Thank you. We'll now call the Arlington City Council to order for our afternoon work session. City Council will now go into close session at 12.28 p.m. on May 8, 2018 in accordance with the following sections of VTCA Government Code, Chapter 551.071, consultation with attorney. Point 072, deliberation regarding real property. Point 087, deliberation regarding economic development negotiations. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm sorry. Now, I'd like to call our work session back to order and our first item of business is a cultural education facilities corporation. And Philip Lombagans, executive director of North Texas Higher Education Authority and Assistant Secretary of the Arlington Higher Education Finance Corporation. Philip, there he is. All right, good to see you, Philip. And let me just say thank you for all your work, really appreciate what you've been doing. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Just real quick as was pointed out there on the Executive Director of North Tech's Higher Education Authority. We were established back in 1978 with the support of Arlington in Dinton and a few years ago. We changed a bit our sponsorship and now City of Arlington is our sole sponsoring governmental entity. So we thank you for that. Over the years, we have served hundreds of thousands of students and families in Texas and here locally. And we've helped them by providing low-cost education loans, by providing discounted repayment terms, by providing institutional scholarships, and by providing outreach initiatives. And in 2010, we were approached by a local charter school, Arlington Classics, and they asked us if we would be able to help them with low-cost funds. And so we looked into issuing their bonds for their campus on Bowen Road that they were acquiring at the time and under state law, North Texas Higher Education Authority was not permitted to issue their bonds. So we looked at creating a new entity. We came to the city, the city approved the creation of the Arlington Higher Education Finance Corporation. We issued their bonds. They added that campus. And as a result, we get a small fee. And so we decided, let's expand this. And I think it was our plan going into it, but let's expand what we do in Texas and here locally. And take the small fee that we get, and let's leverage it and promote higher education as much and as far as we can. And so that's what this presentation is about that's in front of you and on the screen. The first half of it is to recap what Arlington Higher Education Finance Corporation has done since 2010. And then what we're coming for today is to request from Council the consideration of sponsoring another entity that we would the same board would serve on called the Greater Texas Cultural Education Finance Facilities Corporation. And so if you move to the next, I guess I need to forward these, Donna. So on this next slide, what you see is that the Arnington Higher Ed was created under a specific state law as it relates to test education code chapter 53, where a nonprofit entity, and we're basically a conduit issuer. And so we've assisted in helping over 20 charter and private schools throughout Texas. Many of them here locally. And we've provided financing for close to a billion dollars over the last eight years. You know, move to the next slide. Just kind of recap real quick how this process works. A school or a borrower would come to us. We would step in. We would along with a lot of help organize the financing. We would issue the bonds to investors. And then at that point, the school becomes a debt toward to the investor and repays a loan to to the investors. We stepped out of the transaction and the school receives tax exempt bonds or loans, which reduces the cost of their debt tremendously. And so that's why a lot of these charter schools, they're unlike a typical district where they can't issue their own bonds. They look to a conduit to issue their bonds for them. If you go to the next slide, what we get out of that is a roughly 10 basis points. So on a typical transactions about $25 million, we may receive $25,000. Out of that, we may pay some legal costs, but right off the top, we pay the city of Arlington, 25% to help the city promote education, offerings that the city may have for its employees, tuition reimbursement, that sort of thing. There is no employees at Arlington higher ed, it's a volunteer board. There's about 3% of admin costs. This covers DNO insurance, some travel costs, some board meeting costs, but virtually every dime goes towards supporting the City of Arlington and supporting North Texas higher education authorities outreach group called Inspired. We work in 12 local high schools running what are called Go Centers, their college and career centers, within the high schools that are an extension of the counselor's office. We deal with between 7,500 and 10,000 students and parents a year helping them look and navigate their way towards college and careers. And in addition, we operate from different programs around the city called Destination Success. We host one in the fall at Sam Houston High School, another one in Mansfield at the Performing Arts Center, which every all students in the area are welcome to. And we also put on evening events throughout the year. Everything we do is free of charge. And what we do with Arlington Highred helps to sustain those outreach programs that we perform. The next slide, you just kind of see a visual of how much we have donated through the years. It took us a while to kind of get going. But by 2014, we were beginning to do more and more of these financings. In fact, we've closed 25 financings through 2017. We have two more that should be closing any day now. Through that, we've donated to the city $127,000, roughly, again, for education purposes here at the city $127,000 roughly, again, toward for education purposes here at the city. And we've donated $237,000 roughly to inspired our outreach division. And we have about 117 in the pipeline to be donated. So what we are proposing today is for the Greater Texas cultural education finance facilities corporation to be created. It be created very similar to how we created Arlington higher ed. We would have the same board would serve on both organizations. And again, it's a nonprofit organization sponsored by the city. We issue bonds. The difference is that it is created under a different part of Texas law, which really expands our ability to do more of these financing. Right now we are pretty much capping out on the number of financing is more and likely that we're going to be able to do. And we would like to continue to leverage this as much as we can to continue to promote more and more educational benefits to the city and the surrounding communities and so with the greater Texas cultural ed facility we would be able to fund nonprofit facilities such as theaters museums use education organizations like YMCA's and others like that hospital facilities rehab rehab facilities, and senior living care facilities. And to give you an idea of what that means, that's about three times the number of potential financing that we would be able to be a part of last year in the higher ed side of things, similar to what we did at Arlington Higher Education Finance Court. There were about $700 million in bonds issued through those types of facilities. Under the cultural ed facilities, there was close to $2 billion. So it's roughly three times the number of financing that we could potentially be involved in. And so what we think and believe is that by creating this entity, we can leverage again more of these financing's more fee income and leverage that into helping more kids pursue college and careers here in the Arlington area. So with that, I open it up to the Board for any, to counsel for any questions you may have. Tell me questions or comments, Ms. Thalman. Yeah, just a comment. I just want to say I really appreciate what you're doing here. I have a passion for helping kids get the information that they need to pursue higher education. So I don't know if you guys know this. I'm the first member of my family to attend college and graduate. So anyway, I'm just really excited about what you're doing. I'm glad that you guys saw the need and the opportunity and you're filling that gap for our residents and our students and just to emphasize no cost to Arlington, which is we love that. so thank you. Thank you. Mr. Glassby. Thank you, Mayor. So this program started in 2010. So up until that point, charter schools and private schools were in pretty tough streets trying to expand, right? Yeah. There are other higher education finance corporations around the state that they could have potentially gone to. Some of them are a little bit more difficult to work with than we are. At more hoops to jump through. But there were other facilities that they could go to potentially to get funding before we came along. I could. Other question I would have. have assuming that this expansion that you're looking at comes about, would that have any limitations on what schools that may be interested in expanding? They would have access to or this is a stricter than the expansion. No, this would just expand the type of financing. We do, we'd continue to do some financing through Arlington, higher ed. We could still do some school financing through the greater Texas group, but it would open us up to be able to do more financings for, especially senior care facilities. They are just a growing need in the state and around the country. And we see that that is where we would likely be doing many many more financings in the coming months is primarily in senior care facilities. In fact, there's another local conduit issuer and last year I think they issued bonds for 10 different cultural ed facilities and seven of them were senior living care facilities just to kind of put it in perspective. Other questions, comments? Philip, this sounds extremely exciting and really able to broaden our horizon and with our city growing, there's gonna be those opportunities here with it, but Council are y'all all supportive of what you're hearing right here. Seeing all heads nodding, Philip, I think this one's pretty much a no brainer. This is awesome. Y'all've done such great work, and we have evidence of scattered throughout our city of how successful this has been. So we'll look forward to finding some opportunities here to come to you to help with some more financing for our facilities. Thank you for any work. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next we will move to short term rental and Mr. Mike Bass or Code Compliance Administrator. Thank you Mayor. afternoon mayor and council like bass, Code Compliance Services Administrator. So the purpose of today's discussion is to review the recommendations of the council as it relates to the proposed short term rental regulatory elements that were discussed last week. So, at your places, again, this week you have a marked-up version of the regulatory elements we discussed in order to ensure that we heard your direction clearly last week. I'm going to review each element along with your recommendations so that if council desires we can begin to develop some language for you to review at a later time. So as it relates to the regulatory mechanism, the Council recommended to not prohibit short-term rentals. You all recommended not to utilize current regulations. you you you you you you you you you I'm going to be a little bit more on the other side. I'm going to be a little bit more on the other side. I'm going to be a little bit more on the other side. I'm going to be a little bit more on the other side. I'm going to be a little bit more on the other side. I'm going to be a little bit more on the other side. I'm, now you're at some Mr. Glass being then, Mr. Shepherd. Probably going to mention what Mr. Shepherd was. Last week we had this conversation about maximum. And we all, we have here 12 adults. But I thought we were all, there was some concern about overloading with children, possibly. And what was, I thought we did talk about to a period, right? Sorry mayor. I don't remember where we, that was one of my two questions, but I don't remember where we landed. I think Mr. Parker suggested the carbon-based unit definition. And we all kind of be 12-period. So I don't know if we agreed on that, whether it be 12th period or 12 adults or what. So what that was, one of my questions. Okay. Do you want to discuss that here? What's your opinion, Mr. Parker? Go with the carbon-based unit to affect it. It'd be 12. It's clear to no matter what the age that it be. No, total. It's just me. My opinion would be no matter what you, the two times the number of bedrooms plus two for say a three bedroom house is eight people. And that's the maximum you can have in that house no matter how old they are. But the bottom line is, is if you have a very large house with five bedrooms and that 12 could be the maximum that you could possibly have in that house. If I might, I'll wait for Mr. Shepherd here. Mr. Shepherd has something to go on. Yes, Rob. Well, and I had a different question, so if we want to put this issue to bed, where we move on. Now let's try to get this one. So what about that number? You heard the max and there would be two adults for each bedroom or excuse me, two people per bedroom, plus two additional ones with a maximum no matter how many bedrooms it would be 12 Yes, it would so it'd be 12 people people Regardless because on this one. It's just not to exceed 12 adults. Yeah, so I'm good with that. Okay. Everybody are out with that. So we say 12 persons. Yeah, 12 persons per bedroom. Total occupancy not to exceed 12 persons. Okay. I'm separate. You have floor. Yes. Oh, thank you. And Galen's still here. No? Oh, there you are. We talked during executive session about there being three specific categories and either I didn't take notes or I lost the notes I took. Can you remind us of what those three categories that we were discussing were? Yes, sir, Mr. Shepherd, Gail and Gaden, Assistant City Attorney. The three categories would be the home sharing. So the co-occupants, so the owner occupied with the person taking one portion of the dwelling unit. The second type would be the home-owner rented, home-rented short-term rental, where the homestead or the person's primary residence is rented out occasionally when the person for the whole dwelling unit. And then the third type is the secondary, it's just a piece of property owned by the individual. It's not their residence and it's rented out for just the purpose of short term rentals. Is it the medication? Dr. Marsh. That was your purchase transient. Thank you, Mr. Myers. That would be referred to as transient. Thank you. Mr. Rogers. Yes, Councilmember Myers, that would be referred to as the vacation transient rental. Thank you. Yes. The purpose of me asking that question, if it is okay with Council, so we can begin getting the definitions consistent if we could in our discussion of restrictions have these as our words. So when Mr. Bass says prohibit vacation rentals, whatever word it was that you used Gal Galen STR, short-term rental or transit use less than 30 days, or prohibit vacation rentals, but allow home sharing or home renting. I think we're getting ourselves somewhat confused by the nomenclature that we're using, and I'd like for us to get consistent on what it is we're going to allow and or prohibit. So that's all I was trying to do. Okay, I think that makes sense. Mr. Parker. If I could try to categorize those. Essentially, I think there's three particular avenues that we can take. One is to prohibit vacation rentals, which is a rental where you just go away from your home and you rent that prohibit that use whatsoever. And the second is to go ahead, and that's the most scorched-earth avenue to go down. The second avenue would be to tie it to, as Galen said, a homestead exemption, which would allow you to rent your residence if you would like, or home share it, either one. And it would be your residence and you would be renting it out and you would not be on site and you would have to answer to your neighbors when you came home after that rental was complete. And the third avenue, and that's kind of the middle of the road avenue, and the third avenue would be to have vacation rentals, which means that you're not there and it's what we have right now. People who don't own their homes or excuse me own the particular residents, they own it but they don't live there and they can rent that resident as they see fit. That's essentially what we have now. And so I think one of the we have to decide the first thing we have to do is decide which one of those three avenues we're going to go down. And I for one I am still in favor of the homestead exemption. It does many things that are desirable and it takes care of a lot of things that can go wrong. If you'd like, I can go over those. Okay. Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Parker? Would you like for him to go over those or feel like you know? Okay. I don't know. Good. Okay. Miss Cape art. Well, I tend to agree with Mr. Parker. I think the thing that That makes the most sense to me is you know, we've got two property owners and two property owners rights were dealing with right and so were dealing with, right? And so to protect the integrity and character of the neighborhood for that to be your primary residence and your right to rent it out is a thought. But the neighborhood has the assurance, you know, you're going to be back there. And so if indeed there truly has been a problem, they know you. They live next to you and you're a part and a fabric of their neighborhood. And so I think that's less problematic from some of the things we've been experiencing in the city that's for. Mr. Shepherd. So I guess I look at it a little bit differently. The home sharing and home rented, I think was the way Galen referenced it. In both of those instances, the homeowner returns. And in both of those instances, in my opinion, it's my house. I live there. I can do whatever I want. So if I want to go to Italy for a month, and I want some Italian people coming here for a month, it's my prerogative. Six months, I don't know whatever. So to me, there's a there's a very distinct line between the homeowner owned property, which is used occasionally for transient people, even if it is to go to the draft party, you know, I want to go get a hotel for the weekend and run out my property for a weekend. So to me that there's a line between I own the house and I conduct whatever it is I conduct there legally. And then there's the other side where I'm a landlord, whether it's short term or long term it doesn't really matter, I'm not there. And so the permitting and all of the requirements that we've talked about become a little more difficult for me in the first instance, the home owner thing. Because, you know, if I want to live in an unsafe environment without a fire alarm, that's my choice as a human being to do that. And if I want a short-term rent, I hate to use that word, but if I want to let somebody stay at my house, Saturday and Sunday for the draft party, in a potentially unsafe environment, then that's my prerogative. So I see them as completely separate beasts. One, I don't, I think it's a very slippery slope. If I start telling any of you what you can and can't do with your home, it's your home. You live there at least some of the time. If a homestead exemption is something that we feel like is categorically a litmus test, a bright line. Well, if it's your homestead, obviously you live there. I think that's right. Legally, I think you could have a homestead and live someplace else. But that's what we have lawyers for. So to me, I think we need to either decide that it's fish or foul, and if it's fish, let's stop, agree that we're gonna stop talking about what the fish are and focus on whether we're gonna have the foul, which is the short-term rental, which is the non-owner occupied property that somebody has as an investment and its primary purpose is to lease it out on a transient basis. So I believe that our discussion of both concepts is confusing because for me, I don't want to regulate what Charlie does at his house under any stretch of the imagination. So that's a separate animal to me. Now do I want to regulate what Charlie does with the house next door that he bought as an investment property is a different question for me. I would like us to kind of start eating the elephant one bite at a time, not saying we're making decisions that can't be unmade if we discover new information later. But I think it's better if we all are looking at the same picture when we're making decisions because I'm afraid we're looking at different pictures and saying, oh well I think that's okay for this, but it's not okay for that. And we got to figure out what it's okay for what it is and what it is anyway. I'm sorry. OK, that makes sense. That makes a long sense. As a clarification, no here with Mr. Parker and Miss K. Part, I think they were proposing that the investment short term rentals would not be a part of it. So you get that one they were proposing the other that the only short term rentals would be in your residence that you own as a homestead. Is that right? Is that right? Okay. And Mayor, and for me, it was now, if indeed, that's your property and you go to Italy for a year and you rent it out, that's okay with me. I mean, that's, you are coming back there eventually or you're gonna sell it or whatever you're gonna do. But it's not a property that you bought to turn into a profit center necessarily. It's your home. And so when I start thinking of neighborhoods, most people buy those homes as their biggest investment with the intent of living there and raising their families and doing all those things. Not necessarily, and it's a new animal for all of us, not necessarily thinking that right next door, somebody's going to buy that property, and there's going to be a revolving door if people coming through there every weekend. That's different than a longer term rental, which is, now somebody could technically be there for a week and leave, but that's not the Now somebody could technically be there for a week and leave, but that's not the intent of a longer termed rental. The intent is you get an attendant in there and people are happy and you know that. But when it becomes a complete turnover, potentially every week, that becomes disruptive to the character of a neighborhood. And there's just no other way about it. But I get it. But if I bought my house for the sole purpose of just turning it into a revolving door, I would have had second thoughts about that because I would have a concern about what that might do to the integrity of a neighborhood. But if it's your home that you own, you're going to go away, you're getting transferred to wherever and you want to rent it out, that almost becomes a long-term rental. But you want to rent it out. Okay, that's fine. My concern is when you get people who buy the properties with the sole intent of just having a revolving door coming in and out of that neighborhood and the disruption it causes. Now, I come back to whose property and whose right? I didn't buy my property next door for a profit center to set up on the other side of me. I didn't do that. And I don't think most people do. And I don't think most neighborhoods are even aware that this could happen because it's so new. And so they're looking to us to put in some reasonable, I mean, want to call them regulations, but I guess for lack of a better word, that protects everybody's right, not just the one who bought the property and wants to make a profit. The ship and my point in all of that is this, if we're all okay with homeowner, rental, however it's classified, but we're not okay with, unquote short-term rentals. Then let's just say if it's a homeowner rental, you can do it. We're not going to mess in your business. I'm not going to regulate what Charlie does at his house period. All this list can be chunked into trash can because it's all designed to regulate and restrict the picture that you're seeing of the devastated neighborhood. If we're going to go with you can do with your house, whatever you want to do, and we don't want short-term rentals period, let's just say there's a ban on short-term rentals and let's move on and be done with the discussion. But if we're going to regulate short-term rentals, let's stop talking about people that own their homes. People that own their homes can do whatever they want to with their home owned. The thing we're talking about is the business. I know I'm not making any sense, because I see everybody over there being really questioning like, what do you mean? But it's exactly what you're saying. I'm just trying to make a fine point of it. We're gonna spend weeks or months talking about regulating what people do at their homes. That's not how this time it came up. This topic came up because we have people who own a home that don't live there and never have and rent it out on a short-term basis. If we're going to talk about regulating that, then let's regulate it. If we're going to say we don't want that, then let's say we don't want it. Let's don't talk about regulating something we don't want. Swam. This is where I'm confused because I thought we had talked about if you own your home and you're a homestead. And also I think and I can be corrected if I'm wrong but is it not true? If you homestead you have to live there. You can't homestead it and live in full or even though you don't homestead there is that You can get the lawyer to come up here and say but you can have you can have Okay, cuz I'm a Texas law standpoint you can have a homestead on a property that you do not reside on Okay, well that's where I now whether there's somebody tell me yeah, whether ad volorum taxes can be lowered Now, whether there's weather, whether at Valorum taxes can be lowered on, because I don't know, but you can have. I think that was one of the things that we, at some point I know I talked to somebody who said, if I can buy a house and I can homestead it, but I'm gonna live over here at 101, and I'm gonna have that as my short-term rental. Okay, see, that's where I got confused. I didn't think you could do that. And that's what I thought some attorney, somewhere, maybe it was in the city, is that right, Gaelin? Generally what we're seeing, many of the cities are requiring a proof of homestead. Some jurisdictions have just a little quickie form. It's basically just a certification says, this is my homestead that they have on record. And then if they have the documentation to prove that, normally it can be as simple as bringing in, showing that they have an exemption with the Terren County appraisal district. But that's not the point. The point is, do they have to live there? That's the point. Can I have a home? I can prove to you I've got a homestead. In fact, we've seen that happen. Yes. But I live somewhere else and I rent this as a short term rental. Yes. Now I see the finance director headed this way with intent and purpose in the side. So maybe that's where I heard because that was something I was not clear on. Mike Finley, chief financial officer, search engines rule. On the Comptroller's website, what it says is that you have to live there as of January 1st, but you can move away for up to two years and still maintain your home state exemption. Okay, then that makes a difference. But also, when I, I I, I'm not through Robert, wait just a second. So, even if we said, we're doing away with all these short term mills that people have 16 of them here, and we're not going to do that. But we will go with homestead. Then I thought we talked about, do we want those people to have a permit or a register and do we want to keep up with whether they're paying your hot tax or not? Those would be restrictions on even what we're talking about. Now, okay. Ms. K. Poorn. And Robert, to your point, what I think I'm in some of the forums that we were in through the campaign and stuff, and obviously this topic came up frequently What I'm hearing a lot of is people want clarity and so I had you know one lady She rents out her bedrooms and she said is that considered her short-term rental? And do I need to this and do I need to that so I Get it you're saying all short-term rentals or just those properties that you don't live in and you just rent them out for that. But that's not the public to use it. The public views it is much more cloudy than that. The public is saying if I'm renting out a bedroom I'm basically running a short term rental. That's how they believe it. And so what are my guidelines or what does this have as a city weigh in on that. Then there's the other category of the longer, I even call it a longer shorter term rental, but anyway, as you can see, it's not clarity. We don't have clarity and the public sure doesn't. And I wish we could put it in a category as easy as you said, but I don't think we can. The other thing I'd like to ask and counsel, I'm kind of getting off topic here a little bit. But do we want to talk about short-term rentals that are not in a neighborhood? So if you're buying or build a property that's really kind of in a commercial area, but you call it a residence and you buy it or build it for the strict purpose of short-term rental, that's different than setting up a short-term rental in a neighborhood to me. But we really haven't even talked about that part of it. And so I don't know where that fits into the equation. So thank you Mike for your good definition. You have to own the property on January 1 and you have to live there as your principal residence on January 1. And you can't claim any other property as your homestead. My point and this adds to the confusion if I'm a disreputable person, I own the property. It's rented on a short term basis. All I have to do is be there on January 1. I'm living there January 1. And I can't claim a homestead any place else in the state of Texas. I could live in Colorado. No way for the comptroller to figure that out. So all you got to do is be there January 1 and you can still circumvent what we're talking about. So the homestead exemption while I get your desire to latch onto something that we can tangibly look at, the people that we're trying to regulate or restrict, are the same people that are going to do exactly what I just told you I would do. Not that I'm just reputable. I just read things. Mr. Parker. Well then I would add a second sentence to the ordinance and say that you have to have a homestead exemption and it has to be your primary residence. Does that fly? It's, you know, if you have to live somewhere, okay? And if you, what we're saying is where you live is what you can rent. And that's, and because you have to come back there. We're trying to make the individual culpable of to the rest of the community that they live in and that's the concern. However you want to get there, you know if you want to take one bite out of the elephant or if you want to take a several. You got to get there it's some some way somehow and I'm sure that Molly can draft up something that is going to stand the test of time. Right Molly? Okay, but anyway the bottom line here is is that what we are trying to do and Robert I understand completely how people are going to try to circumvent in whatever way, shape, or form they can possibly do it. But I think that we're being definitive in what we, the road that we want to go down. I said there was three roads before. And so the road that we want to go down is the road where if you live in that house, and