That was loud. There you go, all right. Next, okay, I'll call order of the regular city council meeting August 7, 2023, at 6 o'clock p.m.
Madam Secretary, do we have a quorum? Yes, Mayor, we do. Next please. Invocation given by Rex Walker with Life Spring Church,
followed by the Pledge of Allegiance to the American and Texas flag. Please stand.
Amen. Let's bow for a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for your presence, and we invite you into this room tonight, Lord,
because we need your wisdom Lord we need your protection I'm thankful for these
men and women who are gathered here tonight who Lord we all just want to
serve our city in the best way possible and make the decisions that you would
guide us to make and so we just pray as we look ahead of the great events that
we have coming up in the fall to celebrate fate we thank you for your
blessing on that event and pray for your divine protection and I know that you smile
when your children have fellowship and have good times and we celebrate those things and
we just ask for your protection on our children as they go back to school. Lord, we thank
you for our first responders and our people that serve the city and protect us Lord from
Evil Lord your word taught us to pray deliver us from evil. So we come against anything that
The the enemy has planned against this city and we pray your hand of protection your divine providence over
Over the city council tonight as they make decisions that will affect the future of this city
And we give you glory and we give you honor and we thank you Lord
We don't take lightly we thank you for our freedom Lord that all the
people that fight for our country have laid down for us and we thank you for
that we celebrate our veterans and we thank you for everything that Lord you've
established in this nation we thank you for a nation that's one nation under God
we give you glory and honor and praise tonight in Jesus name amen all
right
next please agenda item 3a presentation of employee spot spotlight
award to Robert Highfield.
Mr. Wells, come on up.
Right as our planning director.
I'm sorry. Good evening. Mayor and council, everyone in the audience. Robbie, can you come
up please? So I came to the city of fate two and a half years ago and Robbie here was holding
down the fort as a young, just out of graduate school planner managing the department in the
absence of my predecessor. And I have to say over the last two and a half years, Robbie
has really blossomed into a very skilled, very passionate and knowledgeable planner.
And with over a decade of experience myself, I'd say one of the best planners that I've
had the pleasure of working with. And I mean that truthfully. I enjoy working with
I know that he brings a sense of humor and a wit to our department and a whole wing that we can all enjoy.
And I was unhesitant in myself, nominating him for this award as well as staff from our finance department, utility building department,
also nominated him for the award today.
We all just really appreciate his presence and his contributions and he definitely deserves this award that we're handing him today.
Okay,
I do.
I'll press the switch.
I don't know if you wanted to say anything.
You're mad at me with words.
There you go.
6B is the TML.
All
right, next please.
Agenda item 3B, never give up day proclamation.
All right, see if I can get this.
Jenna, I'm correct tonight.
We're out of the city faith proudly joins community members and celebrate and never give up day on August 18, 2023, and we're asked never get update is by inspiring others motivate ourselves and remember even hard time we keep going.
And we're asked, never give up days, focus on cultivating a mindset of determination to
help people get through difficult challenges.
And we're asked, never give up days, an opportunity to recognize faith citizens who teach incredible
lessons of life, dignity, courage, but never give up in the face of sickness, adversity,
injustice, grief, mourning, or death.
And we're asked, the city of Faye recognizes, never give up day, and its positive influence
for people across the community, either for David Billings, Mayor of Faye, Texas,
on the behalf of the city council do proclaim August 18th 2023 has never
get give up in the city of a fate and call upon the citizen of the faith to
unite as a city support one another in our journeys exemplify hope determination
unwavering support next
please item four is public comment all right so here's
what we're going to do tonight with the council permission we're going to move
We have six F to the first item, six A any objections to that in the council?
Okay, so we're going to allow public comment during section four for item six F or on any
other items.
I'm going to remind you tonight we have a public speaking policy.
I will not tolerate anybody any directory comments.
If you cross that line, I will ask you to sit down.
If I ask you to sit down or I warn you, please do that because you're in violation of the policy, I'm just not going to tolerate it tonight.
And so three minutes, that's it tonight.
When the bail rings wrap up, I'm not going to have much leeway after three minutes.
We'll be the public speakers tonight.
That's fair.
I think it's going to be state law and I want to make sure this is civil, professional.
As we gather to make decisions tonight. Any questions council?
All right. Next please.
Okay. Consent agenda.
Public comment first.
Okay. We're going to hear them during this portion of the meeting.
Okay. I'm so sorry.
So I have about six people for Agenda Item 6F, first being Joanne Yacht, address 808 Horton
Street.
I'm Joanne Yacht, and I live at 808 Horton Street.
This is huge for faith.
Ms. Wilson is a clever one.
First she ignores the law to register as a sex offender.
Then she buys property in an area that she is fully aware of, is close to where
In fact, she said so in her letter to this group. When she's caught, now, mind you,
she didn't own up to being again that she hadn't registered. Someone found her on the
Internet and reported it. Then, all of a sudden, she's got this sob story.
She's
to set a dangerous precedent.
Well, that 13-year-old she's sadimized
hasn't received an exemption.
I'm a retired nurse and I've also co-authored
medical journal articles and I'm aware of studies
that show he will have to deal with the after effects
of this his entire life.
She was imprisoned for sadimizing him.
But often you are convicted of, they just didn't convict you of all the things that may have happened, so we don't know.
These kids suffer a lifetime of psychological, physical health, and problems, horrible problems,
and often engage in very dangerous behaviors themselves, like deviant sexual behaviors, self-abuse.
their lives are forever affected.
Her house is 100 feet from a park where children gather.
We cannot let her play dumb about what she didn't, didn't know,
and why she didn't obey the law in the first place about the restrictions.
After all, she was on a sex offender list when she got out of prison.
She knew what the restrictions were in other states.
why would she think they weren't here in Texas, where we have a death penalty, for God's
sakes? Don't let her play dumb. And remember, that boy didn't get an exemption.
She did not register when she moved here for a big reason. It was an ignorance
of the laws. She didn't want anyone to know about her past. Thank you.
I'm here tonight acknowledging that we're not here to try the offender, but what we are here to do, and as well as all of our neighbors and citizens here, is to make sure that the ordinance that we have in place that was put in place on the 6th of March, 2023.
3 is understood and upheld. I think that Joanne covered some very good points. Other points
that I think are important to note is that DPS has a duty and an obligation to protect
and serve. Protect and serve sometimes isn't easy. We have high expectations and we expect
them to meet those expectations. These situations come up because someone tried to beat the
system. Someone came in and made a decision without doing due diligence contrary to what
was said. Due diligence means that you make a decision that's informed and that you
have full understanding of. That didn't happen. What I want to point out is that
There's information that was provided in the packet that was posted online for us to view.
And I'm sure that it's hard for some of that information to be shared.
But as a mother, as a friend, as a concerned member of society,
I have neighbor children in my neighborhood that it's my duty to look out for and protect,
and I would do the same for your children.
Having said that, I was quite disturbed that I kind of got in on this on the tail end.
Everybody was kind of going and I was too busy that I didn't know to look online.
When I look and make a couple discoveries I was bothered.
We're given information with regard to aliases and upon checking to measure the distance from points,
It's kind of hard actually, but I discovered she has another alias as Elizabeth Thorson.
Her property is registered in ARCAD under a name that was not disclosed to FATE DPS.
Did I call them today when I discovered this?
I did not because I simply didn't have time.
It's not that I'm withholding, but you can look it up on ARCAD and see that's
new name. She's made relationships as Elizabeth Thorson, not as Elizabeth Wilson, not as any
of the other names. Any judgment of what happened has been done over the last 30 years. But
from here forward, we are the smallest town in the smallest county in the second largest
state in the U.S., uphold the ordinance, and thank you for your time.
Next please. Next speaker, Karen Kaiser, address 1093 North Churchill.
Mayor,
counsel, Karen Kaiser 1093 North Churchill. To hit my time I'm going to read
this to be efficient, but we all know that we're here because Ms. Wilson, the
applicant seeks exemption from our ordinance 2021-029 and it's easy to
to find on our website. If you find it, it's easy to read it and understand it. It's a two
minute Google away from anyone that would seek it. Certainly reasonable that you
You would seek it out before moving here if you have the applicants facts, but whether
she did or didn't isn't the issue before you, as I see it.
To grant Ms. Wilson this exemption, you must find that our ordinance doesn't apply to her
so she's not bound by it, and I don't see how that's possible, given the applicants
She is a convicted, registered sex offender and her victim was a 13-year-old child.
And that's all I read as the evidence required.
Convicted sex offender, registered, doesn't matter Texas, Virginia or California, I don't think.
Are you on the national registry?
It clearly indicates when you are and that you have lifetime reporting.
So I see no discretion in the decision before you.
Like I said, not knowing about it doesn't give you a pass.
Buying a home without doing any proper inquiry,
her choice doesn't give you a pass,
and it has nothing to do with, oh, debts paid to society,
she's qualified for security clearances, donated blood,
on and on and on. It's not about a human being being a productive citizen or a
nice person. It's are you this? Did you do this? And was your victim? Our code of
ordinances even says if the victim was under 16, it's prima facie evidence you
done. And here we have a 13-year-old child. I'm the grandmother of a 13-year-old
boy. He's a kid. He's a little kid. But lastly I wanted to say that for the
In the last 15 years, the applicant could have applied to the State of Virginia
to get deregistered. And if she had done that, we wouldn't be sitting here, because
she would be exempt from our ordinance. But I see no evidence that that was done.
I don't think she runs out of time to do it, but that's where this needs to go,
is if you don't want these things to apply to you I don't know what the
criteria is don't want to know but go to Virginia asked to get deregistered it's
never again an event in your life but here in Faith City Hall that can't be
granted thank you next place next Ryan to me address 628 bunker bunker Hill
I'm going to keep this short and sweet, but anyways, I just want to bring to the tension
that it is a felony not to register as a sex offender punishable by jail time the discussion
we are having tonight shouldn't even be happening until she sees her day in court and possibly
another round in prison?
Excuse me, I have no patience tonight for this.
I have none for any agreement or alters.
So let's make sure we don't do that.
Go ahead, sir, please.
Sir, go ahead.
So anyways, let's not even consider the exemption
for somebody who is trying to play the system
and avoiding registering as a sex offender
breaking the law by not registering the action we need to take regarding this
matter is not granting an exemption or not granting but having her arrested for
not registering and let a judge decide her consequences not us that's all I got
to say about that thank you thank you please next speaker Patty Matledge
address 267 Callaghan Drive.
Patty Mallish, 267 Callaghan Drive, Lake Texas.
I too am going to read so I can get within my three minutes.
So I'm going to go quickly.
For the record, I strongly oppose the request for exemption
by Ms. Wilson, who is currently residing within 2,000 feet
of where children gather.
Additionally, after review of the documents attached
to Nile's agenda, there seem to be various discrepancies
which should prohibit the exemption from being granted.
As a former paralegal, one of the things I was taught
is that when viewing statements was to look for words to stand out,
upon review of Ms. Wilson's statement,
number two's response is, and I quote,
my grave error in judgment involved only one victim,
my non-blood male relative.
The operative word in that sentence is only.
She uses the term to lessen her crime.
For example, one might say,
I only shot one person or I only killed one person.
Sadly, the term only should never apply to that 13-year-old boy
who must live within the memories and reality of being sexually molested
by her for the rest of his life.
In the DPS registry, I found that there's three offenders, and there's some things on
there that are here in FAPE.
And one of the things that you have to fill in is about risk level, and it's low, moderate,
and high.
None of ours seem to have that.
And I want to know, basically, who is accountable to get that information into DPS?
Who puts in that risk level, because none of ours show that?
And I've got copies of other ones that I just randomly picked the name, and it showed up high, low, moderate.
None of ours do.
And then the final issue is the timeline of events.
Sorry, I've got a cough.
December 22nd, purchased a home.
February 2023, fully occupied.
May of 2023 was registration.
June 13, 2023 is verification.
My belief on this, the clock started running in December of 2022 when she purchased a home.
As a sex offender, she should have familiarized herself with the Texas and city fate laws prior to purchasing the home.
Based upon Chapter 62 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the registrant must be completed
no later than the latter of two things.
The seventh day, the date of the offender arrives in the municipality or county, and
to the first date that the local law enforcement authority of the municipality or county policy
allows a person to register.
Unfortunately, I don't know what the city of fate policy is regarding timely registration.
I didn't have time to look it up one once in its so I asked where is the city of fate stand on enforcing this law of
Tom Lee registration of a sex offender since it appears that she failed time to Tom Lee register. Thank you
Next speaker mark Hattley address 267 Callaghan Drive
You know the drill good evening, and this is Mark Hattley 267 Callaghan Drive and fate
I'm also
opposed to granting this exemption, it might be easy for everybody to look and
look at her gender and go, well, we've seen members of the media actually kind of,
you know, said there's a difference between when a man and a woman commits
this crime. It's the same crime. And if you open the door and grant her this
exemption with that bias in your head that she may not be as dangerous
because she's a woman. What you're doing is you're leaving that door open for a man to
come in here and reversing that situation. And it's the same crime. A man at that age
molesting a 13-year-old girl.
I understand there's arguments that have been made about,
you know, well, we need, you know, we should make accommodations where an exception to
where they can live because faith's a small town and we have a lot of areas where
children can gather. It's not our job to do that. We have laws. We have an American
with Disabilities Act. That is a federal law that protects and makes accommodations
for people who have disabilities and, quote, unquote, handicaps that we have to make
accommodations for those. Those are not people that have offended. Those are
people who, by no fault of their own, have had things happen to them that we
need to do this. There is no such thing as an Americans who commit sexual abuse accommodation
acts. We just don't have to go do it. And there's no law I'm aware of that says that
are we supposed to check with the state every time we build a park or anything that we
do to make predator safe zones, former checks for sex offender zones. I'm not a parent.
I'm here speaking on behalf in support, not in behalf, I'm in support of parents and do this.
I believe as an adult, even one without parents, it's my responsibility, adult's responsibility to protect children.
And absolutely, that's what I'm here for. I've seen so much, talked to so many people who are so outraged over this.
And I urge you to please do not consider her gender in this and treat her as though she is everybody.
The law says equal treatment under the law, equal justice for under the law.
So that's all I have to say.
Thank you and I hope you'll give that good consideration.
Thank you.
Next please.
The next two speakers want to speak on agenda item 6B, which has to do with the resolution
to TML on zoning reform, first being Sharon Tooley, 171 Chamberlain Drive.
We
can go with Karen Kaiser, address 1093 North Churchill.
Karen Kaiser, 1093 North Churchill, Mayor Counsel, thank you for bringing this resolution forth.
I sure hope you agree to send it forth to the Texas Municipal League.
If I'm understanding it correctly, it lessens the opportunity for a super majority to be needed,
And I think that's a good thing for the city of faith to ever get anything done
Simple majority is good enough for the United States
Supreme Court, so I think we can work with it here, too
And if there's more to this that I'm missing I hope you'll talk about it a little bit
It was an interesting part of your pocket. Anyway, thank you
Sharon to Lee address 171 Chamberlain drive
Sharon Tuley, I still live at 171 Chamberlain Drive in Texas, thank you.
