Thank you, Council. We'll start our session, our closed meeting. The council will now go into closed session 153 on December 5th, 2017, in accordance with the following sections of VTCA Government Code. Chapter 551, section 551.071, consultation with attorney. And if we can close the door. Oh, we have one more. Oh, and 551.072. It goes 551.087. Now we can close the door. 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Okay, Council will get started. It is about 308 and we'll start the afternoon session. Thank you, Ms. Wyman and Ms. Wolff. Perry, Cal Perry. Perry, Mr. Pello, Ms. Wyman and and Miss Wolfe. Perry, Cal Perry. Perry, Mr. Pello, Miss Wildman and Miss Wolfe. If we can start, thank you. And Mr. Shepherd, thank you and Mr. Parker, thank you. We're all here. So we'll start this afternoon with Arlington on Demand and Alicia Winkleblack. We'll come forward our Assistant Director of Planning, Community Development and Planning. Thank you, Alicia. Thank you. Good afternoon, Alicia Winkle Black, Assistant Director of Community Development and Planning. Very excited to be here with you today as we are about to launch the city's new on-demand rideshare service. This coming Monday, December 11th, will be the first day of service. The city is partnered with VIA, Transportation out of New York to operate our service. And I have a couple of VIA's key players here with us today. Monica Ziragyoly is director of lunch. And Obena and Maniki is our project manager. I've been working extremely closely with both Obena and Monica and the rest of the VIA team over the last few weeks And can tell you that they have been extremely professional They are great team players and I'm really excited to see How the service does in the city and with that I'm going to turn it over to Monica to give you a little bit more information about the service Hello, thank you so much for having us. Let me just get oriented here. Great, and as Alicia said, my name is Monica Sarajoli. I'm our director of launch, so I lead all of our new city launch efforts as we're expanding to new markets. It's better. I'm a bit short of an Alicia, I apologize. So I know Alicia has walked you through some information about Vio over the past few months, but I figured it would be useful to also hear it from the horse's mouth. So who are we? Vio is the world's leading provider of on-demand chair transit. Now what does that mean? We launched a New York City in 2013. We've operated there for nearly four years. And in that time, we've grown extremely quickly. We've done over 21 million shared rides since we've launched, and we now have over 1 million users who use our service in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago. We're doing about 1.5 million rides per month. In addition to this, we've raised significant venture capital funding. As of September, we had raised $350 million, which is obviously extremely exciting for us. And we also partner with organizations to license our technology, either to set up new transit systems using our technological infrastructure or alternatively to make more efficient existing transportation systems. Now, what makes us different? Certainly, the on-demand transportation space is growing. I'm sure there are players that you'd heard of long before you had heard of the A. What really makes us unique is that from the beginning we have been focused on shared rides. It's really our bread and butter. Whether we're referring back to our technology stack and the algorithms that we've put in place to facilitate these shared rides or to the user experience and the app booking process and actual pickup process for the rider, we've been focused on shared rides from the beginning. It's really our bread and butter. What this means from the user point of view is that it's actually quite simple. Riders simply book a ride on their phone. They set their pick up or their pick up location in their drop-off destination. And then we match them with a vehicle that's headed in their direction. On the back end, this is obviously much more complex. Our algorithms are searching through hundreds, thousands, even millions of possible seat possibilities for that Ryder. And finding the best one for them, based on where all of our vehicles are, where they are headed, and other incoming requests to the system from other riders. But what this creates is a fully dynamic system. Unlike traditional public transit, we are not constrained by fixed routes, fixed timetables. We can be dynamic and shift demand and are routing based on where people want to go. So I mentioned that we operate in multiple markets here in the US. Those are New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and actually soon to be London. We'll subsequently be expanding to multiple new European markets. And we also license our technology to multiple players. Here in Texas, we have set up an on-demand paratransit service with capital metro in Austin, so pretty close to home. We also have partnerships in the UK, in Paris, and in New York City where we partner with Kerb to offer shared taxi rides. So the model is a little bit different in Arlington and something that we're quite enthusiastic and excited about. This is truly the first time that a public private partnership with federal funds is putting in place an on-demand micro transit system. So congratulations. I think we can say that Arlington is truly revolutionary. Using the operational know-how that we've built up, as well as our technology, we're very much looking forward to working with you to set up projects and hopefully a long-term pilot that is very oriented towards Arlington's needs. So what does this actually look like? I mentioned that the benefit of our technology is that users are no longer constrained by specific routes, specific timetables. So what we seek to achieve is a system that really unites the city and links riders to places that they would not otherwise be able to access affordably easily outside of using their personal vehicle. Over the course of time, as demand builds up, and we see more and more riders using the platform, will achieve higher and higher levels of efficiency and be able to both produce private car traffic on the streets as well as ultimately reduce pollution and just congestion within Arlington itself. Now practically speaking from a user point of view, the benefit of the is that it will connect people in an affordable manner to different parts of the city. One major element of that is of course connection to centerport stations, so giving people access to Dallas Dallas to Fort Worth disarrowing areas for those who live and work in Arlington giving them an easy way to commute outside of using their personal vehicle. For UTA students access to other parts of the city off campus whether that is shopping centers or alternatively the stadiums for special events and also supporting local businesses you know encouraging people to use via to get to restaurants to shops to places where parking may be a little bit more difficult to find, for instance. So this map outlines our planned launch zones and how we plan to expand over the course of multiple months. Starting next Monday, and we are five days away, which we are very excited about. We'll be launching in this core area, the northernmost border of which is Randall Mill, and the southernmost, which is Mitchell. And here we're really trying to serve and provide an alternative to the max bus. We realize that the max bus is going away. We want to make sure that we can serve those riders who currently use the max bus. So we're very focused on those use cases and focusing on central Arlington, particularly during the holiday period. So downtown, UTA, the entertainment district, shopping, and center protestation will all be served. We're starting with core hours of Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. In January, we will further expand the service. So we'll expand North to Lamar and south to the southeast residential area and also extend our evening hours. And as part of this, over the course of December, we also want to evaluate other times of ridership. We've received some feedback that it may make sense to increase our morning hours and start earlier than seven. So if we indeed see the demand patterns match that, and we're very flexible and can adapt hours in order to meet that demand. In the spring, we will expand further all the way south to the Park Small and Arlington Highlands and serving those commercial strips, going south towards that area. And continuing to evaluate demand patterns, these zone boundaries may shift. If we see that there is a pocket where people are opening the app, wanting via, or alternatively where there is an area where VIA is underused. We have the flexibility to shift and really accommodate demand as we see fit. So part of what we want to achieve with VIA is obviously making it accessible to Arlington citizens generally. I think the most important way that we with VIA is obviously making it accessible to Arlington citizens generally. I think the most important way that we can do this is by keeping it affordable. So we've defined a $3 price point per ride, obviously making it as close to the cost of other existing services like the Max Bus as possible. We're also in the process of evaluating discounted rates for specific user groups. So for example, disabled individuals or elderly riders. And to start, we also will offer wheelchair accessible rides from day one. So we're setting up a partnership with HandyTran whereby we can use HandyTran vehicles to serve those riders who need a wheelchair accessible vehicle in order to get around. Additionally, we realize that there are populations in Arlington where communication and education about VM may be necessary. For example, the elderly population, those inf facilitated living centers, and so we are planning to set up a brighter education seminar sessions in order to show them exactly how it works and encourage them to use it. As Alicia mentioned, we've been working together very closely over the past few months. Part of this is obviously putting out information to the public and giving them visibility into what via will be. So we've set up a City of Arlington via website, which you may have seen. As soon as we launch, we're planning ongoing communication that will take place over social media and through my Arlington. Additionally, we're filming a PSA and an Ask Arlington episode this week, which will be set out even before launch. And we're doing quite a lot of outreach to neighborhood and community groups as well as key stakeholders here in the city. So whether it's CVB, Arlington Memorial Hospital, the Visitors Bureau, as well as the university, and we're trying to be as in touch with these organizations as possible and set up a marketing plan from day one in order to provide the information that their users need. In addition to the city, we have extensive experience on R&D with marketing and our existing cities. So we've set up a plan for Arlingtonlington and this will be comprised of a few different key elements. The first being promotions that we will offer from launch to encourage early ridership. We're extremely focused on providing a high quality experience for every user, our quality of service standards or something that we measure ourselves against constantly. So by offering promotions and encouraging people to have a lower barrier of entry to Trivia, hopefully we can hook them from day one. We also will put a place referral program. This has been an extremely successful way that we've gotten users in our existing markets. Over 90% of our users in New York, for instance, come through Word of Mouth, which I think is testament to the fact that our service is extremely high quality and something that people want to speak about. So hoping to achieve those same results here in Arlington. I mentioned the partnerships of local businesses and companies. And additionally, we will look to put in place subscription programs over the course of time as we see demand patterns. We call this the VIPAS. So for instance, you could imagine we would put in place a week long or a month long subscription program for UTA students at a student-based price point for those who wish to use via regularly. And last point I'd like to make here is that we will be in close communication with riders here in Arlington. We send out weekly emails with promotions, with news about the service, as well as with surveys and ways for users to give us feedback directly. We really see it as an iterative process whereby we can adjust the service to meet user demand. And so hearing directly from customers here in Arlington will be a critical piece of that. And what do our vehicles look like? I think this is an important point to hit. So as you may know, we have dedicated 10 Mercedes Benz Metrices to this project. This is the Mercedes Benz Metris. They're a relatively rare breed. You may not have seen one before. We have an ongoing partnership with Mercedes Benz and a larger and larger percentage of our vehicles in New York City are Mercedes Benz Metrices. They're basically the ideal ride-trying vehicle. Both drivers and riders very much like the experience of driving in a vehicle or driving in this vehicle as well as riding in it. Some of the things that make it such a positive fit for VIA is that there are automated doors. It's plenty large. You're not squished up next to the person that you're riding with. It's an easy ride for the driver. And we think that putting these high quality vehicles on the ground from day one in Arlington will also be an important element of branding within the city. We want to make sure that people see via as a high quality service, that the vehicles are consistent and reliable and recognizable. And that people really see it as a service that they can depend upon. Here's what our Arlington vehicles will look like specifically. So special branding, again, to make them as recognizable as possible, as well as additional information on the service. People will be able to see the icon and note that they can download the app immediately. One important element of our service that you may not have been mentioned that they can download the app immediately. One important element of our service that you may not have been mentioned previously is that we offer real-time customer support. I think this is an important differentiator within the industry, but also something that we very much want to emphasize here in Arlington. We always have somebody monitoring service, and we have them texting or responding to writers if there's ever an issue, feedback, a complaint, some sort of concern. People can simply text our number, which sends them also automated messages about when the driver will arrive and will respond nearly instantaneously. We will also have in place here in our LinkedIn a call line for people who do not have a smartphone and might not be able to text us or to book a ride using the app. And we also have a driver support line. So we really see our drivers as our customers as well. We want them to be able to have the same support that riders would and to be able to help them should there be an issue on the road whether it's an accident or alternatively some sort of traffic blockage that we need to get around these sorts of things, making the services efficient as possible. Lastly, we're extremely focused on demand-driven decisions here in Arlington. I mentioned that we're constantly collecting and iterating upon the algorithms that we have in place that select the seats to which riders will be assigned. This, over the course of time, we've set up a very robust sort of analytical back end that allows us to