City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Good evening. We'd like to welcome everyone to the September 1st, 2026 City Council meeting. As always, we'll start by discussing and reviewing the agenda items. It's a very healthy agenda. We have a big work session, a couple very important issues, an executive session as well, and in addition to our regular business. So we'll get right to it. No old business, I think. For consent, we have considered approval of the minutes of the August 12th meeting. F2, minutes for the August 18th meeting. F3, consider resolution of the fiscal year 26-27 vehicle replacement purchases through the Enterprise Fleet Management System. Any questions on F1 through F3? F4, consider resolution... Proving the bed from Andrew's Building Services for janitorial at Keller Point. Questions on that one?

My only question there is that is something that's sent out for bid. It's not just...

I believe so. Yes, sir. Yes, great question. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Michael, do you want to talk to us real quick about how you landed on... Yeah, we just... Good to see you, man.

Yeah, good to see you, too. Yeah, we just, we put it out for bid. So we had, I gotta look, I think we had 19 proposals come back in. And so Andrews came in with the lowest over the next three years, or next five years, excuse me. And even with a 3% increase per year, it still ended up being the lowest out of all of the bids. And they also are the company that services City Hall and all the other facilities within the city. We're happy with that number that they came back with.

Do they currently serve us without a point?

No. The previous company was called Ambassador. They came in quite high, and so Andrews was the best looking one for that.

Maybe they had some economies of scale, right? All right. Good. Good question. F5, consider resolution authorizing city manager to execute a one-year agreement with Advox for the purchase of Arctic Wolf Networks managed detection and response cybersecurity services. is on F5? Does anyone want to put that in plain English? It's basically AI. Well, I know it's cybersecurity, but what is?

It's AI.

So what's the purpose of this?

Besides cybersecurity. Besides cybersecurity, it's part of our overall data compliance and protection services that we implement. point out that governments in general are one of the heaviest attacked entities out there because of all the information we have. And so having something like this, this is a very reputable company. It does a really good job protecting our data. And they tailor it to the city.

It's not like a product you just turn on. It's tailored to the city or the company that buys it.

Yeah. I thought I'd seen him before, but I can't remember.

He's archived for two or three years, I believe.

And we're happy, obviously, otherwise it wouldn't be on here. Yes, sir. Okay, good. Any other questions on consent? No. No old business. H1, a public hearing to consider an ordinance approving SUP on Barbara Lane. Doug Stamps is the owner. Any questions about H1? H2, another public hearing. It's a major subdivision final plat. Looks like Katrina and Kenneth Miller, Andrea and Drew Lankford, and Anna D. Bentle are the owners. I missed a few owners there. There's quite a few. 1516 Wallace Lane. Any questions on that item?

This is just housekeeping, right? Cleaning up the south property line.

It's a little different. So the southernmost lot on this plat has never been platted. This existed in its current state for quite a while. That owner wants to sell a back portion of her lot to several of the lots in Calais Estates, which is right there north of Willis Lane Elementary, if you guys are familiar with that area. So it's a replat for those lots. It's the first time for this existing lot to ever be platted. There's a variance because that existing lot actually doesn't meet the minimum lot width for SF-36. And so I think it's 122 feet is the width of that lot. The requirement is 140 feet. So not traditional housekeeping, but hopefully pretty straightforward.

Okay, thanks.

I'll tell you another item on this, and they're aware of it, but those homes wanted to take it in because the elderly lady that lives there that's given property up is not. And so they've gone out on her property and maintained it some, and now they've reached an agreement if they would buy it. And then Sarah made them go through what they needed to get it redone. But it's so it'll look better, too.

Sure, sure. Sounds like it's win-win. Yeah.

Good discussion. H3, consider an SUP for Eagle Tavern. Any questions on H3?

This is one where they already had the tables there, the game tables there, and they didn't realize they needed an SUP so they're coming back and getting an SUP.

Yeah, sounds like it.

Definitely pool tables.

So the SUP would be required even if they just had the pool tables. It would be required for the gaming devices also. Those are, I think we put in the staff memo, the police department's been looking into those to see if they're even allowed to keep those. But even if it ended up just being the pool tables, they would still need the SUP.

All right. H4, a resolution approving a special exception to the UDC, sign regulations for chalk and steel. Any questions on H4? H5, consider an ordinance approving amendments to the City of Keller UDC for automobile electric charging stations. This was an item, I believe the Mayor Pro Tem discussed and seems like a good subject matter to consider so thanks Shannon for bringing it forward. Thank you. Any questions on H5? Alright H6 we're not gonna honestly it's repetitive from the executive session item and we'll just tackle that in the executive session it's related to the natatorium.

And we would just have to take any action we would just take outside of executive.

Yeah, so H-6 is redundant, and so no need to go through that. But to your point, councilman, any action we would take would be out in the open. All right. Well, I've got to read a lot of language about the executive sessions. All right. At this point, and I will say for people in the room, I think there's some folks in here listening on the short-term rental discussion and other related items. We have a very healthy and lengthy executive session. It's sequenced this way for efficiency purposes. I don't know if we're going to get to SDRs before the 7 o'clock, but the good news is that the 7 o'clock meeting Knock on wood, we're not adjourning. 7 o'clock meeting looks to be fairly straightforward. So hopefully, if we don't get to SDRs before 7, we'll be here. Yeah, no, I'll be under those. It depends on how many questions we have as a council. All right, so we'll move into executive session under section 551.074 of the Texas Government Code. Personnel matters to deliver at the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer employee for the city secretary and city manager's performance evaluation. We're also going to do executive session under section 551.071, consultation with attorney, closed meeting. A governmental body may not conduct a private consultation with its attorney except when the governmental body seeks advice of its attorney about pending a contemplated litigation or settlement offer or on a matter in which the duty of the attorney to the governmental body under the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct at the State Bar of Texas is clearly conflicted with this chapter. Those items are to discuss legal action relating to the Westlake Data Center development and the Beverly Grove Velocasa Phase II project. We'll also be in an executive session under Section 551.072 of the Texas Government a deliberation regarding real property. It's a closed meeting. A governmental body may conduct a closed meeting to deliberate the purchase, exchange, or lease or buy of the real property. A deliberation in an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the position of the governmental body in negotiation with the third person. That's 1000 Bear Creek Parkway. Got through it. We're an exec. We're going to go ahead and start with an invocation by Reverend Dr. Jason Blundy. Thank you for being here, sir.

Yeah, thank you all so very, very much. Keller United Methodist? Yeah, Keller United Methodist, right up the road. Yeah, I appreciate it. Council, thank you all so much. City, thank you so much for being here. My tradition opens with just a simple word of silence, and then we get into prayer. So thank you so very much. Holy and gracious God, enter into this space and into our hearts that we might have ears to hear and eyes to see. And so in the business of our lives, oh God, we trust that we pray that you would forever hold before us the common good, set our own agendas aside, that we might pursue with perseverance the love of our neighbor that you so desperately desire. All of this we pray in the name of love that surpasses all understanding. Amen. Thank you all very, very much. Be well.

All right. Next up, we're going to have someone here who's no stranger to Keller Elitist and the Pledges of Allegiance. There's a scout here, I think. Abigail Will. Would you mind coming forward to lead us in the pledges? Gregory, you're welcome to join if you'd like. Yeah, if you want to. Sure. Anytime we see a scout in the audience, we ask you for your leadership. All right.

with liberty and justice for all.

Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. Great job, guys. So it came to my attention that I'm wholly unqualified to serve in this seat this evening And so we have Mr. Cohen Cox here, who's actually the mayor of the day. And I believe we have a colleague, Councilman Watley, couldn't be with us tonight. And so we also have a councilman of the day, which is Mr. Connor Cox. Gentlemen, if you wouldn't mind coming forward and helping us lead the meeting, I sure would appreciate it. Charles, you can sit by here. No, you can sit by here. All right. Yeah. Mayor, how are you? Good. Take a seat. Take a seat. Councilman, how are you? Good. Right there. Mic check. That one's working. So we are extremely excited to have our mayor and councilman of the day. Mr. Mayor, if you don't mind, would you tell us how you got here?

Okay. I did the summer reading challenge and my name got drawn from something.

The summer reading challenge? So what did you have to do to win the summer reading challenge? So just once?

I don't know.

Wasn't it every day, pretty much?

Something like that.

Something like that. You're going to make an excellent mayor. That's how we operate as well. So we're super excited to have you here. Why don't you both tell us what school you go to?

I go to ISMS. I'd go to Shady Grove Elementary.

So, ISMS and Shady Grove. What grades?

I'm in seventh. I'm in third.

Seventh and third. You sure? You look older. So, how was your day?

It was pretty good.

Pretty good. What did you enjoy?

All of it.

All of it. I told Connor that he's going to make, and Cohen, that Connor's going to make an excellent councilman, and Cohen's going to make an excellent mayor, because when I asked them to pick between police and fire, they declined. They took the diplomatic approach. Well, did you actually go to work today? Didn't you do one or two calls with the fire department?

Yes.

What was that like?

It was pretty cool.

Pretty cool? Yeah, so Chief Skaggs was telling us they literally did one or two calls with our firefighters out there. So, all right, we've done school. What's one thing that you would change about Keller or improve? One idea.

I would add, like, emergency equipment near the baseball field because we were in a situation where that was needed, and... It didn't end too well.

Yeah, yeah. What about you, Councilman?

I would give everybody a raise because a lot of people asked for one.

That's awesome.

So, Councilman, we're going to work on your request. Next meeting, we actually adopt the budget. And then, Mayor, actually, just so you know, in part, based on your feedback, we have put that emergency equipment at the baseball fields. So thank you for sharing us with that. And I have one last question for you. It's really important that you know this. Hopefully you remember. Who's the boss of the city?

It was, like, the people.

The people. That's right. It's not the mayor, is it? No.

No.

Good job. Good job. All right. Well, do you want to get a picture? Would that be okay?

Yeah.

All right. And I have this certificate for you, Mayor. It's awesome. On behalf of City of Keller, thank you for serving as mayor today. Really appreciate it. And then we'll go down here and take a picture, all right? There you go.

Good job. You've got to get a picture, too. Good job.

They're in the center.

Oh, they're in the center.

You're not in the center. They're in the center.

So next up we have a recognition for some of our very favorite people in Keller. But before we recognize this year's Keller Citizens Academy graduating class, I want to take a moment to recognize someone that's near and dear to the city of Keller in our heart. Kimberly Doyette joined the city of Keller in 2021. And from what I understand, actually grew up right here in Keller. Very sadly, we lost Kim last week and we were all heartbroken about that. She was participating in the Keller Academy. And so We want to take a moment to recognize her. Those who worked with Kim remember her very fondly. She's very kind, very sweet, very generous with her time. She called her coworkers her family. As I understand it, even some of her last moments was literally trying to get back to work because she loved working with the city and I think more significantly the people that worked here. So we do have a certificate here. of appreciation. We're going to send on behalf of mayor, council, and our residents flowers and as much support as we can to the family in their difficult time. And really just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge Kim and everything she's done on the city of Keller. So very somber for us as a team. It's part of life, unfortunately, is losing someone that you care greatly about. We wish she could be here with us tonight, but we're going to do everything we can for the family and our residents and our employees. You know, Aaron's been doing a good job reaching out to folks at Town Hall. So if anyone needs support or has questions, then please reach out to Marsha or Aaron or any of us. Anything you would add? We're good? Okay. That being said... It is an honor. This was something that actually started just three years ago, and we have our graduating class of the Keller Academy with us tonight. The program was established in 2024 with the goal of providing our employees with a unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of city government and the essential functions from various departments. My understanding is they go, you know, kind of like the Keller Citizens Academy, go department to department and learn as much as they can. So From a City of Keller perspective, this is some of our best of the best. These are folks that want to go above and beyond the call of duty to learn everything they can about the city that they love. So before you tonight, our employees are representing several departments, including administration, community development, finance, human resources, information technology, parks and recreation, aka the fun department if you ask Jordan, and police. So if you wouldn't mind, please join me in congratulating the Keller Academy class on this remarkable achievement. We appreciate everything you do on behalf of the city of Keller. And as I understand it, Kelly is going to read your names. You'll come up. We'll have a competition to see if you can allow us to pause. I mean, we'll hold applause until the end and, you know, recognize you for your efforts. And then we'll take a big group photo. So, Kelly.

