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Journal of Proceedings Missoula City Council Meeting October 21, 2019, 7:00 pm City Council Chambers 140 W. Pine Street, Missoula , MT Members Present: Stacie Anderson, Mirtha Becerra, Michelle Cares, Heather Harp, Jordan Hess, Gwen Jones, Julie Merritt, Jesse Ramos, Bryan von Lossberg, Heidi West Members Absent: Julie Armstrong, John DiBari Administration Present: Ginny Merriam, Communications Director, Jim Nugent, City Attorney, Marty Rehbein Administration Absent: Mayor John Engen, Dale Bickell, Chief Administrative Officer 1. CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL The meeting of the Missoula City Council was called to order by Mayor John Engen at 7:00 PM in the City Council Chambers at 140 West Pine Street 2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES 2.1 Minutes for September 23, 2019 The minutes were approved as submitted. 2.2 Minutes for October 7, 2019 The minutes were approved as submitted. 3. SCHEDULE OF COMMITTEE MEETINGS 3.1 Committee Schedule for the week of October 21, 2019 4. PUBLIC COMMENT Doug Grimm said he represents the Upper Rattlesnake Community Forum. About two years ago he talked about a problem and the solution that he had suggested wasn’t really taken at that time. He said if you look at the map up there, look at the coal train and see an arrow where the coal train disappears into the trees, that’s where he almost lost his life several weeks ago. When he was four years old, his father was in a horrific train crash this side of Miles City. A trestle collapsed and he was the first person in the train to survive. He managed to survive that and Doug said he’d hate to see himself get hit by a locomotive that was going 15 miles an hour here in Missoula. There are four streets coming in from both sides of that track where the Madison Street crosses the Rail Link and that people are headed north. People on Spruce Street are headed east. From the north side of the track people are coming down off Waterworks Hill on West Greenough Drive which is also known as Duncan Drive. From the west, coming in north, 1 Second Street East so the crossing arms go down and the traffic for the cars is stopped. You know the traffic is going to stop and a train is coming because about two blocks away the engineer pulls a horn that is really loud. Doug lives a mile from the crossing up the Rattlesnake, and if he’s in his yard, he can hear every train whistle that comes across that crossing. Just before the train engine gets to the crossing, he pulls the horn again and usually doesn’t let go of it until he’s halfway across the street. What is happening is if you come down West Greenough Drive and what happened to him was the crossing arms came down and there were two or three cars ahead of him that stopped at the crossing arm and they all waited for 127 cars to pass them by. When the crossing arms went up, the cars from northwest Greenough Drive crossed the crossing and the first car wanted to make a left-hand turn and go south onto Madison but there are cars on Spruce Street and are trying to cross and they can’t get through. So, the first car, the second car and third car stops, Doug is ending up stopped on the railroad tracks. Acting Mayor von Lossberg said he was sorry to interrupt but they have a full agenda with five public hearings and Doug’s pushing four minutes. He said he and Heidi, his representatives, would love to follow up with him and there are plans in work right now with Public Works around that intersection and they would be happy to go over those plans with him. He asked that Doug reach out to him. Doug Grimm said he saw he saw a train coming at him and he floored his car and jump onto the sidewalk and drove on it. Acting Mayor von Lossberg said we are all glad that he took action to be safe. Un-named person said a lot of us are from Montana so he thinks a lot of people will feel some solidarity when he says that the reason that this is Big Sky Country is because we don’t have a lot of tall buildings. Our monuments are not to man but to nature. The reason people like to live here is because of the canyons and peaks and so much richness to living here, but it’s also trouble to live here when the living expenses are getting out of control. We, Montanans, know that the world is getting bigger and understand that this city is going to grow. With climate change and whatnot, more people are likely to start moving here. The city is going to get bigger. The only thing that a lot of us dispute is how that happens. For some reason the Missoulian has heard this awful rumor that people in Missoula strongly support and indeed encourage the taxpayer giveaway of over $16 million to a Wisconsin millionaire. That ain’t Montanan. He was born in Missoula and so he can speak freely for everyone he knows who is from here when he says that’s not Montanan. If you believe, as Martin Luther King, Jr. did, that budgets are moral documents, then we are obligated to ask ourselves whether it should be our local government’s priority to further enrich local tycoons while homelessness in Missoula is now so bad that we have billboards announcing the exact number of homeless children all over our town. That seems like a strange contradiction to him. A huge number of Missoulians are struggling worse than ever to meet ends meet but it seems that all the City can do is squeeze already desperate taxpayers for just a little more in perpetuity. He said we have all these music venues to get drunk at so we can forget what a dumpster fire our town is turning into. Thank God we aren’t using tax money to a deal with affordable housing. What the City Council communicated to the citizens of Missoula at last week’s meeting is that they don’t care about us. Entertaining wealthy tourists at all costs may be Nick Checota’s prime directive but it’s not shared by the rest of the people who are from here. The City wants him and his neighbors to pay this fancy new eyesore, a venue we don’t need, don’t want and shouldn’t be talking about. There already enough concert venues in this town owned and operated by Mr. Checota: the Top Hat, the Wilma and the Kettle House and he also enjoys exclusive booking rights at the Osprey 2 Stadium. This monopoly behemoth is celebrated as a revolution and touted as a jet engine in the middle of an economic crisis by our local media. Many of us are from Missoula and were born here but somehow have less agency over how our tax dollars are going to be spent because of the constant misuse and abuse of tax increment financing. Troy said if the City continues to abuse TIF by taking tax money from hardworking Montanans, then TIF should be outlawed altogether. Becoming dependent on future gains and projected earnings to pay for existing projects seems a precarious gamble when considering every short period of American history. By forcing Montanans to further enrich a Wisconsinite is just plain wrong and a Wisconsinite that apparently wants to transform Missoula into Austin, Texas. A Sunday article in the Missoulian demonstrated that Orwell meant when he said that journalism is printing something that everybody doesn’t want printed. Everything else is public relations. Congratulations, Missoulians. The best PR a millionaire can buy in a sleepy mountain town. We have nothing against Austin personally but to our elected representatives, we are not Austin. Austin sucks. If Austin is so great, why don’t you move there and leave Missoula alone. We are not Austin. We don’t want to be Austin. We don’t want to be anyplace else other than Missoula because Missoula has sole and Austin doesn’t. There’s a lot of spirit in Austin but not sole. Spirit adds in alcohol. Sometimes that contributes negatively to suicide rates in Montana which is still number one in the nation for suicide statistics, but nevertheless one of Mr. Checota’s primary profit drives is alcohol sales. Look at the state of Seattle or Portland and San Francisco with their homeless epidemics now to proportions that should be declared a national emergency or at least a national disgrace. Policy shapes towns and as we watch Jeff Bezos corporating Seattle, most of us are concerned that Nick Checota is doing the same thing to Missoula. Many of us are concerned the City Council is allowing it to happen. Don’t turn Missoula into a place that nobody wants to live in. Don’t bring your big city problems to our small town. When in Rome do as the Romans do. When in Missoula have respect for the people who live here. Missoulian incorrectly assumes that Kevin Hunt is the only member of the public to speak critically about the project. Hunt’s questions are our questions. Hunt’s questions why TIF funding wasn’t used for badly needed affordable housing. Hunt said that raising property taxes causes people to move out of buildings which causes them to be demolished and then the area is declared blighted, thereby necessitating the use for even more TIF.

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