City Council Preview – September 11, 2012
Given that my email box has received approximately 108 emails over the past few days regarding gas well variance requests, I imagine many of you are reading this in order to read my thoughts on that topic. I’ll get to that in a minute. Meanwhile, check out what else we’ll be discussing this Tuesday. City Council will begin with a Work Session at 3pm followed by a Regular Session at 6:30pm, both at Denton City Hall on McKinney Street. Click here to check out the agenda and back-up material for the meeting. Some items of interest…
URBAN CHICKENS
Believe it or not, this is a question that comes up frequently – “are we allowed to have backyard chickens?” Until now, the answer has been “maybe.” If you had a property that enabled you to keep the chickens 150 feet way from any residence, business, school, or hospital (meaning your own house and that of your neighbors), you could do it. Most people do not have properties that large. But because urban chickens are becoming more and more popular today and because our own recently adopted Sustainability Plan has as one of its goals the increased access and availability of locally produced food, it is time for a change. We’ll be hearing a proposed ordinance and discussing it in preparation of bringing it back for a council vote at a future meeting. Here are some of the requirements of the proposed ordinance:
- A minimum distance of 50 feet to other residential structures, churches, and businesses (down from 150 feet).
- A maximum limit of 8 hens on any single parcel of property in a residential neighborhood.
- No roosters allowed.
- A requirement that hens be kept in an enclosure or fenced area at all times.
- A requirement that the owner registers and obtains an annual, renewable permit.
Please let me know if you have thoughts or suggestions about this proposed ordinance.
COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
When I ran for council in the Spring of 2011, my campaign tag line (which still exists on this website) was “bringing citizen involvement back to Denton City Hall.” I was convinced then and am still convinced now that the citizens are our city’s best asset. We are a creative, educated, ambitious, wordly, and hard-working bunch of people. In order to have a formal avenue for continued reflection and initiatives toward this end, I recommended the creation of a new Council Committee. We will be voting on a resolution to create this committee and assigning members to it on Tuesday night.
COMING UP… CITIZEN COMMITTEE TO LOOK INTO SMOKING BAN FOR DENTON
This has been a long-time coming, but we are now prepared to take a serious look at the possibility of a comprehensive smoking ban for the city of Denton. Our goal is to develop an ordinance to be voted up or down by January 2013. Before we get there, we will be creating a citizen committee tasked with examining all angles of this issue. We will be putting this committee together at our next meeting on September 18. If you have an interest in getting involved with this discussion, please let me know.
EXTENSION OF GAS DRILLING MORATORIUM AND STATUS OF VARIANCE REQUESTS
As you probably know, the City Council unanimously passed a 120 day moratorium on natural gas drilling and production activities on February 7 of this year in order to give us enough time to complete the current ordinance. Near the end of that time period, we passed a 120 day extension to that moratorium. The moratorium, as it is right now, is set to expire on October 4 – less than a month away. Because that is far too short of time to adequately review, amend, involve the public, and pass a new ordinance (given that a draft of it has yet to be completed), it continues to be the will of council to extend the moratorium until a new ordinance can be put in place. As such, we have set the goal of December 18, the final council meeting of 2012, to complete the ordinance. See the tentative timeline below:
Therefore, part of what we will be doing during our deliberation of Agenda Item 6E is extending the moratorium to December 18. That should be good news for those of you concerned about gas drilling in Denton. That means we will have had a moratorium in place for close to a year while we take the time necessary to complete the rewrite of our ordinance.
This is important context for those of you who are probably going to be frustrated with the other part of this agenda item. This moratorium has potentially held back hundreds of new gas drilling and production applications from being considered since it was put in place in February.
Another amendment to the moratorium, in addition to extending it, involves a clarification and specification of what sort of natural gas activities are not stopped by the moratorium. You might note that the original moratorium from February included a provision, found in Section 2, that read, “Applications for oil and gas well permits for Mineral Activities filed before the effective date of this moratorium are not affected by the moratorium and shall be processed pursuant to the Denton Development Code.” In layman’s terms, this is akin to a grandfathering clause, the intent of which was to allow existing gas drilling projects to move forward. Imagine you were in the process of building a house after receiving the necessary permits to do so from the city only to have that same city declare a moratorium on house building after the fact. You would expect that your current project could continue and not be subject to the new moratorium. This was, in very lay terms, the spirit behind that provision in the original ordinance.
