[MissoulaGov] Committee Update 10-14-09

Wed Oct 14 22:38:29 MDT 2009

Greetings,

This morning in Public Safety we approved a contract with Solar Plexus to install a 12.96 KW photovoltaic system at firehouse #2 for $62,500.  More than half the bill is being paid by Northwest Energy and the rest is coming from the 2006 firehouse bond.  It will provide about 25% of the electricity at the firehouse and should have about a seven to ten year payback.

We also learned about the new PM2.5 air pollution standards and set a public hearing to consider changing the regulations.  The current standard is based around ten micron particles. These are just big enough to be filtered out by breathing through your nose. The 2.5 micron particles get inhaled deep into your lungs. The primary source is from wood smoke.

The new EPA standard allows for an average level of 2.5 micron particles in the air to be up to 35 micrograms per cubic meter. Missoula is up to 35.2. They let us round it down so we are still considered an attainment area, but just barely.  Becoming a non-attainment area puts our highway funds at risk. We will have to do a gigantic study costing many thousands of dollars and many hundreds of hours of staff time to establish baseline data and show what we are doing to fix the problems in order to get our highway money.

The new rules essentially say that on bad air days you can't use a woodstove if you have an alternative source of heat. The kicker is that these rules now extend way out into the county where they told the health department they would have to pry the woodstoves from their cold dead hands. After a bunch of educational meetings folks came around some and it is not so contentious anymore.  We'll find out more at the public hearing. If you would like to see how the air is doing in near real time take a look at this site:
http://todaysair.mt.gov/AirMonitoring/AirDataMap.aspx

There was no Conservation today and in PAZ we just wrapped up our discussion about the findings of fact for the Sonata Park subdivision. Nothing too exciting.

In Public Works we set the public hearing to consider the SID for the Arthur/5th/6th project. The goal of this project is to reconstruct the section of road that connects 5th and 6th to the Madison street bridge. The university would like to get the roads to connect directly and not run the loop around that block that comes into the campus.  They own all but four of the houses on that block and plan to expand there someday. A few years back MDOT put together a plan to build a superhighway through the University neighborhood.  As expected, people came unhinged. It turned out they didn't have the will to go through with a project everyone hated and it was too expensive anyway.  The University continued to work on a more acceptable design with a more reasonable budget. The current project will be paid for with a $1.2 million SID assessed against the University of Montana. The City will provide a few hundred thousand dollars worth of labor to do the paving work. The state will throw in a few hundred thousand for traffic lights.  In all, it will cost less than what was spent studying and trying to justify the big plan that everyone hated.

The key difference is that the purpose and need for this project is based around fixing current safety problems for bikes, peds, and cars. The other project was based around providing capacity for the next twenty years.

The most pointed question of the day came from Renee Mitchell to Hugh Jesse from the University. She asked why the U was pursuing million dollar roadway improvements when the newspaper tells us they are going broke. The guy who was qualified to answer that question wasn't at the meeting so Hugh punted to the public hearing. We'll have to wait a few weeks to learn more.

After lunch In A&F we discussed the new OPG fee structure that needed to be adjusted to match the new zoning code.  A couple of the sections caused some heartburn. The cost to take a project to the Design Review Board is $753. That has not changed. But now an appeal to a DRB decision will also cost $753. There are a few others that seemed onerous. I'm not questioning that they actually cost that much to process, it just seems like a lot to ask people to pay. You can see the whole list here: http://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/DocumentView.aspx?DID=2399 The public hearing is set for November 2nd.

In other news, I learned a few things at the League of Cities and Towns conference last week. I asked folks about sidewalks, homeless, and crowded rentals. I gained some preliminary information that I am following up on and will have more details in the next few weeks.

Sidewalks:  Great Falls and Bozeman have tried a policy where they don't make the developer build them until three years after final plat. That time has now come and they are having trouble getting them to comply. But it didn't sound like the other cities really do very many sidewalk installations into existing neighborhoods like the way we do. It wasn't really an issue on their radar.

Homeless: They "used to" just give them a bus ticket to Missoula. Of course they don't do that anymore. In asking people from a number of cities the theme was that they don't really have any services for homeless people so they don't have enough of them around for it to be a real problem.  But in Billings they have issues.  I learned that they have a "Crisis Center." When people are passed out or dangerously intoxicated on the street they take them to this place and they dry out there for up to 23 hours. They try to refer them to other services. It is primarily funded by the hospital in the interest of keeping them out of the ER.

Crowded Rentals: While waking doors for the campaign recently I got into a conversation about the family definition law. This is a rule that attempts to define how many people can live in a single family house. I have always understood that we tried to do that here but it was ultimately determined to be unconstitutional. I was told that Bozeman has a family definition law and I should look into it. So I asked and it turns out that their law is now being challenged and will likely end up in court.  I'm still trying to get more details and will report back when I learn more.

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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