the scope of work that's happening.
One of the questions we get asked a lot is, we want temporary things where existing
pedestrian infrastructure didn't exist before.
That's hard to do.
So where existing sidewalks are, we're either going to clearly sign that, hey, this is currently closed while we install drainage boxes or roadway improvements.
Again, part of our phasing plan will install those sidewalks with the concrete roadway that's coming through. So as soon as we can get sections open that are safe and we'll get you somewhere, we'll open those up to the public.
Are you designing alternative paths for folks that have to use bike path access to the schools?
I mean, are we going through other directions, even if it's more roundabout?
Yeah, we're currently not just because a lot of those areas did not have existing pedestrian pathways.
So if they were riding on the street, they can continue riding on the street through the work zone.
but we didn't have any continuous places of sidewalk
that came to any of the school system there currently.
I'm gonna encourage you to be on the thing,
these things around schools to be as proactive
and as push-centric as possible to make it
so that people can get timely updates,
push to them as much as you can.
Thank you, sir.
Absolutely.
That's always good.
Anyone?
Thank you the east end of sunset between Carol and Bolliver okay is that is that imminent
to me is it to be to be knocked out or finished soon yes so I believe you're referring to in
the two and six project yeah so we had our first portion to painting go down I think
a little over a week ago. So as soon as they get all the remainder of the concrete flat
work they'll finish the last two layers of asphalt. Part of that will be curbed for the
first time ever. Yes. Yes, section between all of them. Right, adjacent to the corner.
Yes sir. Very nice. Thank you.
Because we're just here. I've got a couple of questions.
I don't think I need to take everyone's time for but if I could just catch you
you may be in between meetings today.
I've got a couple.
Yes ma'am.
Thank you.
Thanks to questions.
I did get parent feedback.
They love the sidewalks by Alexander.
So I guess parents are using those
and they really like that.
They're really excited about the Safe Rocks to School
Projects around Newton-Razer, if their parents are.
Two questions about Westgate slash Bronco Way.
Yeah, so that part of the road was built by development. We actually recently had a question that came through mobility committee about the same section. So I got with D and me, they don't have a current project there, but now that we've been notified, we can start programming it into either the capital plan or the street behind the pipe between me to see if we can get street lights added in.
but currently there is no project for that section.
And then final question, I heard from a Westgate resident
that I think their understanding was the plan was
for northbound traffic on Westgate
that they cannot turn right on Brock away
heading towards that high school.
I was able to find the video
where I think it was supposed to be a bug out
to discourage it, but you can't 100% deny people
from turning right.
So I don't necessarily need an answer,
but just that's something that the neighbors
are concerned about.
I guess a lot of cut-through traffic coming up Westgate to skip all the traffic on Bonning Bay and applying down Westgate. It sounds like yeah
So we do have signage that's going in there that says no right turn left turn only and not a student drop-off location
Again part of the geometry of the roadway does point for a footed left out to try and force people to go back towards 35
So again once we get all the infrastructure installed and that is complete
We can probably reach out to PD and see if some sort of enforcement or something there can help
But we did not include the pork chop design. There were some concerns with our transportation department on
How that was going to impact people are just going to drive around it and do the wrong thing like a torches
So again, we can we can continue looking at some other options down before
Right any other questions
Good example on torches. That's a challenge.
Just as H.E.B. is going in.
So a couple of things. The,
we can go back to the screen. There was a, I mean, a second slide, woman.
And if I could get someone from the school board's input.
So, I'm assuming they'll come in near the south there, that's the front of the school.
And then I'm just curious about the QE, you know, because it'll wrap around in a good way.
So if it's against that north curve, is there enough space for people to leave?
So Mary, how the QE is, those roads are now going to be one way in and one way out.
The road, planned west, as we look at to the left, that is the entrance.
if you're coming from the school is still facing the Borman community as always so you
will enter from that road you will drop off and you will leave through the road that's
right there by the rec center so those will be one way and so you can imagine the queuing
there is massive compared to what we previously had so you can queue all the way down you'll
drop off your suit at your passenger door or the passenger side and then you will
leave right there by the between the rec center and the soccer field one way out
Yeah, and so that is still the front of the school there. There is an entrance from the back
We typically like to separate but that's for our cars from buses
Yeah
So the plan right now is that buses will enter from the south road
Drop off and leave so that we don't mix those together
And there's also a door that they can enter from that side as well that will be man
So we'll have parents dropping off the front back riders walkers coming from the front
and we have us to come from the south.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
And then if you want to touch on the McKinney sidewalk,
because that will help also with Alex.
