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Minutes January 24, 1995348 CITY ~F DENTON CITY COUNCIL MINUTES -., January 24, 1995 The Council convened into the Closed Meeting on Tuesday, January 24, 1994 at 9:15 p.m. in the Civil Defense Room. Present: Mayor Castleberry; Mayor Pro Tem Brock; Council Members Cott, Miller, Perry, Chew, and Smith. Absent: None 1. The Council considered the following in Closed Meeting: ae Be Ce Legal Matters -- Under TEX. GOV'T CODE Sec. 551.071 1. Consider settlement demand in the claim of Frances Rodgers. Real Estate -- Under TEX. GOV'T CODE Sec. 551.072 1. Discussion regarding acquisition of pr~pe~ty~ for expansion of the City's landfill. Personnel/Board Appointments -- Under TEX. GOV'T CODE Sec. 551.074 Discuss City Attorney applicants and selection process. The Council convened into Work Session on Tuesday, January 24, 1995 at 6:00 p.m. in the City Council Chambers. Present: Mayor Castleberry; Mayor Pro Tem Brock; Council Members Cott, Miller, Perry, Chew, and Smith. Absent: None 1. Council received~a presentation by Corgan Architect Associates and discussed City Ha~l Renovation Projects. Betty McKean, Executive Director of Economic Development and Municipal Services, gave the Council background on the renovation projects. She said Staff was seeking direction from Council regarding the scope of the projects and the size of the budget Staff would have to work with. Staff also wanted to have Council representatives to work with Staff and the architect on an ongoing basis through completion of the project. McKean said Staff was about to go to bid on the City Hall West renovations. She anticipated employees moving in the facility by the end of the fiscal year. McKean indicated that in terms of the comprehensive City of Denton City Council Minutes January 24, 1995 Page 2 349 space plan Staff was ready to move forward on the facility. Bruce Hennington, Facilities Manager, reviewed the project budget and the funds available. He said the two sources were certificates of obligation issued February 1994, Municipal Complex rental agreement, and replenished by the Denton maintenance certificates of obligation issued in March of 1992. Hennington said those funds were approved for building repairs all over the City but Staff held off on several of the projects in City Hall until the renovation. The total budget was $324,000. Hennington said $200,000 was budgeted to remodel City Hall, $3,000 to move furniture and relocate offices, and $21,000 for furniture needed throughout the building. The remaining funds would be spent as designated. Council Member C6tt asked if the costs for the building were included in the budget. Hennington said the construction costs, which included moving walls and painting, was $200,000. Cott wanted to know the cost per square foot for City Hall as compared to the cost per square foot for the Denton Municipal Complex (DMC). Hennington responded that the cost per square foot was comparable to that of the DMC, $20 - $24 per square foot He said some aspects of the renovation at City Hall would be m~re expensive due to the architectural design. Brent Byers of Corgan Associates reviewed the floor plan and discussed how Council could use the budgeted funds. Byers said the DMC was not originally included in the space study but became an option because Departments did not have adequate space. From the study it was also determined that the best use for City Hall West would be a Planning and Development Center. Once Engineering, Planning and Development, and Building Inspections moved to City Hall West there would be space available for departments to expand. He also discussed ADA compliance with regard to City Hall and said the use of the building would ultimately determine the level of ADA accessibility. Code' compliance was another important issue discussed. Byers said when City Hall was built the code requirements were of a different kind. For example, the building was not sprinklered and egress and access requirements were also different. He felt strongly that those fire issues should be dealt with architecturally particularly in the lower level. Byers also felt strongly that the facility was a wonderful structure and said it had the foundation to develop a consistently, significant architectural building in the community. He said they wanted to be sensitive to that in the remodeling. He felt Council could deal with issues such as the lighting and the PA address system in the Council Chambers and not a lot of the aesthetic issues and still 350 City of Denton City Council Minutes January 24, 1995 Page 3 consume some good size dollars. In the main corridor, however, he felt Council may wish to stay with the original image and lighting. More modernized remodeling could be done in the areas occupied by Departments. Harrell mentioned that Byers showed tentative work that was done more than a year ago and said those issues were open for discussion and revision. The process Staff suggested was to have a couple of Council representatives work with the Staff to develop proposals and make a recommendation to the full Council. Secondly, Harrell mentioned that from Staff's stand point the $325,000 identified was a modest budget for some of the things Council mentioned having accommodated in the building. Those things would need to be taken up during budget discussions. Miller expressed concern that there was no clear cut entrance to the building and wanted to know if that was a charge of the committee to look at an entrance to City Hall. Byers said those things had been discussed and he made two suggestions, to have an after hours entrance to the Council Chambers and a main entrance for the day to day operations. Miller wanted to know what the state of the art Council Chambers would involve. Byers said changing the audio system would be a major part. Miller asked if space would be provided for the Mayor and Council Members and also a place for them to meet with citizens. Perry wanted to make sure that somewhere in the renovation Staff considered a place to hold work sessions that would be