Just a couple quick notes on this.
I believe that keeping a simple majority as well is good, but the only concern I have
is, and it could be a lack of my understanding, so take that at hand, under financial
considerations it says zoning reforms will reduce the cost of housing by increasing
the overall supply of housing units in the DFW Metroflex and in urban areas around the
State, which means it's going to lower the price for existing homes, so people that currently
have a home, what they can gain by selling their home would be less in an oversupply?
No?
No.
So what we'll do is we're going to get an item who will talk to those specific areas.
Perfect.
There's specific strategy around that, and it's by new, but we'll talk about
Okay. Thank you. And that's what I wanted to clarify. Okay. Thank you. We'll definitely do that. Okay.
All right. Meals on that one. That is it. Now, I did receive emails from various citizens that I forwarded to the council as we received those 26 as of 5.59 p.m.
Okay. And those were in opposition to the extension. Thank you. All right. Next, please. Next is Item 5, Consent Agenda.
Any comments, questions that I can send, and just one quick reminder for the public before we get started, I forgot to do this, so we have states council members tonight, anything that's street three, it will be denied according to the rules of order.
So it takes a majority, a tie is not a majority, so we don't have, we have an evening council tonight, so I just want to make sure that's clear to the public.
It doesn't come to a lot of meetings coming forward.
Okay.
Any questions, comments?
That's for you, Jim.
Any questions, comment by consent agenda?
I don't think I can do the vote for this.
All right, take a motion, please.
I make a motion, we accept the consent agenda.
I motion to vote.
I'll second.
Okay, please vote.
Motion passes 6-0.
Next, please.
Okay, it's my understanding we're going to now move to agenda item 6-F.
Yep.
Okay.
Okay, so the way we-
Okay, agenda item 6-F.
Discuss, consider, and take any necessary action regarding a request for an exemption from the regulations of Article 3, Chapter 18 of the City of Fate Code of Ordinances related to the residency limitations for certain sex offenders inside the City of Fate.
All right. So how's this going to work tonight? We're going to have the applicant that's going to for a talk. She has some group of people that want to talk with me, and they're kind of do that once they're done speaking.
We'll do council questions.
I think it'd be easier just at the end instead of one by one.
And then after that, we'll entertain a motion, have a second,
and then we'll have any further discussion for them.
Is that sound clear to council?
It's not for the applicant.
Okay, John, you want to start us off?
Sure. Thank you, Mayor and Council.
The item before you tonight is to consider an application
for an exemption from the Child Safety Zone
or residency restriction for certain sex offenders.
This is not for all sex offenders.
This is just for those where the victim is considered a minor under law and so in our ordinance
This has been an ordinance that we've had on the book since 2000
And in that ordinance, it allows someone who is affected by it, someone who would be normally restricted out from living in a certain area, to request for an exemption from the city council.
So it's a very public process while we're here tonight. And those child safety zones are measured 2,000 feet from any premises, the property line where someone is residing or looking to reside.
and it cannot be within 2,000 feet of a place where children commonly gather.
This could be a daycare, a park, depending on the type of business,
whether it's just a place where children commonly gather.
And so there are playground schools, daycare facilities, et cetera.
So our ordinance specifically names a couple, but it's not limited to that.
It's up to the council to decide.
And we've recently updated our child safety zone map within the last couple of months
to include some additional park spaces and things like that.
So, we received the application from Ms. Wilson
and so Mayor at this point in time.
Yeah, just one more comment if you don't mind, we'll go ahead.
So just a reminder for the public,
so this is, we've been trying the state level
to get the laws clarified
and so just a reminder to the public.
So one thing is, state law does not mandate
a child safety zone in the state of Texas
for general law cities.
It may shell, it says may,
The county's have no authority to establish a child safety zone in the county, which does not mean a city of fate.
You literally could live in the county a hundred feet from Joe Burger Park across the street and we couldn't stop it.
Mud districts have no authority to establish child safety zones either.
So as you build out the county, you build out private cities, you have no authority to do this either.
The state legislature has, on the 86th session, 87th session,
the 80th session has chosen not to address this issue.
Two bills were induced last year.
I testified on one of them.
HB 2560 was left pending in county fairs.
I'll give Justin Hollman credit for that,
but he did actually co-sponsor the bill,
or co-author the bill, I think it is.
SB 2160, state bill, I think it was King,
did not even see the hearing.
So it's not a prior, so I'm going to make sure
I'm going to stand.
And the city of Fayette has gone, but we thought the state law did not cover for our jurisdiction.
And since 2006, we had two down the fever a really long time here.
So there is a hole in state law by a lot.
And it's really unfortunate that we can get state reps to fix the gapping holes they have here and
get the consistent center across the state of Texas.
And that's what we really need.
This is a state issue, not a city issue, but since the state won't address it, we did.
But if you want to talk about pramsion, pramsion stuff, they should ramp this and create one
standard with the courts on how they do this and not how each city do it.
Peace mail is just, peace mail across the state right now.
And faithfulness, if you want to have them, by the way, so just for the record, that's what state law is,
what we're doing here tonight.
Applicant, do you want to come up, please?
Thank you.
First, I'd like to thank the mayor and the council for giving me-
I'm sorry, you're naming that question.
Oh, sorry.
Elizabeth Wilson 103, Katie Street.
I'd like to thank the mayor and the council
for giving me time to talk to this exemption.
There are just a few details that I'd like to address
during the public comment.
I do not have any aliases.
My name is Legally Elizabeth Wilson.
I am married to Lole Forson,
but I did not Legally change my name.
I do not go by Elizabeth Thorson.
I do not want it to seem like I have aliases
that I'm trying to do something in the back door with.
I also do want to say that I did do my due diligence.
In Virginia, and I understand this not Virginia,
but that's where I have the experience of 30 years,
all of the requirements by sex offender registries
are done at the state level.
To the mayor's point, there is no state level requirement for child safety zones.
So when I did my due diligence, I looked up on the state website.
I did not see my offense listed.
So that's why I assumed I did not need to register.
And I did not see any stipulation for child safety zones at the state level.
Otherwise, everything that I have to say is in my packet.
I think I was very thorough.
I think I've addressed the main issue, I believe,
with the county, with the council is child safety.
I think my 30 years speaks to how I feel about child safety
by not only not offending again as a sex offender,
but having no other criminal activity.
Next, please.
Do you have a seat?
Okay.
Good evening, Mayor Billings and other members of the City Council.
My name is Richard Gladden, and I don't have the good fortune of living in fate.
I actually live in Denton, Texas, and my attorney, my address is 1822 West Oakland.
As an attorney, I've been involved in sex offender registration issues and residency
restrictions since about 2005.
I've had probably over 100 cases, I've argued cases in the Fifth Circuit Court of
of appeals, the United States Court of Appeals, and elsewhere, but I'm not here to talk to
you about the law. I'm here to talk to you about what is not uncommon in these kind of
proceedings is that this is a very emotionally charged issue. I don't think anyone would
dispute that the safety and protection of our children is foremost among all of our
concerns, those of the persons who are parents. What I think is unfortunate is a lot of people
don't understand exactly what the issue is. What the issue is with registration as well
as residency restrictions is you want to measure a risk and balance the risk with
the facts or compare the risks of the facts.
Mr. Stephen Finstein, who is a sex offender treatment
provider, is going to talk to you more
about what he knows academically.
But over the course of roughly 20 years that I've been doing
this, I've learned some things too
that some of them would surprise me.
We know from studies done by the United States
Department of Justice, as well as law enforcement,
criminal justice academics. There's been roughly over 100 studies down about recidivism. That is the
propensity of someone to offend again. And not specific, Mr. Finstein is going to talk to you
specifically about Elizabeth and his evaluation that he's done with her. But some of the things
things most people don't understand is, is someone who, first of all, 97% of all sex
offenses against children are committed by people who have never been registered as sex
offenders. The remaining 3%, according to the FBI, 95% of those persons are immediate
family members, are very close friends of the family. We're not talking about
stranger danger the scientific research shows that sex offenses connected
with children can be uncles and granddads, stepmothers, stepfathers, things of
that nature. Going even within that 3%, it's undisputed that someone who's been
once encountered the criminal justice system for commission of a sex
offense against a child. If they go without reoffending for 20 years, they actually have
a less, they pose a less likelihood of committing a sex offense than someone who's never been
accused of committing a sex offense. That's me and I assume everyone on the city council.
In this case, we've got someone who's been over 30 years since her commission of a sex
offense.
That's more than 20 years. And I realized there's kind of a tendency for
people to want to think once a sex offender, always a sex offender. And
that's just not true. Criminal justice researchers and Justice Department all
have refuted that. People can get treatment. People don't have life
long obsessions or compulsions. They don't have sex, they don't commit sex offenses against
children if they don't already know them. This is not the stranger danger McGruff stuff.
They came back, came up back in the 80s. Now, the reason why you have, and the issue
before you, is to what degree there's a risk to the community by allowing Elizabeth
with living her home with her husband.
I submit to you that based upon Mr. Finstein's discussion
with you that he'll follow me, you're
going to have to find not only that there's
no such thing as zero risk, every one of us
poses something more than zero.
But in relative terms, what you're
going to find out is she poses less risk of offending
against a child than anyone of you up here on the dice,
because she's been through the treatment,
It's been 30 years without reoffending, and so if you're talking about risk, which is
really the reason why you have this exemption ordinance, I think you're going to have to
say unless we just want to engage in vindictiveness or do something that actually courts of all
said is unconstitutional, is impose an additional or double or multiple penalties after she's
already been convicted, I think you're going to have to say that the risk does
not justifying, denying her exemption.
One other thing I would tell you is the Justice Department and dozens and dozens, in fact I'd
submit a consensus of the scientific research is that residency restrictions actually make
children less safe.
That sounds counterintuitive, but there's a reason for that, why all these studies
going back to the early 90s continuing even as recently as more than or barely a
month or so ago is that when people who've committed sex offenses try to
reintegrate to society if they can't get stable housing and a support system
with their friends and family and be able to be nearby where they can go
see counselors if you just throw them out under a bridge which is what they
do in Florida, that creates an instability where someone who ordinarily would not pose
much if any threat to children. It can trigger them into engaging into recidivism. And that's
not according to me. That's according to the United States Justice Department. But
nobody knows that. Everybody thinks they're making children safer by having not a thousand
foot ordinance, but a 2,000 foot ordinance. That's not the way it works. And I would actually
say that if you want to endanger your kids,
then I suppose that this might be a good ordinance
to strictly enforce and maybe enforce without exceptions. And I've been kind of cautioned
that I'm not here to badger y'all
or complain about your ordinance,
I'm just here to support the exemption.
And I think for Elizabeth, in her case,
if you're ever gonna have an exemption
and you measure it on risk,
which is the reason why that's in,
the exemption is in your ordinance in the first place,
you gotta base it on risk.
And when you do, you're gonna find
that if anybody should get an exemption,
it should be hers.
In our society, I don't think you measure someone's life by the one worst mistake they ever made.
But if you deny this, that's basically what you're saying.
Think of what the worst thing y'all have ever done.
Would you want to be measured your entire life by the worst thing you ever did?
I don't think so. That wouldn't be fair to you, and it wouldn't be fair to Elizabeth.
So I urge you to grant the exemption, and I would call the next speaker up, Mr. Finsley.
Okay, thank you. Who's next, please?
Mayor,
would you explain the time limit? Because we have some questions going on out there in the audience.
We've only had a passive public comment period. They had a chance to sign up before the meeting.
These are not subject to the three-metre time. No, I'm giving them all the time they need.
Good evening. Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Stephen Finstein. I am a forensic mental health
Evaluator and consultant. My office is in Dallas. My home is in Garland, Texas. I've been in practice for 55 years. I don't know where that time went, to be honest with you.
But it's been a long time. And my focus is on evaluating and treating individuals who have been convicted of sexual offenses.
So that's the focus of my practice.
It has been for quite a number of years.
I believe that you all have my evaluation report in your packet.
And I hope you would agree that it's pretty thorough.
It's detailed.
It's the same type of evaluation that I would do
with any case, even if it was a new case that just came
up, you know, last week or last month,
even though in the case of Mrs. Wilson,
and the offense took place 30 years ago,
but basically the process is the same.
I look at several risk factors.
I look at mental health factors, number one,
looking for mental health propensities and disorders
that might increase an individual's risk to offend.
Secondly, I look at sexual health.
Factors that may increase an individual's risk to offend, such as sexual preoccupation or
paraphernalia. Parapheria means a deviant sexual interest, that sort of thing.
The third thing I look at is I try to apply published scientifically valid risk assessment
tools to these situations. In the case of Mrs. Wilson, I was able to identify two such
tools that I could use that apply to females, because most of the tools that are out there
do apply to males, frankly. But there were two that I could use, and I included those
in my report. And then I look at other factors such as research and a length of time,
you
that sort of thing. So I do want to explain to you simply that Mrs. Wilson was very open
and transparent. She's given me permission, 100% permission to share any information
with the members of the Dallas City Council.
I'm sorry, we're in fate, aren't we? Okay.
I've been in front of the Dallas City Council once or twice.
I'm glad to be here rather than Dallas, actually.
Again she has been fence free for 30 years.
She is, in my opinion, very well rehabilitated.
My license boards prohibit me from stating that anyone presents zero risk as Mr.
Mr. Gladden said, however, the research shows that essentially her risk of offending and
harming anyone in the community of fate or anywhere else has basically been extinguished
because of primarily due to the length of time she's been offence-free in the community.
I want to leave it open for any questions you may have for me.
but I'd just like to end and summarize by saying if you all are looking for a good bet,
then I would say Mrs. Wilson is the closest thing to a sure thing you're going to find.
Okay. Thank you. So just a clarification real quick is if I state law a public comment
stream and its application of applicants for any topic, to the matter of topic,
get time to explain the counsel, that's just the way the state law works here.
So, that's just, that's just, so I have applicant for any developer, applicant for whatever,
right, has the same right to speak a lot if they want to, and you guys keep it in.
A big apartment.
I just want to clarify that, I understand, public comment is dictated by state law three
minutes, right, that's how this works.
Applicants, like for any project, any, this or development projects or anything, have
a limited time to talk to them if they want to talk.
We've had half our presentation by developers here, so that's why, that's why I,
I'm sorry that we're doing what we did.
So next please, so clarify.
Hi, my name's Lowell Thorson.
I've been married to Elizabeth Wilson for five years.
I'm sorry, name, your address please.
Oh, I'm sorry, 103 KD Street.
Thank you.
Known her for actually since 2008
when we both worked at Lockheed Martin.
Elizabeth is a wonderful wife, a wonderful mother, a wonderful grandmother, to my, by blood,
granddaughter and grandson, and a wonderful neighbor.
Our move to Texas was supposed to be, or has always been planned to be, a movement
to our retirement city.