Now, again, I don't know if we have anything
to help them cross the street, but if you
can touch on that project.
So we had an interim project for McKinney sidewalks.
This goes from Loop 288 on the east
all the way to Woodrow, Audra.
So that has begun construction.
They are in the process of taking right away and starting.
And so you're gonna have a variable width sidewalk
that is continuous on the south side of the roadway
all the way from Loop 288 to the Woodrow Audra section.
And I believe we're supposed to be done
in roughly six months for that.
It just began construction and launch.
And then similarly, you wanna touch on Woodrow
and more the signal light, the status,
because that affects.
Yeah, that is actually our transportation services group.
I don't know, I know various infrastructure
is going in, the ramps are in, the signal should be going up, I would estimate within
the next few months you'll see the signal up and activated at that intersection.
So those buses trying to get out on Audra and all those things or parents getting in
across that, that'll be much improved. And then lastly, and this is not on your presentation
but related, so two things, Calvin, is there someone driving by there every now
again just to make sure no one's moving in right and delicate as I can say it but
to have have we continued discussions about the tennis court and how we can
activate those areas of work together on those I can talk about that we are
personal recreation has just taken possession of the tennis courts and the
field space in front of the old Calvin Middle School we are going to go
to the John B. Denton Neighborhood Association meeting in April to engage the community about
what they would like to see those courts become. They'll still be courts, but are they, right
now they're tennis courts. Do they want basketball? Would they like pickleball? What, what kind
of court activities would they prefer to have there? We'll take input from the meeting
and we'll also have an online form to engage the greater community and then fairly immediately
do some improvements on those courts, repair the concrete, make sure that everything is
safe for play and set those up to be what they shall become.
Okay, great.
Thank you for that update.
And then lastly, again, not on your slides, but I would advocate and it's a not today
thing, but I'm just planting a seed.
I would love for the city to facilitate a meeting
with the city, the school district and tech stock
to talk about access from University Drive
to what was Newton Razor's site
because I think it adds value if we can navigate that.
And if it, you know, again,
it's whatever that is to bridge that gap there
or find that alternative access.
But I think when we're trying to help our pay,
the numbers are substantial, you know,
The value added between Starbucks and those other things that came back on the tax rolls.
So in this instance, to add value to that piece of property, I think that had university
access from university drive, it enhances that and just helps us all by proxy.
So I would think there would be that the accrued meeting to have to try to see if we
You can one, figure out how to span that ditch area that run off or whatever, and two, so
that they can market that as access or, you know, pending approval or all those things.
But for what it's worth, I think that's a great opportunity to help them help everyone
else and I think it enhances the quality of the project because the alternative is
somebody's going to put a multi-family thing on there or something, you know, just I just
like to see it highest and best use, right?
So, understood?
Any other questions?
Great.
Thank you very much.
That
takes us to item C. I need 260207, see reportable discussion regarding property tax
exemptions and multi-family affordable housing in the city again.
Good
afternoon, Council and Trustees.
My name is Jessica and I'm the Director of Community Services for the City of Denton.
And I'm excited to talk to you about tax exemptions and affordable housing.
But one in every three renting household according to the American Community Survey, the census
is severely cost burdened.
That means they pay more than half of their income in rent every month.
And 58% are cost burdened.
They pay more than a third of their income in rent every month.
And so over the past several months, the city has been evaluating our affordable housing
programming and looking at ways that we can improve the ways we're incentivizing affordable
housing development in the city.
We're going to do a little bit of drinking from a firehouse here.
There's so much to talk about around affordable housing and so many things that are relevant.
There are two really important topics or concepts.
There's one it's the median income, the area median income, and the other is
rental restrictions.
So, affordable housing in the United States lists an income through the lens of area median
income.
A lot of them are federal programs.
Any program that has to serve 350 million people is going to lose nuance throughout it.
And so, when we look at income here in our community, we are looked in with the Dallas
Fair Market region.
I've got it mapped out in here in blue.
and there are a lot of high-income areas within that blue area. So typically, housing programs
focus on those households at 30, 50, and 80% of that area median income. Those are considered
low-income households. And for the purposes of these programs, we're measured against them in
2024. The Denton's median income was $80,900, but we are held to the affordability standards
There's an income for the Dallas fire market region, which is significantly higher at 148
percent.
Vents and households just in general, according to this definition, are considered low income.
So what does that look like in terms of actual incomes when we look at a household of four
at low, that is considered low income, that's set at that $93,850 a year at very low
income or 50% AMI, you're at $50,000, $650,000, and then the extremely low income households
are those that earn $35,000 or less for that household of four. These scale based on the
household size. So as the household size decreases, the amount of money that you need to be able
to pay rent to live in a household that accommodates a family at that size decreases
is a lot of it, and it steps through this function.