Jasmine Byerly. Kim Joyette. Ethan Flanders. Kimberly Guana. Amanda Haas. Jalen Rivera, and Chad Rogers.

I'm so relieved Amanda's here. I thought I was in trouble as a volleyball coach. As soon as, like, the... We still got to talk, all right?

All right. Sorry, sir.

. . . .

Amen. Amen.

All right, we'll move on to persons to be heard. This is a time for the public to address the City Council on any subject. However, the Texas Open Meetings Act prohibits the City Council from discussing issues which the public has not been given three business days notice. Issues raised may be referred to city staff for research and possible future action. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes to speak. First up is Mr. Stuart Rennie.

I addressed the council last month on flock camera issues, and there have been some interesting developments. Governor Abbott, who has previously supported flock camera deployment with over $30 million in state grants, has reversed course when advised that the Texas Tribune was preparing a story on that. As of Thursday, August 27th, Governor Abbott has ordered a pause on any state funding for flock cameras. Governor Abbott's previous help had resulted in over 3,200 flock cameras installed since 2023. This funding comes from the theft of monies from the $1 per vehicle registration fee passed into law in 2023, something state lawmakers have complained about as never being suggested or authorized. Six police departments and sheriff's offices across Texas have announced officers being placed on leave investigated or criminally charged in August alone. Yesterday, the state of Florida revoked the ability to place or maintain ALPR cameras from any company on any state highway in the state of Florida. Any ALPR on a state highway in Florida has to be removed within one month. The problem with this is it doesn't address private properties and the use of flock cameras. Private entities that have canceled their Flock contracts are being told they cannot remove the cameras, which begs the question, why? If, as Flock says, the data belongs to the businesses and the people that contract with Flock, and the businesses are no longer contracting with Flock, why leave the cameras up? Unless they're collecting data and relaying it to Flock still. Some businesses are actually being boycotted if they have Flock cameras in or next to their parking lots, which puts them in a very difficult circumstance when Flock refuses them the right to take down those cameras. Does the city of Keller enjoy the idea of businesses being driven away, or people refusing to shop at businesses in the city of Keller with ALPR cameras in the parking lot? businesses like Lowe's and some of the other ones. Imagine instead if the city of Keller moved to remove flock cameras and encouraged businesses to remove them, how they could tell people that you can come to Keller and not be tracked. Approximately 250 governments have canceled the flock contracts in the past year, and Keller can lead the way. especially since North Richland Hills has purchased over 200 flock cameras in the last year and distributed them to other cities in the area because they got funding from the state of Texas. And this is being investigated as the paperwork justifying the sole source contract is not in compliance with state law.

Thank you, sir. And just for what it's worth on that issue, I will be meeting with Chief Fortune soon to have a discussion for possible future action. All right, next up we have Tom Fulbright.

Hello, counsel. I guess you guys saw me a couple of weeks ago. I was focusing on sound and the worry about sound, low frequency sound coming from the Circle T data center to our Keller neighbors down there. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about the grid power. And again, done some research on this. I'm not going to read this information to you, but I did provide you guys with three pages of information on what I turned up regarding the Texas grid. But I can kind of do a quick overview. There were like 186 gigawatts of power planned for Texas in the coming months. In June of 25, that ramped up to 271 gigawatts in April of 26. 270 gigawatts, just so you know, I've got a little ERCOT app on my phone here, and it says what Texas is pulling today. Texas was pulling about 85 gigawatts to run the state of Texas. 85. So multiply that times three to support its industrial growth, but mostly data centers. So this is just huge. So transmission lines is kind of the second paragraph. We're scrambling to try to get transmission lines in. The third paragraph, which is even more dire, is power. Where is the power plants that feed these transmission lines? Where is that going to come from? And then the other point I want to make is they're changing, they're trying to rewrite the rules down in Austin because people could reserve power kind of without a real heavy commitment. You know, we're going to need this many megawatts, this many megawatts. So the rules of providing power are getting juggled right now. Bottom line, nobody knows really what's going to happen, how fast these data centers are going to be able to come online, how quick we can get power lines in, how fast we can build power plants. So that takes me to my last page. I've still got 47 seconds. And I start with double-check me, find a qualified engineer that can verify this. But if all the backup generators on Circle T are running to support that power plant, it's the equivalent of 27,000 cars idling out there in the field. 27,000 cars idling. So that's a lot of exhaust gas for folks around Keller and Westlake to be breathing. So in the plan, they say they're going to run these backup generators for 10 minutes each month just to make sure they work. But what if we have a problem with the Texas grid, the Texas transmission system? We don't have power. So if we sue these guys, we need to have it in the rules. You can't run these things 100% day in and day out. We've got to have limitations on how long they can have those things on. Because if it's 27,000 cars, that's a lot of gas.

Thank you. Well said, sir. Thank you. Is there anyone else from the public that would like to speak this evening? Okay. Seeing none, move to consent. Item F1, consider approval of the minutes of the Wednesday, August 12, 2026 Special City Council meeting. F2, consider approval of the minutes of the Tuesday, August 18th, 2026 regular city council meeting. F3, consider a resolution approving the fiscal year 26-27 vehicle replacement purchases through Enterprise Fleet Management and authorizing the city manager to execute all related purchasing documents on behalf of the city of Keller, Texas. F4, consider a resolution approving the bid from Andrews Building Service Incorporated of Dallas, Texas for janitorial services for the Keller Point Recreation and Aquatic Center. and authorize the city manager to execute all purchase documents relating thereto on behalf of the city of Keller. Five, consider a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a one-year agreement with Advox of Houston, Texas for the purchase of Arctic Wolf Network's managed detection and response cybersecurity services. All right, any discussion or questions on items F1 through F5? Seeing none, we'll recognize a motion. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move we approve consent items F1 through F5 as presented. Thank you, sir. Councilwoman Brennan?

I second the motion.

We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on consent. All right, that's approved, 6-0. H1 is a public hearing. Consider an ordinance approving a specific use permit for an approximately 1,883 square foot accessory structure and approximately 11.24 acres located on the north side of Barbara Lane, approximately 1,350 feet west from the intersection of Barbara Lane and Rue Snow Drive. legally described as lot 5A, home side of the black addition zone, single family, 36,000 square foot lot size or greater, and address 715 Barbara Lane. Douglas Stamps is the applicant owner. Is the applicant with us tonight? Well, would you please, it's Charlie, right? Do me a favor and wish your parents happy anniversary. What number is it? 25, and they didn't want to spend it here. But you blocked them. You knocked them out? Okay. All right. Well, seriously, tell them happy wedding anniversary and, you know, we'll consider the item. But thanks for being here, man.

Thank you, Mayor. I have the aerial and zoning maps here. Subject property is zoned SF36. The applicant requests a specific use permit for a 1,883-square-foot barn with an approximate average height of 18 feet and 2 inches. The proposed structure is to be used for storage and a workspace to support the associated agricultural activities. There are two SEP triggers for the structure to exceed 1,200 square feet in the SF 36 zoning district and for the height of the structure to exceed an average of 15 feet tall. The site plan from the applicant shows the structure is located behind the main home and will conform to the setback requirements of the SF 36 zoning district. You can see it outlined in red there. The applicant has stated that the barn will be a fully framed and finished structure that has been designed to complement the architectural character and quality of the main home. You can see the elevations there, as well as the floor plan. The existing home on the property is intended to be demolished, and the new main home will be approximately 5,980 square feet. The UDC states that the combined area of all accessory buildings on a lot shall be less than 50% of the main structure unless approved by an SUP. This proposed structure would be less than 50% of the square footage of the main home. On July 30, the city mailed 23 letters of notification to all property owners within 300 feet of the subject site. Staff has received no public opinion letters in response to the request. Section 8.02 F2A of the UDC states that when considering an SUP request, the council shall consider the following factors. The use is harmonious and compatible with surrounding existing uses or proposed uses. The activities requested by the applicant are normally associated with the permitted uses in the base district. The nature of the use is reasonable and appropriate in the immediate area. Any negative impact on the surrounding area has been mitigated and that any additional conditions specified ensure that the intent of the district purposes are being upheld. And at the August 11th Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, commissioners unanimously recommended approval of the SUP request as presented. And again, this is a SUP request for an accessory structure to exceed 1,200 square feet in the SF36 zoning district, as well as for it to exceed an average of 15 feet tall with an approximate average height of 18 feet and 2 inches. The City Council has the following options when considering this request. Approve as submitted. approve the modifications, table the item, or deny. If you have any questions, staff and the applicant are available.

Thanks, Calvin. Anyone from the public? This is a public hearing. Would anyone from the public like to speak on this item? Anything you wanted to add? No? We're good? Okay. We have a motion. Councilman Will?

Yes, Mr. Mayor. I move to close the public hearing.

Thank you. I'll second. Let's vote. Public hearing is closed. Any questions for staff or the applicant? If not, I recognize a motion. Councilman Armstrong?

In the commentary, they talked about that the existing home would be demolished. Is this going to be an issue if we allow this to happen now? What if the bigger house doesn't get built?

Staff, isn't there a SUP? What is the status to the... So I don't think Stephanie has any concerns. It's a good question. Okay. All right. Good question. Any other questions or discussion? I'm really going to be the only one that wishes them a happy wedding anniversary. I'm joking. I'm joking. All right. I'll make a motion to approve item H1 as presented. Councilman Will.

Yes, Mr. Mayor. I second and also wish them a happy wedding anniversary.

All right. Let's vote. All right, that item is approved, 6-0. Thanks for coming in. Seriously, give them our best wishes. Thanks for being here. H2 is to consider a resolution approving a major subdivision final plat with one variance for lots 3R through 7R, block A and lot 1, block B of the Calais State Subdivision, being 6.63 acres located on the west side of Willis Lane, approximately 1,787 feet southeast of the Rapp Road and Willis Lane intersection, being a replat of lots 3 through 7, block A of the Calais State Subdivision, and a final plat of a portion of the John Edmund Survey, abstract 457, tract 4A1 and 4A2, zone single family, 36,000 square foot, And addressed as 304, 308, 312, 316, and 320 Calais Drive and 1516 Willis Lane. Chris Blevins is the applicant. David Hawthorne, Deborah, excuse me, Shruk. Provocable Trust, Stephen and Betty Zeminski, Trina and Kenneth Miller, Andrea and Drew Langford, and Anna D. Bentle are the owners.

Thank you, Mayor. I have the aerial and zoning maps. The subject property is zoned SF-36. The original plot was created in 2003 and included 15 SF 36 zoned lots. The other subject property, 1516 Willis Lane, has never been plotted, and that is the property outlined in orange shown here. So the purpose of this replat is to revise the south property lines for lots 3R through 7R of the CalA estate subdivision and create a final plot for that remainder lot. This application does include variance request because of the lot width for that remainder lot. Since the plot was never approved for that lot, that is the reason for the variance. In SF 36, the minimum lot width is 140 feet. They are showing a minimum lot width of 122 feet. Here's a brief look at the zoning and the future land use plan designation for those properties. On July 30th, we mailed out 34 letters of notification for this public hearing, but staff has received no formal public feedback in response to this request. Section 2.07 of the UDC states that when considering a final plot with variances, the City Council shall consider the following, that there are special circumstances or conditions affecting the land involved, that the granting of the variance will not be detrimental to the public, that the granting of the variance will not have the effect of preventing the orderly subdivision of other lands in the area, that the granting of the variance will not constitute a violation of any other valid ordinance in the city, and that strict compliance with the regulations and or that the purpose of the regulations will be served to a greater extent by the alternative proposal. At the August 11th Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, the commissioners unanimously recommended approval of the plot with the variance as presented. Council is following options when considering a final plot with variances, approve as submitted or with modifications, table or deny. Staff and the applicant are here if you have any questions.

