Council Meeting Postscript – May 8, 2012
In case you missed my preview of Tuesday’s meeting, click here.
As I stated in my preview write-up, this meeting was a 2nd Tuesday Session and, as such, there were no action (i.e. “voting”) items on the agenda. It is a chance for the council to be briefed on various issues and to provide feedback and direction to the city staff. We discussed four issues…
DCTA UPDATE FROM PRESIDENT JIM CLINE
The highlight for me of Cline’s presentation had nothing to do with its content, but with its method of “delivery.” Prior to the meeting, Cline tweeted this: “Catching the 3:05 NB to Denton to make a City Council Presentation. Should be on 5:03 or 5:29 SB 4 Rtn. Say hello if u see me.“ In other words, the DCTA President is leading by example and taking the train himself when he can. If you are on Twitter, you might follow him.
If you have yet to hear the DCTA staff recommendations to the Board, please take some time to check that out here. It looks like we will be seeing train service expanding to midday by August, among other tweaks to the schedule. At issue is the fate of Friday night service. The DCTA staff is recommending that such service continue with changes to the schedule – pushing the times back to accommodate later train times (and thus allowing the possibility of trips, for instance, to the American Airlines Center for sporting events). This is a good move.
While Friday night service has been underperforming compared to its weekday commuter counterpart, it is important to point out that Saturday service is seemingly consistently outperforming weekday commuter trips. A DCTA analysis of train ridership between the months of October and March (accounting for 26 weeks) shows that Saturday passengers per trip was beyond 100% of the weekday passengers per trip for 14 weeks during that period (in 7 cases beyond 150%). This means that there is significant interest in non-commuter service or discretionary service – people who are riding the train for something other than work purposes. That should tell us that there is a distinct market for Friday night service, if only the times can be adjusted to match the interested riders’ needs. I will be providing more of my own analysis soon…
For now, please let DCTA know what you think about whether to keep (with modifications) or do away with Friday night service – contact them at info@dcta.net.
NAMING THE 288 RAIL TRAIL BRIDGE
It took very little time for the council to agree to move forward with the naming of the soon-to-be-constructed after Martin Luther King, Jr. Former council women Charyle Heggins, the initiator of this idea during her time in office, was present to hear the discussion. This will come before us for a vote soon.
GAS ORDINANCE AND GAS WELL INSPECTION UPDATE
Now that the city’s task force has completed its series of meetings, the council was officially briefed on the results of the task force recommendations and a staff-suggested timeline of how the ordinance will progress from here. It was a lively, and I think healthy discussion centered mostly on the process of the ordinance writing.
Based on what I saw in the staff report we received prior to the meeting on the subject, I was concerned about two things. First, I was concerned that the ordinance was set to be written simply on the basis of the majority view of the official city task force. I had paid close attention to their deliberations, even attending several of their meetings and catching the others on Denton TV. It became increasingly clear to me that some on the task force, especially those who represented the industry perspective and lacked Denton residency, were voting down ideas and suggestions that seemed clearly in the interest of the Denton citizens. I am not comfortable with simply moving forward with the majority recommendations and, after considerable discussion with the full council, it seems many of them shared this concern. We would like to make sure that we are capturing all of the ideas that came about, including those presented by two of the task force members in the now infamous “minority report.”
Second, I was concerned that most of the work on the new ordinance would be done PRIOR to the council having substantial discussions on its direction. An ordinance of this magnitude will take considerable work – it is important that the council has a chance to direct this train before it heads in a direction not of our choosing. Again, this sentiment was also shared by many others on the council and it appears we have a better path forward that will include significant public input and council direction. Please stay tuned: your continued input will be valuable and necessary as we seek to make a better ordinance that protects the health and safety of our citizens and city.
But perhaps one of the main reasons for discussing this issue at this point centers on the upcoming end of our drilling moratorium. You might recall that council passed a 120 moratorium on all drilling activities in order to give us time to rewrite the ordinance. That is set to expire on June 6. Because it is clear that this process will take a few more months, council gave clear direction that it is time to extend the moratorium to allow us to complete the process. We will be voting on that at our June 5 meeting.
PROPOSED CONVENTION CENTER
We met in closed session on this topic – an open discussion is slated for May 15. Those interested in this should stay tuned for that.
SENDING OUR YOUTH TO JAIL
Following our meeting, I ran over to the Denton Police Department for this school year’s final meeting of the Youth Advisory Council I started last Fall. We had the chance to hear from two of our finest officers about the police profession, take a tour of the jail facilities, learn about finger printing, check out the action in the 911 call room, and much more.
Questions or comments? Let me know – kevin.roden@cityofdenton.com or 940.206.5239