accessible to the public and television. He also wanted the room to be equipped with modern equipment so that everyone would be able to see, hear, and communicate clearly. He felt a room designed for those purposes was extremely important. Cott did not feel the Council Chambers was the Dlace for entertainment, or where the taxpayer wanted to pay for a luxury. He felt the taxpayer wanted fire and ADA accessibility. McKean said Staff considered both the interior and exterior issues to be considered. She wanted to sit down with the Council representatives and work with Staff on solving those issues. McKean felt that once the interior issues were resolved the exterior issues would evolve. Bruce Hennington discussed the estimated time line accelerated to fit in to the budget time frame. The first step would be to establish a Council/Staff committee to study the issues. In 351 City of Denton City Council Minutes January 24, 1995 Page 4 February rough estimates would be obtained and selected. Hennington said by March they would need to begin the hiring process to have an architect on board in April. By May the Staff would begin fine tuning the numbers and in June the design drawing would be presented to the Council, Staff, and Building Committee with design drawings presented to the entire Council in July. In August Staff would work on the specifications to go to bid in September. The bids would be brought back to Council in October with construction beginning sometime in November 1995. Brock asked at what point Engineering and Planning would be moving out of City Hall. Hennington said hopefully it would be in September. Miller suggested that Staff consider reporting back to the full Council before issuing the RFP. Smith said she was really excited about the plans so far. The historical aspect of the building would upset a lot of people if too much was done t© upset the historical nature of the building. There may need to be a lot of ground work done first. Harrell said Staff would get a feel for the types of things important to the Council before bringing on the architect. Mayor asked how many Council Members Staff recommended for the committee. McKean said at least two, hopefully three. Brock, Miller, and Perry agreed to work with the Staff. 2. Council received a presentation of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the year ending September 30, 1994. Terry Kyle, with the Public Sector Services Group at Deloit and Touche, presented the financial report for the year ending September 30, 1994. They performed an audit in accord with general purpose and audit standards as well as government auditing standards. Kyle said in general there were no disagreements with the management, and they worked well with the finance department. David Pate, Audit Manager, referred to page 1 of the audit. He said their opinion was unqualified and the City's general purpose financial statement did present the financial position of the City for the year ending September 30, 1994. He called attention to the change in accounting principal due to the implementation of government accounting statement #18. The statement required any entity that owned or operated a landfill to accrue the costs of closure and post closure monitoring during the time period the 352 City of Denton City Council Minutes January 24, 1995 Page 5 landfill received waste. He said no situation was identified which was in noncompliance with federal laws and regulations. No situation was identified which was considered a material weakness in the internal control structure of the City or its federal or state programs. Pate said management had received a report identifying recommendations to assist the city in enhancing the control environment and improve efficiency. Other items were noted relating to the amortization of investment premiums and discounts, accrual of workers' compensation, incurred but not reported claims, external quality control review of the internal audit department, the year end procedures checklist, and automation of the trial balance preparation process. Kathy Dubose, Executive Director of Finance, presented the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). She reviewed the major funds and noted the results of operations for those funds. Cott said.assuming the federal government ended up with a balanced budge,, how would the City have been effected had there been funds coming from the federal government. Harrell referred Cott to the single audit report. He said it listed every federal grant the City received for the last year. Miller made a comparison of the results of the tax rates presented in the CAFR. In the last 10 years City taxes increased 26.8%, DISD tax went up 77.3%, and the County tax rate increased 41.5%. Brock asked for clarification on the total outstanding current and delinquent assessments. DuBose said they were special assessments. If there was a street cut or curb put in for a particular area or citizen where they shared in the cost of the improvement, their payment to the City would be recorded there. Brock mentioned the difference from $279,000 1985 and only $4,608 in the last year. DuBose said no current assessments were established during that time so the number only reflects where individuals have been paying down their balances. Harrell said it used to be that Denton would construct street improvements by making special assessm~nt~. In the last 10 years Council felt those improvements should be done with taxes not special assessments. He also commended the Finance Staff for their high quality work. Their hard work gave Council more flexibility in the upcoming budget year. He also added that the utility funds were in fine shape. 353 City of Denton City Council Minutes January 24, 1995 Page 6 Mayor Castleberry said it was the first time since he had been on Council that all of the utilities had come out in the black. 