however we wanted to find it, if you live there, then you can home share, you can swap your home with somebody else, or you can do a short-term rental something less than a month out of that home, because it's your home and you will be culpable to the neighbors and the community when you come back. And I think that you're absolutely right. You can take this list right here of all the things that we're trying to do and you can toss it because that's your home. And I think that's where the validity of the entire ordinance should come from is the fact that somebody is renting the place they live. And that is a little bit more sacrosanct than having a business that you're running. It's shepard. And if that's the direction we want to go, all I'm saying is, if that's the direction that the council wants to go. Any discussion of vacation rentals, short-term rentals, all of that just chunk it. Let's just call it what it is, which is a ban on that, because I'm not going to vote on any ordinance personally that purports to regulate the activity of an individual in their own home period. Not doing it. So us talking about regulating something that we're all shaking our head that we're not going to regulate is just a waste of time. So if we're going to permit short-term rentals, let's talk about short-term rentals. If we're not going to permit it, let's just say we're going to enact a ban on it, and let's move on. All of this talk about, to me, all of this talk about what people can do with their house that they live in. They can do with their house, whatever they want to do. I don't care. So whether it's short term, long term, mid term, micro term, it doesn't matter to me. So the whole house thing was in my opinion we need to not be talking about at least for me because I'm not going to regulate it and I haven't seen anybody else around here shake their head that they're interested in regulating it including Mr. Parker who brought it up. So whether we say you can or can't do something in your own house to me is irrelevant. If we're going to talk about short termterm rentals, which in our present messed up definition of it is, if you own it, but don't live there, and you're going to rent it for less than one month, you are a short-term rental person. If we're going to discuss those folks, then let's discuss those folks. If we're not, we're saying no, we don't want any of those. Period paragraphs. The only way you can lease to someone for less than 30 days is if you own the home and live there, we're done. Yeah, well, except we need to remember our current ordinances do not address it at all. So we would have to come out with definition of abandon. Yes. That's right. That's right. I want to go on record. I'm not proposing that. Not proposing a ban on short-term rentals. I'm just trying to get us to be talking about the same thing. Well, and then and then we have the other problem though in the fact that we've got to be careful that we are I think even what we talked about over here is that we are allowing people to use them. I'm talking theoretically here with what we're talking about. We are allowing people to use, I'm talking about theoretically here of what we're talking about, we are allowing people to use their homes to be able to rent them out less than the 30 days. So it's, it comes down to definitions because what you said, there is a very definitive way of allowing it one place and not the other. So we need to define that. I think it has to be defined because we ignore it right now. There's no, we don't address it at all. So that with ignoring it, that allows Willie Nilly. I guess it doesn't allow it, but that's what's happening right now in our community is that with that being addressed, it's just running rampant. And I don't think that's the intent. And to give you an example of, you know, in Augusta, they have their homesteads that they are using the primary residence and there is accountability, major accountability there in that community because they come back and live in those neighborhoods after the major sporting event takes place. So that's it's kind of the theme of where we're going. But yeah, we still got to do some definitions even to define what was just discussed. Let me know if you're someone. But Mr. Shepherd is not proposing that, but he has defined a potential proposal here that the primary residence gets to do what we're not legislating that. We're named we're not banning that but yet if it's not the primary residence they're then potentially that would not be allowed to do short-term rentals But what go ahead and I guess the way I'd ask the question of the council although we I guess we can't vote is are we prepared to permit Rentals of less than 30 days For people that don't live in the place they're renting. That's really when you get right down to it. That's to me is the threshold question. Forget what you call it, short term, whatever. Are we prepared to be okay with someone who owns a property they don't live at. Renting that property for less than 30 days. Yes or no? And if the answer is no, and there's five of us in here that say no, done, move on. If there's five of us that are prepared to say yes, we got a lot more work to do. So, you know, that's really others that are prepared to say yes, we got a lot more work to do So you know that's really What it falls down to to me Okay, Miss Wolfe Not to complicate it, but it probably will I hear what you're saying in both situations, but I'm back to, in Miss K-Part said it, it gets back to the integrity of that neighborhood. What is that neighborhood's history? What is their intent? What is that character? What's the character of that neighborhood? and there may be some folks that I mean we know there's there are some parts of town that you could probably go to Two or three blocks and there's probably not a homeowner that lives in any of those houses. So that's just because they're not kept well, but it's whatever it is. I think that's why there's the homeowner's associations and the people live behind the gates because they wanna set their own rules. And if they wanna measure how tall somebody's a grass is, then just, you know, if y'all want to live through that, go live through that. But it comes back to a single family residential neighborhood has character and it has history. And that's what I think we have seen or heard from some folks that those short-term rentals destroy that and particularly I don't want to call it a party house but where it is just consistently turn over every weekend every week I don't know how I don't know how you define that, how, how you find a remedy there to say, gosh, we used to have a great neighborhood, we used to have a lot of little kids. Now all the kids have grown up and everybody's middle aged people, but it still has the historic and the integrity of that neighborhood. And you want to take pride. I think we know probably more people have pride in their neighborhood than they do the entire city as well. And I hate to see us destroy that concept, but I don't know how we get through it. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, to Ms. Wolf's point, there are neighborhoods like that, but we also have a lot of neighborhoods where people don't know their neighbors. They don't know that, you know, their next door house is a short term rental because not all. Okay, we're using that short term rental, but not all non-owner occupied Airbnb type homes are party houses and the operators. It's not in their interest to have a party house. That's not how they make money because they're consistently spending money on repairs and having to do all these other things. But last time we discussed this, Mr. Shepherd brought up when a lot of kids in the neighborhood are in high school, his remedy was to call the football coach. And that made a difference. When you have somebody who has an ultimate say over what's going on at that property and makes a difference. And so in the past, last week, I guess previous week, we talked about this permitting process. And the whole point of that permitting process would be to have essentially many checks and balances in place to protect the neighborhoods. Specifically, having that contact person who could be on site within 30 minutes or an hour, the quote unquote, football coach, someone who could be called. And so, yeah, personally, I'm in favor of allowing these vacation riddles if there's that type of, you know, check system in place so that it's not destroying our neighborhoods. Because the last thing that we want is a series of party houses all over the city. I know that we do have several, but that is still the vast minority of Arabian and Arlington. Mr. Parker, I would bring up the tenant that I talked about last week. talked about last week. And that is as people that are put in this position to represent the constituents of their districts, I can't, in any way, shape or form, a vote for something that I would put in their neighborhood that I would not want next to me. I cannot in any way understand how anybody could do that. And so that being the case, you got me all day long, cause next week I'm gone, okay? But the bottom line is, I'm here to represent those people. And that's my charge, that's what I'm here to do. And I'll do it as long as I sit here. Well, going along with that, protecting our neighborhoods, I think is, I think we're all in agreement, we wanna protect our neighborhoods and how far do we go to protect our neighborhoods is the question before, because we here in Arlington have some good examples of short-term rentals but then we have a lot of bad ones there too and that is a very difficult thing there to do and then we we said here and think about the accountability that is there when someone lives in a neighborhood is better than any regulation because we've already talked about how hard it's going to be for enforcement there too. And so I just have real questions on whether we could actually allow short-term rentals beyond someone in their own that owns their home and it be successful there without infringing on the neighborhoods rights of having a neighborhood where it's peaceful and people can coexist and work when you've got the lack of accountability that's there. And I don't know how we can create that accountability. And I would sure hate to err on the other side there of that, which is kind of what we have right now. Mr. Glassby. Thank you, Mayor. This is a challenging moment. As you know, the municipal policy committee started off rousing with this and came to the conclusion that this is something that we as a council need to discuss totally in that. I have a lot of, I agree a great deal with what Mr. Parker was saying because you stop and think in terms of what we should do and I can't help but reflect on the fact that me personally would I like someone moving next to me, at least buying a home next to me, and there's a constant churn. And the issue has come up with a great deal, a lot of neighborhoods you don't necessarily spend a great deal of time with your neighbors. I know some of my neighbors are my don't, but at the same time I'm comfortable with who lives in the area. And I guess the other thing that keep in mind, this is so important to us as a council that our priority is championing great neighborhoods. So if we are going to hedge on any side, it has to hedge on the side of what is best for maintaining our neighborhood integrity. Anybody else want to express Dr. Myers? Thank you, Mayor. I've been patiently listening to my colleagues because I've been struggling with this notion of vacation rentals. And I think I come down very close to the home sharing and the home rentals to me makes a lot of sense. Because you own your home. I think you should have the ability to do what you want with your home. I struggled over the last several months because I've been on the committee that's been looking on this, on these vacation transient rentals. Because to me, when you purchase a house in a neighborhood, the expectation is that you are going to be a resident of that neighborhood and that you're going to add to that neighborhood character. When individuals go into neighborhoods and purchase homes for the sole purpose of a commercial activity, of renting that home for a short-term rental, then that to me is a degradation to the neighborhood character. that's a very important and important part of the proposal. Then that to me is a degradation to the neighborhood character. For that reason, I'm very much in favor of moving forward with as Mr. Shepard articulated earlier or I'm not sure Shepard Parker plan whatever it is. He didn't make a proposal but he outlined a potential solution. I'm clarifying this. We have three categories. Home sharing and home rentals. No regulation. Vacation transient rentals. I'm proposing that we don't allow them. All right. So in that there with you know we're not taking a vote but we need to kind of get a direction for staff to go and so Miss Shepherd pointed at where we at well Dr. Myers just put something there and then if we could see or Ms. Walman is, or you want to say something or you know, okay? Yeah. Yeah. Because I've, I've been a little bit. We've talked about so much about permitting and all these other things that we've talked about. I want to be sure when we're talking about it because I am for no regulations on them. There's, we're not going to permit them. If you own your home, you can do whatever you want to. There's not we're not going to permit them if you own your home you can do whatever you want to there's no permit There's no regulation on how many you can have there There's no regulation on anything is that is that what I'm hearing? Yes, okay, okay, I just want okay, I just want to be clear because that's what I thought But to be sure I want to be sure that that's what I thought, but to be sure, I want to be sure that that's what I was definitely here. Okay, that's good. Dr. Marshal. Could I just be clear about what I just articulated? I agree entirely with what the mayor said as we do have to draft something with these definite definitions of what we mean by home sharing and home rentals and what we mean by vacation transient rentals so that there is a clarity and a bright line for our citizenry going forward. So please don't take what I just said is we're not we're just going to throw this away and go away. I'm articulating that. I thought that we said there will be no vacation transient basically put a ban on. They will not be done but we have to do an ordinance or something to do with that. But the rest of them, home free, right? Yeah, okay, I'm good. Mr. Shepherd, yeah, and since everybody's kind of way in and you know, for me, I'm supportive of vacation rentals, short-term rentals. I think we can regulate them, restrict them, however you want to categorize it, I think we can regulate them, restrict them, however you want to categorize it, to address all of the issues we've heard. Now, there may be other issues come up that we haven't heard, and I understand that, but I think between the regulation on the parking, the prohibition against party houses or whatever they called it, written notification to the neighbors, out there assembly curfew. I think all of the regulations that we've talked about if implemented and if enforced will all but eliminate all of the complaints we've had. It's not to say it would eliminate the thing. So for me, I hear everybody else kind of chiming in saying no short-term rentals at all. I just want to be on the record. I would be in favor of having them, but just regulate them to a way that fits the city of Arlington. So that's where I'm at. Okay. So I think we've got two positions there on the table and there and so I think we need to kind of go around. Where are you landed, Mr. Glassby? Yeah. Dr. Myers was talking about. Mr. Parker? I