collect all of this real time service information. And we'll use this to make decisions about the service. As I mentioned, we'll be able to see where demand patterns are picking up or dropping down, understand where the service quality needs to improve or alternatively where we're doing too well. And adjust both our expectations and our zone to align with what we are seeing on the road. We recognize that a big goal for the city is also having access to this data and learning about Arlington Transit and user behavior through this pilot. So we're setting up a portal through which the city will be able to access demand pattern information and both during the course of this pilot and hopefully for many years to come use that to inform decisions. Lastly, a bit of insight into our team. Alicia mentioned two of us. I don't think I need to speak anymore about myself. But Obina, who is sitting here, will be the general manager of the Arlington service as we get it up and running and reaching the steady state. He's been a member of our operations team in New York for about two years and has extensive experience with running a service like this one. Rachel who unfortunately couldn't be here today works on our expansion team and is basically our systems expert. So she's been working over the past few months to set everything up on the back end and localize it for Arlington. Additional support will of course be provided by our New York team as well, our data science team, as I mentioned, our growth team, and we'll also have a local office here in Arlington. It's actually right around the corner on Mesquite. So if you ever wanna stop by, please feel free. And that's about it. We're extremely excited to be here. As I said, we consider this a really revolutionary project. It's been a pleasure to work with Alicia and the other members of the city who we've been in touch with over the past few months. I think it really bodes well and speaks to the positive collaborative relationship that we've developed and hope to continue to take advantage of. So thank you. Thank you, Monica. Any questions from council or comments? Mr. Parker. Thank you. As you look at that picture right there, you'll see a lack of high-rise buildings and a lack of extreme density like the cities of New York, Chicago, London, and so on and so forth. How do you, since our density mass isn't so tight, how do you expect this venture to be successful? It's a very good question, and it's true that Arlington is very different from New York City. A couple of points I would make to explain our experience here. I think one is that some of the experience that I perhaps failed to mention is in lower density environments. For example, I think there was a some of the experience that I perhaps failed to mention is in lower density environments. For example, I think there was a quick image of this, but we have an existing partnership with Ariva, an operator in the UK, that is in sitting board, a town called sitting board, that very much has the characteristics of Arlington. There's similarly sort of a train station hub that then feeds into the city. We launched that service probably nine months ago and we've seen extremely promising results. One of the reasons for that is that we've been very focused on containing the launch zone and the hours and making sure that we have some control over how we can grow this service over time. Our approach in markets has always been to start small and grow based again on the demand that we see and the patterns that we see in the city. So hopefully by focusing on this core launch zone and then expanding over the course of time, we're able to build up some demand density that we can then take advantage of as we grow throughout the city. And this is the only city as you stated earlier that this is essentially a public private partnership and with some federal funds involved. Do you have a target date for the possibility of being self-sustaining? Yes, realistically at the price point that we are charging, that is the benefit of getting the federal funds. We can be subsidized and charged this $3 price point. So the goal for the first year is not to be self-sustaining. It's to set up the infrastructure to extend the project to hopefully your two and beyond over the course of time. I think that's something that we can discuss as we get a better sense of what demand looks like in Arlington as well. And my last question, okay, if I may, is that I noticed that you had stopped the service, the north part of the service at Lamar. Is that correct? Yes, that's the correct plan. And the problem I see there is that north of Lamar there are a great, the best majority of seniors live up in that northwest portion. And for them to get to things like doctors and stuff down to them, down to the medical areas to see their doctors. Are they supposed to drive to a pickup point at Lamar and then proceed down to, why wouldn't they just continue one down to their doctor's office if they have to drive that far? Yeah, so it's true that there are populations in Arlington that are currently outside of the existing service zone. I think we're certainly open to expanding further over the course of time as we, again, receive additional feedback from writers and get a better sense of whether they're indeed as demand in that area. And we also have the flexibility to shift these plans over the course of time if our expectations don't line up with reality. So I guess to answer your question, I think one of the problems with being constrained, whether it's from a funding point of view or wanting to pilot something small that we can then learn from is that we unfortunately just can't serve everybody right from the get go. But our goal over the course of time would be to reach those populations and again provide them access such that they wouldn't need to drive into the via zone, for instance, in order to book a ride. I think you'll find that there's quite a demand for you up north of Lamar. So anyway, thank you very much. I appreciate your presentation. Thank you. I appreciate you bringing that up. Just to follow up, Mr. Parker's questions, Monica, would it be accurate to say that over time, the map that you showed that's more block and square will start to be a bit more gooey? It'll have more curves and edges and spikes as you see the demands and connect the dots. Is that how it will evolve? Absolutely. I think we're using this as a starting point. To be honest, even when we were first discussing the service zone, and I think some of the focus areas that had been discussed by the committee, for instance, we didn't go all the way up to Lamar. There was sort of a hack-toff point right at the highway. And so through discussion of the fact that there's residential populations up there, we wanted to be able to serve the hospital that's there, we thought about extending up to Lamar. I think over the course of time, both in January and then in the spring as we continue to expand the service on, we'll want to be similarly responsive and make tweaks and iterations as we see fit. So certainly flexible on that front. I think this is intended to be a framework off of which we can adapt. Mr. Shepherd. Thank you very much. And thank you for the presentation. It's exciting to hear about it and like Mr. Parker, I hope it's successful. One of the confusing things I've got in my head is how does someone outside the area demonstrate a need for a ride if they're not within the area to be picked up? I'm a little confused about how that ends up morph and could you explain that? Yeah, sure. So I think two ways that we would receive that feedback. The first is just in a qualitative sense. People can email us, call us, give us that feedback through writing, and I think that's part of why we also seek to send out surveys as part of our general communication with writers. In our other markets, for instance, when we're thinking about expanding to a new neighborhood, we often ask for feedback from our existing user base, including people who have signed up for the app, but may not currently live within the service zone in order to inform that decision. So we would want to do a similar thing in Arlington. Secondarily, we have the ability to track app-based data. So if somebody downloads the app and then tries to open it or book a ride outside of our service zone, we have access to that information and can see the frequency with which that is happening. So that's sort of a secondary good indicator for us that there's indeed demand in a specific location. a good indicator for us that there is indeed demand in a specific location. So if asked by citizens outside the demand area, would we first encourage them to go ahead and download the app as a way of informing via that there are people with the app in areas outside the zone. I think so, yeah, that's something that we will certainly be closely monitoring. And by downloading the app, they will also receive our communications and sort of be in the loop as we continue to expand and change the service parameters so they can provide feedback directly on the news that we are spreading to the community. That allows them to be connected. Mr. Michael. Thank you, just, you know, we've heard a lot about how it's it's going to be operated But would you kind of go through In use the scenario I'm gonna write out I mean a possible write-out somewhere that's in the zone How would I interact with you to make sure that what you can do and what I need or in sleep? You mean from a writer point of view? What is the writer experience of booking sure? you to make sure that what you can do and what I need are in sync. You mean from a writer point of view? What is the writer experience of booking? Sure. So let's say that I am a UTA student and I want to get to centerport station in order to take the train to Dallas. Assuming that I would have already downloaded the app, I just need to log in and pick my pick-up location, set my drop-off location, and press request ride. And on the back end, our system will be searching through the various possible seats that might fit that user's request. And then we'll then present a ride proposal. So a price point in Arlington will always be $3. The rider will be able to see exactly how long it will take a vehicle to get to them. Usually a matter of minutes, the average or median ETA that we're shooting for here in Arlington is right around 10 minutes, hopefully even less over the course of time as demand density builds up. The user can then accept that request and we'll tell them exactly where to go. So we have what we call virtual bus stops within the city, which is basically a corner pick-up location that we ask the writer to walk to. The reason for this is that it makes our routing much more efficient. If a driver doesn't have to circle all the way around the block in order to get to somebody and can just take a straight shot and pick them up, it's never more than a block or two, so it's very minimal walking. So we'll tell you as a rider exactly where to go. You'll receive automated text communication with us, or from us, excuse me, as the driver approaches. Both when he or she is two minutes away and then again when he arrives you'll be able to then board the vehicle obviously texting us if there are any issues in the meantime and you'll be taken within a block again of your of your destination. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I apologize for my voice today. I'm very pleased to hear about your data-driven decision-making in terms of how you're going to route map. I'm curious as we roll out this pilot project, what are milestones, are milestones as we increase our ridership zones, or at what iteration should we expect as a council report back from you about the success and where are we going in terms of the ridership What iteration should we expect as a council report back from you about The success and where are we going in terms of the ridership and routed. Routage. Excuse me So I think two sources of it two sources of information for that one is the real-time portal that we expect to provide back to the city So that there's not only check-in processes every few months But there's real access to that data and then we can have sort of conversations in the moment about it and make decisions together. Secondarily, we've set up performance standards that we seek to achieve or are essentially required to achieve here in Arlington or what we are defining as success. The first is based on estimated time to pick up, so staying within a reasonable range there. The second is related to on-time pickups, so how reliable is VIA? We seek to be within a very close range of when we anticipate the vehicle will arrive, whether early or late. And thirdly, it's just our uptime. Are there any system problems? Is the service down for any reason? We hope to achieve 99.5% uptime. And that's very much within our capabilities. Other questions? Ms. Farman? OK. Well, of course, I'm looking forward to December 11. That's going to be a red letter day for Arlington, actually. I'm very excited about it. There was one thing that you mentioned about people who live and talking about what Mr. Parker talked about. People who do not about what Mr. Parker talked about. People who do not live in the zones where you move. But would it not be favorable to encourage a lot of citizens that live outside to go ahead and get the app? Because I see situations where people may be working downtown and say, wanna go in the zone. They could, I mean, you don't have to live in the zone to use it. That's the point. So I would want the app in case I'm here and I wanna go to centerport or some of our employees or student, you know, I know the students well. But I think it kind of reminded me of like the toll tags. Lots of people didn't know they were going to need a toll tag and may not need it all the time, but they buy them. I mean, they get the toll tag. And so I would think that more people would get your app that do that maybe not even live in this zone. Okay? And then I think the other thing was that I would like a little bit more explanation maybe for the public on the handy trend, the partnership with the handy trend because I know that's going to be we have such a demand for handy trend service. And so I feel like those people are really going to be interested in what how you partner with them and how that can maybe expand that service. Let's see if there's anything else I was thinking about while everyone was talking. How long have you been in DC in New York? So we launched in New York in 2013. So we've been there for a little over four years at this point. We launched in Chicago in the fall of 2015. So about two years. And we've been in DC for a little over one year, about a year and a half. Did you start with the pilot program or did you take the whole city? We started with the pilot. So what we're doing in our LinkedIn is very much in line with the model that we have success with in our existing markets. Yeah. I'm really pleased about the way we're going with the pilot. I think it will expand quickly because I can just see, we've not had any inner city transportation of this kind. And so it's new, it's innovative, and I'm glad that our city is the first to be the public-private partnership to do this. So anyway, those are just some of the things thoughts that I had and wondered about. But anyway, thank you very much. I'm excited about it. I'll be there on the 11th. Absolutely. And thank you for your presentation. Sure. Monica, could you share with us about the drivers? How many drivers you have? And are they people who live in Arlington? Or how do they know Arlington? Sure. We give us a little bit of information about