October 9, 2023 Work Session Notes
All of the telephone lines are down…
District 7 October 9, 2023 Work Session Pre-meeting Notes
I’ll make my comments in bold italics for each of the items. Please email council7@garlandtx.gov with your input.
Public Comments on Work Session Items
Persons who desire to address the City Council on any item on the Work Session agenda are allowed three minutes to speak. Speakers are taken only at the beginning of the meeting, other than invited testimony.
Speakers are grouped by Work Session item and will be taken in the order of the Work Session agenda. Speakers must submit to the City Secretary a completed speaker’s card before the beginning of the meeting. Speaker cards will not be accepted after the Mayor calls the meeting to order. Speaker cards are available in the lobby, at the visitor’s side of the Work Session Room, and from members of staff.
Speakers are limited to addressing items on the Work Session agenda – any item relating to a Regular Session agenda item should be addressed at the Regular Session and any item not on an agenda may be addressed during the open microphone at the end of the Regular Session.
2. Consider the Consent Agenda
A member of the City Council may ask for discussion or further information on an item posted as a consent agenda item on the next Regular Meeting of the City Council. The Council Member may also ask that an item on the posted consent agenda be pulled from the consent agenda and considered for a vote separate from consent agenda items on the regular agenda. All discussions or deliberations on this portion of the work session agenda are limited to posted agenda items and may not include a new or unposted subject matter.
Here are a few comments on Regular Session Consent Agenda items:
2023 Term Contract For Concrete Ready Mix
Bid No. 1095-23
Cooper Concrete Company (Primary) - $1,875,000.00
Bodin Concrete (Secondary) - $625,000.00
TOTAL: $2,500,000.00
This request is for the 2023 Term Contract for Concrete Ready Mix. The recommended contract award to two (2) bidders will ensure the availability and supply of concrete ready mix for Street Department projects constructed by in-house resources. Staff recommends awarding each vendor a one-year contract with four (4) one-year renewal options. A 30-day written termination clause shall remain in effect.
With all the road construction going on, it is important that we secure a contract to make sure concrete is available. Also, this item is a hedge against future price increases as the Agreement sets price but does not commit funds at this time. Expenses will be charged to the Street Department's construction direct materials account as incurred.
4. Purchase of Real Property and Approval of the Disposition and Development Agreement Related to 519 State Street, Garland, Texas.
Approve the purchase of real property located at 519 State Street, Garland, Texas and the ancillary Disposition and Development Agreement, and authorize the City Manager to execute any necessary documents related to the same. Council discussed this item and the substantive terms and conditions in executive session at the October 9th Work Session.
This item will be discussed in the Executive Session at the end of this Work Session. Keep an eye out for another post Monday evening specifically concerning this item.
3. Written Briefings:
Garland New Sidewalk to DART Downtown Station
Written staff presentation and recommendation regarding an Advance Funding Agreement (AFA) with Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) for the construction of the Garland New Sidewalk to DART Downtown Station in Garland, Texas, prepared by Michael Polocek, Director of Engineering. Unless otherwise directed this item will be scheduled for formal consideration at the October 17, 2023, Regular Meeting.
When you are out shopping and see a “buy one, get four free” deal, how can you pass that up? That is exactly what we are getting with this item where the City of Garland is agreeing to pay for the construction of one foot of sidewalk and we will get four additional feet paid for by the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) and Regional Transportation Council (RTC).
Even though we have invested millions of dollars into revitalizing our Downtown District, it is still difficult to make your way to destinations east of the Downtown DART Station due to the lack of sidewalks. One project considered during the 2018 Bond Study Committee was the Downtown Sidewalks project. That project would:
(Google Streetview looking eastbound on Walnut Street east of the Downtown DART Rail Station. Notice the worn “cow path” where a sidewalk should exist.)
Raise the walkability score to 80 for the broader Downtown area, including among other locations: adding sidewalks on both sides of Walnut Street between Fourth and First St, adding sidewalks along Avenue B, etc.
In 2018, the estimated project cost was $2,250,000; however, it was tabled until a future bond program due to debt capacity constraints.
This new project would build approximately 1.5 miles of sidewalks and provide safe pedestrian routes east along Walnut Street from the Downtown DART Station to Country Club Road. Additional segments will be built along First Street from Walnut Street to State Street and to the west of Bradfield Park along Mars Drive.