All right, thank you. This is a public hearing. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak on this item? Not, recognize a motion from Councilman Armstrong.

Motion to approve item H2. I'm sorry, motion to close the public hearing.

Yeah, I was with you, Councilman. That was close. Yeah, we'll close the public hearing if Councilwoman Brennan will second.

I second to close public hearing.

We have a motion and a second. Let's vote. All right, Councilman Armstrong, your motion.

Now a motion to approve H2 as presented.

Thank you, sir. Councilman Rankleaf.

Mr. Mayor, I second.

Thank you, sir. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on H2. All right. Platt's approved. Thanks, everyone, for going through the process and being here this evening. I think it's a good outcome, so thanks for working through it. H3 is a public hearing as well. To consider an ordinance approving a specific use permit for Eagle Tavern to operate an indoor entertainment facility in an existing lease space on approximately 3.11 acres on the north side of Keller Parkway, located approximately 220 feet north of the Keller Parkway and Borland intersections. Intersection legally described as lot 7 our block B of the stones land subdivision zone retail and address 721 Keller Parkway unit 100 Eagle Tavern is the applicant evergreen Fern LTD is the owner Thank You mayor at the aerial and zoning maps subject property is owned retail Quick reminder on the UDC definition for an indoor entertainment facility

Some background on this request. It was brought to the attention of city staff that the existing restaurant was operating with pool tables, and the applicant was notified of the SUP requirement to operate as an indoor entertainment facility. The business will continue operating as a restaurant. No expansion of the building or change to the primary use of the property is proposed as part of this request. The requested SUP is solely to authorize the indoor entertainment facility use associated with these amusement devices. Subject property, again, is zoned retail and designated mixed use on the city's future land use plan, as are the properties to the north. The properties to the east are designated retail commercial. To the south, mixed use and retail commercial. And to the west, semi-public. On July 30th, the city mailed out 25 letters to all property owners within 300 feet of the subject site. Staff has received no public feedback in response to the request. The August 11th Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, commissioners recommended denial of the SUP request by a vote of three to two. Again, the request is for an SUP to operate an indoor entertainment facility for Eagle Tavern in the retail zoning district. And again, reminder of the UDC criteria for considering an SUP request that I read in my previous presentation. And the council has the following options when considering this request. Approve as submitted, approve the modifications or additional conditions, table the item or deny. If you have any questions, staff and the applicant are available.

Thanks, Calvin. This is a public hearing. Would anyone from the public like to speak on item H3? All right, seeing none, we'll recognize a motion. We got one. Oh, yeah, go ahead, sir. Sorry, I missed you.

I'm not an expert, but... In looking at the prerequisites for a restaurant, it says that a restaurant can have... The city of Keller says a restaurant can have some entertainment items. I don't understand how two pool tables could bring them out of compliance with being a restaurant. So I don't understand why they would need a special use for that. Now, I have no objection to the special use, but I was just... Curious why this would be a necessity with just two pool tables. Yeah, good feedback. That's all I've got.

Thank you, sir. Would anyone else from the public like to speak? All right, Councilman Will.

Yes, Mr. Mayor. Sarah, to that gentleman's point, can you clarify why in this instance we're requiring an SUP if the zoning or the land use designation for a restaurant under the development code allows for a certain amount of gaming or entertainment?

So while staff looks that up, let's go ahead and recognize the Mayor Pro Tem's motion on the public hearing.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move we close the public hearing on item H3.

I'll second. Let's take a vote. All right. Public hearing is closed. Councilman Wolf's point. Sarah, what are your thoughts?

So I'd have to look up the specific code reference he's talking about. The definition for restaurant in the UDC doesn't have anything about entertainment. It just mentions where people are eating at a restaurant. Erin and I had quite a few conversations about this one in particular and went back and forth a little bit. We have in Keller traditionally required businesses that we're putting in just pool tables to do the indoor entertainment because it is a service beyond just a traditional restaurant. It also is called out in the indoor entertainment definition that's on the screen and so I think that's kind of where our decision has hinged is that In the restaurant definition, I don't have anything that says these other devices are allowed, but those are clearly called out in the indoor entertainment definition.

Thank you.

Happy to revisit the definition at some point in the future, though.

No, I just wanted clarification. Thank you. I had one question about the land use. In that one slide that we looked at, I was just trying to understand maybe the theory behind having those two properties designated as mixed use when It's a strip mall. It's probably only going to be retail commercial ever. So I'm just kind of curious why we have that as mixed use.

I can't speak to that. It's been like this since the 2021 FLUP was adopted. I think you probably all remember that as something definitely on our radar for doing some refresh to in certain areas like this where maybe it doesn't quite make sense or we're not quite sure what the reasoning behind it was. We'll get revise either in this instance to retail commercial or whatever council thinks is most appropriate.

All right. Thank you.

All right.

Good questions. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. For staff, I'd say maybe in the future, because we have so much stuff right now on a backlog, maybe next year looking into this, because I think there is a line, obviously, between restaurants and entertainment venue, but also in some cases that are obviously we don't need extra red tape. maybe we can empower staff to make that distinction more clearly, like we can make it easier for you to do that. So maybe next year when we catch up on some of these backlogs, we can get to that item.

Erin, do you want to comment on that? Because I know you were heavily involved in this one in terms of the indoor entertainment, SUP.

Well, I don't need a response. I was just saying in the future we can discuss it. Sorry, I wasn't looking. I was just saying as a council, we need to empower you all if we think it's too much red tape. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not saying you did anything wrong. I was saying we, council, need to clarify it if we think it does or just leave it if we agree.

All right. Understood.

I blame everyone on the 2021 flop committee personally. Wait, I was on that one. Never mind. Councilman Armstrong.

My question is going to be for staff as well. On the two dissenting votes on approval from PNZ, I don't care who they were, but the reasons, do you recall?

I don't, there was a public comment that evening with concern, and this was from the public, this wasn't a commissioner, with concern that an SUP for indoor entertainment doesn't limit The way it's proposed, it doesn't limit them from changing the nature of the business to be less restaurant and more pool hall or more heavy on the entertainment side. So there were some concerns with that. The applicant was also unable to attend PNZ, so that's always a concern for the commission when they're not there to answer questions about the business. I think there were some concerns about the gaming machines that have been installed that are still being reviewed by the police department.

Good question. Is the applicant here tonight? Hey, I had a quick question for you, sir. If you don't mind stepping forward. Yeah, just so they can hear you on the YouTube live stream.

Mr. Mayor, could I have a follow-up with Sarah's response just now?

Yeah, absolutely. So the quick question I had was probably two-part. One, how many pool tables are you looking to do? Just those two. Just the two? Yeah. And then do you have any opposition? Because one of the things we can do to kind of clear it up is just put a condition on your specific use permit that basically says we're limiting it to two two pool tables. Would that be agreeable to you? Two is fine, yes. Two is fine? Yeah, I know it's probably a little bit, well, it is a red tape. Whatever is convenient, even for you guys. I feel like I was not going to come here and meet in a row.

You know, just decide whatever you want to do, even to take out, you know.

No, we're excited to have you here, and all I was going to say is really appreciate you kind of going through the process. I think it would be wise, just for clarity's sake, just to make that recommendation that we're just talking about two pool tables, but

Councilman Wold, did you have a follow-up? You actually hit my nail on the head.

I can't golf, but every once in a while I'll hit one. Okay, so Mayor Pro Tem?

Yeah, maybe we disagree. Y'all can make a motion to amend. I was going to move to approve H3 as presented. I don't think we need the red tape. It isn't big enough to really become a pool hall, but if y'all want to amend it, that's fine. But my motion is to approve it as presented. Okay.

Well, Cody Thorne's in the audience with community impact, and he knows I can't resist an opportunity to amend a motion like that. So I will make a motion to amend. Either way it works out, we'll be fine. Item H3, so that way the specific use permit is limited to two pool tables as the applicants requested. And so procedurally we'll vote on that, but I have to get a second. Is there a second on that motion?

I second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Mayor Pro Tem, you're welcome to vote for this one as well.

Yeah, just for clarification, if you vote against this, you can still vote for it.

We're going to vote on the amendment first, and then if that succeeds, then there's no further action necessary because we'll have approved the item. If it, for some reason, fails, then we'll consider the Mayor Pro Tem's motion. And it's a point well made, sir. All right, so everyone clear on the motion, or the amendment to the motion? All right, let's vote. All right, that passes 4-2. Thank you for coming in tonight. Thank you, appreciate you being here. Thank you. All right, next up is item H-4, consider resolution approving a special exception to the City of Keller UDC. Article 9, Development Standards, Section 9.05, sign regulations for Chalk and Seal, an indoor entertainment facility for an existing 7,310 square foot lease space on approximately 1.4 acres, located approximately 560 feet northeast of the intersection of Borland Road and Keller Parkway, legally described as Block A, Lot 4A of the Shemwell addition. So in retail and address, 761 Keller Parkway, Unit 104, John Upromes, the applicant, M&D Associates LLC is the owner. This is not a public hearing, so we can get right to the staff presentation.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Council. Aerial and zoning map before you. Subject property is zoned retail. Chuck and Steel Co. recently had their SEP request approved on June 16th of this year to operate as an indoor entertainment facility at 761 Keller Parkway, Unit 104. They are now coming before you requesting a special exception to allow for two signs on the front facade of their lease space. UDC sign code states that one attached sign for building elevation or lease space elevation visible from a public street or with a public entrance is permitted Attached wall signs must be located minimum of one foot from the edge of the lease space. Their other request is to allow for signs to be composed of materials that are not listed in the UDC. UDC states that all permanent signs shall be constructed of quality materials including aluminum, masonry stone, brick, stucco, molded plastics, and acrylic. As I mentioned, they are proposing two signs on the front elevation of their building. Both of those signs would meet the UDC requirements for an attached wall sign if submitted independently. and both of those signs are faced in black and white and include digitally printed vinyl graphics and a luminar backward panel, and the letters and borders will be constructed of high-performance vinyl. UDC special exception does not require public hearings, so no public hearing notifications were sent out. The public had an opportunity to speak on this agenda item during persons to be heard. At the August 11th, 2026 P&Z Commission meeting, commissioners recommend approval of this SUB request by a vote of 5-0. Section 9.05 of the UDC list criteria for approval of a special exception to the signed code, whether the requested exception will not adversely affect public safety, whether the requested exception will not adversely affect surrounding properties, whether the requested exception will be in harmony, whether special conditions exist which are unique to the applicant, whether the requested exception demonstrates increased quality and standards, and whether the requested exception will be aesthetically appropriate in that area. Again, the two requests before you this evening is to allow for two attached wall signs on the front facade of their building and to allow for the use of sign materials that are not listed as approved materials specified by the UDC. Council has the following options when considering UDC special exception. Approve with the request of special exceptions. Approve with modifications, table, or deny. And staff and the applicant are here for any questions. Thanks, Ethan.

All right. This is not a public hearing. Do you have a question, Councilman Wool?

Yes, Mr. Mayor.

Maybe I missed it. I was looking. It just says that we're looking for approval to use something other than what's listed, but it doesn't say actually what the sign is going to be composed of. So do we know? I may have missed it, but I don't see it. in the presentation.