Also in that original ordinance was a provision that allowed property owners, drilling operators, or other relevant parties the right to request a variance, based on a “unique and undue hardship.” You may have heard that EagleRidge, a gas drilling operator, had submitted four variances for four separate well sites. While technically variance requests, it is important to understand their position: EagleRidge maintains in their supporting paperwork that the moratorium ordinance does not actually apply to their specific application (it might be helpful to read the link provided a few words back). With projects and certain permits preexisting the moratorium, yet not specifically defined by the clause in Section 2 I alluded to above, reasonable questions arose as to whether such projects are exempt or not from the moratorium.
The EagleRidge variance requests came to our attention around the same time we were considering a possible timeline for the ordinance and a possible extension of the moratorium. Now that we are pursuing an extension of the moratorium, it seemed prudent to reexamine the exemption clauses from Section 2 to bring clarity to this issue. As such, we are considering the addition of a clause that states (now in Section 2b of the proposed moratorium extension): “Applications for gas well permits that are in sequence with an approved specific use permit, site plan, development plan or gas well plat approval, under the terms of the City’s existing ordinances relating to gas well drilling and production activities.”
If passed with that language, the requests put forward by EagleRidge are rendered moot. That is why, as you may have heard, EagleRidge has removed their variance requests from Tuesday’s agenda. Should we not pass the moratorium with that additional clause, EagleRidge has indicated they will bring the variance requests back to the council.
BECAUSE MANY CITIZENS WERE EXPECTING THE VARIANCE REQUESTS TO BE ON THE AGENDA AND BECAUSE THE DECISION ON THE MORATORIUM DIRECTLY IMPACTS WHETHER THESE PROJECTS CAN MOVE FORWARD, ANYONE WISHING TO SPEAK TO THIS ISSUE SHOULD COME TO THE MEETING AND FILL OUT A BLUE CARD TO SPEAK ON AGENDA ITEM 6E.
What do I think about all this? I remain committed to working hard to finish an ordinance that protects the health and safety of our citizens and our environment and one that protects both present and future land uses in our rapidly growing city. We need to keep our focus on that long-term goal and recognize that it is that goal that set the context for the passing of the moratorium in the first place.
I’d love it if every gas drilling company stopped what they were doing, willingly subjected themselves to new regulations (designed to protect the health and safety of the community), and worked to do what is best for the common good and not just their own financial interest. But despite all those days in Sunday School and all those episodes of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, some among us are intent on pursuing their legal rights above their community responsibilities. And this continuing divide between what is legal and what is best for the common good is not unique to corporate culture and is certainly not new to American society. A couple hundred years ago, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville said this:
Each person, withdrawn into himself, behaves as though he is a stranger to the destiny of all the others. His children and his good friends constitute for him the whole of the human species. As for his transactions with his fellow citizens, he may mix among them, but he sees them not; he touches them, but does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone. And if on these terms there remains in his mind a sense of family, there no longer remains a sense of society.”
I look forward to hearing your comments, but I’m convinced that our moratorium, which will be in place for nearly a year by the time we finish our new ordinance, has kept several gas drilling projects on the sidelines while we work to better our regulations. We need to focus on getting a tough new ordinance in place and look ahead to the more important and strategic legal issues relating to a city’s ability to effectively regulate this activity, not spending our energies fighting a challenge to a moratorium that will be gone anyway in just a few months.
It’s about the greater good, after all.
City Council Preview – August 21, 2012
Did you know that serving on the Denton City Council is a volunteer position? We don’t get paid a cent for this and the supposed financial perks I keep reading about in the enlightened comment section of the local newspaper have yet to materialize for me. Therefore, I continue in my day job working for the prestigious Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science. And this time of year is particularly busy as we work to train our staff and prepare for the arrival of our students next week. Consequently, I’m writing this at 12:30am and will most likely be brief…
Today’s meeting begins in a Work Session at 3pm and continues as a Regular Session at 6:30pm at City Hall on East McKinney Street. Come on down and bring me a strong cup a coffee. Click here for the entire agenda and back-up material for the meeting. Here are some things you might find interesting from our agenda…
FOOD TRUCKS!