We visited a lot of different houses,
and the house in Katie, at Katie Street,
fit everything we wanted,
proximity to grocery home improvement stores,
and also it has a great Internet capability.
We have a one gig, and we both work from home,
which we definitely need the one gig.
Since we've been here, moved in,
we've accomplished a bunch of different projects
to upgrade our home.
The prox...
Well, sorry, skipped.
We've cut down six cedar trees
to improve the look of our also
planted trees to improve our backyard and we have
moved more
than 11,000 pounds of home goods when we moved here.
We've upgraded to impact resistant shingles
and we've also,
spacing,
oh, we also had gutters installed, sorry, a little brain lock there.
I'm here representing my wife and my family, meaning me.
I don't want to have to move again. It's going to be, it was very painful, our last move.
I was in the military, so most of my moves were accomplished by the military.
Moving here, packing our own stuff, having a trucked out here was extremely difficult and very costly.
And I really don't want to have to continue working to pay for another move in a new house.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Lance, you want to start?
Mr. Finstein, I have a question for you.
In your report, you reference a study by Carl Hansen.
Yes.
Could you go into a little bit about what that study entailed?
Yes, that's a very important study.
It's a study regarding recidivism, it means relapse, it's basically a desistence study.
So desistence refers to the time it takes for an individual to stop committing offenses.
And what Dr. Hansen, who is really kind of the national and worldwide expert on these
matters what he and his colleagues have determined, is that when an individual commits
a sexual offense and they're free in the community and they desist from reoffending
for 20 years, that basically extinguishes their risk of future offending.
report to us and understand this is all covered by HIPAA laws, and we can't get into the details
of what it is, but in your professional opinion, how many of these do you think you've done
in your 50 years?
I'm sorry, we've-
Evaluations.
How many evaluations have you done?
How many evaluations I've done in 55 years?
Yes.
Well, certainly hundreds, and I'm thinking it would be in the thousands, actually.
In the thousands?
And also in your recommendation, you specifically state in here that you believe that Ms. Wilson
is fully rehabilitated.
Is that true?
Yes, I do believe she is absolutely rehabilitated.
Okay.
Ms. Wilson, I have a question for you regarding your public trust and your other security
clearance.
What was your other security clearance that you currently hold?
Excuse me?
Your other security clearance that you hold beside your public trust?
I hold a Department of Defense secret clearance.
So you do have a secret clearance. Do you know what is entailed, how far back they go in doing the secret clearance?
Yes, they go back 10 years from the initial, and I've also gone through, every 10 years they reinvestigate, and I've gone through one of those.
So if I surmise your question, I receive my security clearance after I offended.
After you offended?
Yes, sir.
So you've been back the first time.
How often do they redo your security clearance?
Ten years.
So basically you've had 20 years of background investigation.
Yes.
And had any criminal charges or anything been put up, U.S. investigative services
surely would have found that out, right?
Yes, sir.
Okay, have you ever false, well, if you have it,
you certainly have a falsified information
on your security finances.
You know, I've spent a lot of time over the last week
considering this case, considering what's going on,
and like everybody else, I am a father,
I have two daughters,
and the last thing I wanna see
is any child molested for whatever reason, whether that is through a sexual
offense or whether that's through child abuse or child neglect. And I've had,
I've talked to to my pastor at length about this the other day or yesterday at
I've talked to numerous people around that I know that I take advice from.
And a couple of questions that have come up in my mind is, as the mayor has stated,
the state law and the county law are pretty poor.
And whether the citizens of fate know this or not,
But we have some doughnut holes in the middle of our city that are not considered part of
our city.
And I mean smack dab in the middle of our city, right across from Joe Berger Park, where
is an offender or somebody could be living in that and there's not a blessed thing
that we can do about it.
And you would never know it.
I also think that, you know, I don't mean to preach with everybody, to anybody, but my faith
and the biblical principles that I live by on a daily basis, talk about grace and mercy.
I have been afforded grace and mercy.
And every one of you has got the same opportunity to have that grace and mercy.
And I think that if, you know, I've had a number of emails sent to me by people that have said that they are Christians, that they're Catholic, that they've all been given an afforded grace and mercy.
And I think that listening to Mr. Feinstein and your lawyer, and understanding the 15-page
report that we got from Mr. Feinstein regarding his professional opinion of that, that you've
been rehabilitated.
And you know, this is not going to be a popular, I'm sure this is not popular with anybody,
and I really, you know, this is how I feel.
And I think that Ms. Wilson, even though there were some mistakes,
understand that the process of getting registered in the city and in the state is not an automatic thing that has to happen, right?
And that there are certainly some loopholes within the way that our state laws are written
that causes all kinds of confusion and all that kind of stuff.
I first want to say that this is very difficult, not only for you, and it takes courage for
you to come up and stand and talk about such a crime that you've committed in the past,
but I do believe that you have paid your debt.
And I personally think that grace should be afforded to people, especially when they've
shown that especially when they shown that they have learned from their
mistakes and can move forward. I just want to say that I appreciate that
everybody's been out here and I understand the passions are high about
your children and believe me the last thing I want to see is somebody's
child abused but it makes me wonder how many 18-year-olds we have living in
in this city who are technically sex offenders but have never been caught.
Hold on.
Come on, please. Thank you.
It's got nothing to do with it, sir.
Lance, you too.
I'm done.
You sure?
We'll come back, Jim.
I just have a couple of quick questions for you.
One is, you heard several times tonight about the ignorance of law.
Did you check before you moved into the city of fate of what our sex registration would be?
I did not. I had no experience with...
The towns that would have laws different from state laws. My only experience is in Virginia.
In Virginia, the towns do not have separate laws. All the law about where you can live is run by the state.
And the state of Texas, the only law that I could find is that I can't, like, live on our college campus.
So that's what I based my decision on.
The
system, basically all states have registration systems because of Congress passing something
called the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act in 1994.
They required states to continue getting full funding for law enforcement upon, it depended
upon states adopting the model statute that Congress enacted.
What happens is some states have a statewide registry system, and that includes other things beyond registration, like residency restrictions, proximity, whether someone physically, not where they live, but physically can go within certain distances, and they're statewide. Virginia is one of those.
Texas is not. Texas has authorized general law cities now since 2017 to pass these ordinances.
Before 2017, they couldn't because of an attorney general opinion by then Attorney General
Greg Abbott actually was wrote that in 2016. And it took him until 2017 to give general
law cities authority to pass these ordinances. But home rural cities, I'm sure you all
know, are basically entitled to pass whatever ordinances they want to unless the legislature
legislature has expressly prohibited it, something called Dillon's Rule that I won't get into.
That goes back to the 1876 Constitution of Texas. But I have people call me all the time
that are no longer required to register in other states, and they want to know whether
they're going to have to register as sex offenders when they come to Texas.
And it's a very complicated process because you have to compare the elements of their
offense under the state law they came from and determine whether those elements of their
offense in the other state is substantially similar to the elements that would require
registration if the offense had been committed in Texas. There's no doubt that she is required
to register under Texas law, and that's what she looked to, but she didn't see, according
to her testimony, she didn't realize that she also needed to go the second step
and determine whether there's any residency restrictions when she moved to Fay.
And that's a real common problem. I've known people that have lived in
their homes for over a decade before law enforcement
and their community realized that they were violating their city
residency restriction organisms. And so
for your information that's what I was responding to. It's not an uncommon thing for
someone moving out of state to have that confusion.
Okay, any other one is,
since you're conviction, have you had any contact with the minor, who's no longer a minor now?
Just minimal contact.
What is minimal contact?
Well, so we don't, having been, you know, we don't go to family reunions together.
He's not a blood relative, in full disclosure, he was my stepson.
So once my husband died, his father died, there was no contact.
There was minimal contact through my husband when he was alive.
There is also a stepdaughter from that marriage who I've fully reunited with.
And I also have a daughter of my own who was six years old at the time, was never removed from the home, was never thought to be a danger.
My contact with her was never stipulated to be less than full.
Thank you.
Scott, no questions.
Mark, just one follow-up question.
So Ms. Wilson, you said that you didn't know that there was a requirement to register in Texas at all?
So a little bit more about the process.
So when I looked into the Texas registry requirements,
there are a list of offenses that talk about if you have to register for 10 years,
or if you have to register for life.
Looking at my sodomy charge from Virginia,
if you look in the Texas Code,
that is not listed directly as one of the offenses
you have to register for.
So that's why I was not aware of needing to register.
But is the law, I believe Texas law is that
if you've committed an act with a child under the age
of 17, that that's a permanent registration.
Is that not correct?
It depends on the offense, and like I said, with the fraud.
Could you use the microphone?
I'm sorry, for the recording.
For example, in her case in Virginia,
they used the term sodomy.
If you looked at the elements, you'd
look at maybe was there sexual contact,
was there penetration, was there indecency with the child,
which would be an exposure, and all these other things.
And so it really takes a logger
to compare the offense in the state
under the state law they had to look at the elements
and what was alleged even in the charging instrument, whether it's an indictment or whatever they use.
And then you look at Texas law and you find if there is or isn't an offense
that would require registration had that offense been committed in Texas.
As she mentioned, there's a lot of offenses that only would require registration in Texas for 10 years,
and she was obviously 30 years gone since her offense.
There's other offenses that are not quite as broad a number of offenses that would require registration for life.
And that would be kind of a sexual assault involving penetration.
And that's, from what I know about this, the offense that she was convicted of would not include that, okay?
Hey, John, just real quick.
John, did you ever clarify the process we went through?
Then I know we went to the state to get a clarification on this.
Do you want to walk away through that?
Yeah, the issue that comes up, we've heard about it,
and we've dealt with this issue before,
is when you have someone who is registered as a sex offender
in a state outside of Texas,
and then they relocate to Texas.
And as Mr. Gladden stated,
so what the state of Texas went when we found,
we learned that Ms. Wilson was living in fate.
what our DPS department had to do was determine what offense she was convicted
of for which she was registered in Virginia and had to take the elements of
that offense and we had to send it to the state of Texas. The state of Texas is a
sexual offender registration program or a SOARP. I may not have the acronym
right. So what they will do is look to determine whether there's a
substantially similar offense under Texas law and then based on the
elements decide whether or not the person needs to register, whether they need to register
for a limited time like 10 years or for life.
And in this particular case, the State of Texas reviewed the elements of the offense
to determine there was a substantially similar offense, and that required a life registration
if I'm not.
Thanks.
Mark?
Go ahead.
Sorry.
So did you seek the guidance of an attorney when you moved here?
I did not.
Okay.
And my last question is, have you had any sex offender counseling since your conviction?
Yes.
And when was that?
During my incarceration.
But have you had anything after that period?
No, I fully graduated from that.
And that was a voluntary or that was mandated?
Voluntarily.
Okay.
Thanks.
I was not mandated to any rehabilitation counseling.
I sought that on my own.
Heather.
I think all of my questions have been answered between everything that's been presented and the other questions.
No, can you speak on the microphone?
I can hear you.
We can't hear you on the microphone.
You're really quiet tonight.
I think all of my questions have been answered between all the material that's been presented and the other questions that have already been asked.
So thank you so much.
Thank you.
This is the same for me, of course.
So thank you.
Lance, wrap up.
Come on, you're good.
I have a microphone.
Sorry, thank you.
I have actually no further questions to Ms. Wilson
or to her attorney or Mr. Finstein.
Again, this is a very difficult decision
for everybody on this council.
and understand that people want to keep their children safe and I want your children to be safe.
I also think, though, that if we start, if we have zero compassion as a community and dictate
who we're going to throw out of their homes and who we're not, what other crimes will we start looking at?
right? We could have a murderer. We would never know it. We could have people that have
deweys, multiple deweys, and I would submit that drunk driving is equally as heinous a
crime because there's more often when somebody's drinking and driving, they're drinking
and Mr. Finstein she's gone through at this point, I assume that you have paid for all
of this and that she has tried to put forth that
she is not and we've got expert witnesses
that say that she's not a threat to our community. And personally you can chuckle all you want.
Next time that you have a legal problem,
you'll certainly wish that you had some grace.
I'm done.
Okay, thank you.
Any more questions from council?
Last call.
All right.
I'll take a motion, please.
I'll make a motion to deny the request for item 6-up.
I have a motion.
Do I have a second?
I second.
Okay.
Please vote.
And this is a motion to deny.
The motion passes 5-1.
Okay.
Next, the key please.
What was the vote?
No.
Sorry, has it turned over?
I'm sure it's lands.
OK, with the council on the legacy voting now.
OK, next please.
We will move back to agenda item, excuse me, 6A,
discuss, consider, and take any necessary action regarding
road bond projects.
Council to provide direction on Gettysburg East connection
to Blackland Road.
Now the roads.
Good.
All right.
Get even there.
Okay, Scott.
Council, this evening we're going to go over the current status of the road bond projects,
and then of course we'll have a discussion item on Gettysburg extension, get some direction
and clarification from Council on how we may want to proceed forward with that project.
Just a quick update before I get into some of the slides.
So currently, out of the bond projects, two of those projects have been completed.
One of those being the Memorial Parkway Striping Project.
The second project is the Water Tower Road.
Both projects are complete, being utilized.
The I-30, Frontage Road, right turn lane.
We are scheduled, and I think there's been some questions in reference to that.
We're scheduled to be complete by early next week.
So some final details, but we're getting very close a little bit of landscaping some striping
Sealing some expansion joints
Sidewalk was poured just last week. So very very close on that project
righty club road still on schedule to be completed by September of this year the
Wood Creek Boulevard
Scheduled for November of this year and then Gettysburg again
We can talk about that when I get to the slide in a little bit more detail
So I'm going to kind of jump in on some of the slides.
So Wood Creek Boulevard Extension, of course, that was the project that extended through the U-Track to the Frontage Road of I-30.
Project status, as of today, we have a few updates.
Of course, this was a last late-minute item on the last council agenda.
We decided we were going to send everybody home at 11 o'clock instead.
So all the water lines, all the utilities are complete on this project, all the stormwater is complete.
We have as of today paved most of that project.
So all the roads, all the way crossing the railroad track going north are paved.
We're still finishing some details on the roundabout and then we have sidewalks to complete.
We have a lot of infrastructure when it comes to utilities.
Poll lights, signage, railroad crossings, the crossing arms, and some utilities that go to those crossing arms.
So there's some pieces that need to be complete, but we are on schedule to have this project completed, again, as we stated by November.
So some of the conflicts that we wanted to mention and kind of go over with the council in reference to this is, so this project originally had that November date.
We've had quite a few conflicts on this project that really could have extended this
Contract out until as late as March
But we're able to maintain and stay on on schedule on this project with the original contract date, which was
370 days, so we had we've had 43 days. We had heavy heavy rain if you remember when this project first started
We had some conflicts with some water lines
Some of the plans that some of the archived information wasn't correct, so we had to relocate some lines on the frontage road.
We had some bore issues related to some utilities working with DGNL Railroad.
So with these days, you know, just again, we just want to show that we could have actually extended this project out.
But again, if everything holds true, we're going to be opening this project and we're aligning with the Avondale project.
