Gas Drilling in Denton Update – the Path Ahead
Eagleridge, a gas drilling operator, made the decision to drill disturbingly close to a neighborhood near Fire Station #7 at Bonnie Brae and Vintage, causing understandable anxiety among the residents there. We have heard from fathers of young kids, mothers of unborn kids, and retirees who are no doubt concerned, worried, frustrated, and angry at the entire situation.
Many are thinking: where the hell is the city? Isn’t it their job to protect neighborhoods like this? Why are they allowing this to continue, and worse, why are they now entering into negotiations with the operators?
Throughout the drafting of the latest gas drilling ordinance, it was clear that the new rules would only impact NEW drilling operations. Thanks to the coziness of Texas legislators, law, and legal precedence to the oil and gas lobby, drilling operations occurring under earlier permits are vested under the regulations applied at the time they received that permit. That means that a gas well permitted under 2002 rules, for instance, can be redrilled, changed from a vertical to a horizontal well, and refracked at any point under the rules in place in 2002. New regulations created by new ordinances simply can not reach it.
This, for the most part, is what has taken place in the Vintage neighborhood. Gas drilling permits and wells were originally drilled prior to the presence of a neighborhood. Then the surface owners, developers, builders, and realtors all came together to develop, build, market and sell homes WITH FULL KNOWLEDGE of the proximity of those well sites to the homes. The buyers of those homes may or may not have had such knowledge depending on what sort of research they did into the surrounding properties.
Then this summer, Eagleridge and those who own the mineral rights in that area, made the decision to claim their “rights” and began redrilling the older wells. Despite this being a very un-neighborly way to act, state law protects their right to do so. It wasn’t until Eagleridge attempted to drill a NEW well that the city had the authority, under our current ordinance, to step in and require a permit – one that would have required a 1200 foot setback from protected uses and other new operational requirements. We took them to court and requested a Temporary Restraining Order – the judge denied our request.
I certainly appreciate that these complex legal distinctions between old and new wells are meaningless to those enduring an industrial drilling operation only a few hundred feet from where their children play – whether new or old, its the same effect for them. But everyone needs to realize that this distinction is important from the standpoint of our ordinance: new wells must come under all the regulations of the 2012 ordinance, old wells come under the regulations of whatever rules were in place at the time they were permitted.
Why is this important and why are we entering into a time period of negotiations with Eagleridge? Because there are currently 463 wells in Denton and its ETJ, 437 of which were drilled prior to when the new ordinance was in place. Consider the following chart showing number of wells drilled by year in the city limits of Denton…
We are anticipating that the bulk of drilling activity coming to Denton will be redrills of these existing wells. Eagleridge represents a new type of company that makes money trying to suck the last amount of gas available from wells which are no longer profitable for traditional operators.
What you are seeing near the Vintage neighborhood could be just the beginning of this mess. This is why some of use were so worried when another neighborhood was being planned in the middle of a gas drilling field off Ryan Road. Consider the location of most of these existing wells. Here’s a map showing my house and a 1000 foot, .5 mile, 1 mile, and 2 mile ring around it (this great interactive map, by the way, is available on the city website here)…
The green dots represent existing gas wells. My house is just shy of downtown Denton. Notice that there are no existing wells within a mile and only 6 within a 2 mile radius. But then look to the West and South of I35 – most of the existing well sites in our city are in that area and all of them can be redrilled and refracked at any point. As our city develops to the South and particularly to the West, there are bound to be hundreds of more Vintage neighborhood situations. Situations where drilling and drilling permits preexisted the building of neighborhoods and where neighborhoods begin to build TO the drilling areas.
There are things we need to explore and consider adding to our current ordinance, as it relates to the issue of existing wells. Some would involve requirements on new surface development within a certain proximity to such wells. We need to look at disclosure options (and we’ll see this piloted with the development off Ryan Road set to come back to Council for reconsideration) and we need to have a fresh discussion on setbacks as they relate to development coming toward existing wells. Currently, our ordinance allows development to come as close to 250 from an existing gas well site. Even with a disclosure provision in place, I’m not convinced that’s the responsible thing to do. I am also interested in exploring ways to apply new nuisance standards to old well sites if and when they are redrilled and within 1200 feet of protected uses – sort of a way to create a unique set of standards for such sites that sidesteps many of the regulatory pitfalls and puts us squarely within our jurisdiction of regulating nuisances.
