City Council - workshop

Yes, sir. Bill Brown will come to the podium. Right here, sir. Right over here, sir.

Thank you, I think. I'd like to bring to your attention, I brought these both to the city before and received no response. 3617 Clover Lane has been abandoned for three years. There are animals living in the attic. You say, how did they get there? I've seen a possum climb the column, which my neighbor told me happened, and I didn't believe it until I saw it myself. There were garage door, the top segment is missing. Somebody's mowing the lawn, but the house has been abandoned for over three years. Is there anything the city can do? It's a dump. Okay, I don't expect an answer today, but you've got my number if you want to get back to me.

Talk to Mr. Stokes right after this workshop, and we'll get it on the list.

Okay.

Is it back there behind your place?

Yep. So second question I have is, why the baseball park across from my house is closed? Kids have learned to ride bicycles there. People have taught their kids to drive there. There used to be a group of young guys that came out on the weekends early, no problem for anybody, and they'd race electric cars there. I say young guys. That's basically everybody in the world now except me. And the point that gets to me is the police used to park there, and so speeding was minimized on Pasadena Boulevard. there are now people that drag race on Pasadena Boulevard, because there is no police, there is no place that I know of that the police park to do radar. And so they used to do on East Boulevard, but East Boulevard, the police have a couple places they park, and now Pasadena Boulevard is the drag race boulevard of choice.

Well, the chief knows I might disagree with you because I think it's on St. Augustine over in front of my house.

Well, okay, we'll compare statistics later.

How's that? Well, the chief is sitting in the back, and you talk to him afterwards, and I'm sure he'll like to set up his little thing over there and get some data so we can have something to debate.

Well, it's locked. It used to be an officer would pull in there for five minutes, take care of some paperwork or whatever they needed to, and leave. But that was a deterrent. Yeah. The Parks and Recreation Department people have a hard time unlocking that thing. Why, I don't know, but I've watched them do it many times. And so I doubt one of his police officers wants to spend the time to pull in there, unlock, spend two or three minutes there, come back, have to lock it again. It's a park. It ought to be open to the people, my opinion. Thank you.

Thank you. You want to help sign up to speak?

No, sir.

