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.
One Comment
In my view there should be a moratorium on all drilling and all fracking within city limits for a period of at least three years.