3. Council reviewed and distributed the 1995-96 Budget Priority Questionnaire. Harrell said delivery of the questionnaire was backed up due to questions received. Council was asked to return the questionnaire in one week. He reviewed how Staff used the information provided by the Council. Traditionally, all of the services provided by the City were listed by functional category on the questionnaire. Council was asked to give 2 points of evaluation, one viewing each City service vis a vis another City service and the other to give a relative feelihg of how that particular service should be prioritized. Miller asked at what point he would know whether or not additional manpower and equipment was needed. Harrell commented that if Council said current efforts should be substantially increased Staff would interpret that as there were things Staff could be doing in that area that was not currently being done to the satisfaction of the Council. Staff would then suggest packages in the budget process to strengthen the efforts and improve the product being produced. That could be accomplished by adding Staff or taking other steps. Miller asked Harrell to take the converse and suppose Council said to continue current effort. He wanted to know how that would fit into the formula. Harrell responded that Staff would take the information provided in the questionnaire to help make tough budgetary recommendations. It gave Staff a general feel of Council's priorities. Cott asked if it was relatively easily for the manager to give the current year priorities. He said he would feel more comfortable if he saw a list of Staff's current priorities. Harrell said that could be accomplished by taking last year's questionnaire and critiquing it. He said Staff would bring back Council's compiled results and ask for comments. Brock asked what Council would be ranking under other services and issues - current hotel and motel tax contributions. She was not sure if that meant to evaluate the amount being distributed or allocating according to the percentages. Harrell said that was a good point since there was no flexibility to greatly increase efforts because the City was at the maximum amount it could allocate. He said the ranking on that particular 354 City of Denton City Council Minutes January 24, 1995 Page 7 question would probably not tell Staff much. Mayor Castleberry reminded Council to ret.urn the questionnaire by January 31, 1995. 4. Council received a report, held a discussion and gave staff direction regarding the restructuring of landfill rates to provide adequate disposal capacity for the community Until mid-1997. Howard Martin, Director of Environmental Operations, said Staff had discussed the existing landfill site at length with the Council at the Planning Retreat and projected that the current site would be fully utilized by mid 1997. Those projections were based on the amount of solid waste being received at the time. In 1994 there was a 25% increase over the 1994 rate. The concern was that the existing landfill space was being utilized faster than expected. Martin said in order to maintain the 1997 schedule Staff felt they needed to.discourage about 50,000 cubic yards per year. Staff reviewed the customer base and determined that there was a large increase in cash and contract customers. A 53% increase was experienced in the contract customer and cash customers increased 130%. Staff developed 6 options to accomplish that. Martin indicated that the PUB made it very clear that they did not want to adversely impact economic development in the City. They wanted to maintain the landfill and its remaining life for Denton customers. If they could not slow the rate from outside the community at least sufficient revenue would be received to offset any transportation and disposal to a neighboring site. Charlie Watkins, Superintendent of Solid Waste, said residential tonnage decreased by 3%, the compacted commercial waste increased by 4%, and the uncompacted waste from the commercial division increased by 35%. There was a 53% increase in the cash customer category and a 130% increase in the contract category. Watkins indicated that 34% of cash tonnage came from outside of Denton. He said private haulers were the biggest contributors to the landfill. Watkins compared the rates charged by surrounding competitors. He said if Denton wanted to drive customers elsewhere a rate of $15 would probably do it. Staff reviewed several oDtions of excluding cash customers from outside the City. Staff proposed to require the driver carrying the load to present a driver's license to check for a Denton address. The Board recommended to raise the rate for all cash customers from outside of Denton and private haulers. Chew asked if the recommendation was to raise the rate for all customers hauling in from outside the city. He supported the Board's recommendation. Miller asked if that would apply to all customers outside the City. Watkins responded yes. City of Denton City Council Minutes January 24, 1995 Page 8 355 Miller asked if the proposal would get the City through until 1997 based on present projections. Watkins said based on current projections it would. Miller also agreed with the recommendation. Smith also agreed but wondered if the $15 would drive people away as much as anticipated. Watkins said Staff would continue to monitor the rates of surrounding competitors. Cott suggested that Denton haulers have a piece of paper that said if they live and~-work in Denton they get to come to the landfill. Watkins said it would be helpful to have that kind of agreement. Smith asked if it would be possible to have a sticker to go on the truck that regularly came in the landfill. Watkins said they could place a notation in the computer so they would not have to repetitively check individuals. He said Staff would follow up on those suggestions. Brock said people with stickers on their truck could rent their truck out. Perry motioned, Brock seconded to direct staff to bring the recommendation back in ordinance form. On roll vote Cott "aye", Brock "aye", Miller "aye", Castleberry "aye", Perry "aye", Chew "aye", Smith "aye". Motion passed unanimously. Meeting adjourned at 7:53 p.m. with no further business. VERONICA S. OGLESB~-3 DEPUTY CITY SECRETARY CITY OF DENTON, TEXAS CITY OF DENTON, T~S