them? Yeah, so the core fleet will be these 10 mattress vehicles that I spoke about and on top of that We will have the ability to supplement the fleet as we need with drivers who bring their own vehicles onto the platform So an example of this might be if there's a big event at the stadium and we anticipate that we'll see very high demand They cannot be served with only 10 vehicles We'll seek to supplement the fleet with other vehicles. In terms of training and sort of quality of the drivers, I think that's probably what you're getting at and trying to understand, are they from Arlington? Do they know the city? We take this process extremely seriously. All of our drivers meet with us in person. We go through extensive training both on the via platform, goals within Arlington, the service standards that we seek to meet, customer service, expectations, I suppose, for our drivers, and behavior is monitored very closely. We take customer feedback extremely seriously and use this to control for quality on the platform as well. Does that answer your question? I'm happy to be able to do that. Yes, I was just curious about, you know, because we're launching on Monday, I guess it is. Mm-hmm. Do you already have these drivers? I'm assuming you already have them on board. Yeah, you've got them trained. It's been a big focus all the past few weeks. Yeah, so we have a number of people who we've met within our office who are fully trained, ready to go, very excited about the platform. I think the option to have another platform with which to drive is extremely exciting. And to be honest, our drivers are very excited about the mattress vehicles as well. I think it's very exciting and creative for Arlington because we've always struggled with fixed routes, just don't work here. And there's always been a resistance to quote buses. But this is almost, it is on demand service. And so that's great. And then there's a predictability, as far as price. And there's some reliability with regard to the type of vehicle you're in and the person driving the vehicle. So I think that's all really, very good. So very excited to have you here. Great. Thank you. And I think Ms. Wilman, did you have you here. Great, thank you. I'm excited to have Via here. And I think Ms. Wileman, did you have another question? No, I've got. Ms. Winkle-Black, I do have a question for you. With regard to the partnership and the funding for the public, if you would just kind of go over all those elements, so the public is aware, because council will get a lot of questions with regard to who's paying for this how did it come to be and that kind of thing? Sure, absolutely. So the total project cost for our contract with VIA is $922,500 for the first year of service. $600,000 of that is coming from Federal Transit Administration funds. So some federal funding there and in the city is putting in 322,500. And that is for how long? That is for one year of service. For one year pilot. Yes. Well what we will call as a pilot. Okay great. Any other question? Mr. Yevrton? I might just have you elaborate that a little bit more in the sense of the three dollar fees that are being collected, how that's advancing the project, and then to the degree that if there are any concentrated areas of service that business might wanna get connected with, whether it's the university or the mall or the highlands that there's opportunities essentially to kind of provide additional resources there as well. Yeah, absolutely. So the, as Monica mentioned, each ride is $3 per person, per ride. All of the service revenue that's collected as a result of the project is going back in to grow the project. So we hope to be able to use that revenue to help us expand, as you saw in the map, to kind of phase one and phase two, and ultimately hopefully grow the project even further throughout the city. And then there are, via, via has a lot of experience with a variety of partnerships through their other service models and there's different ways those can be developed. So we've already been having a lot of conversations with key stakeholders in the city and we will continue to reach out to in particular major employers employers the university There are different opportunities if for example an employer wanted to subsidize rides for their employees and and kind of help them with the cost of that their opportunities to partner with us to do that As Monica mentioned there may be for certain user groups where we see a significant number of users needing wanting to use via there may be for certain user groups where we see a significant number of users needing wanting to use via. There may also be partnership opportunities or promotional opportunities there to help those groups use the discounted price or kind of develop other partnerships that will increase ridership, which then brings more revenue into the project and ultimately helps us grow the project. Just one more follow up and this might be for Monica, but I know I heard the university talking a little bit about how they're doing some partnerships with some of the off campus housing to expand some of their shuttle routing services. Do you all do it where you have partnerships not only with kind of business density, but also kind of a place that might have housing density where that particular place that someone lives offers, that is a minute or service to their residents, is that kind of thing work for you all as well? Absolutely. We've actually done partnerships very similar to what you described in New York City on the west side of the city where subway access is far more limited. We've worked with housing complexes or large apartment buildings. A similar idea, you know, although in a sort of different urban environment would take place on UTA. And we've actually been in touch both with the International Student Organization as well as with the off-campus student housing organization about a model like that. Ms. Fauma. Okay, they just came to mind when you were talking about partnerships and moving out and, you know, now all of a sudden I'm looking global, I guess. But we live in a metriplex. And like in Washington, do you serve the cities that about Washington? Like do you go out into other cities and do you work with them to work one big system? So we don't currently, similar to the idea of our zone being somewhat constrained to start in Arlington. Our approach is similar in Washington. So we serve Central Washington. We don't yet serve Virginia, for instance. Over the course of time, the goal would be to develop and grow and continue to expand into Maryland, into Virginia. You could imagine a similar model here over the course of time if we get aspirational and really think about what the service is going to look like a few years from now. Well I know there's another service I think I don't think it's a city partnership but there's another city in the Metroplex that's doing a rideshare program. Do you work with other rideshairs? I mean how do you work that if say Grand Prairie decides to do this? And they have another company. But can you go in and out of the cities? It doesn't matter whether there's another program there or not. So I think that's a situation that we have yet to come up upon. I suppose. But I imagine if there were another operator, there would be bounds of some degree, right? Because the service standards and the expectations of what we're putting on the ground in one area is solely based on the area as opposed to another provider. Yeah, does that answer your question? Yeah, I think so. I'm getting weird. If we reach the register, we have them gotten out of all of our long-term yet. Okay, thank you. Not innovating the specifics of the situation. Any other questions, Council? Thank you so much, Monica. We look forward to the launch on Monday and it's exciting. And for those of us who live down south, we can't wait to you come south of 20. That's the goal. Absolutely. We're going to leave. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it. And next, we have City of Arlington, Initiative School Crossing, Next we have City of Arlington and Inish's school crossing, Mendy Carmichael, Director of Public Works and Transportation. Good afternoon, Mendy Carmichael, Director of Public Works and Transportation. As a request, last week I'm pulling up on City of Arlington. It's not working. Hello? calling up on City of Arlington. It's not working. Hello? City of Arlington, can you hear me now? City of Arlington initiatives for school crossings to ensure safety of our students as they cross the roadways in Arlington. So what makes a safe school crossing? It takes a lot of people to make a safe school crossing. It's not a city responsibility. It's not a school responsibility. It's not a parent responsibility. It's not a student. It's everybody's responsibility to make a safe school crossing. And it takes strong partnerships to achieve that. Some of the components required are engineering, education, enforcement, and evaluation. There are established national guidelines that we use to determine the necessary level of improvements such as school zones, stripping the markings, things you see out there today. But generally, we decide what is required based on volume, speed, and the width of the roadway. This is a chart that we use. It's a national guidelines, as I mentioned. But it's just a guideline. We have to employ engineering judgment as well because every school is different. So we work with each school individually, collaborate with them, we have to know where they're dismissing their children, what doors they're coming out of, we have to know their internal circulation of their traffic, their vehicles that are picking up and dropping off. So it's not a one-size-fits-all. Elementary schools are different than high schools. You have driving students at high schools that are quite different than at an elementary school. Education and enforcement, this again, is this is where I say it's a shared responsibility, safety for students. Public works and APD work very closely with schools to inform them on safe driving practices. We've handed out brochures. We've met with schools. We advise schools on, you know, and talking and educating their students. So we work very closely with them on that. But driver and pedestrian distraction is a huge problem. There are laws that says you cannot text or have a cordless device in a vehicle. But there really aren't laws that says that a student needs to look up when they're crossing the road. And what we see is a lot of these students will just walk out into the street without even looking. And it's really a scary situation. So that's one thing that we really evaluate when we're working on these school crossings. So then once we install a crossing, we don't just walk off and leave it. We will evaluate it over the year. We'll work with the school if they see issues. Let us know. We'll work through those. So there is continual monitoring throughout the first year. Once we get it to where we're comfortable with it, then thereafter we collaborate with the schools. They can just call us and say, hey, we've had some changes. This has changed. That's changed. Can you come out and help us with some of this? That happens routinely and regularly with schools throughout Arlington. So what are our initiatives? What do we do as a city working with the schools? So there's four independent school districts in Arlington, AISD, MISD, HUB, and Kennedyville. But there are also charter schools that are considered public schools as well. So there's, you know, we're approaching 100 schools. There's 87 independent campuses and then our charter schools plus private schools and so on and so forth. So we're working with almost 100 schools routinely on making sure the students are safe. We offer guidance and support regarding traffic issues within their campuses and around their campuses. We offer installation of school zones and crossings, flashers, markings and to signage that we provide. We also update our ordinance to make sure that the school zones are enforceable and are regulated by city ordinance. We provide safe routes to school program. I don't know if you're aware of the Mayfield Road out by Martin High School. We've just finished a sidewalk project there. That was a safe route to school program. All of our capital improvements are designed and implemented with sidewalks and access ways for pedestrians. We also have specialized pedestrian signal timing at our major intersections. That is with our new upgraded controller signal controllers, we're able to eliminate pedestrian vehicle conflicts. So that is a very new technology-wise improvement that we've been able to do lately. And then again, on their new school buildings and remodels to their schools, we review their plans and we offer our advice and some recommendations that we make for required components if they need to install when they build their new school buildings. We also provide crossing guards at all AISD elementary schools. That's a city initiative for annual budget of $461,500. We have 94 part-time positions and we recruit higher training monitors them. And that city provided quick note, Mansfield, Canada and HEB provide crossing guards at their expense for their schools. So ongoing coordination is recurring constantly with AISD to resolve some of the issues that they have with their student safety and it's been very successful and I'll present to you a couple of examples of that. We have South Davis Elementary School. What we had is a concern where students were actually crossing Cooper. And these are elementary school children that are crossing Cooper Street to get to South Davis Elementary from the apartments on the east side of Cooper. That's a risky endeavor for an adult, much less an elementary school age child. So we observed that. We met with the school. We talked with the school. Actually, it was the administration that came to us and said, hey, we've got this problem. Can you help us with it? What we did is we applied for and we received a grant to install a signal as the intersection at Snooty Fox, which is one of the driveways into those apartments. Actually that project is out for BIDS and will start in January, so that will be an issue resolved come next summer. So hopefully we can get that when moving in the safety enhancements completed in a timely manner. Wimbich Elementary. This is one where students were crossing Randall Mill and Fielder at just random mid-block locations. The principal contacted us and said, have got elementary kids crossing these streets. What can you do to help us? So we, again, we went out and we observed it. We watched the kids, we watched what they're doing, we watched where they're coming out of the school. On this one, we increased the length of an existing school zone on Fielder Road. We added a new school zone on Randall Mill. We designated an additional crossing guard at the intersection of Randallll and Fielder, but we also advised the principal to discuss this with their kids. Don't cross randomly on the street. You need to cross at the intersection. That's a concern on a lot of these issues that we get with the AISD is that the kids are just crossing midblock anywhere they want. So we work with them to, you know, send them out this door so that they'll go to this crossing. So anything that both internal to their campuses and external, we will advise and guide them on some of that. Arlington High School is another one. This is one we get a call from every year. We talk to them and work through some issues with the students crossing the intersection at Park Row and Cooper as well as along Park Row there. We've improved we've worked with them to improve the