[MissoulaGov] committee update 8/26/09

[Bob Jaffe]

Greetings,
First I want to thank the folks who covered for me while I was out of town. I really enjoyed reading the updates from afar.

This morning before we got started I heard Hendrickson commenting to Wilkins about his quote in the paper on his statements at the Republican central committee forum. I threw in something about him becoming the new champion of the Republican party that wasn't well received. He said something about at least not being too far on the left. I suppose that would be the left of labor unions and safety nets and the like. Jason got involved and then Dave had to break it up to get his committee started. All this before 8 AM while the coffee was still brewing. It's good to be back.

In Public Safety we revisited the Pedestrian Interference ordinance.  Dave did a great job as chair preparing talking points and motions with options that reflected the discussion of the previous meeting. But we didn't quite get that far. There were still some general purpose questions that needed to be resolved before we could get into the details of the specific language.  My two main questions had to do with what was the goal of this ordinance and what did it provide that we didn't already have. There has been much talk suggesting that this somehow has something to do with helping our homeless problem. There has also been some suggestion that there is some authority the police are lacking in dealing with the homeless people downtown.
Police Chief Muir and I had an exchange that I found very helpful. Mark clarified that the police are limited in their ability to engage citizens. If no obvious crime is being committed they are limited to the duty of care doctrine. This means that if someone is sleeping outside in 5 below weather they have a duty of care to engage that person. If someone is in some kind of obvious medical distress, they can engage the person. But if they are simply asleep or laying on the sidewalk, maybe not. Especially if they check on the person and the person says they are not in any distress and do not wish to be bothered. At that point the police really have no business harassing that person.
So that is one reason to have this ordinance. To give the police the legal authority to engage someone who is sitting or laying on the sidewalk.
So that raises the question of why do the police need to be engaging people who are sitting or laying on the sidewalk?  I am paraphrasing here but Mark's answer was that the downtown serves a lot of people. The vast majority of those people do not really want to step over people who are sleeping on the sidewalk. In fact, they have a right to unobstructed passage on our downtown sidewalks. I agree with this. I can vote for the ordinance if it is directly tied to interfering with the use of the sidewalk. The language proposed was something like no sitting or lying on the sidewalk if it leaves less than six feet of passage downtown or 50% of the sidewalk elsewhere. I could support that.  Of course some would like us to outlaw lying or sleeping on the sidewalk period. I'm not willing to go that far. We will continue the discussion next week.

In Conservation we discussed the greenhouse gas committee again. We added a couple of more seats and made some appointments.

In PAZ we got back into the zoning rewrite again.  We first dispensed with R3. This is a small lot development zone. For some reason it has been singled out as the ruination of all that is holy.  There is a great fear that somehow someone will insert this zone into the middle of a nice neighborhood and all will be lost.  Now I don't disagree that it would be a contentious issue if someone wanted to rezone a couple of lots in the middle of an 5.4 neighborhood to R3. But the process would be identical if they wanted to also rezone it to industrial or commercial. I'm just not really sure what is so special about R3. All the same, John Hendrickson finally presented his solution to the dilemma. He moved that the minimum area in which the zoning district could be applied would be changed from 15,000 feet to 30,000 feet. The argument being that this would make it less likely to be used as an infill tactic in an R5.4 neighborhood and only be used in new development.  It's not really that big a deal but I didn't vote for it because I think it is much more likely that if it is used for infill it will be in areas of higher density and there is no reason to create an additional impediment. But the motion to increase the size passed.
The other issue we got into was building heights on the hillside.  This has proven to be an incredibly difficult topic for the committee.  Today we didn't even get into whether we would use the table top or envelope method to measure height. We just talked about where the bottom of the measurement should start from. The planning board draft says existing grade or finished grade whichever is lower.  Ed moved that it should just say existing grade. The consequence here is that in the planning board version, if someone digs a daylight basement, that becomes the base to measure the maximum height from. In Ed's version the builder is not penalized for digging in a basement below existing grade. But as usual we got into all sorts of conversation irrelevant to the motion. I find that if I try to direct the conversation too much people cry foul. I think we had four calls for the question fail before we finally got to vote on this thing. It's just shocking to me how much trouble folks are having with this. It's true that there is some geometry involved. It requires some skills in spatial visualization. Haines and Hendrickson are saying that we are not qualified to make this decision and need to refer it back to some kind of special task force of builders to tell us what to do.  I wholeheartedly disagree with this. For one thing, this isn't that hard. For another, this essentially has already happened. The professionals have spent considerable time on this and we are now presented with a couple of clearly defined options to choose from. And finally, this is a policy decision and that is what we are elected for. If these guys don't think they are qualified to make these decisions I'm not sure why they are running for office again.
In the end Ed's motion passed and next time we will start off with the discussion of tabletop or envelop method of measuring heights. Hopefully folks will take the week to do some research and be ready to make some decisions when we meet again.

After lunch in A&F we set a public hearing to approve the Tourism Business Improvement District. This is a taxing authority granted by the state a few years back. A whole bunch of cities jumped on board once it was available but Missoula has taken a while to get it organized. It requires 60% of the hotels to sign on before it can be authorized. There was a lot of concern that the money would end up just getting sucked up by the state legislature like the way they stole the bed tax from the cities.  But the TBID rules have some protections that require the money to only be used by the local convention and visitors bureau for the promotion of local tourism.  They will charge a $0.75 surcharge for each room night in a hotel. It is projected to raise about $500,000 per year. Billings started at 75 cents and recently raised it to $1.50. I'm not sure why we are not just starting at $1.50 or even $2.00. No one is going to choose to leave the city and find another hotel to avoid the charge. The 7% bed tax and 75 cent TBID fee is pretty small compared to the taxes applied to rooms everywhere else in the country. I'm not sure why we are walking away from all that free money but apparently this was a big deal for getting that 60% sign on from the hoteliers.

In Public Works we took care of some miscellaneous business and learned that the grand opening of the Higgins Hill Beckwith roundabout will be at 11:00 on Thursday the 3rd. We also talked about the leaf collection program and how it could maybe be more efficient this year. The best we can probably do is get more strict about when we are coming and not coming back again later because someone didn't move their car.  I think the council would like to see the public works department take a harder line and do something like put the cones and signs out the day before saying the street will be cleaned tomorrow. Show up the next day and tow anything that is in the street. Clean the leaves and don't come back. If someone rakes the leaves out after that day then too bad. This program costs a fortune and people need to cooperate if we want to save money. If people really want us to come back after their pickup date we should charge them for the service. I don't think it is asking too much as long as there is very clear communication about exactly when the pickup will happen.

Thanks for your interest,

Bob Jaffe
Missoula City Council, Ward 3
1225 South 2nd West
Missoula, MT 59801
(406) 728-1052


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