So there's pieces on both sides of the railroad track as of a meeting myself and Mr. Bilber had with contractors last week
Looks like everything's going to be very close to aligning at the same time
Which means the traffic signal on highway 66 is going to open
The road will open the sidewalks will all be in place all the landscape and all the details so that when we open that road
We're open all the way to the service road. So
Feeling pretty confident that that job is moving forward on schedule
If you don't mind, let's do one at a time of questions, if you don't mind.
Sure, absolutely.
Would people have any questions?
Yeah.
I know you have a question, so I said that.
The intersection of Wood Creek and 66.
Yes, sir.
So are they completed with the intersection?
They are not.
So it looks like they have to move control boxes for the...
the Avondale development, this was not a part of this,
but yeah, some of the controls, utilities have to be moved
and some of the arms that are existing arms,
they're putting a longer mast arm.
There's a new ILS sign that goes in.
Most of the paving on the north side
of Wood Creek Boulevard is now complete.
We have some pavement on the south side
at the Highway 66 transition that needs to be completed.
So the idea is we're gonna hold off
on opening any section until the road is fully complete.
That way, when we rip the Band-Aid off,
the road is clear and there's no obstructions.
Last thing, personally, what I don't like
is when you get to the point
where you're ready to open a road
and then you still have temporary closures
in the process.
So the hope is that our project and that project align
and we can open the whole road at one time.
So are we dependent on text.to do that?
No, it's all under the contract.
With the exception of the signal, the signal is taxed out.
They're just currently waiting on the material to come in to finalize the signal.
So they're not going to delay that necessarily.
No, everything's, they gave us, I think, eight weeks out to finalize.
Jim, any questions?
Yeah, the budget was 5.2 and we've paid 3.0.
Do we have anything else under contract for that?
The budget was 5.2.
Correct.
And we've spent 3.0.
Right.
Yeah, we still have quite a few pay items that need to be finished out on the project.
So they, again, everything's kind of segmented out, but everything's holding.
We've had a few minor change orders, but they're all within the contract budget.
So we're feeling pretty confident that there's nothing else, no other big ticket items that could show up to complete the project out.
Great. Thanks. Yes, sir. And so just to clarify the bid award was 6.7. Yes, 6.7
So we had to move money from other as you can see in the next page
We had to move money from other projects to get what creep done
Okay, so are we on I I know you hate this question saw I won't public
Are we gonna make right for real open the road on number six?
Yeah, we feel very confident. Yeah, it's curing
So the one thing is, you know, no concern with cure time at all.
The road has already been poured on the north side of the railroad track.
That was the last piece. So we are connected all the way through with pavement.
The issue that I am now working with is DGNO and Encore to get the signal in place
because the one thing that actually could hold this project up is we could be 100% complete
and the railroad will not let us cross it until the signal is in place.
So we've been pressing on that schedule and they feel confident.
It's only a five-day work schedule to get that crossing in.
But we feel confident with our last conversation.
I don't know what you're going to assert is, so just to check my assumption is,
this really helped traffic on the north side of Faye, right?
As much as Michael's heard this many times,
As much as we can get it done faster on the 6th, it's really important that we do that.
I'd love to tell you a date sooner, and I hope I can at some point.
But right now, we're going to hold to that date at this point.
I think that would be good.
At least the December date we put out there, I think,
improved traffic flow would be just nice in our city.
Okay, Mark, Heather, you can go on then.
Okay, thank you.
We'll start with Lance always, and I'm here at the questions.
So the Memorial Striping Project, you know, obviously is being utilized as open.
One of the things that we noticed, and of course all the striping, all the details,
all the signage was approved through TechStot.
We did ask for permission after we completed the project.
Can we add an additional left-hand turn straight lane
painting and painted underneath the bridge to help alert citizens of this.
So we painted it.
We used just regular road-based paint.
That's what we had available in Textot, gave the blessing, so go ahead and do it.
It really has faded out pretty quickly.
We ordered thermoplastic, we're wetting on that because it's not a typical term
lane.
So once that comes in, which we hope it'll come in in the next week,
then we will apply that. That's much brighter, much stronger,
and it's going to last quite a bit longer.
So in this, I'll ask this question.
Sure.
But I see it every day.
So this is underneath from South Side of Pitt and North Side of Pitt,
going on a right-thirty or talking about right.
Okay.
There's a sign there that doesn't make sense to me, right?
So what's still happening, people are aligned from the right lane,
Like, you have left turn, right, then left turn straight, then right turn right.
People are still in the middle and then they're hurrying over because the sign on that
cross from fresh says straight, straight.
It says, no, left turn straight and it's like that.
It's confusing people and they're still under the bridge going over.
I would be glad to make another request.
Okay.
But TextDOT has specified it matches the detail and it matches
is the traffic pattern at the location
when they should be looking for it.
I do understand, and-
Including me, by the way, I cut up a couple of times,
so I'm just giving it to anybody else,
but anything we can do with text,
I think it will clarify,
but I still know those people are not using
both left and right, like we hope they would,
even if they're getting better at learning,
I get it, but it's still happening after anything we can do,
that would be great.
I'd be glad to extend another real question,
and see if they have any,
or possibly they pull that one back
and maybe be able to add it a second,
But I'd be glad to reach out to them and see if there's anything additional.
I mean, I think you said that we're going to try to repaint underneath the crowd.
Yes, it's thermal plastic, so it'll be bonded up to the pavement,
more like what was put down in the project.
That wasn't included in the project details.
So rather than do a late change order,
we felt like let's just order that internally and I'll have my staff install it.
Thank you.
Any questions?
I'm sorry.
So when you turn left out of the middle lane there, is there one of those guidelines that
tells you?
There is.
Yes, sir.
All right.
I couldn't remember if there was or not because when it first opened it was a mess, people
turning both at the same time.
And it was there from day one, and again, you know, I've kind of asked our staff, let's
start to utilize that lane just to kind of direct people to follow through there.
And, you know, the first few days, yes, it was quite confusing, but I've noticed that
any time I've opened any road or any kind of change.
But if you really, and we're back and forth through there, I'm sure you all travel it.
We travel it multiple times a day, and I've really seen that, that the help.
And I've seen it utilized much more.
The first few days was a little rough.
Are you also going to use the thermal plastic for the follow-through lanes too?
Yes. That's all being done through the contract.
It's kind of new for us because we don't have all the resources to do it internal.
But again, I didn't want to put a change order on this project, so we have the materials and we're going to go ahead and apply it.
Yeah, I noticed it was there right away.
And it's a requirement through textile.
Yeah, it's a specification through textile, so that's what has to go down.
So we've just talked about the frontage, but just a couple of small details that need to be finished up on this is a little bit of the drainage needs to be cleared on the Brookshire side, a little bit of grading, the grass, sealing some expansion joints, and then the striping.
So we're getting very close.
Again, contractor is, if everything holds true,
no weather changes or anything,
we're scheduled to be complete by the 14th,
which is next Monday.
Water Tower Road, I think we talked about this one already,
but again, one of the same things,
we're seeing more and more citizens come home in the evening
and realize, hey, I have this other option coming through here,
just like when Gettysburg opens up here soon.
and they're seeing some relief and seeing some ways
that they can bypass the intersection
to brook showers if they choose not to go that way.
But again, it's been a huge benefit.
Any one road that we open up,
it's like opening up a new artery.
It just, here's the way it travels
and we're really seeing a lot of good input from that.
Okay, just go ahead.
Oh, so question on Water Tower Road.
Yes.
The size of those lanes, what is that?
They were reduced to 11, is that correct, Ryan?
11, okay.
Because I noticed they were a little bit smaller, but they still, you still fit.
Yes, yes. And you're going to see that pattern carry through the city as we do some of these new projects.
So that's a cost savings and also a reduction in speeding behavior. That's why we did that.
So I just have one comment.
So, in a number of the site plans that we've seen for the development there, they're planning
on street parking, right?
The question comes in is, what is that going to do to the traffic on there with the street
parking and slowing it down and all that kind of stuff?
If you really could, it should slow the traffic down.
Right, theoretically, and I think that that's problematic actually, that we shouldn't
have street parking on on that road. Speed limit 35 there? 30 on that one. 30. Okay. My question is
going to be, so two questions really. So one, you know, water time road on 530 service road,
there's still, can we get a sign to tell people that road exists after or so long? Sure. I mean,
like, yes. And then the second question is, they have a lot of barriers, they've still got
the big orange barrels there, and that's going to cause some confusion, what do you mean?
Like it's open now, so are those there for a reason, or they just forgot to put them up?
Well, a lot of them were out there for another utility that's being installed in the city,
so they're not for that project.
They were for some right away work being done by a gas company, so that's what dictated those.
Yeah, we can get a sign there, because I think it would help more people,
We actually just got a, ironically, a request from Turcot to rename Water Tower Road.
Whatever name you want to put there and whatever you want, did you have to sign up?
It'll be coming to y'all. So it'll be coming to y'all to consider.
I'm not the naming guy, so I'll let you take it.
It is your discretion whether or not to agree, but we have to process the request.
I'm sorry, one comment.
Can we pay attention to landscaping around there because the sunflowers are actually up
to the high right now and it's difficult to see oncoming traffic coming up in that rally?
Sure.
We can talk to our co-compliance and see if a lot of that property around there doesn't
belong to the city.
It's probably some of the development, but we'll see if you can help us with that
piece.
No, much of it.
I mean, Michael hasn't answered one of those by the way.
All right.
Yes, sir.
Next please.
All right.
and Riding Club, so if you haven't been by Riding Club recently,
it's getting very close. It's really moving nicely.
We have one section on the southbound lane, which I show south and it's running from east to west.
One segment of that needs to be completed and will be completely paved out on that project.
We do have one conflict that we're dealing with with an AT&T utility box
needn't be raised or lowered it depends on how they want to attack it so it's
keeping one panel from being able to be poured out on that project but again
we're still scheduled for a September completion on this job again this was
about a six month project everything's staying on schedule no real change
orders that have caused any conflicts so we're feeling really confident that
we'll get this one open up in September and again if you haven't been
buy this one, you know, please go buy. One thing on this project that's going to move
this pretty quickly is through negotiations.
We're involved with this project, so it's really once we finish the job, we hide our seed,
we establish grass, and we finish the job. So nothing that would eliminate us or push us
back on being able to get this opened up as early as possible. So we're hoping early September.
Okay. Okay, I think you can go on. All right.
And the last one, the Gettysburg to Blackland extension. So this is the one that we were
We're asking for a little guidance from the council.
So this would be the last and final bond project.
This is the extension from our Edgewater development to a roundabout on the intersection
of Gettysburg and Blackland Road.
As of today, we just put in a demolition contract in place, so we're scheduled to
have the property cleared and ready to go.
Kimley-Horn has the plan set at about 90% currently.
One of the things that we were considering originally on this project
is when Edgewater came and pulled phase four of this project,
that would be the time that they would build the extension
and then connect to our portion of the road.
Things have kind of slowed down.
We don't have specific dates and times of when they're going to do that next phase.
So, a couple of options is we could go ahead and build our portion of the road, so that
we finished out and closed out the bond projects.
Another option is we could go ahead and build that Gettysburg piece.
So, you're looking for, so right now it says, Kimley Horner is doing the cost analysis,
so you want us to-
Correct.
So, you want us to wait until the cost analysis shows up?
No.
We've got, it's 3.8-
Yeah.
So, we have that?
Yes.
Oh, you have that, okay.
Right, so if you go to the bond, if you go to the expense part on page two, so you'll
see on Ginsburg to Blacklin there under bid or estimate, we're at 1.9, so what our estimate
was for our section, and then back in here we've got about 1.9 remaining, so we've got
just enough to possibly complete the entire road but but that may not be
something that's smart at this point because the construction traffic that's
going to take place and the timing so that we may want to wait a little bit so
that was another option. We can build the whole thing, renegotiate our
development agreement, get some impact fees from Edgewater later which
will trickle into the roadway impact fee fund which you use for other
projects like Ben Payne or whatever, and then, or we could wait, or we could do other
projects as well.
Yeah, they're both phases, our piece, and then the Gettysburg piece, one's a thousand
linear feet, the other one with around about is about 800 linear feet, so they're about
the same scope and size of projects.
And again, you know, one of the things that we were concerned with if we went
ahead and built that entire piece out into the Gettysburg portion into Edgewater is the
fact that we would want to open that and we would put traffic on that and that does cause
issues when you go to develop a neighborhood because the minute you open it up as we mentioned
earlier it becomes an artery and it's going to be utilized and utilized heavily.
So just for consideration, what would council like to do moving forward?
I'm going
to defer to Misty on that one. I can't really say.
You know, there is a lot of traffic on that side of town.
It will put it it would be a nice cut through but I'll let you speak to that
Nicely, I think it would provide a reliever route basically for that sort of town
It'd be the cut through traffic through Edgewater back to 551 and then back and forth
So so
This is going to help people get from the Blackland Road area
a couple
of thoughts. But I'm thinking more about total relief on the south side and my
general thought would be, if we're going to prioritize projects, I'd rather, I'd like
to understand, this is Gettysburg, Greenbriar. Greenbriar eventually is going to flow from
water tower further west between Green Bar and Rochelle I would between the two
probably like to have an understanding which will provide more immediate relief
to 30 especially the black land being pushed back in the I-30 project just
just what I'd like to understand if it's good to spend the money where's
our best bang for the buck to provide so yeah that's so that's so the
Hunts are building that kind of like in a U shape and it's going to curve back into the
it's not actually going to go. So Gettysburg is going to punch all the way through to Rochelle.
Right, right. It's almost done.
But, but, but Greenbriar.
Greenbriar is going to curve down to the Access Road and we have a halfway between Rochelle and Rochelle.
Like you saw.
Right.
Closer to industrial.
And are the Hunts and the Charcot Group committed to build that part of the road?
They are. Yeah, they're going to go slow as they go.
They're so right now. They're building the section in front of phase two for pros and then they're going to continue as they build the commercial
They're going to build it all the way to the frontage. And what's the time frame on Gettysburg opening up to Rochelle?
Gettysburg Rochelle. It's close
I think Steve we're ready to we're probably ready to accept it next month expecting next month
Okay, well if the huts are going to build Gettysburg and we've got the money
I'd probably rather spend the money now to go ahead and build it while costs are lower.
This one?
Yeah, build this proposed extension as opposed to waiting and if we've got the money for it.
Mark.
I agree with Scott.
It's not going to get any cheaper and longer we wait.
And the fact that I live on the south side, I think it will give quite a bit of relief
to those folks that don't have to come all the way up to the intersection to turn
to go to Roy City and sit, you know, and close freeways every day, but that's a
different story for FedEx. Yeah, I'm kind of leaning towards build the whole thing so
that way we can kind of match up with the connection into Rochelle because then
maybe I'll get something on South Siders to leave that intersexual in so we
can get back to the north side.
That happened. Hey, so here's my thoughts on
this. I don't understand why Gettysburg, if I understand correct, from the
right along the idea, it's almost done.
