[MissoulaGov] Committee Update 6-24-09

[Bob Jaffe]

Greetings,

This morning we set the public hearing for the new panhandling
ordinances in Public Safety. 

The panhandling working group has been organizing a number of efforts
like the "Real Change" program and the work on this ordinance. This link
takes you to the referral and ordinances:

http://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/DocumentView.aspx?DID=1654

 

The whole thing pushes both my liberal and libertarian buttons.  I don't
really like making laws to make things harder for the destitute. And I'm
not sure we really need a law that tells folks they can't "force
themselves upon the company of others." But there is no doubt aggressive
panhandling is a major bummer for those trying to attract visitors and
shoppers to downtown.  The police say they need a more specific
ordinance to respond to the requests of merchants and citizens.  Ellie
Hill from the Poverello assured us that the serial inebriates have no
interest in interaction with the police and will quickly learn and
follow the new rules. A similar set of rules was passed in Billings.
Even though they have had very few citations they had a high level of
compliance and complaints dropped significantly after passing the
ordinance. We set a public hearing for July 27th.

 

In PAZ we continued our discussion on the zoning ordinance. We had the
long public hearing Monday night. Most folks probably read the
Missoulian coverage. There were about 100 people there. Maybe 50 spoke.
The ADU was still the focal point of much of the comment. I counted off
about 30 comments in favor or the project and ADU's. About fifteen
against, and five or so who spoke only to specific technical issues.  On
Stacy's request, a table was set up at the entrance with forms for
people to submit written comment. This worked pretty well. There were an
additional 18 comment forms submitted. Most with well articulated points
of view. They were pretty evenly split on support and opposition on the
ADU issue.

 

The following morning we returned to committee and returned to the
motion on the floor from last week to send the whole thing back to the
planning board.  After a pretty lengthy discussion the motion failed and
I attempted to move the discussion on to the topic of the ADU overlay.
There was much wrangling about process. Dick made a motion to do
something like just endlessly talk about issues but not make any
amendments until some later date.  We "frittered" away about two hours
on that nonsense. It wasn't until the fourth call for the question that
I finally got a majority to be done talking about it and we were able to
dispose of the idea.  So we were back to the main motion to adopt title
20 with some bizarre caveat that if the question is called on the main
motion we have to wait seven days to actually vote on it.  I may yet
call that divergence from procedure out of order.  There appeared to be
some concern that we would force the thing back to the floor before
everyone had an opportunity to have their issues heard. Possibly as we
get further into this and all the suspicion and fear subsides we will be
able to just dispense with the weird seven day waiting amendment.  The
frustration level was extremely high at that point in the meeting so we
took a recess. After a few minutes we reconvened and spent the remaining
45 minutes just asking questions of our consultant. That part was pretty
productive so I chose to provide another hour or so at today's meeting
for more Q&A

 

So we started off this morning's PAZ with more random Q&A for the
consultant. Then we got into the ADU discussion. Stacy moved to allow
them by right in the multi-family zones. Then Jon made a substitute
motion to exclude the option for the ADU overlay from the single family
zones. After much discussion and minor amendments both motions passed.
Jon's with Marilyn, Dave, Renee, Dick, Lynn, Jon, and John.  Stacy's
with Marilyn, Ed, Jon, Myself, Stacy, Pam, Jason, and Dave. Hendrickson
Abstained. It had all the appearance of a glorious moment of compromise
amongst the council but in reality it was the usual liberal giveaway.
Best I can tell the ADU doesn't really offer much to the multi-family
zones and now they can't even be had in the single family zones with an
overlay rezoning process. But the goal here is to pass title 20.
Hopefully this gets us closer to that goal. My intention is to refrain
from revisiting this issue in committee. There may be some further
amendments on the floor once the details really get worked out.

 

After the lunch break we had A&F. The CDBG-R grant that we were going to
use for replacing park equipment was denied. HUD decided that parks were
not considered infrastructure for low income families. We disagree. The
mayor argued the case all the way to Washington but it didn't get
anywhere. HUD announced the final decision that recovery money could not
be used for parks on the same day the white house announced that they
were getting a playground. So now we are going to use the money for
repairs to the pedestrian railroad overpass. There are some structural
issues to address and we want to get rid of the pigeon roosts and the
homeless hiding places. 

 

In Public Works we approved various sewer related contracts and the CMAQ
grant contract for the bike/ped program.  A few of us have concerns
about how some of this money is being applied but this wasn't really the
time to take it up.  We will need to try to remember to have this
conversation much earlier in the process next year.  The main concern is
whether the best use of this money is on various promotional and
educational efforts as opposed to hard infrastructure.  Could the
$11,000 we spend on the bike ambassadors do more for cyclists if it was
spent on creating more bike lanes? Are the little signs telling us that
we are on a safe route to school more important than actually doing
something to make the route safer? It's a discussion worth having at
another time.

 

In BCOW we pretty much finished up the budget. There are still a few
loose ends so we held off on approving the preliminary budget. It always
gets amended later when final numbers are in but there are still some
negotiations happening that could change things.  If the unions are
unwilling to work with us on the health care contribution reductions we
may need to come back for more cuts.

 

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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