[MissoulaGov] committee update 7-16-08

[Bob Jaffe]

Greetings,

This morning we opened with a Public Safety update from Police Chief Mark
Muir regarding the upcoming visit from the Hell's Angels.

The police will be working to keep the community informed and avoid the
problems from the past visit.

After all the trouble that happened last time there was a review committee
set up. They found that the police acted accordingly but did have nine
recommendations. All nine have been addressed in one way or another. Mark
did not elaborate on what those were. 

There are three jurisdictions involved that will be working together. The
state, the county, and the city. The state will be in charge of
intelligence. Since 9/11 there is a whole state/federal intelligence
infrastructure that has been developed. The locals will make use of
intelligence provided but will not focus on gathering it.

The Hell's Angels visit coincides with the Testicle Festival out at Rock
Creek this year.  The sheriff's department will have a field operation set
up out there.  They will have a lot of their resources focused on that
event. Twenty officers from other Montana communities will be brought in to
assist the City. No out of state police will be used this time. The highway
patrol helicopter will be in use in the area again but will be limited to
traffic related operations.

We are expecting a 30% decrease in the original overtime budget (about
$15,000 saving) due to some shifting of schedules. They will also be doing a
lot of mandatory training with the officers instead of just having them
standing around waiting for trouble. This way we can have a lot of officers
in uniform and on duty ready to respond but they can be doing something
productive. Since these are mandatory training hours that we would have to
pay for anyway we will see some savings down the road.  Thank you to chief
Muir for finding some creative savings in staff time expenses.

A question was asked about whether it is unusual for the Hell's Angels to
return to the same community.  Mark cited a few other examples and also
indicated that the Angels thought things went well here. He noted that the
perception that there was an excessive police presence is very subjective.
For the Hell's Angels a high police presence would be something like one to
one. For Missoulians it is a lot different. If we see four officers on a
block we think martial law has been declared.

 

We then had an early session of A&F to discuss the city portfolio.  After
resolving some technical difficulties we had our specialist from Wells
Capital on the speaker phone. He rattled on for about a half an hour with
what could have been a recorded presentation on the US economy. He sounded
very much like a radio or TV personality. It didn't really have much to do
with our portfolio or the City's investments but it was one of the better
presentations I've heard on the state of the economy. When we did get to the
part about our portfolio it looked like we were seeing some pretty healthy
returns since we have been working with these guys. We sit on about $13
million that can be invested. Except for the last quarter we have been
seeing returns between 2.5% and 5% per quarter (10%-20%/year).

 

In PAZ we started with a discussion on Linda Vista Estates. I know I've been
over this one on the list a few times. The developer wanted to get some
sense from the council if he should move forward or if we had no interest in
approving his project. It pretty much came down to an interpretation of a
part of the growth policy that calls for a certain percentage of build out
in Miller Creek before anyone could develop over the back of the hill. We
had a unanimous straw vote that we could get on board with the
interpretation that would allow development.  Mr. Twite will now start over
again on his project at element review.

 

For the rest of PAZ we had a discussion about the future direction for
Orchard Homes.  We had a presentation from Roger Millar about the history of
planning in the area. We then had a presentation from Steve King on the
infrastructure improvements.  Then folks from the neighborhood spoke and
Josh Slotnick and Paul Hubbard from CFAC gave a presentation.  We also heard
from a few developers and Nick Kaufman.  It was a very cordial discussion. I
thought it was productive. No decisions were made but all the issues were
put out on the table and different perspectives were aired. Some of the
problem is that there are pretty significant mixed messages coming from the
City right now. We are in the process of putting in sewer and water. But we
are also starting to worry about the loss of agriculture land.  Some people
have voted against projects for being too dense while others have objected
because the projects are not dense enough. The folks who want to develop out
there are not sure which way to go.

Essentially we are going through a period of shifting community values and
our ordinances and policies have not really caught up. In fact, we are still
trying to settle on what those values really are so we can make the
appropriate changes to our ordinance. The planning department is taking a
systematic approach to trying to establish that community vision. The urban
fringe effort will establish some growth and density targets. This Fall they
will begin a formal neighborhood planning process in Orchard Homes to create
an updated vision for the area. In the interim there will be some
uncertainty for anyone trying to subdivide out there.    In the upcoming
weeks we will start seeing some actual projects in that neighborhood come
before the council.

 

After lunch we discussed the Memorial Rose Park plan in Conservation.  Where
it pretty much ended up was that they moved the bathroom over to Franklin
street where it isn't in front of anyone's house. They made a few other
minor changes. The groups that are complaining about the design are mostly
saying that it is too much. They don't want additional structures. We will
take it up one more time next week. Ed was working on a motion to approve
the plan with a few items scaled back.

 

In Public works we discussed a proposal to request that the county
commissioners put a 2 cent per gallon fuel tax on the ballot. There was
substantial agreement that this was a good thing. There was disagreement
over how the money should be allocated. Some folks were not happy about the
idea that some of it may go to bike and ped improvements. In the end it was
agreed that specific allocations to bike and ped improvements would probably
kill the thing in the county so it won't go forward that way. Ed was going
to try to revise the wording of his proposal for consideration next week.
We are hoping the commissioners will be supportive of putting this on the
ballot for the voters to decide.  We have substantial unfunded
infrastructure improvements to address and we are not expecting to see more
state and federal money come in. We have to find a local source of financing
if we are going to take care of the roads.

 

In Budget committee we worked to get an understanding of the plan to finance
the CIP heavy equipment expenses. We have some substantial expenses coming
up like million dollar ladder trucks. If we spread the cost over a number of
years we can keep buying all the stuff we need without digging so far into
our savings that we start to hurt our bond rating.  Personally I'm not sure
why a fire truck only lasts twenty years. Up until pretty recently I never
even owned a vehicle less than twenty years old. My cars were low end
consumer grade equipment with little to no maintenance. Fire trucks are high
end pieces of equipment with Jack Stucky keeping them in tip top shape. It
seems like they should last a lot longer.  

 

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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