Yes, sir. So the material that they're proposing is vinyl and high-performance vinyl. Both of those are not listed in the UDC as quality materials. So those are the two requests. All right. Thank you.

Thanks, Councilman. Councilman Armstrong?

Being in the location that this place is going to be, they're going to need some help on signage. It's tucked back behind Sonic.

and a couple of other restaurants and the signage looks really good and hopefully it'll draw you a bunch of people back there if it passes so i think you need all the signage you can get back there all right do we have any so if the quality materials just because our udc doesn't list it as a quality material doesn't mean it's not a quality material so what are our thoughts on the quality of the material if you don't have any insights or

I know nothing about signs. Okay. But the people that make the signs, they're proud of their work. The things that are going to be, they're going to be printed on a particular type of vinyl material that you're looking at the eight ball and the dartboard, those two items, the only two ways to make them are print them on vinyl or have them hand painted. If they're hand painted, I can't afford the signs. It's like about $8,000 to paint an eight ball and a chalkboard and a dartboard. The sign maker assures us that the material will last, at least it will be in its pristine condition for a minimum of 10 years. At 10 years, we will probably start to see some decay and fading of those items. At that time, what I'm told is we can, they can come out, reprint those, take those off and put new ones on and they'll be good for another 10 years. It's a commonly used material in science. Okay, great. Thank you for that insight. Mayor Pro Tem?

I'd just add that we had the same discussion at the sports park. We were looking at the difference between painting and vinyl. I think it'll be fine. I agree with Councilman Armstrong's point.

Anything else for me? No, sir. Thank you. We have a motion from Councilman Armstrong.

Motion to approve item H4.

All right. Thank you, sir. Councilwoman Brennan?

I second the motion.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote. All right, that passes 6-0. Thanks for coming in, and again, we're excited to have you here in the City of Keller. We're excited to be here. Thank you, sir. H5 is a public hearing to consider an ordinance approving amendments to the City of Keller Unified Development Code adopted by Ordinance Number 1746, dated July 7, 2015, by amending Article 8 relating to automobile electric charging stations, providing penalties, authorizing publication, and establishing an effective date.

Thank you, Mayor. So some background here. As part of the comprehensive 2015 UDC update, the use automobile electric charging stations was added to the use charts for the neighborhood services, retail, Old Town Keller, town center, and town center medical zoning districts. At that time, the use was designated as requiring a specific use permit in the Town Center, Town Center Medical, and the Main Street Subdistrict of the Old Town Keller Zoning District, while designated as permitted by right in the Retail Neighborhood Services and Neighborhood Subdistrict of the Old Town Keller Zoning District. The proposed amendment would modify the use charts of the Retail Neighborhood Services and Neighborhood Subdistrict to require a specific use permit for automobile electric charging stations. So you can see that proposed change in the use charts here for the retail neighborhood services and neighborhood sub-district OTK table. Based on a change recommended by the Planning and Zoning Commission, there would also be the stipulation in the neighborhood sub-district use chart that states that the SEP is not required for automobile electric charging stations at single-family homes within the neighborhood sub-district. So, again, the... Proposed amendment would change automobile electric charging stations from permitted to specific use permit required in the retail neighborhood services and Old Town Keller neighborhood sub-district zoning districts. At the August 11th Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, commissioners unanimously recommended approval of the proposed amendments with the condition that the SUP requirement does not apply to single-family homes within the neighborhood sub-district of the OTK zoning district. an amendment to the text of the udc requires a public hearing notice to be published in the local newspaper 15 days prior to the scheduled planning and zoning commission meeting date the notice for the city council public hearing was published in the august 16th 2026 edition of the fort worth star telegram and staff has not received any comments from the public regarding the proposed udc amendments city council has the following options when considering This amendment approve as submitted, approve with modifications or additional conditions, table or deny. If you have any questions, staff is available.

Awesome. Thank you. So this is a public hearing. Would anyone from the public like to discuss item H5?

All right, seeing none. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move we close the public hearing on item H5. Thank you. Councilwoman Brennan?

A second.

Motion and a second. Let's vote. All right. Public hearing is closed. I just want to briefly acknowledge the mayor pro tem for bringing this item forward. You know, I think it's important that we create a path for folks to, you know, live, work, and play in Keller. But, you know, there are times where we have to have quality controls. And so this is, I think, a good time for that. And I'll be in favor of... this item. Councilwoman Brennan?

Just a question for staff real quick. I'm also in favor of this item. I believe this is in reaction to the electric charging stations that were placed at the Walmart that we all didn't really realize were going to be there, and they were allowed by right because it was considered retail. This would then require that they would come in front of city council the next time something like that comes up.

That is correct. We do have one application that was received before the UDC ordinance was even started that I don't know that we can retroactively apply the SUP application to. The particular application that is under review right now is much farther from the road in a retail parking lot, but everything else going forward would have to come to council as an SUP.

Can I ask who's the applicant?

It's actually the property. It's adjacent to the Kroger over here, but it's not Kroger. It's actually the property that a few years ago, council did a zoning change to kind of carve out a donut hole of retail in the middle of town center. Otherwise, they wouldn't be allowed to do the station.

When we did that vote, we were actually curing some of the medical use issues, if I recall. if we're talking about the same area, I think that's why the property was rezoned, right?

I don't remember. I mean, it's been over five years since, I think, since the rezone. It's just an unusual little spot of retail that's surrounded on all sides by town center.

Yeah, I think, you know, maybe we can, yeah, that was the medical city manager showing me a map. You know, for whatever it's worth from a council perspective, basically what happened is there were suites that were outfitted with medical equipment, and then the zoning changed underneath those owners and those occupants' feet. A couple, at least one spot went vacant with the investment of medical, and then it went vacant. What is it? You have to be vacant for more than six months or a year? I think it's six months. Yeah, so they were vacant longer than six months, and so we had this medical building that wasn't allowed for medical uses. And so to cure that issue... We rezoned it so that way there wouldn't be as much red tape. Seems to be a theme of this meeting. However, it also opened the door for this application, apparently. Who's the owner?

We're looking up right now. I don't have it off my mind.

Probably the same folks that we, so, well, I'll chat with you offline about it, Sarah, so that way we can, I can get a few more questions answered. Thank you. Did you get your question answered? Yeah. All right. Mayor Potem.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thanks, City Manager and the Mayor for helping move this along. I just want to say for those listening, For citizens out there, the concern was multi-focused public safety, no matter whether it's a refueling station for a combustion engine or an electric vehicle. We want to make sure it has safety noticing and also has safety components, on-off switch, things of that nature. And also to let consumers know that they can park in those spots. Most of, like if you go over here, I'm losing my mind, the zone right here. Right here, Senator. Thank you, town center. If you park there, it says that anyone's allowed to park there, but they are for charging. That way, some of the smaller restaurants and businesses aren't affected and ameliorate their concerns. But also, just any type of charging station for the environment and all of the reasons listed above were what led to this. So just for y'all's edification with that, I'd like to move to approve item H5. So recognized.

Is there a second? Councilman Will? I second. All right, we have a motion and a second. All right, let's vote on H5. All right, that passes. Thanks again, Mayor Pro Tem, for bringing that forward. That's good work on behalf of the City of Keller. With that, no consideration of H6 is necessary because it's duplicative, so we'll go ahead and recess briefly and then start our work session in about three minutes. our work session strs we discussed this issue discussed this issue a couple times over the past years my recollection from the last update was that council essentially asked staff to do some homework and look in the issue and so i think if i'm understanding it right sarah's bringing forward some of her findings tonight is that right sarah

regulation language yet. What I'm looking for tonight is some direction on specific parts of how you want that to read. And then we can do a subsequent work session and we can go straight to P&Z. Whatever next steps council wants to do after this is perfectly fine. So back in 2022 there were a handful of work sessions with the council and the P&Z level discussing the adoption of SDR regulations. They got as far as P&Z actually making a recommendation on some draft ordinance language but ultimately council decided not to take any action if you remember at that time several cities were going through lawsuits related to their regulations and and I think the killer position was to kind of watch and see especially what grapevine going. We revisited the item back in May of this year. That's when Council, as Mayor McMillan mentioned, directed staff to do some more research and begin preparing for adopting regulations later this fall. So since then, we did two input meetings. We met with folks that are concerned or have been personally impacted by living near, maybe right next door or in the vicinity of a short-term rental, and just folks that are concerned about the issue in general. So we had an input meeting back in June with those folks, just listening at the staff level, asking some generic questions, but really just wanted to listen to them, their experiences, and what they have found, because a lot of them are a wealth of information about what's happened in other cities. We also did a meeting in August where we reached out to local SCR operators, so folks that are color residents would also own and operate short-term rentals within the city. So we did that meeting in August, same format. We just did a lot of listening at the staff level, asked some generic questions on how they felt about different things and what their experience had been. But again, really primarily listening from the staff perspective. In addition to those, we met with the lead council of the Texas Neighborhood Coalition Mr. Schlegel, he's been very involved with and that group has been incredibly involved with mobilizing a lot of communities and drafting ordinances across the state related to short-term rental regulations and we also spent a good deal of time reading other cities ordinances and then a lot of time with the staff from Grapevine and NRH in particular. NRH has probably the most recently adopted regulations that have some pretty good stuff in it that seemed appropriate for Keller. Not to duplicate, but a good reference for sure. So as I mentioned today, we're seeking some direction on specific parts of what we might guidelines to say. So, starting off with the definition, pretty consistently across most cities, it's some sort of rental, you know, that first language kind of varies here and there, but it's always less than 30 days. It's pretty consistent. And then I think we want to be clear that the ordinance is going to apply to it doesn't matter. All of these regulations would apply the same if you're renting the property for a fee. This is a topic definitely want to get some council input on. how we want to write this in terms of allowable locations. I put three options up here, but really there's probably several others, some kind of combination of a few of these. So first, looking at only allowing SDRs in certain districts. So examples might be Old Town Keller or multifamily. This option could exclude all the single family districts. And just to note, if we allowed it in multifamily, that would of course be at the discretion of the property owner. We could also write something in that it was limited to a certain percentage of the unit, so you avoid having maybe an apartment complex that has a majority short-term rentals. Option two, you could allow SDRs in certain districts kind of like an option one, plus single family neighborhoods if they're already operating. To continue to operate in those single family neighborhoods, they would need to meet some requirements to achieve a grandfather status. and that grandfather status could be non-transferable to a new property owner. That would be a decision from the council. North Richland Hills, the model that they did, allowed a path for grandfathering for existing operators, but they have made it where it's non-transferable. So ultimately, the long-term effect is going to be no short-term rentals in their single-family districts. would be SUP approval by city council. You could apply that across the board to all zoning districts or only to single family districts. So maybe you allow them by right in places like Old Town or multifamily, but if it's in a single family district, you have to get an SUP. Current operators would need to either be grandfathered or would have to come in and apply for that SUP. I don't know if we want to pause for a moment, Mayor, and discuss this one, or do you want me to go through? There's only a few more slides.

I'll probably just get through it.

Okay.

Yeah, good question.

Draft registration requirements, annual fee for each property. We would need the contact information for the owner and a local emergency contact that could be on site within a certain period of time. We want to see a floor plan and a survey of where all the parking is going to be and something that... tells them the parking can't be anywhere than in the garage driveway or the curb that's immediately adjacent to the home. In the initial year, they would have to acknowledge the requirement to remit hot taxes. And then in subsequent years, staff would confirm that they had been paying their hot taxes every month. Inspections would be required annually in order

that we were discussing possibly like staff capacity to monitor the hot tax is that still an issue or I think so it's going to depend on which method you go so if we're being extra restricted then we could probably do it internally if we were

going to look at an option that allows it in multiple areas. At SGP, we probably would look at a third party to monitor that. That also allows them to have some companies that do that will also be that handle the forms, the collection, and then also where a point in place if there's complaints, they can go and complain to that. that third-party vendor so there's a system out of that so provides a general good oversight of the program so okay again i think it's it'd be dependent on how restricted we want to be versus and they'll monitor all strs as well that is also an option because they would you know look at the name look at the various websites to figure out who's actually renting out whether they

Thanks for the refresher. Awesome.