think it's as plain as the nose on my face where I said I'd take you. Do you want another opportunity to say I'll be more than happy to articulate. I miss shepherd I'm going to I'm going to be you know blatantly honest. I don't think the city does a good job of regulating if we take a look at code that tells me right there that that we have we have a deficiency in and holding people's feet to the fire out there because there's a lot of feet out there and to the fire out there because there's a lot of feet out there. And code is very diligent and what they do and they do a great job, but I'll tell you, it is tough to make sure that all the things that are wrong are fixed. And so we can't put this out there with stipulations. I think that you go with the primary residence of the facility and that's the way you do it. I'm just kidding. I do have a question though with regard to, and I agree with Victoria that we have to have, and you stated also, Mayor, that we have to have something in our ordinance that defines what we're doing basically. But I still wonder, and maybe Mr. Finley has this answer, how those folks that are doing what they do with their homes, which is their right, are paying hot tax. Because I'm assuming that's still a requirement. Or is it not? Mike Finley, CFO, how were the current 35 that are discussion in the city about short-term rentals and clarity is what they're looking for. So if indeed you have space in your home and you want to rent out this space or you want to rent out the whole home for a while that doesn't absolve them if we don't have quote-unquote other regulations in place that doesn't absolve them from not paying hot tax I assume. Yes ma'am. It does not. Yes, what you're saying is correct. Okay. So I think in whatever verbiage we put together, that needs to be in there because I think a lot of people don't know. There have been several people I know who ran out there better. So I said, well, nobody ever told me I had to play hot tax. How did why and how and who decides? So there's a lot of lack of clarity out there So I just want to make sure as we go forward we have Words to the effect of what's required whether it's our requirement or somebody else Okay, Miss Thalman So it looks like separate and I are in the minority here I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm favor of regulating short term. Ms. Walmond. Okay this is exactly what Ms. K-PART was talking about that's where I was trying to go to say we're not going we're not going to print we would never know and no one would know if I have a home and I have no one knows it, except me. And I rent it as a short-term rental. There is nothing to say that anyone would even know whether I pay hot tax or not. Unless you say if you're going to do this, we'd just like to permit it so we have a record and we would know. But that's what, that's reason I kept asking no nothing we're not gonna we're not gonna ask them to permit we're not gonna ask them to do any I mean that's okay with me but I don't think there'll be any way I mean I would think it would almost be impossible to collect hot tax from people who are in their home and doing it and they I, that's just human nature. You know, to try to put on them and say, we're gonna, there's no way we could know. We just couldn't know. So, that, but that's okay with me. That's okay. I can probably, you know, say, okay, you can do it. And if you pay hot tax, well, that's nice if you want to. And if you don't, well, there's not any way we'd ever know it. But yeah, I'm fine with limiting, not having them, not having transient vacation rentals. And if you live in your home and you have a homestead, it's your home, you can do what you want to. Okay. All right. I'm swolf. I think you sunbed up very well. Like we said, there may be a lot of people that are here, but they have a lake house, they have a place. And if it's super bowl weekend, never comes back again or whatever, you choose to say I will rent out my home to my friends or friends of a friend you know and we'll go to the lake and we'll be back Wednesday evening and y'all have a good time. I don't have a problem with that. But Miss K for, I don't know how you make those people pay taxes. Hot tax. Oh yeah. Okay, Mr. Shepherd. Yeah, I was just going to give the example. My youngest daughter's living at home and I'm charging her rent. I'm not going to pay hot tax on that. So just want to go on record right now. Dr. Myers. Mr. Bass. Mr. Bass may ask a question please regarding this hot tax. The reason why I think we're talking about this is because currently in our policies today. Regardless of what we do on this it already articulates that we collect short-term rental hot tax. Is that correct? Yes ma'am.. So therefore, if we do not want to do what we're articulating around here, we would have to make a affirmative change in that. Is that correct? I'm going to defer to Mike. I'm not sure. We'd have to. No one I'm saying is because right now it says short-term rentals, you have to do have out tax. So we're just, we have to, in other words, amend that portion of our policies that currently exist. I'm sorry, I hate to make you repeat it a third time, but I'm a little slow. My understanding is that currently part of our policies is that it's states for short-term rentals, we will collect hot tax. Yes. Since that is currently part of our policies regardless of what we do here today, if we're moving toward what we're talking about today, we would have to affirmatively change that language. Remove it and or amend it and or do something to it. Is that correct? Well, I don't know that we have to do that. I mean, to that point, there's, as mentioned earlier, there's no finance enforcement arm that's going out. Understood, Mr. Finley, but if we are trying to be clear to the public that we are making a distinction in home sharing and home rentals versus vacation transit rentals, then it makes, at least in my sense, maybe I'm, I mean, it can be different but it doesn't, it doesn't make sense to me to have piece of legislation that says short or rentals play hot, hot, hot tax if we don't have them. Yeah, so, so in the, in the part of our web website where we talk about who pays occupancy tax, one of the definitions is private homes. That's included in there. So that could be removed at your direction. Now that doesn't necessarily free them up from the state. But it will. I can say this is I think a state law question not a city ordinance question. So I'm not sure we could delete that because state law trumps that. It defines what a short-term mental is and when occupancy tax is levied, we choose whether or not to have a city occupancy tax and what level it is. But if we levied, it's levied equitable. Just to make clear, this is actually more than a policy. It's actually in our taxes chapter. And it's actually the only current ordinance that specifically follows that. But that definition was based as the city manager indicated, it's based on state law. And at the time, the taxes section, this is a new thing and they just hadn't broken it down into category. So that's why it's just kind of lumped in as Mike indicated. It's just home renting short term under 30 days. So we could definitely take administrative action without changing the ordinance and just take those notices off the website. But that's, I mean, the city can always exercise its discretion based on direction. Okay, so Mr. Bass here from here, it looks like we're moving in the direction to define the ability to go ahead and state it clearly that someone's primary residence, they have the opportunity to use their home that way, but yet we are not allowing short-term rentals their outside of primary residence. And then we'll have to define that there clearly and because we don't have that anywhere outside of our tax chapter there. So does that, and I guess you can come back to us with some proposed revisions to yes sir and or additions. Certainly do that. Miss Cape aren't. Thank you Mayor and I don't want to blabber the point but this hot text thing has got me confused more. So I realize Victoria that the short-term rental thing is in there and we don't really allow short term rentals if you follow the logic of Mr. Shepherd. So, but I don't think that we can really provide absolution from that. So I think if we have to further define it or take out the short term rental or maybe you have to leave that in because that's what the state says, but it does extend and include if you're running out your private residence. I just don't want us to get crossways with what the state says we better do. And our city attorney's office will work with them to ensure that. Good point. All right any other comments or anything on short-term rentals? Know that we are trying to protect our neighborhoods and everyone here was trying to do that regardless of where we landed on that. I think you could see that theme throughout here that we're trying to protect the neighborhoods and we've had some tough situations here in our community lots of feedback from our citizens probably more than I've seen on anything there and then I really appreciated the feedback of our citizens on both sides it was so helpful and so positive there and trying to give us help in what direction we went and so forth. And then this may be an evolving issue to know that, that we'll continue to keep an eye on it and be watching there as this situation evolves. I want to thank each one of the council members for the time. Thank you to our subcommittee that labored for months and it wasn't just this issue was hot on the table back in 15 and remember the state legislature was going to take it up. So we put it on hold because anything they did with super seed us, they didn't end up not able to get any legislation passed. So we picked it back up and now we find ourselves here where we are needing to take care of it as soon as we can because we have real life issues out in our neighborhoods that are doing. And then I want to thank the ones who are doing a great job there too in the short term rentals because we've got some great examples of people doing the right thing in the right way there too. So with that, we'll move on to the next topic. Thank you, Mr. Bass, for your effort and staff's effort there. And I'd like to move to 4-2 on a safe 4-1 here just a minute but I'd like to go to recycling at multifamily developments and call upon Miss Nora Coronado, Assistant Director of Public Works and Transportation. and Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Nora Cornado, Assistant Director, Support, Service, and Public Works and Transportation. In your packet this afternoon you have an informal staff report with some information requested from the previous council meeting regarding recycling at multi-family developments. Also joining us today is Mr. Vince Raeble with Republic Services who are designated collector. If you should have any questions, we'll be happy to answer them. Dr. Myers, do you have any questions with regard to the staff report? Okay, no problem. While you're looking that up, let me ask. So I realize we've had this topic before and then you got kind of pushed away and now we brought it back, which I'm happy about. So the idea back in the day was to make it a requirement for recycling for new apartments, realizing that trying to retrofit existing apartments would be very difficult. And I know personally, from my son and his friends who live in apartments, I mean, he brings his bags of recycled to my house because he can't do it at his apartment. I don't think his apartment can do it because he's living in an older apartment. But the idea back in, I don't know, six, seven, nine months ago when I brought it up was really with regard to new apartments. And so if Mr. Ravel could come to the mic, I have a question for him because he spoke with me recently at an event. And number one, Mr. Ravel, if you could share with the council, what some of the new revelations are, particularly with recycling of paper, as you discussed with me. Yes, what we've seen effective March 1st of this year. China has changed some restrictions that they had on the inbound waste stream, including plastic but primarily paper products when I speak paper primarily mixed paper. They used to have a threshold of no more than 3% contamination. They have reduced that to a half a percent. That would include your cardboard boxes. Mixed paper they're not taken at all right now, they discontinue taking mixed paper. That represents about 20% of the waystream talking about what we collect from a residential curbside, mixed paper is about 20% of the mix. So what we've had to do is shift the sale of those commodities to what we call the secondary markets. So we're still able to get rid of it, but what we were getting a year ago, not even that seven months ago, at about $85 to $90 a ton, now we're only getting $5 a ton for that material. So that's what's happened in the secondary markets is just all the industry in North America has had to flood the secondary markets is just all the industry in North America has had to flood the secondary markets with this material that China is no longer taking. So it's just driven down the price. Processing material recovery facilities like the public and waste management and other large processors, the material will stop piling. So they just say, hey, just take this off our hands. We got to get room to process all the other inbound materials that we're collecting. So let's driven down the price, number one. Secondly, the plastics are also the contamination factor has been reduced in sales because of China. They're inspecting every container on the ships come in. They're inspecting every single container. So a lot of it, they're just rejecting. So what we've had to do here from a processor standpoint is we've had to slow our lines down to take more of the contamination out of the stream that we source separate, that we separate at our recovery facilities. And we've had to add more laborers making it more labor intensive. It's a slower process. So it's costing us more to segregate those materials to the proper areas to bail them and ship them for sale. So processing costs are gone up. Commodity sales have come down. So eight months ago, when we talked about multifamily recycling, one of the incentives for an apartment complex is, if I put a recycling dumpster, that would help reduce my cost on the other side of the trash dumpster. That's no longer the case. Actually, in a lot of cases now, it may be even more expensive to have a recycling dumpster at that location versus a trash dumpster. So that part of it is really changed just in the last few months. Dr. Myers, you have a question for you, Mr. Grenada. Yeah. What are we currently doing with Styrofoam? Or how are we handling Styrofoam? Styrofoam is not a recyclable, recoverable commodity. Are we doing anything to remove it from the waste stream at all? Or is it automatically go to the dump? Well, unfortunately a lot of the products that we as consumers use, your TVs, your computers all come with Styrofoam in it. Unfortunately that can't be recycled. It would just go in the trash at this point. And there's nothing we can do in terms of, obviously I understand the cost and the change in the cost structure. Is there anything that other cities or other that are trying to do to try to increase recycling but also create a cost mitigation? For the Styrofoam? Well, styrofoam or any, what I'm saying is is there a better, more efficient way for us to recycle terms of having different kinds of recycled bins that would decrease your labor cost, increase recycling, but still keep that cost recovery. Or is that just problematic in general because of the changing? It's just problematic. Over the last few years, the value that we received from the materials recovered were