[MissoulaGov] Committee Update 2-18-09

[Jason Wiener]

As far as I know, no title companies discovered the 1896 right-of-way.
One resident mentioned a floodplain permit he received in the 1970s that
specifies the footprint of his house, which the right-of-way bisects. No
one seems to have known about this until last year.

 

If I remember correctly, someone said that the document that triggered
all this was discovered with some documents stored in a Weed District
warehouse. Some residents raised the question of whether there was
another missing document that vacates the right-of-way. There's probably
a good story in all this about how the document was discovered and how
it made everything grind to a halt. Sort of a horror story.

 

We are expending considerable money to buy back Milwaukee Railroad
right-of-way now. It's not exactly analogous since the effort there is
to restore a former travel corridor. At any rate, if we vacate the
right-of-way now, someone will have to pay for it later, either when
they widen Miller Creek Road or are forced to consider alternatives
because people are sick of taking out houses to widen roads.

 

*******

Jason Wiener, Alderman, Ward One

1238 Jackson St.

Missoula, MT 59802

(406) 542-3232

jwiener at ci.missoula.mt.us

 

From: missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com
[mailto:missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com] On Behalf Of Jim McGrath
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 7:11 AM
To: Bob Jaffe; missoulagov at cmslists.com
Subject: Re: [MissoulaGov] Committee Update 2-18-09

 

A question for Jason about the right-of-way issue: did the title
companies fail to inform the owners of the right-of-way? or did they buy
knowing it was there and then forgot because no one seemed to know about
it?
That would be an important factor for me.
Comment: the city has spent significant amounts to buy right-of-way that
was vacated earlier (often by the county). Think about the "trail"
system west of Russell.


-----Original Message-----
From: missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com on behalf of Bob Jaffe
Sent: Thu 2/19/2009 12:30 AM
To: missoulagov at cmslists.com
Subject: [MissoulaGov] Committee Update 2-18-09

Greetings,

After council meetings I had a situation at work that wasn't resolved
until 11:30 pm so this is going to be pretty brief tonight.



In Public Safety we spoke again about cats and dogs. We ended with a
motion to direct staff to make further adjustments to the document and
bring it back again.



Cats: forget the multiple cat permit stuff but initiate a cat license
program. No reason the dogs should be paying their freight.



Dogs: no agreement on dogs off leash on conservation lands. We want
staff to work on the language for the kennels/vets/day cares. There
should be no exemptions for noise ordinance for any of them but possibly
a different way of addressing compliance with the commercial operations.
Possibly we will make stricter rules but have to exempt the existing
businesses that were established under the old rules. Need to discuss
this with the attorney.



In PAZ we continued the discussion of the Chickasaw subdivision on
seventh past tower. Pretty much the same as last week but with more
detail and a little more drama.  Considering my current state of mind
and my interest in avoiding litigation I'm going to just save my
comments on this project for a public meeting. The deadline is on Monday
so we had to schedule a continuation of the PAZ meeting for 6:00pm
Monday before the council meeting.



In A&F we had Wolf from the job service give a presentation. I'm not
going to attempt his last name.  The employment picture in Missoula went
off a cliff in November and has been pretty lousy since. But compared to
most other places we are still looking good.  Unemployment sits at
around 5.5%. But it was pointed out that these numbers are calculated a
lot differently now than they were in the past. They used to count
people who were underemployed and about five other categories. Now they
just count the people who have been out of work for some number of
weeks. So 5.5% now is like 8% or 10% from past recessions. Wolf also
pointed out that they offer a number of human resource type services to
employers for free and people should take advantage of this opportunity.



I had to meet with OPG staff in the afternoon so I missed Public Works
and most of COW.  I've included below a summary that Jason submitted
highlighting public works.



====



In Public Works, we had an update on the project to improve the junction
of Upper and Lower Miller Creek roads, which has been stalled since the
discovery of some right-of-way dedicated in 1896 along the west side of
the current road. The right-of-way intrudes significantly into the
property of residents on that side of the road, running up to porches,
through accessory buildings and even some houses. It puts us in a tough
position because the right-of-way is public property, in essence, but
everyone-residents, city and county staff, EIS consultants-has been
proceeding for a long time as though it wasn't there since its presence
was not known. There are two questions that we have to address at some
point.

Today, we got to some agreement on the first, which is what to do about
resuming right-of-way negotiations for the roundabout construction that
is the immediate project that led to the discovery of the right-of-way
in the first place. At a meeting last year, Public Works Director Steve
King represented to the residents that we would compensate them for an
easement as though the 1896 right-of-way had never been discovered; we
agreed to proceed with that course in committee. That will lead to an
engineering services agreement amendment costing about $50,000 to get
the right-of-way acquisition finished--the extra time being added by the
need to stop the previous negotiations, work out all the issues raised
by the 1896 right-of-way discovery with extra public and private
meetings. That chafes, of course, since we're paying to resume the
course set by the initial scope of services but there wasn't much debate
about it since the alternative is to just realign the road in the 1896
right-of-way and not continue negotiations to compensate owners. The
remaining question is what to do with the 1896 right-of-way, which could
serve future expansions of Miller Creek Road, which will almost
certainly be necessary at some point in the future. The owners of the
land through which the right-of-way runs have filed petitions with the
city and county to vacate the easement entirely and we'll have to
consider that along the timeline prescribed by state law for vacating
right-of-way. That will be a tough decision because we (and the
Commissioners) are entrusted with the care of public property such as
the right-of-way, and some of it (maybe 20% or so) will likely be needed
in the future, but the owners justly feel shafted by its discovery and
all the pressure will be coming from their point-of-view, which is that
we should vacate it.  The Commissioners still have jurisdiction over the
vast majority of the right-of-way since it is in the county and I don't
know what they will do. I don't know what we will do with that either.
Certainly, it would be easiest to cede it now and buy it back decades
from now but that might not give due weight to the needs of future city
residents. At any rate, we'll have to return to that question in future
months.





Thanks for your interest,



Bob Jaffe

Missoula City Council, Ward 3

bjaffe at ci.missoula.mt.us <mailto:bjaffe at ci.missoula.mt.us>

406-728-1052







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