[MissoulaGov] committee update 2-24-10

[Bob Jaffe]

Greetings,
Last night we went on a date in honor of the fund raiser for Conservation Voters. A share of proceeds from a bunch of restaurants yesterday was donated to MCV. We went to Café Dolce and I had their lamb burger with bacon, sautéed onions and feta. Yumm. We got home and watched the USA hockey team beat the Swiss and I forgot all about writing my council update until I was in bed around 1:00am.

In any case we started with PAZ to discuss Lyn's referral about the sign ordinance. It was unclear from her referral or the numerous attempts to gain more information, what she hoped to cover with the discussion. So the only thing the staff was prepared for was to clear up the language regarding mobile billboards.  The language says public transportation vehicles are exempt from the rule prohibiting mobile billboards. There was a desire to make it clear that this applies to taxis as well as buses.

The other issues she wanted to discuss turned out to be window signs and the brightness rules for electronic signs.  The window sign rule says you can put the window sign on the inside of the window. A concern was raised that with tinted glass this would not be visible. No one objected to changing the language to allow for the signs to be on the outside. The brightness rule gets complicated. The bottom line is that there is some question whether the current language has any way to be enforced. This wasn't the sort of thing that could be addressed in committee without any preparation so staff will need to work on that with some of the sign industry folks to see what they can come up with.

These changes and other clean up items will come before the committee in a couple of months to be taken care of as a batch. The overhead for amending the ordinance is such that we don't really want to do it for every little thing individually.

In A&F we had a presentation on how to find all the various finance documents on the city web site. There is a wealth of information there. You go to the city web site; hit departments over on the left; then go to finance.
We also set a public hearing to consider extending the downtown business improvement district for another ten years. As a downtown business and property owner, I consider the $210 per year that I pay for the BID to be money very well spent.
Our other item was to amend our anti-discrimination ordinances to add sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression to the current list of race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, creed,
sex, age, marital or familial status, physical or mental disability.  Our action was to set a public hearing that will be a ways out so we will have the opportunity to discuss it again in committee. I believe the motion to set the public hearing was unanimous. The interesting twist was that Dick brought up that we should also include protections for veterans in the list. So we will be providing protections for gays and veterans with the same action.  This ordinance is an initiative of the Montana Human Rights Network. We had a speaker from that organization and the ACLU speaking in favor. We had a representative from a Christian women's group speaking against it.  She indicated that they had a lot of data showing the ills of these types of ordinances and apparently their group has been active in lobbying against this at the state level. I haven't seen the Missoulian story on this yet but maybe they caught the name of the group.
She mostly spoke about how Christians should not be required to provide services to gay people. She had relayed some anecdotes from other states such as a Christian woman who is a wedding photographer who refused to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony. They sued her and she had to pay $3000.  She also spoke of a case in California where a Hostel owner kicked out some people because they were gay. Why should a business owner be required to provide service to someone whose existence they find offensive?  I find it helps to provide context if you exchange gay and lesbian for black in the two stories.
If you would like to read the details here is the link to the referral:
http://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/DocumentView.aspx?DID=3170

I was five minutes late getting back from lunch and completely missed Public Works. They just approved a sign encroachment permit out on South Reserve.

In COW we discussed how to improve recruitment for our boards and commissions.  The two that we have the most trouble with are Design Review Board and the Historic Preservation Commission.  We were told the HPC used to be a very popular board and it is only in the last four years or so that recruitment has become difficult.  The DRB primarily reviews sign variances among other site specific reviews. Some suggestions were to make better use of our contact lists from the neighborhood councils as these folks have already indicated some interest in government affairs.  We also discussed how to do more to give recognition to our volunteers.

Thanks for your interest,


Bob Jaffe
Missoula City Council, Ward Three
1225 South 2nd West
Missoula, MT 59801
(406) 880-2052


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