If you have followed my comments for a while, you know that I am a fan of creating a welcoming environment for this type of business. Not only do they offer the chance to augment our culinary choices, their mobile nature provides a unique opportunity to bring street life to areas of town in need of revitalization and provide a platform for small businesses.
We will be seeing another draft ordinance relating to this issue and other food-related topics (temporary food permits, Community Market permits, etc.). Click here to see my comments from the last time we discussed this issue in April and click here to see the latest draft ordinance from the city website.
Speaking of food trucks in Denton, you might pay attention for an upcoming announcement celebrating both the opening of Denton to food trucks and the return and expansion of the DCTA A-Train service on Friday Nights – you might want to reserve your calendar for a certain Friday at the end of October…
NEIGHBORHOOD INCENTIVE GRANT
As part of our continuing discussions on the upcoming budget, we will be discussing a plan to create a neighborhood incentive grant for neighborhoods interested in bettering their immediate community. This is something I have advocated for and have specifically requested to be a part of this year’s budget. I look forward to hearing more about how to better involve our neighborhoods in making this a better city to live, learn, work, and play! Who are the people in your neighborhood???
COMMITTEE ON CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Recently, I recommended to the City Council and city management that we institute a new Council Committee aimed at advising the council and staff on ways to best involve citizens into the direction and policy decisions of the city. We will look at a resolution creating such a committee and discuss the topic as needed.
It is in the best interest and necessary for the long-term health of our city to continually examine the ways by which our citizens can influence the direction of Denton. We are blessed with a more educated, more imaginative, more creative, and more ambitious citizenry than most – how we best capitalize on this, our best asset as a city, is the intended goal of this committee.
FAIRHAVEN REZONING, AGAIN
I think it might be the 4th time we have heard this issue – I’m beginning to lose count… The rezoning request of the old Fairhaven Retirement Community (near the corner of Bell and Sherman) is once again before us. You might recall this is a building that bears the name of famed Denton architect, O’Neil Ford. Several concessions/conditions have been recommended by the applicant, including the preservation of the exterior of the building (in order to ensure the preservation of the structure). We’ll see if we are able to find a path forward tonight.
PUBLIC HEARING ON THE PROPOSED BUDGET
This is your chance to chime in on the budgetary direction of the city. Click here to learn more. We will adopt the budget at the September 11 meeting.
City Council Preview – August 14, 2012
It is the second Tuesday of the month, so most of our meeting today consists of a Work Session of various items (meaning we discuss them, but no official action/voting will take place). Today is a bit different. In addition to our Work Session, which begins at 2:30pm at City Hall, we are convening in a Special Called Session in order to vote on the placement of a $20.4 million bond package for street improvements on the November 2012 ballot. Click here for a full agenda of today’s meeting. Here are some items that might interest you…
STREET BOND PROGRAM
We will vote today on whether or not to send this to the November ballot. If you’ve been reading my posts, you know that we are hoping to use these funds (should they be approved by the voters) to perform some much needed road infrastructure improvement projects. Here is an earlier post outlining the various street projects recommended for inclusion in this bond program. Part of the bond program involves up to $400,000 in street-related public art projects in order to remain true to a 2006 City Council Resolution calling for 2-4% of all future bond program money to go toward public art projects. Because the I35 highway expansion project is in the works, there is a need to identify and fund various intersections and major sections of the highway through Denton that could be enhanced with aesthetic treatments. These sort of street-related projects would be funded with that $400K.
CODES, CODES, and more CODES
Just what every builder and contractor wants, more codes! That is what we will be looking at today as the city is interested in amending the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code, adopting the 2009 International Building Code, the 2011 National Electrical Code, and the 2009 International Fire Code. Council members have the joy of looking through all this and providing direction of possible changes before officially adopting these new regulations.
