Today’s City Council meeting begins with a Work Session at 1pm, followed by a 6:30pm Regular Session. Go here for the full agenda with backup materials. Here are some things we will be discussing during the meeting…
TREE PLANTING – THE 20,000 FREE TREE PROJECT
The city has built up a sizable Tree Fund over the years, made up of contributions from various developers who have paid for trees they have removed as part of their developments – it now stands at over $2,000,000. It has been a goal of many in our community to update our tree ordinance as well as come up with a policy that determines how such funds can be spent. Today’s discussion will focus on several proposed projects aimed at spending nearly $500,000 of this fund toward getting more trees planted in our city.
The projects we’ll consider are great – they’ll get more trees in our city parks. But it comes with a price of over $1000 a tree (due to labor, maintenance, running water lines, etc.).
During our last council discussion on the topic, I referenced the very successful Keep Denton Beautiful Tree Give-a-way program and suggested that perhaps we could get much more bang for our buck if we invested in programs like this where the maintenance and watering costs was covered by the citizens getting the free trees. After all, KDB is getting trees directly into the hands of our citizens at a cost of $10 per tree.
That is 100 trees put into our neighborhoods for the cost of every 1 tree we can put up on city property.
Consider this map of the proliferation of KDB trees from the past 5 years of their tree program:
What if we devoted $200,000 – or roughly 10% of the tree fund – to scale KDB’s tree give-a-way efforts over the next two years? That’s 20,000 trees planted in our city, a bunch of happy citizens, a ton of possibilities of educational opportunities for children, and more beautiful neighborhoods. We could develop ways to track the trees and encourage best tree care practices. We could develop larger-scale give-a-way packages for neighborhoods – or even businesses – who come to the table with a neighborhood beautification plan.
Let’s consider adding this concept into the mix in order to have a long-term strategy of building back our city’s tree canopy.
CONTINUATION OF PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT DISCUSSION
We will hear the 3rd presentation from our Planning and Development Director on a series of updates, changes, and recommendations happening in that department. This department has an incredible amount of crucial public-facing roles: development issues, permit processes, Community Improvement Services, Food and Health Inspections, Gas Well Inspections Division, Historic Preservation, and so much more. Because of this, many of the council initiatives end up becoming new projects for this department.
We’ll spend some time hearing about the many projects underway within this department and, hopefully, help prioritize their efforts. Here’s a link to the presentation we’ll see on this today.
CONTINUED DISCUSSION ON GAS DRILLING ORDINANCE
I don’t expect the city council will be prepared to vote on a new, amended ordinance today, but we continue to dig into the recommended ordinance and hear from all sides of the community. Recently, I’ve been getting a number of emails from folks all highlighting the same recommendations for toughening the ordinance. I’ll list those recommendations here:
1. Mandatory vapor recovery units
2. 1500 ft. REVERSE setback and setback, no exceptions
3. Mandatory 24/7 air and water third-party monitoring paid for by the industry. Daily monitoring results posted on a city link. TCEQ and city do not monitor nights and weekends.
4. Require electric motors on rigs and line compressors
5. Mandatory pressurized flowback tanks
6. Prohibit flaring except in an emergency as defined by the Texas Railroad Commission
7. Prohibit waste pits
8. ZBA should not be allowed to grant variances/exceptions. Only council should be allowed to do that since it is directly responsible to the voters.
9. Limit hours of operation to 9-5 on weekdays. No operations on weekends.
10. Mandatory mail notice by operator to anyone living or working within 1500 feet of the well. Notice required before any stage of the process begins and must outline a timeline for the entire process.
11. Immediate notification of city and TCEQ of any mishap/accident…Fine or shut down operation for a period if not notified immediately. Shut down would probably be more likely to gain compliance.
12. Require the use of desiccant dehydrators that will greatly reduce fugitive methane emissions.
I look forward to continuing this important community conversation as we inch closer to acting on an amended ordinance.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitation to contact me at kevin.roden@cityofdenton.com or 940-206-5239.