So some restrictions we'll want to put on short-term rentals. Absolutely no external signage anywhere on the property. No more than two guests per bedroom, plus two additional guests. This allows if you have a living room with a pull-out sofa or something like that, but it still limits the number of folks in the home. This language on outdoor gatherings and amplified music, I put it in italics. You find something similar in some cities' ordinances. Chief Fortune and I talked about it a little bit. It may be better to actually delete and just rely on the noise ordinances and everything else we already have in the code for officers that are responding later in the evening. It's also difficult to define an outdoor gathering. Is that just a family of four that's staying there or is that a certain number of people? deep into the weeds on that one. And then some cities have a three strikes and you're out system for substantiated violations. We put it at just two here.

When you say substantiated, what does that mean?

It means that most likely the police department, it could be co-compliance, it depends on what it is, but most likely the police department is called out to the site and confirms that they are in violation of either something in the city code or of this ordinance.

So they're basically confirming that it's not just some... angry neighbor who just keeps calling in complaints frivolously to... Right.

Yeah, because if we did it just based on number of calls, it would likely be unfair to the owner.

Yeah, so to your question, I was kind of thinking about it from the, you know, there are STR operators that are very responsible and there are those that are obviously not, but if I just want to make sure it wasn't like trying to understand the level of scrutiny with when we say a substantiated complaint.

I think it would lean more towards the guidelines and the ordinance. I don't think we would be looking to shut down. And we can definitely firm this up in the actual language if we want it to be very specific to I don't think the intent would be to, you know, if we were to allow short terminals to shut them down over one call over grasping a little bit too high.

Well, maybe we just reference where else in the code it is that you could just reference a certain section. Because I know that we go in sometimes and we rewrite some of the code that's duplicate and repeat it rather than repeating it again. We could always just reference a section, so if that section later changes, we don't have to go back and change this. Sure. It would apply. Just a suggestion.

Sure. And we included this option for if somebody has their registration revoked, there would be an appeal process through the ZBA. The ZBA is well-positioned to do this type of appeal. They're already charged with hearing appeals to the decision of an administrative official or code interpretation, which happens from time to time. So that was our suggestion here.

Why not just devil's advocate? Why not P&Z?

We certainly could. The reasoning behind ZBA is because the UDC already specifies ZBA as the appeal board for if you're unhappy with a decision by an administrative official from the city or code interpretation, they're

So the bottom line is we have flexibility, ZBA or PNZ. We can do both. I leave it at that.

So like I mentioned, we can do another work session at the next meeting, but actually it would be October 6th, I think, before we could actually get a full section of the code written for review. Or if you guys want to skip the work session, we will get the language drafted and go ahead and start scheduling it for P&D.

They have a minimum stay requirement of two days. I didn't see any of that in your

So we considered that. We can certainly include that. Some of the advice we got from the Texas Neighborhood Coalition was they advised against it. It was just another thing that you could end up possibly getting sued for.

I don't know what the concern is there, the one night versus two nights.

Well, I think a lot, based on the conversation we had with the local that they're requiring a two-night minimum say the ones that are operating properties in Keller and the reason is it by requiring that like weekend long you know non when I say it eliminates a lot of the folks and want to run a house for one night for a party so be an expensive party

I don't know. Based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback, if we're going to take action, I'd be much more inclined for three. The SUP are out, but I don't know what you guys think.

Are we concerned legally? I mean, if we just outright ban? I mean, I'm all for grandfathering the ones that already exist, but making them apply and get them on the record and all that. But for brand new STRs in residential areas, are we open to legal action? Because I think there's been some cases in the state of Texas, Austin particularly, where that was an issue because of personal property rights and the ability for an individual to do what they want to with their land if it doesn't violate the law. So that's what I wonder if that part of it would be a problem for the city.

Yeah, I think you need to have a path forward that's feasible and realistic. So I think an outright ban would be a concern. Yes.

That's a good question. I don't want to call people. What do you guys think? I mean, as it relates to the three options, do you have any instincts? I like one. You like one.

I'm curious about the process. Is there a reason why we wouldn't want to do another work session before this goes to P&Z?

And like write it out and see what it looks like?

Yeah. Yeah, mainly to get their feedback because ultimately we're going to get... What would we be sending them? I guess that's to Karen's point. Yeah, so we would give policy direction, big picture direction to Sarah tonight. So that way... If we want to go the SEP route, then she could start working on that language and present it to P&Z. They could all tighten it up, and then we'd reconsider it. We can always do another work session. We could do five work sessions. So it's just kind of at our discretion. But because this is already our second work session with this council on it, I was thinking, well, why would we need four bites of the apple? I think three is enough, but that's just me.

I guess my opinion is that why don't we write up what we think it's going to be, how it's going to read, and we have one more city council work session where we all look at it and read it and then say, yeah, it's good, let's submit it to PNC.

All right. Well, then y'all don't complain to me when we're here late.

What was the consensus out of the group that looked at this? but which one did they lean more towards?

So that's what I wanted tonight was direction on one of these options. So then we can take whichever option council is leaning towards, and that's what we're going to actually write. Because this isn't code language. This isn't how you would write what goes into muni code. I vote number three.

So you didn't answer my question. Well, I don't have an answer because I haven't presented the option.

long story short essentially that there just wasn't a whole lot of empirical data to support taking action we actually heard from a high volume of and i'm talking citywide yes there are documented individual instances no question about that no one's arguing that but 2022 the thought was you know citywide there's some isolated instances let's try to attack it through enforcement But that's where we landed in 2022. There's a lot of folks here. We've gotten some emails from them that, unsolicited emails anyway, that spoke to that and said, hey, look, there's operators in Keller that are, the lady that, the individual, excuse me, that wrote today, she had a good line. It was something to the effect of, you know, let's not basically punish the good apples. That was her point. STR operator, and her point was let's absolutely take action on those that are not operating in good faith. So that's why I was, that kind of gets to your question. I like her letter. That kind of gets to your question about, you know, me and Sarah didn't necessarily have a chance to propose these three options to any of the subgroups, but that's kind of where we were at in 2022. That being said, there was some communications with folks in the HOAs. There was some work, but it's still an issue. And so I always promised, hey, let's put it on the agenda, and others did as well. So we have it on the agenda. I think the intent is to take action. You're with one. You're with three. I'm with three.

Greg, what do you think? I think if I were the king of Keller and could do whatever I wanted, doesn't allow any new STRs in neighborhoods, and doesn't overly burden the people who are already operating if they're operating in good faith, and it gives us an option to hold them accountable if they aren't operating in good faith. or creating problem districts, and eventually, it will eventually lead to one at some point, because those properties will change hands at some point, and the grandfathered status would not be transferable to the new property owner. So it would eventually become a single family residence again. Because that is the, I mean, again, and I said it last time we discussed this, is I don't know how we get around the fact that it's single family residential zoning, The implication in that very name is that it is somebody's primary residence. It is their home, and they have some buy-in to that neighborhood because it is their home. Again, council could go put a Hilton in the middle of Hidden Lakes if we wanted to, but we're not because it is a neighborhood. Homes have suddenly become hotels. And it's just all the neighbors' problems to deal with all the problems that come with that. They should just suck it up and live with it is apparently the opinion of some people. So I think number two does a really good job of allowing people who are currently operating to continue. Are your kids three? I think three leaves it up to the will of the council. And if council wakes up tomorrow and decides they want to do something different, then I think it just ends up resulting in weak enforcement.

So can I add to that comment on three? Yeah, I would just add one thing. When I say, because I need to touch up my own comment and then jump right to Jared, I would just say I'm for three. but it should come with some actual accountability like it's a revocable yeah sup and if there's so you can incorporate which one has the two strikes you're out rule it's under the restrictions yeah so if they don't follow the restrictions all right i like that both of it but i we're already talking about how late we're going to be here and if it's just an extra item that comes to us they're not coming to us because they're

They should be mad at us. I don't think we need this council or any other former future council to have to deal with it like that on a one-on-one basis. Create an entity that already says here's where it's at. Once it's gone, like two says, then deal with it.

So they would come to us on the good end, right? But they would go to ZBA when they're the bad actor. So we wouldn't necessarily deal with the bad actors.

If I may and I think I understood your your question a little bit I haven't presented these three options to to any group council P&Z That's what I thought you were asking We did ask a lot of questions of the different groups and I don't want to spend we had a lot of individuals in those groups and so I'm summarizing I'm sure there were different opinions, but I think I The first group, the concern group, people that have been impacted by STRs, I think the overall response I got was they would love to see an overall ban, but they also understand the legal implications.

Impacted negatively. Those impacted negatively.

Yes, they would like to see the total ban and single family understand the legal implications. For the operators, they were generally opposed to the SUP process because they're concerned about the public hearing notification In their words, to folks that may not even know that they live next door to an STR, but then will be opposed to it just because it's an STR. Again, I'm really paraphrasing and summarizing the input we got at those meetings.

I got good feedback on the SUP from operators and neighbors, actually.

almost the outright ban, but then for the others, do we have any examples in surrounding municipalities?

So, two is very similar to North Richland Hills, where they've allowed, and actually, if it's okay, I'll just pull up, so this might help a little bit. So, They grandfathered their existing operating SDRs if they met certain criteria. They had to come in and register. They had to get inspected. They had to get right with two years of hot tax, all that kind of stuff. But they put in theirs that it was non-transferable, again, so ultimately... There won't be any SDRs in single-family zoning, but they are allowing them under certain conditions in multifamily, and then they have some non-residential areas and transit-oriented development where they're allowing them. So two is probably the most like Rocherton Hills. What's wrong with the Roanoke option?

Because couldn't you revoke the registration? If they're, like, council could just spit out the policy criteria, and then if they violated twice, then...

I would say it is a viable, I think it would. probably opens up more than maybe council's intended, given the situation and the citizen concerns. So I think that was the logic of having the SUP is it comes before you, you're aware of it, you know where they are, can have a say in whether they make sense or not. This with, I mean, with the right guidelines, you could do a registration option, but more than likely you'll be allowing anywhere in the city that isn't banned by the HOA, but then they have to follow the rules and then do that.

Well, I guess my point is they're already allowed today. Correct. So we have registration and they pay taxes. Then to Councilman Armstrong's point, which I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but you were like, hey, why do we need all this on our agenda in summary? And I'm like, well, so that way we could have some accountability. I'm just wondering if that's, I don't know, what do you guys think?

Hi, I'll give you my, can you go back to the three options? For me, actually, I think our agendas are full in the work session. Zach, I think out there, we're actually okay. I could be the only one. Originally, I like number two because selfishly, if I buy a house in a single family, I don't expect for, you know, an STR to be there. However, you know, I don't know if everyone's had a chance to read some of the emails, like there was one family, elderly couple, like their house either burned down or something, and so they were able to stay in Keller because they could use STR for a longer term. I originally, I wasn't a fan of the SUP, but I think we've all seen situations, rare situations, where maybe a SUP would help a family or even neighborhood that's okay with it it could be a neighborhood only three houses on it I mean there's just different scenarios so I'm actually kind of leaning towards number three now where the mayor was but I did like I'm fine with number two as well but

that already are operating in SDR would have to go through the process and make sure that they satisfy all the requirements. They wouldn't have to go through the SUP process because they're already in SDR, but they would have to pass all the requirements that we're now putting on the SDR. That's part of number three.