HOW IS THAT BIKE PLAN COMING?
We will get an update to the bike plan today. It wasn’t until late February when we officially voted on the plan. Go here to see the plan online. The plan had $100,000 devoted to project for the 2011-2012 fiscal year and $100,000 in matching funds from the Denton County Commissioners (thanks Hugh Coleman and Andy Eads). This year, the council is considering adding another $100,000 in yearly funding for the plan, bringing the total to $200,000 per year.
We will discuss the possibility of switching a priority project from Pennsylvania to Windsor (from Old North to Bonnie Brae). After several meetings with the Pennsylvania neighborhoods, it seemed that it is not the right time for bike lanes in that area. With Windsor connecting several amenities of interest to surrounding neighborhoods, it seems like a great place to start – at least 2 elementary schools and 1 middle school, at least 3 city parks, a library, etc. We will also discuss projects to connect the DCTA Downtown Transit Center with UNT and TWU as well as the possibility of creating lanes on Oak and Hickory Street.
DOWNTOWN HICKORY STREET IMPROVEMENTS
You may have already noticed progress on new sidewalks and streetscape elements on the North side of Hickory Street just West of the DCTA station (leading to Bell). The ultimate goal is to overhaul the entire street from the station to the square in order to make it more pedestrian-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. We will be discussing the plans to fund this project and to bring on a team to help design the project.
MORE BUDGET DISCUSSION
We will continue to discuss issues related to the 2012-2013 budget, with a session designed to answer many of the questions raised during our budget workshop a couple of weeks ago. Go here for more info on the budget.
Vote for Serve Denton – and how to do it from your mobile device!
If you are in Denton and you have yet to hear about the innovative and ambitious plan underway to better serve those in need and the hard-working non-profits who make it happen, you should take a second to check out Serve Denton. They have recently been named a finalist for the WFAA Project Green “20K for a Better Way” contest, where they are competing with other great initiatives for much needed funds.
The contest is simple – the project with the most Facebook votes wins. You can vote “once a day per computer” through Sunday, August 12 at 11:59pm. If you haven’t yet voted for them today, go here now and do it.
The “per computer” clause is important – most people today have multiple computer devices, including smart phones and internet-accessible tablets. It has been said that it is impossible to vote from these mobile devices. That is not true – you just have to know how to do it. Below is a tutorial that takes you through the steps of voting via iPhone and iPad. We can all pull together to increase our votes to help this very worthy cause. Here’s how…
HOW TO VOTE WITH YOUR iPHONE
It is true that attempting to vote while using the Facebook iPhone App is impossible. But you can access facebook through your Safari internet application, just like you would from a traditional desktop computer….
STEP #1 – Go to Safari and type facebook.com into the URL field. You will have to login to your Facebook account like normal. This will automatically take you to the mobile version of the site and it will look something like this:
STEP #2 – You won’t be able to access the voting from this mobile version, so you need to click on the three bar icon at the top left corner of your phone. This will cause the menu to appear in the left hand of your screen and should look something like this:
STEP #3 – Scroll down to the bottom of the menu and you will see a link for “Desktop Site” – click that to get to the full version of Facebook (the same version you typically see when using a regular computer). It should look like this:
STEP #4 – Now you are ready to access the site just like a desktop. Everything is very small, so you might take advantage of zooming in with your finger tips to make it easier to navigate. To get to the voting site, go to the search bar at the top and type in “WFAA project green” – the appropriate page should appear and you can click on it…
STEP #5 – vote for Serve Denton!!
HOW TO VOTE USING YOUR iPAD
This is actually much easier. Again, you can’t use the Facebook App to do it. Go to Safari and go to facebook.com. Login to your account and it should automatically take you to the full desktop version of the site. You can go to the WFAA Project Green page from there and it will work. If for some reason, you are directed to the mobile version of the site, follow the same steps for the iPhone and all should be well.
Now pass this around and get voting – remember, you can do it once a day PER COMPUTER through Sunday! Make all your votes count!