But even with such provisions, I’m convinced that we will continue to struggle with our ability to regulate the redrilling of old wells in a way that adequately protects our citizens. I’m convinced that these operators are more concerned with their rights and profit margins than the well-being of our city. And I’m convinced that they will continue to take advantage of pro-drilling legislators, judges, and laws to push their will on other neighborhoods.
I don’t advocate entering into negotiations because I think the other side is interested in being a good neighbor – they lost their ability to claim that when they set up rigs within feet of where kids play. I advocate entering into negotiations because I think it might result in creative solutions whereby we prevent another Vintage situation.
Speech to UNT Hunger Banquet – How One Hour a Week can Change our City
I had the honor of speaking for the annual Hunger Banquet at UNT last night. Here’s a transcript of my talk detailing the great needs in our cities, the great solutions already offered by many of our citizens, and what college students (or anyone) can do to help…
It is my honor to be here this evening. The fact that you are here means you care about the world around you and the needs of your neighbors, whether they be next door or around the world.
Denton is a wonderful city and a great place to live. Of cities our size, we are the 7th fastest growing city in the nation. We are rated one of the top Livable Cities in America, were ranked the nation’s #1 small town, are consistently looked at as having one of the best independent music scenes in the nation, were recently listed as the #6 hot spot for Hi-Tech jobs, and we have a growing creative class of young professionals. We have two beautiful and thriving universities, a downtown second to none, and a community that values culture, art and music.
Despite all this, there continue to be large numbers of people in Denton who are struggling. Any talk of growth, of prosperity, of a healthy economy, of
- Median household income is the lowest in the county and below the state average
- 20.3% of people below the poverty level
- Highest poverty rates are in homes with single moms – 51.5% of them
- Food stamp cases and recipients have more than doubled since 2007
- 13-16% of adults have no high school diploma
- 17.2% of adults and 10.6% of kids lack health insurance
- The last official homeless count in Denton pointed to 201 individuals – we know there are more
- Need for shelter is on the rise
- Historic cuts to public education in 2011 – still not where it should be
- 40-50% of kids attending Denton ISD are on free and reduced lunch
- 1 in 3 students are considered at-risk
- Denton ISD is reporting that 426 kids in their schools are considered homeless
How can we celebrate our city’s economic prosperity when 51.5% of our single moms live below the poverty level? When 426 kids leave school every day with no secure place to live? When a good number of our kids leave school each day unsure of where their next meal will come from?
We have a lot to work on from policies to economic development initiatives aimed at bringing more training and jobs to those who need them.
Fortunately, Denton has a significant number of people, businesses, and organizations working on these very issues. Many people are stepping up to the plate in creative and ambitious ways to tackle some of these problems. Just to name a few…
- Our Daily Bread Soup Kitchen – daily free lunches just near the square
- A doctor from the Denton Community Health Clinic provides free services to people eating there
- Every night, people needing shelter can go to the Salvation Army – the county’s only homeless shelter
- When the temperature goes below freezing or above 100 degrees, Immaculate Conception Church and Vision Ministries team up to put on an emergency shelter on the campus of Denton Bible Church where people can sleep and eat.
- The Civic Center Pool lets people in free 30-60 minutes before closing during the summer for those without money to cool off.
- Our libraries and rec centers serve as places for those without homes to shelter during the day.
- The city passed tough ordinances to regulate the predatory lending companies throughout town that make money off of other people’s misery.
- United Way then got most of the city’s banks at the table to provide financial education and bank accounts to those who need it.
- Serve Denton was created to bring together many of the city’s non profits and put them in one spot.
- Hundreds have already responded to the call by Mentor Denton to mentor our city’s most at-risk kids.
