[MissoulaGov] Committees 8-13-08

[Jim McGrath]

I'll take a stab. I'm sure others will chime in if I misstate things. 

 

When an area is designated an urban renewal district, all the properties
continue to pay the property taxes they are currently assessed. However,
as property values increase (presumably due to redevelopment activities)
and so do taxes, the "increment" -i.e. the additional taxes above the
starting point-are set aside in the redevelopment fund. 

 

Properties pay taxes to various jurisdictions - the city, the county,
the state, the schools, the university, the Mountain Line transit
district. Even though the city may be the creator and controller of the
redevelopment district, all tax increments feed the fund. And all
jurisdictions lose the increment for their general funds during the life
of the district. 

 

So yes, the funds come from the general funds of the various bodies
(only about one quarter will be from the city), but only the amount that
would have been added to the general fund due to increased value since
the beginning of the district. If the value in the district does not
increase, then there is no fund. The MRA's second district (URDII) - the
one the Champion site is in-grew very little for many years.

 

There are specific rules about what the funds can be used for, but they
are most often used to assist private development activities. The reason
for this is built into the logic of how the redevelopment fund works:
the funding should be targeted to make property values in the district
increase, and to combat "blight." Our MRA has been more generous than
most in committing funds to public works that pay no taxes -like
parks-on the theory that they help increase overall values. But more
likely they will go to tax-paying projects.

 

Yes it is a subsidy to private and usually commercial property. 

 

________________________________

From: missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com
[mailto:missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com] On Behalf Of Derek Goldman
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 1:18 PM
To: Jason Wiener; missoulagov at cmslists.com
Subject: Re: [MissoulaGov] Committees 8-13-08

 

re, the proposed urban renewal district for the Hip Strip:
Can someone please explain to me how this works? if so designated, would
funds for "renewal" projects come from general tax revenues? Would these
funds only apply to projects on public property (like sidewallks) or
could they fund improvements to someone's privately-owned commercial
property? ie: does this amount to a public subsidy of highly-valued
private commercial property?
(no offense to the Hip Strippers-- I love that neighborhood! Just
concerned about what is the best use of city funds during times of a
budget shortfall, and whether this is the most-blighted neighborhood).
--Derek 

 

________________________________

Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:56:15 -0600
From: JWiener at ci.missoula.mt.us
To: missoulagov at cmslists.com
Subject: [MissoulaGov] Committees 8-13-08

Bob is on vacation once more. I will be filling in.

 

Public Health and Safety started off the day with an update from the
police department. The session focused mostly on the Hells Angels
weekend. Chief Muir said that the police "could not have planned for
[the weekend] to go as smoothly  as it did." Still, the visit cost
Missoula an extra $93,000 in overtime and other costs; savings of
$46,000 from the budgeted amount were realized by scheduling training
and the like for times when officers were not patrolling. Chief Muir
pointed out that the overall volume of criminal activity in town went
down during the weekend, which just goes to show that having an extra 60
some police officers on duty reduces crime. The guiding philosophy of
the police during the weekend seemed like to be harm reduction. Other
than responding to specific complaints on incidents, the police didn't
engage our visitors for surveillance and interdiction. There were
federal officers around for those purposes and they were in town and at
the Testicle Festival. The main criminal activity seems to be some drug
arrests in conjunction with a reported sexual assault (still under
investigation) and a concealed weapons charge. To keep the police
presence from being overwhelming foot and mobile patrols were limited to
32 officers in downtown at one time. Chief Muir reported no complaints
about too much police over the weekend.

 

We also looked at preliminary racial profiling numbers, just the number
of stops by demographic group. A citations versus warnings analysis is
still being calculated. The counts were required by legislation from the
last state legislative session. The results basically follow the
population distribution except for African Americans, who were pulled
over at a rate four times greater than their representation in the
Census population. Chief Muir speculated that the Census data
inaccurately represented the number of African Americans in town or that
their representation in populations just passing through, but not living
in town, was high enough to explain the difference (160 stops of African
Americans vs about 40 that would have been predicted). Chief Muir added
that if those stops yield high warning rates, as opposed to citations,
it might be a sign that the disproportionate stops are less warranted,
which would be a troubling set of events. At any rate over 90% of the
stops were Caucasians, like our population.