City Council Preview – August 7, 2012
We get started on Tuesday with a Work Session at 3pm, followed by a Regular Session at 6:30pm – all at the main City Hall at 215 E. McKinney Street. Click here to see the agenda along with back-up information. Here are some items that might be of interest to you…
DENTON COMPREHENSIVE PLAN UPDATE
The Denton Plan is the key document determining the direction of the city for the next 20 years. If you have ever had an opinion about the direction of the city, what it needs, how to make it better, and what you think would make Denton a great place to live, work, and play, you NEED to get involved in this process. Things get kicked-off this Thursday night at 6:30pm at the Center for Visual Arts (corner of Hickory and Bell, just near the Downtown Transit Center). If you haven’t yet been to the Plan website, go here – and get connected to them on the various social networks in order to keep up with the progress.
During our meeting, we will get a chance to meet the consultant team and hear more about plans to involve the community in the process of updating the Plan.
BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS
I have posted at length about this process here. Council will be finalizing their nominees and we will vote on those during the regular meeting.
MORE ON THE BUDGET
Council will have another chance to review and ask questions about the proposed budget. For more info on the budget, see my earlier post about it here. Nothing is finalized until council votes on it at our September 11 council meeting, so now is the time to chime in. Take a look and let me know your thoughts.
WE AREN’T RAISING TAXES, YET WE ARE INFORMING VOTERS OF A TAX INCREASE?
An item on our agenda is a vote for a proposal that would give the public notice of a tax increase. At the same time, our budget boasts “no tax rate increase.” How does all this jive? To help you understand this, I am posting an explanation below from the backup material for this meeting…
The truth-in-taxation guidelines require taxing entities to calculate and publish their effective and rollback tax rates. The effective rate is the calculated rate that would provide the taxing unit approximately the same amount of revenue it received in the previous year on properties taxed in both years. This rate excludes taxes on properties no longer in the taxing unit and also excludes any growth due to new property values. The City of Denton’s 2012 effective rate is $0.68046/$100 valuation.
The rollback rate divides the total property tax revenue into support for maintenance and operations (M&O) taxes and debt service taxes. It provides approximately the same amount to revenue it spent in the previous year for maintenance and operations expenses, plus an extra eight percent. If a taxing unit adopts a tax rate higher than the rollback rate, the voters have the option to petition for an election to limit the size of the tax increase. The City of Denton’s 2012 rollback rate is $0.73218/$100 valuation.
The City Manager’s FY 2012-13 Proposed Budget recommended a tax rate of $0.68975 per $100 of valuation, and this rate is $0.00929 above the effective rate. If the City Council considers adopting a tax rate that is higher than the recommended effective rate, state law requires the governing body to vote to place a proposal to adopt the rate on an agenda. In addition, state law requires that two public hearings be held on the proposed tax increase, with the second hearing occurring three to 14 days after the first. Publication of quarter-page notices (“Notice of Public Hearing on Tax Increase”) informing the public of the hearings and the publication of a quarter-page notice (“Notice of Tax Revenue Increase”) prior to the adoption of the tax rate are also required.
PUBLIC HEARING ON PROPOSED STREET BOND ELECTION
I have talked about this ongoing issue at length on this post. You will see all the info on the recommended streets, cost of projects, and other details all broken down by council district. Because we are hoping to go to the voters in November (the same day as the Presidential Election on Tuesday, the 6th), we need to decide how the proposition for the bond proposal will look on the ballot.
You might recall that there has been a discussion related to Public Art financing as part of this bond program. This can be traced back to a 2006 City Council Resolution asking that 2-4% of all future bond programs be dedicated to Public Art. It has been a trick to see how that policy is supposed to work in a clear, single-issue bond election such as this one. Council has agreed to ask for no more than 2% of this bond issue (or $400,000, given the total bond package is $20 million). At issue is whether we put this altogether as a single bond proposition or split the streets and art funding into two separate bond propositions – each one having to rise and fall as individual votes. What do you think?
That’s about it – as always, if you have thoughts, feedback, or concerns, do not hesitate to contact me at kevin.roden@cityofdenton.com or 940.206.5239.