[MissoulaGov] committee Update 2-4-09

[Ryan Morton]

As a former speech and debate coach/instructor/judge/participant, I also
have strong personal feelings about telling young people to shut up and
smile (particularly towards young ladies like the one at the hearing).
Getting young people involved and interested in the political process is
crucial, and I just hope that none of the students who testified read Mr.
Jaffe's comments.  Plenty of the other council people provided constructive
comments despite their strong feelings against the sign.

Perhaps there are good reasons why schools are exempt from City Council
review (whims).

If there's one positive note from all of this, at least now I know how Bob
feels when the rest of us speak at City Council.  :-)

Have a great weekend!

Ryan Morton
Government Affairs Director
Missoula Building Industry Association
406.543.4423 or 406.546.0902 (cell)
community at buildmissoula.com

-----Original Message-----
From: missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com
[mailto:missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com] On Behalf Of Ruth Link
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 10:42 AM
To: bobj at montana.com; missoulagov at cmslists.com
Subject: Re: [MissoulaGov] committee Update 2-4-09

I want to make a personal comment, not on behalf of MOR.  I was in
attendance at this PAZ meeting and saw the presentation that the students
made.  I have to say that I was incredibly impressed by the preparation and
poise the students exhibited.  Obviously, we all see things through our own
personal filters, but from my perspective, when the students wrapped up,
they weren't "carrying on;" they were showing that they had heard the
concerns and had responses to them.  Regardless of our differing opinions of
the students' motive, it seems unnecessarily condescending to use the phrase
'to keep your mouth shut.'  These students are the future of our
city/state/nation.  Our collective efforts should be toward earning their
respect and exhibiting respect for them, unpolished as they may be.  These
comments do neither.  

Ruth A. Link

Please consider the environment before printing this email.

-----Original Message-----
From: missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com
[mailto:missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com] On Behalf Of Bob Jaffe
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 10:43 PM
To: missoulagov at cmslists.com
Subject: [MissoulaGov] committee Update 2-4-09

Greetings,
In Public Safety this morning we learned about the hazards of compact
Fluorescent bulbs. They contain a small amount of Mercury. Even though it
is a small amount there are a great volume of the things out there and the
first large wave of dying CF bulbs is upon us.  Ace and Home Depot will
take the bulbs for recycling and proper disposal. You can also bring them
to the haz waste days event the health department does each year. Pete's
electric takes them for a fee.
Here are some links for more info on the subject:
http://www.governing.com/articles/0811bulbs.htm
Here's a link that addresses the hazards of exposure if you break one:
http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/#fluorescent

In conservation we awarded bids for the reconstruction of Pineview park up
in the Rattlesnake. The SID budget for the project is $750,000.  We put it
out to bid last summer and the bids came back way to high. So they broke
the job into four smaller parts so the smaller local firms could bid. Many
of them are unable to cover the bonding requirements of the bigger bids. 
I think we should employ this technique more often. As it happens gas
prices are half from when we did the first attempt to bid and the economy
has tanked. So this time the bids came in much better.
Of the $750,000 budget, $108,000 goes to financing costs. This is the cost
to set up financing. Not the interest.  When I suggested that paying a 15%
fee for setting up financing is incredibly inefficient Brent agreed but
said this is what it costs.  Taking a $640,000 bill and spreading it over
a thousand property owners and tracking divisions in land and changes in
ownership is an incredibly labor intensive and inefficient way to pay for
something. Apparently the same thing applies to sidewalk financing. We
should really look for a new way to do these things.

We also approved a contract for development of a conservation lands
management plan. The contract was granted to Ecosystems Resource Group.
Here is a link with all the details:
ftp://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/Packets/Council/2009/2009-02-02/Referrals/CLMAgr
eementReferral(2).pdf

Our third item of business in Conservation was the Greenhouse Gas Energy
Conservation Team's proposal to have the city sell "Green Tags."  I think
this was the fifth time this had come back to committee but this time it
moved forward to the floor. They had revised the proposal so the direct
costs to the city were negligible and had consulted with the
administration and had their support. To see the past discussion on this
item or any others from this list you can go to missoulagov.org and use
the search box at the top of the page.