All right. We're moving past agenda item number one. We have no need now for the executive session. I'm moving on to agenda item number two, the presentation by Bay Area Houston Economic Partner Annual Report.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Jay beat me to the punch. Thank you, sir. Good evening, Mayor, Council. My name is Brian Friedman. I serve as the president of the Bay Area-Houston Economic Partnership. Appreciate you giving me a few minutes on council to give an update on some of the things going on in the region. I'd be remiss if I didn't start by giving a big thank you, some of the finest leadership in the region. Mayor, thank you for all that you do as a community leader and peer to your fellow mayors and members of council. It's also great to get to work with Sarah and Jay, both through city business, but also TCMA. And then a huge shout-out to Debbie Westbelt, who's one of the finest economic development professionals in the region we're honored to work with and who really is phenomenal. And so, anyway, thank you for the opportunity. Let's see. Am I controlling these? It doesn't look like it. I need some help going through. I am. Okay. Hang on. Oh, oh, oh. All right, I think I got my bearings. For those who aren't familiar with Bayhep, very briefly, we're a nonprofit business organization focused on the southeast quadrant of the Houston-Galveston region. We're in our 50th year. Our membership includes 350 investor companies, 18 municipalities. Harris and Galveston County are members. We have 11 school districts, six university and community college. The way I describe it is when you talk about the region working together, How do you get industry, academia, nonprofit, and government leaders to the table? And that's what we do. And to tackle big regional issues and then also work economic development projects, particularly large, high-volume, high-pay, high-skilled jobs and projects. And I'll talk about a couple of those in a few minutes. And then just to give you a little sense, I showed this chart last year. But folks who aren't familiar with it, this is kind of the simple way to view the broad regional economy. We have five giant industry clusters, multibillion-dollar-a-year economic engines, maritime, aerospace, tourism, healthcare, and petrochem. Supporting those giant industry clusters are a whole host of services, including government services, nonprofits, restaurants and dry cleaners, lawyers, and everything in between, who not only benefit from those giant economic drivers but have their own economic ecosystems, and then foundationally a critical need for a workforce that's ready to go to work on day one. And so we work extensively with our K through 12 school districts, universities, and community colleges throughout the region to advance the interests of the region. So a little bit on the philosophical rationale of how we view the ecosystem here. I won't dive into this chart in detail, but we have a great story to tell as a region. And there is a reason people want to come here and be here, and we should be proud of that. And when we're outside of our community, we should be talking about things. But this region is a great one to sell. When I was in industry, I worked in communities all across the country. And I picked Houston to call home in this region in particular. And so very proud of that. In the interest of time, I'll spare. We produce a brief called the Hot Projects. Many of you know Barbara Kutzinger, who is one of our folks who leads our economic development prospects meeting. And we're out working projects and recruiting them. But if you haven't seen this document, it is everything going on in the region, including a number of projects in Deer Park and celebrating the success of both the new activity center, the Jimmy Burke Center, but then a lot of the individual projects that have come in, everything from Stomps to the Behavioral Center in Deer Park, and so happy to showcase those throughout the region into site selectors. In the interest of time, you know, I could list off a bulleted list of things that we've done with Deer Park over the last 12 months, but pictures are really where the fun is. It was an honor to be at the State of the City. We're honored to have Mayor Mouton engaged with his peers. We have a Council of Mayor, which is a mayor's only... Peer group sounds like maybe not the right description of it, but it is a group of those leaders to work on big regional issues without worrying about or with sharing some of the shared experience of being a mayor, which is a unique experience. We hosted a number of general membership meetings, including Mayor Mouton's there with us and Senator Cruz when we hosted him. And then down on the bottom left is Jay at one of our TCMA meetings that was hosted at the new activity center. Debbie Westbelt at our regional get together of economic development professionals. We host the regional gathering of all the economic development leaders in Harris County, or in our region of Harris County, so that those economic development partners can work together. And last but certainly not least, my favorite picture up there is Jay and I at Bubba Bingo. I did want to clarify that it is me holding the drink, not him. So appreciate his service and leadership. What an awesome event that was, and congratulations to the city and all the folks that made that there.

You're holding the drink. What is Jay holding?

I had to crop that part out of the picture. Hey, so if that's a little bit about our engagement with Deer Park directly, I also wanted to showcase some of the things that we do across the region, starting with being a convening organization. That's us with the Texas A&M folks who are on contact to upscale manufacturers throughout the region, including many in Deer Park and the surrounding communities. where they're providing that assistance free to area manufacturers. Of course, we have our big regional convening at our Quasar banquet. We have over 650 of the community's leaders together to celebrate the success of the region. Several trips to Austin, including one to meet with TxDOT last week. We host about 20 to 30 international delegations to recruit businesses from those international delegations. We do veterans mentoring program, where we take executives involved in our organization and work with Ellington as members are transitioning out of service into civilian life and help them identify jobs and network with executives that are in the field that they're interested in going into. So really an up and out version as well as the work that we do down and in. James asked me to talk about a couple of wins. And I did want to mention two very briefly. And they are regional wins. is all of the excitement that's going on in the space industry, and particularly Texas A&M's $200 million investment in the Space Institute, of which quite a few Deer Park residents will be part of. But they are investing $200 million in facility. Companies across the country are trying to figure out where they're going to test their lunar rovers and their Mars rovers. And the answer is now this region. And the facility is being built right now. And if you have not seen that facility, it's right on the edge of the campus of Johnson Space Center. It's incredible. It is massive. And every company from across the country is going to be coming through here that's looking to do work in that ecosystem. The other one I wanted to mention is the expanded work that's going on with defense manufacturing, which has been a real home run. That started with the Davie Defense announcement that this region is going to be building icebreakers for the US Coast Guard. But we have met with a number of DC leaders that I think that is going to be the first of many projects that come to this region. They are looking to be waterfront for the direct manufacturing. But they are looking all over this region for their supply chain. And they don't want to have to ship that stuff in. They want to produce it and use it domestically. And Deer Park is a fantastic community to provide that capability. And we're making sure that they know that. With all that said, it's a lot in a little bit of time. I appreciate the opportunity. Happy to answer any questions. And a sincere thank you again for the partnership between the City of Deer Park and the Barry Houston Economic Partnership.