Literally almost done.
You only have the intersection of Rochelle today, that's it.
Yeah, Eastward and Rochelle's pretty much done.
We're waiting on a waterline installation along the way.
Correct.
That's why that's not open yet?
Yes, that's the primary reason it's not open.
OK, so that's almost done right.
It takes a couple of months.
Any time frame on that, by chance?
I know it's down to like 50 feet.
Currently working on the development agreement?
Two months.
There's only like 28 feet.
It's not a lot of feet there left to do, right?
It's just that waterline's going
we go on the side, I might put back that,
so we're just say two months.
Directly in that portion, that's not poured out,
is where that water went.
And then how much, and you have to help me miss on this one,
how much traffic from back line that we actually have,
that we would reroute through?
I see the Rochelle connector down to Gettysburg,
that's gonna be a huge reliever for the city,
just people seeing that upcoming right turn lane
and then congestion at the light,
people are gonna bypass that light
and go down to Gettysburg,
and then it will continue on to go to Eastside.
Offer offer a shot absolutely
Yeah, I'm fine with the council decision. Just build it all out. I prefer getting ahead of the guard caves
Do we have any time frame for a light there because we're pushing more traffic through there
We'll need to it seems like much for a lot of years. Oh, we exactly we actually want to
So the lights help with the left turn movements, but they slow down regular traffic
So you kind of want to wait as long as you can until the intersection gets to almost to a point of failure then
bring it up for the, otherwise if you call them in early it's not going to warrant.
And so the textile will come out, they'll do the traffic study and then they'll say you don't need one.
So we'll just have to watch it and see how it goes.
Were we talking about Signal at Rochelle or?
You've had Black, sorry, Gettysburg and 5-51.
5-51, okay.
Yeah, we were watching, we've been watching, in fact, just the other day, Chief pulled some
accident data for me and we got, do I remember who we sent that out, somebody asked for accident
data, so we said, we'll give you all the accident data.
It's not very exciting, bottom line, there's not a whole lot of accidents, there's, most
of our accidents are at the I-3551's area, so in front of Fresh, the turn lane there,
and then a little bit beyond that whole section.
That's where most the actions are.
But if you look at some of the other ones,
there's not much down there.
It is just kind of a pain to get through there at AMP.
Okay, thank you, got it?
Yeah, so if council is open to it,
what we could do is we'll move to 100% design.
We currently are issuing the PO today
for the demolition of the existing structure
that's on the property.
If you wouldn't mind, I wouldn't mind actually reaching out to the developer just to see where
they currently stand on that next phase to see what that scheduling may look like in
relation to us going and putting bid specifications together and going out for bid.
Just to see if there's any opportunity there for us and then, if not, we can move forward
and we'll bring that back to council.
Okay, perfect.
Thank you.
Can we take a five minute break for council and try to do that with the rest of them?
Thank you.
Well, this group at 750, something like the seven months, we're going to make that 750.
That'd be great.
Thanks.
Okay.
We're going to get restarted again at 754.
We have another agenda request change.
Vicki?
Hey, Vicki, turn it on.
Yep.
I turned my mic off.
Sorry.
Next agenda item.
We're going to move to agenda item 6C.
Discuss, consider, and take any necessary action regarding approval of communication
and public engagement plan for the City of Fates.
Any objections by council?
Shelby or Michael, who's introducing this one?
Oh, I'm doing this one.
All right.
You have three minutes, no.
Okay, no problem.
Okay, we have a public engagement plan.
So our staff has put together Shelby Spencer
and Steven has also got quite a bit of a PIO background.
He's also reviewed it.
Oh, there you are.
Keep looking in the audience.
I keep forgetting, yeah, he's in justice spot now.
So, and I've of course looked at this as well.
So here we go.
Council, this is something you asked for back in the spring
and with the intent of improving our community engagement.
So we do all sorts of things for community engagement.
We have different sorts of programs
and we want to of course include all these different
events and the way we communicate with people
on social media to improve engagement with our community.
And so, some of our principles, we're going to tell our story, create a centralized approach
to information, build relationships with our citizens, and be proactive versus reactive
with communication.
This is something you all have really stressed that you want to see improved, and of course
we've added staff to be able to do this.
You all did that in the budget, which is making a big improvement.
We'll show you some stats here in a second.
So our structure essentially comes out of the city manager's office, out through
the Stevens title in there too because he's going to be helping us a little bit with some
of this is his background. And then the public safety is a big part of that. You'll see a
lot of posts coming from on the social media side coming from public safety. So chief chief
is a big help with that. And then we've also started to help with DPS and of course our
public information officer. Our target audience. So we've got a number of people we want to
communicate with internally we've got our own staff as our staff gets bigger and
bigger we're getting a lot of information you'll see different snippets in
our reports of how we're actually communicating better with our own staff
and then especially as we go to multiple sites so now we've got public works
off-site we've always had DPS off-site City Council you all different
information we've got some different tools for you all departments and then
our other boards and commissions some of our other officials and then of
Of course, the big one is external.
Citizens, businesses, the media visitors,
a lot of our clubs and nonprofits,
and then even real estate developers and HOAs.
Go to the next slide real quick, and I'll come back then.
So one thing I think external needs to be on here
is the state, let's say, our state elected officials.
Oh yes, I didn't see it in here at all.
No, no, I think that maybe that's,
because we have a specialized crew for that.
We've got the the guys in Austin and we've got the folks in DC. So that's more that's kind of more you and I have been
Yeah, kind of delegated that I had no problem doing it
I had no problem leading that political fibers most of our politics by the way most of time about getting them do the thing
So you're okay as a council. Okay. Not just the way we do it today
or
basically
Any of the Austin's that is handled by focus on see myself and Michael and the political fights that we get with the state
I've been handling those either by letters to the state or letters to the state or I post on social media.
Everybody okay with that process to me in that way?
Okay.
Sure.
Do you take the beating?
Okay.
Thank you, my question.
That's why I saw that was missing.
I want to make sure that we cover that tonight.
Okay.
Thanks.
And channels.
We've got a pretty robust website.
It started really small and now it's quite large.
there's quite a bit of information on the website. The other fun part is
Because now that we've got a chatbot, they've all seen our little chatbot, so we've got Barry
the chatbot, which Spencer has trained how to answer many questions, so he's continually
training Barry the chatbot.
So I use chatbot, dude.
It is not.
Yeah.
I use chatbot, dude.
Who's the mayor?
I got no answer for the chatbot.
We're going to have to train him.
I haven't even thought about the answer yet.
Therefore, you just have the wrong city councillor and he said, no, I don't think so.
So we got a deal on the chatbot.
Like we got a deal.
Like we do with everything.
I have to train him all the answers right now.
Yes, I haven't taught him who you are.
Thank you for doing that, by the way.
It comes through.
So it's through our it's through our website provider.
And it's kind of like an add-on we did a little add-on to try and you know buzz boost public engagement quite a bit of folks are using it
We think
But they have not integrated some of the newest technology. So it's the chat GPT for
However, we are getting a free upgrade once they integrate the chat GPT for so it should become much more powerful
So on this one real quick. So when will chat by you use AI in the background is that coming up?
It's kind of yeah, I don't think we've got a timeline for that, but it's coming up. Hopefully fairly quick
They're hoping for the end of the summer, so it could be any minute.
And then how are we going to make sure, I know everybody loves AI and everybody likes playing with AI, you know, like figure out the holes in it.
So do you get feedback? And honestly, do you get feedback from it when you get the incorrect answer?
Or do we get feedback on AI or do we just have to wake up people complaining about how does that work?
We get immediate feedback. So individuals can go and use the chatbot and then we have a portal.
we can go in and see exactly what they asked and what the answer was from the
bot and then we can train it to correctly answer that question.
And then can you turn your mind off?
I'm late John alone tonight. I'm really going to pick on John Patrick.
I almost my bot. Can we just train it in your mind?
So I will say that since it got put on there I've had two
notes saying that somebody thought they had virus on their machine because of
that. Is there any like notice that we gave people? It's sort of got a teddy bear
that showed up on their web page. Y'all remember which windows was it back in the
day when the little paper clip? Y'all remember windows? Is it Windows 95 with
a little paper clip guy? Maybe dating myself. But now it kind of floats in the
background like that. Where did we put the notice for it that it was
being added to the site? Because it sort of just popped up on the site one
day for me. No it just, we didn't really put a notice out. We just live, we did some
internal use but not for the pump. Okay I think it's as long as we're monitoring it
then we know what this was doing and we can correct as we go along that big
difference. And now even, but even just having a good website now, you know
it's before the website is kind of clunky, the search engine is horrible,
etc. But if you have content on your web page, so now with it with
with the regular AI. Even you go to things like Google's got barred. Bing, so remember
Bing wasn't such a great... Bing is now integrated with ChatGPT3, ChatGPT4. And so if you've
got content on your website and you ask a specific enough question, the AI will find
it. It is amazing. It's an amazing tool. So other people's search engines, other
people's AI, if we've got content on our site, we can get it to people if they're
looking for it.
So forward fate that's the comp plan site that's still active Ryan's been
updating that and that's a tool that we're using especially with a lot of
our guides for planning that we're going to be getting there's a lot of
interest in planning and then Zen City we've got the new tool called Zen City
which is really neat and we'll be there's much more to come from that
but we're going to be tracking some analysis actually so show you some
stats from that. Social media platforms primarily at
Facebook our target person is a essentially a female between the
age of 30 and 35 and so that is our that is our target audience that is our
biggest user group we have about 10,000 followers on Facebook DPS has got about
11 they're ahead of us and they usually they're usually ahead of us we've also
started Instagram so that's kind of fun trying to get a little bit of try
to hit a little bit younger crowd but not a whole lot there's a lot of them
We're also on Facebook.
And then linked in a little bit of that YouTube.
We need to probably do some updates to YouTube,
but it's kind of a neat platform too.
And in Coms channels, public notices, of course,
digital print media releases.
And then we've got some crisis communications,
that stuff that we're doing,
along with our public information.
So we're starting to develop
some of those crisis plans.
Yes, Sam.
Yes.
Thank you.
And then city-wide, of course, we got city-wide support.
We're able to support other departments
as they're doing things.
The departments have been feeding us things like pictures
that we need.
So whenever you see content going out there,
the departments have been helping us with everything
for like you see here, public works, parks,
and public safety.
And of course, metrics.
We've got some great metrics, both from our website.
We've got data from the community survey,
and then we've got data from Zensity.
So we just want to kind of show you some neat stuff.
Our reach on our Facebook, this is from Zen City stats
between, let's look at January,
essentially January to February, about 49,000.
And we're up to, here in June, we're up to about 54,000
on our reach, so we're continually boosting our reach
on our Facebook.
DPS is kind of fluttered up and down,
but we're going to be helping them up.
And so we're up about 11 point, almost 12, almost 12%.
And then Instagram, of course we just started Instagram,
we'll weigh up on Instagram.
And then lastly, in Zen City,
we've got a partnership with Zen City,
they're analyzing a lot of our public communication
strategy, this is something we turned on here
about midway through summer.
And our big emphasis is on,
because we noticed a challenge in the,
you know, challenging one of our things in our survey,
we got kind of collaborate in our survey this year,
That the city is progressing really well, but one of the things we got hit on is kind of the whole planning
World and how people were understanding that we think that a lot of that was the timing of when the survey was being answered because the
Stevenson issue was going on during the during the
Questioning however, we want to really focus on
You know strategy. Let's say hey, here's here's what we're trying to do with our comprehensive plan
Here's where we're trying to take the city
there's a lot of really good positive things that can happen and so we're
getting some feedback there should be a part two to the communications plan
coming and I think we're shooting for September maybe October it's that time
frame and then I've got Spencer and Shelby over here Shelby you've kind of
scooted up to the mic would you like to say something I
feel very formal
I would move down if you had any additional questions or needed any clarification on anything.
Lance, any questions?
On your very first slide, there was one thing I noticed that I would think that we did, not this one, keep going.
Maybe it was the third slide. This one, guiding principles.
I think one of the things that we need to establish in here is education of our citizens as a
point.
Education of our citizens.
Well, there's topics on, there's topics that we should be, I think that we should be putting
out like, you know, why does your water bill go up in the summertime?
Right.
I mean general information type of stuff like that that we get questioned all the time about
Well, I didn't do anything this summer. I haven't changed the way I've watered. I haven't done this
But yet my water bill was three times harder than what it is. Yeah
Yeah, it'd be like a jet like gender. I don't give a look on a councilman's they don't send how the genders are structured
They don't know how genders work here. What public comment versus, you know, I basically, you know, like a board presentation
on action, they're loud applicants, loud unlearned of time.
That's how they were all right.
Just so like that, they just don't come to county,
they just don't know, right?
They don't get upset, and they were like,
they can get it kind of cross-eyed, so we can,
I agree with you.
We've tried to think about and anticipate
from a day-to-day standpoint,
what kind of stuff is coming up.
So you'll see the post that we did today.
It was good, yeah.
On the build to rent or the single family rental.
So that zoning action took place years ago,
but it's now just finally starting to go
with the demolition, you all saw the demolition of the house.
So we figured, okay, that people are gonna start asking
like, what's going there?
But I think today for example,
I think the Wood Creek stuff,
I think the road stories are really important
to keep pushing.
Like in the comments today, where we were saying traffic
again, which is not true, right?
That's not causing more transparency
since that we have today,
but keep pushing, we're proactively building roads now,
right?
I think the words are important,
proactively, that's why push, right?
You know we heard you now. We're pushing it right now anyway, but more frequent road updates
So we know from our survey on the survey that Shelby did earlier about how people want to be communicating with we know
They really are interested in its roads
development taxes
I don't know
So they want to know the traffic updates what's going on with our roads Scott gave a really great road bond update
It's making sure we're pushing out that information.
It's making sure we're pushing out any planning
and development information.
So as Ryan's getting new developers coming in
to the community wanting to build here,
we're sharing that information out.
And to the point, you know,
these developments were approved years ago
and they're just now starting construction.
So it's again, just telling that story
and reminding the residents here
that it's not new information,
you're just maybe perhaps seeing it for the first time.
So helping them understand.
Yeah, I think I would make sure we put dates
It's like the Williamsburg Pro's apartments, some of these, it's 2008 that you don't, okay,
got it, you know, why'd you prove, well, 2008, okay.
2008.
It's like you put it, Dave was proof five years ago, so we could put like a year, it's fine
with me.
Then 2012 and then 2016.
Yeah, exactly.
You could see the progression of it.
So the thing we educate, hey, we always have a period of time, it's how you roll
in Texas, since we have a lot of new people from different states, they're not used
to this.
Right.
And the other thing, too, would be like a property tax, again, feeding out how the property tax
or how the city tax is affected as compared to the mud taxes.
What's a mud tax?
Right?
People, they're still questioning, well, how is this going to affect our mud tax?
Well, sorry, it's not, right?
I mean, general educational things that seem to be coming up time and time again,
you know?
Yeah.
So how are we pushing this out on which media?
We're leveraging all of our platforms.
