City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, so the time is 325, and I call the Property Management and Environmental Services Committee to order. Our first agenda item is briefings, and we will hear from Wendy Turpin, an overview of Brownfields Workshop held on April 23rd.

It's moved on me. Wendy Turpin, Environmental Services Assistant Director. I just wanted to share a wonderful experience that we were able to provide with our brownfields program. So our brownfield program uses a lot of grants from the EPA. And with that grant, we were able to provide a workshop and get about 70 attendees to come. And as part of this workshop regarding brownfields and teaching others how to access all of the programs, We were also able to share a tour of the convention center that is being abated right now with asbestos, especially in that saucer area. So we were able to take that and share it as a learning experience. It was a very good program. It was very well attended. And I just wanted to give a little kudos to the staff, especially the environmental program manager, Julie Ragland, who put that together with her team and share with you the the fabulous opportunities that we have sharing our knowledge of brownfields with the rest of the state of Texas. And as you can see, we had several attendees from out of state, and they were wonderful to provide education to our attendees. It was a great program. So I just want to give them kudos.

Thank you, Wendy. Great job. Does anybody have any questions?

Just thank you, Wendy. It is a wonderful program and event that your team put on for the community and developers. And thanks for your time and for staff's time.

Thank you. Do you foresee this happening again next year?

We try to do it every few years. Okay. Thank you.

We will move on to the overview of proposed changes to the Fort Worth City Code, Chapter 12.5, presented by Dr. Wittenberg from Environmental Services. Dr. Wittenberg. Thank you.

Absolutely. Good afternoon and thank you for a few minutes to discuss our changes to 12.5. You hear of spring cleaning. I call it summer scrubbing. We take an opportunity to look at our existing code of ordinances and make some recommended changes for getting things back in alignment or from lessons we've learned recently.

So real quick.

So just real quick, we have chapter 12.5 is our environmental protection and compliance chapter within the overall city code. And going through each of these, there's multiple articles. And this does impact several different departments, TPW stormwater, water department, and several others, including environmental services. So as we work with our law department to make these modifications, these are just relatively straightforward text amendments. First thing, of course, is definitions. We just want to get those reorganized and put into the right sections rather than the overall chapter. With respect to Jennifer Dyke's team and the stormwater protection team, we also took this opportunity to remove some redundant definitions, update our notice to our new location at 100 Fort Worth Trail, and just clarify that TPW Stormwater does have the authority for stormwater utility services. about municipal setting designations, build in some leeway as we work with developers and the community as these applications come forward. So you see a couple of time changes. Again, these applications come to the city before they move on to the TCEQ. And so we wanted to expand some opportunities for staff to engage with the public and the developer, 45 to 90 for that comment period, and then also moving in 60 days to 120 days for the actual public hearing itself. Moving right along, we have the requirement for currently, in the code it says that there are necessary for six hard copies. In today's digital age, we just prefer that people bring an electronic format whenever they provide service. Also we're updating it so that whenever someone provides an application, that goes to the city secretary's office as well as our office. And we moved away from the library as a place and really, allowing our city secretary's office to make those notifications. The other component is we wanna allow for more time for city staff to process these components, and we wanna make sure that our development community is fully ready when they come to the city for a letter of support from the city with an ordinance or a resolution. So we're asking for some opportunity for the developers to bring their full application for the TCQ ready before they approach the city, and that they've also had time to meet with stakeholders. Moving right along in the water section, Chris is here if there's any specific questions, but I appreciate some alignment here. Working on the public drinking water side, they wanna really just lean into backflow prevention assembly and making sure that those technical components are in alignment and that those inspectors that are performing those services are fully registered with the city and that we have the opportunity to revoke those items if those individuals are not performing those inspections up to par. We also want to make some adjustments to industrial wastewater just to be in alignment as state and federal laws change. We don't want to have to go back into city code and make changes each time and really work to just make sure that all of those permittees know what they need to take care of with respect to wastewater permits. Moving right along to solid waste and recycling. Again, we have existing city code that's been in text for quite some time. So there's items that are listed as acceptable for recycling that maybe at one time in the early 90s were acceptable but are no longer acceptable or vice versa. So we took this opportunity to update that list of recycling components, move into removing some obsolete waste, yard waste language to allow for that full collection. And then we also wanna take an opportunity to clarify our environmental protection fee rate structure and classifications, as well as just honor some update to grant of privilege. So if someone does not pay their quarterly fee or does not pay a fee to us, we need that opportunity to go back and reclaim that as an offense. Last section is fill material. You can think of your favorite stockpile around the city perhaps as construction continues to boom. And so we wanna make sure we're working closely with DGA Development Services for some alignment here. So you can see we're just working to clarify fill material, talk about maximum heights and maximum time limits for how long those stockpiles can exist outside of an active construction permit or when the project is complete. We want the project to be completed and then we want that material to move on. And we also want to make sure there's alignment between our fill material with respect to a permit requirement versus our grading requirements, so there's alignment there. And then finally make sure there's understanding that a permit is required, it's not simply a registration. So in closing, you'll see this a couple of additional times. So we're working with our law department to finalize text. We'll have an IR that comes back to detail some of this on August 25th in a couple of weeks. And then we'll also plan to bring that draft ordinance forward for adoption by full council vote on September 29th. Opportunity to present this.

Dr. Whitmer, does anybody have any questions? All right. Well, if people don't know, this is an example of some of the text amendments that were included in the bond proposal, so they can see firsthand what those are now.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you. And we are going to move the... staff recognitions for environmental services to the next property management meeting. And so now we will hear from Marilyn Marvin, property management staff recognitions, Marilyn.

And while she's coming up, I would say we appreciate having this time during committee meetings to recognize staff that we sometimes don't have the opportunity to recognize in a public setting. So I appreciate Marilyn bringing her team here for this today.

Marilyn Marvin, Director of Property Management. This is our facilities team, led by Aaron. Raise your hand, Aaron. Most everybody thinks that our facilities team's just taking care of maintenance. What they don't realize is they do construction as well, so that we don't always have to go out to do construction. And we've had a lot of moving parts in the last many months. As we have the Monroe Street properties on the market, we've had to move people out. So they have, this team has renovated one of the storefronts in Taylor Street Garage to move sister cities out of 908 Monroe and give them a new home. We're moving Southside Community Center to Hazel Harvey Peace and this team is who has renovated the second floor to move code up to the second floor. renovating the first floor to become the new Southside Community Center at Hazel Harvey Peace. They are renovating the second floor of 200 Texas Street for Central Patrol Division. And they are renovating the 18th floor to move environmental services from Monroe to the 18th floor in this building. I just wanted them to know how much I appreciate, this is extra work outside of their normal day-to-day job and they are very rarely recognized. And so I wanted y'all to be aware of the great work that this team does.

Thank you guys. And thank you for the amazing work that you do across our city and for making our facilities look great also. And if we could take a picture. Council members, would you like to join us? All right, are there any future agenda items from? The committee? No? I do have one though. So I would like staff to look at establishing a vacant property registry to combat nuisance properties and power code enforcement and stimulate economic growth for the city of Fort Worth. And so I have done some research and would like to propose what that might look like and share that with staff. And so is there a need for executive session? If not, we are now adjourned at 336. Thank you.