[MissoulaGov] Committee Update 9/2/09

[Bob Jaffe]

Greetings,
We had a short day today. Just Public Safety, Conservation, and PAZ.
In Public safety we started with a general update from the police department. Police chief Mark Muir reported that the police had done an assessment of their priority issues. I'm only remembering a couple of them but Mark said he would email me the document. When I get it, I'll share the list.
We also reviewed a summary chart of the arrests from the first half of the calendar year.  Traffic related violations total 10,685 compared to 14,624 Last year (YTD). Non-traffic related arrests are at 5052 compared with 4405 last year.  The simple explanation for the change in the numbers is that traffic stops are essentially discretionary. They do them when they are not busy with something more important. The police force has been short staffed for the last year so they are mostly sticking to the actual crimes and not getting to as many traffic stops. We currently have all of our positions filled for the first time in a while, but there are something like 16 positions that are not fully active. The officers are on military leave, out for injuries, or still in training.
We also looked at the accident history on west broadway. Bottom line there is that post road diet there are many more minor accidents but a reduction in serious accidents. No pedestrians have been killed since the diet either.
Both of these documents can be accessed here:
http://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/DocumentView.aspx?DID=2164

http://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/DocumentView.aspx?DID=2165

Then we discussed the Pedestrian Interference Ordinance.  I made motions to strike the language that was inserted to make it sound like this ordinance was created to help the homeless people. There are valid reasons to want to run off homeless people but we shouldn't be hypocrites about it. Some of those amendments passed, some failed. That's about as far as we got this time. I think there is maybe one more committee meeting needed before this can go back to the floor (Dave says it will be a few weeks before we get back to it though).  There are three prohibited behaviors in the ordinance. 1) Harassing or intimidating people on public property; 2) lying or sleeping upon the street, sidewalk or right of way; 3) Blocking the sidewalk so there is less than X amount of clear passage.

I think I am OK with 1 and 3.   Harassing and intimidating people on the sidewalk is a sort of interference.  Clearly, blocking the sidewalk so there is inadequate room for passage is interference. But I'm not so sure about a blanket restriction on lying or sleeping on the sidewalk.  This homeless thing really is a conundrum to solve but the issue is pretty straight forward. Our downtown businesses have a hard enough time competing with the mall and reserve street. Throw in the fact that you have to see the dark underbelly of society when you come shop downtown and lots of people just opt for the mall. But on the other hand the homeless are people and like it or not they exist and have civil rights.
At one of the meetings Ed described it as people in our society are all expected to have a place to go and a reason for being where they are. The homeless folks don't have either so that creates a problem. I'm not able to support an ordinance that makes it illegal for a certain part of our society to occupy public space. Maybe we could put in some boundaries like X feet from the entrance to a business while it is open.
Another one of the issues is liability. If the purpose of this ordinance is to give the police the authority to engage homeless people who are sleeping on the sidewalk, this creates some liability concerns. If the police engage someone and make them move, and subsequently anything happens to them we have some potential for liability.
We have a few more weeks to think about it so we'll see what we come up with.

In Conservation we discussed the urban forestry program in the context of John Hendrickson's request that we consider privatizing their operation.  Donna Gaukler, the parks director, kept her presentation pretty vague. Hendrickson and my opponent in the council race have been pushing this issue of privatizing city services in comments I have heard at the candidate forums.  I don't buy into the statements I have heard about lazy and ineffective government workers but there still could be merit to the idea of privatizing some services.  If we really want to pursue it though, I don't think we are going to be able to rely on a particular department to tell us that we should fire their coworkers and outsource their jobs. That type of cost benefit analysis will have to come from some kind of outside entity.

In PAZ we tackled the Hillside height standards.  There was much testimony back and forth about the various height methods.  In the end the council voted in favor of modifying the planning board draft to adopt the "envelop" method of measurement. This says that the height of the building at any given point must be within X feet of the existing grade.  So if the zoning district allows for 30 foot buildings it can be 30 feet tall on the downhill side of the building and 30 feet tall on the uphill side. So it can step up with the grade.  It was clear that many residents in the south hills won't be too happy with this but this is pretty much how we measure it now and a majority of council was not in favor of making it more restrictive. Those neighborhoods can pursue the neighborhood character overlay at some point in the future if they want something more restrictive.  My position moved around some during the course of this debate but in the end I voted for the envelope method.

We also reinstated the lot line house language. This allows for someone with multiple lots to set them up so the internal lot lines can be right up against one of the buildings instead of splitting the difference in the middle of the two houses. The purpose is to create a usable side yard instead of two spaces too small to do anything with.   For some reason this completely benign issue got a lot of attention during the planning board debate. Most of the arguments I heard against it were completely unrelated to reality. The planning board must have decided it wasn't a battle worth fighting or maybe it was some kind of bone to throw. Whatever their reason to take it out, a majority on committee today thought the idea had enough merit to bring back in to title 20.

It is conceivable that we will actually finish the review of the zoning rewrite the next time we meet. There are just a smattering of housecleaning sorts of items to take up.

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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