JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS MISSOULA CITY COUNCIL APRIL 13, 2009
CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL
The meeting of the Missoula City Council was called to order by Mayor Engen at 7:00 P.M. in the Council Chambers at 140 West Pine Street. Present were Alderwomen Hellegaard, Marler, Mitchell, Rye, and Walzer and Aldermen Childers, Haines, Hendrickson, Jaffe, Strohmaier, and Wiener. Also present were Commissioners Landquist and Carey. Also present were Chief Administrative Officer Bender, City Attorney Nugent, Public Information/ Communications Officer Merriam and City Clerk Rehbein. Alderman Wilkins, Finance Director Ramharter and Commissioner Curtiss were absent.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
Minutes of the regular meeting of April 6, 2009 were approved as submitted.
SCHEDULE COMMITTEE MINUTES
The following meetings were announced:
Wed., April 15, 8:00 – 9:00 AM Public Safety and Health (PSH) Wed., April 15, 9:05 – 10:00 AM Conservation Committee (Cons) Wed., April 15, 10:05 AM – 12:00 PM Plat, Annexation and Zoning Committee (PAZ) Wed., April 15, 1:05 – 2:00 PM Public Works (PW) Wed., April 15, 2:05 – 3:00 PM; Committee of the Whole (COW) Mon., April 20, After the council meeting; Tues., April 21, 3:00 – 5:00 PM Wed., April 15, 3:05 – 4:00 PM Administration and Finance Committee (A&F) No Meeting Urban Wildlife Subcommittee (UWS) No Meeting EIS Peer Review Subcommittee No Meeting Economic Development Subcommittee (EDS)
PUBLIC COMMENTS - None
CONSENT AGENDA (1 ROLL CALL VOTE) 1. Approve claims totaling $ 471,597.17. (Detailed Claims) (Chart of Accounts) (A&F) (04/14/09) 2. Approve the Riverfront Neighborhood Council Bylaws as amended. (memo) 3. Approve the extension request for the Windsor Park Phase 7 Subdivision phasing plan amendment to March 28, 2011 in accordance with Article 4-7(2)(A-C) of the Missoula City Subdivision Regulations. (PAZ) 4. Approve tabling a decision to adopt permanent zoning for certain unzoned parcels in the upper west Rattlesnake Valley. (PAZ) 5. Table an ordinance to rezone property located at Rattlesnake Valley Lincoln School Cultural Center from R-8 (Residential) to P-2 (Public Lands and Institutions) as an interim urgency measure, pursuant to Section 76-2-306, MCA. The property is legally described as Lots 1, 2 and 13 of the School House Addition (within the Park Addition), Section 14, T13N, R19W. (PAZ) 6. Approve the Mayor's appointment of firefighter trainees Dave Smith, Justin Walsh, John LaRocque and Jamie Porter as Confirmed Firefighters for the City of Missoula. (PS&H) 7. Set a public hearing on May 11, 2009, to consider an ordinance creating Chapter 5.45 Missoula Municipal code entitled "Ambulance Services" Sections 5.45.010 through 5.45.100 to establish regulations for ambulance businesses operating in the city of Missoula and repealing Chapter 5.44 Missoula Municipal Code entitled "Ambulances" in its entirety. (PS&H) 8. Approve the encroachment permit at 218 East Front Street. (PW) 9. Approve the purchase of one Energy Absorption Systems, Vorteq; Traffic Attenuator to Coral Sales Company of Portland, Oregon, for $15,582. (PW) 10. Approve the purchase of one (1) 2009 Land Pride 72‖ Grass Seeder from Big Sky Kubota of Missoula, MT. for $9,872. (PW) 11. Approve the purchase of three (3) used mini pickups from Montana Mini-Trucks of Shelby, MT. for $23,900. (PW) City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 2
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Rehbein. Chief Painter, would you like to add something this evening?
Fire Chief Painter said, Mr. Mayor, Councilors, Commissioners, with your permission, I’d like to introduce you to the four firefighters we’ll be asking you, as part of the consent agenda today, to confirm as firefighters with our department. Dave Smith, right there. Dave Smith was born here in Missoula. He graduated from Bozeman High School but came back to U of M where he obtained a Psychology Degree. He moved to Colorado to pursue a career in the fire service, working for an ambulance service and then as a firefighter for the Fire Department in Littleton for 10 years during which time he also obtained his paramedic certification. Dave and his wife, Michelle, have two children including Hamish Bradford-Smith who was also officially a native Missoulian arriving here last August. Justin Walsh. Justin was born and raised what he claims was a little town in Northern California. He attended community college there before coming to Missoula to finish his education by obtaining a degree in Business Information Systems from the University of Montana. He started his career as a firefighter and EMT in California before becoming a smokejumper and wild land firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service. He has traveled both domestically and abroad but enjoys the abundant outdoor activities and the quality life he has found here in Missoula. John LaRocque. John was born in Great Falls but moved to Missoula as a youth and attended grade school in Bonner and graduated from Hellgate High School. He also attended UM where he obtained a degree in Health and Human Performance. And during his summer he worked as a seasonal wild land firefighter for Nine Mile Ranger District. John has also supported our community by working as a volunteer firefighter for East Missoula and as a counselor for Missoula Youth Homes. He enjoys hiking, fishing, camping and hunting but confesses that his favorite activity is taking walks with his beautiful wife April and their son, Kyler who just turned one and their yellow Lab, Riley. And Jamie Porter. Jamie Porter was born and raised in Oregon, left home to attend Santa Clara University where she obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry with an emphasis in Biochemistry and a minor in Religious Studies. During her time in Santa Clara, Jamie also worked as an assistant to Santa Clara’s Basketball Program and helped raise funds for improvement to the Pediatric Hospital at the University of San Francisco Medical Center. Jamie also found her way to firefighting by our wild land fire agencies working for the Forest Service as a Financial Officer, Arson Investigator and Fire Prevention Officer in addition to wild land firefighting. She has worked as an EMT for Marcus Daly Hospital’s Ambulance Service and taught wilderness emergency medicine. She loves the outdoors, is active in her church and her family’s woodcarving business. She enjoys being close to her family which consists not only of her parents and her sister, but two yellow Labs, Junior and Belle. These fine folk have successfully completed the training requirements for confirmed firefighter. They have received positive performance appraisals from their training officers, their company officers and their respective shifts battalion chiefs and I’m proud to recommend them for confirmation. I believe they also are, with good reason, proud to be part of our team. I would like to thank all of their co-workers for helping them toward that end as well, especially our Training Division and ask that you confirm them.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Chief. I see a number of those co-workers are here this evening. Thank you for swinging by. Are there any questions or comments on any of the items on the consent agenda? Anyone in the audience dare to wrestle the microphone away from Chief Painter to comment on any item on the consent agenda? Seeing none, Ms. Rehbein will have a roll call vote on the consent agenda.
Upon a roll call vote, the vote on the consent agenda was as follows:
AYES: Childers, Haines, Hellegaard, Hendrickson, Jaffe, Marler, Mitchell, Rye, Strohmaier, Walzer, Wiener
NAYS: None
ABSTAIN: None
ABSENT: Wilkins
Motion carried: 11 Ayes, 0 Nays, 0 Abstain, 1 Absent
[applause for the new firefighters]
City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 3
COMMENTS FROM CITY STAFF, AGENCIES, COMMISSIONS, AUTHORITIES, AND COMMUNITY FORUM
Robin Spaziani, Bike/Ped Board, stated that the Board has had the opportunity in the past month to address several different issues. One of which was brought to the Board from a group of citizens concerned about the safety of the C.S. Porter School crossing on Reserve. They are working toward getting a grade separated crossing there and the Board has drafted a letter of support for that grade separated crossing. In the meantime they have sent a second letter requesting an immediate speed reduction from Mount to South and any other interim measures that they can take such as the school crossing signs to increase the visibility of that crossing and make it safer than it is. Another issue is the bike lanes on Orange Street between First and Florence. The bike lanes actually don’t exist there. They exist on either end but a spot in the middle does not have any bike lanes. Also there is a four-foot shoulder there with fog lines demarking the shoulder from the road but they feel it isn’t really safe there because no one really knows what a bicyclist right is. The law is clear but people, in general, don’t know that it is the bicyclist right to ride on the road rather than the shoulder. And if you’re on the shoulder then you don’t have the right to go through the intersection and somebody can cut you off when they make a turn. It isn’t a safe situation. So they drafted another letter requesting the inclusion of standard five-foot bike lanes when the permanent striping is done in June on Orange Street. A copy of that letter has been passed out to the Council. She read into the record the paragraph where they explain that the fog line demarcated shoulder does not provide bicyclists protection per Section 618-320 of the Montana Annotated Code, right-of-way within a designated bicycle lane. This is especially important for a bicyclist who has no legal right-of-way when approaching a red light. For example, at Third Street, in the shoulder lane, as a result cars intending to turn right at the light may legally cut off the bicyclist because the bicyclist is not in a legally defined bicycle lane. If the lane were the full five feet and properly denoted as a bicycle lane, right-turning motorists would be legally obligated to yield to bicyclists in that lane, so they feel that would greatly improve the safety of bicyclists there. A third issue that the Board have addressed is the cell phone ordinance that is coming before the Council tonight and she’ll wait until the public hearing opens on that to comment. Another issue is Walk Bus Week is coming up April 25th to May 2nd and they have over 100 sponsors and participating organizations this year. On April 29th at 2:00 p.m. they are having the 10th annual Pedal Versus Metal Errand Dash which is sponsored by the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Board.
