Council Meeting Preview – September 6, 2011
I just might celebrate the recent cold front by overcompensating with a corduroy jacket at tonight’s meeting. The crisp air even has me contemplating the return of my beard. It just seems so unbecoming of a Denton City Council to be without bearded representation.
In any case, things start off with a Work Session at 3:30pm followed by the Regular Meeting at 6:30pm. Click here to see the full agenda. Here’s what you might be interested in…
BUDGET AND BIKES
We will hold the first of our Public Hearings for the 2011-12 Proposed Budget. If you haven’t yet taken a look at it, go here. I’d encourage you to take the time to read pages 17-41 to get a sense on where city money comes from and where it goes. It’s a great civics lesson.
By far the most talked about item on this year’s budget is a surplus of $333,676 that has been set aside for yet-to-be-determined City Council initiatives. Initially conceived to be $192,000, this fund has grown after sales tax revenue has shown a healthy increase. It is important to realize that the last couple of years have been difficult ones for the Denton city budget due to a weakened state and national economy, housing crisis, and subsequent low consumer confidence (which translates into less spending and less sales tax revenue for city budgets). What this means is that there are many good things to fund that have gone unfunded as of late. Here’s what the city council back-up material says about this fund:
Due to an increase in the sales tax forecast, staff increased the level of funding for Council initiatives from the proposed amount of $192,616 to $333,676. As discussed during the August 16th meeting, these funds can be used for additional street maintenance, the implementation of the bike plan, additional traffic signals, Denton County Transportation Authority (DCTA) downtown shuttle operating costs, or any other City Council priority. However, since exact cost information on these programs is not yet available, staff was directed to include these funds in the non-departmental budget for the General Fund. Once additional details are known, staff will bring these items back to the City Council for their consideration at that time.
What is important to note from this is that the City Council will likely NOT make a determination on the precise allotment from this fund before we approve the budget on September 20. Because many of these items require additional study (in fact, the bike plan has yet to be seen or approved by city council), the direction of the council up to this point, has been to hold off decisions on this fund until more information can be had.
I know many of you who are interested in using some or all of this fund for the initial implementation of the Bike Plan. In fact, citizen communication regarding this issue to the City Council has been undeniably greater than any other budget topic. From the perspective of pure democracy, a robust first year roll-out of the bike plan seems to be what Dentonites are most interested in. You should note that the current budget, apart from this council surplus fund, already recommends $50,000 for the plan in a way that would see this amount repeated in subsequent years. I expect much time spent during the public hearing on this topic alone.
THE AESTHETICS OF AN UNSUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION MODEL
Want to have a quick lesson in transportation economics? The Bike Plan just referred to is estimated to cost approximately $25,000 a mile to implement. At first glance, no doubt, that sounds like a lot of money. But consider the following…
- Consultants recently told the city of Denton that we need to invest at least $10 million dollars a year just to maintain the CURRENT condition of our quickly deteriorating roads.
- Texas is about to embark on the most costly road project in history in order to expand I35 for a mere 28 miles. With a total price tag of $4.4 billion, our addiction to cars, gas, and sprawl requires us to pay over $157 million a mile to widen a highway.
- And while most taxpayers expect to be able to drive on highways for free, the lack of revenue requires us to pay fares for much more financially and environmentally sustainable models of transportation, such as the recently-opened DCTA A-Train. Running along a similar corridor, the project cost only $313 million to build.
All this to say, council is being asked to comment on a TxDOT “Aesthetic Study” for this I35 expansion project. If I look disinterested in spending much time thinking through how to make a bad idea look pretty, this is why.
TO CATCH A PREDATOR – DENTON STYLE
We are being asked to consider a new ordinance that would make it illegal for convicted sex offenders to live within 1500 feet of a place where children frequently gather (schools, parks, etc.). Although city data shows that there are no records of Denton sex offenders “reoffending” at the expense of Denton children, there is regional data to suggest that such an ordinance may actually decrease the amount of sex offenders living in our town. Denton currently has 132 registered sex offenders, a number that has risen in recent years. We will look at the arguments for this new ordinance that is being adopted by many other cities around us.
MORE STUDENT APARTMENTS?
The creators of Midtown Apartments, the student housing complex that recently went up on the corner of Carroll and Eagle, are hoping to expand already. The new complex backs up to a series of single family homes fronting Cleveland Street. The owners of these homes have agreed to sell, but because of a difference in zoning categorization, the area must be rezoned in order to allow multi-family housing.