So again, we have our standard website, fakedx.gov.
Ryan's doing a lot of the development
and kind of our comprehensive guidelines through Fort Bates.
Part of what we're doing within Citi this late summer fall
is we are actually creating project platforms.
So it does give that timeline.
It gives checklists of what developers are doing.
So it's going to be a really robust information portal
for all of the developments that are going on currently within the city.
And then through all of those, we're leveraging our social media accounts
to get out to the public to connect them back to these different platforms.
So how are we getting the citizens to know about these platforms for them to go and sign up for?
I mean, I went to a page that says, for notifications, do this, but it's not totally intuitive, such
as click here for, you know, like us on LinkedIn or Facebook or something.
A big part of what we're doing with Zinn City currently, so we're doing kind of a back-end
work right now.
So we're really identifying our current strategies that we're using to see where
the gap is so that we can be better.
We are looking forward to them kind of helping us bridge that gap a little bit cleaner and then also providing some recommendations on how we can further engage with the community and the residents.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thanks.
The one thing we got to realize on what I told them is the misinformation out there, right?
We see examples of it getting traction for no reason and then we get like taxed.
We have to figure out how to explain tax to people that, you know, where a small part
of your tax bill, one part of the tax bill doesn't solve the problem, it just makes
you feel good, right?
So we have to figure out how to do, like, to explain taxes and then deal with misinformation.
So it's not going to have to happen with part of that.
Unfortunately, for London and Fay,
we kind of avoided it for a while,
which seems like now it's kind of come back again.
And we can get a hit of the curb again, that'd be great.
Heather, I'm sorry, Mark, yeah.
Mark, here.
Okay, so Ryan did a really good presentation
a while back on all of the already entitled properties.
They included the numbers of homes
that were going to be there.
That would be great to have the overall,
like how many homes are going to be in this neighborhood because people ask
that question all the time as well so I think you did a really job on that
presentation I've I've used it multiple times to educate and I think doing
something like that would be as well one last thing the I know sometimes you
have to breathe I'll take all my three minutes the the education
being video form that you know short videos now tick tock that's where things
very influential even on the older residents like myself so if we can get
it in video form people tend to watch that rather than read out you know 15
paragraph long deal so Heather so are you having any luck with getting some
we've always had a decent relationship with the HOA's but a little bit more
buy-in from
They send out newsletters every month, every quarter. I mean, I don't know why we can't be
on the newsletter of, you know, here. This is where you go to address anything city-wide,
right? I've never seen them in my HOA newsletter. That would reach a lot of people a lot faster
than even what we're able to do with our website because everybody reads the HOA newsletter.
Yeah, we've used it for, for the power switch, back when we first started with the power switch.
And Wood Creek does a good job in the H-O-A.
We have kind of solved that.
Yeah, we have several.
Yeah, and Wood Creek is a big one, Wood Creek is huge, those two neighborhoods, and then you all have...
We actually included a lot of that information in our annual meeting slideshow,
and even before I got on the council we did that as well.
We have a pretty active page for our neighborhood and I think, you know, putting the valid information on there would be helpful as well.
Yeah, it would be nice if we could talk them into putting a link to the city webpage, you know, for all their new residents and all that kind of stuff so that way it just kind of eases that transition.
On the other side, I've really enjoyed the content that's been pushed out. You can definitely notice that it's been a shift.
it's very concise, you can glance at it, you know exactly what's going on and you
can move on, you know, you can do the doom scrolling and still see what's
happening, you know what I mean. So yeah, good job there. One more question. Sorry,
I know I briefed. The organization chart where you said everything's coming from
the city manager's office, is DPS still gonna maintain autonomy of their site,
of their media. Yeah, chief can put whatever we don't screen his posts. He's
very judicious about what he puts on there. So if it's a mistake generally I put
it on there so I've stopped putting posts up but but chief does his stuff and then
we've support we're supporting him. Yeah we're just support for chief. Yeah I've noticed a lot of
his own. Yeah getting shared and stuff like that. I just saw this and I just
I just wanted to make sure that was continuing, so yeah, cool.
Okay, so first off, you've definitely seen an increase in stuff going out the last 60, 90 days.
It's all good information.
Even the stuff people don't necessarily like to see, like traffic circles and stuff like that.
It's good information. I think it's a great avenue to get it out.
My one question, I agree with Lance on we need to figure out a better
citizen-in-gate education strategy on muds and pits and all the things that
impact tax rate. I know we've got a section on our website on that but I would imagine
if you look at our website hits are probably pretty minimal and if you look
at that specific page it's probably almost non-existent so. Oh Justin's got a
great page that he's not here tonight but do y'all remember the one you
put up last year so we're populating he's working on that we're populating that
we just need some information but there's a really neat page that he's got
where you can you put in your address or you put in not your necessary address you
put in where you live in the city and it'll show you your tax bill estimates
for so we've got some stuff we can always we can always try to get you
know people's attention to it the piece that I would also like to see
to do better on is, especially as it relates to development, is anticipating the backlash
and being proactive in getting the word out as opposed to letting a social medium blow
up with, like the mayor said, misinformation because on the last several deals, the misinformation
gets out there and gets traction and it's just difficult to turn it back and especially
with some of the developments we've got coming up you tracked in particular and I
don't know if that's a city issue or if that's something the council needs to be
more that's ours we've been trying to get ahead of some of that stuff in
fact we'll we'll probably have something that goes out here that because
Stevenson's coming back on the 21st for a workshop right so there's no plan
per se to look at it but yeah we were we're designing our things to get
So we've been trying to be more proactive rather than reactive.
Exactly.
That's what we're doing.
And we've noticed a significant difference with how we were proactive with U-Track coming
in with the workshop that they just did and more interaction before that happened rather
than if we were reactive after that workshop.
We have to change strategies on that.
That's why we have all the workshops.
Right.
We change strategy to get the workshops in the first each and then we stop in the below. Yeah, and Ryan's been doing an awesome job
Setting those up and helping us to be proactive with distributing the information before those
Yeah, could completely understand in the workshops and I get that especially on on projects like that that have been denied before
But but there's gonna be stuff that comes in that we're not gonna have that opportunity to workshop
they're just gonna come in and make a proposal and
And, again, if we can get the word out just to, I don't want to say control the messaging,
but to get in front of any potential backlash.
So let's see why that happens.
Otherwise it's the letters.
They get the letters in the mail and someone takes a screen shot of the newspaper and then.
Exactly.
Well, part of it is state law.
The problem is, this is my favorite complaint by the state is you have to put in a newspaper.
You can't put it on a website.
I mean, some of the state law has to change, right?
If we put it on the website, we can control the message.
But the small bit, you know, small newspapers,
a lot of this is really effective,
and now we still can't do it.
So it's almost more of a disadvantage to have a state
that's set up with notification processes.
We try to change the mobile time.
We just can't get traction on it.
We've had a dedicated educational campaign about,
you know, our comprehensive plan
and trying to show folks why there's some real
positives in our comprehensive plan.
So it's really neat and we're able to track that's in city. We're able to track, you know
official pages and things like that because what you'll see is as you mentioned with scrolling like you just
We've talked about this before you
Someone gets on there and you're watching them go through their feed. You know like oh my goodness like
Where's the city stuff?
It just goes going and going and going going they follow so many people that we're just competing with all that activity
But we've noticed that since we've pushed a lot of this stuff
proactively put out some videos and different things from
linking with other different groups or stuff that we're doing
that we're getting a lot of likes.
So, you know, we've got, every once in a while you get people like,
ah, I hate this stuff and, you know, this belongs in Dallas
or whatever, you know, don't frisco my fate or whatever.
All these different things.
And so you get five of those.
But then if you look at the sentiment,
there's 35 people that just like that video.
So what we want is, so you've got your moms,
I watch my wife go through this to they have a hundred and fifty they're just going like this for ten minutes looking at stuff
And so they may stop for a fraction of a second
As they're look at the video or not look at look at it
But they may like what they see and then move on and so we want to capture, you know
busy people
That are going to be for a lot of this stuff that is going to make our city stronger in the long run financially
So what do you need from us tonight?
Really, this is just a check-in for us to present what we've been working on,
and then let you know that we've got some more.
So just feedback with what you're looking for?
We've got some good feedback.
If you want to approve it, you can approve it.
If you don't want to approve it, you just want to receive a report.
That's fine.
I think we're good.
You have the feedback from us.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Next, please.
Now we'll move back to agenda item 6b. Discuss, consider, and take any necessary action regarding resolution number 2023-061 to the Texas Municipal League on Zoning Reform.
Okay, Michael, are you going to do this one?
Yes, this is, and I neglected to put, who put it on the agenda? This is both the Mayor and myself because you could tell we worked on this in the legislative session.
You all approved this, a similar resolution last year along with a few other ones.
Your agenda item too, so I put a lot of information in the packet,
just because there was a lot of activity going on and we've got to come in.
Just to ask a couple of questions real quick.
So this creates a better balance between developers and this isn't right to protest, right?
So at 20%, you're going to already have one person once you've seen them fade,
kind of shut down the development.
and the Dallas had a hospital shut down over one resident, landowner, so 50% we think raised
a proper bound between the right to protest and the right to develop the land.
It's not going to take, it's going to allow different housing stock to get approved, which
will help the housing supply, the price of housing, its market forces on that, so it's
It's more about new housing, multi-family housing,
and it's also a pre-empty strike against the state.
Instead of them trying to take an 89 session,
take a land development session away from us,
or a mandate like they did this year,
you know, they must have 100-proofed housing
in every zoning classification, which actually died,
but they could say apartments may be approved
in any zoning classification in the state of Texas.
That's where this is heading.
So we're trying to say,
look we found better ways of doing this and it protested better way we created a
very fascinating group of people who supported this from the far right in
the far left by the way it was interesting we a lot of people help us we
a lot of people signed up for we've got a lot of people into it I'll skip the
politics in here because I just irritate me literally but you know that they we
did so we're gonna read it we're gonna try to get the bill filed again in
in the 89 session, and we're gonna try to get past.
We got a committee hearing, which is great news.
We got a lot of support, which is also better news.
And then, which, so I might have a process.
So next time we'll probably get a floor about what we're
hoping, so it's just an incremental process
over a period of time.
We have to keep, you know, staying in our case for it.
We're trying to get in front of TML early,
instead of trying to find it from the floor
like we did last time.
We're literally talking to the floor.
We're trying to get approved and get on there,
but they actually support it this time, right?
Michael, we're trying to do this.
So this is kind of the off seasons for the legislative
session.
So we're submitting this idea kind of fresh.
They saw it last time.
But like the mayor said, for those of you
who are at the TML business, that business meeting
is a little bit, there's a lot of action there.
But we're trying to put it through the normal process.
So what's changed, I think, is the league watching
like the mayor was saying there.
We're watching.
So the city's always said, hey, local control,
local control, don't do this and don't do that. It's our right to choose this and that,
but we're just getting steamrolled by the developers, and we're losing more and more
of our powers. And so what we're saying is, hey, we realize that, you know, particularly this is
designed for the bigger cities, this is designed for the Dallas, the Fort Worth,
and the inner ring big suburbs. And it benefits us because if you can put a lot of people in
the middle, then there's less demand to kind of push outwards. So you're putting folks
where it's more efficient to serve them.
It's maybe taking a little bit of the demand down.
There's still people going to want single family homes.
That's primarily what we do here.
And so they're going to be still a demand for that.
But as far as things like multi-family,
if you can put thousands upon thousands of units
in the core, then your demand to have multi-family out
here is going to be a little bit.
There's always going to be some desire for that,
but it'll be lessened.
So our theory is raise the amount of housing,
put it where it's most efficient to serve it,
eliminate the roadblocks,
things like hospitals getting denied.
I think I heard another one.
Stephen was mentioning a college in Utah
was denied student housing
because the people in the neighborhood
didn't want the student housing.
So there's all sorts of different examples
of where the good of the city,
you don't want your council members,
essentially playing, you're just waiting,
It's like the playing field is not level.
You want a good fair debate.
You want the majority of the citizens
will to get through when you're doing planning for your city.
So I think there's this unification
between with different interests.
We're trying to do smart governance.
So this gives something to the development community
from the cities saying, here's a solution.
You all are complaining about cost of permits,
and you don't want to pay impact fees,
And you can't get anything approved in Dallas and it takes X many months to do this and it takes too many
You know you have a shot clock and you we've heard of this all before so this this says okay, you know whether than us just playing
Defense here's an idea. You know, this is something we could work together. Let's see if it can go somewhere
Any question council
Yes, sir, so this is this is a very powerful tool when dealing with development, but also don't forget
that, I mean, we've had this impact
our small business owners as well.
I mean, we had, you know, homeboys,
business owner that's been in fate
for years and years and years,
was not able to use his existing building
the way he wanted to because of, you know,
one or two people, whereas a liquor store went in
less than three miles down the road
and there was not a peep.
So, I mean, yes, there's multiple ways
that this could help the city of fate
and the residents and the business owners that are here.
So so during the testimony we did so in the testimony what we did was we cited a city of Dallas case the hospital
Right be lack of care. We cited the homeboys example in my testimony
Texas 2036 was addressing around where Michael just addressed was you know
How do we get more things approved?
It's like what we need that a million people are coming to Texas the next five ten years
They had to go someplace right they're moving here that the face keeps incentivize people
So we used to be right here that we'd use different seven different cities trying to get our point across
What the objection came was you love this one is
The rural county still want the power to shut down when when farms by one person by the way, this was their objection to us
Literally, this was their objection
So we we got think about we you know we try to you know bracket the bill, you know cities only not because it just got
I'm really weird on when energy, so that was kind of a, but when we testified, we wrote the letters, we actually did that.
We said that was unfair, and we said that was unfair to healthcare.
I think, I think Witt had an example from Austin, a business guy shut down for no reason, too, and he had to have the case, and we presented that case, too.
So just to make sense, we did. Okay. If there's any more questions, we'll take a motion, please.
I make a motion that we pass resolution R2023-061.
Motion to land at a second.
Second.
Second, please vote.
Motion passes five to one.
Ms. Crock, Kelly, and Vody, no.
Okay.
Next, please.
Next, we'll move to agenda item 6D.
Discuss, consider, and take any necessary action regarding ordinance number 02023-022,
creating a citation program for the enforcement of the city's ordinances.
Michael, or?
I got this one, Mayor.
Oh.
Members of council.
So this is a coming back to you for another opportunity for consideration of this ordinance made some changes at the direction of the council since the last time.
So just for the benefit of the public, what is proposed in this ordinance is that there's an amendment to the code of ordinances that would create a citation program that would authorize and from based on the direction.
We're limiting it to the Community Development Department and Public Works Departments that would authorize the ability to issue citations.
This is not deeming them any such peace officers, so they can't make arrests.
But it's in lieu of being able to issue written complaint to the municipal court,
which would then require a summons to be issued to appear.
This would actually be a citation, so you're taking it out the middleman.
