[MissoulaGov] committee update 7-1-09

[Bob Jaffe]

Greetings,
We had a short day today. Just public works and PAZ. In public works we ordered in the paving of an alley on the west side. A number of the folks living there requested it and were able to get more than half the property owners to agree. It works out to about $350 per home. If anyone is interested in getting this done they should contact the public works department. It is pretty nice in terms of cutting down on dust and noise and creating a nice surface for kids to skate on. But people do drive faster. It would be nice if public works would come up with some standard traffic calming options that folks can choose from that have been pre-approved by fire and Allied Waste.
We  also heard about how they had pretty much worked out the remaining details on the Miller Creek road expansion. Right of Way agreements have been reached with the various home owners. The whole debacle has raised the cost on the project. We were asked today to approve something like $46000 for the consulting to deal with the mess and the project has been delayed a year due to our good fortune of finding that we had the extra right of way across people's homes. When the extra right of way showed up it seemed like a windfall for the public but In the end I hope it will at least be a wash for all the trouble it has caused.
We also set a public hearing to approve a yield to bus ordinance. The busses will have an illuminated yield sign on the back that can be activated by the driver when they are trying to get back out into traffic.  It will be a violation if you don't yield.  Being unable to get back out in traffic goofs up their whole schedule.  One of the ward five reps, I can't remember which, was looking for limitations to the ordinance since it was unfair to expect people to be willing to drive behind one of these "smoking behemoths." The hearing got set for early August.

In Paz we took on small lot issues.  The conversation focused on the change the planning board made to the consultant draft that set the minimum feet of lot per unit in multi-family districts to 1500. The consultant recommended 1000 feet. Currently it is 1000 for efficiencies, 1500 for one bedroom, and up to 2500 for three bedroom.  One bedrooms are the primary market demand these days. So developers have been designing one bedroom complexes disguised as efficiencies. They have a wall that almost connects to the other side that needs nothing but a door framed in after final inspections. Our consultant essentially recommended we acknowledge the loophole and enable the development of multifamily units at 1000 feet per unit density. The planning board instead suggested that 1500 feet, the legitimate number for a one bedroom, was the appropriate density.
A motion was made to set it back to 1000 feet. It ended up losing on a tie with Dave absent and Ed voting against it.  So the current practice of building one bedroom apartment complexes in the multifamily zones at one per 1000, albeit through a loophole, is now gone.  Density has been reduced by 50%.  Ed justified his vote as something to do with this being a rewrite and not a rezone so we shouldn't be changing anything. To be honest I don't know what the f**k he was talking about. It was like he was channeling Jon Wilkins in his absence. We have already established that the difference between rewrite and rezone has nothing  to do with changing densities or heights and that a rewrite can indeed contain substantive changes.  Building multifamily units at 1000 feet is already allowed in current zoning. I can think of some arguments for why it should maybe be 1500 feet but staying away from a rezone has nothing to do with it.

Then we took on the issue that multifamily residential development in commercial zones is pegged on these same 1500 foot standards. Currently they are allowed to build at up to 750 feet per unit densities in the commercial zones. So this is a major reduction in density in the main district where high density is allowed.  The motion passed to put the standard at 1000 feet but there was much concern that when paired with the prior motion reducing density in the multifamily zones we were incentivizing residential development in the commercial districts.  When you look at the maps you see that these are primarily in ward four and five along the Brooks corridor, along the tracks on the west side, and east of Reserve street.

So high density in the commercial districts was salvaged but we gave away a little more density in the multifamily zones. It was not a good day for the fifty percent of our community that rent their homes. Opportunities for additional rental inventory were reduced. Maybe this one will come up again in the final consideration on the floor.

One other item covered was a change to the front and back setback distances in the new R3 zone. The draft has it at 10 in the back and 20 in front. We made it a minimum of 10 in front and back with a minimum of the sum being 30 feet. So one of them would have to be 20 but the developer would have a little more flexibility. This was based off of a request from Collin Bangs where he showed how the zoning could apply in projects like his Windsor Park.

Next week we will take up height calculations and hillside standards.


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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