SPECIAL PRESENTATION Sentinel High School DECA Day
Mayor Engen proclaimed April 23, 2009 to be Sentinel High School DECA Day.
PUBLIC HEARINGS
Resolution 7412 Joint public hearing with the Missoula County Commissioners on a resolution to expend up to $31,000 of 2006 Open Space Bond proceeds, plus the prorated share of taxes, to fund city purchase of approximately 59 acres on the east side of MT Jumbo adjacent to the Mountain Water Tower, known as the Yawle property, for open space purposes. (memo) (Cons)
Commissioner Carey said, I’ll go ahead and call to order the public meeting of the Missoula County Commissioners and before I open our hearing on the resolution to expend Open Space Bond proceeds, I’ll just point out that Commissioner Curtiss is unable to attend this meeting. She’s welcoming her first grandbaby into this world as we speak. And I’ll go ahead and open our hearing on the resolution.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Commissioner. And we have a staff report this evening on a resolution to expend up to $31,000 of 2006 Open Space Bond proceeds, plus the prorated share of taxes, to fund city purchase of approximately 59 acres on the east side of MT Jumbo adjacent to the Mountain Water Tower, known as the Yawle property, for open space purposes. And, barring any additional technological difficulty, we’ll have a staff report this evening from Ms. Corday.
Jackie Corday, OPG, said, good evening, Council members and welcome County Commissioners Carey and Landquist. Tonight we are looking at a potential purchase approval for a 59-acre parcel on the east side of Mount Jumbo, so let me orientate you. The parcel is 59 acres right here. This is East Missoula. City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 4
Here’s I-90 down here. Here’s Highway 200 and, of course, the Rattlesnake over here. In the light green is all of Mount Jumbo City Open Space, approximately 1,500 acres. And the darker green is a County public park, about four acres that was dedicated with the Hidden Trail Subdivision, which is right here. And so the access to the 59 acre-parcel is through the four-acre County park, then through a parcel owned by Mountain Water Company and the water tower is right about here. And so this basically one- lane gravel road comes up off of a public street, comes up through the County parcel, through the Mountain Water parcel and then there’s your access. So it is currently being used right now by folks in East Missoula to be able to walk up that gravel access road and get a nice view of all of East Missoula. And…but they can’t connect to the open space right now because this is all private property, of course here and here and, of course, right now this is still private property, so this is about all they can do is come up like this. So about…let’s see, oh, it’s already been almost a year since Kate Supplee, who was the former Open Space Program Manager, came to OSAC and asked us to consider purchase of this 59-acre parcel, and she represents the owners, and the owners are Yawle LLC. And the purchase price, at the time, when it was first approached to OSAC back in the early 2000s was quite high but this time when they came back in 2008, it was more reasonable and we finally settled on $500 an acre so it’s a very reasonable price for us to be able to purchase it. The property is not developable but it is private and doesn’t allow any access. So the main reasons we would be purchasing it is to, one, to consolidate our open space on Mount Jumbo, to include that in our management. It does have a very healthy and good native grass community all up in this area. It has excellent wildlife habitat all through it. The forest is in fairly good shape as well. So we would be buying it for consolidation. We would be buying it for excellent wildlife habitat, and then also for the possibility of being able to connect the trail from here, this is the first switchback off the road, and if you went from the same elevation where that switchback ends over to the U.S. West Trail, which the switchback on the U.S. West Trail is right here, if you come along through there, it would make an excellent connection to the U.S. West Trail and that U.S. West Trail runs all along the south toe of Mount Jumbo over into East…or West Missoula. And so it would provide a very nice connection for folks in East Missoula to get over to the Rattlesnake on that trail. So that’s what we hope for in the future. I do have an appointment set up with this property owner to talk to them about that and they are open to the idea and just want to talk about what that would involve. And so right now there are no structures or any roads on the property other than the one road that fades out after it makes that first switchback. So let me show you what the property looks like in pictures. Here is the OSAC Committee out on the field taking a look at it and so that is looking to the north, to the Mount Jumbo Saddle area. Here is looking straight up the property to the Mount Jumbo Summit. And here is looking as it wraps around to the southwest. And then this is just…you can see how the road switches back right there, and then t just continues for a little ways more and then fades out. Now, one of the things that’s…I want…that’s important…I wanted to point out to you is in the resolution, is that because the trails were going to potentially be a very important aspect of why we would purchase this property, I felt it was important, first, to go to the Park Board since the Park Board is the entity that approves any new trails in our open spaces, and I wanted to make sure that they were in favor and would support having these trail connections. And so the trails that we potentially looked at again was a trail coming off of that switchback and connecting to U.S. West, then we looked at potentially something like this that would eventually come up to the saddle. Of course you would need permission from both of these property owners. And then another trail potential was coming up to the summit. So, one of the things that was important to look at was the wildlife issues because this particular…I…just my time being up on the mountain I knew that this particular valley was very important to wildlife, lots of mule deer, winter elk range and you just don’t have people going up into this area. It’s very steep and the summit trail comes up over here. And so I contacted Bob Henderson at Fish, Wildlife and Parks to talk to him about that and ask him what would be the impacts of having a trail come straight up here, and he was very against it. He felt that that would be a very negative impact to the wildlife. Also it’s very hard to maintain a trail that zig-zags like that, way up to the mountain. So for those two reasons, we presented that information to Park Board and they voted basically to say that they did not want to see trails going straight up to the summit, but they were in support of these connections here and if we got permission from the property owner, eventually to have one come up to the saddle area. And OSAC members also felt the same way after they received that information. So what you see in the resolution, in the second to the last paragraph, it basically explains that information and puts it into the resolution, and the purpose of that is so that 10 years down the road when maybe none of the same folks are in the same position anymore, that institutional knowledge will be there in the resolution. And so if it’s questioned again at that time should there be a trail, they’ll have that information that they really need to look at…take a hard look at that before putting a trail up there and these are the reasons why. And the other…last thing I want to address is that it was really important to the City to make sure the homeowners at the base of the subdivision were supportive of this project. This is the Hidden City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 5
Trails Subdivision and this is the access point. This is part of the County park. The County park comes right down to the public street, and then this is part of the County park right here, and that gravel trail goes up to the water tower. So because it was going to be right…the access point right in their neighborhood, I wanted to make sure that they were in support of this. So, I actually waited about six months until the Homeowners Association formed so that I could go and meet with them. And I did that in January, met with the full Homeowners Association Board and they were very supportive of it. They did have some concerns about parking and dogs and the waste pickup, so they asked us would we install a mutt-mitt in this area here with basically what we call the mutt-mitt station with the bags and a trash can, and we said yes, we would do that and service it. And then the other issue was about parking. As you can see, the streets are not that wide and it’s fairly dense housing. And so one of the things we looked at is when you have a trailhead like this, it’s essentially…the people that are going to be attracted to it are the ones that live there, the ones that are right there in the neighborhood, mostly they’re going to be walking and riding. That has been our experience for the past 10 years with trailheads to open space when they’re small neighborhood trailheads, not when they’re big major ones like the one up on Lincoln Hills or the one on the North Hills, but for smaller ones like this that’s what we have seen. We have not seen problems with parking. You can see that it comes to access that you come off Highway 200 onto this public street Staple and then this is Discovery Way. There is no housing here so it’s possible that if there are cars that come, this is one place where they could park. The Homeowners Association President wrote and asked about what we could do to address parking problems if they do in fact come up in the future and I wrote him back today, after talking to Donna, about it and wrote him an email and said what we could do. One of the things could be, I think one of the things that could help is actually having a bicycle rack right here in this flat leveled area to make it easy for people to ride their bikes there and lock it up and then continue walking, because it is fairly steep. Not everybody is going to want to ride their bike continuing on up the trail. They may just want to walk it. We could also put a sign there and say…ask people to please park down here or on Staple instead of right in front of the houses. There are things that we can do to work with the neighbors if those issues come up. So I just wanted to put that out there and let you folks know that we were thinking about it. I think I’ll just leave it to that then for questions.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Corday. At this point, would anyone like to comment on this proposed resolution, please step to the microphone and let us know you name and what’s on your mind.