I just want to say how much we appreciate Brian and Mayhap. We got to know Brian a few years back through Chad, and we made the decision as a municipality to join a couple years ago. And they have just gone out of their way to include us and make us feel welcome. Just thank you very much for all you've done to really reach out to us and not treat us like we're new, but like we've always been there. Thank you.

Thank you, Jack. Thank you.

I don't know who's trying to outdo each other, but Brian and Jay, y'all are being really nice. He covered me on that drink thing.

I'm trying to help you out.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you.

Jim, item number three, discussion of issues relating to changes in mobile food truck ordinances.

Mary, I'm going to start this one off and then turn it over to Angela. And Angela's put a lot of time and effort and work into this. and greatly appreciate her efforts, as you're going to learn here in a minute. She can get into the nuts and bolts, and Sarah and Jim and I can kind of chime in as well, about some things that changed in the last legislative session. And we're going to have to adapt some of our ordinances to comply with that. The main thing we want to talk about tonight, historically, we have as a city made the decision that we did not want to be open to a lot of food trucks and ice cream trucks and things like that. I will tell you, ironically, as Brian was talking, an ice cream truck literally just drove through. It reminded me of when we were talking about the little scooters and Tracy's nephew pulled up on the scooter a couple months ago. If some of you were on council relatively speaking not that long ago, when Ray was still here in 2018 or 19, and I think that was the last time we talked about did we want to be more inclusive and allow ice cream trucks. And as you're going to hear in a minute from Angela, there's different types of food trucks, type 1, type 2, type 3. An ice cream truck is a type 1, and that is one that sells prepackaged foods. They're not making food on site. They're selling prepackaged. Again, historically, we have said, in dear part, we don't want them going through neighborhoods. The PD expressed some concern historically and a few years ago with Ray. They're concerned about plant workers and amplification and noise and people who sleep during the day and whatnot. And I'm not suggesting anything change. I am telling you the law has changed. And we cannot do an outright prohibition. And we can't make it so restrictive that effectively we have an outright prohibition. But I just want to know, and we need to know, as we start shaping ordinance changes that must occur, what is council's pulse about that these days? Do you want us to still try to greatly, within what's allowed, restrict where these type 1 cells go, as we've done historically? Or is the mindset a little different, we're not as concerned about it? Enforcement's a whole different issue, because as I said, literally the ice cream truck just drove by 10 minutes ago. So I'm going to turn it over to Angela to give you some specifics and nuts and bolts. And then with your concurrence, Mayor, I'd like to resume the discussion back toward this end of the table about where do you all want to see this go or not go.