drop-off zone along the front that they used to have parking along the front. And then they would have parents come up and drop off kids so you'd have parking cars, you'd have drop off cars and you've got kids running and out of all of that and it was just very haphazard. So we remove, we ask them to remove the parking and just make that area the drop off zone. So you still have two lanes of through traffic, but you have a designated drop-up zone. That seems to have improved some, and they did implement that one. We've also installed that pedestrian signal technology at Cooper and Park Road to eliminate those conflicts. And we've added additional crosswalks along Park Road to help kind of gather the kids in a certain area so that they can cross safely. In addition to those, we've offered the partner with AISD to construct a pedestrian signal on Park Road. We've offered the labor and equipment to construct this signal. If AISD will pay for the materials. And we've also offered to train their staff as school guards, school crossing guards. We've offered to do that as a safety measure if they want crossing guards. We don't typically provide crossing guards at high schools. So we would provide them the training and the equipment. Lamar is quite resembles Arlington High School. They have students that are crossing Lamar. Same thing. They're the scatter and cross at any place along Lamar. We've worked with that Lamar as well pretty much every year to install some things right now. We're currently installing some additional pedestrian lighting along Lamar as well pretty much every year to install some things right now. We're currently installing some additional pedestrian lighting along Lamar Should be completed this week because when they have events at night, they're crossing Lamar and it's it's the Existing street lights are in the median so the the parkways were pretty dark So we agreed let's let's light that up make that a little safer there we've installed there's actually three crosswalks now at Lamar just trying to gather the students again we've installed ramps we've installed more flashers and signage and then again we've advised them to advise their parents to not drop off and pick up along Lamar again that's the part where the kids are running out of the cars move the parents on down the parking lot to drop off and pick up along Lamar. Again, that's the part where the kids are running and out of the cars, move the parents on down the parking lot to drop off. That'll make it a lot safer for your kids out there. So it's a partnership. It's a very strong partnership. And if we don't all work together on this, it doesn't, it's not successful. These are the same two items that we offered, Arlington High, cost share on the signal, and then training as crossing guards. More elementary and Bulls Junior High, this was students crossing at Park Springs and Sublet. There we did this signal technology again. We emitted a permissive left when there's a pedestrian at the intersection. So if they push the button, it will prohibit the left turn as permissive. They can only go on an arrow, which is a protected left. So I'm just happy to the microphone. So okay, now I a lot to me yelling. So, we provided that signal improvement so that we could prevent and make it more safe at the intersection. Sagan High School, Sagan contacted us as well and they had a problem with their drop off a pickup location which is in the front of their school. And what was happening is they were parents and students of both were dropping off a long front, the building coming along on Eden and stacking up from E from Silo back into the drop off zone. So then it was just stacking up further back. So what we recommended was to reverse that because there's more stacking area on silo than there is on Eden. And since we've done that, it's been operating a lot better. So just the little things that we can recommend, we do that regularly and routinely. Another thing we work with schools on is being a good neighbor. We have a lot of call-ins from adjacent neighborhoods that do not like students parking in their neighborhoods. They don't like parents just overwhelming their neighborhoods at pickup time. So, we'll advise the neighborhoods that they can petition their area and have no parking signs installed if they can get a concurrence. But we also advise the schools to please work with their student in parents to keep them in their campus and not external to their campus where they possibly can. So that's another area we work with. So to close, we work with schools, we work with. So to close we work with schools, we work with them constantly. It's a daily part of our jobs, but it's a shared responsibility and we can't do it by ourselves and they can't do it by themselves. So with that I'll take any questions that you may have. Any questions from the council? Any questions from the council? Many, it certainly seems like in reviewing all that the city does to help resolve the problem and the safety concerns that probably a lot of people are not aware that the crossing guards are in Arlington, ISD or city, part time city employees, but crossing guards in Mansfield or Kennedy or HUB are not city employees. Correct. And I think most people just assume that it's one of the other for all school districts and it's just not. And I guess maybe the differentiating factor is that the three school districts that provide their own crossing guards have their own police force, whereas AISD does not. So I guess that's what makes it very different. And I know there's been some undercurrent of concern around some of the schools you named today in the AISD system with regard to safety and, you know, and but so much of it, it seems to me, and I saw this yesterday in a crosswalk of a school, the people are on the phone, and they're just not paying any attention. And, you know, it seems so, so nonsensical that you would just put down the phone when you're trying to cross a street, right? But adults and children alike don't do that. So, Mr. Ferromars, I'm not sure if you're going to have to go to the city. I'm not sure if you're going to have to go to the city. I'm not sure if you're going to have to go to the city. I'm not sure if you're going to have to go to the city. I'm not sure if you're going to have to go to the city. I'm not sure if you're going to have to go to the city. And I think you effectively, especially in Lamar, I know we've been hearing a lot about that one. I think that's a great opportunity, increased lighting. I'm curious, I've had some questions from constituents about how often do we, because at some point in time, the reflectivity on the signs, as as the paint just degrades and I was wondering what kind of schedule does the city have to monitor those beyond just what is reported but is there an ongoing maintenance to that? Thank you. There is we have a we have a condition assessment on all the signs and markings and those are annually reviewed. So it's the worst first category. Yes, that's an ongoing maintenance. Mindy, is it the 20 mile an hour speed limit for school zones? Is that state mandated or is it individual in the recent I ask is because Kenadel has a 30 mile an hour one on business 287 to their elementary school Which is always just very surprising to me. So how is it determined if it's 20 or it's 30? I know that 20 is the lowest I think you can make it in Texas. I'm not sure If it's a city policy that we always use 20 I'll have to go back and do some research on that. School zones are not always required. That you can just have a crossing without a school zone. But as for the speed, I'm not sure what exactly the rules are there. We typically use 20 miles an hour in Arlington. Okay, I just thought it was probably state law, but probably not so. Probably not, okay. If you could just give us that information whenever you get it. Any other questions or comments, Mr. Parker? Thank you, Mayor Prattim. Mindy, thank you very much for the work that you've done at Wimbish because that was really a problem over there for those little kids to be crossing such busy streets and not have the supervision that they needed. So thank you very much for coordinating with that school. As far as Lamar goes, is it is it true that we've provided a set of keys for the school zone lights, the blinking lights to the school itself. I'm not sure I would hope that the answer would be no, because the school zones are regulated. They can only be flashing during the hours that is in the ordinance adopted by the ordinance and If they're flashing when drivers Unexpected then the driver is going to start ignoring the flashers So I would not recommend that we do that well the reason I asked the question is because of the night activities and the And the darkness around that area, the residents wanted the flasher to be on and I was told by somebody on staff that a set of keys was provided for the staff of the school to be able to turn those lights on in the event that they had evening activities where they wanted people to slow. I can definitely check on that. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Other comments or questions? Thank you, Mendy. Appreciate the report. It's very informative and we do a lot to help them and we'll continue to do that. So thank you so much. Next, we have short-term rental and residential properties. Mr. Mike Bass, co-compliance administrator. Good afternoon, Mike Bass, co-compliance services administrator. As you all are aware, the municipal policy committee has been actively engaged in discussions specific to complex and dynamic issues associated with the short-term rental of residential properties. As a result of our discussions and municipal policy committee has recommended extending the discussion and examination of short-term rentals to residents and stakeholders via the hosting of a town hall meeting in order to identify a balanced solution to what is a complex challenge. So some previous discussions with the committee centered around three policy objectives for consideration. Those were preserving hot revenues and creating parity amongst the lodging industry, neighborhood preservation and health and safety. So what is a short-term rental? Well typically short rental.term rental, short-term rental is defined as a rental of a residential dwelling unit, bedroom or accessory building for a period of less than one month. This is an example of a home that's listed in Central Arlington. It boasts 2,660 square feet and can hold up to 11 guests. So short-term rentals are one example of the increasing popularity and the growth of the sharing economy. So according to some research I did, Air DNA, which is a third-party vendor who provides Airbnb market analysis and analytics, they've indicated that 4.2 million rentals are currently listed on the Airbnb platform. Because of this growth and the challenges associated with the monitoring and tracking of the short-term rentals, the committee also considered utilizing a third-party vendor for purposes of identifying the location of the short term rentals, operator data, activities, and trends. Additionally, the third party provider could provide 24-7 telephone email hotline for which residents can report real-time non-emergency issues related to a short-term rental. So some recommended next steps is for the city to engage the consulting services of host compliance. Just to give you a little bit of background on host compliance, their CEO is Ulrich Binser. He's nationally recognized an expert and utilizes his expertise and insights to assist local governments with their concerns. He frequently speaks at ICMA in the American Planning Association conference and he's been featured in the Wall Street Journal and on leading network CNN and Fox News. The specific consultant for this project would be assigned to Jeffrey Goodman. He's been previously contracted with the City of New Orleans and Airbnb. And he's advised the cities of New Orleans and Airbnb and he's advised the cities of San Francisco, Portland, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Boston, St. Louis, and New York. Jeff by trade is an urban planner and his work focuses on the sharing economy. He's a graduate of Yale College and he has his master's of urban planning from Harvard. So host compliance believes that decisions should be data driven. This is based on qualitative input from the community, which should be combined with the quantitative data that's obtained from the local market. I don't believe that there's such a thing as a boilerplate ordinance. They believe it's too complex of an issue and that any system must be tailored to the local context. And then moving past, yes or no, regulatory lens based on the community needs to allow for a more comprehensive and effective choices. So if the councils in agreement, host compliance would facilitate the town hall meeting so that they can develop a common foundation of knowledge both qualitatively and quantitatively. They'll provide the residents and stakeholders with a background on the industry and some national trends and issues that they have encountered. And also they will provide some local market data related to how many short-term rentals are currently in Arlington. Based on a high level review of what we have in Arlington, they've identified 370 short-term rentals currently located in Arlington. During the public input portion of the meeting, host compliance will prompt commenters with most common topics in the STR debate. They'll want to focus on our specific needs and they'll also talk about a variety of tools that other communities have used to address these issues with emphasis on some of the following common concerns. Housing, what are the effect on long-term, housing availability and affordability, ownership and insurance concerns, quality of life, development, fairness to local lodging providers and tax and assessment implications and opportunities. They'll also be able to provide an online survey that will allow for broader participation for residents who can attend the town hall meeting. They'll be able to provide other comments and describe any real time impacts that they have in their neighborhood. So as I indicated if the Council's in agreement phase one of this project will involve the consultant providing data on the scale and scope of activity currently in the city. They'll facilitate a town hall meeting in January in order to identify key issues and policy objective considerations. They'll provide an online stakeholder survey and a quantitative report summarizing those results. And then staff will take that information and data and then report that back to the municipal policy committee for future guidance and next steps. So with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Questions from council? Mr. Glass, I know be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Questions from council? Mr. Glass, I know this was in your committee. Do you have any additional comments? It's a very interesting and challenging issue to deal with. I was going to ask, as I missed a bass. Have you mentioned that they had worked, this particular consultant had worked with New Orleans? Have you had a chance to get any idea of how New Orleans had approached bringing them in and the issues they were trying to resolve and how they felt about the whole thing? Sure, sure. The consultant would be the same consultant, Jeffrey Goodman. He really approached this from a community input perspective and also stakeholder input and from there the city was able to craft an ordinance that was specific to the feel of an environment that the city of New Orleans wanted to have as it relates to the regulation of their short-term rentals. To