Tim Aldrich said, I’m a member of OSAC and I wanted to just say a couple of more things. Jackie pretty much covered the field, I think, in terms of the details of that property and a lot of reasons that we think it’s a great property for the City to have. There was unanimous support for this, by the way, with OSAC. I think that, in addition to being just another piece of a very, very important cornerstone for Missoula people, it has that attribute of it’s now accessible from the east side and I think that’s something that we’ve kind of been lacking in some of the areas. And this is a great opportunity, as far as I’m concerned, to provide that kind of an access that will be used by those people that are in that developing area that’s on the east side of Mount Jumbo. I was raised a block from Bonner Park and lived a lot of my life on Mount Sentinel and I have seen how people use Mount Sentinel and how that use of Mount Sentinel has expanded once the City and the University came together on things like that. Mount Jumbo very much the same. I think these places are so important for people just to get a little sweat on their bodies and go up there and clear their minds a little bit after a tough day at work or climb clear to the top and look over this great piece of territory that we all live in. So, this property acquisition really makes Mount Jumbo even more of an asset for all of the people of Missoula and I mean all of them so I strongly encourage that we go ahead with this. Thank you.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. Aldrich. Anyone else care to comment?
Donna McCrea said, I’m the homeowner that lives directly across from the trailhead and I just wanted to say that while I am very much in support of the purchase of this property, I have concerns, as a homeowner living across from the trailhead, there is already a very difficult time for us who live in the development to find parking and the little narrow area that you were shown is the access that Mountain Water has to get up to that tower, and people are already parking in that area, which means that then Mountain Water cannot get up to that tower if they need to. My third concern is the number of young children that live in that neighborhood and live directly across from that trailhead. And so my hope would be that if this is approved that the County and the City, if that’s what it takes, work with us to be sure that the traffic is decreased, that the people who come through go slowly, and if we have problems in that City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 6 neighborhood that people come and help us out because there are probably ten kids under the age of eight that live right near that trailhead, and the traffic is really a concern for me.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. McCrea. Anyone else?
Brian McDonald said, hello. Thank you for this opportunity to join the meeting and comment. My name is Brian McDonald. I’m the Treasurer for the Hidden Trails Homeowner Association. As Jackie mentioned, she came and met with us in January of this year and that was the first official meeting of the Homeowners Association Board and pretty much our first issue that we’ve ever dealt with as a board. I think Donna did a good job of expressing our support for the purchase of this land but also looking ahead to if and when that trail becomes a possibility and the connection becomes a possibility, issues with parking and increased traffic, and Jackie also mentioned issues with waste and dogs and things like that, but I just wanted to come tonight to reiterate, I guess, our support of the purchase of the land and just hope and put it out there that when and if the trail does become a reality that the Homeowners Association Board can be a part of the planning and problem identification and issue and solution process. I just would like to add another comment that might help with some of these concerns is that the Homeowners Board has recently made contact with the County about some of the ongoing road and parking issues, and so we’ve opened that dialogue up to try and resolve those and hopefully we can work through those in concert with any trails that are being proposed. Thank you.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. McDonald. Yes, ma’am.
Lisa Thomason said, good evening, my name is Lisa Thomason. I live directly at the trailhead. When you were looking at the map my house is the one…if you’re looking at the trail, it’s directly on the right, so I have had numerous and consistent problems with people using the trail and parking and dogs. I would probably be your largest user of the poop bags picking up other dogs’ waste. I do not own a dog so any dog waste that’s in my yard is clearly not mine. Parking of large trucks, dropping off multiple animals are seen consistently blocking the road and access up to the water tower, which is another concern. We already currently have a parking issue at the area that was pointed to at the beginning of Discovery Way. The trailer park that loops up behind our development is a private road. They’re limited to one vehicle per trailer so second vehicles have discovered they can park on our street because they’re not allowed to on theirs. So we already have that area that they’re thinking is going to be used for public parking, is already being used as public street access for the private road that goes up behind us, which is another issue. I’m very concerned about the parking, very concerned about the use. We’re already seeing…I’m the one that shoos the people off the road so that Mountain Water could get up there should they need to. They don’t know about that but I’m the one who steps out my back door and says, excuse me, that’s an access road, you need to put your truck somewhere else. So…and I would really like that job to be passed onto someone else. My last concern is of the grasses. From the water tower down to our neighborhood right now it’s been attempted to be reseeded from that road reconstruction. Both reseedings have failed. It is now nothing but dirt and knapweed and a bunch of netting that kind of hangs there. And if you drive by, you can’t miss that large brown area at the base of the water tower. I would love it if the County or City purchases this. If they could try a third time to successfully get something to grow up there because it is an erosion issue and obviously unsightly. But my first concern is with the parking and people using that trail. There is not room for a bike path, a bicycle rack up there, if you expect a large Mountain Water truck to get up past that. If there were bikes on there, that will be an issue. They’ve always been driving on my property for as long as I’ve lived there. I have an Iris bed that goes up my garage and they are consistently run over by trucks and they’re within 12 inches of my foundation. So, the public is pretty rude when they come and park and use that road, so I’m very, very tentative of this being expanding upon without a lot more issue and thought put into parking in particular. I’m not opposed to trail systems, mostly imposed to impact on the neighborhood itself. Thank you.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Thomason. Anyone else care to comment on this item? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing for the City. Commissioner Carey.
Commissioner Carey said, I’ll close the County’s hearing.
Mayor Engen said, and I’ll entertain questions from Council or Commissioners.
City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 7
Alderwoman Mitchell said, this is probably for Jackie. Are trail bikes and mountain bikes allowed? Do people take their mountain bikes up on the mountain now? And what there is there?
Jackie Corday said, I’m going to go back to one of the slides so we can…let’s see…
Alderwoman Mitchell said, while I’m asking you, Jackie, but maybe the neighbors have a better feel for it than we do.
Jackie Corday said, yes, if somebody wants to get up after me and answer that one. The U.S. West Trail is the one that comes…let’s see, let me go back to this one. It comes around and it’s an actual gravel road and so, yes, that is used consistently by bicyclists and because this is also a gravel road, the thought would be to connect it with probably about a three-foot, four-foot wide gravel trail that could be used by both bikes and hikers to make that connection, so you could ride your bike all the way on this gravel…on the gravel road over to Missoula. So that would be the intent on that trail. On this, if we ever do get permission from this property owner, it would just be a small hiking trail. That would not be a bike trail this way. The reason why this is appropriate is because it already is a gravel road that bikes use.
Alderwoman Mitchell said, well, my question was, out of concern for people that do like to ride their mountain bikes on mountain trails and then they just kind of come down the side wherever they…wherever it’s daring enough and fun enough and so I just wondered how much of a problem that would pose.
Jackie Corday said, well, the only way to get down off of this is this gravel road. This is an extremely steep talus slope. It’s just rocky and it goes right into the…I mean eventually it comes down to the back yards of the houses in this subdivision. So there’s no way that, I mean, they would do that. They will, you know, come straight down here and right on out into the subdivision is what most likely happened.
Alderwoman Mitchell said, so there’s no way someone could just come whizzing down there on a bicycle. I know up on the South Hills they come down by the Youth Home. I couldn’t tell you how fast they’re going but I just shudder thinking if they ever crashed, it would be really bad.
Alderman Haines said, for Jackie. Could some of the funds that are being used to purchase this also be used to develop a parking area that would be signed and be clear to the public where to park and where not to park? I can’t believe that would be that big of an investment and it certainly sounds like the purchase of this land would not be complete without making arrangements of that kind.