- Shiloh Fields, a project of Denton Bible Church, helps provide fresh food and garden education to the city’s hungry – they are now the nation’s largest community garden.
- Before each weekend, school employees fill kids backpacks with food to make sure they have food to eat before returning to school the following Monday.
- And I could go on and on…
So what does this mean for you? How can apply what you are learning from tonight’s event? The fact is that awareness alone is not helpful. We can all be aware of the great needs around us in this world and that awareness changes nothing. There are things you can be doing right here, right now in your own community to make a difference to those around you.
Here are some suggestions…
- UNT Center for Leadership and Service
- Our Daily Bread
- Denton Community Food Center
- Mentor Denton
Start something yourself…
- Every volunteer opportunity in this city was started with someone with an idea. They saw a problem, played around with it, and hacked a new solution.
- The problems facing us in the 21th century can’t be solved simply by applying the same 20th century solutions.
- The innovation culture is transforming just about every other aspect of our life and institutions, what if we applied this same sort of creative energy into our community’s social problems?
Here’s the challenge – give our community one hour a week. Imagine if every college student in Denton did just that.
- 48,000 college students between UNT and TWU
- That’s 48,000 hours of service to the community every week.
- The equivalent of 1200 full-time workers working 40 hours a week.
- Let’s go ahead and count 13 weeks per semester.
- 48,000 x 13 = 624,000 hours per semester
- That’s 1,248,000 hours per school year.
- It is estimated that an hour of service can be monetized as $20.85 per hour.
- 1,248,000 hours would mean an economic impact to our community of $26,020,800 per year.
- And that’s just our college students…
The power of one hour. Imagine that. Everyone just giving one hour a week. There’s wouldn’t be a need left in this city if we all did that.
City Council Preview – November 19, 2013
I dedicate this City Council Preview to my counterparts on the City Council in Toronto, who just had to strip their crazy mayor of most of his powers. The ongoing Toronto saga is one way to get citizens interested in local government again…
We’ll get started with an early 2pm Work Session on Tuesday followed by a 6:30pm Regular Session, both at City Hall at 215 E. McKinney Street. There’s whopping 1200 page backup to this week’s council agenda, so go here to see everything we will be talking about and get to reading.
Here are some things you might find interesting…
CONVENTION CENTER
The City has been pursuing the concept of a city-owned Convention Center for some time now. Our most recent discussion involves a developer, the City and UNT, whereby the old Radisson Site on I35 (across from UNT) is redeveloped into a upscale hotel (with restaurant) and a convention center. Here’s a very rough site plan to give you an idea of the layout of this…
You can click here to see the agenda sheet for this item along with the Power Point presentation we will be seeing at Tuesday’s meeting. There are a bunch of agreements included in the full backup in case you need more info on this.
The land for the project is being leased from UNT. A private developer is building, financing, and running the hotel and attached restaurant. The city is contemplating financing, building, and owning the Convention Center at an estimated cost of $25 million. We are also contemplating using Certificate of Obligations to fund the project, with revenue from the Convention Center going to service the debt. Part of the agreement also contains the provision that the private developer (hotel owner) will make up the difference in what the city lacks in debt payment should that be necessary.
It is hoped that this agreement can be reached and finalized before the end of this year.
DENTON HOLIDAY LIGHTING FESTIVAL
Mark your calendar for Friday, December 6 – the night every citizen should be bringing their family downtown for the annual Holiday Lighting Festival. The council will be voting on an in-kind sponsorship of up to $13,000 to help with this event. On a somewhat related note: spend time that night reflecting on the fact that there will be no parking or driving on the square for that evening. Yet somehow, an estimated 10,000 people will go, find somewhere to park far away, walk as far as need be, and it will be awesome. It is times like these where it is worth challenging the hypothesis that more parking is the key to a more commercially viable and vibrant downtown.
PARKING CRAZINESS ON PONDER STREET TO BE FIXED
Have you noticed this? The recent removal of no parking signs on Ponder between Oak and Scripture have created a chaotic scene for every form of transportation. It’s sort of the UNT student parking equivalent to the “Give a Moose a Muffin” story. We will hopefully be voting to create an ordinance to allow us to post and enforce NO PARKING on both sides of that street.