Thank you very much, Mr. Stokes. As he had mentioned, it's House Bill 2844. It did come into effect last year for a couple of items. The rest of the items came into effect July the 1st, 2026. The law is that entities like us, cities, are no longer allowed to permit for the food safety, which is something we never did, thankfully. But now the statewide license is required, and that is done through the Department of State Health Services. And so all food trucks in the state of Texas have to get their permit through them and their inspection through them. As Jay had mentioned, there are three types now. There is a type one, which is prepackaged food, which is the low risk. A type two, which is the limited prep, which is usually your coffee or your hot dog carts. And type three is your full cooking operation, which is your barbecue or your taco trucks. Type 1 is the lowest tier, and they're only inspected if there is a complaint. There is a preemption clause that allows us to still inspect for fire safety. So our policy is not changing as much on the process. We would still have them fill out an application so that we would still be here. We still are allowed to regulate where they go how long they're there. So we still can handle, we still can do that under the zoning, the fire, and the location. So some of the suggestions would be to change our ordinance to change the definitions so that they align with the state's type 1, type 2, and type 3, as well as changing it to where it says that you're required to have a Harris County or another entity's health permit. That has to be changed to the Department of Health, DSHS, as well as adding a possibility, the residential zones. We can limit a lot on that. But you just, as Jay had mentioned, you cannot ban them. That is unfortunately part of the law, and we're not allowed to ban them at all. period. The same location and dwelling limit that we currently have, right now you cannot operate in one location for more than six days per the 90-day period, which thankfully we still get to keep that. And we still get to charge our $25 fee, because that is an application fee for our fire safety and not for our mobile food. So we do have some suggestions on how to handle a Type 1. And we do have a sample ordinance with some suggestions in there as well. But we're really wanting to find the flavor of what council is looking for. I'll pass it back over to Mr. Stokes.

So just to be clear, we're basically just talking about type 1, right?

Well, the rules change for everything. Really, this is an outcome of when the law changed in the last legislative session, it was to be friendly toward all food trucks, where if they were in Houston, Waco, and Dallas, and San Antonio, they didn't have to get constant permits. Or every suburb in the Dallas area, you get a different permit to make it more uniform to get one permit.

I get that, but I'm saying, like, for us rewording things, are we really wanting to just talk about ice cream trucks?

I'm mostly – we're probably going to talk about all of them, but I'm mostly – because ice cream trucks, we've talked about at council a couple times that I can remember and voted on at council at the times that we want to – disallow it. If we still want to, what I'm going to call, not disallow it, but greatly control it, we can do that. We need to hear what council wants, and we need Jim to draft that ordinance. If something's different, and we don't want to be as restrictive, we need to hear that, and Jim needs to draft that ordinance.

By saying disallow, disallow what? We don't even know. I mean, when my kids were young, they'd come up and down the street, and they would stop and sell ice cream. which was very dangerous, to be totally honest with you, which I think it still would be to this day. So what would we, how would we, you're talking about having an ordinance.

I think you could, if I may, I think you could say it wouldn't be allowed in a residentially zoned area. Now could that be argued you've made it so restrictive that they can't operate anywhere because that's where they get their business and we get sued or have problems? Possibly. But That's the kind of thing we need to discuss with you all.

So because we have, I mean, I know a lot of this was because we have shift workers and people, I mean, I do know. I hear that complaints from the past about people are home during the day and you've got these loud noises. So because we have that, we can restrict, like, certain areas, say, like, in the subdivisions. I mean, like, can they go on main streets and not in subdivisions? You can restrict it that way. I mean, can we pretty much set it however we want or how does that work?

I do have some examples. Ms. Koslow, if you will open the attachment for the ordinance. There you go. So everything that's in yellow would be the proposed changes. But if you'll scroll down to the next, we've got a number nine. We do say that they would not be able to operate in a residential zoned area. unless it's for a private party or a park. So we could have that in there. And then if you scroll down, we also added the preemption clause that allows us to do it. And then under type one, because the other one was on all three types, but for additional standards for type one, we could say that these additional standards are applied to them if you'll scroll down. So the residential roaming would potentially be permitted if they moved continuously on a public street, stopping only briefly, which would be no more than like 10 minutes. They would not be able to, if they wanted to operate from a fixed location, they would have to do so in a zoning area that would be allowed. They could only operate on local or residential collector streets that had a posted speed limit of 30 miles or less. They would not be able to do it on those other types of road. We would prohibit them from school proximity within 1,000 feet before or after school. We also can limit their operation. And the sound devices would be limited as well, which is also covered under a noise ordinance. And then if they do want to do a stationary or commercial operation, then they would fall under the regular type of mobile food truck. So those are some suggestions if council wish to allow them.