The last couple of years has seen a flurry in new student housing projects like this one. Enough to make many observers question whether or not Denton can sustain the quick influx. The city already has a significant apartment stock. No doubt there will be a “market” for the newest and hippest student housing option (gone are the days of roach pads, students nowadays demand all sorts of bells and whistles when it comes to apartments). But what does this momentum do to the existing apartment areas? What pressures does this bring to neighborhoods in the vicinity of our two universities as apartments want to move in? And what sort of product is being offered when we see these complexes built seemingly overnight?
That last question became all too relevant this weekend with the tragic accident at The Grove apartments on the corner of Carroll and I35. Many questions remain following that incident and I wouldn’t be surprised if you hear some of these surface at tonight’s meeting.
I continue to think that Denton should consider developing a comprehensive apartment policy to address these and other issues.
Reflections on the Closing of the Courthouse Lawn
The headline of today’s Denton Record-Chronicle announced a “closing time” for the beloved downtown Courthouse lawn in response to a summer-long rash of vandalism and micturition. The popular gathering place will now be closed between the hours of midnight and 6am, in hopes of curbing the destructive behavior. This is a decision reached by the Denton County Commissioners (not the city), as the courthouse is property owned by the county. As someone who lives blocks away from downtown, as someone who frequents that area later at night, and as the Denton City Council Member whose district includes the area surrounding the courthouse, I offer the following reflections.
The behavior this new rule is meant to address is clearly unacceptable. I sympathize with Denton County leaders and the courthouse caregivers who are struggling to find a solution to this problem.
Having said that, we must be very careful to understand just what is good about the downtown area and, in so doing, be careful to avoid regulations that will tend to chip away at that goodness. The downtown area has increasingly thrived in recent years precisely because of the sense of place that exists there. Much could be said about this, but here are a few highlights:
- The square area is built to human scale. The downtown buildings have been built with the needs and aesthetics of humans in mind, not the whims of a specific business or the requirements of a car-dependent culture. Compare the feel of downtown to the feel of Denton Crossing (Best Buy, etc.) to capture this distinction. The forthcoming “form-based code” set to be reviewed by city council will ensure that this scale and aesthetic is continued as new development happens.
- Business life on the square is diverse and time-staggered. The square is home to offices and businesses that are open during regular business hours. Then there are food establishments and retail spots that come alive late morning and keep the area alive past 5pm until around 10pm. Finally, the area’s music venues and bars start gearing about around 9 and 10pm and keep the downtown hopping just past the last call. A single day on the square sees many births and rebirths of activities and draws from a variety of demographics.
- The square is conducive to socializing. It fulfills what should be a basic political aim of all cities: bringing people together. The businesses provide the basic ingredients of community: caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, food, and commerce. The layout and open space of the area provide an opportunity for humans to interact outside of designated establishments. A table and chairs on a sidewalk outside a wine shop, for instance, effectively blurs the line between public and private space, thus continually drawing us into the public sphere.
It makes sense, therefore, that the courthouse lawn stands as the center of gravity for such a place. We are drawn to this area, almost instinctively. We want to take our ice cream there, we want to take our newly purchase bottle of wine there, we want to dig into the first chapter of the book we just bought at Recycled there, we want to share our coffee with a friend there, and we increasingly want to bring our music there as well. The life observed on the courthouse lawn throughout the day should be understood as a local renaissance of public life for our citizens. Humans were made for this and what we are seeing is beautiful.
As civic life increases in such an area, so do certain negative consequences such as litter, wear and tear, possibility for conflicts, and vandalism. Understanding these issues is an important step in discovering their solutions. County officials, business owners, the newspaper, and various citizens are all forwarding their own narrative of the situation. Unfortunately, most of what I have heard thus far are shallow attempts at cultural analysis built only on anecdotes, cliches, and stereotypes.
THE BLAME GAME
The local paper has helped forward the idea that the vandalism is the result of Denton’s thriving music scene, most of which is centered around the many venues in the downtown area. “This tagging is sometimes obscene and, police say, likely a direct result of the music scene migration from the Fry Street area to downtown,” writes Donna Felder in the opening paragraphs of a front page story on June 25. It’s the old “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll” line. Perhaps the Psalms of Doug Burr, or the love struggles of Sarah Jaffe, or the occasional tribal rhythms of Seryn are contributing to the delinquency of permanent marker wielding minors. Perhaps something more philosophical is happening – I wrote a review of Midlake’s latest album in which I pointed to the dueling tendency toward both nihilism and love of life present in the lyrics of this great Denton band. Perhaps young listeners misunderstood the meaning of this tension, failed to see its resolution in a clear affirmation of life, and have subsequently taken to the courthouse to release their pent-up nihilistic angst following a hasty listening of this album. I doubt it. And it is irresponsible and unfortunate to pin the blame on an aspect of Denton culture that is enriching to civic life and continually puts us in the national and international media spotlight.