Jackie Corday said, well, the only issue is that there’s no place to create a parking lot like there was with the Tower Street property. We bought that property, it was at the end of a dead-end road and people were also concerned about parking. And because we bought 80 acres, we had space to create a small parking lot whereas here this is a County park and this is fairly narrow so right now, when we went up there to do our field trip, it looks like what most…a lot of people do is there’s room for one car here. It seemed like there was room for one car here and still being able to get by. If somebody parks right in the center of it, yeah, there’s no way that you could get by and get up the road. So it sounds like people do that. They just park right in the center of it. But we can’t do a parking lot there. This is common area for the subdivision so we couldn’t do one there. I…yeah, I just don’t know where we would do that. And plus I wanted you to know that, you know, there’s similar trailheads that have even way less use. Think of Cherry Street, Maurice Street for Mount Sentinel and Poplar Street. None of those have parking areas and those get a lot more use than this particular trailhead is ever going to get.
Alderman Haines said, follow-up. The concern I have though is you’ve already tonight heard several citizens out there talk about the impact this is having on them, and I don’t know how the existing or present day use of that trail how that compares to some of the other places you’ve mentioned, but it seems to me that we’re going to have a problem we’re going to have to solve later if not sooner. And I don’t see why we don’t deal with it now rather than wait until it becomes a festering sore which it obviously is going to be, a lot of tough on some of those people that live out there. The other concern I have along those same lines is if that’s blocked off not only is that a detriment to access by Mountain Water but that also could be an access to put out a fire on that side of the hill, and if you have cars parked in the way, you’re not going to be able to get an engine up there.
City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 8
Jackie Corday said, yeah, I did ask Donna about that. It is in the County so it would up to somebody calling the Sheriff’s Department, writing down their license plate and calling the Sheriff’s Department and saying, this license plate is parked right in the center of an access.
Alderman Haines said, I don’t think that’s a good way to go.
Jackie Corday said, yeah.
Alderman Haines said, we can figure this out without getting to that level I think.
Mayor Engen said, further questions?
Commissioner Landquist said, I tried to send the Council members the letter that the Commissioners received from the Hidden Trail Homeowners Association and our response but from the Council people that I’ve checked with, they apparently…the email did not go through. Did you get it? Some of you did get it. Oh, good. Some of you didn’t and I don’t know why but I tried twice so I apologize for those of you that didn’t get it. So I’m glad to see that some of the people from the Hidden Trails Subdivision are here and making comment. I’m glad that most are in support of the purchase of the open space, although you do recognize the parking issues and traffic and access blockage that does exist there already. We have sent you a response and we are waiting to hear back from you as to how we go about to at least begin to mitigate for those problems which would include various types of signage. Just so you know that ball, at this juncture, is in your park as far as how we go about signing that and I realize that the area is very narrow. I am, however, concerned for the City acquiring the open space. I think it makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways but I do think that it’s important that at this point to be City open space and affect County residents that we have some sort of agreement that we work together to resolve these issues that will be impacting these people because of the access that’s needed to the water tower and for fire purposes and safety. I think that that’s very important and I really liked Mr. McDonald’s suggestion for the Homeowners Association to be invited to be a part of the planning for that open space should this go through. I think that that would be a wise decision to make. I think that’s about all I want to throw out there. But, again, I want to remind the Homeowners Association that the last thing we said in our letter of response back to you is that we ask for you to inform us in writing of which of these options that we threw out to you, to address the parking, so we have some sort of basis to proceed. So that falls in your park right now folks.
Mayor Engen said, additional questions?
Alderwoman Marler said, I had a comment, which I’ll hold for the comment portion but, Jackie, could you talk again about the Mountain Water facility and I wasn’t clear if they own part of the property, the part that needs to be re-vegetated or if that’s an easement and who is going to be responsible for that troublesome area?
Jackie Corday said, the troublesome area is especially through here. It’s owned by Mountain Water Company so it’s not something that we can spend the money on.
Alderwoman Marler said, we’re not buying a big mess that we have to vegetate?
Jackie Corday said, no, we’re not. All of the property that we’re buying would be up here and it is not in that kind of state at all so…
Alderman Jaffe said, it looks like the letter from the Homeowners Association suggests that there’s the covenants of the subdivision prohibit parking at all on the street. Is that…I just want to be clear about that. Is that the case, that maybe someone from the Homeowners Association could clarify that?
Mayor Engen said, Mr. McDonald, I’ll ask you to come to the microphone please, sir.
Brian McDonald said, I don’t know the covenants word-for-word but essentially every…well, I can’t say every because there are a few exceptions but there is off-street parking that is provided to most of the homeowners in the subdivision. Whether they choose to use that off-street parking is…I don’t think anything that we can…we can try and control that and enforce that but, I mean, those are public roads so people can park there. City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 9
Alderman Jaffe said, okay, so it’s…
Brian McDonald said, there is off-street parking provided for whether it be garages or driveways but a lot of people choose not to use those.
Alderman Jaffe said, alright but as far as you know on-street parking isn’t prohibited.
Brian McDonald said, no, it’s prohibited, yes. Yes, it’s prohibited.
Alderman Jaffe said, so on-street parking is not allowed.
Brian McDonald said, no, sorry, on-street parking is allowed. Yes.
Alderman Jaffe said, okay, thanks.
Mayor Engen said, any additional questions?
Alderwoman Walzer said, I understand it’s a County park but do you know how large that park is? I’m kind of… so far, from what I understanding, is the current issues are over access to the County park. And now whether or not the addition of the open space would compound that or not it’s uncertain but wondering if, you know, to me I know when we talk about buying parkland or developing parkland, this doesn’t seem to be a very great spot for a park and so I’m kind of concerned and wondering about how big is this, what are the plans? Is it just going to be a grassy area that just met some sort of set aside for parkland development or what? And maybe this area, if there’s topography available, could help with some of the parking issues.
Jackie Corday said, the County park is four acres and I spoke to Lisa Moise who’s kind of my counterpart in the County early on in the process and asked what was their intent for allowing that to be dedicated because it is steep. I mean, it’s level right here and then it immediately goes up to steep and this area is all probably 20-plus slope for sure. What they had envisioned was eventually potentially this 59 acre becoming part of the open space and they saw that as, you know, really great access to get to that, and so that was eventually what the thinking was at the time. So this four-acre piece can’t help with parking at all; it’s just too steep.
Mayor Engen said, any additional questions? Seeing none of those, Commissioners cannot act on this item this evening. Council could act contingent upon approval from Commissioners, and I’ll leave that up to you all. Ms. Marler, what’s your pleasure this evening?
Alderwoman Marler said, I’d like to make a motion, Mayor Engen. I move that we pass a resolution to expend up to $31,000 of the 2006 Open Space Bond proceeds, plus the prorated share of taxes, to fund city purchase of approximately 59 acres on the east side of MT Jumbo adjacent to the Mountain Water Tower, known as the Yawle property, for open space purposes, and I’d like to speak to the motion. I do think that this is a good opportunity for the City for trail connections and to expand that part of the Mount Jumbo open space and I’m really glad that the neighbors, the East Missoula neighbors, came and told us about your frustrations. I hear and I can imagine vividly your frustrations that you have. I feel optimistic that by bringing this in to part of the…more into the City parks open space family, if you will, that Morgan Valliant and some of his staff are really going to be able to help with some of those problems, and I hear you. Those are real problems that we deal with but I think that it’s going to make it more visible and get it a little bit more attention than it is now, so I’m happy to support this motion and I want to thank everyone for all the work that went into it. And thanks everyone for coming and telling us honestly what the situation is out there so that we can get it some attention.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Marler. That motion is in order and is contingent on Commissioners’ action. Discussion on the motion.
Alderman Haines said, I’d like to offer an amendment to that. I don’t know if you’d accept it as a friendly one or not but I’d like to make it contingent on developing a parking plan. And aside from that amendment I would also point out, and Jackie, looking at the pictures you gave us there that one switchback that’s City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 10 grassed in and the people who have walked up there and are walking back, it looked to me, and I may be off a country mile on this without having been there, but it looked to me like it would not take much to flatten on that area in that little bit of a saddle and make a parking area. I’d be glad to come up there and show you how to do it.
Jackie Corday said, let’s make sure I understand where you’re talking about. Are you talking about up here?
Alderman Haines said, no, no, no.
Jackie Corday said, no. Because…
Alderman Haines said, go to the other pictures where you show the people walking on the grassed in road.
Jackie Corday said, okay.
Alderman Haines said, that’s the area.
Jackie Corday said, that area? Oh, okay. That area, where they were standing, is that switchback and no, there’s no room and plus you would be bringing cars up on to this narrow gravel road. Right now it only maybe twice a year does Mountain Water go up there and I’m sure they want to keep it that way as far as cars being on that road.
Alderman Haines said, okay, my proposed amendment still stands. I’d like to have this contingent on solving the parking problem.