So all that's very reasonable, say, within school operating hours and times of day and music not being too loud and that type of thing. In the past, council didn't want reasonable. They didn't want them. So if you want to greatly control them, you say you can't be in a residential area. Because in effect, that's going to greatly control that. If you think that's going too far or you want to allow them, then there's a lot of parameters here that would be very reasonable. And I'm sure they would comply with anyway. Those are the hours a day they're going to do ice cream sales, for example.

Well, for myself, I would like it as close to what we have been used to. And I don't want to speak for anybody else on council, but that would be my position. Knowing that the state's forcing us to address some of this, but keeping it as close to what our community expects, I think would be what I would advocate for.

I pretty much agree. I think that more the stationary public party is, I think, more what I kind of agree with, that that's kind of changed from where we were in the very beginning when we set this ordinance.

I don't really see any reason to change anything else besides that. I didn't hear what you said, Georgia.

No, I was just saying that I know that when we wrote the ordinance, there's more food trucks for public events or private parties. But I don't really think I want to see a bunch of trucks driving around all the neighborhoods.

Well, I agree. I don't think we would want them in residential areas.

Right. I would have no problem with it, like you said, with private parties and all. But I don't think we're going to have much support just for opening it up.

Exactly.

I know. I'm sure I won't, for sure. In my neighborhood. So as a general statement, does anybody disagree with mine in regards to keeping us close to what we've always been doing?

We do have now, if they can do stationary and private parties.

I agree with Georgette. I think that's a main, because that is a big deal now that people do.

I want Jerry to go get his ice cream cart. Right.

Why is she talking to me? Chief, can you tell her not to talk to me?

Chief, you know I'm the sweet one. Just ignore him.

Say he knows I'm the sweet one. Am I reading the proposed ordinances that, I mean, we really can't enforce it? Am I reading this right, where it says residential roaming permitted, that they can go? That's what we're proposing.

These are just suggestions.

She's just proposing. But I mean, that's what I'm saying. So if it is, then. I mean, are we really, I guess is that the most restrictive that we can be, that language?

Well, I don't think that's really, that was just an option. Okay, okay.

I'm all right. Got you. So explain then, I guess for my, what is it for this, what can we restrict based on what the state is trying to do? What is the state trying to accomplish outside And how can we restrict it as much as we can?

Well, we can. As Angela said, we can get the fire inspection permit. And so we'll have information on them. We'll know who it is and everything else, which is probably, to me, was maybe- That's still allowable.

That's still allowable. Yes.

Yeah. And I think that's really critical that we have information on who's going around. We can't keep them from going around places. We probably limited them out of the residential areas. For safety concerns, that's what you would have to base it on and say maybe even find out in the ordinance that you consider that a traffic safety issue. But allow private parties, and do not regulate them other than the fire permit, not regulate them in the rest of the part of the city. If they get permission from a property owner to park there, you probably have to let them in.

I think we want to say you're not allowed in a city park without the city permission. Well, sure, yeah. Well, that's in the proposal. The one that just left did not have city permission.

And you can do that for sure.

What's not a residential area in your park? A street?

Well, if you look at the zoning map, there's quite a bit. There's some big views.

So you're saying like going down farther in the Pasadena Boulevard, some of these boulevards. Like all the red blocks. Yeah. Okay.

And the businesses on the Deer Park side, you know, they get all set up there.

Keeping it as close to what we've got, short of the amendments that we have to make to comply with state laws, is what I would advocate for. Absolutely.

Okay.

Everybody up here agrees?

I hear you all saying.

Keep them out of the residential area as much as possible.

Absolutely. Do we already include private parties and stuff like that?

Absolutely. It's allowable for private parties. Okay.

It is right now. Okay.

So you can contract a rent.

That's true of the other food trucks too. Right. Yeah.

Any kind of event you can do that. Even in a. Like at the community pew or city event, but then someone's going to have to hire them to come in. They can't just show up.