And so what this would allow is a codification of the authority
for our code enforcement officers to issue citations.
and then it would also add the Public Works Department to that and would
authorize employees of the City of Fate that are over the stormwater management
program to issue citations for violations. This could be related to
unlawful dumping or just mismanagement of a certain erosion or flood control
measures regarding tied to a development and the like. And so again the what the
limitations are. Originally we had discussed authorizing the department heads to have the
ability to issue citations for those ordnance violations of ordnance tied to their departments,
but we've scaled that back to just be two employees that have code or excuse me community
development and that would be for your code enforcement officers and then for a maximum
of two employees in public works and that would be for the stormwater stormwater
management program. And I'm happy to take any questions from the council.
Any questions?
No, I would have approved this last time.
You have one minute. Mark, any questions?
Who's going to be monitoring the issuance of the citations?
I mean, do we have some kind of, this person's issued 50 of these things and nobody else
is issued. Any and what kind of citations are being issued? Yeah so it flows
upwards so if it would start with the delegated employee so if it's a
code enforcement officer or stormwater management so it would go to their
supervisors to make sure that one that they're out there doing their jobs and
that the site and then that filters up so when they those citations get
issued in the municipal court well then they're processed and then
and they're prosecuted.
And so the city attorneys, my office touches those citations
and if there are issues, then I'll work directly
with those employees if they're inconsistencies
or issues with the citations that they're writing.
We can talk through those.
Just give you an example.
When I first got here,
some of the citations being issued for junked vehicles
that didn't meet the definition under our ordinance
and so I had to work with code enforcement
to ensure we were writing the proper citations
to the proper individuals, et cetera.
And so we're having an opportunity to track those to a certain extent and then the Municipal
Court keeps stats of all of the citations that come from the different departments whether
it's DPS or code enforcement or now if this ordinance has approved our stormwater management
program.
Will it be included in the monthly that we get from like DPS?
We do a quarterly court.
every week, I believe, and that you all receive from DPS.
So we get a weekly update on those.
And then every quarter, you also get a court update
from Reggie, who they have sent to the municipal court.
I would like two things.
I'd like to see a weekly update on the weekly status report
on the number of citations by group put out.
Not necessary from DPS perspective, but Scott,
you know, we issue the public works update,
We have like a issue for citations for water management to whoever something very simple
just so that we can just so that I can track it and watch it.
The other question I had has to do with a lot I mean code version does a lot of we will
only we won't show you the administrative stuff we'll just show you the citations.
I just looking for count citations citations are not as common as just the other thing
is you're not going to name the employees, you're going to do the authorization by job
title.
Have you thought of that?
Yeah, so it is specific because there's a training element to it.
So that part will go with the individual employee, named employee, but as far as the delegated
authority. So Scott, for example, can't delegate the authority to issue citations to more than
two employees under the ordinance. And so he could make changes to who has that authority,
but then as the ordinance requires that whoever is going to be doing that, they have to
go through that training regimen first. Sure. But I'm just saying that we're authorizing
the Director of Public Works versus Scott Monaghan. Oh, correct. Right. Correct. And
And Scott Monaghan has the ability to authorize
Tech One,
whatever the job title is,
versus a named employee, and just that way
you don't have to constantly go back and tweak things.
Sure, see what I'm saying?
Yep.
Okay.
Any more questions?
Nope.
Okay, I'll take a motion, please.
I'll make a motion.
We approve ordinance number zero, 2023.
Motion, 22.
I'm back.
We're not going to count it because my Kelly does second.
My councilor Harper, please vote.
I vote yes this time.
Motion passes 6-0.
Next please.
Agenda item 6e, discuss, consider
and take any necessary action regarding various parking
management strategies.
We gave parking for last.
Mayor, we wanted to keep our promise
after the UDO passed you had a question
during the passage, which I thought was a really good one,
about parking requirements.
We'd seen a lot of parking reform taking place.
And there's been a lot of research that's been coming out even since you mentioned that.
So we wanted to...
We said we'd come back and check in on parking reform,
so we wanted to talk a little bit about some parking strategies.
Here we are.
Myself and City Manager to make sure that it touched on the topics
but didn't necessarily give direction at this point,
because ultimately the direction is going to come from Council.
But this is just an initial touch on the topic.
We're not necessarily expecting that direction is going to be given tonight.
However, that's, of course, your prerogative.
So, if you'll recall, back in late 2022 and ultimately in January 2023, we went through the update process for our FATE Unified Development Ordinance.
During that process, we did discuss with the Planning and Zoning Commission as well as City Council how we're treating our current parking regulations.
And ultimately, with the adoption of the UDO, we did result in reducing some of our parking
minimums for non-single-family residential uses to align with the Institute for Transportation
Engineers Parking Generation Manual, which is kind of the go-to document that shows
based on actual research what kind of parking generation different land uses create.
However, in the discussions, as the city manager mentioned, there was a desire for further discussion on parking strategies with the potential result in more significant measures to be adopted in the future.
So parking minimums, which is the way that the City of Fate regulates parking, generally started back in the 1950s during the suburban expansion.
expansion. And as a result, it did support a car-dominant development pattern, and it
was created with the expectation that more and more people, as we, of course, see, are
dependent on the motor vehicle to get around and to access different places. And so this
policy applies a minimum off-street parking inventory for different developments based
on the development size and land use. So if you have a 1,000-square-foot restaurant,
There's a certain number of parking spaces per thousand square feet that are required of that new development to be installed off-street.
So meaning not in the public right of way, but actually on the private property.
But why is this a concern? What caused us to bring it up in the first place?
What caused us to do the research and come back to you tonight?
Well, parking minimums often result in excess parking inventory.
They are, in some cases, a perceived arbitrary number that the city assigns to development
based on what we think is the right number, but may not reflect what ultimately is needed
by that development.
And as a result, it takes up valuable real estate for unproductive, low-tax generating
emptiness.
Because if you have parking spaces that are never used, all it is is just an empty
spot of asphalt that could otherwise be used more productively.
Like I said, it often, but not always, requires more parking than desired by the business.
Some businesses, especially those who have corporate parking requirements, they want
as much parking as possible.
But as you'll see in some of these further slides in the discussion, that parking does
come with a cost.
Starting back in the early 2000s, a number of cities,
and as you can see, quite
the traditional parking minimums strategy wasn't really working and that it was causing
some problems.
And so to various degrees, cities across the country as well as in Canada and Mexico have
adopted various reforms to their parking standards, whether it be just changing the
standards in just the downtown or in some cases such as in Mexico City as well as
in Bastrop and Dandera, Texas, removing all parking mandates completely and letting the
market decide what kind of parking is created for various developments.
So based on information acquired from the parking reform network, over 1,400 cities in the U.S.
and Canada have adopted parking reforms, and 52 cities in those same areas have removed
parking mandates altogether, and only the two in Texas, according to this source.
So
based on the request from the City Council, as well as discussions with the City Manager,
the Planning and Development Department put together the parking strategies report provided to you
in the agenda report, which essentially reviewed case studies of alternative parking strategies
from four cities in the U.S. We essentially, we first wanted to just really focus on taxes,
but we also wanted to provide a robust enough variety of strategies to get you thinking
thinking about how cities are addressing this issue, which caused us to have to go outside
of the state of Texas and find some other cities that had some cutting edge or interesting
strategies that they employed.
So the study looked at four different cities, Norman, Oklahoma, Dunwoody, Georgia, Austin,
Texas, and San Marcos, Texas as examples of ways that cities addressed parking reform
in their own ways.
So I'm going to briefly go over the four case studies, and at the end of course
so I'm happy to answer any questions of this.
So first is Norman, Oklahoma.
Norman in 2021 changed all minimum parking requirements
in their code to recommendations
with the exception of single-family homes,
duplexes, frat houses, and mobile home parks.
So essentially, they provide a recommendation
in their table and their code,
but they don't actually enforce it
as part of a site plan review
or as part of any kind of land use approval.
The reason they did this was because they wanted to support small business.
They were finding that the cost of meeting those, again, perceived arbitrary parking
minimums was becoming a barrier of entry for especially new small businesses.
It also created a physical separation of businesses.
We all are often drawn to those kind of tight-knit downtown kind of streetscapes
where the buildings are close to one another.
But when you have to have vast seas of parking for each specific business,
you create large gaps, and you lose that kind of connectivity and continuity of the built environment.
It also was to respond to consumer trends, especially post-COVID. More and more people
are depending on the delivery of groceries to their homes, drive by a curbside pickup,
and strategies such as that, that led them to believe that there's less of a demand for
parking and these other options could be
The next case study was Dunwoody, Georgia, which is just outside of Atlanta. In 2019, they
removed parking minimums and established parking maximums. So they did retain minimums for certain
specific uses, just a few, but the maximums basically say you can only put up to this
mini parking space, which is a completely different way of looking at it. Usually we
say you're not going to give enough so we're going to put this minimum. Now people are saying
you're putting too many and we're going to kind of limit what you're going to be put
on your site. However, they did have a provision in there because the parking is essentially
using a valuable land, those maximums could be exceeded with a multi-story parking deck.
So the same amount of land is being used, they're just going up. And so the reason
that they adopted this policy was that the city was recognizing that there was a surplus
of parking out there. There was a lot of empty parking spaces year-round and it was a waste
of land. And of course, they're also transitioning to a more urban and walkable community and
wanted to kind of lean more on the alternative ways of getting around. Again, it was a money
saving option for small businesses by limiting their required parking. However, one of
One of the concerns they had was that in cases where the amount of parking provided for a
business was not enough to actually meet the market requirement, there would be a concern
with unauthorized parking elsewhere, people getting tickets booted, towed, things like
that.
Third is Austin, Texas.
They removed the parking minimums in 2019 within the downtown district only, which
consists of actually four different districts, but generally the central business district.
They, of course, accepted the handicapped or ADA parking.
You still absolutely have to provide the required number of handicapped parking spaces.
They also are requiring a minimum of two bicycle parking spaces per business, and in some
cases more than that.
And you'll recall in our UDO update, we actually started adding bicycle parking
requirements for new development.
So, when interviewed about this initiative, the city leadership stated that the success
of this program, which they did deem successful, did depend on transportation alternatives
being available, including a massive $11.6 billion investment called Project Connect,
which basically invested in alternative transportation opportunities.
They also suspected, though I am suspecting or suspicious of this, that removal of the parking
minimums would also increase the number of available residential units because you're
basically taking that land and using it for residential development and that would presumably
lower rental rates.
I kind of doubt that that would actually happen.
You might remember the discussion we had with the townhouse project that the developer
said, yeah, the market's going to guide it, whether there's two or four units there.
So that's some of the feedback that Austin gave.
And finally, San Marcos, Texas.
They removed parking minimums in the downtown district in 2021, but maintained minimums
elsewhere in the city.
But they also established parking maximums.
But the interesting thing about this policy was that they allowed an exceedance of
those maximums with certain mitigation measures.
So, as you can see on this slide, some of the ways that they can mitigate exceedance
of those maximums was to include solar canopies over at least half of the parking spaces,
providing wider landscape islands with trees or permeable paving
so that the stormwater will infiltrate into the ground
rather than runoff as sheet flow into the stormwater system.
So some of the benefits that they perceived from these strategies was to, of course,
decrease the impact on the stormwater system with more pervious area to advance their city's
alternative energy initiatives with the solar canopies while providing shaded parking and
generally enhance visual appeal by providing more landscaping.
So we thought about, in the report, I didn't go into the specific analysis of how each
of these strategies might manifest in fate, but we did think about in general how some
of these strategies would apply here or could be possible, and one of the things that we
recognized when we were doing the report was that all four of the cities identified in this
report have robust alternative transportation systems, and we've basically come to a conclusion
that without something like that available in the community, having very aggressive parking
reform strategies is not going to probably be very successful.
And so there were three things that our staff identified as probably a starting
if we wanted to pursue something in the future.
I'd say that we are supportive of looking at our parking strategies on an ongoing basis,
but before we tried to tackle something significant,
we would, one, need to provide further investment in our trail and sidewalk system
to make it just a safer walking environment.
And that's actually something that our department's going to be doing this coming fiscal year
is to do an in-house sidewalk and trail analysis.
city-wide. Second is that we would perhaps want to look at a future city-wide circulator
minibus or local transit system that would only serve fate but would allow people to
get around from the neighborhoods to the key destinations within the city and perhaps
even expand out into Rockwell County in the future. And third, as directed by our
comprehensive plan is to conduct a parking study for our downtown and of
course this would probably need to happen after the major construction is
completed but to conduct a parking study in the downtown to see really where
where the Delta is between demand and supply as it is now because that's one
of the biggest concerns that we have and what we've heard is that there's a
perceived lack of a parking downtown and so we kind of want to see firsthand
if that's really happening or if it's just a lack of convenience that
that people are more bothered by.
So those are kind of the three starting items
that we find would be necessary to really be serious
about looking at parking more forms further.
That's it for my presentation.
I'm happy to take any questions if you'd like, Heather.
All right, so first of all,
I mean, I don't know why permeable paving
isn't used more often.
I mean, it makes a lot of sense in a lot of places.
I hesitate with the eliminating the parking minimums
in like downtown and things like that.
I understand how it makes sense
for a lot of these other cities,
but with the mixed use that we have,
it's concerning because I see a lot of those parking spaces
being used for residents
and then nothing left for the business patrons.
So that's just one of those things, I guess.
And then the other thing is,
sorry, I completely lost my train of thought now.
Well, I will say regarding that concern,
you might recall, I think it was in late 2021,
the council adopted a parking ordinance for the downtown.
So it actually designates parking spaces
for residents versus businesses, versus business employees.
But because of all the activity
and the construction downtown, we put that on hold
and we're not gonna implement that
until some of the major projects are completed.
If I can make a suggestion,
I would say look at the small business owners
that are wanting to convert the existing buildings
in fate on the thoroughfares.
And I mean, I don't see why you wouldn't eliminate
some of those parking minimums.
I mean, if somebody's putting in an office,
they know exactly how many parking spaces
they're gonna need to make that business successful.
They don't need, you know, five parking spaces
or six parking spaces if it's gonna be, you know,
them and another person sitting there
answering phones all day.
So that would be a really easy change, I think,
that could really open up some opportunities
for our small business owners.
So I love the idea of the shuttle through the city because if people want to frequent the downtown area, beer geeks, that sort of thing, that gives them an opportunity to get down to what I have to drive for two reasons.
Don't need a parking spot and if you're at beer geeks, you don't need to be driving anyway.
But I do have some concerns about parking downtown.
I think you said, like you said, that after the construction,
maybe some of that will be alleviated.
But I went down there in the middle of the day,
the other day to go to lunch at a restaurant that was closed
and there still was no parking downtown.
So it is definitely now very crowded.
And the only concern that I have is if we rely
on the walking trails and that,
it's 109 degrees for about three months here.
So, you know, that's going to limit the amount of people that are going to use it.
I mean, in the evenings, yes, people use the walking trails,
but if that's the primary thing that we're using, it's tough for people,
especially the elderly people, if they're going to be using that stuff.
