[MissoulaGov] committee update 7-15-09

[Bob Jaffe]

Greetings,
This morning we had a short Public Safety meeting at 8:00am. Our only piece of business was to enter into an agreement with Northwest energy to put in a photovoltaic system at fire station #5. The grant is for $39,000. The balance of the $80,000 system comes from the 2005 fire bond.

The rest of the morning was spent in an extended PAZ session reviewing the zoning rewrite.  I was hoping to do a Tuesday session but too many people were unable to make it. Turned out I had work I had to do on Tuesday anyway so it would have been a mess for me too. Since we only had that one other item it made more sense to just do a long session this morning.

We spent a considerable amount of time discussing hillside height standards. It will be tricky to explain without pictures.  There are certain challenges that come from building on a hillside. The special rules kick in at 15% slope. The maximum buildable slope is 25%.  There were two competing proposals. The tabletop method and the envelope method. In the tabletop method you find the lowest point of either finished grade or original grade within the footprint of the structure. Then you measure up to the maximum number of feet allowed in the district and draw a line straight across. No part of the building can go above that line.

In the envelope method your maximum height line follows the grade line. So if the maximum height allowed in the district is 30 feet you make a line thirty feet up from the finished or original grade, whichever is lower, and no point on the building can go about that line.

The current rule uses the envelope method but bases it off of finished grade. So a builder can essentially reengineer the grade of the site to give them the height they want. The planning board draft calls for the tabletop method as described above. We had an architect David Gray, and builder David Edgell tell us that this would be too restrictive and all they would be able to build would be big flat top boxes. This is of course bunk since they are both very good at what they do and I'm sure could find plenty of creative solutions.
We looked at a few examples of recent building permits for hillside structures. Some of them would work some would not.  But they were all huge. 5000+ square foot homes with 2800 square foot footprints and 1000 foot garages. At least four of us have homes that would fit inside those garages.  So the tabletop would require homes to be a bit smaller and lower. But there was some concern that it would be too restrictive in some cases when you count in setbacks and maximum driveway grades. So we asked Laval to come up with something that reflected the discussion and send it out for comment.  The committee meeting was a lousy venue for coming up with new language. I'm hoping that between what she comes up with and the feedback from interested parties we end up with something where we just get to pick between a couple of options. We do much better with those kinds of structured decisions.

Next was bed and breakfasts.  In the new code they are a conditional use in all residential districts. Renee wanted to know what possible benefit could a bed and breakfast bring to a neighborhood.  Some suggestions were that it provided an option for where the relatives could stay when they come to visit. Instead of the guest room or the holiday inn, they could stay down the block at the B&B. It was also suggested that these are usually large historic homes that get restored and maintained when they become a B&B. They are almost always beautiful homes with wonderful landscaping. No one is going to open the crack house B&B. It's a pretty safe bet that these places will be kept up well.  There were a bunch of what I considered overly restrictive motions made such as one kitchen per B&B, a drastic increase in the parking requirement, and a neighborhood protest provision. I'm pretty sure all of these bad motions passed with most of the "five" and some of the "seven" being won over by the concern that somebody somewhere may someday do something that might be bad.

Next was administrative adjustments. The new rules create provisions where the zoning officer can make exceptions within certain tolerances to some of the rules in specific cases. This is intended to address some of the more ridiculous situations that arise where a good project has to be denied because something is a couple of feet or even inches off of the requirements. But it makes some folks nervous of course.  Renee suggested that we should postpone this discussion since it gave the zoning officer the ability to make exceptions to rules we had yet to even discuss. This actually made some sense so we postponed the administrative adjustments part to the end.

The next item was home businesses.  I had a couple of concerns that the rules were too restrictive regarding the number of people who could be present and the types of businesses that are allowed. It says no medical clinics. Does this include psychiatrists and marriage counselors? These are pretty standard home based businesses. It allows only two customers at a time. What about the photographer doing a family shoot for my family of five? Only one non-resident employee? What about the three guys in the garage creating the next Intel?   Pam raised some points about the restrictions of hazardous chemicals. What about a photographer? Or the person making candles? Or the landscaper, or woodworker, or any number of professions that use hazardous materials in quantities greater than standard consumer amounts.

There was a lot of talk at the Democratic Candidate Forum last night about creating good jobs in Missoula. Small businesses are a major part of our economy and a they all pretty much start in the home. I would hope that my colleagues recognize that excessively restricting home based businesses is contrary to supporting good jobs and the local economy.  That's where we ran out of time and will pick up again next week.

One might think that the absurd law suit filed by Dick, Renee, and Lyn would have made it hard to proceed with this process. I thought it had the opposite effect. I'm guessing they have had this thing prepared for at least a month and have been waiting to pull the trigger. Maybe the stress of having that hanging there was the source of all the venom we've seen in the last few meetings. There was much less stress in the air today. Or maybe it was just that the subject matter today was less contentious.


After lunch we had A&F. The main business was the consideration of a $400,000 loan to the North Missoula Community Development Corporation to provide bridge financing for the Burns Street Commons project. The affordable home ownership project has fallen victim to the lousy housing market. In a lot of ways this was a challenging project to start with. It's tough to sell homes to a population that can't afford them. Even with the huge subsidies it is a small pool that meet all the requirements for the federal funding but can still afford the payments. When you add the financial uncertainty created by this economy the pool gets much smaller.  It's also still hard to sell attached condo homes. People have not quite gotten used to the idea that the days of the affordable detached home in the city of Missoula are pretty much gone. It is unlikely that there will ever be another subsidized housing project in town that provides single family detached homes.
In any case, things are starting to pick up at Burns street but more time is needed than the bank is willing to give. This deal pays down the loan to a level that the organization can afford to carry as the units are sold over the next few years. The City has already made a substantial financial and policy commitment to creating affordable home ownership and this loan is the best way to help the project reach fruition. The money comes from a title one grant that we have been doling out at about $50,000 per year. We have about $550,000 left so in theory this should be paid back before we need it. The motion passed with only Dick and Renee voting against it in committee. They both agreed that it was OK for it to go on the consent agenda on the floor.

In public works we discussed speed limits. We set Greenough to 30 mph. We also set a few other varying places officially to their posted limits. It turned out that there were a handful of speed limits that did not get set with council approval.  We asked staff to come back with a resolution for Expressway boulevard to increase the speed from 25 up to 35. This is the road that goes from Reserve out to Direct TV and on out to Airway Blvd. For whatever reason it is 25 over by reserve in the commercial area, then it goes up to 45 out by the residential areas. We thought it appropriate to just increase it to 35 but wanted it reviewed by staff to work out the exact details.

We also requested that George Elmer drive off Mullan be reduced from 45 to 35 within 500 feet of the 44 ranch subdivision. So the first 2000 feet or so will be at 45 and then it will drop to 35 and then drivers will need to slow way down to get through the roundabout that will be at the entrance to the subdivisions. As things develop further north from there my guess is that it will be designed for 35.

I also asked what the deal was with getting a bike lane on Orange on the block north of the bridge. Steve King said that a deal was worked out with KECI to give them some additional street parking on Main in trade for the parking that would be lost on Orange. This couldn't be worked out before they paved and striped it. But when they come back later and chipseal and put down epoxy stripes it will have bike lanes on both sides. This is the most dangerous part of my daily route so I'm pretty happy about this.

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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