me, I think it's a good approach for us to take because it is a fairly complex issue. I think we want to be in a position that we've looked as thoroughly as possible at what our options are and what we come up with is something that's unique to allington. I said the committee was supportive of going forward with the consultant. Okay. Councilor Lennie, further input, Mr. Parker? Mr. Bass, thanks for the presentation. The first house that you put up there was 2600 square feet. Is that correct? How many bedrooms was that in that house? I believe it had six bedrooms. Six bedrooms. Or I'm sorry. Or. Okay, so our particular policy, if I'm not mistaken, and I could be, is the number of bedrooms times, and then times two, plus two extra inhabitants. Isn't that correct? That would be 10. Yeah, I'm just saying you might have to help me out in this, but really we would look at the definition of family. And that would be where there was more than five that are unrelated, five or more that are unrelated. or unrelated, I have a more of their unrelated. I'm concerned that I believe that's correct. The number of bedrooms is looking at that thing right there. It says three bathrooms. Three bathrooms and my eyesight's being challenged right now. And four bedrooms. So that's a 810 and so this this I think advertisement for this particular property is in violation of our city code. So that is just one aspect. Now I look forward to whatever the consultant has to say on this subject due to the fact that five years ago I brought this subject to a council for some kind of restitution and now we have 370 of them. So I think that something certainly has to be done. And I think there has to be an ordinance written that takes into consideration the property values of residents and ensures that their quality of life is not violated due to the almighty dollar of somebody else's property rights. So I'm looking forward to this. I'm looking forward to the town hall meetings and getting some feedback from our constituents as to how they feel about these particular properties. Thank you so much. Ms. Wolfe. Thank you, Mr. Bass. Will there be a series of town hall meetings? I believe that once we report back to the committee, we're gonna see guidance from you all as to how you want us to proceed from that point on. Okay, I think that would be the members of the committee would appreciate how y'all council members feel about that. If there's a town hall in January and then we're gonna do this survey, what do you think that timeframe is for the consultant to come up with some specifics or some recommendations? They've indicated in their scope of service so they can provide a turnaround of around two to three weeks of information. Two or three weeks? Goodness. Okay, thank you very much. Mr. Parker. Well, the consultant be available for these town hall meetings or who I say will be. Okay, all right, thank you. So the town hall meetings once the consultants here and comes forward, then the town hall meetings will get scheduled. And so is it that there'll be one in each council district, each of the five single member districts, or how is that going to happen? I believe and correct me if I'm wrong. Mr. Glasspies, the committee recommended have the town hall meeting and then assess whether that's sufficient and look at what our options may have to get additional information if we need. Okay, so if there's a desire to have more than one town hall meeting, is that possible with a consultant? We should be able to do that. I don't know how Council feels about it, but I certainly, one town hall meeting, if it's on the wrong day, at the wrong time, and you can't get this as such, a controversial and convoluted topic, and I think public input is paramount on something like this, because you're talking about People's property and what's happening next door that may affect their property So I don't know if the council has an appetite for us maybe trying to have five town hall meetings one in each council district I mean, that's just kind of how I envisioned it. I don't know if that's possible or not Is it possible Mr. Vance? I'm sure it's possible that we'll have to look at the consultant schedule, but we can certainly ask them to do that. I'm sure there'll be more than happy to watch. So, council, is that your desire or not? And if you don't know yet, that's fine. I know I want one for my district. Mr. Parker wants one for his district. So you got two out of five. Yeah, Mr. Parker wants one for his. So you got two out of five. Yeah, I miss one once one. Miss Wolf, wanna comment, I know when we had the town hall on the garage sales and the fence, new fence code, there was one and it was helped here in this room and it was packed and but not all council members attended. So I think you're gonna need more than one. So whatever you desire and what you need in your particular area. And I agree with you Ms. Fulfke, because for one, I didn't even know about that one, that meeting about the garage sales. And I can tell you, many of my constituents did not know, because after the fact, when I was reporting that to them, I said, well, why didn't we know well you know we always face that challenge why didn't we know but if you kind of divided up among the council district there's a little bit more direct contact with your constituents and if you do one big one and I think this is going to take a lot of vetting and a lot of thought and the more input we get from the people our property tax payers I think the better off will all be so if we if council's an agreement then You could go forward with that Mike and see if we can get five on the schedule Okay All right mystery algorithm Mike if you could flip back to that graph where you had just two quick things I want to make sure you all that that graph That's all the activity on Airbnb. This is clearly a thing that is not a passing fancy or a fad. And just to put that in context, that is more web traffic than hotels.com generates. So this industry is bigger than the most traditional world. So it's just that's the you know, the future that we're having to deal with and manage in a very careful way. But the other thing I want to make sure is we talk about this consultant involvement and the reason they're able to turn this around so quickly is because of all the communities they have been in. They have created a whole palette and cafeteria style of suggestions and recommendations. So it's really a matter of which ones fit our community. They've got a list of 20 or 30 of these things that might provide a reasonable framework if the community decides that's what they're interested in. And also I think the cost on this I wanna make sure people realize it's a pretty modest amount that we're talking right now. Barring growth in town halls is around $10,000. It's not a huge investment of some facilitative private expertise in this world. So I didn't want anybody to think this was an extraordinary amount of consulting services that we're asking for. I think that would be money well invested to give us guidance and to get the input. Ms. Fowman. It's one comment in that I hope that citizens of Ong can realize this potentially could touch everybody in Ongo. It's not just one district. It's the whole city. And I think if we had it on a map, plotted them on a map, we'll see that it's everywhere in the city already. It's just, you know, some areas are maybe more problematic than others, but at the right it's growing, it's going to become a growing concern. And, you know, with public input, I think we can find a solution. All right. Any further comment? Thank you, Council. Thank you, Mr. Vass. Next up, we have one of our city policy priorities, Mr. Jim Paragion, Deputy City Manager. Mayor Brotein and the city council, today just want to highlight one of your priorities, the invest in our economy. It's been a really vibrant time for the city of Arlington and we're just gonna use a couple phrases, Luxury Hotel, Fortune 500 Company, small business expansion, international business, and employee-based US business expansion. So those are just some of the phrases that come out when I read our Invest in our economy news letter this quarter. As you can see, it's been a really vibrant time for the city. It continues to be a really good business climate in the Sea of Arlington. A lot of that is consistent policies, consistent approaches that the Council has established. We meet with businesses every day and when there's uncertainty, they don't want to be here. In your case, as the Council has established policies and processes and a consistency of a certainty of decision, that's really made our job as staff much, much easier. And you can kind of see the fruits of that labor when you just look at this newsletter. And it is just quite frankly, it's amazing. Most cities would be happy to see one of these in the course of probably a four or five year period. And you're seeing them in literally a few months. So just want to take a couple of minutes to highlight a few of those luxury hotel. Finally, live by live by lows, which is $150 million hotel. It's going to be in the entertainment district. That construction process is already begun. You can see it out there. It's really moving forward well. You were, many of you were at the groundbreaking. Really an exciting time for the city. It's one of those things that the city had hoped to achieve over time and it's happening. And then we had a really in the in the second page of your newsletter there's a great story about a small business and that small business started in the Dallas region and grew into Arlington as a small business and they have a business enterprise really focused on printing specialized, using specialized equipment for printing and some of their major partners include the biggest players in that industry, Xerox, Canon, Connaca, Huwut Packard. So they've been in our until 25 years they continue to prosper by being in the city and they continue to do really well economically. And it's a small business that's really impressive. And then certainly, DR Hortons grand opening off of I-30 corridor. Been looking forward to this for a while. The Orhorton's world's largest home builder, although I think they might be number two soon with the acquisition, but we'll see. We're excited about having them. They bring a lot of really good job opportunities for people, including not just direct jobs, but indirect job suppliers, things like that. And they have such a global reach that we would hope that and anticipate that them being headquartered in Arlington will continue to grow other businesses in Arlington as well. And then we continue to work on recruitment efforts internationally. The newsletter also highlights the experience we had We continue to work on recruitment efforts internationally. The newsletter also highlights the experience we had. It focused on Mexico and Mexican Mexico businesses. And you know, those starts slow. It takes a while from an international recruitment standpoint. You have to build relationships and then you look for opportunities where there's alignment. And in our case, that's happening, a probably a good example of that is with the Arlington Logistics Center Park, which is the old Six Flags Mall, where one of a very large Mexican-based business is moving to Arlington. And then I'd be remiss if I, for those car enthusiasts, I really had to learn about this. Summit racing opened its doors. And that was a company that chose Arlington. They're all how based. They chose Arlington as one of four locations in the United States to relocate. In fact, Arlington's got the largest and biggest and probably most productive, hopefully most productive store that they'll have in their portfolio. And I would just highlight, I think while you see a big business there and you see a lot of sort of warehouse distribution space, that retail store shouldn't be understated. That is going to generate a significant amount of sales revenue for the city. And that revenue as well as some of these other deals, those dollars get put back into some of the services that are needed for our city, such as police and fire and streets and infrastructure. So just wanted to highlight, we do these things so that those dollars can go into the city system and take care of the needs that we have. So that's just a quick little highlight, but it was so interesting as you read this. I would just not want to understate the fact that much of what you see here, most cities would be proud to see that Maybe once or twice a year at the most and when you're seeing every quarter so Congratulations Thank you mr. John and thanks to the economic development staff you guys do a great job mr. Shepherd as chair. Would you like to have any comments? Thank you mayor Mayor Pro Tem. There's still not here. I padded them on the back last Tuesday, and they weren't here. No, not working. Out good. Good, I'm sure Mr. Paragion and Mr. Yevroton can evade those remarks to them, but I do think the job that our economic development team does I'm not sure if you can see that the community is well over 10 conveyed those remarks to them, but I do think the job that our economic development team does is remarkable given the size that they are in the limitation of funding that we have in terms of our inability to write a check. Hey, there he is. He's back. Bruce, what are we given away today? No, I'm kidding. So investments. Yes. Thank you. Thank you to them. They do a remarkable job with what they have. And they're very talented, very bright people working, very, very hard for the betterment of our own. And so thank you, guys. Well said, Mr. Shepherd. And thank you, Mr. Payton and Mr. Perrajone. And with regard to Summit, I too had to learn about Summit and Racing. And it was pointed out to me by my son, because he was here and we went to the ribbon cutting. And I was telling him about a different retail endeavor that we didn't get to be able to be there. And he said, well, the average sale there generally is probably going to be $50. Because you can go in by a little thing, right? He said, you can't walk out of summit without spending $200. So, you know, your return on investment is much better at summit than, and of course, he's a car enthusiast, so he would know much better than I. But I thought it was a point we'll make very well. But thank you so much for the report, Mr. Perrion. Next, we'll go to committee reports, Mr. Glaspy, municipal policy. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Municipal Policy Committee met this morning with everyone present, and our focus was on the garage sale, my ordinance there. We shared some potential recommendations at our last meeting. And those were shared with stakeholders to get feedback and everyone seemed to be pretty much comfortable with the approach we were taking. So what we we propose is a permit would be required for garage sale, an online permitting process will eventually be put in place. We know more than three sales with a 12 month period. That's, I guess you said a debate within the committee about that, whether she be three or whether she before, which we would like to get input from the council in general about that. During the 12 month period, no more than three or four garage sales could be held. No more than three consecutive days that would be done. One sign can be on the premises for the garage sale. That would be no fee. We were talking originally about possibly having a fee for a permit, but we eliminated the ideal fee. And then hours would be restricted from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for doing the garage sale. So I guess the question is what your response is on whether we should go with three sales, garage sales annually or full garage sales, annually. And then one other question came up and I'm going to let Dr. Myers expand on it concerning home business because one of the problems we feel we might be dealing with a lot of people who are actually using these as a business versus a true garage sale. So Dr. Myers. Before we go to Dr. Myers, let's resolve the first question. Okay. Because I think her, if I understand it correctly, hers is kind of a different issue that may be in the part. So, basically, what's the pleasure of the council would, would three Grysales per year during a 12 year or 12 month period or a lot for Mr. Sparker Thank you Michael I have two garages and three addicts and I can't sell three times That stuff that's in there. I mean this is a garage sale. It's not something that you replenish on a monthly basis. OK, so essentially, I think three garage sales is very generous on an annual basis. Anyone else? Ms. Waman? I agree with you. Ms. Woolf. Mr. Shepherd. I agree with you. Ms. Wall. Mr. Shepherd. Ms. Myers. Three. Okay. I think we have consensus for three. Okay. So we'll in the in the ordinance will have three sales during a 12 month period. So now the next. And before we move to that, how does this get implemented and when does it get implemented and how do we let people know about it? Great question. Once we've we've put the ordinance together and set it in place. We eventually will have an online permitting process. However, it will probably be the third quarter of 2018 before we can do that. So the staff and committee concluded we should initially focus on educating people for kind of what is coming. And then position I'll say also that in when we can do online permanent, we can actually go full scale ahead. So I guess a companion question, Mr. City Manager, is there a cost associated with allowing them to do, I mean to the city, not to the people. But I mean, do we have, can we do it through Amanda? Do we need an Amanda update to do it? How will we actually do this online permitting? And is there an additional cost associated with that to the city? I'll have to defer to Mike to answer what the permitting process expectation is. Sure. The process would be the same as what's currently utilized by CDNP where you're able to get your permit online. I believe that IT is going to be able to work this into their work plan. They don't consider it to be a huge endeavor. So I can't speak to the cost of it, but Dennis, I think you might be able to add some more to that. Mr. John. Thanks, Mike. Dennis John, Chief Information Officer, I join you with my voice as well. We would be utilizing our Amanda System, which the only cost would be our internal staff resources in order to complete the program. And all of the coverage for the actual software costs are part of our normal maintenance. So there would be no additional cost for that software. Okay. We have the wherewithal to do it, but there is an additional cost by understanding correct. Okay, thank you. All right. I think we've resolved it and missed for our Mars. In our discussions, there was a lot of discussion by constituencies, and also I brought this up at the committee level with the idea of individuals utilizing these garage sales as a guys to run a business out of their home. I had asked staff and I asked now council and put on this. And whether or not we should also intend them to doing this, to go back and look at our small, our home business-based ordinances or ordinance related to retail out of the home to make sure that our language is as tight as possible. So that we are moving in parallel with this because while I've been made to understand by my colleagues, the differences in the need for desire for garage sale, although I was outweighed by the 3-4, but I understand I yield. I do feel that there is an opportunity at this juncture to pair these issues so that we can be sure that we provide the best coverage for our citizens. So is the Council in agreement to have that reviewed and I probably I think it would go to municipal policy for further investigation. So I think by understanding correctly, the home-based business ordinance that we have to go back and revisit that and see if we need to make any changes to it in any way, particularly in light of many of the garage sales seem to be selling new products. I differentiate between a home-based business where people are invited into your home to purchase something if it's a retail situation versus putting it out on the lawn and having lots of different cars Stop by and creating some lot of an unsightly appearance to a neighborhood I see that very differently, but it's probably been I don't know how many years since we did the home-based business ordinance It probably wouldn't hurt to go back and look at it and see if we need to make any changes 20 20 15 to 20 years. Well, I think it's time to go back and visit 15 to 20 here. So. Oh, well, okay. Well, then it's more than time is more than time. And so Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. K. Part. The Ms. Wolfen, I had this discussion kind of offline after our executive work session. And I wasn't in committee and we don't need to rehash any of this. But the issue that continues to pop up in my head is why we can't stop what's clearly a retail endeavor at a house. To me, a home-based business is a CPA, a piano teacher, someone who's allocated some portion of their house to engage in a business enterprise. Based on what I heard from the committee members concerning some of the instances of these quote garage sales, we had packaged items that were retail priced, you know, with a price tool or whatever. I mean, clearly, we're not talking about grandma's closet being out on the front lawn to be sold. And so while I have no objection to, and clearly it's been a while since we've looked at it. Looking at the home-based business ordinance, I still struggle with us attempting to find an approach separate and apart from this garage sale ordinance that addresses what's clearly a retail activity being conducted without an appropriate certificate of occupancy, without the appropriate zoning, without the appropriate parking and on and on and on. We have a lot of businesses in town that are required to maintain each one of those things. And if we're allowing individuals to conduct retail activities out of their houses, we're not being fair to the business community that we're requiring to do all that, and we're not also requiring these individuals to do the same. So I think they're a related problem. I've got my own issues with the garage sale ordinance, which we won't get into. But I'm hoping that when we go through this review process, we can also kind of look at other opportunities to perhaps stop the kind of outrageous activities we've been informed about. Well said. And I think that was missed from Myers Point if I got I understood correctly. But the garage sale thing that was a part of it, but it was also the number and the frequency and the traffic it caused in neighborhoods and in some places sometimes it was an opportunity for people to learn the law of the land of a particular neighborhood. And it was citizen driven. I mean, we don't sit around this horse, you and dream up things to go regular. I mean, it's always back to us to respond to the citizens. And this was clearly citizen driven. I think I know Ms. Wom and Ms. Wolf and I had received numerous complaints from separate neighborhoods about the problem. And it's a growing problem. Ms. Wom and Miss Wolfenye had received numerous complaints from separate neighborhoods about the problem and it's a growing problem. Miss Wom. I don't mean to get off of what you're doing, but it also occurs to me because I know I'm looking at the recommendations. Could you tell me how you came up with three days instead of two? I mean, how did we get three days? It was a compromise. It was a compromise because three days seems like an awful lot. We started off with two and a couple of members of our committee start for reflecting once a quarter would be the appropriate. Oh, three days, I'm sorry. We can that you can be open. I mean, three days seems like a long time. The Friday, Saturday, Sunday, just kind of weekend. Well, garage sale. Yeah. I'm thinking too, but I just wondered how you came up with three. Kind of a weekend, you know, know Friday Saturday and Sunday. Often times they are Friday Saturday and Sunday. Estates sales in particular which this doesn't apply to estate sales but it's kind of the norm. Mr. Parker. As this goes back to the committee, could I ask you to review some portion of teeth within this document in an effort. In the event that we have somebody who is selling merchandise, new merchandise, so to speak, that there are rights for the remainder of the garage sales for a certain period of time I'm wondering if the chairman and if you did apologize. I missed it. Explain about apartment, multi-family projects having grown. No, no, we in fact, we. I did. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I'm not going to explain about the apartment, multifamily projects having grown up. No, we, in fact, I didn't mention that. Of course, I've wanted to concerns also has been apartments. And one of the things that we indicated in the ordinance that an individual a room within an apartment could not just arbitrarily have a garage sale, but it would have to be something that the owner or the manager a room within an apartment could not just arbitrarily have a Garage sale but it would have to be something at the owner or the manager of the apartments is in agreement with and that would be the person who would get the permit Mr. Bass do you have it queued up for that picture that was taken recently? No, okay It's in your packet, but there was a garage sale and I had mentioned it last week And it was on Cooper Street. It was a major thoroughfare into our city and it was awful. I mean it just It was just awful no other way to describe it in an apartment complex So I'm glad for the clarification. So mr. Bass one would the ordinance come back to us for a vote? Oh for the clarification. So Mr. Bass, one would the ordinance come back to us for a vote? On the garage sale? Yes, Miss Fowman. It's about the signs. It says no more than one sign on the premises, but I see signs all over the neighborhoods. Are we good? Would you address that please? Yeah, the couple of things. One, the sign on the premises had to do with just making sure that they didn't populate the yard with signs. The other signs that you may see around a neighborhood come on down normal ordinance for usage of signs. Be not prohibited. Is that what I'm hearing? And so when code sees those, they just pull them up. I hope if they receive permission from a private property owner to place a sign, then it's not. And it's not in the right way. We're good. It is placed in the right way. Then we can remove the sign. OK, I guess I'm misread this because I thought we were just going to so you could just have one sign on your yard and not but you can put signs in anybody's yard that agrees to put them in there. Okay. Okay. Mr. Vasson, will you? to determine that we could bring this back in January as a first and second reading. As Mr. Glassp indicated then we would start a marketing and education strategy. Okay. So that by the time we build up to the third quarter of FYA, it's going to be to hopefully provide enough information to residents that they understand what the ordinance will. So in January or probably our first meeting in January that ordinance would come to us for about. Okay. Understand what the ordinance will. So in January or probably our first meeting in January, the ordinance would come to us for about. Okay. Council and agreement. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Bass. Any further, Mr. Framars. I just would before we get to that point, I would very much like to. I don't know if we have a municipal policy committee scheduled, but I would very much like the information that Mr. Cheperton and myself are asking in regards to the retail ordinances and home based business ordinances. I'd like that information just for sake of discussion and consideration. If we could have a plan to municipal policy meeting prior to the looking of the council on this. So if and there's a municipal policy meeting scheduled for next week, I guess it is right. Is the next council meeting? Is it next week? Or is the week after next week, isn't it? And I don't know if there's one plan or not, but Ms. Myers was asking that we have that topic with regard to starting to revisit the home-based businesses and the retail component of selling products. Okay? For the next municipal policy meeting, whenever that is. Correct? Correct? Okay. I'll put on a TMI report. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Galacity. I'm sure you're happy to be concluded with reports on garage sales. Okay. So now we'll move to community and neighborhood development. you're happy to be concluded with reports on garage sales. Okay, so now we'll move to community and neighborhood development. Ms. Wall. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm going to ask Mindy Cochran to come forward because what we addressed today in a short meeting was last January, this Council approved a no objection, decoration for a 4% tax credit property reconsider that letter of no opposition. And I've just asked Mindy because we get real complicated on tax credits and she's because we decided as a committee that the full council needed to have this discussion. Thank you, Ms. Fall. Mindy. Thank you, Mindy, Cochran Assistant Director of Community Development and Planning again. Thanks for listening this afternoon. This project is a project, as Ms. Fall said, that came to Council last January. This was the Millar Valentine Group's Reserve at Mayfield Project. It was a 255 unit all senior, meaning over 55 years of age not assisted living At New York and Mayfield and this is in Council District 3 and you all prove your resolution of no objection This project is a 4% tax credit project so this project is not subject to the 9% policy that we talked about earlier today is not subject to the 9% policy that we talked about earlier today. So there are some changes to this project. The developer is actually completely pulling out. They're no longer pursuing this project. However, an affiliate of generation housing partners is intent on completing this project with some modifications from what Miller Valentine had proposed initially. So because there are changes to the project, the developer and the unit mix, the new developer needs to get a new resolution of no objection to move forward with an application for tax credit. The developer is generation housing development. They have over 30 years of experience in affordable housing. They're based here in Texas and have a large portfolio. Chris Applequist is here on the audience representing the developer today. So if you have any detailed questions about the development itself, he's the expert on that. And their mission is to develop sustainable communities so we can all be very proud of. The project they're proposing is called the Heights at Mayfield and this is a mixture of senior housing and family housing. So they're proposing a variety of different building types with kind of that natural split in the property dividing the senior housing villas from the family housing. The project should be up to 240 units, probably somewhere between 200 and 240 total units and right now they're proposing 60 senior units. proposing 60 senior units. The heights it may feel is kind of unique in that it allows for an aging in place development, which we don't really have here in Arlington. As I said, it was a mixture of senior and family housing. Generations housing really does some quality housing. These are some examples of some of their properties. They do multiple different housing types with a lot of different amenities and really some beautiful properties. So this again is a change. It's no longer a milling-ballant time. This is Generation Housing Partners, up to 240 units and it's no longer an all- senior housing project. It's now a multi-generational housing project. Just today, Generation Housing received a letter of support from the East Arlington Renewal Neighborhood Association. And Generation Housing is committed to being vested in their neighborhoods and upon completion of this project. They have offered a generous donation of $25,000 to each branch library. So trying to be good neighborhood partners. So the request that will be coming to you on the December, yes, December 12th, a council meeting would be for a resolution of no objection for a 4% project. Again, it's not subject to the 9% project, but the 9% policy does have support only for senior projects on green space. And this is an opportunity for a public private partnership. And I'd be happy to entertain any questions. Any questions, Mr. Shepard? Thank you. Thank you. Is the zoning in place on this? We I'm confused about when we took all these up. What's what? So what's the project is already currently zone M of 22? 