really in fiber. So that's your corrugated cardboard boxes, newsprint. There is some value to plastic, but it's not much, but it's a lightweight material. Look at your water bottles now. They're so flimsy. It takes almost 60% more water bottle containers to make a ton than what it used to just because they've gotten still thin. So the cost of processing that has gone up, we're seeing news prints of dying media. So we're seeing less of that. That was one of the items that brought us the biggest value in terms of resale material. Glass, we can get rid of it. We found a place in middle of it that takes the glass, but they don't pass anything for it. So we have the cost of transportation to that facility. So it's a negative value commodity in the waste stream. And I'm not suggesting we take it out. We're just, you know, we are getting some guidance from corporate and I will be meeting with staff in the next couple of months to kind of go over a lot of these dynamics that we're seeing and what can we do from an education standpoint to residents and businesses of, you know, our old school of thought isn't applicable anymore with these recycled commodities. I mean, this is a fundamental shift in how the commodities are captured, processed, and sold in transported to those points of sale. So it's kinda like, you know, when the Affordable Care Act came into place, that fundamentally shifted healthcare in the country. This is, I don't say it's to that same magnitude, but it's a similar foundational shift in how we look at that. I appreciate very much bringing that to our attention. You know, I certainly had an interest in us thinking through this again since Miss Kepar I wasn't here to talk about the original report, but thank you for bringing that piece of information to our attention. I also am very, very interested to hear what your thoughts are on educating our public about how we might better go about doing recycling in the city if we continue to do so under such global circumstances. So thank you very much. You bet. I can give you an example. I mean, used to we would take pizza boxes and we could just blend that in with our core getting cardboard. And the, you know, the people, the meals that it went to, they didn't really care. It's fine. We can no longer do that. So the dirty pizza boxes, although they were acceptable when we began the cart program in 2012, is no longer a commodity that we need to clean up the waste stream and it's going to take some time to educate residents on these shifting dynamics. Mr. Parker. Vince, my wife gets on me about putting stuff in the waste bin that's recyclable and not recyclable and and anyway I know that you don't take plastic bags in your recycling, because I've been scolded at home several times. I do learn after a while. But plastic bags are recyclable. They're just not recyclable by you. We do recycle plastic bags. So I can't put the plastic bag in the bin? Yes. Oh, yes. Thank you very much. When the materials come to our murf at each sorting station, there's a big tube that comes down out of the ceiling. It's like a backing tube. So the pickers just throw the bags up into the tube and then it goes over and it gets shoved into like a big container. It's like a sausage stuffing machine. And then when it gets about 20 foot long, the guys cut it off, tie it up, send it to the baler. And it typically goes to Mexico. We don't get anything for it, but we are able to capture that. Well, that's refreshing because we keep our bags in a separate thing and take it down to Kroger or Tom Thumb and put it in their little thing down there because we couldn't put it in the bin because my wife was wrong. Okay. Right. What we ask that you do. Hello, out there. You out there. What we ask that you don't do is put other materials inside the bag and then take the bags and if you can put them all in one bag and put them in your bin, that's acceptable. Any other questions from council or comments? Mr. Feldman. Thank you. Okay, I just learned this. I just googled this. So when Dr. Myers asked about recycling Styrofoam, I've seen on the bottom Styrofoam cups where there's the recycle symbol and I guess that is the number six resin identification code That's usually on products that are called polystyrene. Are you familiar with this? So it looks it's often confused with Styrofoam, but they make cups egg cartons to go like food containers You get a restaurant. So are those recyclable here? You know, I don't know I'd have to talk to the manager of our facility. My sense is probably not because we just don't get enough of that to actually bail it to make it economical to bail it and then try to sell that material. There's probably limited reuse of that material, even though it may have a six stamped on it. There's probably one specific use, but we just don't capture enough of that to make it economical to sort it, bail it capture enough of that to make it economical to sort it, bail it, and then try to sell it. Okay, thank you. Yes, my friend. And the whole reason why I asked about Styrofoam is because that's been one of the things that there are a number of environmental groups as well as here in the city. There's a group working on recycling issues and cleaning up Arlington. And there, specifically, we're talking about Styrofoam and the types of different types of Styrofoam. Because think of the volume of Styrofoam that we get because we get everything in boxes now, right? Everything comes, we get shipped. So we have all that mischipping material. And they are talking about truckloads of Styrofoam and shipping material. And my concern, I know there's two or three locations in the Metroplex that actually handle those to reduce those sizes because otherwise, they just go straight into the landfill. And that takes up a lot of volume with, you know, very light, but a lot of volume. So that's my question. That's why I ask the question. I'll find out a little more information for you on that. I can't give you the correct answer. I just know that, you know, if we fill a box car full of bail paper, it could wait 200 times. I could fill a box car full of styrofoam probably any way at time. So the transportation to get it to a facility and quite frankly, most companies that utilize styrofoam for packaging their materials that are manufacturing, they probably prefer virgin materials. and manufacturing, they probably prefer virgin materials. Vince, I wish we could find a way to get to yes here. And so I hear you about the paper and there's just, there's not a market for it and I get that. But we're not talking, we're talking about new apartments only. And so is there, would there be any benefit to allowing recycled containers at apartments that are just for glass and plastic, that kind of thing and no paper? You know, I'm not opposed to even putting paper in containers and apartment, multi-family units. You know, we've done. Containers and and apartment multi family units. You know, we've done several pilots over the years. We did one here in Arlington. Probably back in the late 90s early 2000s. Right. Some of the issues that we encountered not only here in Arlington, but I've done them in Grand Prairie, Northridge, and Hills and other cities. And what we encountered a couple of things. One is the limitation of space for apartment complex. It's a lot easier if they're in the development planning stage to incorporate space for those dumpsters. But the bigger problem is the contamination factor. If it's not managed properly and not monitored. If you put contamination in a dumpster that's meant for recycling, it only contaminates the product in that dumpster But once it gets into my truck it contaminates that entire load So if I get to a material recovery facility and open the tailgate and a bunch of roofing shingles come out They're gonna reject that load now. I've got to take it to the landfill I got to pay to have those shingles removed and that's happened You know our driver if they see the contamination, they won't dump it. They'll just flag it for the trash dumps, or trash truck to come and collect it. But a lot of times that material's on the bottom and then cardboard boxes and other recycled materials placed on top. So if it's gonna be successful, and I'm not suggesting you don't do it, but it's gotta have a real buy-in from the property manager. That's their long location. They're going to have to manage that process effectively if you're going to have a sustainable program. But Vince, that's no difference in my neighbors putting stuff in their cart. And your driver never sees it. He just has the automatic thing and it dumps in your load. And you don't know how many times your load is. We do get contamination from a recycle. Uh, cards at homes, but with homeowners of single family residents, they have a little bit different perspective. They have an, they have an ownership of their property and what they put in their cards. We just had that conversation. I get it. I get it. Mr. Robert, I do. But I still feel like there is such a desire for particularly the millennials who keep saying, G. R. Linton doesn't even require recycling and apartments, you know, and I was living over next Y. Z. City. That was a requirement. So, my only thought, and it'll be a council decision, but I just kind of need input from you. Would it make more sense if the council was so inclined and had recycling at new apartments where they could manage the space? But limited only to forget the paper because that's going to get contaminated more quickly than anything else you've always told me. And just eliminate it to the glass and the plastic and the tin or the aluminum or Charlie's plastic bags. Would that make more sense? You know, again, I don't think paper is really going to matter. I think if you're going to, you know, as a matter of policy, if you're going to mandate that new apartments have recycling, just understand that it really takes the property manager for that program to be successful and sustainable. That's just something to keep in mind is you make your decision on that. Appreciate your input. You bet. Thank you. We've kind of been around the horseshoe, and everybody got to speak, Mayor. All right. Thank you, Ms. All right. Thank you, Miss Coronado. Thank you, Mr. Robble. Thank you, guys. Okay. We'll step back to the state legislative consultant contact, contract rebitting. Miss Jennifer Wickman. Thank you, Mayor Jennifer Wickman. Interim deputy city manager, support services. The informal staff report you have in front of you, tells you a little bit about how we're going to go about the re-bidding process for our state lobbying contracts, which are up at the end of this fiscal year. We're trying a few new things this time around. We're going to allow some bidding on more than one, allow vendors to possibly bid on just one part of it. And we think this will allow us to perhaps get some experts in areas where we haven't lobbied before, which is specifically higher education. We think that might be an area we could really seek some expertise on. And there may be some other folks out there who would be an expert in an area where we could make more of a difference. Additionally this will allow we may end up with, this will allow, we may end up, we may end up with just one lobby firm, but we may end up with more than one. And that would allow if a conflict came up with either side to shift more quickly during the session to have one pick up something that perhaps the other group couldn't handle. We also want to make sure we were calling vendors to let them know if they would like to bid on this. They're more than welcome. And we've even gotten some good feedback from our current vendor in this area that that flexibility to move things if there were a conflict will really allow us to keep things moving and would really be a benefit and additionally bring more people to the team working for Arlington. So we think it would be something that would be beneficial to the city and our current and lobbying environment. I'm happy to answer any questions that the council may have. Mr. Glaspie. Thank you, Mayor. This week, I'm going to describe how that would be laid out so that somebody who may be interested in a particular part could focus on it versus and then sort of have given any reflection on them the cost For the toll thing versus having an individual company to do it Sure, well address that we'll put out on request for qualifications and and I've revised that to clearly state the additional areas Where we're going to be working in or all the areas where we're working in to make sure that was updated with what the current needs of the city are and then just it states clearly there that proposals can be turned in for part or all of the items that are included. So I think that'll be clear to the vendors and I believe your second question asked about the total cost. That's something, it's a request for qualifications. So we can ask for some pricing info based on just for our budgeting purposes. But what I think will end up, it's always a negotiation with these professional services. So we certainly have a budgeted amount that the council has set that they're comfortable spending in this area and we'll have to see when we go in there how we could negotiate that with the different vendors who would be working with us. Any other questions from Miss Wigman? Okay, thank you, Miss Wigman. Thank you, sir. Okay, next we'll move to 2018 City Council priority and Tants Regional Mobility Mr. Jim Parishon. Mayor and Council Jim Parish on Deputy C Manager. This is your third quarter newsletter update. C's under construction. As you can see by the newsletter there's some pretty interesting information in there. I just want to hit a couple of the facts. We have 51 projects under construction right now. 51 street projects under construction in our city. That doesn't speak to all the cranes that you see out in entertainment district and in downtown. We have 16 projects that are in the design process. So in about 13 projects that are what we'll call street maintenance projects. So we have about 70 projects that are street improvements, street enhancements that are being undertaken now or will be undertaken shortly. But that was particularly interesting. I wanna call attention to one particular project. We hear a lot about school safety and crossings in the sea. It devotes a lot of time and energy and resources to try and make sure our kids are safe as they go to and from school. There is a particular project that's on South Cooper at Snooty Fox Circle, which is an intersection improvement that is specific to safe school crossing and safe walk to schools. That was a project that the city worked very hard with textile to achieve and that project is under construction as we speak. It's probably important. We do a lot of these things. We don't call attention to it, but I want to call attention to that. And then the rest of the discussion I did want two of our best assistant directors to speak. Council you had talked a little bit in the past about getting a little more information about BIA which is a rideshare project as well as the status of the 360-30 interchange. So I've got Keith Brooks and Alicia Winkbleck that are going to do some have a few slides to talk to you a little bit about. And Alicia is also going to highlight a couple federal grants that we would ask councils and doggins to submit submit on and this would give us that direction. And then finally I'll come back up if there's any questions that you might have or you want to talk about some other items that are in the newsletter. Thanks. So Keith Brooks. Thank you, Jim. Keith Brooks assistant director of public works and transportation. So this afternoon just wanted to kind of give you a quick update on the I-3360 interchange project that's currently under construction. In