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Minutes August 06, 1997CITY OF DENTON CITY COUNCIL M1NUTES August 6, 1997 The Council convened into a joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission on Wednesday, August 6, 1997 at 5:30 p.m. in the Central Jury Room of the Denton Municipal Complex. PRESENT: Mayor Miller; Mayor Pro Tem Brock; Council Members Beasley, Kristoferson, Cochran, Durrance and Young. AB SENT: Council Members Durrance and Young 1. The Council continued the review and discussion, schedule of topics, and gave staff direction on Vision, policies, and the Comprehensive and Denton Development Plans. Dave Hill, Director of Planning and Development, stated the scheduling of future meetings appeared to have two parallel tracks that were recommended. One was for implementation and the second was how to focus on the plan. Under implementation, the Council would be asked to consider three items that included scenic corridors, park dedication and landscape regulations. Scenic corridors would be considered at the Council meetings of September 23rd and October 7th. Park dedication would be considered at the Council meetings in December/January and the landscape ordinance would go to Council in January 1998. The time frames were flexible with the park dedication issue having the longest time frame. Other items such as development impact fees, drainage policies and erosion and sedimentation control would wait for individual consideration until the broader planning issues were addressed. Council Member Young joined the meeting. Hill continued that the plan had four different levels of efforts. The first effort was information delivery in which three presentations were available to provide ideas for policy development assistance. Three speakers were available for presentations to the joint group. A videotape library was also available at the Planning Department for anyone who was interested in viewing planning documents. The second effort was an existing conditions inventory. Staff had started assembling a team to work with the DISD, UNT, NCTCOG and GIS databases to prepare a well- organized information packet for City Council use. An outline of the data to be prepared would be distributed to ensure that this effort was comprehensive. The third effort was forecasts/projections. Staff was prepared to develop a request for proposal for the development of several forecasts needed to plan effectively for Denton, should Council indicate support for such a task. Demographic projections, land use, demand analyses, and fiscal support impact analyses would be extremely helpful to provide insight into Denton's position in the Metroplex market, and would enable consistent interdepartmental coordination on several planning levels. A Development Policy Committee made up of a staff committee of department heads would be assembled by the City Manager. The Development Policy Committee would be assigned the task of staff-level policy coordination. The coordination of interrelated policies and the assessment of the relationship between policy choices and technical operations was needed to allow the staff, through the City Manager, to provide input at early stages in the planning process. The transition from the DDP to the new "Denton Plan" would take time. A proper sequence of events must be allowed to take place if a good plan with public support was expected. Council Member Kristoferson asked where overlay districts were in the process. City of Denton City Council Minutes August 6, 1997 Page 2 Hill replied that it was really a question of the definition of overlay districts. It could be a tool held in reserve to see if it was needed to serve some of the policy statements. Council Member Kristoferson asked if it was no longer going to be discussed. Hill stated that it had been put on hold until it could be determined the best place to address it. Mayor Pro Tem Brock asked about scenic corridors. Hill stated that scenic corridors dealt only with billboards. Jim Engelbrecht asked if overlay districts would be included in aesthetics planning. Hill stated that it was in the policy document that the Council would consider. Council Member Cochran asked about being more specific regarding forecasts and projections. He had some questions about the economic nature of the growth and trying to establish what type of growth the community needed to sustain itself. He would like to address the discrepancies between the business and residential tax base. Mayor Miller suggested checking with the Council of Governments for some projections and forecasts for employment growths. Hill stated that staff had some ideas for a schedule of presentations and some implementation and was trying to save some time to work on the actual planning process. Mayor Miller asked for Council opinion on the schedule for track one. The second track dealt with presentations. Consensus of the Council was to proceed with track one for scheduling. Mayor Miller stated that track two dealt with the schedule for presentations. Hill stated that he had received five vision contributions. He would look for reoccurring themes to put them together for a draft statement. He stated that the Vision and DDP documents were merged and reorganized as per the recently suggested planning process. The document appeared to be bottom heavy with most of the elements more appropriate at the comprehensive plan. There was a lot of replication that could be eliminated. The existing conditions and forecasts phases needed to be addressed as part of the plan if the desire to serve the public education need was to be fulfilled. The policy phase might not be as comprehensive in scope as Council and the Planning and Zoning Commission wanted. One policy item, land use, was not listed among the other policy topics. Council Member Beasley felt that the topics needed to be more general. She felt they were too narrow for where they were in the process. Mayor Pro Tem Brock stated that it would reassure the Council and the Planning and Zoning City of Denton City Council Minutes August 6, 1997 Page 3 Commission if a list of common ideas from the Vision process was included. Hill stated that there was a need to find common links in the policy document. Those would be subgroups to include with the major categories. He questioned if Council wanted to go through some of those categories and list concerns/ways that Council would like to organize the policies. He stated that there would be several types of transportation with a policy for each included in the document. Mayor Miller stated that the policy statements would look at congestion issues. The projections would indicate how much worse conditions were going to be unless dollars were available to correct the problems. Hill stated that it could be looked at in terms of public investment strategies or in terms of how to work towards private street dedications. Mayor Miller felt that it needed to be related to projections and forecasts of growth. Mayor Pro Tem Brock felt that there might be a problem going ahead as previously thought. Mobility was more than just how many vehicles could be carried on a street. Council Member Young left the meeting. Mayor Miller felt that there was a need to think through on impact of development not only in Denton but also in other areas. Hill stated that another area to look at was the trend that there would be a higher number of trips per capita in single-purpose zoning districts. Council Member Cochran stated that an aspect to consider for the community was no long lines to deal with at intersections and to be able to walk to certain areas. Hill stated that there were ways to look at different levels of service internally within the city and ways to get in and out of the city. Engelbrecht stated that he would like to see a policy statement which would monitor roadways both secondary and primary arterials for a level "C" activity. Svehla stated that such a policy statement would be that the City was going to improve the internal transportation of the city. Hill suggested that too much time might be spent on certain issues. He suggested not using August 15th as meeting date but rather take time to develop a document for Council to review. Track one would remain on schedule. Council Member Cochran suggested a park dedication policy that would allow smaller parcels to be donated to the city. Hill stated that that policy would be looked at from a new starting point. The public involvement proposal would be more structured and would have all of the stakeholders identified and how to City of Demon City Council Minutes August 6, 1997 Page 4 involve them in the process. With no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:00 p.m. JACK MILLER, MAYOR CITY OF DENTON, TEXAS JENNIFER WALTERS CITY SECRETARY CITY OF DENTON