22. Okay. So the proposed the 255 fit so the 240 would also fit. And if we if we were to reject the certificate of no objection, what what would happen as far as the developer is concerned or the availability of tax credit, do they go back in the hopper for a year or what? So Miller Valentine, and correct me if I'm mistaken, Chris, but Miller Valentine received a resolution of no objection from the city but did not pursue the tax credits because of the change in credit pricing, exact correct. So they never put the application into TDHCA with the proposed changes in the tax laws, with the corporate tax rates coming down. Tax credits aren't as valuable to investors which are generally banks any longer. So the price has fallen. So the deal else all senior didn't work out for them. So they never put their application into the state. So those credits are just still in part of the general pool. This is a brand new developer and brand new project. And if they were received a resolution of no objection, could then apply to TDHC for an allocation. If you are to deny their request, they would need to either try revisit the project in some other manner and potentially represent it to the city. Mr. Parker. I said in that committee and I had concerns about this particular project because of the change and purpose of the project. Now, Mindy, you stated that the restrictions on senior housing and being workforce housing, that particular restrictions are only for the 9% tax credit programs. I don't recall that differentiation. I recall that it was for tax credit program housing, okay? Those restrictions were on all tax credit housing, not just the 9%, and I may be all soapy, but that's my recollection. So essentially by changing the purpose of this particular housing, mostly to workforce housing, it doesn't comply with the fact that we wanted new construction, Greenfield Construction on Senior Living, which that's what this project was to new construction on in Greenfield projects for workforce housing over that particular purpose of the project itself. So I think to be very honest with you, I think we're kind of in a violation here of our ordinance that we just got discussing and passing last week of permitting workforce housing, tax credit workforce housing on Greenfield. And there's the rub for me, okay? If it was going to remain senior housing on Greenfield, I could understand, you know, supporting this particular project. But I think there's an issue here because the scope of this project changed from senior living to workforce housing. And that specifically is in violation of what we were trying to do with the ordinance last week. So the 9% and the 4% projects, the reason that those two processes are kept separate is because the 9% projects have to be submitted to the state by March 1st. Last Thursday, the governor signed the qualified allocation plan which defines how the scoring system works. So that starts that application process and it ends on March 1st when those are due to the state. The 4% projects are an open-ended cycle. A developer could come anytime during the year to apply for 4% credits to an open-ended cycle. A developer could come any time during the year to apply for 4% credits to TDHCA. That's why we tied that policy to our 9% because it's so strict versus the 4% project. Well, we didn't tie the thing to the 9%. We tied it to tax credit housing, okay? And the fact that it is in tax credit housing, okay? And the fact that it is in tax credit housing, it qualifies if it's a 9% or 4%, essentially my understanding of what we did last week, okay, was the fact that if we had tax credit housing, we want tax credit housing to be, we want to try to stimulate the need for senior housing on Greenfield by having new construction, but limit new construction for apartments on Greenfield with tax credits. And it doesn't make any difference when the state needs their application or anything else. It makes a difference that we're putting tax credit projects on Greenfield that are workforce projects. And that's what we were trying to make sure that we had that same impetus to try to get senior living on green space and not workforce living on green space with tax credits. And if I'm wrong, please counsel, let me know. Ms. Farman. Would you tell me the company that started first, the first developer. Is there a relation between that developer and the one that's now applying? Are they the same? Are they, did they sell? What, I don't know. Is there a relationship with Chidefress? I'm not aware. Initially we were part of it together and the one that I'm not going to pull down. Okay. We're going to do some of these in the room. It was the two companies that first applied and then just Miller pulled out. So it's the same. Okay, thank you. Mr. Shepherd. I mean, there's no action tonight. This is just informational, but I assume that it will be on our agenda next week. And we'll have the opportunity to vote yes or no on this item next week. In spite of what Mr. Parker saying, which I agree, I think was certainly my belief that the tax credit policy we were adopting covered all of it. But that's a little more nuanced discussion perhaps. And I think we're talking about here. Regardless of what our policy says or doesn't say, we still have the ability to say no. So next week we'll have that opportunity to say up or down on this particular request and we can talk about this later. Ms. Vaughn. Well I think when we as a committee realized that this was going to be on the Consent agenda next week, we just said, well, we'll talk about it next week. And staff was very forthright in saying, I think you ought to have that full discussion today. That's why we, as a committee said, we will have that full discussion with full council today, not next week. And Mr. Paragion, you might want to clarify or maybe if I mispoke there. So I think we need to get it all on the table. And the resolution as revised talks about tax credit housing period. Yeah, you really have two actions that are before you. One is on your agenda tonight related to approving a tax credit policy. It's your policy. It's not mandated that you even have one. I think the committee came out and came up with this policy. Policy's been written that it references housing tax credit. It doesn't reference 4% or 9% it's just a generic. Having said that, you have the choice to do. This is your policy. So if there are visions to this policy that you would like to make, you made one today already that will be here. Number six. But if you decide that you want to modify that, that would be helpful to know so that we can get that policy on board. Or you leave it just as it is and as it is now, this policy does not differentiate between a 4% and 9%, it just says housing tax credit policy. These are your preferences as the council. That's one area. And then the second piece is a direct request from the potential developer of that property that is requesting your action on a separate matter. So that will become on the 12th. That does not need to be acted upon tonight. In fact, it would not be acted upon tonight, be acted upon on the 12th. But direction about that would probably be very help-way. I know the developers in the audience, and if, for instance, the council decides that that property really to get your support needs to be senior oriented they need to know that so they can make adjustments to where they're able to make any modifications of that request or not but the the big issue would be to make sure that this policy that is on your council agenda tonight maybe under evening agenda items Any direction you want to give contrary to what's here would be helpful if this is consistent with your Expectation as a council then you're good to go and other believe you all have this at your place the revised that was what we want to adopt to tonight certification Jim I That was what we want to adopt tonight. Miss Fileman. Perfection. Jim. I know there are 9% and the 4% do this. I guess the state regulation is the same for both like the 50. It's not. 9% is a competitive process. The 4% is different than that. But both the 4% does come to the city and requests. I think a no objection is what that is. They have that. But in the 9%, that's that competitive scoring process that's got quite a bit more. I guess what I was asking, when we talk about the 15 years, and then it's up again, does that apply above the four and the nine? Yes, it does. OK. All right. And then it's competitive after that for nine, but not for four. Well, the nine is competitive in the very beginning. Yeah, okay, but the four is not. Okay. Last thing, Jim, before you go there, on number six on tonight's action of the ordinance itself, the city has a preference for developers who are willing to identify the Arlington Housing Finance Corporation or an entity controlled by the corporation as the intended recipient of First Ratter Refusal. Does that make this property come off of the tax rolls because of the Arlington Housing Finance Corporation's control? the city's decision to be in the city's control. I don't know the answer to that. I would think that would be the city's discretion if it was an entity that was controlled by the city. But I don't know the answer to that. I can't find out. The reason I ask this is because what we're doing is we're simply transferring the property over to one of the chodos if I'm not mistaken. And so it would still be chodo controlled and operated of which they would be if we went through the normal process they would have it on the tax rolls. So that's my concern with the city putting their nose and the tent, so to speak, do we forego the tax rolls anyway, shape or form? Council member Paragraph, I'm not sure I see the different. I mean, what number six does is it provides the, should that property be sold that the first position would be an organization that is consistent with perhaps the city's perspective which would be the housing finance corp. The tax implication of that to be honest with you, I'm not sure we know that yet. We can certainly get that answer. It has to be a chodo, so we would create a chodo. I don't know if there's a tax difference between city created a chodo and a chodo that didn't create a, I really don't know the tax of the piece. I could find that out. If I can just kind of clarify, if it went directly to a chodo would remain on the tax rolls, if it went to the HFC, no? Not necessarily. Chodo could be tax exempt at least. Okay. Okay. That's the hard part. A lot depends on the dynamics. Well, my concern is the fact that the city gets its nose under the tent and it automatically comes off of like any other property that we might have. It would automatically come off the tax rolls. And if it went to a chodo that was a locally owned chodo around this area, would that choto be able to be taxed? That's my concern. We'll have to look at that. I think chos are typically non-profit. So there's a tax exemption component to that. I understand what you said. I think it depends on how it's structured but I think regardless Mr. Parker how we're doing it what your concern is is that you know any type of housing and housing density puts a demand on city services so if you're doing affordable housing and in addition to that putting the demand on city service that no revenue to the city and that's a concern. And so whether it's the HFC or Choto, they can be tax exempt or not, depending on how they're structured. What you're stating is a preference to make sure that the property stay taxable. Yes. Mr. Sherford? Thank you, Mr. K. Part, I was going to respond to Mr. Parijand's inquiry of concerning the C&D discussion on this project, the heights at Mayfield, although we're not voting on it tonight, we're discussing the committee recommendation and discussion. And I would concur with what Mr. Parker said concerning our policy adopted last week would be guiding in my decision next week where I to be asked to decide that way and that would be not to be supportive of this project because the scope has changed. I think we voted on it. We're second reading. Well, okay, we discussed it last week. Let me clarify then, since apparently the clarifications necessary, I would not be supportive of this project next week where it to be on our agenda. Mr. Paragion seemed to think the applicant would be interested in knowing whether or not we would be supportive and I'm chiming in with my two cents work. I would not be supportive either, Mr. Shepherd. So I, you know, the policy has been and a very well thought out policy to provide more senior housing, affordable senior housing. And so we had to council had made that a priority. They had been our amphibous amphibous now for, I don't know, three, four years now, something like that. And so I think that's, I haven't heard a change in that policy from the council. So this is very different than what we first thought. So any other kind, Mr. Rio-Rochan? So I clarity that question and remove any ambiguity. And I don't know if this is the case or not. I'm not familiar with this development. But if this development was to change the ownership, but clarify that it is still a senior product as opposed to a mixed product, does the council feel differently about that if they come forward with a senior product and not a mixed product. Speaking for myself, I would be more open to it, but I'm becoming a little weary of the change of ownership and the change of direction and who's on first, you know, I'm getting a little weary of that. And my confidence is waning. So I'd be more open to it, but I can't tell you I could be supportive of it. Yeah, I agree with Ms. K. Part, I wasn't super excited about this project in the first place. It was only because of the support that we were that was expressed by some of the elderly folks that were attending the meeting that night that I've sort of Relented in supporting this project To begin with the senior housing, but that being said I too It you know you're you're either pregnant or you're not let's move on with it and be done So time at call wasn't this the project where we had a lot of discussion with the applicant about getting transportation for them. That was a different one. Okay. It's different one. But still. All right. Any further discussion council staffed you