The bars and their late-night patrons are also an easy target of these amateur analyses. At a recent meeting on the subject a local pastor forwarded an account that seemed to come right out of West Side Story. “There are some bars on the square,” he said,” that have rivalries among their patrons. And when those bars close, the rivals often meet in the parking lot behind my church to fight.” Perhaps when the skinny-jeaned patrons of Hailey’s spill out at 2am and cross paths with the looser-legged cliental of the Loophole, tempers begin to flare, but probably not. Just in case, I offer this poetry…
Boy, boy, crazy boy, get cool boy.
Got a rocket in your pocket, keep cooly cool boy.
Don’t get hot cuz man you got some high times ahead.
Take it slow, and daddy-o you can die in bed.
At this same meeting, a police officer offered yet another theory: “You need to realize that as a liberal arts school, UNT has a really big art program – and students these days see this as art.” The statement was offered during a discussion of the various forms of graffiti or tagging that are showing up on downtown buildings. Consider the following two images that have been provided, again by our local paper, of this vandalism.
This one is from the June 8 Denton Record-Chronicle police blotter…
And this one from the June 25 front cover story on the subject…
Say what you will about the state or definition of art, but more than worrying about the reputation of their students as vandals, I suspect the faculty at UNT’s College of Visual Arts and Design would have greater concern that their students are suspected of creating art of this caliber.
The cumulative cultural analysis which has been offered amounts to something like this:
There exists a group of remedial UNT art students who have been wooed by the lyrics and rhythms of the Denton folk scene into embracing anarchy and leading lives of lawlessness. Their lame attempts at performance art, whereby they apparently reenact scenes from West Side Story in church parking lots after consuming too many Old Milwaukee’s at downtown bars, are being mistaken for full-fledged bar fights among rivaling gangs.
Needless to say, we should be careful about acting upon such hasty attempts at diagnosing problems.
At a time when the city of Denton is hoping to take advantage of a renaissance in urban living among a younger demographic, we should be careful when considering regulations that send a message to that same demographic (college students, young professionals who take part in the night life of the square, musicians and artists and those who enjoy their art, etc.) that they are suspected vandals.
To be clear, destructive, senseless, and criminal activity of this kind has no place on the downtown square. But we must avoid policies that might serve to turn back the momentum of community that is enjoyed by many who live in or visit the downtown area. Here are some other suggestions to consider…
- IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY – Those who enjoy the courthouse lawn as a prized public space should seek to take a greater sense of responsibility for its care. We’ve seen groups already emerge this last summer such as the Denton Square Clean Team who have committed to regularly clean up the trash on the courthouse lawn. We should also commit to taking it upon ourselves to confronting people when we see them engage in inappropriate behavior in our downtown area. It is a sad commentary when we have to resort to calling 911 in order to confront a marker-yielding teenager.
- MORE EYES, NOT LESS – Famed urban theorist, Jane Jacobs, is famous for pointing out that watching citizens are more conducive to safe streets than street lights. A 12am closing time on the Courthouse lawn will all but ensure that the responsible citizens will remove themselves from the area, leaving only those who have little respect for the law with no one to see them. Encouraging one or two 24 hour diners or coffee shops to bring a greater amount of life to the area may actually serve to curb the behavior of those who now can act under the cover of anonymity.
- INVEST IN BETTER LANDSCAPING – Ugly spots will be treated as such. It’s no secret that the landscape of the courthouse lawn is not up to par with the majesty of the building itself. The beds immediately surrounding the building have been neglected and are currently an assortment of patches of grass and the occasional drought tolerant bush. As such, they invite trash and mistreatment. Why not team up with local groups to adopt these areas and invest in some better landscaping. This will help us test the theory that beauty begets beauty.
- JUSTLY DISCRIMINATE – No doubt, closing the courthouse lawn at midnight makes it easier for law enforcement officers to move people along – they just get to move everyone along. Have we lost the ability to judge between a homeless guy with his 40 ounce of Bud Ice and a couple on a date sitting on a blanket enjoying a bottle of Pinot Noir? Common sense tells you which is more likely to defecate near the basement entrance to the courthouse. Can we not tell the difference between a group of college students congregating on the lawn after a concert at Hailey’s and a group of teenage post-punk, backpack wearing wanderers digging through the ashtrays looking for a used cigarette to recycle? Again, common sense tells you which is more likely to tag the courthouse with an anarchist symbol. Anyone who frequents the square at night can attest to these distinctions. Let’s find a way to train and empower our law enforcement officials to do so as well.