(Limits of proposed sidewalk construction)
Through an agreement with NCTCOG, the City of Garland will contribute $919,706.92 to the total $4,457,878.17 project cost with the remaining funds ($3,538,171.25) coming from Federal and State funding sources. Not a bad return on our money.
b. School Zone on Miller Road
Written staff presentation and recommendation regarding the establishment of a school zone on Miller Road between Parkhurst Drive and Country Club, prepared by Paul Luedtke, Director of Transportation. Unless otherwise directed by Council, this item will be scheduled for formal consideration of the October 24 regular meeting.
With each of these school zone cases, we follow a procedure where a request is made to staff for a school zone, then we send Transportation staff out to observe whether a new school zone is warranted.
For this site near the GISD Alternative Education School, Transportation Staff observed 11 children crossing Miller Road between Parkhust Drive and Country Club Road. Staff believes this justifies the need for an additional school zone to increase safety for these school children.
As with all school zones, the school zone will be in effect for the minimal amount of time in order to provide safety for these school children.
4. Verbal Briefings:
a. Discuss and consider parking for bicycles in the downtown area, and provide direction to staff where needed.
Andy Hesser, Assistant City Manager, will give a presentation for Council’s consideration regarding parking for bicycles in the downtown area. Unless otherwise directed by Council, this item will be scheduled for formal consideration at a future Regular Meeting.
Building off the Development Services Committee’s report from the last work session, staff is providing a formal presentation regarding the proposed bike parking for Downtown. Proposed U-shaped bike racks are proposed along State Street in front of Intrinsic, along 6th Street in front Rosalind Coffee and at the southeast corner of 7th Street and Main Street. These are very inexpensive means of securing bikes, and I am happy to see these being installed.
However, a bike locker has also been proposed to be installed in the State Street parking garage. These are enclosed units which offer additional security for bikes, but are significantly more costly.
(CycleSafe ProPark Series Bike Locker)
We have been quoted a price tag of $25,000 for three units (two bikes per unit, six locker spaces total) which includes shipping. In order for the lockers to justify their cost, I ran a sensitivity analysis assuming the lockers are used seven days a week for two, four and eight hours a day.
To justify the cost, a rental fee of $0.29 must be charged if the locker is used eight hours a day, seven days a week for five years. If the locker is used only two hours a day every day of the year, $1.14 per hour must be charged.
If the rate was set at $0.50 per hour, for someone working in a Downtown office who parks their bike at 8:00 AM and picks it back up at 5:00 PM, they would pay $4.50 a day (about $1100 a year working 50 weeks a year). I am curious if the storage cost worth it to them at that price.
I am skeptical that the lockers will even be used an average of two hours a day. I certainly cannot support purchasing three units at the cost $25,000 when we do not know yet if one unit will be fully used. I do not believe that this Field of Dreams scenario where there is a high bike locker demand in our Downtown Square that we could fill if we just “build it.” Perhaps this is a scenario where a private bike locker rental company could fill this market opportunity if it exists.
b. Discuss and consider Garland’s Community Rating System (CRS), and provide direction to staff where needed.
Michael Polocek, Director of Engineering will give a presentation for Council’s consideration regarding Garland’s Community Rating System (CRS) to provide some relief to those citizens paying for flood insurance in the designated Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA).
The Transportation, Infrastructure, and Mobility (TIM) Committee agenda was previously briefed on the efforts of our Engineering Department to improve our National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) Community Rating System (CRS) classification. (Acronym soup I know.)
(The CRS rating system is laid out in this 641 page tome from 2017 and the accompanying 68 page addendum released in 2021. Hard to believe it couldn’t unseat J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy from the New York Time’s best seller list in 2017).
Our rating is calculated by earning points in various categories by completing or achieving certain benchmarks. Over the past year and a half, we partnered with a consultant to help identify opportunites to gain points and lower our CRS classification. Having a low CRS rating is better (think golf scores) and means lower flood insurance rates for Garland’s residents.
(CRS classifications. Garland currently has 2112 points earning a CRS class 6)
On October 1, our classification was changed from a 7, a rating we have held since we first started participating in the program in 1997, to a 6. The change will save 5% on flood insurance premiums or about $88 per year for policy holders. This is $20,944 in savings across 238 flood insurance policies in the City of Garland.