In PAZ we started with a review of the sign proposal for Sentinel High
School.  The school is not subject to local zoning regulations so they can
pretty much do whatever they want with their sign. Mr. Wilkins got wind of
their proposal and how it was completely non-compliant with our
regulations and started following the issue. He spoke with a number of the
folks who live near the school and there was quite a bit of objection to
the project.  For some of us it is objectionable that a public entity
would ignore the local regulations. The sign is a project of their
marketing club and what sounded like their equivalent of ASUM.
The item on the agenda today was to consider if we wanted to pass a
resolution expressing the opinion of the council on the project to the
school board. It turned out the thing was only a little offensive and
didn't cross the threshold to get the council to pursue a resolution. A
few folks thought it was just fine. Of primary importance the school
representatives indicated that they wanted to work with the community to
make people happy.
After much discussion and questions and answers Alex Apostle, the
superintendant, made a really nice statement assuring us that they would
work to make this a win win for the school and the community. He waited
until everyone had spoken to say his piece. It was skillfully positioned
to close the meeting on a positive note and leave us feeling assured that
we had been heard and the school would be responsive to our concerns. This
fine piece of diplomacy was lost on the marketing teacher and student
representative who then continued to carry on defending their project and
discounting the concerns expressed by council members.  One lesson in
marketing they need to work on is knowing when it is time to just keep
your mouth shut and smile.

Our main PAZ item was the discussion of development agreements. This item
had been broken into two parts. First we discussed the revisions to the
rules on contract sewer. Contract sewer is for people who are outside of
the city and want to connect to the sewer but do not want to be annexed.
The whole ordinance is being revised. Much of the work is clean up and
memorializing existing policy. Some of the additions are that requests for
contract sewer will require a development agreement that will cover such
things as development consistent with city subdivision regulations and
payment of fees in lieu of impact fees.
Some points that interest me are how we handle areas that the city council
does not want to annex but sewer services are potentially available.  They
may be within the defined growth and service areas but from a land use
planning perspective we may not think it is time for those areas to
develop. Currently such areas, like out at the Wye are eligible and
receiving contract sewer.  When we take on the next round of updates to
the growth policy I'm hoping we can address this issue.

The other part of the development agreement discussion was establishing
the policy to apply the agreements to all annexations.  So anyone who
wishes to annex to the city will be required to enter into a development
agreement which essentially serves as a contract between the developer and
the city spelling out the terms under which we will annex them. We would
like all interested parties to submit comment and work with Carla Kraus to
form a final draft to bring back to committee as early as Feb. 18th. From
there we will decide if it is ready to go to the floor or if we want to
set a public hearing to continue the process.
The updated versions of the various documents are not currently available
electronically but here is Carla's email address if you wish to be
involved in this: CKrause at ci.missoula.mt.us

In A&F we had the presentation from our financial auditor. Everything was
in order and looked good from the auditing perspective.  One thing that
stuck out to me was he commented a couple of times on how the lion's share
of our income is from property taxes. Our revenues have been gradually
climbing but our mill levies have been pretty stable. This is because of
growth and rising property values. In the absence of growth and rising
values we are going to be hard pressed to maintain the same level of
service without significantly raising the number of mills we assess. I'm
guessing there will be some very hard decisions to make in upcoming
budgets.

Public works had a number of small items including the re-approval of the
purchase of a prius for the fire department. Enough council members were
befuddled by this item to send it back from the floor on Monday to have
more questions answered.

Then we had another COW session to discuss the notification process for
the big zoning rewrite hearings. We had asked OPG to come up with a sample
letter they were going to send. They put together a sheet front and back
that explained the process, told when and where the meetings would be,
explained how to get more info, and highlighted the substantive changes. 
Some folks were really pushing hard to see a side by side representation
of what your current zoning allows and what will be allowed under the new
code.  Roger explained how this would be impossible to do for the whole
city because it is different depending on where you live. The part of the
document that lays out this zone by zone comparison is 20 some pages long.
In the end there was agreement that Marilyn would help to edit the one
pager to make it more readable by the general public and Jon Wilkins would
get to give it final approval. It will then go out to 22,000 property
owners next week at a cost of around $10,000.

Thanks for your interest,


Bob Jaffe
Missoula City Council, Ward 3
bjaffe at ci.missoula.mt.us
406-728-1052


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