What do you think? Comment below…
Public Input Needed on Gas Drilling in Denton
Natural gas drilling ordinance revisions will soon be a topic for the City Council to discuss. In order to make sure that citizens are the ones shaping this important policy for Denton, there are several recent initiatives that you should be aware of…
The city has put together a new website designed to educate, answer questions, and update citizens on the upcoming drilling ordinance rewrite – check it out here. As part of the process, the city has organized a committee to help guide the development of policy. Three members of this committee are designated as citizen representatives. They will be hosting their first Public Meeting this next Thursday, August 25 from 6:30 to 8:30pm in the Civic Center in order to receive public input at the outset of this process. A Facebook page has been created to help promote this meeting – please pass around to your friends.
In order to ensure an even broader avenue for citizen input, an independent group of concerned citizens has emerged under the name, Denton Stakeholder Drilling Advisory Group. This group has come about as the result of collaborative discussions between me, UNT professors associated with the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity, and several engaged citizens. The purpose of this group is to fully engage the citizenry in a democratic discussion on this important topic and to work with the official city process to provide policy recommendations, developed after directed and purposeful deliberations done in a series of open and transparent meetings. If you are interested in becoming an official member of this group, please contact me or Dr. Adam Briggle.
To officially kick things off, this Advisory Group is hosting a panel discussion THIS MONDAY, August 22 at 8pm at the Environmental Building at UNT, featuring regional experts on municipal gas drilling policy. This event is free and open to the public. Here is a link to the Facebook event so that you can share with your friends. More info can be found on the flyer below…
Council Meeting Postscript – August 16, 2011
Here’s everything you ever wanted to know about tonight’s city council meeting…
BIKE PLAN FUNDING – BUDGET DISCUSSIONS
We continued our discussion on the current budget proposal – click here to check it out. Citizens will have their first chance to offer public comment on the budget at our meeting on September 6. Dominating much of the discussion as of late has been the issue of street maintenance and the possible allocation of budget surplus. The annual funding of street maintenance hovers somewhere around $3 million, well short of the recommended $10 million per year that has been recommended by a recent study on the state of our streets. In order to close this gap, the city’s finance team has come up with some creative funding strategies that end up creating a special fund designated to streets that will grow in revenue over the years.
As you see, road maintenance is seemingly financially unsustainable. What a better context to have a robust bike plan coming down the pipes in order to encourage less car usage, and therefore, less wear and tear on these expensive roadways. Initial figures show that a mile of bike lanes will cost the city an average of $25,000. Compare that with the suggested $10,000,000 a year for mere road maintenance of existing roads. Biking, it seems, is the fiscally responsible thing to do for Denton’s citizens…
Funding of the Bike Plan for its inaugural year has yet to be determined. The manager team suggested a mere $50,000 for this year (an amount that will be included in future years). The council, however, has over $300,000 in surplus money that has yet to be allocated. We continue to be in the process of prioritizing projects that could use this money. Today’s discussion included five council members arguing for the need of allocating more money toward the initial implementation of the bike plan – great news for cycling advocates. Specific numbers have yet to be determine pending the approval of the bike plan.
THE RESURGENCE OF GOLDEN TRIANGLE MALL?
You know that mall that is all-too-often the butt of local jokes? A group of investors and professional mall re-designers think that there is more life to be lived in this retail establishment, so much so that they are prepared to invest millions of dollars toward bringing it up to date. They have asked for an economic incentive agreement with the city known as a 380 Agreement. With such agreements, the city is able to cut a deal on the INCREASED sales tax that result from investment in a certain property. In this case, the new mall owners will receive 50% of the increase in tax revenue over the next 20 years. In short, if they are unsuccessful in increasing sales revenue at the mall, they get nothing. Taxpayers risk nothing in this scenario. If the mall is successful, the owners benefit from part of the sales tax revenue associated with the increase in sales tax AND the citizens benefit from increased sales tax revenue as well as a thriving mall. A failed mall right there would have disastrous consequences on surrounding businesses and neighborhoods. The council voted unanimously to approve this agreement tonight.
REDISTRICTING
Tonight was the official public hearing for the redistricting plan. Click here to read more about the current plan and see various maps. I’ve written about some of my concerns in an earlier post. Much of the discussion centered around the proverbial “finger” of District 2 – a strange stretch that extends District 2 South of University Drive for a width of only a few blocks all the way down to the historic downtown. Many of the concerns I’ve heard, both tonight and in previous conversations, come from residents in SE Denton. These concerns can be characterized as follows:
- The character of the downtown area and surrounding neighborhoods is increasingly urban in its persona, while the majority of District 2 is distinctly “suburban” – perhaps it is best to include that finger area in either District 1 and/or District 3 so that the urban persona can be maintained
- As we consider keeping neighborhoods together within a single district, it is important to recognize that the neighborhoods surrounding the downtown area view that area as part of their neighborhood. The square area does not seem to be a part of the District 2 neighborhoods North of 380 in the same way that is a part of the neighborhoods in District 1 and/or District 3.