RECONSIDERATION OF A ZONING CHANGE DECISION
During our last council meeting, the council voted 3 to 3 for a motion to approve the rezoning of a property near Ryan Elementary School. As a result of this split vote, the application was denied. At issue for some of the council members was the presence of a gas well in close proximity to the development plans – in some cases, homes were planned as close to 250 of the gas well site. To be clear, our ordinance allows surface owners to “come to” a well with only a 250 foot separation. But as we are seeing in other parts of the city, that sort of development near well sites which can seemingly be drilled and redrilled into perpetuity (thanks to state law) is proving very problematic. I was concerned about that setback, especially without any assurance of notification of future potential buyers of homes in that area.
Since that meeting, the developer has indicated a willingness to work with the city on notification provisions aimed at alleviating this concern. This is certainly a promising move and I look forward to what comes of it – exploring this issue might help us as we look into the possibility of writing something more permanent and universal into our code. A motion to reconsider a vote must come from one of the three of us who voted against this rezoning.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please contact me at Kevin.Roden@cityofdenton.com or 940-206-5239.
City Council Preview – November 5, 2013
Before highlighting tonight’s council meeting, realize today is election day. There are a series of constitutional amendments on the ballot and one very important bond package for Denton ISD. However you vote on these issues, get out and vote today if you haven’t already. I am a strong supporter of the Denton ISD Bond initiative and would encourage you to vote YES on this item with very real local impact. Go here for more information on that along with info about polling places today.
The City Council will meet on Tuesday, November 5, 2013 at 3pm for a Work Session, followed by a 6:30pm Regular Session at City Hall at 215 E. McKinney Street. Click here for the entire agenda and backup information. The following are some items you might be interested in…
CITY BOND ELECTION – NOV 2014
The council has given direction to move forward with pursuit of a city-wide bond package to place before the voters in November 2014. The city staff has already provided a list of needed and desired projects to the tune of about $300 million over the next 10 years. To help the council prioritize these and other projects, determine a reasonable total amount of the bond package, and engage the community on this important project, the council will be putting together a 50 person bond committee to serve this coming Spring and Summer.
- Go here for more information about the bond program and process. - Want to serve on the Bond Committee? Go here to apply and then let me know.
- Have an idea for a project you’d like to see considered? Go here to submit it.
TRANSPORTATION USER FEES – FIXING OUR STREETS
A 2009 study on the condition of our streets indicated that our streets were bad and quickly getting worse. It is estimated that we need to be spending $12.2 million annually to stop this decline. In other words, $12.2 million is needed to maintain the status quo. We need to be spending significantly more than that to begin to see our overall street condition improve. We’ve made some changes over the last few years that has increased our annual investment in road maintenance and road reconstruction, but we are still heavily relying on debt financing to fix this problem (last November, for instance, voters passed a $20 million bond package dedicated to street reconstruction projects).
Transportation User Fees, or Street Maintenance Fees, are a way to increase revenue for street projects by charging monthly fees to utility customers. This tends to change the way we view our use of city-owned streets – they become a sort of “utility” that requires constant maintenance. Just as we pay monthly for other sorts of utilities involving costly infrastructure, a monthly user fee would be our way of paying for the cost of streets.
If council chooses to go this route, there would likely be a set fee for single family customers, multi-family customers, and various designations of commercial customers (depending on their determined “trip generation”). To give some context, a single family customer in Denton could pay anywhere from $5-10 a month for this fee ($60-120 per year). We’ll be looking into this some more during today’s meeting.
As always. please let me know if you have thoughts or questions.
Sriracha2Denton Update and Media Coverage
To catch everyone up on the fast-developing pitch to bring Sriracha to Denton, here’s the rundown. Late yesterday morning (October 30), I read this Atlantic Cities story about the legal battle between Sriracha’s Huy Fong Foods and the city of Irwindale, CA. Shortly after, I pitched the idea of Sriracha moving to Denton via Facebook and Twitter.
