[MissoulaGov] MissoulaGov Digest, Vol 31, Issue 6

[Pam Walzer]

As a point of clarification, I'm pretty sure Dick voted for the amendment.

Pam

missoulagov-request at cmslists.com wrote:


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>Today's Topics:

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>   1. committee update 9-17-08 (Bob Jaffe)

>

>

>----------------------------------------------------------------------

>

>Message: 1

>Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:43:53 -0600

>From: "Bob Jaffe" <bjaffe at ci.missoula.mt.us>

>Subject: [MissoulaGov] committee update 9-17-08

>To: <missoulagov at cmslists.com>

>Message-ID: <000f01c91949$2815bcb0$78413610$@missoula.mt.us>

>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>

>Greetings,

>

>First item in PAZ was an amendment to the covenants for the Valley

>subdivision. This is five or ten acres about two miles out Mullan road. The

>covenants had a provision that said no basements would be allowed due to

>ground water considerations. It also said that particular provision could

>not be amended without governing body approval.  The developer hired

>Geomatrix to do a hydrological study and determined that for some of the

>lots it would be OK to build basements. So they brought it back for us to

>amend the covenants before filing final plat. Our flood plane administrator

>had reviewed the study and sent a letter in agreement with the findings. The

>state flood guy was also OK with it. I figured this would be about a ten

>minute item.  But I was wrong.

>

> 

>

>Some number of years ago there was a subdivision near this one that did

>flood and the residents sued the county for allowing them to build there.

>Nothing like the specter of a law suit to get some of the council members

>running around in circles.  The question was asked in about sixteen

>different ways by Renee, Jon, and John if there was any way to provide the

>council absolute legal immunity if we allowed for this change in the

>covenants. Ed pointed out that along the same purely hypothetical and

>speculative lines we could be sued for not approving the change after a

>qualified consulting firm had done a specific study of the property and the

>city and state flood professionals had agreed with the findings. On what

>grounds were we denying the request? The only argument offered was that in

>the past a law suit arose from a property close to this one so maybe we

>could get sued too.  Even our attorney advised us, with all the standard

>disclaimers, that we were on solid ground.

>

>When it was time for the vote, it in fact failed. Renee, Dick, Lynn, Jon,

>John, and Jason against. Ed, me, and Pam in favor. Everyone else was absent.

>

> 

>

>When I later asked Jason, his reasoning was something like this:  We didn't

>need to be exposing ourselves by getting involved with this since it was not

>a condition of subdivision and just a part of the covenant. The covenants

>are a contract between the property owners in the subdivision.  The city is

>not a party to that agreement. The developer could just change those

>covenants any time he wants to as long as he is the only property owner. No

>reason for us to get involved. We'll get to discuss this on the floor Monday

>night so Jason will probably clarify his position then.

>

> 

>

>My take on it is that may be true but we approved the subdivision with that

>condition in the covenant. It specifically said that there would be

>governing body approval to change it. It may be correct that the developer

>could legally change it all on his own but it certainly wouldn't look good.

>Much more prudent to bring it before the council. 

>

>The one point this did bring out was that we should make sure these types of

>things are conditions of the subdivision and not just in the covenants.

>

> 

>

>In other business we voted to postpone the proposal to require affordable

>units in the CBD for densities higher than 16/acre.  The planning board

>recommended that we wait until the zoning rewrite is done because it will

>probably address this in some way.

>

> 

>

>In A&F we approved the RFP request for the Fox site. This is to try to find

>a developer who will build something there that we like. Most of the

>discussion centered around fees that MRA wanted to charge developers of the

>site. They wanted a $100,000 deposit that would be repaid upon completion of

>the project. This sounded reasonable. They also wanted a 'developer fee' of

>1% of project cost not to exceed $500,000 to cover expenses associated with

>the project. This caused a little more commotion. My concern was if this was

>a standard practice that outside developers would not baulk at. If so than I

>have no problem with it. Usually when people come to spend a big pile of

>money they expect us to give them something like a parking garage. I've

>never liked that so it would be nice to see it go the other way.    

>

> 

>

>In Public works we discussed the expansion of the sidewalk project around

>Trempers. They are finishing up the system that comes in on North and around

>Oxford and Kemp. There are a couple of property owners who had not signed on

>to the project but they were at the meeting to air their concerns. It

>sounded like their issues could be worked out. We all want to see the whole

>project get done all at once. We approved the change requests and are

>hopeful that Engineering will work things out with the last two people to be

>able to do a complete project.

>

> 

>

>It was a short day so that was it.

>

>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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>End of MissoulaGov Digest, Vol 31, Issue 6

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