[MissoulaGov] PS&H on 8-12-07

[David Strohmaier]

All,

 

We had three items before us in Public Safety and Health today: authorizing acceptance of a $1,092,230 Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to hire additional police officers, the aggressive solicitation ordinance, and the pedestrian interference ordinance.

 

Due to this year's exceptionally tight budget, the city opted to forego filling three vacant police officer positions. Similarly, the school district eliminated two community resource officers. The city's grant application sought to reinstitute these five positions plus a couple more. DOJ granted funding for five positions for three years, with the stipulation that the city must fund these positons for a fourth year (at minimum). Some discussion ensued regarding whether this would put us in a financial bind during the fourth year. However, Police Chief Muir was confident that this shouldn't be a problem since normal attrition would allow us the ability to continue funding these positions even if the city's financial outlook doesn't significantly improve. In the end, the committee voted unanimously to accept the grant, which should go a long ways toward maintaining our current level of police service over the next few years. I'd still like to get to the point of funding a park officer at some point in the future.

 

Our next two items took up the bulk of our time, and in keeping with the morning's festivities, we even got into a little parliamentary wrangling regarding whether it is permissible to amend a motion after we've voted on it. I won't go into any great detail regarding the content of the aggressive solicitation or pedestrian interference ordinance. However, to recap, the aggressive solicitation ordinance seeks to circumscribe the places and manner in which solicitation can occur in Missoula. So, for instance, you can't panhandle within 20 feet of an ATM, within 6 feet of the entrance of a storefront, after dark, etc. You also can't solicit folks in an "aggressive" manner through intimidation, threats, or harassment. Deputy City Attorney Keithi Worthington opened the discussion with what I thought was a fairly compelling case for how these ordinances differ from those in other communities (like Portland and Seattle) that have been accused of "criminalizing poverty." Some on the committee felt that individual elements of the aggressive solicitation ordinance might be reasonable, but taken cumulatively, it merely has the effect of focusing on symptoms rather than underlying problems. The flipside of this argument contends that this ordinance is only one aspect of a more broad-based approach to address undesireable behavior, and improve the quality of life for all Missoula residents. Pam brought up the topic of whether the ordinance might (or might not) apply to other forms of solicitation, such as aggressivily seeking signatures for a petition. We decided, though, that this should probably be discussed in its own forum. In any event, we changed some wording in the ordinance to clarify that through the city's special use permit process, fundraising might be allowed in certain circumstances that might otherwise not be allowed. We also struck the word "alarming" from the purpose section of the ordinance, which for some seemed to be hyperbolic and not necessarily supported by fact. In the end, we unanimously voted in support of the ordinance, which will appear under committee reports Monday night, thereby allowing an opportunity for additional public comment and council discussion. The companion "emergency' ordinance also was approved, although I'll need to clean up the text Monday night by deleting the word "alarming" and adding the modified text about special use exemptions, which didn't make it into the motion in committee.

 

We ran out of time, and were only barely able to begin our discussion of amending the existing pedestrian interference ordinance, which has been the focus of much community discussion and accompanying misinformation. For instance, contrary to some reports, the ordinance does not prohibit sitting within the public right-of-way unless you are doing so in a manner that fails to leave 6 feet of space on the sidewalk. We'll probably be diving into this topic again next week, along with other confirming a police officer and possibly listening to a special presentation on drug disposal in Missoula.

 

Hats off to Mr. Jaffe for his work on these posts every week, and to the other committee chairs who are filling in for him in his absence.

 

Dave



Dave Strohmaier 

City Council, Ward 1

508 E. Pine Missoula, MT 59802 

(406) 327-8911, home

www.strohmaierforcouncil.com


 
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