Mayor Engen said, alright, we have a proposed amendment. Ms. Marler.
Alderwoman Marler said, I’m not sure how I feel about that, Mr. Haines, just because it seems like a lot of times real estate dealings are…, and, you know, with that City real estate deal and the County has to be involved, it’s kind of complicated already. I’m confident that we can work out a parking issue but I don’t think I’m ready to accept it just as a friendly amendment because it makes things complicated, but thank you.
Mayor Engen said, alright. We’ll have discussion on Mr. Haines’ motion to amend.
Alderwoman Mitchell said, I also would feel better about approving this if we took care of that situation so that the people near the trailhead are not inconvenienced. We do this with a lot of our planning and we ask for conditions and I see where, because of the people who live close by and are going to be impacted by this, why we shouldn’t consider taking care of that problem before we go ahead. I do support the trail but I think we would be wise to also mitigate any problems that we already foresee that seem to be very real.
Alderman Jaffe said, I wanting a little more clarification on the amendment, development of a parking plan or resolution of the parking problem. It seems like you said it a couple of different ways.
Alderman Haines said, thank you, Mr. Mayor. What I’m looking at is it wouldn’t have to be something developed but have the plan to go forward on how the parking problem would be solved. I don’t know, maybe they just need to put signs up out there or clean up some weeds or whatever but it seems to me we’re leaving the people that live there with something that’s a problem they can’t solve without help. And I’d like to see that decided before we say this is going to become public property.
Alderman Jaffe said, okay, so then decided by Parks Department or…okay. I think I see it a little more of Marilynn’s perspective of the idea that we want to move forward with this deal. We want to try to complete the transaction. I think we…but I’m in agreement that we should address the parking problem but not…I don’t want to make it a contingency of the purchase that we would direct our Parks Department to proceed with that. I think we could make that very clear to the Parks Department that we want that pursued and I’d be comfortable, I think, just doing that is adequate. City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 11
Mayor Engen said, and with regard to the parking, Commissioners, you’re currently…you and staff are working on resolving street parking issues and others as well?
Commissioner Landquist said, we are, but like I said we’ve kind of thrown that idea back to the…we’ve given the Homeowners Association a couple of different ways that we could work with them on that and we’re waiting for them to get back to us. And, as I suggested to the Council a little while ago, I think between what the Commissioners are willing to try to do with the Homeowners Association regarding the parking issues and if the City takes up Mr. McDonald’s offer for the Homeowners Association Board to be a part of the planning process, I feel pretty confident that we could work something out that would be mutually beneficial for the park and the folks living there.
Mayor Engen said, Mr. Haines, does that give you enough comfort?
Alderman Haines said, Mr. Mayor and Madam Commissioner and Mr. Jaffe, I don’t have a problem with that. The concern I had and the reason I worded that amendment that way is I didn’t want to see us let the issue hang and we go ahead and get the land and then nothing happens after that. I think Mr. Jaffe’s point is well taken that maybe we need to go ahead and consummate this purchase but let’s have some kind of a roadmap ahead of us on how we’re going to deal with that so these people out here aren’t left with…parked in their flowerbeds sort to speak.
Mayor Engen said, well, and I’d certainly ask our staff to be as open to resolving those issues as we could. So are you interested in withdrawing the motion to amend?
Alderman Haines said, I would do that if I thought I had good strong commitment from everybody to do something about the parking. Yes.
Mayor Engen said, Commissioner, would you offer a blood oath at this point?
Alderman Haines said, I would accept that.
Mayor Engen said, alright. That motion is off the table. Is there further discussion on the main motion?
Alderman Hendrickson said, I’ll support the motion since Mr. Haines withdrew his amendment, but I would have supported the amendment. I think the time to deal with this is before the consummation of the deal, not after the fact, and the property owner should know that their concerns are being met and, you know, we do have concern with that but as long as the Commissioners, as a group, have signed a blood oath, not just Michelle by herself, I will support it.
Mayor Engen said, further discussion on the motion. Seeing none, we’ve had a public hearing on the motion. Ms. Rehbein, will you count the roll please?
RESOLUTION 7412
MOTION
Alderwoman Marler made a motion to adopt a resolution to expend up to $31,000 of the 2006 Open Space Bond proceeds, plus the prorated share of taxes, to fund city purchase of approximately 59 acres on the east side of MT Jumbo adjacent to the Mountain Water Tower, known as the Yawle property, for open space purposes.
Upon a roll call vote, the vote on Resolution 7412 was as follows:
AYES: Childers, Haines, Hellegaard, Hendrickson, Jaffe, Marler, Mitchell, Rye, Strohmaier, Walzer, Wiener
NAYS: None
ABSTAIN: None City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 12
ABSENT: Wilkins
Resolution 7412 carried: 11 Ayes, 0 Nays, 0 Abstain, 1 Absent
Mayor Engen said, and that motion carries contingent on actions of Missoula County. Ms. Supplee, thank you for bringing us a deal.
Public hearing on a resolution of intention to close and vacate certain portions of Miller Creek Road and Lower Miller Creek Road generally located between Briggs and the ―Wye‖. (Resolution A) (Resolution B) (Staff Report) (map-6 MB file size) (memo) (PW)
Carla Krause, City Public Works Department, said, I’d like to start the public record by giving a little bit of history that has led up to the request for this vacation. The public right-of-way easement that’s the subject of this petition tonight was created by a citizen’s petition or two citizens’ petitions beginning about 113 years ago. And the easements were created then to assure public access into and out of the Linda Vista and Miller Creek area for those original citizens and for future citizens of that area. During that long length of time the exact location of the easement became confused and forgotten by a series of circumstances that were beyond the control of yesterday’s citizens or today’s property owners. The result is that over that long period privately owned structures began to encroach into the right-of-way easement without the knowledge of either the property owners or the City and County. Five of those properties that are adjacent to the right-of-way are within the City’s jurisdiction and those property owners are part of a larger group that has petitioned for the vacation of all of the old right-of-way easement. But our responsibility tonight lies with the five that are within our jurisdiction. The right-of-way easement in question came to the attention of City Public Works Department during the City’s efforts to build an expanded complete street to serve the residential growth in the Linda Vista and Miller Creek area. And this complete street project is currently placed on pause so that research of this right-of-way vacation could begin. There are certain responsibilities that the City is required to carry out according to the Montana Code Annotated Section 7- 14-4114, the City Council may discontinue a street or any part of a street in the City if it can be done without detriment to the public interest. The City also has a policy and it’s Missoula Municipal Codes…that’s a tongue-tier, that came out of Council Ordinance #2997 which recognizes that public rights-of-way are granted to the public and are then held in the public trust for the benefit and use of the public. The policy also recognizes that there are situations and circumstances that exist for right-of-way vacation may take place without taking away the public’s benefit. The City’s policy has outlined steps for carefully evaluating whether a particular portion of a right-of-way can be vacated without harming the public’s benefit. That is gathered and then provided to Council prior to making the decision to vacate the right-of-way or keep it. And some of those steps have been followed and I’ve got the results of the staff’s work to fulfill the goals of the policy. The first thing to do is a site specific review of the vacation proposal and a comparison of the benefits and losses that would affect the public, and by public meaning the citizens that own the property that’s adjacent as well as the citizens that may need to use that right-of-way. City Engineer attempted to comply with the policy, that part of the policy, by arranging for a survey of the old public right-of-way to ascertain the full affect on the property owners as well as what it’s going to do to the public use. And the survey shows that the impact on property owners is significant but that a total vacation could also be considered detrimental to the public by giving up the right-of-way necessary for the current and future anticipated growth in all modes of traffic into and out of that area. The next thing to look at is any potential for intended use of the public right-of-way if the vacation were to be approved. The survey clearly shows that the private property owners would be able to continue their current uses with a full vacation or with a partial vacation, however, it shows that public uses would best be served by a partial vacation. The next thing to look at is the location of existing utilities that may occupy any portion of the public right-of-way vacation area for easements must be retained by State statute. And there are utilities that are located in this area that are protected by existing utility easements as well as by State law and these would not be affected by either a full or a partial vacation. The next thing to look at is alternatives that might be available in lieu of vacation of all of the right-of-way, such as a partial vacation or maybe allowing temporary uses by private property owners. The City has a history in the past of using partial vacations as an alternative in order to assist property owners that are impacted by right-of-way and yet avoid the loss of essential right-of-way for the public’s use. The engineering survey shows that a partial vacation of that old right-of-way would be possible. Another thing to look at is the financial and other impacts to the adjacent property owners if the vacation were to be approved and the right-of-way were to City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 13 revert to private ownership. Typically with dedicated public right-of-way when it’s vacated and reverts to the owners, they begin paying City taxes on it and for some folks that can be a deal buster. Staff’s research on the private property owners adjacent to the right-of-way that are in the City show that there would be no increase in the property owner’s taxes if the right-of-way is vacated or not. The reason being that it was formed as an easement. Easements are counted in the total square footage of the property for taxation and for some other purposes. Another concern is creating properties that would be noncompliant. They would be legal non-complying properties for setbacks with a vacation. In this case again because they…it is an easement rather than dedicated public right-of-way, the easement is already counted in their total square footage. It has already been applied towards meeting their zoning and setback requirements and that wouldn’t change whether it’s vacated or not. The next part is to look at the extent of the proposed vacation and I do have an exhibit that helps…may help to