- As the downtown area thrives and increasingly moves Eastward, decisions made about the downtown area will inevitably have important ramifications (good or bad) for the SE Denton neighborhood. Retaining the downtown area in District 1 will allow these residents to have a representative who can understand these challenges of growth in a holistic way.
- As the downtown area moves Eastward, the city has a unique opportunity to figure out how to better include the large Hispanic and Black populations into the life of our downtown. Important social initiatives along these lines would better be served if both the downtown area and the SE Denton areas are contained within the same council district.
For those interested in seeing the revised map that includes recent suggestions from residents in the Denia neighborhood (the earlier version had inadvertently split their neighborhood into two districts), here is a screen shot I took off of our council back-up PDF (click on it for a larger version). I’m asking that they put a higher resolution version on the city’s website soon…
IN and OUT BURGER IN DENTON?
“Those are good burgers, Walter…” During tonight’s presentation of the Golden Triangle Mall economic incentive agreement, Denton Economic Development Director Linda Ratliff threw out that the mall investors were in discussions with West Coast-based In and Out burgers for a spot somewhere in or near the mall. This will no doubt be met with great excitement among many fellow citizens. For myself, I tend to reject the ubiquitous spread of previously-regional food gems. Part of what I look forward to when I visit relatives in Southern California is the chance to sneak away to enjoy this tasty treat, a rare occasion for a visiting Texan. Bring it here and it loses all its mystique and luster – that’s just my personal opinion. I’m sure we’ll have a few miles of cars lining up to hit it up on the first day of business.
One word of caution, however… Such announcements are certainly premature. When timed with the announcement of a deal like this, one should understand that it might be a rhetorical tool. Recall, for example, the late-breaking announcement by the Dinerstein Company (the company who is currently developing the vacant Fry Street property), just prior to the city council’s final vote on the project, that the Tomato had signed a letter of intent to open up as part of the new development. Over a year later, the Tomato has all but backed out of that deal and is now several miles away on the square of downtown Sanger.
WHAT DO WE CALL PEOPLE FROM DENTON?
At the close of the meeting, Dalton Gregory expressed his discontentment with the current nicknames for people who are from Denton – be it Dentonites or Dentonians. Issuing a public challenge, Council Member Gregory asked all citizens to chime in on this important city question. So…
Council Meeting Preview – August 16, 2011
It’s a full agenda for today’s meeting – we’ll start with a Work Session at 3pm, followed by the Regular Meeting at 6:30pm at City Hall.
By the way, local statesman Howard Draper and I tweeted back and forth last week about the paperless possibilities for city council meetings. Did you know that City Council agenda paperwork averages around 500 pages a meeting? Multiply that by 7 council members and that’s a lot of paper. The city, therefore, provides the council with loaner laptops and this agenda paperwork electronically via a CD-ROM with a large PDF file. But thanks to that Twitter discussion, I got the idea to try using my wife’s iPad instead of the laptop. I’ve found many applications, including “iAnnotate PDF” to be quite helpful and more “natural” to navigate as compared to the laptop equivalent. And iPads are cheaper than laptops, so maybe we can find some cost-saving measures here in the future. For all the nerds out there, please welcome the first ever iPad experiment at a Denton City Council meeting.
Here’s some issues that might interest you…
BUDGET DISCUSSION
Join us on September 6 when there will be the first Public Hearing on the proposed budget for this fiscal year. Today we will continue a council discussion on the budget and receive answers to questions we have raised over the last couple of weeks. One area of particular interest to many is how the council will prioritize the possible spending of $192,616 that has yet to be allocated to specific projects.
DIRECTION ON COMPREHENSIVE PLAN
The city sets the goal of revising the comprehensive plan every 10 years. We are a bit past due for this due to recent budget constraints. But the city staff is recommending an approximate $800,000 to invest in this new comprehensive plan. I have already asked to look into this figure and will continue to do so. That’s a lot of money to invest in a document.
PUBLIC HEARING ON REDISTRICTING PLANS
It’s time to embark on redistricting the city’s four council member districts. Changes in population over the last 10 years dictate such a re-evaluation. Go here to see the proposed changes and let me know your thoughts – good or bad!
As always, if you have questions or comments, do not hesitate to contact me at kevin.roden@cityofdenton.com or 940-206-5239.