[MissoulaGov] committee update 8-20-08

[Bob Jaffe]

Greetings,

This morning we considered the Garden District subdivision. This is the
latest iteration of the Housing Authority's project on the old Intermountain
Lumber site on Russell.  They are proposing to divide it up into five large
lots. The Housing authority has a tax credit project lined up to build about
35 units on one of the back lots along Catlin. They may be able to put
together a project to develop one of the other lots. The rest will be sold
to private developers to raise funds for the Housing Authority. 

The first half of the meeting consisted of explanations of the project and
appeals for leniency on exactions and infrastructure conditions in the name
of affordable housing.  In the second half we tried to get everyone's
questions answered but were unable to get to a point where we could move
forward.  The developer agreed to grant an extension on the project until
Sept. 8th. Some of the issues had to do with obtaining an easement for space
to build the future bike path tunnel under Russell, Street width, and
sidewalk width.  All of these issues are pretty easy to define and haggle
over. 

The bigger and more difficult problem is that the 12 acre project in the
middle of the city is coming forward with five large lots and no definition
of what will happen on these lots. The council would be uncomfortable with
this out on North Reserve. In the middle of town it is really disappointing.


The pitch for why we should grant all the exemptions from our regulations is
that if they have to make the sidewalk wider it will be more expensive.
Since it is a housing authority project every dollar spent on sidewalks
takes a dollar away from providing housing.  In addition, any exaction that
takes away from the buildable area of the lots lowers their potential sale
price and therefore takes away from the income of the housing authority. 

I am mostly on board with this argument and willing to look for compromises.
But it burns me that I am being asked to make compromises in our standards
for what may be the future Osco. We have no idea what is going to end up on
these lots.

I am a little fuzzy on the history but I believe this is the housing
authority's third or fourth attempt to put together a project on this
property.   At this point I think they are just trying to get out from under
it.

 

In Public Works we received updates on the Higgins roundabout and the
Russell EIS.  Right of way acquisition is now complete on the roundabout
project and they will be going to bid in a week or two. Construction is
scheduled to start Monday, June 9th 2009 and be completed within 60 calendar
days. The Draft EIS for Russell and 3rd will be out next week. There will be
a public meeting late in September to hear public comment.

 

We also spent a few hours on the budget. There are a few new twists now. It
turns out we are no longer short on money.  An error was made early in the
process by the finance department where a cell was left out of a calculation
on a spreadsheet. The reduced department of revenue numbers inspired review
with a fine tooth comb and suddenly we have money again. It has something to
do with leaving out our debt service payments from the amount we tax. So we
had it on the payment side but not the revenue side.  In the end it means we
are going to tax more than we originally stated but we are only raising
taxes by the percent we stated.  We just had it wrong on how much that was.


That is a really lame explanation and I hope others make a more coherent
attempt at it.  But the bottom line is that there is no longer the same
urgency to find budget cuts. But spending less is always a good thing so we
did continue to review the various cuts that had been proposed. We took
$20,000 from the aquatics subsidy. I can't remember if the proposal to cut
$10,000 from a conservation lands management plan passed or not. We dropped
$2000 from the council travel budget. A proposal to cut 10% from the new
fuel requests (over last year's) failed on a tie vote with Ed, Renee, Dick,
Jon, and John voting against it. This was even after the police chief spoke
in favor of the reduction. So much for conservation.

Jason caught some heat from the fire chief for suggesting they could do
without new laptops. Apparently we are only here to approve the budget as
presented. If the items were not absolutely necessary they wouldn't have
requested them in the first place. 

Apparently I didn't learn the lesson because I suggested a few line items in
the mayor's budget looked like they could go.  In the budget detail file
they have $3500 allocated for the guide to codes book and another $1500 for
the guide to city offices. If this is a tight budget year those look like
things we could maybe drop.  The information is available on the web and a
few copies could be printed out for when someone really needs one. What we
learned from the CAO is that just because the budget documents we have been
given to review show a dollar amount allocated to a particular item doesn't
really mean they intend to spend the money on that item.  It says Guide to
Codes $3500 but that is just a place holder for some other stuff they expect
to maybe print. And if they don't print anything maybe they will use it on
something else.  Either way if it wasn't absolutely necessary it wouldn't be
in the budget so I really don't need to be worrying about it.

John Hendrickson then presented his list of budget cuts. John, or at least
the person who wrote the document for him, was a little more ambitious. He
had about a half million dollars in suggested staff reductions and other
reallocations.  The list was somewhat cryptic and most everything required
explanation and we were right at the end of the meeting.  Ed was content to
just shut it down but a few of us wanted to hear out the proposals. So we
will be taking up the suggestions next week.

 

     

Thanks for your interest,

 

 

Bob Jaffe

Missoula City Council, Ward 3

 <mailto:bjaffe at ci.missoula.mt.us> bjaffe at ci.missoula.mt.us

406-728-1052

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