And let me ask a different question, too. So I'm hearing what y'all are saying about ice cream, type one. Historically, my understanding, and please, anybody on staff, correct me if I'm wrong about this. Food trucks have come a long way. I think we'd all agree over the last 10, 12, 15 years, whatever the number is. When I got here, I was told roach coaches are not allowed. Meaning... We can laugh, but that's what I was told. Meaning at job sites and commercial areas, it is illegal in your park for a food truck of any quality to show up and sell their food right there. Is that what... HOW RESTRICTIVE DO WE WANT TO BE WITH THAT? OR HOW RESTRICTIVE ARE WE ALLOWED TO BE WITH THAT? Y'ALL AREN'T AS CONCERNED ABOUT THAT? IT'S MOSTLY TYPE I AND RESIDENTIAL AREAS. YEAH, I DON'T THINK THAT WOULD BE I'M JUST CURIOUS HOW THAT WORKS.

THEY OWN THEIR PARKING LOT. YEAH, THEY OWN THEIR PARKING LOT.

IT'S FOR ANYTHING ELSE.

So you think they shouldn't show up in the business parking lot anyway, right? If they own it without asking.

Without permission. Yeah. I mean, somebody's going to walk out there and go, what are you doing?

Get out of here. I don't want to tell them. I mean, they have a food truck that shows up pretty much every day. I mean, that's legal. They probably ask. They probably ask. Yeah. OK. So that would still be illegal.

The food trucks are supposed to come into my office and get a permit. to operate in the city limits. Obviously, some of them we don't know about. But even if they have permission of a property owner to set up, they still have to come to us because they're not allowed to stay there for more than six days. So we had a case where a company said, oh yeah, you can stay in our parking lot for three months. And they came to us and we said, no, you can't. We don't allow that. We only allow them to stay at one location in a 90-day period. So if they wanted to go to the gas station in the corner, they can only be there for six days in a 90-day period. So if they want to do the weekends, that's great. But we can still restrict that. so that we can control where they're at, where they're going. We just can't outright ban anybody any longer. We can't say, no, you're not allowed anywhere. So if one I'm hearing, we would need to change our ordinance to just restrict type 1 to only specific areas to keep them out of residential. Because you will have to address that in an ordinance. Otherwise, you have nothing to show where they can go and where they can't go.

But about a residential, if they're invited there and they're not selling to the public.

Yes, sir. We do actually cover that, I believe, in the proposed to make sure that if there's a private party, they still should come to us to get the application because we still need to, especially if it's a regular food truck, we still need to do the fire safety inspection to make sure that its property. We are not doing anything on food safety that is done by the DHSS. We just want to make certain that we know where the food trucks are at, how long they're going to be at, do they have the property permission, and that we make sure that they're at the location that the food truck is safe for fire safety.

So are y'all saying that right now you're saying six days out of 90 days? So you can only stay for six days and you have to leave for 90 days?

Yes, ma'am. That way you don't have someone at a gas station for three weeks.

Well, you can't leave it there, but if anything gets challenged, that's going to be it because it's really restrictive. I'm not saying – I'm not pro food truck. But we're not. You're not banning them. Totally banning them. No, but, I mean, I'm just saying if anything gets challenged, that's what's going to get challenged. Well, I would still like to keep it as close to what we've had used to. You could always defend that, you know, because what happens if they're there too long, it's – It's all the restaurants that invested in the brick and mortar, the nicer places. They're competing against a guy with an RV. So that's the purpose of it. So I think you have a basis for it. I'm just saying if anything is challenged, I think that part of it would. I'm not saying it would be successful. I'm just saying.

Honestly, we need to comply with the state's regulations.

Well, I think we could say we are, but we have a reasoning for that. Well, that would be, and we can do. Yeah, we can defend. I think you can defend that. I'm just saying if any part of it gets challenged, I think that it is a little restrictive.

If they challenge it, I'll tell them to talk to Jim Fox. Yeah, thank you. We have an attorney. It's okay, yeah.

Yeah, I need something else. I think we know where you all want to go, and we will work on that as staff with Jim and bring something back to you.

Any more comments, questions? We're good? All right, that's all the audience we have on this workshop. This meeting is adjourned.