understand that and if I’m able I would like to use the little pointer that shows the hand to show you what I’m pointing at. The first property that’s in the City limits that is of concern is 4705 Miller Creek Road and then we have 4755, 4775, 4865 and 4875, both of these being on Lower Miller Creek Road after the road creates the Y. The first parcel in this line, the 4705 Miller Creek Road, the petitioners have requested to vacate a width of 25 feet of the old easement, which would be the full width of the easement. City staff, based on what the survey is showing in regards to potential public use, would like to vacate something slightly less at about 17 feet which would retain eight of the original old easements footage to be used for right-of-way improvements for the various types of traffic that’s expected to impact that road now and into the future. The next two parcels, 4755 and 4775 on Miller Creek Road, have 23 feet of easement across the frontage of their two parcels. Based on the survey, 21 feet would be what City Engineering would recommend, keeping two feet of the old easement for future street improvements. And then the last two parcels, the request by the petitioners is the same as the staff recommendation. There is no need for the portion that’s being proposed for vacation here to be altered for future improvements. So based upon the City’s policy and the research findings, City Engineering is recommending a vacation of approximately 80% of the old right-of- way and retention of what would be about 20% of the old public access easement to continue providing some sort of reasonable public access into and out of the valley now and into the future. And other considerations that went into that recommendation included recognizing that the property owners and the City are caught up in a situation that was beyond their knowledge and control, and recognizing that a vacation would be a fair thing to assist these affected property owners and that retention of a small portion would also fulfill the responsibility that the City has to protect and maintain public access for other citizens that live in the area. The fact that the survey shows the ability to vacate most of the old right-of-way and that retaining that small portion will allow current…the current in progress project to proceed and would prepare so that the City could provide a future four-lane when the citizens in the area are in need of it. And based upon the above, Council has been provided with two choices to look at tonight: Resolution A that describes a 100% vacation of the old right-of-way easement as the property owners have requested and Resolution B that describes an 80% vacation of the old right-of-way as recommended by staff in order to retain that eight feet, two feet that’s needed for the future four lane. In order to complete a right-of-way vacation the City has begun by proceeding with State statutes. On March 23rd they adopted Resolution 7405 stating Council’s intention to consider the vacation proposal and the scheduled public hearing. On March 29th the City Clerk put legal notices out and the staff posted the vacation site and that’s also required by State statute. On the 30th began the first day of a 15-day public comment period that was observed. No written comment was received in the City Clerk’s office. And Council is now conducting the requisite public hearing. The last step would be to adopt one of the resolutions vacating the right-of-way or to deny the request. The City Public Works Director is here and he would like to comment on the staff’s recommendation. And that concludes my part of the staff report.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Krause. Mr. King.
Public Works Director Steve King said, thank you. I wanted to go on record for the public interest in a portion of this right-of-way as Ms. Krause has just described. There’s two sources of documentation for public need for a portion of the existing right-of-way. The first document is Environmental Impact Statement for Miller Creek Road Access Improvements, that is a final Environmental Impact Statement produced by the Federal Government upon request of our Metropolitan Planning Organization for the community’s transportation needs looking into this neighborhood. The EIS looked at the Comprehensive Plan for the area. It looked at existing and planned subdivisions. It also reviewed existing road systems, bicycle systems, pedestrian systems, transit access into the neighborhood and the EIS conclusion, the recommendation, was to build an expanded Miller Creek Road as a complete street. The planning level document looks at the largest potential footprint for the need of access and that largest footprint that was City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 14 identified on the planning level was for a five-lane roadway. That’s two lanes northbound, two lanes southbound and in the middle a two-way left turn lane in the center. The second document is the project level review. As Ms. Krause stated, we’ve been working for some time on this project as a City Public Works project in cooperation with the County of Missoula. And the project level engineers have refined and reviewed the Environmental Impact Statement taking a closer look at the Comp Plan, the subdivisions and particularly a close look at properties adjacent to this stretch of Miller Creek Road; it’s illustrated on the exhibit on the screen. The recommendation from staff is not for five-lane but for a four-lane roadway, two lanes in each direction, northbound and southbound and the elimination of the center of a fifth lane, the elimination of the two-way left turn lane. The four-lane system, our recommendation would satisfy access long into the future and it also meets access to the adjacent property owners as anticipated for land uses, both current and future proposed adjacent. So four-lane is what we’re recommending, a minimal of retainage of the existing right-of-way. Both of the EIS document and our City planning or project level review identified a public potential need for a portion of this existing right-of-way. I wanted to go on record with those documents. Recommendation from staff is to retain a portion of the right-of-way as noted in Ms. Krause’s report and that’s Resolution B. Thank you.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. King. And I’ll open the public hearing. Would anyone care to comment on the resolutions before this body this evening?
Lauren Gray said, I live at 4775 Miller Creek Road. The property adjacent and 4755 Miller Creek Road is owned by my mother- and father-in-law. We’ve seen a need for a long time to do something with the road. I am not against making improvements to the road at all but when we built our house 16 years ago it was with all of the proper documentation. We went through the City and they did all of the surveying they needed to do so that we knew where our property was. And now with this easement we’re being told, oops, 100 years ago there was this easement that now we own more of your property than you thought you did when you built your home. It just flat isn’t fair. Again, I am not against improvements to the road but I think that the City should stand by their original easement. If it becomes necessary to do a four-lane road down the road, the City is going to have the authority to purchase that extra two feet or whatever it is that they need. It’s not, I mean, it’s two feet but I think that the City should stand behind what we were told that we owned when we built our home, and I guess that’s basically all I have at this point. Thank you.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Gray. Anyone else care to comment this evening?
Bob Cole said, I guess I don’t have to introduce myself then.
Mayor Engen said, please do. I happen to know you, Bob but…
Bob Cole said, my name is Bob Cole and I live at 4805 Miller Creek Road which is the County part of this easement vacation. I’m here on behalf of the City folks because the whole vacation that you’re talking about is really three parcels. Eight feet doesn’t sound like an awful lot but if you were to take a look at the house that is farthest up…whatever, that way, behind you, which would be north, the farthest north house, eight feet comes right up next to their house. It also comes up right next to an awful lot of places that are in the County along this. The City wants a partial vacation to extend all the way through the County part also and all the way to the north up here where it gets up to the Carters which is almost to Briggs Street, that’s almost 11 to 12 feet, and so if you guys don’t vacate the whole thing and vacate just the part and then the county doesn’t vacate, these don’t do you any good. It doesn’t do you any good for building the road or whatever. So, I think you’re kind of getting the cart in front of the horse here. I think you should let the County decide what they want to do before you guys vacate since they are the major landowners. If they don’t vacate it or if they vacate the whole thing, your three parcels are useless to you. So, the County really is in the forefront here. Also they talk about the four-lane road being what is most important about this but if it doesn’t get vacated, that property has a cloud over it forever because it is a public easement, which means that any time anybody can come in a run utilities down it, they can do anything they want with it as long as they have approval from you guys. I do not trust that it is a 20-year plan out the way that they will use this four-lane road to go through. If they build the three-lane that’s going on right now, I think that that is substantial for a long time out. I don’t think you need a four-lane. Of course they want to build as big as they can because you guys don’t want to put a bridge in but I think the bridge is what we really need. So, to put a five-lane or a four-lane in here…or a four-lane in here right now would be way too much. You guys survive with a two-lane on 39th Street both ways; it gets much more traffic than this does. There’s no major entrances to this road, to this section of road here other than just a few people getting City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 15 out of their driveways or Briggs Street. So, once they finish the intersection up at Miller Creek, Upper and Lower, and they get something done with 93’s intersection down there, this traffic will flow just fine, no problem. All the open land that’s around the area will all be drained off of, as I’ve been told since I own some of it, off onto other roads, like Orchard Street, and they won’t give us access to Miller Creek to drain any subdivisions that we have because they want it to go out through the different areas. So, a four-lane road is overkill and to just let them have this little tiny bit of easement , you think, is a cloud on all the people that bought their houses. The Carters, just as an example, live up at the very end. They’re both 90 years old. They both have to go into a assisted living place and they want to sell their house. They can’t sell their house with a cloud over it like that because there’s 11-foot easement sitting on the front of them. So what you’re doing is somebody that’s paid taxes to Missoula County for all these years and believe that they own this place all of a sudden they can’t sell their house. They’ve been there for 90 years or well, I mean, in the area for 90 years and all of a sudden you guys are looking to take away what was their lifetime earnings. So, as far as Mr. King goes, saying that he wants a four-lane to go through there eventually for the access of all the people above is something that they should have looked at it at the very beginning. It brings back the point of the open space that we’ve discussed here. Once again the cart is before the horse. You’re not solving the problem of the parking before you do the initial thing, and I think that’s a big problem that we have in the City and the County. So, I guess that’s all I have to say.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. Cole. Anyone else?