general, there will be several multi-purpose or I should say general purpose lanes and auxiliary lanes that will be built along with frontage roads and collector distributor roads and mostly the biggest improvement will be the direct connectors from either 30 going to 360 or from 360 going to high 30. Here we have some some some some aerial pictures of aerial photos that were taken probably about a month ago of what's going on with the interchange. This is if you would this is right there at I-30 the bridge that's kind of to the left that's a ballpark way which you can kind of see in the background. It looks like it's in the the darker asphalt color. That's the some of the frontage road work that's going on. You'll also see the frontage road is going up towards a ballpark way and then was closer to I-30 if you will, is the Collector Distributor Road that's currently under construction. Now this section of the Collector Distributor Road, we're looking at, TechStyle is looking at that being open sometime in the summer of this year. That's basically from Ballpark Way to Johnson Creek. You'll see a lot of shifts out there in the roadway as they're building this project and we'll talk about a little bit some of the demo work that they'll be doing. This is, now this photo is just to the east of Ballparkway. As you can see in the background there you're starting to see some of the direct connectors. That particular one is of course if you're heading southbound on 360 and you're going west on I-30 and then you can see there's kind of a fork in the road. So to speak on that connector, and of course that's if you're having northbound on 360 and you wanna go westbound on I-30. This is just another aerial shot at a different angle. You can see this is I-30, just basically showing all the direct connector work. As you can see, a lot of work has been going on since construction started back in 2016. And we'll talk a little bit about the frontage road, the southbound frontage road of 360 that you can see that's in construction, that's spanning i30. So this is a close-up of the Southbound Frontage Road, 360 Frontage Road. As you can see, that's some of it has spanned across I-30. Now they're looking at opening up the Southbound Frontage Road sometime by the end of the summer. And one of the reasons why this would be one of the first things that you will see that's open is because there is the existing southbound frontage road needs to be demoed and you can kind of see it's well it's kind of hard to but it's the southbound the existing southbound frontage road is very close to the existing main lanes that will have to be demoed as they start widening out for the 360 project so traffic will be shifted to the new Southbound Frontage Road and then they'll, as they make that shift, they'll go ahead and start demoing the existing Southbound Frontage Road. And these are just some more areas. Just kind of showing that Southbound Frontage Road work and all the direct connector work that's going on right now. So the project is moving at a pretty good pace. It's on schedule. And this is just some more areas of those direct connectors as you can see. A lot of work has happened over the last year. The project is unscheduled. It's scheduled to be done by fall of 2020. At this time, if you have any questions, I can ask those questions at this time. Yes, sir. Mr. Parker. Keith, we were having a problem with an establishment called Boston's on Lamar. Keith, we were having a problem with an establishment called Boston's on Lamar. Yes, sir. Were they able to remove those barriers at all to help that guy out? Or what's his status now? Is he still in business or what? My understanding is it's still open for business. We have not talked to him in a while. Those barriers were still in place. What he was pretty much told by TechStyle is that those barriers would have to be in place throughout the duration for a good part of this project. So those barriers have still been in place for a while. We tried to put up, as a city, we tried to facilitate and put up as much signage as that we could. So you could detour around and get to his establishment. But that's pretty much all that's been done so far. Could you do me a favor and touch base with Mr. Chen? Yes, sir. And anyway, see if there's some relief for him in the future with text. And I mean, we've tried several different avenues. I know you've tried real hard. And so see if there's any relief as far as removing those barriers and giving him some access if you could touch base with him. I'm not going to be around much longer. So I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. Michelle, I would just add one more Mr. Parker. I haven't talked to Mr. Chen, but I have been by that location He's done a substantial renovation. I mean it looks brand new all the outside stuff So he's clearly I think investing for the longer vision So if you were to drive by it looked very different than maybe the last time you seen it Mr. Brooks, I think something that would be helpful is if You know, we just talked about the Westbound frontage road being opening, if you could give us the major milestones or when things will be opening to the public and I know it's approximation. Yes, sir. I think that that would be helpful. Here's where we're talking about it on when other ramps will be open or other frontage roads would be open, that would be help because it's not a situation where the whole thing is going to be closed down until 2020. Of course. You know, part of it, parts of it will be open. So I think that would be a big help if you could send that to us in a memo there on those major milestones. Yes, sir. That would be great. Any other questions from Mr. Brooks? Okay. Thank you. All right. Miss Winkle Any other questions from Mr. Brooks? Okay, thank you. Ms. Winklebuck. Good afternoon, Alicia Winklebuck, Assistant Director, Community Development and Planning. Have just a few slides to give you our most recent information on our via rideshare program. The program continues to do really well. We continue to get a lot of positive feedback from residents and users. And as you can see from this chart here, we've got a fairly strong upward trend continuing. To date, we have had over 22,000 rides taken in the VIA Vans. Right now, our current weekday high is 360 rides for one day, and then our current Saturday high is 208 rides. So those numbers are looking great, and we're happy with the growth there. One of the other pieces of information we track is the number of accounts that have been set up. So these are the number of people that had not only downloaded the VIA app, but actually entered their credit card information and got themselves ready to take that first ride, whether or not they've taken it. So again, we're seeing a strong upward trend there, which we also like to see, because we like to look not only at our current ridership levels, but also try to project out and see kind of where we're going to be in the future with ridership. So that's a strong chart there for us as well. And then just one other piece of information. This is very similar to the maps that I've shown you before. It just shows you kind of the how the different pickup and drop-off destinations are dispersed throughout the current service area. They aren't changing a whole lot in that we are continuing to seeing a pretty widespread of people wanting to access all different areas within the service area. Some of our publications continue to be the Center Port TRE station. So we've got a lot of people using ride share to come in and out of Arlington for different reasons. And then the area around the university also continues to produce extremely high ridership for us. We've got a lot of university-related trips that are taking place. So we are still on schedule to do our expansion down to I-20 this summer. Once we have a certain date, of course, we'll let everyone know, but we're excited to see what happens when we do that and hopefully see our ridership continue to grow as people have access to the Highlands, the Park Small, and either more areas, even more areas down south. And then just very quickly, as Jim mentioned, we wanted to brief you on three potential federal grants where of course always out there looking for grant opportunities to help us fund councils priorities and get where we need to be. And a lot of times we have to move very quickly. So we were aware of these three upcoming grants. We're still in the process of deciding if we should apply which projects are most competitive and how we want to go about that. But wanted to go ahead and let you know that these are out there right now. The first is called Chrissy, the consolidated rail infrastructure and safety improvements grant. $65 million is available. They are setting aside at least $17 million for rural projects, so all of these are always extremely competitive. While they only require a minimum 20% local match, it is common knowledge now to be competitive for these grants, you need to come to the table with at least a 50% local match. So that's something to keep in mind. And the Chrissy Grant really focuses on safety technology, congestion reduction, and crossings, and all of these things related to the rail infrastructure. The second one here is better utilizing investments to leverage development, transportation grant. Build is the acronym there. This was previously the Tiger Grant. $1.5 billion are available through the year 2020 with a maximum of 150 million going to any single state. Again, a 50% match is required for us to be competitive. And this is for a large range of infrastructure projects, roadways, bridges, public transportation, rail freight, port, and intermodal projects. And then the last one, they have not released the funding notice yet, but it is another round of the Infragrant Infrastructure for Rebuilding America. So has a strong safety focus and is focused on just major infrastructure projects and funding levels and the exact criteria not available yet but we'll be watching for that. And with that I'm happy to answer any questions. Ms. Walman. and how to go together. Do you have projects that you've already identified that it didn't make a report for recently? Good possible, we'd be available. I mean, if you identified any that you think, is that the reason you want our? Okay, go ahead. We have a list of potential projects. We're trying to go through the funding announcements and figure out what projects might be the most competitive. And then obviously there's a funding component there because depending on the cost of the project and the need to come to the table with 50% of that cost, we need to take that into account. That's not a lot of money basically too. So I know the constraints, and I didn't know if you're prioritizing about which of those would be a priority to try to get, to use the money to match. I guess that's what I'm saying. Yeah, we're working on that. We're working on that. Okay, my other question is, I noticed on the back of our flyer, we talked about handy trend. And I want to have you had any reduction in handy trend calls since we've had V had via and do you know what those are? We are actually in the process right now of cross referencing the handy trend trip data and the via trip data. It's we have not seen a reduction in handy trend trips. However, handy trend has more right request than they can handle. So what our hope is is that we take some of the trips from handy-tran, move them over to via, and then free up some additional capacity for handy-tran. So we're doing that analysis right now. We need to go through and just look for riders that were previously using handy-tran or now using via, and then I would be able to give you that number. Are we working with like, I know JPS wanted to talk to us I think at one time and maybe some of the other hospitals about trips that that VA could produce could use and that they might even be willing to partner with this on some of those trips. Yes we have had we've had numerous conversations Arlington Memorial Hospital actually has a corporate account set up with us so they're set up and trying to use the service. JPS will be in our, their major facility will be in our expansion area. So we've already been talking to them about different partnerships and ways that we can coordinate needs and services. Okay, that's great. Good job. Thanks for all you're doing. Thank you. It's glass me. Thank you, man. Thank you, man. I know two totally different if from implementations, but could you give us a sense of comparing how max was accepted versus what we're seeing would be it? Sure. So, you know, the max best service was our first pilot that we put out there to really kind of try to assess the interest and demand for public transportation and it worked well. We got a lot of feedback, a lot of great data from that. We're doing the same thing with VIA, but we're able to build on that. So we have already surpassed the MACS ridership numbers and I think Mr. Yelverton mentioned this previously possibly, but where with max, we saw a very steep growth at the beginning and then almost a plateau or a very slow growth throughout the rest of the pilot. With VIA, we are kind of just seeing that continuous growth trend move up. So as people are learning about the service, downloading the app, understanding not only how to use it, but how it can benefit them. We're continuing to see that growth. Mr. Parker. Thank you, Mayor. Alicia, I just wanted to know when you might be able to, I've been asked a lot of questions about when you might be able to expand the zone above Lamar. Sure, I think once we do our expansion this summer to I-20 and see how the system and our number of vehicles reacts to that, we'll have the data we need to start looking at other opportunities to consider expansions. Well, thank you very much. I know a lot of people are looking forward to it when it does happen. Other questions, comments? Just one more thing I was remiss this Friday will be the 360 ribbon cutting, 360 South ribbon cutting. So that facility will be open. And what that means to us is that it will create quite a bit of mobility here from the south, here all the way down to 287. Have we able to bring people in, of course, to work and to our entertainment district, but also it's going to free up capacity in the frontage roads on 360, but also help us with a congestion that we have on New York, Collins, and Matt Locke. All of that you'll see a marked difference in there when that road opens up. Dr. Myers? Oh, was it, oh, Mr. Glasspeak? Excuse me. Thank you, Mayor. A few years back we started investing more and more into our streets so that we could speed up the process of trying to get kind of up to speed. And I think at the time of indicating over like a seven seven year cycle we were looking at so before we got to the point we felt we were approaching having stable streets kind of you know where kind of where we are on that. Not sure I exactly follow I think are you talking about just the level of investment. Yeah. I'm prior director public works. Came before us in one time and then we got away behind him. I think I recall now what you're talking about. There was a presentation that Mr. Melton gave that I think showed. I want to say it was like an eight to nine year transition plan that would convert from what we were doing. we used to call it, keep the Good Streets good because that's where a lot of our maintenance dollars went. And there's a lot of merit in that, but not when there's not enough capital flow to do the worst first. So you had this growing disparity of Good Streets were good, but more poor streets were staying worse longer. So we made a change, and that change was to emphasize worse first. And it was going to be this eight to nine year phase in plan as we stabilized the red streets. It