The Dallas Observer was the first to write on it.
I then huddled with our Economic Development team and drafted this Open Letter to Sriracha on my website (thanks to Lou and Katie Kelly Korom for the great pic headlining the letter).
New traveled fast, even reaching folks at Huy Fong Foods headquarters. The major media outlets in DFW jumped in. Catch up on the stories and see Denton and #Sriracha2Denton featured:
- Dallas Morning News
- WFAA Channel 8 ABC News
- CBS DFW Channel 11
- NBC DFW Channel 5 News
- Fort Worth Weekly
- Texas Monthly- Central Track
We’ve even seen some play in California:
- Los Angeles Daily News
- Silicon Valley Mercury News (where I get a promotion to “Congressman”)
- NBC 4 Los Angeles
- NBC Bay Area
And let’s not forget the international press:
- For those who can speak Chinese
- For those who can speak Vietnamese
The stories keep coming – check here for some of the notable write-ups:
- Wall Street Journal
- D Magazine – The Savior of Sriracha
I followed up mid-December with an official letter to Huy Fong Foods – that led to this reply from the company on December 20, 2013:
I’ll leave you with a sampling of the Twitter discussion about all this…
Sriracha: Come to Denton, TX!
News spread quickly that the beloved Sriracha (Huy Fong Foods) is caught up in legal woes with the city of Irwindale, California. Millions of fans of this spicy treasure are anxious that prices will rise and access to this special sauce will be limited.
We’ve got a plan that can save Sriracha and everyone who loves it: move your operations to Denton, TX.
As the indie music capital of Texas and a city of 48,000 college students, Denton is home to myriads of Sriracha’s customer base. We’ve got cheap land, shovel-ready industrial sites (far away from neighborhoods to avoid your current complaints), 40% wind power, competitive costs, and award-wining reliability from our city-owned electric company, an emerging urban farm district ready to start farming fresh jalapenos, location at the convergence of I35E and I35W and centrally located for efficient transportation and distribution, a city-owned airport, research universities ready to work with you, the nation’s 6th top high-tech hot spot, and tons of college students seemingly willing to work for a daily supply of free Sriracha!
And here are more reasons to come to Denton, TX…
Manufacturing In Denton, Texas from Brian Daskam on Vimeo.
High-Tech Denton: Hotspot, yet Still Low Priority for the City
By now many of you have read and probably participated in the flurry of re-postings of Richard Florida’s recent piece for The Atlantic, “America’s Top 25 High-Tech Hotspots,” where Denton (the county, at least) was ranked #6. There is a tendency among those of us in leadership to cheer lead such news, as if it is the result of some great strategy coming from city and business leaders. It’s not, as I’ll point out shortly, but I certainly understand the inclination to celebrate. After all, any solid economic development plan for a city involves savvy marketing and painting a pretty picture of what we want people to think and feel about that city.
This is where civic and business leaders can get tripped up to the detriment of the health of a local economy: we believe the hype and lose sight of the important distinction between the marketing and the reality.
The reality is that Denton has no strategy to foster or leverage our high-tech assets. If something good is happening locally in this industry, it is the result of an organic mixing of assets, which we have in abundance, that cities all over the country are tripping over themselves to get: two major universities, a growing creative class who want to stay in the city, an indie music and culture scene that is touted in national and international publications, a concentrated, creative and cultural sense of place, centered geographically with our downtown, and an enormous DIY ethos and ecosystem. We are ripe for our own tech boom, a vibrant startup culture, and the go-to city regionally for creative technology.
But this is not reflected in our economic development strategies, now going on 10 years old.
Knowing this and hearing a consistent concern among citizens that Denton needs a stronger employment base for our college grads, I developed a Creative Economy Initiative my first year in office to begin moving us in that direction and to begin the process of creating more substantial jobs, particularly within the creative tech fields, to our city. That led to the first Denton Creatives Mixer, where Denton’s best and brightest came together to connect and strategize. As a result, CreateDenton.com was launched to highlight our high-tech assets, DFW media outlets began paying attention, and businesses and collaborative projects were spawned. We began talking about the possibility of creating a collaborative, co-working space in Denton and started collaborating with experts at our two universities. Knowing that smart people want to live in a city where innovation is valued even at City Hall, we began to activate our top tech minds to find technological solutions to civic problems.