But I do really like the idea of the little tram or whatever that stopped at each neighborhood.
I mean, really, when we have five or six neighborhoods, it would be pretty easy to do.
So, thank you.
Scott?
So I know there's perceived like a parking downtown also know there's a
completely empty 80 space lot it's probably 40 spaces back behind downtown
that just doesn't get used and I will say I'm guilty of sometimes parking on
grass next to the DPS station as opposed to going to the back lot so I think
people are finding the resources they need even though it's not what has been
designed. The case study pointed out that Texas is doing a lot of parking
minimums all together. I'm familiar with that a little bit and they've got a few
developers that own a large swath of stuff out there. So there is some
coquets of work going on between projects to ensure that there is
adequate parking. One concern I would have with doing something like that in
down is that there may not be that cohesion between the particular
developers are worried about their lots and not what's going on on the adjacent
lots and that's where it's imperative that we as a city with you would have to
keep an eye on that but some of the other stuff the San Marcos case studies
interesting but they're on a what do they call them aquifers as opposed to the
same type of water since it's a little bit different situation you know I think
parking is just going to be one of those things and I'm definitely open to
figuring out ways to reduce unprofitable space however you want it not
It's not profitable, but dead parking space that's not used 80% of the time, but I think
it's just going to make constant conversation that we have to keep having.
Chair.
I'd agree.
Definitely more conversations need to be had.
I mean part of the dead spot is actually trying to get to and from it with all the construction going on in there.
You've got to even realize that I can go back there and park.
Because, like I said, we've gone to downtown to have dinner and have the fountain spot unless we go way back there.
With the lighting stuff we have, it's just not quite there yet.
We get more things opened up and it opens up more.
People feel more comfortable about using that area.
So where are we experiencing a surplus of parking now?
Well, we haven't done much analysis in town. I mean everything is so new that we don't have like a city-wide
understanding of what's going on. But the reality is that the numbers that we have in our parking regulations
are based on national studies. And we want to make sure that we have a parking regulation
that is focused on the needs of the local community.
And so, again, this is an ongoing conversation.
We're not coming here saying that we have a problem right now,
but we just want to make sure that we're doing right
and following best practices and doing right by the businesses,
such as what Heather was saying.
If we're requiring more than is really necessary,
we're installing a cost burden on that business owner
that may be to make break.
And so we want to be just really thoughtful about the regulations that we adopt and how we're going to implement them. Okay. I'm going back to the
mini bus
commuter, I mean
Obviously, we're going to need something like that if we're going to try to get the residents of fate
To leave the cars at home or I mean, it's not convenient for me to walk the downtown
Even with the trails and stuff. I mean just isn't going to happen. Sure
So, and if it's for me, it's going to be other people just like that.
But we need to look at what the cost is and the whole ramifications for that.
So are you planning to pick that up as well?
Well, we won't take that on until we're actually directed by City Council to start putting the time in on that.
It's not a decision or an initiative that we would take on lightly or without doing very thorough evaluation.
So the point that we're trying to make here is that right now we do have no other alternatives but to drive.
And so we need to have a wider spectrum of choice of getting around the city before we can really tackle the parking issue
because the parking issue is based on a high dependency of motor vehicles.
And so these are just other ways of trying to establish those other transportation alternatives.
And I completely agree, I'm not going to go for a long walk today, you know.
But walking is the fundamental, the base way of being able to get around.
If you have nothing else, at least you can walk and not have a high risk of getting hit
by a car because we have a complete sidewalk system or an off-system trail network.
And we don't even have that right now.
And so that's just the kind of like first tier of having a city that you can get
around in without having to jump in your car for absolutely everything.
So would we be pushing more parking to the city streets if we did this?
Can you repeat that?
Would we be pushing more parking to city streets if we did this?
Well we'd have to have city streets that can accommodate parking.
So you know for example East Fate Main we have the on-street parking there next to
the Canales project, the horizon.
Project that has yet to be built. There's on-street parking going to be developed there.
So as downtown, if we're, you know, there's been a lot of talk about downtown, as downtown develops,
each block is going to have to have either facilities for parallel parking, angled parking,
so that at some point you can push more of it to the streets. That creates a dynamic streetscape.
You don't necessarily have to have all your parking on private property,
especially in a downtown you want to have parking on the streets.
And so that would necessarily push it out there.
And as a matter of fact, in our new parking ordinance adopted in January, we did allow
for on-street parking abutting a development property to count toward their parking minimums.
But there actually has to be a parking space there.
They're not going to park in the barge and get credit, you know?
So.
And then I can make one correction for the mayor.
That's mini-commuter system.
It's a trolley.
Okay, I agree
well
a lot of those suites have not yet opened though, so we'll see
Sure
Absolutely.
Oh, thank you. We need to get by Jersey Mike's when they're having a big rush that blood is getting filled up
Yeah, well, I don't see that but I
Like the maximums get away with minimums move to maximums
Yeah, my no minimums
They were parking all parking requirements
You know, honestly, right, I don't see why we even try to,
I mean, so me, if you have a one-year option,
it would be the maximums,
but I don't think we should have minimum parking requirements
anymore.
It just doesn't make any sense.
City of Dallas is gonna go to,
I think I remember to the article correctly,
they're gonna go to no minimums now,
so that's what they're heading.
I haven't seen anything recently on that.
Last council meeting they asked for parking,
to eliminate the parking minimums to Dallas.
I think though, I think, you know,
You got to call the trolley whatever but I think we just for lots of reasons but people of fate need to understand the Rockwell County
This is directed to alarm back there is
There's a penalty to not doing this as higher taxes
They can complain all day long about it by the day they're gonna hire dead higher tax
And that's what's gonna happen Rockwell County and that's a fact in city fate, too
So they need to learn to leave the cars at home and find other transportation
Or they're gonna have a higher tax but and there's a payment for that, right?
And there's lots of ways, you know, you may not want to use your car or you may, there's
ride sharing.
So ride sharing has changed how, you know, you look at lower Greenville, some of those
areas in Dallas where it's really popular, they've actually had to come back in and
reconfigure some of their streetscape to account for, you know, less parking, but
also more ride share and how do you get the drop off and the ride.
So there's ride share, there's, we're working on alternative transportation ordinance
Once we build out our trail system, we're going to have with this new single family rental product
We're going to be able to connect downtown to to Wood Creek mud six, which is huge
There's thousand homes almost in that area
So we'll have you know close to a thousand units that can now get on a trail
Get on a scooter get on a bike get on the e-bike
So there's all sorts of ways that it's still hot it's a little pain people are going to want to drive
But you start chipping away list a little bit
you know a few percentage points here a few percentage points there so and then
remember with the big lesson from Fort Worth that they found out I like to
repeat this every chance I get but they found out that like the mayor was saying
the biggest bang for their buck was not requiring people to provide not
requiring businesses to provide parking that what the citizens would really
want is they want they want street parking and it's just kind of a as we
move through our downtown we're doing this last where when we first started
opening these mixed use buildings we had people like I got to have X many spots
you got to guarantee me these many spots we're starting to move away from some of
that we'll talk a little bit about that maybe tomorrow night with one of our
restaurants so what you don't want to do is you want to you don't want to
assign public parking as much as you can you want to have that free and then
speaking of free at some point the mentality is you know if it's really
valuable and people really want it, you can start charging for that. And people will, once
they make that mental shift, at first though, they won't like it, because in suburbs everything's,
you know, parking is free. But it's not really free. It costs you in a different way. But starting
to regulate that with, you know, 70%, 90%, when you start hitting those, starting with those
parking studies, trying to get into that, that sweet spot where you want, you want people
parking in front, but you want to be able to find a spot. That's the key, like you want
circle and be like oh my gosh there's no parking it but then ah there's a spot and
sometimes you have to regulate that with different techniques which includes
pricing there's different technology to do that pay by phone and so forth so we're
a long way from that but that's where we're going to be headed and it could
be very successful. So two good points. I agree the downtown study
being after the construction is done I think it will change the dynamics right
and everything if you do bike lanes and stuff like that what Austin did was
because they had a bike lane, it's off, that baller's up,
then you come park and you had run the baller over the park.
It was the bizarre thing that they did down there,
so let's not do that one.
If you go to the bike lane, let's use the parking lot.
Mark, do you have a question?
So the parking minimums, eliminating parking minimums,
would that eliminate parking minimums
for an apartment building?
Yep, I'll read across the book.
You can customize it however you want.
Now, here's one thing that it's mentioned
briefly in the report,
but this is just another reality.
If you're going to spend millions and millions of dollars
in building an apartment building,
you're sure as heck going to provide parking
for those residents.
You're not going to just be free willing and say,
yeah, I'll figure it out a place to park.
Otherwise, you're not going to be able to lease
out those spaces.
In addition, and Mr. Kelly may be able to speak to this,
if you have an institutional financial,
I believe that most of the time they are going
to require a certain amount of parking
for your development to ensure
that it's going to be more chance of success.
So they're not going to lend you millions of dollars to build something if you're saying,
oh yeah, but I'm not going to provide any parking.
So there's some market realities to it as well.
I remember when the Avondale apartments were in the mix,
that was all street parking in front of people's homes.
So I don't know that that's necessarily a true statement
that if somebody's going to build a multi-million dollar building,
they're not going to want people to park across the street in front of somebody's house.
I think there are voters for this right there.
All right, so quickly and more, I think in the morning,
people adjust the weather.
They run a clock off in the morning.
They walk in the morning.
So right when or right of the day,
plenty of people have a clock off in the morning running,
by the way, on their sidewalk.
They just don't do it in the day, right?
So they adjust their schedules for walking.
So what would you need from us?
This was just kind of a primer, an introduction.
I'll just continue to communicate with Michael
and see kind of where we go with this.
As I mentioned, our department is going to be conducting a city-wide sidewalk and trail
gap analysis this year and start looking at strategic investments that we can identify
to make a more complete system.
The circulator, trolley, whatever you want to call it, that's an evaluation that we can
initiate anytime that you would want or as directed by Michael.
And then of course the parking study is also something on our to-do list that would
be done probably in about 18 months or two years once most of the major
development completed. Is there a chance we can take a look at something with the
if we got away from the minimums what would that do for the U-trap? I mean
there's something that we can like you can have some fun with. Yeah well I don't
have enough information right now but I imagine that they're probably gonna
to put in a custom parking requirement
in their plan development,
and that's gonna be the regulation
for the entire project.
So our parking standards, whether they change
in two years or three years or five years,
won't apply to the U-Track because they're gonna do it.
They're gonna have a set in stone
until they come in and amend it.
They're gonna have a set in stone parking standard
that they're gonna ask for
as part of their plan development.
All right, thank you.
very welcome right next please agenda item number seven mayor council and
city manager reports I'd like to thank DPS for your continued support of our
city and as well as public works and building safety you guys continue to do
a good job on everything touch and we appreciate it thank you
All right. First, I'm going to start off with, um, I just want to applaud you Lance for your
vote today. Um, forgiveness is one of those things that pops up in my prayers rather often.
So thank you for that. Um, the other thing is we've got school starting up guys. It's
already here back to school is next week, Monday, Tuesday. Um, please pay attention
to all of those school flashing lights,
have a lot of grace.
There's gonna be a lot of parents having to figure out
how the drop-off pickup stuff works.
We're gonna have a lot of kindergartners
go into school, walking to school, riding their bikes.
It all starts up next week.
So just a lot of patience, a lot of grace,
and you might wanna leave a little bit early
if you're trying to get somewhere.
Okay, Jim.
Now I forgot, no.
DPS once again thank you especially with all the heat going on I'm sure that you
guys are out there a little bit more in force just paying attention to our
citizens you know there's a lot of worry about the heat and what's impacting on
people DPS it's been wonderful watching you guys and we actually have a repeat
person in our neighborhood and you guys have always responded always curious to
the neighborhood and very sensitive about what's going on water is also going to
be pretty tight so we're going to have to be kind of watching on that I'm assuming for
the next month and a half or so. So that's something that I encourage everybody to look
at how you're watering and how often you're doing it. I will admit, I went back and changed
mine because that was over watering so thanks. Mark, you're next. It's still lottery today.
Just want to say, just want to say thanks everyone for participating. I know everyone
left and went home but citizen involvement is important and I appreciate those who did come and speak.
Also welcome to the two new officers from DPS. I'm glad we're glad to have those two
officers in the city celebrate fate fast approaching be ready for that that's coming in September
hopefully it's down to 104 by that time and we can all enjoy it and shop local so that we can
And we can afford to all to put the roads down and just got more money to finish up roadways.
Thanks.
Mr. Kelly.
First off, thanks to DPS for all you all do.
Glad y'all are getting some new officers in and on the street soon.
So I know those guys are under a lot of pressure, especially with the weather and all the construction around.
So thanks to y'all.
Thank you all Raju. Thanks to you and your team for all the budget questions and information that y'all have provided.
It's a lot of information and we're going to be talking about a lot over the next week, so thank y'all.
I also want to thank everybody who came out and spoke tonight.
It's not an easy issue when we're looking at waivers like that, exemptions like that.
And there's a lot of things that have to be considered, but for everybody to at least let your opinion be heard is a great thing.
Thank you well quickly. So thanks to the chief and you know, thank you for all you guys do
I do treasure decisions your office decision. I don't accept it
You know the feedback you guys did something wrong. So we I always will support you and for their decisions
It's our job and people don't like it. They can fly they can go to school and apply for the job
Then you learn how hard it really is
Michael thanks for doing as it done John everybody think well I'll answer the question
I know we have a lot of meetings today, so thank you for doing that and I do probation and always like feedback
Just like we use facts once in a while. Be nice. Okay. Next, please
Agenda add that white city manager report. I'm sorry Michael. You're next. I miss he's not I guess
So tomorrow just some meeting stuff so tomorrow just a reminder. It's the joint meeting with the
MED, so we'll see y'all back here tomorrow, and then August is kind of meeting fast, August
14th budget meeting, as y'all alluded to, and then the 16th, that's a busy week, the county
consortiums, and then the 17th, PNZ and CAC, and they were working on some impact fees,
so that should be interesting.
And then I also want to say congrats to Mayor Billings.
He was accepted to the Leadership in North Texas class
for the North Texas Commission, so congrats to him on that.
Yes, I'll get faced up again.
What's that?
It did.
I know you told him not to do it, and then they did it.
All right, next please.
Agenda item 8, executive session in accordance
with Texas government code section 551.001,
the city council recess into executive session closed meeting to discuss the
following a in accordance with Texas government code section five five one
point zero seven one consultation with attorney one to receive legal advice
regarding strategic government resources incorporated SGR contract for human
resource services and be in accordance with Texas government code section five
of one point zero seven four to deliberate the appointment employment
evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee
want human resources director.
Okay, I'll take it in the second session at 9.13.
Oh, I'll take it out of the executive session at 9.35.
Okay.
No action.
Item number 10 is adjournment. I'll take most to adjourn.
I'll make a motion to adjourn. I second it.
All in favor? All in favor? All in favor?
Thank you. Good night.