So you have income, and on the other side,
there are rental limits. So HUD's programming that incentivizes affordable housing, that
provides incentives, monetary benefits, other programs looks and says, for those households
that make those incomes, what would we need to cap the rent at so that they weren't
paying a substantial portion of their income in rent?
So, these are the rental limits that are most often applied here in the city of Denton
for those programs.
So, for example, that four-person household could choose to rent that's making 93,850
a year, could rent a three-bedroom apartment that has taken advantage of these incentives
or these financing in some way, they cannot be charged more than $2,400 a month in rent,
$2,400 to $41. We look at income for our region. We say based on that income, households
should only pay this much. Based on that reasoning, we set rental limits for programming.
So when we look at the most common occupations here in Denton and compare that with where
we see the Market Rent Act. These are the top ten highest, excuse me, largest workforce
industries or not industries but professions within Denton County. They account for about
22% of all Denton workers. And you can see that based on their income, what 30% of it
is, they don't often reach a level that makes housing affordable for us.
When we
replace income restrictions on units, say at the 50% AMI level, it becomes more affordable
but still not that definition of affordable for a lot of folks. And then when you do 30%,
that's when you're really reaching a level that is affordable that folks are able to
provide affordability. The very last one is what I found online for starting DISD
school teacher salary. So just for your benefit.
Again, housing is considered
affordable if a low-income household spends 30% of their income or less on
housing. So we have those income that were assessed against the Dallas region.
We income qualify apartments that participated programming and we set
rents based on those income levels. So income qualified apartments set rents
based on what a household at their target AMI can afford based on that
30% rule. In Denton, the market rate that we see here falls below the affordable rate
for an 80% AMI event. So when we look at our programming, when we look at the projects
we're trying to encourage, we are looking to encourage as much 50% and 30% AMI development
as possible. Those are those units that we call affordable for dentin. So the
market rate if we were just kind of stacking on the AMI chart according to
the the 2024 ACS was about 63%. So it falls right around that 63%.
And that's
not a trend that is new or it is suddenly happening. When we look at the
rental rates and the income or excuse me the the market rate for the past
10 years. That's been the case. Those low-income rental restrictions do not fall below.
For those 80% units do not fall below the market rate here in Denton. Those 50 and 30% units
have historically those the ones that are most likely to lead to a rental reduction for a resident.
So tax exemption. How does it play into all of these things? We've got people who are spending
too much of their money on rent. We have now categorized ourselves based on our region, what
incomes are, and HUD has helped us set rental limits for them.
Many affordable housing developments utilize tax exemptions as part of their financing structure
to increase the affordability of the property, the idea being if you do not have to pay property
taxes, you do not need to recoup as much rental revenue, you can afford to charge less.
So in Denton, there are 22 properties with tax exemptions, and this is a little bit
There are six more that are in development, excuse me, in construction.
The number is a little bit higher now, but there are five different taxing exemptions
that a developer could use for these things.
So when we estimate just on population data for the census of what the average household
size is for renting households, what portion of those are school-aged children we see
about, we estimate about 1650 children that are school-aged children that live in these
taxes and developments. And then we anticipate based on these ones that are in construction
and at least 500 more school-aged children that will need education.
The business line,
so it's a little bit better for posterity, but there are a number of different legal
vehicles that a developer or a complex can use to secure a tax exemption to provide
affordable housing. The city has public facility corporation. We don't, it's not currently
active on any projects so we are not currently granting any tax exemptions. The Housing Authority
through Chapter 392 of the Texas Local Government Code is active and provides tax exemptions
for properties. There are housing finance corporations. There are CHODOs or community
housing development organizations. And then there are just exemptions for nonprofits.
It's not really, we need to get too bogged down, but there are different ways to achieve
a tax exemption to provide affordable housing.
Okay, so putting all that together, there are people who are paying too much in rent.
We need to find a way to reduce the rent, but these apartment complexes, they're businesses,
They have to raise a certain amount of revenue and rent to be able to pay for their expenses
as a community or as a state.
There is not always a lot that we can do about what is the interest rate on lending, how
much does construction cost, what is the going rate for personnel to run the development.
But one thing that we can do that the state has given us tools to do is say, well,
While we can eliminate this property tax expenditure for it, in exchange, you'll agree to cap rents
at a certain amount for a certain number of units at certain levels.
The idea is that when we eliminate that expense, we are able to retain balance in the budgets
of these businesses while charging less for rent.