I sat down with city leaders, business leaders, and economic development leaders to push us in this direction, understanding that cities around the nation were quickly retooling to best situate their strategies for the rapidly changing 21st century economy and knowing that other cities in our region were already taking advantage of our city’s best assets for their gain. I submitted several budget proposals during this summer’s budget talks aimed at targeting this industry, including an updated economic development strategy plan, a plan to get downtown outfitted with the fastest internet in the city and develop it into an Innovation District, city partnership in a collaborative workspace, and city programs aimed at incubating and accelerating startups with high-growth potential. The response? Let’s keep doing what we’ve been doing.
Meanwhile, startups are on the rise, tech firms are beginning to realize that we have an abundance of talent, many of whom are willing to work for less than their big city counterparts if it means they can stay in Denton, and we have hoards of independent tech contractors, like this guy leading an IT team at LivingSocial, working in and out of our city’s coffee shops and bars. We are seeing tech-centered companies relocating to Denton and bringing in higher paying jobs than many of the companies receiving economic incentives from the city. GSATi and the marketing arm of the Dallas office of Spain’s Santander have both recently set-up downtown, the latter selling their bosses on the fact that the bulk of their talent pool was coming from here anyway. It appears an ed tech cluster is beginning to emerge, pioneered perhaps by formerly Denton-based eInstruction (their early tech talent still very present in Denton) and joined by the likes of All In Learning (spin-off of eInstruction), iTeach Texas, and ReadyRosie (disclosure: my wife is the founder). We’ve got music tech, film tech, marketing tech, and even animal tech!
With so much already happening and untapped potential for partnerships, initiatives, and targeted programs ready to be leveraged for relatively little cost, why hasn’t the city, Chamber, and Economic Development Partnership Board rushed to capitalize on our high-tech credentials? I’ve discovered some problems in the way we tend to think about economic development in Denton, but chief among them is this: we have a tendency to focus primarily on the economic indicators of property and sales tax and measure our success accordingly.
These two comprise the bulk of the revenue into the corporate entity that is the city. As such, “economic development” becomes synonymous with the growth of the city’s revenue stream. While necessary, they are not sufficient for a healthy local economy and tend to distract from other economic realities affecting our citizens. For example, much cheerleading surrounds our quick recovery from the recent national recession, as seen by these two indicators. Meanwhile, our median household income is a mere $42,000, an estimated 40-50% of our city’s kids attending Denton ISD are on free and reduced lunch, and our best and brightest are forced to take low-skilled jobs in town, commute South, or leave our city altogether in order to find substantial employment opportunities.
Most tech industry companies in Denton, especially in their early stages, don’t change the city’s property or sales tax game. Santander, our new downtown firm, has brought twenty higher wage jobs from Dallas to Denton but will not capture our attention precisely because job growth on its own is not a metric of success for our economic development efforts. We have a bunch of techies working in and out of coffee shops pulling in $100 an hour. We have profitable startups working out of homes, bringing outside money into Denton with potential to scale big. With a little bit of fostering, we can make sure these firms, workers, and startups see Denton as a vibrant place for them to innovate and hopefully stay when they get big. Instead, the bulk of our attention is given to bringing in the next Walmart (sales tax) and the next Peterbilt (property tax), whether or not they bring in more substantial jobs for our citizens or improve the local economic landscape – their contribution to the city coffers is what is important according to our current metrics. We need to broaden that focus.
Here are my suggestions of where we should go from here in order to take advantage of our high-tech assets:
MARKET THE HECK OUT OF THIS: we need to create a great looking, yet simple website devoted specifically to Denton being the 6th Top High-Tech Hotspot, featuring our existing tech firms, startups, and independents, and claiming to be the region’s go-to spot for their creative tech needs. This is easy and very inexpensive.