meant that some of the green and yellow streets were going to come down a little bit, and it kind of dollar cost average for lack of a better phrase all of this. So we probably need to refresh that that math to be more accurate in your description. But the good news is thanks to the voters this weekend, the sales tax renewal is a is a huge win relative to to continuing to make progress in that point. And we continue to make progress in that point. And we continue to make incremental progress through the investment of bond dollars in the state and street maintenance dollars to make our red street part as small as possible. It's right now around 10 to 11% of our street network. And we'd like that to be zero and we'd like a lot less to be yellow but we didn't get here overnight we're not gonna get out of it overnight but good systemic ongoing investment over time we'll make all of that a little bit smoother and we'll get you an update next quarter to that specific question when we come back. That's a great question Mr. Glantzby because we are making major investments in our streets, and then it was great to see that our citizens recognize that with the 80-some odd percent vote in favor of continuing that program because it is making a huge difference here in our street network here in our community. Thank you, appreciate it, Mr. Persion. This might be a good time here for Dr. Myers to give an analysis. We just talked about mobility. You have something on the calendar and the way of mobility, Beth, is it hard if we talk about mobility still? All right, we're on the okay. You can do this tonight too. Okay, Mr. Mayor. Since she said it's an order, I just want to let all the folks here as well as at home. I'm having a town hall innovative mobility options on Thursday, May 17th from 6 to 7 30. You can come out and ride the Milo. You can also learn more about VIA. A lot of folks have out and about during this last elections process. Got a lot of questions about what is my low? And a lot of folks want to know about it, want to see what autonomous vehicles are about. So thought we'd have an innovative walk and talk. So we won't be walking and talking, we'll be riding and rolling at this town hall meeting. So thank you, Mayor, appreciate it. Great, thank you. All right, next we'll move to discussion of committee meetings and community and neighborhood development we can't turn to Miss Wolfe. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We just had a good meeting today. We do not require any action from council at this point, but under the leadership of Lindsey Mitchell. And you can see we have our consultants that are here working to renew and update our downtown plan. The last downtown plan was in 2004. And I think we can see we've got all kinds of projects coming out of the ground and all types of infrastructures being invested. And I said in yesterday there was a two hour meeting with the task force and that's working on the downtown plan. And they represent all the major entities, property owners, real estate investment, developers, group, it was a good broad committee. And they're here to work with us throughout this year to give us new ideas for downtown. Tell us what is the future. We want to make sure that we continue to create a 24 hour downtown that's a vibrant community. They, like I said, will continue working with the task force citizens and property owners and they will be bringing back to full council recommendations for their draft plan the summer the summer and then we hope to have a final plan by this fall that we can begin to implement But I too want to make an announcement that they will be having their first public meeting tomorrow at Legal Draft at 6 p.m. so I would, I know you all had met with them early on when they first came on board to get some of our vision and ideas and this will be a great time to come and listen to see what the public has to think about it. So that will be tomorrow. I think their focus from what I took and anybody else on the committee can certainly act is to focus on our commercial opportunities. And I know many of us have had conversations, some lot of private conversations about, but there's so much interactive retail experience. Why do you want to be talking about retail? And I think it's really interesting what they are proposing. And then I think also a big piece is how do we, what's neat about downtown is the small grid, so it's an easy, it's a walkable block, but we really need to focus on access over the railroad or under the railroad, it is straight and focus on how we can improve the west under where we go underneath so that we connect with all the new investment and the new opportunities that are coming forth on East Maine on Front Street and Great Opportunities in Division. So anyway thank you and this is the group right here so if you have any specifics I'm sure they could just jump up and y'all have been so patient you sat here all afternoon. So thank you very much. Well thank you Miss Wolf and thank you for all you've done there in downtown and really excited about MIG being a part of this there and of course here in Arlington we really are building a downtown and we're trying to build one representative of the 50th largest city in America. And we've got some work to do there with it, but always when you're going forward be sure and dream big. Don't dream too small because we've got citizens here who will step up and make it happen. And then the other thing is I'll quote Jerry Jordan, we need an implementation plan. We've got plenty of master plans, but we need an implementation plan. And of course, we're very excited to see what's going on, but yet you can see we have a lot of challenges here. And then we're not interested in waiting 20 years for it to all happen. You know, we've got a lot of momentum right now and looking forward to being able to keep that momentum and keep things being built and moving forward. And then in June, I think we're going to see a major milestone there here in downtown where we actually are going to be opening up what I think will be the center of the community and that's going to be our new library. Be a fantastic community learning center. We got a preview here just a week ago and very excited about it. There and what it's going to mean here to our community but But that's one piece of many more to come, I'm sure. But, it's anybody have any questions or anything they want to ask or anything they'd like to say? Well, thank you all. Appreciate it. Appreciate you tackling it. Tackling the challenge here. And we certainly know of your firm and appreciate what you've accomplished around the United States and we're looking forward to what you're going to accomplish here. Thank you very much. Well, you all said here all afternoon. Would you like to say a few words? Would you like to address this? You guys have been here all afternoon. My goodness. And from out of town, you know? and my goodness, and from out of town, you know. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Again, Chris Bain and Principal with MIG. We are urban planners, designers, downtown strategists, community engagement experts with offices in several locations across the country and we do do work in many cities large and small throughout North America really. I'm joined by Ellie Fiori, project manager for the project wave, so they know. As well as I wanna make sure we highlight that not only our team with MIG, but some great partners we also work with in many locations around the country. Andrew Knudsen, representing EPS out of Denver, Colorado. They are market economists, development feasibility experts, and they're very strategic. Exactly along those lines, Mr. Mayor, that we are not in this to plan and just do pretty pictures and wouldn't that be nice and trust me, we do a lot of nice pretty pictures too, but we are focused on implementation, things in the dirt, things that advance a community, that we can all be proud of, that can contribute to economic vibrancy to create sense of place and identity, to create walkable communities places that are more sustainable and always fiscal, socially, environmentally. So he plays a big role with that with us. And then, Kurt Schulte with Walter P. Moore. He is here in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, and also a long time partner. He and I have worked on projects in North Texas for a while together. They are transportation experts, so they support us on all of the thinking about the roadways, the parking, the incredible innovative transit that you all bring to the table or innovative mobility, rather that I'll tell you, innovative transit that you all bring to the table or innovative mobility rather. That I'll tell you, it was at first glance really, you know, exciting for me and surprising in that not a lot of communities are necessarily as forward thinking as you all are in that regard. So when we started to embrace this project and roll up our sleeves, we started to understand that there's a lot of opportunity in this community and a lot of potential. And it's an incredibly diverse and inclusive place that celebrates a lot of ideas not only locally, but from around the region around the world. So we are poised with your fine staff from Lindsay to Anne to Alicia to Jim. Everyone we've worked with has been fantastic so far. We're poised to collect all of your ideas, the advisory committees ideas, the community. All the stakeholders we're working with blend that with our own expertise and our experiences to really create something that is special and very unique to your context, your needs, what Arlington needs to move forward in the future. Nothing about this will be cookie cutter borrowed from somewhere else because Arlington is like nowhere else. And it has very unique opportunities moving forward. So we very much appreciate the opportunity and we look forward to bringing things back to you all soon. This is a fast track project. Part of our charge was, you know, to do this in a short time frame because hey, we got strike while the iron's hot and we got to move while there's market momentum and the community wants to move things forward and the council wants to think big. And I think big can be big and small. Bold, left and right. There's all kinds of layers we'll be bringing to the process and the ultimate plan that we bring to you all. So again, thank you very much. I'd be happy to answer any questions, but that's our, that's what we're doing here. We have any questions, but that's our, that's what we're doing here. We have any questions? All right. Chris, thank you a lot, and we're grateful for all of you working on the project. Glad you're here. Thank you. Very much. Anything else, Ms. Wolfe? Yes, sir. Okay. Then we'll move to appointments to boards and commissions, and under this category, I think we'll move to appointments to boards and commissions. And under this category, I wanted to see about appointing a task force here just to look into, you know, we haven't looked at our council operations in a long time of everything that we do. And I wanted to see about Miss Capehart heading that up and then Miss Thalman and Mr. Shepherd just looking into everything that we do and working on their recommendations and so forth to try to improve our offices there and as we move forward, they're with it. And we're going to see if I have, if y'all feel good about that. Okay. Well, if you got Mr. Shepard in there, that's. That's great. It's a good idea. So I see the head shaking then with that, we'll move forward on that and look at those three. And then anything else on boards and commissions? Do we have any appointments? We have no appointments sometimes in gender marriage. Great. Okay, and then evening agenda items, Mr. Parker. Lemme all on 814, it's the rental of the gas powered golf carts for the Texas Rangers Golf Club. Are those carts going to be equipped with the GPS functioning day one or what's going to happen with the GPS? Yes, Mr. Parker, and let me round off Director of Parks and Recreation. So at a previous council meeting, you approved a GPS package. This package is for the golf cars themselves and those will be married together when we open the course. As you realize, the current fleet that's on your docket for this evening is for gas powered and that's based on the fact that the clubhouse won't be completed by the time we open and so we wouldn't have the ability to charge the electric carts that will be part of the permanent fleet. But yes they will come with the GPS package and that should be operational day one. Okay, yeah my concern was that this was essentially a rental for about a year or so and then we get the electrical carts that I just wanted to see if if our golfers were going to be able to utilize the GPS day one. That's great. That's great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Any other things on the evening agenda items? Okay. Issues relative to city and tech stock projects. Okay. relative to city and text.projects. Okay. Future agenda items. Miss Cape Horn. Thank you mayor. Three things, really four things. I'd like for us to get an update and maybe an executive session on the Garden of Eden, Masu, the Da Vinci. And I think the other one, I don't know how it was fashion, but it was from Woodmont Court. It's over there in Wembledon. I think the plaintiffs' attorney might be Frank Hill. They had to do with the drainage issue. And I haven't heard anything more about that and I'm curious. And then the other thing is we had the discussion today about the recycling for new apartments. Could we get a staff report and let Council on? I don't think we need to send it to committee because we've kind of heard it all. Just try to see if Council wants to go forward with requiring that for new apartment complexes so if we could get a staff report to that effect so we'll have a reason to discuss it I guess is the best way to say it. Okay everybody in agreement with that sounds good everybody's tired nodding their head. Alright clarify on that when you when you want to staff report on recycling. Do you mean another venue really for you all to talk about it like you did the day under informal deal or if I'm when we think of staff reports it's usually an action item and are you asking for an action item are you asking an action item we need to know the council wants to go forward with that or not. So how would you fashion it try Try may that something right best way? Well I guess based on the conversation that we had today regarding the question I guess I would ask and maybe you're asking are we ready to bring that for for an action consideration to to put for new multi-family some form of recycling requirement. And we can put that together in a, I guess a statement of a resolution, it ultimately will need to be an ordinance modification to require that, but we can get you kind of on the record. But that's what I'm kind of struggling with is, what are we gonna talk about versus what are we going to do? And I just need to get kind of in some direction from the council if if they're okay with us going forward with those that requirement for new multi-family and so and the discussion we had today Vince told us some stuff that when I tried to get more direction from him He kind of backed off and went well, well no I'm not saying don't do it so I just need to know if we're ready to go forward Mr. City Manager or Mr. Mayor. I think based on the conversation we had today if you all tell me that's what you want to do we'll bring it back for that but the avenue was created for for that direction to occur. Okay. And shipper will say something and then we can. Well, yeah, and I was going to just chime in on this issue. And I didn't ask it during the conversation because it been a while since it. We'd heard about it candidly. I was not thinking. I was just thinking