The question now is what else can we do to lower our classification even further to Arlington’s class 5, Grand Prairie’s class 4 or Dallas’s class 3? Also is it worth the staff time to continue to try to lower our rates? Getting a lower classification will impact multiple departments rather than just engineering and require a sustained effort going forward. I’m interested to hear what you have to say.
c. Discuss and consider GCACI Hotel Occupancy Tax Revenue Budget, Sub-grant Recipients and Hotel Occupancy Tax Program Management Agreement, and provide direction to staff where needed.
Amy Rosenthal, Cultural Arts Director, will give a presentation regarding the 2023-2024 Garland Cultural Arts Commission Inc. (GCACI) budget the list of sub-grant recipients, and authorization of the City’s execution of the agreement. Unless otherwise directed, this item will be considered for formal consideration at the October 17, 2023 Regular Meeting.
Have you ever noticed that the rate you are quoted for a hotel room is never the total amount you pay? In addition to the room rate, you pay separate occupancy taxes.
Per Chapter 351, TEXAS TAX CODE authorizes a municipality that levies and collects a hotel occupancy tax to expend a portion of the revenues from such tax for the encouragement, promotion, improvement and application of the arts, and for certain historical preservation and restoration projects, activities and related promotions.
Last year in Garland, that tax totaled $147,000. This agenda item is where we on City Council get to allocate those funds. All of these organizations listed below are worthy of the proposed funding.
d. Discuss and consider the 2024 City of Garland City Council Meeting Calendar, and provide direction to staff where needed.
Staff will give a presentation for Council’s consideration regarding the 2024 Garland City Council Meeting Calendar. This item will be brought back for formal consideration at a Council Regular meeting in November.
The proposed 2024 City Council Meeting Calendar includes only one instance of back-to-back weekly meetings during the month of December due to the Christmas holidays. The September 2 Work Session will likely be combined with the September 3 Regular Session due to Labor Day.
Discuss Appointments to Boards and Commissions
Council Member Carissa Dutton
Susan Vaden - Library Board
Patrick Abell - Plan Commission
Announce Future Agenda Items
A member of the City Council, with a second by another member, or the Mayor alone, may ask that an item be placed on a future agenda of the City Council or a committee of the City Council. No substantive discussion of that item will take place at this time.
Council will move into Executive Session
EXECUTIVE SESSION AGENDA
NOTICE: The City Council may recess from the open session and convene in a closed executive session if the discussion of any of the listed agenda items concerns one or more of the following matters:
The City Council will adjourn into executive session pursuant to Sections 551.071 and 551.072 of the Texas Government Code to deliberate or discuss:
the purchase, exchange, lease or value of real property located in the vicinity of the medical district (551.072); and attorney/client matters concerning privileged and unprivileged client information related to the same (551.071);
the purchase, exchange, lease or value of real property located in the vicinity of 400 South First Street (551.072); and attorney/client matters concerning privileged and unprivileged client information related to the same (551.071);
the purchase, exchange, lease or value of several tracts of real property located in the vicinity of LBJ and South Garland Avenue (551.072); and attorney/client matters concerning privileged and unprivileged client information related to the same (551.071);
the purchase, exchange, lease or value of two tracts real property located in the vicinity of State Highway 66 between First Street and Dairy Road (551.072); and attorney/client matters concerning privileged and unprivileged client information related to the same (551.071);
the purchase, exchange, lease or value of real property located in the vicinity of the 600 block of W. State Street (551.072); and attorney/client matters concerning privileged and unprivileged client information related to the same (551.071);
the purchase, exchange, lease or value of real property located in the vicinity of the 1100 block of W. State Street (551.072); and attorney/client matters concerning privileged and unprivileged client information related to the same (551.071); and
attorney/client matters concerning privileged and unprivileged client information related to nonconforming uses (551.071).
This looks to be a full executive session. As I stated earlier, look out for another post Monday post regarding the item located in the “600 block of W. State Street.”
Adjourn
With talk about flood insurance rates, this gives me a chance to play a cut off of the debut album from one of the best Texas guitar players ever. Here’s Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble with Texas Flood.
Thank you for these City of Garland Work Session Notes.
Your combined information and comments help outline the context around issues facing Garland.