[MissoulaGov] Committee Update 10-14-09

[Thomas Orr]

    I agree with Mr. Gray.  These fees are nothing more than taxes
disguised as "service fees."  They bear no resemblance to the service
provided by the city yet they discourage good projects and perpetuate
bad, often arbitrary and capricious, decisions by bureaucrats.  
 
    I urge the City Council to reconsider the merits of this fee
structure.
 

Thomas C. Orr

torr at missoula-law.com <blocked::mailto:torr at missoula-law.com> 

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From: missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com
[mailto:missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com] On Behalf Of David V. Gray
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 10:18 PM
To: 'Bob Jaffe'; missoulagov at cmslists.com
Subject: Re: [MissoulaGov] Committee Update 10-14-09



Bob,

 

I find it hard to believe it costs OPG anywhere close to the cost they
are requesting for some fees.  The DRB and BOA are two boards I am
familiar with.  As an Architect I meet with OPG for maybe one hour for
the entire review process to the point of submittal for either board.
The meetings themselves which are staffed by volunteers and a planner
take 3-4 hours.  Add  a few hours to make a couple of copies and write
an agenda.  That should only be in the range of $450 assuming the staff
does not cost more than $50 per hour.  The majority of the copies are
provided by the applicant with the submittal.

 

An appeal should not cost anything if the applicant wins, it should be
deducted from OPG's budget.  This would make sure OPG is held
accountable for decisions they make which are not always based on fact.

 

An appeal of an "Administration Action" should be free.  An
Administration Action is not based on the Laws and Ordinances but what
the zoning officers wants to see occur.  These Administration Actions
have been in the past, and I do not see any reason it should change now,
been so far off base that not one portion of the Action's text can be
found in the text of an Ordinance it is supposedly "Clarifying."  This
has always been OPG's big stick for demanding without recompense what
they want over what is written when it comes to developments in
Missoula.  I have been threatened more than once by OPG that if I did
not change a home or business plans they would issue an Administrative
Action so the project would have to go to BOA to request a variance.  As
you can see the BOA is one of the most expensive boards the City has so
that is a project killer 9 times out of 10.

 

The Pedestrian Overlay district already has several strikes against it
in the Zoning Code.  Why have such a large fee for providing a desirable
development format? 

 

The cost of the Neighborhood Overlay zoning is astounding high.  I have
paid less for cars.  That pretty much writes off protecting any
neighborhoods with that new tool.  What home owner or Neighborhood
Council can afford to pay $4160-$6,760 for this preservation tool?

 

Sincerely,

 

David V. Gray

1731 S. 11th West.

Ward 6

 

 

From: missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com
[mailto:missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com] On Behalf Of Bob Jaffe
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:38 PM
To: missoulagov at cmslists.com
Subject: [MissoulaGov] Committee Update 10-14-09

 

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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