CREATE A DOWNTOWN INNOVATION DISTRICT: we’ve got great restaurants, bars, music venues, and a growing number of apartments. Now let’s bring more significant jobs to spend their money at those places and foster a culture of innovation by taking advantage of the only clearly-defined sense of creative place in DFW. Boston did just this on top of an existing Arts District with great success – check them out.
HIGH SPEED INTERNET: high speed fiber is to the 21st century what electricity was to the 20th. We need to make sure our entire city has access to the best internet options available, particularly our downtown area. And we need to get aggressive, researching possibilities with existing dark fiber and leading the charge to change Texas’ statutory monopoly of Big Telecomm (which prevents cities from creating their own internet utility). Imagine if we found a way to get Downtown Denton the fastest internet in the state? See what they did in Chattanooga and how that’s been an economic development game-changer.
LEVERAGE UNIVERSITY ASSETS: UNT has resources, programs, and experts at the Murphy Center for Entrepreneurship, research partnership possibilities and incubator space at Discovery Park, the state’s top young tech minds at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (recently recognized as having more Siemens Competition semifinalists than any school in the nation), and a culture of innovation fostered at the Innovation Greenhouse. There are hundreds of cities that would love to have any one of these assets at their disposal. We can begin by simply cataloging the resources that are accessible to any entrepreneur and market these as assets and resources to foster entrepreneurship and innovation in Denton. Then let’s be about coordinating high level, mutually-beneficial strategies aimed at incubating and accelerating new businesses. Find successes, advertise them, and let this momentum build.
FOSTER A START-UP CULTURE: make it a point to celebrate and encourage making, creating, risk-taking, innovating, hacking, subverting, and the like. Help make entrepreneurship sexy in Denton and watch it and our economy grow. I recommend Brad Feld’s, Startup Communities as a great starting point to thinking about this. I also love this Bloomberg article on The Reality of What Makes Silicon Valley Tick.
DEVELOP “ECONOMIC GARDENING” STRATEGIES: most job growth in cities happens from within local businesses, not from bringing in outside companies. Let’s develop metrics that encourage our economic development partners to invest our time, money, and resources where it makes the most sense: local companies with fast/high growth potential.
COLLABORATIVE CO-WORKING SPACE and INCUBATOR: As we get serious about fostering our economic ecosystem, we can move more quickly if there was a centrally-located place by which to attract attention, find resources, host programs, and house our budding startups and independent tech contractors. A joint university, city, and private partnership could speed this along and become a center piece for our Downtown Innovation District. See what McKinney did with their recently-opened Collide Center.
6th top high-tech hotspot in the nation… We can celebrate this news or we can take advantage of it.
Open Data in Denton – Putting Government in the Hands of the Citizens
Cities around the nation are fueling innovation both within and outside of City Hall by unlocking city data and making it accessible to citizens. What do they do with it? Whatever they find useful, of service to others, or even profitable for them.
We are all aware of some examples of government open data and the services and businesses that have been created around it: Global Positioning System (GPS), National Weather Service data, local crime data, street and building data, public transportation data, and the like.
Cities are starting to get into this game and joining the Open Data movement, or Gov 2.0. Check out what has come about as a result in these select cities:
Austin
Chicago
Boston
San Francisco
Having two major universities, ranking 6th in the nation for high-tech jobs, and fostering a growing and engaged creative class, Denton is ripe for the power and possibilities that would come with opening up our data. You might recall a hackathon I hosted at my house last Spring which resulted in the creation of VoteDenton.org – that serves as a great example of what happens when you put government data into the hands of engaged citizens seeking innovative solutions to civic problems.
In my role as Chair of the Council Committee for Citizen Engagement, I’ve brought this concept up for council consideration. I recently presented the following overview of Open Data and why I think it is good for Denton. Read up and let me know what you think…
A Few Comments on the Eagle Ridge Lawsuit
Many of you now know that the city filed for a Temporary Restraining Order last week against Eagle Ridge Operating LLC to stop drilling operations on wells near Bonnie Brae and Vintage. You can read up on that case in the Denton Record-Chronicle. A hearing for a Temporary Injunction was scheduled for next Wednesday, October 30.