That's the intention of property tax exemptions in this concept.
So when we look at our community, what we've seen is there are a lot of properties, a lot
of valuation and revenue that is foregone by the three tax and jurisdictions, UL, the school
district, the city, and the county, that we give up to try and provide affordable housing
for our community because it is such an intense need.
But what we found is that a lot of the rental restrictions that are exchanged for that revenue
are often not at a level that lead to a rental reduction.
I've got it broken out by market units because in some mixed unit developments, you can
have market rate units in them.
They help to balance and offset the cost of affordable units.
That's great.
We don't have a problem with market rate units.
And there are 80% units, which is the majority of these tax exempt units, and that category
also includes some 60% units.
There's a good proportion of those that are actually 60% units, but when the city characterizes
their housing plans and our strategy plans, strategic plans, excuse me, we include 60
and 80% together.
Those 60%s, if I can go back, again, that's right around where we've seen the market,
it doesn't lead to a significant rental reduction.
So based on the estimates,
because we don't have complete data on rent,
based on the data that we have available
and where we see the rental caps at,
we estimate that our community is exchanging
or we're foregoing about $15 million annually in revenue
in exchange for $1.2 million in rental reductions.
That might not be, that's our best estimate
based on the information that we have.
And that will continue to grow.
There's 5,000 multifamily units in development in the City of Denton right now.
Half of them are expected to have a property tax exemption.
So the City Council reviewed this data, reviewed this information.
We had a work session last November.
And the City Council directed staff to change our policies on how we are affording our tax incentives.
So I didn't mention on the slide, but most of these tax exemptions occur without jurisdictional oversight.
The city doesn't have to vote to approve.
The school district doesn't have to vote to approve.
They can occur independent.
One way that we do have some saying the structure of these deals is through the federal government's low income housing tax credit program.
And so council directed staff to amend the policy to ensure that we are trying to get
as much or as many of those 30 and 50% units as possible.
I've already shared so much information.
I'm not going to dig in way too deep on housing tax credits, but they are distinct
from tax exemptions.
Tax credit, money from the federal government to help with construction.
When we look at this balancing act, the goal of housing tax credits is to reduce
that mortgage section. By reducing the mortgage section you can charge or rent. But house tax
credits are great. Money coming back from the federal government has no long-term tax
impact on any of our jurisdictions. It's money coming to our community to support
affordable housing. But they are often paired with property tax exemptions which do have
a long-term impact on revenue.
So to help try and encourage more affordable housing
develop the criteria by which the city will offer its approval for housing tax credit developments
was changed but a higher focus on affordability. We're not awarding points on our matrix for those
80 or 60 percent units because they don't tend to lead to a rental reduction or they're not
required to provide a rental reduction and we're focused on those 30 and 50 percent units
and because these tax credits are again going to be coming into the community and they don't
necessarily have a long-term impact. We scale how many points we expect the development to
have based on their property tax status. If they are a fully property tax development, we have a
very low threshold. We think it's great. You want to provide affordable housing. We're happy to
support you in your application to the federal government. If you are seeking a full property
tax exemption paired with that tax credit, we would like to see some additional affordability
to ensure that the revenue that we're all foregoing is being spent towards affordable
housing development. And when we look at the distribution of tax exemptions in our community,
we find that the property tax paying affordable housing developments actually provides a
slightly higher proportion of 30% and 50% units than the property tax exempt developments.
So, the state legislature over the past few years has really been digging in on affordable
housing taxes.
The PFC law was amended with the 88 legislative session, it required greater affordability,
required more accountability and transparency for these types of deals.
Last legislative session, they changed the HFC part of the statute to require that
that what they found is that there were municipalities or governments across the state that were
going to other communities signing deals to take multi-family off of the tax roll and
then netting a little bit of income off of that.
So the state legislature said, we're not doing that anymore.
If you're going to have a taxes empty, you need the approval of the local jurisdiction
for those housing finance corporations.
And we're going to monitor the 90% to see if they're going to take any further action
amending these codes or the other codes that are related to tax exemptions and affordable
housing.
I'll stand for questions.
Thank you very much.
I don't remind everyone what it is.
It's one, so we're in time to go right ahead.
Councilman Jessert.
First of all, thank you for this information.
I think this is very important for everyone to understand where we are as we say
affordable housing what we mean here in Denton and that that means something
different in going through the matrix that you also attached looking at the
length of time that some of these developments have been exempt from
property taxes. It seems that some of them have may not even by Denton
standards but even by our North Texas standards don't have any affordable
Do you know is there a mechanism, because it seems that these terms are indefinite,
is there a mechanism to go back and say, you know, you have no 80%, 30%, 50%, why are you off the tax rolls?