need anything further from us. Okay. And this evening we have our policy on with the addition of item number six that we added this afternoon. And the other issue is delayed until next week, I guess, right? Correct. All right. Anything further on that, Ms. Wolfe? Was that your report? Thank you. Next we'll go to appointments to boards and commissions. Ms. Sopino, do we have any? No appointments this evening. Thank you. Next we'll go to Appointments to Boards and Commission and Miss Sopino, do we have any? No appointments this evening. Not an appointment to the Board of Commission, but I want you all to know and follow up to your previous direction that the application process for the economic development corporation process is out and available. available. So as you all might talk to constituents that is available and I think will be due the first week of January and then you all be able to review the stack and conduct you know the review of qualifications and such as it relates to appointing the future economic corporations. I'll make sure you all need that. There's seven as I recall. Yes that's defined by state law long that same line what about the application process for serving on the bond committee is also open and available to the public right now okay great evening agenda item anyone mr. Parachandt Mayor Pro Teman council I just want to let you know the platinum storage case. There is interlocal agreement that has been worked out. That interlocal agreement just basic details. The city of Arlington will handle the permitting process. The grand prairie will take the lead on the police and public safety presence and the value will be a 75-25% where grand prairie does the 75%. This is for add the alarm and then we have the 25% since that we provide in most of the service. That agreement has been worked out. It'll be on your next agenda for the 12th. So you'll have the zoning case for the 12th and the interlocal agreement for you to consider. Okay, great. In fact, I just add to that conversation regarding the interlocal, you know, Glen Perry still remains interested in cleaning up, if you will, the boundary adjustment as it relates along 360, kind of the left curb, right curb kinds of things. It's like a few feet here and a few feet here as you go down the whole corridor as to their benefit when you're in the northern part of the city, but when you get down on the new 360 south, it's kind of to the city's benefit. And so what has been some of the city but when you get down on the new 360 South it's kind of to the city's benefit. And so what has been some of the delay has been their interest in making sure that we are willing to kind of work with them to clean up that edge so that essentially if you're west to 360 it's in Arlington if you're east to 360 it's Grand Prairie in the areas where it's immediately adjacent to the highway not where it goes back through the Great Southwest. But we've talked to, I think, you all, many months back about that, but we'll be looking on cleaning up and providing kind of a boundary adjustment agreement just to clean this edge up really. It's kind of a curb line, a curb line kind of issue for the most part, but that's what they were wanting to make sure that we were willing to discuss as this project kind of called that question about things that split the boundary and we actually have another one that's that's working through right now just so you know that's another building that's going to split the city limits. So we're going to have a similar conversation with them and then not too distant future just FYI. step one. You had indicated that that might be the case and so I proved out to be the case. A couple things. The one tonight, the public hearing tonight with regard to the I call it a gun range but it's really not as a shooting gallery I guess. I've asked Will to come forward just to give us any insight that he has with regard to another one there were two in Northridge on Hills one is closed and the chief has told me to give us any insight into should there be any additional concerns and well if you'll address the council on that issue please. Madam Mayor Pro Temwill Johnson please chief I spoke with officials in Northridge on Hills just in terms of how this operated within their community. Since this is something new to us, they reported very favorable feedback for the developer in terms of their willingness to work to mitigate issues and concerns that individuals may have and largely gave very favorable ratings for the vendor. They did, however, indicate not at the location for the vendor that is under the developer that's under consideration here, but for the secondary location, which opened in close proximity because they had two gun ranges that opened at the same time, that there were which opened in close proximity, because they had two gun ranges that opened at the same time, that there were neighborhood complaints as it related to noise mitigation issues. And so they suggested for continued work with the developer on just making sure that we learned from their experience. developer on just making sure that we learn from their experience. Chief, can you give me a little bit of perspective as to how these operate? I mean, do they go in there and buy guns at that location as well? And an ammunition? Or do they just come in practice shoot or how does that work? So these would be generalized comments from my personal experience of going to one of these locations but yes they're typically federal firearms license dealers where they can rent and or purchase sell for purchase weapons sell ammunition for the weapons that they rent and or purchase and for common calibers in which individuals might be interested in shooting within their facility and which their facility is designed for. Any questions, Council? In regard to that case, the shooting? Thank you, Chief. Appreciate the info. And then the other one has to do with the bail bonds one that's coming up tonight. And, Jinsy, if you would come to the mic, so I think there are five in that general location. There was one that we were approved. I don't know how many years ago, three or four years ago now, that is no longer operational, but the zoning is still there. So we could, if this one is approved, we could have a total of seven in that general area. Yes, that's correct. Within one mile of that location, there are five more. And there was two more that were closed. One of them was the PD that we adopted for the bail bond use on Main Street. And that's closed now. Okay. And so this is in that old Pete Jones furniture area. So they're going, they're proposal is to take the eastern end and turn it into a bail bonds, but the rest of the building is going to be office. Yes, so they have already purchased the property and there was a wooden storage building there on that side that is already demoed. The building itself is going to have an interior remodel that will happen and the building will be split into three suites. The eastern most suite will be the bail bond use and the other two suites will be leased out for office uses. And I know PNZ did a lot of I think think, work on this particular case. And as we continue to look down the road about Division Street and how it looks, so to speak, PNZ kind of envisioned that and asked for some additional landscaping or different landscaping or something, thinking of how Division Street might look 10 years out from now? That is correct. Even before we even to P&C staff has worked with applicant and that's where the whole parking lot was reconfigured and they have added street scape. So that we know that division street is going to have a facelift with our street scape project. So we wanted to kind of get that same feel on this project, even before that street scape project happens. So they do have sidewalk, they do have street trees, they do have shrubs to screen the parking lot. And to the building itself, they will be painting the building with neutral colors and will be adding canopies or awnings on the entrances of those three suites as well as any extra entrances that they have to the building. Mr. Parker? One thing Madam Mayor Pro Tem is that the bill bonds that was approved on Main Street was approved by us and it was because of a malfunction or a glitch or a mistake by staff, okay? that we act we ask because the applicant had already put so much money into the business itself. And we felt as though that that was a mistake that we had made as a city. And so that's why we approved that particular business and that particular utilization. So we still have a lot of bail bonds people right around the jail, which is appropriate. But the question I guess we need to ask is how many is enough, okay? So thank you. Yes, that's a question I'll answer tonight. And there's one additional thing I wanted to point out with specific use permit There's something new that we're adding on is that there is There is an addition to the ordinance that says if this use is discontinued for more than six months This SUP will expire that's a new thing, which is what we did not do in the case you're talking about. So that used to still there. Okay. Any further comment? Thank you. Thank you. Any other evening agenda items, Council? If not issues relative to city and text projects. Nothing, future agenda items. The home-based businesses. That's going to minister the council decided to go. Okay. Mr. Shepherd. About half sleep. This K-Protop college. about half asleep. This K-Protob apologize. On the city related projects, I was speaking with Ms. Carmichael earlier, there she is. And I didn't want to get for the benefit of the public concerning Abram Street in our comments, either last meeting or the meeting before. Ms. Carmichael, would you kind of let our audience know about the plan for the next part of Abram Street with town halls and that sort of thing that you and I touched on briefly, please? Sure. Mindy Carmichael, Director of Public Works and Transportation, we have placed the Abram Street Project from Cooper to Collins out for Bids. So once we open Bids in January, when we know who the contractor is, we'll be setting up meetings with the general public and we will be visiting each property owner individually so that we can introduce ourselves to them, the project engineer as well as the project inspector, give them our business cards, make that face presentation so that they feel that they have a connection that they can always reach out to if they have any concerns. The public meeting will probably be held here, it's typically at night, so it's open to anybody to come and we'll have plans there and they can discuss any specific issues. We usually have tables set about so that they can discuss their specific issues with staff at that time so that we can move forward with some of that as well. Thank you very much for bringing us up to date on that. Mr. Arratton. Jay, I was gonna see if you could follow Mindy's discussion about Abram Street, kind of just on an ongoing communication and outreach perspective from an office communication about how your efforts will work with what she was just talking about to pass the bid opening. In fact, we just met yesterday with Downtown Arlington a manager of corporation that they assembled a group, not only city and we have Mindy Keith from the Public Works Department and Nora were there to provide timelines. And it was actually the first opportunity for some of those people to see some of the designs and they were very impressed with what they saw. We had UTA there, certainly Patti do with the love it because they're gonna to be impacted and and the planning around that is very important. So we start we're starting the conversation downtown Arlington Management Corporation has engaged a firm to help with the communication not only to the visitors and the people that will be coming down here to use the restaurants but also the business owners, both their critical components to make sure that we're communicating on a regular basis about where the detours may be, where the construction may be happening at that time. Any specials or other opportunities that will be going on with the businesses and so forth. So there'll be a robust campaign related to that. And it is a long process as we're looking at about a two year window for the total completion. Mr. Schapper. But Jake, thank you for that information. And I mentioned this to Mindy. And if one of the constituents that reached out to me sort of opened my eyes to an issue that I hadn't really considered, we have East Abram, I mean East Maine, excuse me, which is kind of orphaned there, if you will, with East Street, not really having any North South. And there's no access from the East onto East Maine. I hadn't really considered that. I'd been more focused about the impact to the property owners directly on Abram Street, but this constituent reminded me that they have very limited access as it is. And if there was, if there were, if their access were completely shut off in that segment, say, between what's the street across from Tarrant County? Jeffries or Jeffers and E Street, it would basically shut them down because there's no other way to get there. So I know it's a complex thing if you all could. I don't know if any of those individuals are associated with the downtown Arlington Management Corporation. I think it's a great place to start the conversation, but if we could keep those folks in mind that are sort of off Abrams Street as well when we engage them. Without question we did talk and in fact about you know we've been in a construction for a while and you know I don't in a construction for a while and you know I don't think the residents perceive it as open now Abram Street can be done it's we've had construction with the library and one-on-one centers so it's important to communicate all that to celebrate the milestones and to understand that it is it's going to have tentacles that go out much beyond just Abram Street as we look at the construction as we look at detours and other things. So engaging all of those people in that area will be, I think, very critical. And we talked about that. We're going to start meeting on a regular basis, not unlike what we do with the stakeholders that are involved with the 360i30 project. TechS.dot has organized that. And this case down here in Arlington is going to organize it, but again, getting the right stakeholders in the room to make sure we can do that. And I might just follow up Mr. Shepard's suggestion too. I think I probably visit with that same constituent and as part of our bid documents, we've required the contractor to keep one of the streets open at all times. So there will never be both cut off or if they do, there'll be an issue with the contractor. So we've made sure to stay open on one side of Main Street or on the other side of Main Street. Okay, and then Mindy just real quick, if you could maybe talk a little bit to about some of the bid process that you've tried to offer as far as the bonus amount, the incentive amount to try to shrink what is going to be two years, maybe to be a little bit more. Yes, we're offering a, in our bid documents, we included a $4,000 a day for early completion. So that's a maximum of 1.5 million for them to complete that any year instead of two years. And we think that's worth every dime. So that's one of the incentives we threw out there as well. And for the levit, we also requiring them to finish the south, the south curb line towards the levitt. Complete that by August 1st so that we're only really impacting the levitt for one season. Thank you guys. Anything else on evening agenda? Adams our future agenda. Seeing none we are adjourned. Thank you come. Thank you