Well, I would want direction. If we go the SUP route, do you want to make all the current operators get an SUP to continue

can register but not necessarily have to go through the SUP process as long as they're registered and they're meeting the requirements that we put in place and obviously wouldn't lose their grandfather status because they're operating in good faith and then Yeah, so typically we don't have that just to be honest with you because it gets pretty

Councilman Will or Mayor Pro Tems kind of points about what can we do legally? I guess it was a two-parter. Number one, can we require current operators to go through an SUP process?

But if they're operating legally now, we probably wouldn't want to do that because they already had entitlements that you could put... registration and criteria for them to continue. It would be a zoning approval, but it would be a regulatory approval. If they had to come and get the registration, inspections, whatever we make the criteria, that's probably what we'd want to do. New users get an SUP.

And that's what North Legend Hills did, by the way. I'm looking at their blast and they had that as existing.

How would the enforcement action look then? Because with regard to properties that get an SUP, it would be a revocable SUP where they could no longer continue to operate. But if current operators, let's say somebody lost their mind and started having keggers every Saturday with 500 people in the backyard, because there's no SUP in place, how would we, I guess, what teeth would we have there?

It would effectively be the same result, meaning you were in violation of our, our orders would require you to do that to go forward or continue. So if you didn't meet those new registration or compliance requirements, you would lose the right, you effectively would lose your grandfather status.

whichever one we decide to choose. I agree with what Councilman Will said. The main emphasis would be to get back to having single family residential in single family.

the Westlake data center here right we had how many people just in this room in that room and if we have our work sessions that's what we have persons to be heard for that being said if you have like yeah 30 seconds to a minute I'll do it informal persons to be heard

And I went through my last six months and 80% of the people that have stayed with me are actually Keller residents. They're people that have family, there's people that come to me regularly that are at the conservatory, their parents are there. I have a couple that are here right now that are moving from Haznet to Keller and they have a six week period in between houses and they're staying there. The people before that were people that had a flood in their property and they needed a place for three months while they were, you know, well, they were displaced from their own property, and 80% of my people are actually Keller residents, and it would be really a disservice to make it too difficult. And I'm absolutely with you that there are clearly bad actors out there, and it would be a shame to jeopardize the rest of it because of that, because I could get all my

doing a good job yeah yeah so thank you for sharing that and I'll just tell you this like from a public feedback perspective we're hour and a half discussion. So there's been a lot of ample feedback and data available for council to consider, and it's good data.

Sir? I'd just say that, yeah, the nice lady makes some great points, but no one's trying to shut them down. The suggestion is if their grandfather, like North Virgin Hills, did perfectly, if their grandfather paid her two years' worth of hotel occupancy tax, Get registered and follow the rules. If you do that, you're a model citizen, you'll be fine. No one's trying to shut you down. What we don't want is any new ones opening in single-family residential. You already know that you can't go any place in North Texas and open a short-term rental in a new community. So don't go backwards, please. And no one's shutting these down. What would you do? Follow the ordinances, pay your taxes, you'll be fine.

Yeah, and I'll just say, out of You were kind of between two and three. You were more at two. You were at three. I'm at three. You're at two. I only...

I don't even know what you said. I don't know where we're at. What's leading right now? Two is? No, I don't know if it's leading. Three is leading.

Three is leading, yeah. Sorry. You're going to make some Yeah, my problem with two is it's honestly a backdoor ban. Like, that's how I read it. It's like, okay, you can do your SDR, and tell me where I'm wrong, Sarah, and push back. I'm misstating something because I don't want to misstate something. But it's basically, okay, you'll be grandfathered, but if you sell your property or convey it,

The only thing I would point out is that when we say certain districts, I'm pulling Old Town and multifamily. So those districts could continue to add STRs at the council discretion. And like I said, I've got three options up here, but there's different ways to mix and match the different components. So number two could look like SCR is allowed by right. They still have to register. They still have to follow all the guidelines, but maybe they're allowed by right in Old Town, maybe in multifamily. I don't know that we have another zoning district that it would make sense to allow them by right. And then in the single family neighborhoods, they're grandfathered, but it's non-transferable.

Which is, that's where I'm like,

If the intent is for residential areas to be residences, then that makes sense to me.

Yeah, we could get, yeah. We'll watch the 2022.

I was on P&Z at the time.

Where is it? It's in Kellett by the high school.

So single family residential?

Yeah, and I've never had a single complaint in my name. Okay, so

is Councilman Rankley literally said, I'm for three so long as we bring it back for a work session. Right, Councilman? No, you didn't say that. You just want it back for a work session. So I will look at three, I'll write it up, and then bring it back for a work session. Sounds like that's the consensus of council, because I think that'll allow us to do a little bit deeper dive and look at some of the accountability, some of the meat and potatoes, the regulations or the requirements. And then I actually think the requirements feedback rather than re-going through the same presentation, if that makes sense.

Then basically we would redline it and then it would go on.

Yeah, yeah.

And then it would go back to us and approve it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're tracking right. Yes, sir. I'd just like to make sure we get it moving because it's been kicked down the road unintentionally for a long time. Yeah. And we're taking a 1% of bad apples and affecting the 99% of the people that are doing good, including owners

We have line regulations.

We're good with that.

Perfect. D2? Is that you good, Sarah? Do you have everything you need? Yes, thank you. All right. Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for their feedback.

All right, so tonight we're going to be discussing Keller High School Lacrosse at the Keller Sports Park. So just a little background, the Keller High School Lacrosse team does fall under the Keller Lacrosse organization. So I'm not necessarily going to need to amend and redo the user agreement because they fall under it. It's more so we need to discuss and just get your thoughts on allowing them to use the turf field, soccer field for their practices and games. So we're going to do a little history. and then we can discuss. So our current users are baseball, cheer, football, softball, soccer, and Keller Lacrosse at the sports park. Keller High School Lacrosse, the mission of Keller Lacrosse is to promote and grow the sport of lacrosse through the establishment of boys teams for students from kindergarten through 12th grade in the Keller Independent School District and surrounding areas. The high school team participates in the Texas High School Lacrosse League. They are not a UIL sport though in Texas. Last year, from fall 25 to spring 26, they had 174 registrations and 145 families. 88% previously played on youth teams that went up to JV and varsity, and 75% of those attended Taylor High School. This is their team, so they have 11 to 14 teams total under the association, one varsity and one JV. That's the high school level. The Keller Lacrosse season schedule, so they do practices in the fall, they start in early September and end in November, and then they play all their games in the spring, starting in mid-January to early May. So this was their proposal, be approved to schedule practices and games on pad B, put temporary markings on pad B, so they would need to make A circle and then a couple lines on the outside. Keller Lacrosse will pay for the additional markings, maintain the markings, and pay to remove them at the end of the season. The temporary markings are only needed for games in the spring season. They don't require them for their practices in the fall. And the temporary markings do not damage or harm the turf field. They will have 14 home JV and varsity games during the spring season, weeknights only on Mondays and Wednesdays. They'll invite visiting teams from the DFW Metroplex and expect 2,300 to 3,200 visitors throughout the spring season. So the city council action will be to designate BPAT as a shared use field for the Keller Soccer Association and the Keller Lacrosse Association. This would allow both associations to schedule the field in advance, coordinate regular schedules to minimize conflicts, and lacrosse would primarily use on non-soccer game days. So typically KSA plays on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturdays. They're only wanting Mondays and Wednesdays.

So lacrosse only wants Mondays and Wednesdays.

So KSA right now, they have a clinic on Wednesdays in September. Historically, I went back this past year, KSA has only rented pad B in the spring twice of their whole season. It was towards the end for makeup games and then once last fall at the end of the season as well. So they typically don't use B pad on Mondays or Wednesdays historically. They have reached out to us and said that they would like to add some practices, but they also can play on other fields outside of Pad B. High school, lacrosse, for games specifically, they can only play on turf because of the association that they're under. They can only play on turf fields, so that's why they've been traveling to Fort Worth and other associations because of the turf issue. They've never been able to play if they would like to come home and have games here.

It's just an additional circle at the key in front of the goals and it's going to be in a different color. We did send that to Keller Soccer Association to ask them

Do you see any issue with this? Will this cause any issues with games? We'll say we just leave it there. Correct. It would stay for the spring season. So they would pay to install it at the beginning of the season and then they would clean it up at the end of their season. So it would be gone from May until January of the next year.

What is the cleanup process? Is it tape or is it paint?

It is paint but it is a cleanup so they reached out to the turf company that actually installed it and talked with them in depth about temporary markings and they have it all planned out and assured that it would be an easy cleanup and there would be no damage or permanent issues with it.

And we can even like give them feedback on the colors like sometimes the markings, these are good questions, the markings on the field can be pretty confusing.

So I believe they proposed a navy or blue to kind of go with the color high school colors. Yeah. And KSA was fine with that. They approved that. Okay. So staff is seeking city council discussion and consensus. No formal action is required. So we're just here. Do you agree? Are you okay with it?

So you said practices and games?

So practices are in the fall, Mondays and Wednesdays, and then games are in the spring, Mondays and Wednesdays.

Why wouldn't they use their field for practice?

They can, they just would like to practice on the turf just to be able to practice on the field that they would play their games on. But the youth lacrosse does play on the lacrosse field. This is specifically just the high school team.

Yeah, so when they came to us, they only mentioned games. Did they follow up with us?

Mondays and Wednesdays. And that would be something we would charge a fee for, the turf fee, so we would get revenue from the practices in the fall.

What time?

They want to practice 5 to 8 p.m. Three hours on Mondays and Wednesdays? Mm-hmm.

So...

It's probably JV, then varsity, or backwards. Yeah. That, yeah.

Where are they practicing now?

Right now, I'm not sure.

I thought they used the lacrosse field right there.

It does, up until high school. So K through 8 grade. So lacrosse is approved to be played on lacrosse and pad B. So that is a designated sport that is allowed on turf.

Their practice field is real grass. Is that the difference? The lacrosse field is grass. So they want to practice on the turf because it's going to be different than playing on grass.

Correct. It's just a lot of lacrosse, because then they get up three days a week. It is a lot.

It would be Mondays and Wednesdays. So it would be two days a week. What are the games? Games aren't until the spring, Mondays and Wednesdays. So their only days year-round, fall and spring, are Mondays and Wednesdays.

Oh, so during the season they'd have one game and then one practice?

They only do practices in the fall. So Mondays and Wednesdays they practice for a whole season, and then they play games for a whole season.

They don't practice during the season?

maybe on Mondays, but that's their typical schedule. They don't have any games in the fall.

I'm okay with a lot of it. I just, you know, I know we're still working on our tournament policy, but, you know, I'd hate for a tournament that'd bring in a lot of business to our city because of an off-season practice. So, however we manage that, deferring to you.

I don't foresee a lot of tournaments coming during the weekday. That's the only reason that I'm kind of leaning okay, because it's a Monday, Wednesday, and tournaments are typically going to be a Friday through Sunday.

Are they looking at two games a week as well?

14 games total, so I would assume that their schedule would be a practice on a Monday and a game on a Wednesday. They didn't specify that, but that's going to be staff's assumption. But they don't have any games in the fall. I

prime days a week. Like that eats up a lot of time. That's a more substantial request. So I'm personally good with the games. But what do you guys think? I mean am I overthinking it? I'm with the mayor. Okay.

I'm okay with it. I think it's just interesting that they practice in the fall and they play in the spring. Because usually you're practicing when you're playing.

If they're asking for something

Their initial, they just wanted to come home to Keller and they wanted to be able to, they mostly, they were really buying towards games, for sure bringing games back and then if they can also do practices that would be the cherry on top.

So they don't do any practices at Keller High?

I do not believe so. I believe they're going to Fossil Ridge. I know they are going to Fort Worth to practice and play games. Why? I think that's the only place they can get.