There shouldn't be, so, and that might be the way we presented the information.
They all speak the state requirement, but there are a lot of developments that are on that list that have 50%
market rate are unrestricted, there's no rental restriction, and 50% or a very
significant portion at 80%, which the those rental caps are not set at a
level where we kick in for our market rate.
There's also, I
see the one you're
saying, the my
staff member. Just curious and I'm also you know curious
Is there a mechanism by which council or do we need to go to the state level to say some
of these are not affordable housing and should not therefore continue indefinitely off the
tax rolls not contributing to our schools and city and county?
So the state legislature has taken action against some of these other projects.
So for example, on the PFC deals which are constituted under 303, they went back
said, these deals are not serving their intended purpose. Now, if you're going to provide a
tax exemption through this method for acquisitions, you can only, you have to ensure that 60 percent
of the development provides an actual rental reduction to residents, or you don't get
to keep it on the tax rolls. For the HFCs, the traveling HFCs, the state legislature
was very had strong feelings about it and they made it to where these traveling HFCs
that were taking properties off the tax rolls across the state, they said not only are we
not even going to wait until September to sign this in the law, I'm going to do it today,
but if you don't receive the municipality approval by January 2021, you lose your tax exemption.
So it depends on what legislative action the state can take and now I'm getting too
It could be something that this group together, you know, when we go down for counties, et cetera,
if the will is there, of course, I'm not speaking for anyone else in the room, but I would be
interested to see if there's a consensus to say this shouldn't be indefinite forever,
circumstances change, and there should be, whether it's the state, county, or city,
some kind of ability to review and revise.
Anyways, that's my comment. Thank you so much again.
Thank you. How are these things monitored?
You get the tax break, but you don't actually
provide low-income housing. How is that...
How who monitors them?
I think it depends on the agency that provides it.
So, for example, housing tax credit, which
I'm...
the state monitors those developments for the first 15 years,
and then the IRS monitors it for the 15 years after that, as far as the other things, those
are probably monitored by the governing agencies, either the state or the tax exempting.
So if somebody goes in and looks at the inventory of units and numbers, you know, this many
at market rate, this many at 30%, this many at...
They they have to submit their their rental. Okay, but they don't require that it's necessarily a rental reduction
They require that you are capping the rent at that level
so
Again an 8% unit doesn't guarantee a rental reduction. It's a commitment that they won't raise it above the threat.
Any other questions
Come from back. Thank you
For for these things I understand that it's floating as the as the seal of the caps
Float with the various income levels for our region. Is the number that they agree to in
their contracts float as well? I mean, if they agree to 15 units or 20 units or whatever the
appropriate number is, what governs and who monitors the proportions?
Yeah, it's set by those rental caps. So they say, for example, when we do a 212 agreement,
The one of the city's affordable incentive programs, when we approve a light tax property,
we say we're going to provide 50% at this AMI.
And so because the AMI restriction is tied to income, that's what fluctuates.
Okay.
But the number of units is going to stay fixed from the initial terms?
Or the number of the percent of units is going to stay fixed at the time?
I don't believe they change, but it would be governed by whatever the applicable law,
whichever of those five that they're in, that they're governed by, and the contracts
that they are providing.
Because the state says a property tax exempts property under 303 will meet these requirements.
It has to have at least 50% at 80% AMI, and I probably do some of that, but they
they set these thresholds, and then the deals that these agencies that grant property tax
exemptions make with the developer, they're independent so long as they stay, they color
within the lines.
Okay.
That's my question.
Thank you.
Okay.
Any other questions?
Very good.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Well, that concludes it.
I'll let you close, and I'll close that for you, but I'll just say thank you
all very much always, and, you know, a lot of good information.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate the relationship we have with the ISD and the work y'all do, and the students y'all serve, and everyone top the bottom that makes all that go.
A lot of looking forward to it. Thank you very much for that. And we will be, for those that don't know, we'll be hosting the Ryan State champs, girls state champs.
I think that's our next meeting, something like that. But yeah, so we'll have them at City Hall if y'all want to come in just to make sure everyone knows, but really do appreciate what y'all do and the difference you're making in our community, couldn't do it without you.
So thank y'all very much and whatever you have to add.
Okay, all right. Well, if you want to adjourn.
Uh, this will return, didn't I, as the, uh, joint meeting 107, okay? And then likewise, that concludes the city council meeting at 107 where we can meet at two o'clock at city hall chambers. All right. Thank you.