it was a report. As far as the word requirement, that's, that's what got my hand going up. I would not be supportive of requiring new apartment complexes to have mandatory recycling. I'm fully supportive of permitting it, encouraging it, suggesting it, anything you wanna do, but to me, that becomes a slippery slope. We start requiring apartment complexes and we start requiring due flexes and we start requiring single family. And right now we've got voluntary recycling quote unquote, which is going very well. And I agree, I think it's a product that the millennials want. And I think if we suggest to the new apartments that we encourage it, I think they'll probably do it anyway. But what I heard from Vince is we don't want it. So if we're, there's a disconnect there between, So, so if we're there's a disconnect there between we'd like to encourage it in them more less discouraging it. So I don't know how we close that gap, but for me as far as pinning an ordinance that requires all new apartment complex to have recycle, I would not be supportive of that. I understand. And I was, I thought it was somewhat disingenuous after we went through all that cart of people. Do you not agree? And we heard a very different thing. And I realized the market can change, but I don't think it changed that much. And so I'm concerned that if we only suggest it, then the apartment complex people will never make room for it. And so I think if we don't require it, there will never be an opportunity for people who live in multifamily to recycle. And all of that stuff goes into the landfill as we know. And again, I'm not suggesting we retrofit existing, but it's much easier if that's just part of our SOP to have that availability for the people who live in those apartments going forward. That's just where I am. And so here we are into this discussion, which is why I was trying to find a way for us to discuss it. So I don't know how to's it. And here we are into this discussion, which is why I was trying to find a way for us to discuss it. So, I don't know how to handle it. Mayor Forresti come to a consensus or not. If it's, if it's a next meeting. It sounds like this. We're doing some more discussing. You know, there, I think we need to go ahead. Mayor, and I think Miss K. Part, the impediment, at least I know from a commercial perspective the impediment has been the lack of republics Recycling that there's no recycle bin because they don't pick it up If I don't know how to properly say that I don't think it's been a reluctance on the I don't know how to properly say that. I don't think it's been a reluctance on the commercial property owners part or reluctance on multifamily owners part. It's just, it's not present. So I think if there were a multifamily recycling program, so to speak, however that develops where Republic would dispatch vehicles program, so to speak, it however that develops where Republic would dispatch vehicles to pick up recycled matter from all multifamily. I think you'd probably see an expansion of it anyway. I think it's good for the apartment complexes. I think there are people who would prefer to recycle, but they just don't have the opportunity. I know from my office, we end up shredding everything because we don't want to put all the paper into the dumpster. And shredding is basically recycling. It's just more expensive way of doing it. But if there were a recycling program, I think everybody in our little office complex would gladly separate their stuff and put it in the recycle thing They're just not there's not a bend to pick it up. So maybe maybe a discussion and more detailed with discussion with republic that we we want them to have a Multifamily or commercial recycling program if multi-family or commercial recycling program if what I think is right is right so that it's then made available and then I think you'd find a whole lot more people participating in it. Hey bring us a bin so we can do it. I don't know. Well it's kind of a given that we need to try to see if we can get somewhere with the Republic. I just add to some of you might remember, I'm not sure if they're still in business, but there used to be a recycling company in town called Ava Tibi. And so it's not necessarily that Republic has to be the one that does it. There could be an alternative vendor, but they're clearly someone in the world who knows what's going on with commodities and such. So that's something else we can talk about. Okay so staff could look into that see what our opportunities are and then bring it back here. Okay or word discussion or discussion we can frame up how we want to make it. So maybe it's an issue session in the next work section. Okay thank you. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And kind of a side topic, but associated mayor, Miss City Attorney. Remember, we still allow grass clippings to go into the landfill. The other cities that republic services that go to our landfill don't. So again, I come to, you know, that's why I was saying to Mr. Rebel today, we need to find a way to get to yes. Okay. The next, anything else on future agenda, Adams? Okay, then we'll move to naming opportunities. I had asked Lemuel to just throw a few slides together about some of the things that are in the pipeline that we need to not name today but find a process that you all are comfortable with. And then I might wrap up with a couple other things. So if you would, Lemuel, just talk a little bit about what's coming and what some of the initial business needs you have are. Sure, I'd be happy to. Lemuel Randolph, Director of Parks and Recreation. I know it's late in the afternoon, but I wanted to provide you an opportunity to engage on this subject that's pretty near and dear to us in the Parks Department and certainly you as a City Council. And so that first slide simply suggests that we have recently named a new facility in Arlington and the Texas Rangers Golf Club. And so I wanted that to kind of set the tone for the discussion that you may have in any direction that we may get out of this presentation. So the first facility that I wanted to talk about is the new Lake House facility that's currently under construction at Richard Simpson Park. These are some of the concept images at Richard Simpson Park. These are some of the concept images of the facility. And we also have two current pictures. Those are taken on yesterday of the current construction. And so you can see it's well underway. We anticipate that it will be completed. Perhaps by October, it's due November, but they're a little ahead of schedule. And so we're at a point now where the naming of this facility becomes a little important. The designers and contractors are starting to talk to us about how we want to structure a naming plaque or marquee. And so we're very soon at a point where we'll need to give them some direction on how much space they're going to need and how to do that. As it relates to this facility, we do anticipate that it is going to be a significant revenue generator for the Parks and Recreation Department. And like all of these facilities, they all are part of the Park Performance Fund. And so through that fund, as you're aware, we market the services and activities within that facility. There are also potential opportunities for corporate entities to get involved with those facilities as well. And so I just wanted you to be thinking about that as you think more closely about how we might name this facility in the future. The next facility is the recreation center at Web Community Park and this is the facility located in southeast Arlington off Mansfield Web. Again, these are some of the images that you've seen before with respect to the concept of that facility. Go back to that. So this facility is currently under design. We anticipate the design being completed probably by the end of the calendar year and thus construction beginning somewhere early 2019. And so while we have some time ahead to plan for a name for this facility, again, it's one of those facilities that will be marketing for membership and revenue generating activities. In the local market, you'll find a number of facilities in other cities. Over the last five, probably eight years, you've seen these one word monocles for recreation facilities. Everything from the mark in South Lake, their brand new facility to the epic and grand parry, to the summit and grand parry. You've got apex in McKinney, you've got the wreck and grapevine. And so all of them are kind of borrowing from that theme. I'm not suggesting that that's the route that we should necessarily go. But it does provide them a platform for marketing with that short moniker that is something that you could consider. But again, this facility is right for naming as well. And then finally, the Recreation Center and Library at Bob Cook Park. And so here are the concept images that you've seen of that facility. And so this facility is interesting from a couple of perspectives. Obviously the current facility has a name, Hugh Smith. We've been doing some research relative to Hugh Smith. And our understanding is that the land was originally donated by the Hugh Smith family. I'm not necessarily certain why the park was named Hew Smith and we don't have a lot of information on Bob Cook that we have found to date. But at the same time, it's a brand new facility. And so we are, I'm sorry. What I'm suggesting is that from my perspective, and obviously I'm fairly new to the organization, and so that's something that we're researching. But that... You can talk to me. Sure. I understand. I understand. Is that good or bad? No, don't answer that. Well, obviously there's a rich history in the room that... understood, understood. Was that good or bad? No, don't answer that. Well, obviously there's a rich history in the room that with that said though, we're not suggesting any changes to Bob Cook. However, we do have a brand new facility. And we have been kind of discovering what opportunities might exist from a corporate stay-apoint to take a look at that facility in terms of some naming possibilities. Nothing definitive, certainly nothing to share in specifics with you this evening. But I just wanted to plant the seed that those are the kinds of initiatives that we're exploring. And so we wanted you to be aware of that as you start to talk about potential names for this facility as well. And obviously it includes the library. And so Hugh Smith defined kind of the Directoration Center and Senior Center component. This facility will have the library as part of that. So at any rate, those are the three facilities that wanted you to be aware of that we're gonna need some direction on. Certainly, the richer sense of facility is the most prominent based on the timing. But with that, I'd certainly be interested in your feedback in any potential direction. I think what we'd like to do is just know what kind of process she'd like us to go through, whether it's a committee process, a discussion process, and then just add that there are some other buildings out there that are kind of generically named that aren't in the new product development pipeline. So to the degree that you all have any other honorarium kinds of things that are on your mind, there are some other facilities that could be part of that conversation in whatever format you'd like it to take. Yes. Lemiel, I want to make sure that I'm on the right page. Are we talking about honorary naming? Are we talking about naming rights as we started with the slide Texas Rangers ball club. I'm trying to figure out if it's gonna be like, you know, the Encore, you know, which is Encore cuts us a big gigantic check to put their logo on the side of the building and it can continue to be called Bob Cook Park or whatever, but are we talking about selling, quote, naming rights in addition to some other colloquial. I think that's up to you all. We're not necessarily suggesting that we go out there and sell naming rights. We talked about that years ago and got some direction on that that has made it pretty limited in that realm. But there is in the parks world this kind of business need to have a cool name, have a name that's kind of marketed that might not fit. I don't know that you could sell Bob Cook Rec Center, EO versus the Epic or whatever. So there is a business need to have kind of a cool name. It doesn't mean that it can't have a background subtext of some nature. So I think there's a combination of run the business, sell the business in some of these areas and then some other buildings that are historic that are kind of nameless that can be more of an honorarium kind of thing to the degree that you all find interest in that topic. Sherp. Can we, for me, and I'm hungry, some trying to speed this up, so I apologize for talking a lot, but can we get some sort of direction on do we hire a marketing firm and add agency, do we all just sit around and roll dice? I don't know how you come up with a cool name. I'm certainly not the one to do it and no offense to the other historical figures in the room, but I just wonder if that's not something more appropriate to a marketing or ad agency to help. Sure. And we can do that. We certainly didn't, though, then want to assume that that's the direction that the body wanted to go. So we're trying to make sure y'all have a choice about the direction we had on that. I'm thinking, well, I'm wondering if we shouldn't even, because there's so much background work to do here that we don't have a small task force here from the Council to work with staff on that. I think that would be, yes, Miss Wolfe. Years ago, there was a parks department had a subcommittee that reviewed all the naming opportunities. Is that old hat no longer existing? I wouldn't suggest it's old hat, but this is a little different paradigm with the new types of facilities that we have. I would also suggest there is some level of expertise in the department different paradigm with the new types of facilities that we have. I would also suggest there is some level of expertise in the department that could assist from a marketing perspective, working with the committee in terms of suggesting names. So that's certainly available and an option for you to consider. Okay, and it's also broader than just the park's facilities or other other facilities So, you know, they could do those but not others Okay, well I'll work on getting a task force together then on that yes I was I didn't hear that part may I was gonna suggest we get the staff to work with one of the council committees and come up with it You know, but I think this will make this one specific to this. Miss Thalman. So our school board has a or the school district has a process. Maybe we can look at what they do and pull what what might apply to what we do. Great idea. We have a great source. Okay, anything else on this issue? Any other questions or comments from Mr. Randall? and I think that's the question. Any other questions or comments from Mr. Randall? And I probably should mention this. Of course, we still are going to have the Chester W. Ditto name out at Texas Rangers golf course. And then many of y'all know too we're definitely going to honor and continue the name of Miss Snyder in some way there, you know, the plaque, that was a question some had asked about the plaque in the convention center there, you know, that honored Miss Snyder of our former council members and community leaders there too, and we'll continue to do that. So those were two things that I know I get asked a lot, I'm sure y'all do too. Here on that. Okay, thank asked a lot. I'm sure y'all do too. Um, here I am, man. Okay. Um, thank you, Mr. Randolph. Appreciate it. We'll get on this. Try to give you some help and direction. Any other business? Okay. Seeing none, we'll adjourn and come back at 630 for the evening meeting. Thank you.