Gasland Screening and Grassroots Citizen Panel
I will be hosting a screening of the Academy Award nominated documentary Gasland at my home this Friday evening at 8pm.
The issue of natural gas drilling has increasingly come on our radar, especially for cities that reside on top of the Barnett Shale. As well sites increasingly creep into the city limits and near parks, schools, and neighborhoods, citizens are becoming interested in learning more about this topic. This documentary will serve to provide an introduction to the issue and help explain what all the controversy is about. Following the movie, I will host a Q and A time to hear your thoughts and questions about this important topic.
And this is timely – Denton is embarking on a reexamination of our ordinances related to natural gas drilling. In response to a desire to ensure healthy democratic participation in this process, a Grassroots Citizen Panel is being formed to help think through the issue as it relates to Denton and to provide policy recommendations to the city staff and city council. Participants in this panel will be on hand on Friday to discuss their anticipated work and hear from you. They will also be actively seeking additional members for the panel. If you are interested in serving in this way, please contact UNT professor, Dr. Adam Briggle at Adam.Briggle@unt.edu.
Here’s a link to the Gasland event on Facebook. The event starts at 8pm at my home at 322 Texas Street. The event is free and open to the public, but I am encouraging everyone who comes to bring a backpack that they can donate to the upcoming SE Denton Back-2-School Fair.
Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments – kevin.roden@cityofdenton.com or 940-206-5239.
Backpacks Needed for SE Denton Back to School Event
The annual Southeast Denton Back-2-School Fair is taking place on Saturday, August 13 from 9am to noon at the MLK Center. The purpose of the event is to give away 1000 backpacks stuffed with school supplies to local elementary-aged students in need.
With less than two weeks left, the organizers have struggled to obtain enough backpacks for the event. This is where you come in. Let’s pull together as a community and knock out this need for backpacks. Perhaps you have an unused backpack that is still in good use at your house. Perhaps you can grab 3 low cost backpacks when you go shopping at Walmart today. Perhaps you have $100 on hand and you are looking for a good cause. Perhaps you have a connection to someone who can help make a big dent in this need. The backpacks don’t have to be fancy – these are for elementary students, after all.
Please help spread the word through Facebook, Twitter, and email. Please contact your local church. Let me know how you can help – email me at kevin.roden@cityofdenton.com or call my cell at 940-206-5239. You can also simply drop off backpacks on my porch at 322 Texas Street.
Join the official Facebook page for this event and tell others.
This event is co-sponsored by the City of Denton Parks Dept, Denton Police and Fire Dept., Denton Lions Club, Denton County Health Dept., and many local churches. This year’s emcee will be WFAA channel 8 co-anchor Cynthia Izaguirre.
Council Meeting Postscript – August 2, 2011
In an attempt to show that local government can rise above the toxic discourse that we’ve seen in Washington the last several weeks, one of your Denton City Council Members broke ranks to merge a great compromise Tuesday night. More on that in a second…
ROBSON RANCH DETAIL PLAN
After discussing this issue in great detail last meeting, we tabled this item in order to allow the city staff and legal team time to best word a number of conditions onto any approval of the plan. As I’ve stated earlier, the council was put in a difficult position with this specific issue. Most of the concerns stemmed from the coexistence of houses and natural gas well sites – something that should never have been conceived. But if you think back to 1999 when the original plan for Robson Ranch was approved before council, the issue of natural gas drilling was not on most people’s radar. That has clearly changed, but much of the regulations are tied to what was on the books back in 2001 when gas wells first became a part of this project. The intent on most of the conditions we added was to increase the awareness to current and potential residents at Robson Ranch about the close proximity of gas drilling (including stronger disclosure language and additional signage at well sites). I voted to approve this Detail Plan.
UNT STADIUM PARKING
We discussed a plan by the Denton Police Department to create a special zone within the Denia Neighborhood near the new UNT stadium – all in hopes of addressing neighborhood concerns of overflow parking in the area. The council gave the direction to move forward with the ordinance and bring it to us for action at a later date.
THE GREAT PARKING COMPROMISE OF 2012
In a day when politics seems to consist solely of the polarizing extremes we are subject to each evening on the nightly news, there is reason to hope in the future of American democratic discourse…
What was meant as a simple fix to a clear conflict in the Denton Development Code over the required number of parking spaces that apartment developers should provide for one bedroom apartments, efficiencies, and studio apartments, turned into a much broader and longer discussion of municipal parking philosophy. The Planning Department recommended that the inconsistency of code could be resolved by putting one bedroom apartments in the same category as efficiencies and studio apartments for the purpose of parking minimum requirements. With that move, all apartments of this type would be required to be accompanied by 1.5 parking spaces.
Council Member King was first to stake his ground – he argued that this created an unnecessary hardship on developers who were trying to provide a lower cost product in order to provide a more affordable housing option. King then suggested that the requirement be lowered to only 1 parking spot per apartment of this kind.
Council Member Engelbrecht, on the other hand, argued for a more cautious approach. Citing the parking issues that have contributed to the decline of apartments in the Owsley Addition (more popularly known as “Cement City”), Engelbrecht responded that he was uncomfortable with supporting King’s proposal without a more comprehensive look at its ramifications.
