[MissoulaGov] committee update 5-6-09

[Bob Jaffe]

Greetings,

This morning in Conservation we learned about an agreement the parks
department had put together with developer Kevin Mitty regarding the
park in the 44 ranch subdivision. Kevin wants to go ahead and build the
improvements in the park and get reimbursed later as the city collects
impact fees.  The estimated costs for the project are just over
$1,000,000. In the end the city will only have to pay him back around
$410,000.  It's a great deal for the city. I imagine Kevin's motivation
is that his development will be more sellable with a finished park
instead of a weed field. 44 Ranch is a very vertical project in that
Kevin Mitty developed the property, built all the houses, and now is
doing the city park improvements. It's kind of like John Didell at
Pleasantview except Kevin is working with us for parks instead of suing
us to avoid them.

 

In PAZ we had the dreaded Chickasaw subdivision return.  This was the
painful project out on seventh just past Tower.  We had required a three
acre Agriculture set aside and a connecting road which required the
whole thing to get redesigned. We approved it conditional on staff and
the developer bringing something back to us that met all the various
conditions we were after. They did this today and it was pretty straight
forward. There were still a few concerns including traffic calming for
the someday connection to the north and how storm water was being
handled with the shallow aquifer. The Community Food and Agriculture
Coalition didn't like the shape of the resulting agriculture parcel so
they requested we deny the project. I get this image of the terraced
farms cut into steep hillsides when they say killing the project is
better than farmland that isn't a perfect rectangle. We will finish this
one up next week.

 

In A&F we discussed the parking garage planned for Front and Pattee.
There are still a lot of unknowns. It will be at least 300 spaces and
some retail along front street. If there is enough money it will be 600
spaces. The downtown plan calls for 600 spaces so there is some concern
of what the implications are to the rest of the analysis in the plan if
we only build it to half size.  On the other hand I have some concerns
over the idea of induced demand. We know that if we build a road bigger
more people will drive on it. I imagine if we make parking easier
downtown more people will choose to drive there. That's fine if you are
talking about customers but not so good if you are talking about
employees. I guess I would like to see us build the bigger structure and
then allocate as much as can be used for short term parking and charge a
lot for the leased spaces to encourage commuters to develop other
habits.

 

In public works we had some disagreement over approving the Mayor's
choice to replace Tom Wilkins with Ginny Iverson on the parking
commission board.  The motion stalled on a tie and will be forwarded to
the floor with no recommendation.  

We also agreed to accept a bunch of stimulus money for the north Higgins
street project, a project to build a whole bunch of handicap sidewalk
ramps around town, and the sidewalk project connecting Spruce to
Greenough. Some of us were expecting a fight from the more republican
sorts over the evils of stimulus money but no one had any complaints
today.

 

In COW we heard a report from the lobbyist we hired to work the session
for us in Helena. If you would like to see the written report it can be
found here:

ftp://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/Packets/Council/2009/2009-05-04/Referrals/Le
gRptCOWRef.pdf

 

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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