[MissoulaGov] committee update 11-5-08

[Bob Jaffe]

Greetings,

8:15 AM post election night celebrations was a little rough. But we
opened with a request to purchase a $356,000 fire truck. The oldest
truck that would be moved out of the rotation is from 1979. But there
was still much apprehension about spending the money. All the trucks
still work and could be made to last at least another year if need be.
The price will go up by 3% if we don't enter into a contract by November
21st. But we will be borrowing the money to buy the thing at more than
3% so waiting a year is sort of a wash on inflation vs. interest.  One
of the arguments for getting rid of the old truck is that replacement
parts are getting more expensive and it needs more maintenance to keep
it healthy.  I asked to see some data on the actual cost of maintaining
the old vehicles compared to the new.  I voted for it in committee and
it did pass but I'm not sure I will support it on the floor.  

Next we learned about the new Stop Bias Crime Campaign the city is
doing.  There are a couple of posters they have on busses. One shows a
guy's face all beat up and the other shows the word "DYKE" spray painted
on the side of a house. They both have a caption about how ugly hate
crimes are. They have also set up a web site (http://www.stopbias.com/)
and a system to encourage anonymous reporting of hate crimes.  There was
a discussion about the appropriateness of putting this stuff on the side
of busses. Folks don't necessarily want to explain to their kids what a
dyke is when they are on the way to the mall.  This is similar to the
anti-meth campaign we have all been assaulted with for the last couple
of years.  The point is to force you to pay attention and have the
conversation. Officer Richardson suggested that the kids will find out
anyway and it is probably best they have the conversation with their
folks instead of just on the playground.

 

In conservation we had yet another discussion of Green Tags. The Green
House Gas committee wants the city to become a reseller of carbon
offsets as a way to raise funds for the committee's efforts.  All sorts
of concern as to whether this would be effective, viable, or worthwhile.
What I would like to see is the city enter into its own solar/wind
energy development project. We saw a presentation at the league of
cities and towns meeting that showed that municipal scale solar is
currently cost effective here in Montana. We could structure it in such
a way that the carbon offsets are tax deductable and go towards
financing the project. The returns would lead to a significant reduction
of energy costs to the city. The "Green Tag" could be an alternative or
supplemental source of financing to a bond.

 

In PAZ we heard some more about the community housing resolution.  The
resolution establishes that the housing problem is a priority for the
city and directs staff to come up with some actual policy and ordinance
changes to help address the housing problem.  The resolution passed in
committee.

We also finished up the StonyBrook subdivision.  The session was mostly
spent going over the various questions that came up during the prior
meetings. No substantive changes were made to the proposal. The
subdivision passed unanimously in committee but it will be on committee
reports on Monday in case there is anything else that needs to be
covered.  

 

In public works the council continued to express concern about
expenditures on new vehicles. There was a request to buy a new parking
scooter. We wanted to hear more from the parking commission on what
analysis has been done into alternatives to using the motorized
enforcement. If they did foot patrols downtown would that make the
current fleet work without an additional scooter?  Maybe not. But we
thought it best to first confirm that alternatives had been ruled out
before buying another $25,000 vehicle.   

The next request was to buy six Dodge Charger patrol cars. Jack Stucky
withdrew the request so he could do more research into options for
better gas mileage. He is pretty sure this is it but he wanted to make
sure. A discussion ensued about the need for "pursuit rated" vehicles
for liability insurance reasons.  Apparently only cars with poor gas
mileage can be made with stiff suspensions and high quality brakes.  As
the discussion went on fuel economy became equated to mean poor quality.
We were warned of the law suits that would come from our fuel efficient
patrol cars braking down on the way to calls.  I'm not really sold that
you can't have fuel economy in a really tough car. It may not be a
muscle car but that shouldn't matter. We may be in some kind of trap
with the insurance companies and some kind of certification process that
has evolved but I'd like to have that confirmed.

 

We also discussed the ordinance that says the city engineer sets speed
limits. State law says the city council should do it. Dave made a
referral to adjust our local ordinance so it gives that authority back
to the council. I'm in favor of this. 

 

Our last item was the complete streets resolution.  This basically calls
for the establishment of complete streets (curb, gutter, bike lane,
sidewalks, and maybe vehicle lanes)  on all city streets by 2020.  The
public works people pretty much indicated that this would be impossible.
It may be possible to achieve this standard for our collector streets by
that time but we will really need to consider a new funding mechanism.
We currently make the adjacent property owners pay for sidewalk
improvements. A great deal of time is spent working with property owners
to get them on board with this idea. If we had another way to pay for it
we could do twice as much sidewalk each year.

 

Thanks for your interest,

 

Bob Jaffe

 

 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.cmslists.com/pipermail/missoulagov/attachments/20081105/a8e94475/attachment.htm>