It appeared the city council was at an impasse, split on whether to require 1 or 1.5 parking spaces for small apartments. Would Engelbrecht launch a filibuster in order to prevent a vote? Would King attempt to tie the parking issue to the upcoming budget debate, thus ratcheting up the pressure to come to his side?
Then Council Member Gregory took his turn at the microphone. Hoping to appeal to the goodwill of his fellow council members, Gregory suggested a way out for both sides. “Why not require 1.25 parking spots per apartments of this kind?” A great compromise was forged and political disaster was averted. One bedroom apartments were given their own category where the requirement remains at 1.5 parking spaces per unit and efficiencies/studios were lowered to 1.25 parking spots.
There is hope for America, after all!
I have learned the hard way that our culture has an unfortunate decreasing ability to discern satire in written form. I have no doubt, however, that the good readers of my website run counter to this trend. But to be on the safe side and to be clear, the preceding remarks about the Great Parking Compromise of 2012 were greatly exaggerated for dramatic effect and so that I could do my part to make local government a bit more interesting for everyone.
Council Meeting Preview – August 2, 2011
It doesn’t seem as if today’s session will be the marathon we experienced two weeks ago when our meeting lasted for 10.5 hours – until 1:30am! If it does, someone please think to bring the council members some pizza and additional coffee around 11pm…
Things get kicked off today with a Work Session at 4:30pm, followed by a 6:30pm Regular Session. To check out the agenda and to view back-up material with all the nitty-gritty details, click here. Below are some items that might be of interest…
FINAL VOTE (hopefully) ON ROBSON RANCH DETAIL PLAN
The big reason for our long meeting last time was the in-depth discussion we had about the Detail Plan for Robson Ranch. Read up on last meeting’s postscript to catch up. We seemed to come to agreement on certain conditions we wanted to apply to any potential approval of the plan – all centered around our attempt to lessen the impact of the mix of houses and gas wells. As I stated earlier, most of the gas wells fall under earlier ordinances due to many of them being in the plan as long ago as 2001 (when Denton didn’t even have ordinances dealing with gas drilling). Our ordinances have since changed, but the vested rights of the mineral owner (in this case, the Robson Ranch developers) remains more or less tied to earlier approvals from the city. We wanted to give our city staff and legal team time to draft our conditions prior to officially voting on the issue. I expect we’ll have an up or down vote tonight.
UNT STADIUM PARKING
The recent construction of the new Mean Green Stadium has stirred its share of controversy among the neighbors in the Denia Neighborhood bordering the site. They’ve been worried about the lack of a clear traffic plan and parking plan, without which might cause game-goers to both travel through and park in their neighborhood on game days. Safety, aesthetic, quality of life, and property value issues were raised by neighborhood leaders. What has resulted from these discussions is a plan to implement a Resident-Only parking program for game days in the neighborhood, requiring the use of parking permits. I will be curiously following the success of this program – the first of its kind in Denton that I’m aware of. Several other neighborhoods bordering our two universities struggle with parking-related issues. Maybe, just maybe, we can learn some things from this pilot program that can be creatively implemented in other neighborhoods.
SPEAKING OF PARKING…
The only Public Hearing of the night will center around an amendment to the Denton Development Code relating to parking requirements for efficiency/studio/one-bedroom apartments. It seems to be more of an attempt to fix inconsistencies in the code rather than to embark on a new policy direction. Having said that, such a policy discussion is no doubt called for in the long term. As apartments of different types become an increasing part of our city’s landscape and as transportation options increase in town, brainstorming a parking policy that isn’t entirely auto-centric would be a healthy discussion for the sake of developers, our environment, and our land use.
COMING UP ON THURSDAY – BUDGET WORKSHOP
I am thankful that our elder statesmen politicians on the national level provided such a great model of healthy deliberation as it relates to budget discussions and negotiations…
Perhaps the biggest issue of the week will be the unveiling and initial discussion on the Proposed Budget for Denton (2011-12). We will have a Special Meeting on Thursday morning to look at what the City Management team has proposed. The goal is to have our budget decisions guided by coherent council policy direction and long-term strategic planning. Fortunately for everyone, there are signs of significant local economic recovery. Two of the largest sources of revenue for the city’s General Fund come from Ad Valorem taxes (property taxes) and Sales Tax (tax everyone pays when they purchase something – when it is within the city limits, Denton gets it). Both of these revenue sources have been on the increase as of late. Property values are up 2.93% from last year. Sales taxes have been steadily increasing for months and 2010-11 showed a 7.8% increase from the year before. This gives the city budget considerably more “wiggle room” and it leads to a more positive budgetary experience (meaning less cuts). But keep in mind, the city is just getting out of a couple of really tough years where many cuts were made. Much of the new revenue will go to bringing some of those cuts back in.
I highly recommend every citizen download a copy of the proposed budget, go to your favorite coffee shop, order a strong cup of coffee, and read at least the “Budget Overview” section (pp. 17-41). This will give you a good handle on the various sources of revenue and types of expenditures, as well as give you a glimpse into the major highlights of this year’s proposal. You’ll be a better citizen for it…
As always, contact me if you have any questions or comments – kevin.roden@cityofdenton.com or 940-206-5239.
TWU Expansion Plan – Report to Council
The report is in pdf format and can be accessed by clicking here.