Vickie Gordon said, I live next door to the lady that stood up first. And they’re talking about two feet in the front of my property but that two feet is pretty important to me because right now I can barely, just barely, get out of my property safely. If that two feet’s gone plus the other portion that they’re going to use on the three-lane, it will take my carport driveway out, it will take out my fence, it will take out my rock wall and it’ll take out part of my stairway, so I won’t be able to get out. That’s the truth. So it’s not just two feet. It impacts me pretty heavily. The other thing I want to say is they’re talking about this as part of the existing road. They said this is Miller Creek Road. Well, it’s part of the easement but it’s never been used, the 30 feet has never been used I don’t think in the whole 113 years they’ve ever used it because there’s a huge gulley that would have prevented that, and it’s been there, I would say, the whole time. The other thing is that the knowledge of this easement has been lost. We’ve talked about that. The book was lost. The knowledge was lost I believe by 1905 because in 1905 they added 30 feet to the other side so it is 60 feet wide but 30 is from here and 30 is from here. So the fact is that all of us made all of our property decisions and the people before us, you know, somebody owned my house before me and somebody before that based on a lack of knowledge. So, to come up at this point and say, oh, well, guess what, this is the case now puts everyone in a bind and creates…well, it creates a lack of value for the homeowners. The other thing is there’s open space across the street from us in most places. That would not affect those owners as much as it affects us. It does affect the home you live in, the place you raised your family, the place you drive out of every morning, it’s open space. It could be used. And I think to look at the other side is the intelligent thing to do. And finally I would like to say, what Bob was saying, is that the people up this way are really…it will be impossible for them in many ways to live there at all. I know some of you came out and looked and it goes through some of the houses. It touches the front wall of my house. Yes, they don’t want to keep all of it but as I said, even that little bit will make it impossible for me to get in and out. It’s not inconsiderable. It sounds small, two feet, but added to what they have now it’s not small. And finally I would like to say that the real problem is the intersection with 93. The traffic flows very well on the evening as it goes south. Nobody’s backed up; they’re backed up at the intersection so that’s where it should be mitigated is getting out there. Last fall they painted some lines and it made a huge difference, a little bit of paint because that’s the sticker, so I think some thought needs to be put to that solution instead of, you know, how wide can you make the road. You know, they’re talking as wide as Reserve Street. I think that’s the only road in town that wide. Anyway, I’m going to…
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Gordon. Anyone else this evening?
Deb Cole said, I just want you all to be aware that we all had title insurance on our properties and in our title insurance it says that we’re protected against any easement that wasn’t available, that wasn’t on the title. And nobody, the title insurance couldn’t find those…that easement. Apparently it’s been available this whole time according to the Deputy County Attorney or whoever he was so then that means that the title companies were negligent so if we all go to our title insurance companies, which I plan on doing if this whole thing isn’t vacated, then they’ll get their attorneys to try and prove that that easement was not available, that they couldn’t have found it and so that could tie up the project for I don’t know how long, City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 16 and I’m sure all my neighbors will go to their title insurance companies too because we have also been paid for at least one other easement in the past by the County. So they were not aware of that easement or they wouldn’t have paid us for the additional property that they wanted. So, I think that’s something that the County Commissioners and the City Council should consider is the fact of, you know, some very important impending court cases.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Cole. Anyone else?
Chris Dahlberg, 4703 Miller Creek, said, it’s the house with the blue line going right through the kitchen. Even a partial vacation of this would bring the road right up to my house. I’d have to…walking out the door I’d have to look both ways so I didn’t get run over. Any retention of this would be devastating to us. As far as the worth of our land, we’d like to sell some day. We’ve got two young kids one of which has autism and we’ve talked constantly about the dangers of living that close to a busy road and we’d like to move somewhere where there’s less traffic and less danger. This cloud hanging over our property would make it virtually useless to us so I’d like you to…really urge you to consider vacating the whole thing.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. Dahlberg. Anyone else care to comment this evening?
Jim Calcatera said, first of all I want to thank you for all your time. I live on the corner of Miller Creek and Rio Vista and essentially next door to the Dahlbergs. Chris, who just spoke here right before me. And it is amazing not only what the 1895-96 easement does to the Dahlberg house but even this partial City proposal, I like I said, I live next door and it’s really an impact on those people. Not only them but of course more people down the road, the Grays, then around the bend down there, Norm and his wife, Balko, of which the original easement went right through their particular house. I had a garage hobby shop built in ’07, little over a year ago and I got the proper permits and I had to be setback from the property line 10 feet, both south and from the east side. And right now the original easement, 1895, goes right through the middle of that garage a little more than half. And with the proposal that the City has it’s right next to the garage within about 2-1/2 to 3 feet and that doesn’t give much space between the property that I have right there versus that proposal by the City. And essentially it’s my understanding, I don’t know if there’s a State law, City or County that if you have a lot, an individual has a lot and you go to build a house or a structure like a garage, you have to be set back a certain distance from the property line, and I don’t know what that is altogether but that should be taken into consideration due to the fact that the City’s proposal is going to gobble right up almost adjacent, right next to properties, which there’s no setback at all to speak of. I also feel that the three-lane roadway that the City has proposed here directly they have a boulevard associated with that and if they have to in the future, which I question it like Mr. Cole over here, if they have to put in four lanes, why can they not use the boulevards? There’s two six- foot boulevards proposed for that three-lane and I guess in their planning I feel that they should take that into consideration to develop the three lanes and consider if they have to go to a four lane, which I hope they don’t or that I question whether we need, they could remove the boulevards and put that fourth lane in there. The other thing, and again like to emphasize what Bob Cole indicated, the amount of property impacted by the City is very, very minimal versus the County. And the impacts on everybody, it’s pretty drastic. And I don’t know, for some of you people that haven’t been involved with something like this, but just try to place yourself in their shoes. Looking back at an easement that came out of the woodwork last year in ’08 that’s 113 years old. The other thing I’d like to indicate is that the amount of traffic coming out of Miller Creek of course is huge. It is surprising, I don’t know if you have any counts or how you could even handle it, coming out of Miller Creek at the Highway 93, but there are a large number of cars going, heading to Lolo. I grant you that some of those come out of Wal-Mart but there are a lot of cars…I’ve seen cars backed up as far as Briggs and even further south that had their directional lights on heading toward Lolo. That’s an indication to me…I don’t know where they come from to be honest with you. It seems, you know, I kind of question that but they’re there. And one thing that I brought up before, you know with the stimulus money that’s…I realize a lot of those programs have been already proposed and I saw one on the television around…the other night associated with the City, and that’s great, but we need that bridge and in turn there might be the right time right know, I’m no politician but to somehow come up with the monies to put that bridge in. Again the number of vehicles…and I think there will be people back here that will back me up on that. It’s not all day long. It’s only certain times of the day but there are a huge number that go up toward Lolo. In relation to vacation of that 1895-96 I favor vacating the whole thing, not partial, not what the City proposes but I favor vacating the whole thing. And like somebody’s indicated, if need be in the future they could go to the east. I realize there will be some impact on about City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 17 three or four property owners over there but a lot less than the people on the west side of Miller Creek Road. I appreciate your time and thank you.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. Calcatera. Anyone else this evening? Seeing none, we’ll close the public hearing. Are there questions from Council?
Alderman Strohmaier said, yeah, I’d like to hear from Steve King as far as his thoughts on the utility or the desirability of potentially down the road moving the road alignment to the east as opposed to utilizing the existing right-of-way without vacating the entire thing.
