[MissoulaGov] Committee Update 3-24-10

[Patrick Nooney]

I, for one Missoulian, am getting damn tired of the hateful rhetoric by
those who wish to enslave others.  As a long-time citizen of this community,
I expect the city council to fully embrace the amendment to the
discrimination ordinance.  In absence of that, I would expect the city to
adopt an ordinance requiring businesses and such to post pro-discrimination
notices, so that I for one can avoid patronizing such.  I feel it is only
fair to be forewarned of stealth discrimination practices.

 

The comments regarding "perception" really goad me.  It was not too long ago
when someone was mistakenly "perceived" to be gay and beaten for it.  To
deny such attitudes exist is to lie.

 

We are supposedly known to be a town of peace.  We revere Jeanette Rankin
for her advocacy of peace.  I would expect that we would then universally
stand up against hatred in any form.

 

In a perfect world we would never need civil rights or hate-crimes or
anti-discrimination laws.  We would not need them because we respect the
humanity of all people.  But, as long as one person advocates hatred,
enslavement or destruction of any other person, we need the laws.

 

I appreciate those of you who have stood up for justice.

 

---- Patrick

 

-----Original Message-----
From: missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com
[mailto:missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com] On Behalf Of Bob Jaffe
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 10:44 PM
To: missoulagov at cmslists.com
Subject: [MissoulaGov] Committee Update 3-24-10

 

Greetings,

This morning we started off with the newly reconstituted Economic
Development Subcommittee.  Mayor Engen gave us the longer form pitch for his
Best Place Project. The basic idea is that we have a number of organizations
in town who work on economic development type issues. There is the Missoula
Area Economic Development Corporation, the Montana Community Development
Corporation, The Missoula Job Service, The Missoula Redevelopment Agency,
the Chamber, and the Convention and Visitors Bureau. The theory is that we
need some entity that serves as the umbrella and coordinator of these
efforts. The first steps have been to bring in a couple of consultants who
do this sort of stuff to do an assessment of the community and make
recommendations. 

 

We then moved into Public safety where we set a public hearing to adopt the
new International Fire Code. In the past we have used the Uniform Fire Code.
This code cross references better with our building code. We were assured
there is no significant difference between the two.  There are some changes
coming on the horizon to the Residential Building Code that will be
significant. It is still being considered at the national level so we won't
see it for a while.

 

In Conservation we received an update from the Mount Jumbo Advisory
Committee (MJAC) by Giles Thelan and Janet Sproul. Giles explained the
various activities on the mountain including the efforts to fight the weeds.
There are herbicides and weed pulls and fire and sheep. He said the sheep
are the sexiest of the options and get most of the press. Generally folks in
Montana don't use the words sheep and sexy in the same sentence but Giles
said it at least three times this morning. He also talked about where the
fire retardant was sprayed a few years back. It turns out the stuff
encourages the growth of the annual plants over the perennials. In the case
of Mt. Jumbo this means the cheat grass is taking over in the retardant
areas.  We also talked a little about the fire on Mt. Sentinel. The jury is
still out on whether it was good or bad for the weeds.  It appears that it
cleared out all the duff and exposed a bunch of ground to water and sun. So
whatever seeds were there are what will now grow. There was of course a lot
of invasive seeds but there was also an effort to plant natives. We will
have a better idea of the outcome in a year or two.

 

Our only item in PAZ was the extension and phasing of the Wratislaw
subdivision. This one is at the end of Short Street out in Orchard Homes.
The original subdivision had a deadline of April, 2010.  The request was to
break it into two phases due in 2015 and 2017.  The committee was a bit
concerned about pushing it out this far.  We understand that folks are not
too confident about the market for these kinds of subdivisions right now,
but a lot could change by 2017. Our regulations and expectations for this
area could be different. Generally, when we approve a subdivision we give
the developer a two year window to commit to the project. The request was
amended to accept the phasing request but with due dates of 2012 and 2014.

 

Our main item for the day was in Administration and Finance when we
discussed the discrimination ordinance.  The proposal is to amend our
discrimination ordinance to include protection for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
and Transgender folks (LGBT).  There was an earlier request to also include
protection for veterans but both Dick and Jon said they had received mixed
reviews from the veteran community on this idea. So the veteran part may get
pulled.  

Jon Wilkins came out with strong support for the ordinance. He expressed
some concern about the word "perceive" in this section:  "It is the intent
of the City of Missoula that no person shall be denied his or her civil
rights or be discriminated against based upon his or her actual or perceived
race, color, etc.." He was worried about someone being accused because it
was perceived that they were discriminating. But the ordinance is clear that
this applies to a person who discriminates because they perceive that the
target of their discrimination belongs to one of the protected classes.  So
if you are fired from your job because your boss thinks you are gay, this is
a violation regardless of whether you are gay.

 

The opposition to this has taken three basic approaches. The first is that
homosexuality is a sin and therefore providing equal rights to homosexuals
is also a sin.  Next is the argument that since this would require business
owners to hire and serve homosexuals we are actually discriminating against
the business owners. One guy today even cited Martin Luther King Jr. while
making this argument. The last, and most "sexy" of the arguments is that all
chaos will break out in women's bathrooms.  They claim that this ordinance
will allow any man who is feeling like expressing their feminine side on a
given day to go hang out in the women's locker room at the Y.  It is
probably true a person could do this and claim the ordinance as their
defense. But as far as I know there is currently no law on the books that
prohibits a man from entering a women's bathroom today.  Hell, I do it all
the time. If the men's room is occupied, I'll just use the women's. The
toilet is the same. I just make sure I put the seat down.  Our indecent
exposure law may cover the issue of a guy hanging out in the women's locker
room but the whole thing is really a non-issue.

This ordinance is about providing protections for a vulnerable sector of our
society who suffer a long history of discrimination and abuse. I'm not sure
why folks are so threatened by this. The way I see it is that life is
difficult enough with the standard challenges we all face. Be thankful you
don't have this one on your plate. Why make it harder for them.

 

The public hearing will be April 12th. 

If you want to read more, the ordinance can be found here:

http://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/DocumentView.aspx?DID=3167

 

No shit, the bathroom people actually have a web site: notmybathroom.com

 

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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