It is important to note that on Tuesday afternoon of this week, the city filed for “non-suit” in this case, effectively pulling out of the lawsuit. As such, there will be no hearing on this issue next Wednesday.
As news broke on Wednesday that the city had done this, understandable concern ensued from many people in the community who had been following this issue. Here’s what I can tell you:
I assure you that the city is fighting to preserve the integrity of the ordinance and the citizens and environment that ordinance is meant to protect.
The city initiated last week’s request for a Temporary Restraining Order because, as the legal documents made clear, we demand that all operators follow our laws. This continues to be our stance and Tuesday’s move to back-off this particular suit is not a retreat from that position.
Realize, however, that there is a bigger picture here of vested rights and a bunch of existing well sites out there where claims that our rules don’t apply will continue. Many of these sites happen to be in parts of the city where we anticipate some of the biggest population growth in the next 20 years. Check out Professor Adam Briggle’s brief article visualizing the drilling landscape in Denton and notice how many well sites exist in the Western part of the city. It is therefore imperative that we get this right and proceed prudently to set legal precedent in our favor.
As you saw from the judge’s initial rejection of our request for a Temporary Restraining Order, these issues are highly complex, legally speaking, and aren’t always as simple as “this is a clear violation of the law, now punish them.” We expect any successful legal strategy defending our ordinance will mean we have to be committed for the long haul.
The drilling that is occurring in that area is awful, given its proximity to homes and kids who play in their streets and yards. I urge all of us to temper our initial desire for quick justice in this instance with what is in the long-term interest of our community so as to make sure we are in the best position to defend our ordinance from here on out. I’m asking for patience and a bit of trust while we work to do this right and reorient our strategy to achieve the best possible outcome.
City Council Preview – October 1, 2013
Despite the dysfunction in Washington, your local city government continues to operate, pass balanced budgets every year, and get things done. As such, it’s time for another City Council meeting in beautiful Denton, Texas! Tuesday’s meeting begins with a Work Session at 3pm followed by a Regular Session at 6:30pm. Click here for the full agenda with backup materials. Here are a few items that might interest you…
POSSIBLE BAN ON USING MOBILE DEVICES WHILE DRIVING
The city’s Traffic Safety Commission recently recommended an ordinance making it against the law to use a mobile communication device while operating a motor vehicle. We will hear more about that recommendation, how other cities approach this issue, and so much more during this Work Session discussion. We are not voting on an ordinance, rather we are hearing the information and giving guidance on whether or not to proceed with exploring this possibility.
Have thoughts on this? There’s a great discussion taking place on my council Facebook page right now – join in.
I35 EXPRESS PROJECT UPDATE
As early as later October, construction on the I35 expansion is set to begin with an estimated end date in 2016. We will begin seeing work in Denton at some point this summer. The goal of this phase of the project within our city limits is to see an additional general purpose lane in both directions from the city line to the South all the way to US380 to the North.
Council we hear an update on the project and more information on how to stay current on all the upcoming changes. In the meantime, I’d encourage you all to head over to the DCTA website and begin acquainting yourself with the ins and outs of the A-Train. The mess of I35 these next couple of years will cause many people to reconsider their relationship with public transportation.
CONVENTION CENTER UPDATE
We’ll hear another update on a possible Convention Center project that has been in the works for some time. This has been a goal of the city, the university, and the business community for several year and the issue has been a source of contention in recent city council elections, with those advocating for it being elected each time. As we get closer to a possible agreement, council will continue to vet the terms of any such agreement to make sure the city is not only well protected, but that such a project brings the city many benefits.
VALET PARKING IN DENTON?
Because Queenie’s Steakhouse (formerly the Love Shack) in downtown is interested in running a valet stand outside their restaurant, the city is having to look at its policies in this regard. We’ll be hearing about suggested ordinances.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel to let me know!