 

The Chief closed with a warning that the department will be short
staffed and might not meet all its benchmarks. Right now, they are
authorized to have 102 officers but there are 4 vacancies and 7 officers
on limited or light duty (2 permanently). Coming soon, a couple police
officers will be deployed to Iraq, which will further reduce our local
force and hamper the Chief's ambition to do problem-oriented policing,
which is aimed at root causes rather than criminal behaviors. This
wasn't, he said, a plea for more personnel but a warning that
performance might lag because of the shortages.

 

In PAZ, talked about a conflict in the calculation of height regulations
on hillsides. The issue arises because of the discrepancy between the
natural slope of a hill and the finished slope, after grading and all.
All parties seemed to feel like the issue was being addressed in the
zoning rewrite and that there was not sufficient urgency to justify
amending the existing ordinance ahead of the rewrite, provided that is
successful, which we all hope it will be.

 

In A&F, we took up a request from commercial property owners in the
vicinity of the Hip Strip to go looking for blight, which would be the
first step toward creating an urban renewal district for the Hip Strip.
There wasn't a heck of a lot of concern that there won't be
opportunities to find blight; see the memo for some suggestions from the
neighborhood at
ftp://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/Packets/Council/2008/2008-07-21/Referrals/Hi
pStripRequest.pdf. Some of the impetus for the request seemed to be
coming from projects in the planning phases that would require
structured parking. I have a financial concerns with putting growth in
urban renewal districts since the property tax cap makes it so the only
way to keep revenues in line with inflation is by adding new property to
the tax rolls. If development is happening anyway, we would be causing
future budget issues. Ellen Buchanan pointed out the URD revenue can and
is often used for public works projects that would otherwise need to be
paid for from the general fund so the URD can function complimentarily
rather than competitively. One of the catalyzing projects is a proposed
redo of the Penwell building, the white three story number on the corner
of 3rd and Higgins. The owners may request rezoning to add height. While
this is an accepted practice in historic restoration, one person from
the neighborhood appeared to register opposition. I think we got some
foreshadowing of some resistance from the neighborhood to increased
heights and more urban character that might come with redevelopment. We
decided to proceed with the blight study since it doesn't commit us to a
cause of action but the vote was not unanimous and the full Council
won't consider the question until August 25 so Ellen can go on vacation
next week.

 

After lunch, we returned to the budget. Because the state has told us
that we have grown considerably more slowly than we thought based on
building permits and because insurance premiums went up significantly,
we are on the wrong side of a balanced budget right now, mostly since
the tax base ended up being smaller than anticipated. The mayor's budget
included a 3.5% increase in property taxes--1.92% for a general
obligation bond approved for the Miller Creek fire station and the
balance to cover inflation and new budget requests. The administration
said that raising taxes by 4.82% instead of 3.5% would cover the
difference, if that is the direction we decide to go. Since city taxes
are about 30% of a property tax bill, the increase to what a person pays
would be about 1.4% with the voted debt service for the fire station or
.88% without that debt service. The total cost would be something like
$26 for a $225,000 home; the additional bump would be $7 on that home.

 

Mentioning taxes produced some talk reflecting deep-seated angst about
paying for city services. Once the venting was done, we decided to
proceed by deciding exactly what needs to be funded and then figure out
where that puts us relative to the need for additional tax revenue
rather than starting with a revenue number. Next week in committee each
Council member will bring forward specific suggestions, which were not
bountiful during committee, and we'll seek to whittle our costs down to
the bone before returning to the revenue issue. We did dispense with
some outstanding expense items, deciding that a raise for the municipal
judge and small additional requests from the city band ($1000) and the
Missoula Cultural Council ($2500) were not feasible in the current
climate. Marilyn also removed her request for an energy conservation
officer, which wasn't in the mayor's budget but seems necessary if we
are going to seriously reduce the city's energy consumption and CO2
emissions. That's unfortunate because it is a position that could pay
for itself with even small efficiencies. Stacy succeeded in persuading
us to add $35,000 to the neighborhood parks maintenance fund (now at
$125,000 rather than the $250,000 planned for last year) so we can start
knocking out bathroom, lighting and trail upgrades that will need to
precede replacing playground equipment and the like. We will have to
figure out how to finance that increase along with whatever else makes
it through committee.

 

We have until mid-September to pass a budget and we'll be spending a few
more weeks to wrap it up, I expect.

 

Thanks for your interest,

J.

 

*******

Jason Wiener, Alderman, Ward One

1238 Jackson St.

Missoula, MT 59802

               (406) 542-3232        

jwiener at ci.missoula.mt.us

 

 

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