Okay. Can we just say, I mean, unless he's trying to do – do we know if they're trying to do two games a week? Because me personally, I would just say, yeah, let's try one day a week.

Okay.

That's what I would say. But I don't want to screw up their game schedule. Or soccer schedule. Yeah, or the soccer schedule. So I think one day a week is probably fine, so they can schedule out their games that way. Okay. There should be enough time in – if they have 14 games to do that, we can be more flexible on the games. I don't think anyone – is anyone opposed to having games on soccer pad B? No. soccer.

Yeah, I mean soccer is a lot going well during that time. And again, I know tournaments are during mid-week, but there's practices and they do have some, not many, some tournaments. I've only had one mid-week. I just, this is, it's getting late in my brain, maybe expand it, especially if we see our usage. I mean, we just opened all this up this year, and we're still getting as

data on BPAD. BPAD is relatively a low rented field just because it is turf and it does cost more.

So when people are renting it's A, C, D, E. They can already go and rent the practice space. they can they just can only do it two weeks in advance yeah and i think that's perfectly fine to be honest with you because um unless i'm misunderstanding something but they can't do that with games like you have to have structure for games right so that's what i would tell them is yes for practices you can do it but use the current reservation system so that way you don't have to getting that back and forth and also it gives them the ability if the field's open and then games we just give them the green light yeah and we're doing that just in case

Yeah, and KSA is really trying to grow select in soccer with that KSA has gone down, and then there's other leagues that want to use those sometimes. There's a discussion. I won't go there. But yes, they already have the right to the mayor's point. They can do it now, just like any other resident.

Honestly, I think if at the end of the day you think it's okay and it's not going to cause major congestion, I think.

The games are Tuesdays and Fridays.

For high school?

Yep. He's a junior this year, so.

We are presenting Mondays and Wednesdays only.

It'll be fine. I think the games will be fine. Yeah.

We have their schedule already. They gave us our yearly schedule. It could have been changed.

Waiting on you, Jordan. That's what they're doing.

Probably, actually.

Yeah, probably waiting on this discussion.

Thank you.

All right, D3 in a local agreement with Southlake relating to the Alta Vista Number five, it's literally going to be, do you have questions about the economic development update? Because we already received that report, so it'll be here to answer questions. Don't think we're going to go through a, you know, unless you have 20 minutes worth of questions, that one should be relatively quick. Let's do that one now, actually. Do you guys have questions on the economic development?

town and I'm supposed to be Mr. Council and there's a new business or something that has come here and I don't have a clue about it is there any way we can get a list of those that are flat dudes that did everything you asked them to do?

You should be getting that in your report.

Would you point it out to me? The CO's? Yes, that's what I was going to say.

I'm excited about that mural.

Yeah, that's a big one.

You're so excited about what?

The mural? Not at the McAllister's. No, no, no, but it's in the... For Regency. Yeah.

Did you send that out today, Anna?

It was on Friday, I believe.

The last email I have from you is on June 6th.

Do you have any idea what the payroll is going to look like, or not yet?

They are still working on that, but we will bring it to you before this time.

I think what a good councilman is getting at is the more color focused, the better.

We communicated that. It's like right behind Petco.

Baylor, Scott & White, you know right across from where. So the idea, so Shane and I met with Regency. We said, what can we do to activate the space? Let's start, and they were all about it. And so one of the follow through items is to do the mural. Should be pretty exciting, shouldn't it?

So remind me where this mural is.

I'm trying to picture it.

It's not here yet.

You know, like right behind the Baylor Scott and Wyatt Rehab Center that just came through, I believe in May. If you look behind their space, there's a wall that faces Soho. Okay. And it's that wall right there. It's just a blank wall right now? Okay.

And it's an open space, and we can do stuff with it in the future. The mayor's point, they were actually really... Water tower.

Thank you, Jordan.

All right.

Any other questions for Anna? Yeah, thank you. I don't know if that allows you to get out here earlier, but that was the reason for getting the D5. All right. And kind of moving ahead, We're going to, Erin and I talk, we'll restructure, reformat some of the staff reports. So they're going to have a look and feel a little bit more like that. So it's going to be a little bit of a mindset shift, at least for me to, and, you know, for some of us to read the information, come prepared with questions. So we'll start clicking through staff reports. And then we'll probably have a few more substantive reports on maybe like a quarterly basis or on an as-need basis from some other folks. All right, D3, in a local agreement with Southlake.

It's been a long-time comment. I'll go through the timeline here a little bit. This relates to the Alta Vista water line. For those that don't know, the Alta Vista water line runs from the east boundary, actually from the Alta Vista pump station in Fort Worth, stretches the length of the city and then connects to Southlake. So it is one of our main water lines that we have. It's about a five mile line. It's actually located almost all within Keller. However, it is a shared line with Southlake. So it is both our water supply line and their water supply line. So when it hits the Southlake border, there's a meter there to determine how much water goes out to Southlake. And interestingly, we have a current interlocal with them where they actually take care of the repairs if there's anything that happens to that. And part of this becomes important as we get related to the grants that we've been awarded. But all in all, this is a combination of a 30-inch and 36-inch concrete pipe. It's about four years old, serves almost 80,000 residents between Keller and Southlake. And then in the past about five years, we've had some repairs to it, about 1.5 million. In total, Southley got the luxury of dealing with that. But we've recognized the line is getting to the end of life. Obviously by the nature of it, it's critical for our needs to supply water. And as such, we have been applying for federal grants beginning all the way in FY23 for the FY24 appropriations. Back then, and we've subsequently applied each year. for $15 million from the federal with a 50-25-25 match, so it would actually make a total for $30 million each year. We were awarded the FY24 appropriations of $750,000. We've gone through the EPA process for that, and finally actually have been green-lighted to actually spend those funds. It has been from FY23, so... about april of 23 to now to finally get that green light that's correct it does come with a like i said a 50 25 25 match so we have 715 federal funds the city will contribute um half of that in south lake will as well we were not awarded anything as part of the 25 appropriation that said the 26 appropriation we were awarded another million dollars again a 50 50 match so we would be on the hook for 500 000 and south would be on the hook for another 500 000. we are in the process of having these two grants combined so that's one of the things with the epa so that we can use those as one big project the 50 50 so i thought city of keller was a was it would we do i can't remember it's been like a year at least um

Do we do a joint application with Southlake, or was it the City of Keller was awarded 1.75?

Initially, we were doing it as a joint, and then based on guidance, it's the same application, so often Keller wins the award because it is our line. Southlake will give a letter of support for that application.

So then the 50-50, how does that work in coordination with Southlake? Because we were awarded 1.75.

Correct. And then we will match 25% and Southlake will match 25%. That's what makes the 50-50.

Oh, okay. Got it. So we're actually carrying 75% of the bill.

With grant funds.

Yes. But we did the work to secure it. Yeah, we did all the work. Okay, got it.

Well, and that actually becomes important, though, in what the proposed ILA would look like. So... And the draft of that should be in your packet at this time. Kind of continuing with the focus that we have related to the maintenance idea, we've been awarded $1.75 million. Total is about $3.2 million that's been awarded. Between awarded and match, it's about $3.2 million is available. Southlake would handle the design engineering, the RFQ, all of the work to handle the design and engineering of this. So they would deal with the federal compliances, they would pay the vendor, they would be the ones that handle the day-to-day operations of this. Keller would manage the grant. So we would be the ones working with the EPA. When things need to be submitted, we would be the ones. And then we would receive the funding and then apply both our funding and the match, the Keller funding, sorry, the grant and the match, we would provide that over to Southlake for their side.

And that ameliorates a lot of the concerns we had early on.

Correct.

And is this still a pair of the pipe or replace the pipe?

This is, right now, it's a design and engineering. Design and engineering. Design engineering. Oh, not the physical, just the pipe. Theoretical designs right now would have it, we would actually put a pipe within a pipe. And so right now it's a concrete pipe, we replace it with a plastic. And that's where the expert over here can do the more technical terms.

A smaller diameter then, though, right? Yeah. Different material, it has the same capacity because it's a different material. Grand pipe is concrete, proposed pipe is PVC. It's slicker, carried more water.

So less friction, so you're able to...

cost-effectiveness is fusible PVC and then it would be literally pulled through the existing pipe. And so that's the other positive to it is it's lesser disruptive because most of this pipe is under pavement. The big stretch is over here by the park. With the trenchless technology There will be pits every so often, but we wouldn't have the entire road closed. We'd have long, for an extended period of time, long detours.

So it's a real tight pit. They can feed it through a hole in.

That's crazy. What's the lifespan on the new material? Will it be like 40 years? It'll be longer. Yeah, longer?

I don't know the exact number, but it's more than 40 years.

You want PVC? It's a really cool project. So we don't have to worry about the design and stuff anymore?

They take care of that, so that opens...

engineering going trying to get the totality would because I mean it's like if I'm evaluating an appropriation I'd be more likely to fund it if you're generally looking for shovel ready and we've made it clear that the we want to be careful when we switch to the construction phase that the federal requirements that come with the construction that we don't end up spending more to comply with those than the funds we receive And so if we're going to get construction costs, we really want to see that towards construction. That's also why we applied as part of FY26. We also provided the alternative of maybe we look at funding for some drainage and sidewalk improvements on Melody and start looking at some other alternative projects that also are hitting that high priority. But if we're going to be kind of fine to that smaller grant funding, there's a detriment. There's additional costs with federal ties on there. So what are you looking for from us? Great question. Making sure you want us to continue with the grant-funded project. You want us to bring the ILO focus, ILA Forward with Southlake. So we'd see that on the September 15th meeting. And then just kind of the recognition of this, because you're doing design and engineering, you're gonna prove that project and that scope. We need to plan for the potential debt issuance related to that project in our future. And that's something we do have in the five-year CIP is, General idea of water water water and wastewater line replacements Not necessarily earmarked as Alta Vista, but we do have some capacity as we're looking towards that that long term So just kind of a recognition. This does have a ripple effect if we Get a design and engineering we like we want to cat, you know use that design engineering, you know subsequent short amount of time so the design isn't an engineering doesn't go away, so it's the next so then the next thing would be there or in the general fund?

Water waste water fund.

Water waste water, all right. Yeah, this will be water waste water activity. Unless we get more grant money. Unless we get more grant, yes. And again, we will continue to put in for appropriations.

So we've gotten millions from federal government to help offset, tell their taxpayers.

Correct.

For those of us.

any concerns about moving forward with uh just the design and engineering i mean i don't because if we don't like it um we do the design and engineering we don't like it well then the plans go on the shelf and 875 thousand dollars is a big commitment so once we take that first step but it's not like you're you're not all the way in you're not you're not at 15 At the end of the day, the water line has to be repaired. It's not exciting. It's not above ground. As long as Rodney's shower pressure still works all right, we should be good. Right, Rodney? I'm just at 40 where I'm at. But in all seriousness... a big deal.

You're right though, Mr. Mayor. It's not exciting, but when you turn on your faucet and water doesn't come out, that's basically failure of government at its basic level.

There's a core instruction.

When did we get the green light from

Yeah. We've been working with them since awarded, which was about two years ago, to finally get all the ducks in a row. Now, the nice thing is the merger of the two, I believe, is supposed to go a little bit faster, and so we want to get that going. But we also want to get the ILA going so we can start the process to design.

Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. Good update. It's good to have good neighbors.

so I don't this is not a presentation this is something we've talked about at the strategic session to show you a couple of things one is new the other is a refresh for some of the council but I worth going in and going through both we talked about at the strategic session. So this is executive insights. This is metrics that is coming directly out of our permitting and plan review system that we Started in 2024. Tomorrow morning you'll all get an email with a login. So you can go in and look under the city leadership of the metrics that we have. So I don't want to go through every single feature on here. I know it's late. So I hope you'll all get in there and play around with it. When you have questions or find things that are wrong or confusing, please let me know. We've really just started using this internally in the last couple of months. So we're still figuring some of this stuff out. The first thing I'll point out is you can change this to pretty much whatever you want. We started the system, like I said, in summer of 2024. I will tell you there's some not so great data back to 2024 when it's really almost like training data when we first started running things through the system and learning how to use it. But as you get closer to present day, it's better and better and a more accurate look at what we're doing, how long things are getting through the system. What do you call the system? Executive Insights. Oh, you said that. And so, like I said, it's directly linked to the system that staff from building services, planning, fire, public works, probably a few others that I'm forgetting now, use to review pretty much all types of permits and plans. Plans are things like site plans, zoning applications, SEPs, UDC variances, sign exceptions, all of that stuff is running through here. There are some fire permits that are done through a separate system for them, but pretty much everything else is going through the related system which is enterprise permitting and licensing. So you can adjust the dates to whatever you want to see all the way down to just this week or last couple of days back to a year, year and a half. You can also set up a comparison period. I think this will be more interesting as we go farther in with the data. where you can kind of see, and if you scroll down to the metrics, you can see, so this is showing average days from application to issuance for permits. So right now we're at eight days, which is down about 31% from the same period last year. You can definitely geek out with some of the metrics. You can drill into pretty much anything that you want. I will tell you this system is really for high-level percentages and review times and things like that. If you're wanting specific information about a particular permit, you can probably get to it eventually here, but it's not going to have as much review data. That's what's in the second system I'm going to show you here in a moment. So if you're wanting to see Actual building permit issued for a property. This is not the system for it. This is really again your high-level metrics, so Just looking at some of the stuff that you can see average days from application to issuance permit date permits issue within 30 days So we're at 90% for those average delay and inspection start time we want to see that at zero because I We always want to see inspections getting scheduled basically as soon as we possibly can for all types of inspections. Applications received. The timeframe, January until today, we're at just over 2,700 permits. Average time open, this is for code cases. And this is one of our feature requests to Tyler, the company that makes the software, is we'd like this to be a little bit more descriptive. Sometimes you have to scroll into this to see what it is. So this is describing code cases. So for environmental health, the cases are open average of 23 days. Code enforcement, you're at 18 days. So like I said, quite a bit of information here. This year we've done over 6,800 inspections. And again, this is across a lot of different departments. It's not just our building inspector, definitely not just our internal folks. It also includes our third party folks that are running their inspections through the system.

Cool.

Like I said, I'm not going to spend a ton of time going, geeking out too much with you guys, but I would encourage you to get in there, play with it, drill down, and if you have questions or find issues, just let me know. Would you send us a link or something? Yes, so you'll get an email from, I don't know if it'll come from, it should have my name in it. It'll say Sarah Hensley has invited you to Executive Insight City of Keller. And then I think you'll have to go in and set up an account, because it's not just open

click somewhere and export to a CSV file.

Please let me know if there's a feature that you're like, I want to be able to do this and I can't. Sometimes, like right now I'm viewing it as Aaron, and I just picked him because he has the same permissions basically as counsel because mine is a little bit overwhelming, and so it may be something that I don't realize that you guys don't have access to, and we'll get it fixed or figure out whatever we need to do.

And when Trent does all his stuff, you'll be able to use those CSVs that Greg was asking about. Just pull the data. Sure.

So then the other thing I wanted to show you, this was something else we talked about at the strategic session, also linked to our permit review and plan system is citizen self-service. So this is the public facing site. Anybody, anywhere in the world has access to this site. You can do a lot of things here even without creating an account. If you actually want to apply for a permit or schedule an inspection, you do have to have an account. But we have appointed a lot of residents that are including some of our residents that are known to call us quite a bit about what their neighbors are doing. They really like this site. So you can get to it a couple of different ways. You don't have to say it. You can use Derek's name. You don't have to say it. I know. So I don't think Derek knows how to use this site.

I don't. Text.

The URL is really simple. It's cityofkeller.com slash CSS, but there's a whole bunch of different ways you can permit on this main page of the city website, but if you drill into any of the community development building services pages, you can get back here. So it takes you here.

So how do you get there? You go to the apply for a permit page?

You can go, yeah, you can, that's kind of the least clicks, I would say. You can also go to apply for a permit under building.

What happens when you click that?

And then there's a few other places where it's, I think it's embedded in the community development site. Cool. Going through this page, obviously you can use it to apply. This is where you would need to log in or register if you're a contractor, a homeowner, whatever, wanting to make an application or pay for an invoice. So this is where the vast majority of our permit fees are being paid now. We don't have a lot of in-person payments. We don't have many people bringing in checks or cash anymore. You can request your inspections, report violations. This is all linked to the app that was implemented a while back. And then a few features very quickly that I was going to show you. Citizen Connect. This takes you to a map of the city. You can put in an address that's going to prompt you if you've gotten something correct. And then over here, you can toggle the ranges however you want to. You can also download data from here. I would not recommend doing that without selecting some things because you're going to get a ton. But one of the things people really like to know is, is there an active code case? Yeah, so we put in our address of 508-Katy. You can click Code Cases. And then it's going to ask you, do you want environmental or do you want code enforcement? You probably want code enforcement. And then it's going to show you where you've had some code cases around you. And as you scroll in, you can see more specifically where those are at. You can create an alert based on the... And I'm going very fast, but please, if you have questions, let us know. But you can create an alert with the buffer you've set up so that it's going to email you if there's any activity within that buffer.

So I could literally set up an alert to monitor...

And you can set that up for permits or plans or other things maybe that you want to know about.

This is really cool, man. It eliminates, so I know I've text messaged you like, hey, what's the status of this property? Not that much, but I have a couple times. But I could just go in here and look.

It's still perfectly fine to reach out to permit last week and was told that it's all online now and that individual seemed to be hurt that he couldn't do it while he was standing there but this seems a lot more efficient but are we promoting that out yet so we we from I will say we did a really heavy push to promote to our contractors and applicants people that were actually applying for things whenever we first rolled out and since then. We did kiosks in our lobby. We did big banners. We did a contractor or, you know, a lot of big companies have like permit consultants that handle all of their permitting, maybe a big pool company. We had a lunch and learn. So we did quite a bit with the initial rollout. And there's still quite a bit education when somebody comes in to our permit text on how to do it, if they're applying for something. I don't know that we've done much of anything in terms of just general promotion to the community. Now, one-on-one, like when somebody reaches out to our staff, we'll find whatever information you're asking for. unless it's something I need you to talk to Kelly about, an open records request kind of thing. But we'll also say, hey, by the way, did you know you could do this, this, and this? Especially if it's somebody that's routinely asking for information on a particular property that they do not own. These are all sort of self-explanatory but the search is really kind of what I think it's really helpful to folks so again it's going to search back through all of our plans and permits that have been in the system and again it's only since 2024 we didn't bring over the bad data from the old system so if you're like why can't I find you know this house that was built in 2004 it's not going to be you don't want to put bad data in your system exactly exactly It was also going to just cost a whole lot more money for consultants to help us move 20-plus years of track of data into this system. So there's a lot of different options on how you can drill into this. You can also just type in the address, and then it will show you all the different types of cases, permits, plans, things like that. So 1241 Keller Parkway is the new McAllister's and First Watch location.

What about Woodland Trail?

I'm just kidding.

So, I mean, this is a fairly large non-residential building, so it's going to pull up quite a bit. One of the things that I wanted to point out, so in our new, this is their actual commercial building permit to build the new one, and you'll see the status is issued. When you click on that permit, it's going to take you to a little bit more information, this kind of summary table up here, what the valuation was, about how big it is, and then... Down here in attachments, if it's an issued permit, so it's not something we have in review. It's actually something that's under construction. We've said go turn dirt. If you click on the attachments, you can actually access the stamped approved permit set. Oh, cool. And this is for any type of plan or permit. But if it's not issued yet, it's still in review. It's not the document screenshot here. You can see it. You can see that it's in review. It just won't say that it's issued.

So the general public can access this? Yeah.

So we I mean we have all of our old stuff and in Laserfish, our official repository for documents. We just chose not to take all of our old permit documents and plan reviews and staff comments and all sorts of other stuff in the old permitting system and move it over into here. We still have all of our approved plan sets for commercial buildings and subdivision plots. We have all of that. We just didn't move it all into here.

Cool.

So how long has this been live? This has been live basically since we started the plan and permit system in 2024, but we have refined it as we've gone on and figured out this isn't showing right or this isn't publishing correctly. And like I said, early on, it wouldn't have had great information because we weren't running things, running a ton of permits and plans through the system at first, and we also were learning how to use the system, which I think would

but this is pretty new.

Yeah. And this is, this has been available and like building data in the system, but our team just really got any type of training on it in the last six months.

Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, that's good. Great. Is there anything else? Yep, that's it. You guys have any feedback? That's great. This is awesome.

I like the comparison because we get complaints how cumbersome and awful the process is and we can go back and the example number of days it took to get a permit through, I mean, with data that would compare them.

That's good to be able to answer. One of the things I think is really telling if somebody is having a problem with a particular type of permit, you know, you can drill into this and see, okay, well, what type of permit? And, you know, maybe we're going to look at this little update. You know, they say... screening wall you know it's taken me two months to get my screening wall permit well if you look at at the average time that may be about right and when you look at these they kind of make sense in terms of what's taking the longest a non-residential remodel or you know a non-residential new these are commercial buildings that are requiring probably a lot more review and life safety review also on those than some of the

it's amazing what you learn when you take the time and thanks for taking time to educate me and I presume colleagues. Alright, so that concludes our work session. So a couple executive session items that we've got to complete. So I'll go ahead and Restate. Counsel will go into executive session under section 551.074 of the Texas Government Code, personal and mental matters to deliberate the opinion, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee. Section 550.071, consultation with attorney, closed meeting. A governmental body may not conduct a private consultation with its attorney except when the governmental body seeks advice of its attorney about pending accountability litigation or settlement offer on which means. Duty of the attorney to the governmental body under the Discipline Rules of Professional deliberation in an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the position of the government body negotiations with the third person and the agenda items are listed. We have the performance evaluations, legal action related to Westlake there is an action to be taken as it relates to the item under section 551072 1000 Bear Creek Parkway that's related to the natatorium and it's the will of this council I believe that

that we appraised, Aaron? Total overall value was $2,692,000. Okay, $2,692,000, so around $2.7 million. And then what's the sale price that we're... $675,000. $675,000. Yes, sir.

And replatted. And replatted. It's replatted. And replatted, so... You know, I think in cooperation and collaboration with the school district to maintain use as a natatorium and to get our folks back swimming in the pool again, I think it's the right thing to do to clean up the legal documents so that way Keller families can get back swimming at the natatorium that we all love. So, thanks for the work in negotiating that price. under this agreement fail to be used for an educational purpose, then my understanding is pursuant to state law, it would revert back to the city of Keller, right? Is that right? Yes, sir. Stan, our city attorney? Yes, sir. All right. Good. Well, and I also believe the school district, the board actually, the school board already took action on this at their last school board meeting? Okay. Great. Well, thanks for the work that went into this. I'm excited for the kids and families to get back in the And my motion is to approve a resolution that authorizes the city manager to enter into and negotiate a contract to sell real property at 1000 Bear Creek Parkway and any amendments necessary to execute that agreement. Is there a second? Second. I second.

All right. Are you willing to do me and make it clear that we all know it's just the land under the building itself and the parking lot's not included?

Right. Okay. Yeah.

All right. We'll make sure that was clear.

Well stated, yeah. Do we get everything right? Yeah. Stan, Aaron, you good? We're good. You want me to restate anything? Nope. We're good? Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. All right. We do have one more item. We have a hardworking city council. So we're going to go back into executive session so we can consider that one additional item. We're just finishing our performance evaluations.