Steve King said, we’ve looked at both sides of the road and in fact the current project, we haven’t talked much about the current three-lane project, but the current three-lane project acquires a substantial amount of right-of-way on the east side. There is a direct cost. It’s several tens of thousands of dollars to acquire the right-of-way on the east side for the existing project. It is possible that right-of-way could be acquired on either side of the roadway. It is a matter of tens of thousands of dollars and part of our responsibility in Public Works is to recommend to the elected officials the most economical and efficient way to build a roadway and in this case utilizing existing public right-of-way instead of purchasing an equal amount of right-of-way across the road, if you will, for tens of thousands of dollars is not something we’d recommend. It is physically if not financially practical but it is perhaps not financial prudent as a recommendation from staff.
Alderman Hendrickson said, hypothetically if we hadn’t stumbled upon the 1895 easement and we needed to expand the road, would we go east or west for further expansion of Miller Creek?
Steve King said, we’re going on both sides, east and west.
Alderman Hendrickson said, I know we’re doing that now but I said if hypothetically we didn’t have that easement on the west side and we needed in the future, say 10, 15 , whatever years from now, would it be more advantageous to go to the east or go to the west?
Steve King said, to the west as recommended. So on the east side, they’ve got a substantial acquisition on the east side currently and it would be where we’re acquiring…just could use an example number, 15 feet on the east side today, our recommendation is to retain two feet on the west side. We’ve also looked at the best alignment, not only for these frontages but as you go to Highway 93, we’ve talked about the intersection with Brooks Street and how you go to the north of Briggs, between Briggs and Brooks, and the west side is the most practical way to go. So that’s part of what the EIS looked at, part of what we reviewed and confirmed with our project level was the west side is the recommended expansion for future projects. Current projects, expanding to the east.
Alderman Haines said, Steve, the EIS hasn’t been finished yet on the…it started out to be an EIS about a bridge location, has it?
Steve King said, the record of decision has not been done. All of the work is done as far as the final EIS has been published and the record of decision is pending on the FEIS.
Alderman Haines said, what did they recommend for the number of lanes on this piece of road?
Steve King said, five lanes.
Alderman Haines said, they recommended five?
Steve King said, yes.
Mayor Engen said, further questions?
Alderman Wiener said, my question is for the Commissioners if it’s appropriate for them to answer it now that would be great. But I’d like to know what your schedule is for taking action on this item so we have the option of returning it to committee to wait for that or to presumably condition whatever motion we make on your action. City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 18
Mayor Engen said, procedural question, I can handle that. Commissioner Carey?
Commissioner Carey said, maybe Commissioner Landquist knows when we’re scheduled to hear this again but I don’t know, Councilman Wiener. It’s obviously coming up soon but our Public Works Director, Mr. Greg Robertson and WGM Group are working on what they hope will be a kind of compromise that will satisfy property owners but we’ll have to wait and see.
Alderman Wiener said, so you don’t have a staff recommendation yet?
Commissioner Carey said, no, not the most recent one, unless something happened. I’ve been gone for a couple days last week.
Mayor Engen said, further questions? I have to take questions from Council people, Commissioner. The 29th is when you’ll consider it?
Commissioner Landquist said, I think so.
Mayor Engen said, thank you.
Alderwoman Mitchell said, did I read that you’re taking this up on Wednesday, April 29th?
Mayor Engen said, further questions?
Alderwoman Walzer said, and I just wanted to clarify, we talk about right-of-way, you’re not talking about the actual curb going up to right next to somebody’s house. Are we talking about sidewalk and boulevard and then curb whether it’s a three or four lane?
Steve King said, that’s correct. There’s a substantial buffer of the…from the back of the sidewalks several feet to be able to build the sidewalk, five-foot sidewalk, a boulevard area, a bike lane and shoulder area before you reach the travel lane.
Alderwoman Mitchell said, Steve, these are scheduled to be on both sides of the road, design for both sides?
Steve King said, yes, that’s correct, those features on both sides of the road. And if I could, the features of the boulevard is practical for snow storage. If you recall just recently on 39th Street we had a very difficult time with a limited curbside sidewalk and snow storage blocking parts of the lanes, I want to remind…the very practical need for the boulevard.
Mayor Engen said, additional questions? Seeing none, what’s your pleasure, folks? Mr. Wiener?
Alderman Wiener said, I’d like to send this back to committee and at least review the County staff recommendation before we decide any action to take.
Mayor Engen said, fair enough. Any sense of when you might want to consider it again in committee?
Alderman Wiener said, presumably we could look at it on the 29th, simultaneous just before their…well, it wouldn’t be before theirs so we probably want to wait until the first week of May, which would…
Mayor Engen said, okay. Mr. Wiener has exercised his prerogative to return this item to committee for further consideration. That’s where it will go. Thanks for turning out this evening, folks. We’ll move on to our final public hearing of the evening.
Public hearing on an ordinance amending Title 10 entitled "Vehicles and Traffic" Chapter 10.20 entitled "Operation of Vehicles" by adopting and establishing new sections 10.20.300, 10.20.310 and 10.20.320 generally prohibiting the use of hand-held mobile telephones and other electronic communication devices while simultaneously operating a motor vehicle or a bicycle. (memo) (PS&H) City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 19
Mayor Engen said, the chairman of the Public Safety and Health Committee, Mr. Strohmaier, has informed me that he intends this item to committee as well later so if you’re interested in testifying another time or getting more information, that opportunity will be available. Do we have a staff report this evening?
Alderman Strohmaier said, yes, indeed. So, Mayor Engen and Council members, I bring before you tonight a draft ordinance that would essentially, with some notable exceptions, prohibit the use of hand- held cell phones or electronic devices while driving a motor vehicle or riding a bicycle within the City of Missoula. A little background. I bring this before you today for three main reasons. One, over the past number of years hearing from constituents that this is a concern of theirs throughout the City. Secondly, my own personal experience validated by both being in situations, close calls where I’ve either been a pedestrian or a motor vehicle operator myself and have nearly gotten hit by other folks talking on their cell phones or witnessing such instances from other drivers as just a bystander or I will admit it, there have been those times where I myself have tried to dial my phone or talk on my cell phone while driving and I can attest it is not particularly a wise thing to do and I think it’s an extremely dangerous activity to engage in. What I’m proposing tonight is not particularly novel. There are at least five states throughout the country: California, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Washington state that have fairly far- reaching cell phone bans that are applicable to all motorists. Washington, D.C. also has a similar city- wide cell phone ban as does the Virgin Islands, and a number of other states have various permutations on prohibitions that aren’t across the board applicable to all drivers. Besides personal experience also there are a number of studies that I’ve seen that definitely re-enforce and validate the dangers associated with using cell phones while driving. For instance, one 2008 California AAA report noted that by comparing cell phone records for crash-involved drivers, there is actually a quadrupling of the crasher risk by those using cell phones. Simulator studies have also demonstrated, in some of these studies, a similar quadrupling affect of the crash risk. As some of you may have seen, and I don’t always read this but we here recently received a Montana Department of Transportation newsletter that had an entire section devoted distractions related to cell phone use. And I’ll just cite a few of the statistics off of here that I think are particularly salient for tonight’s discussion. For instance, one 2006 University of Utah study, which measured driving skills under three different conditions: unimpaired, using a cell phone or dosed with vodka to the legal limit. What that study found was that the level of impairment caused by talking on the phone exceeded the impairment of a blood alcohol content of .08 which is the legal limit in Montana. Also the odds of getting in a crash are four to five times higher if the driver is talking on a phone, that is 400 to 500% higher and 800% higher if the person is texting on their phone. The driver’s brain prioritizes a conversation over the task of driving. Using an electronic device as such is substantially more distracting than many typical distractions such as turning up the heat or using other internal control mechanisms in the vehicle because your brain is much more cognitively engaged in the act of talking with someone than it is lifting a cup of coffee, for instance, to your lips, which can be done with relatively few brain synapses. So, I think the studies are pretty clear and confirming what I think many of us know already or have experienced already. Some questions have come up in previous discussions that I think are worth clarifying and help speak to my rationale in crafting the ordinance the way it is before us tonight. For instance, some might have some hesitancy because a state-wide cell phone ordinance has not already been in place. And admittedly I, when I first started working on drafting this last fall, had heard that there were some state legislative bills in the works and I wanted to see what would become of those before bringing this forward. But one of the interesting things in some of those bills, such as Representative Bob Lake’s House Bill 49, which actually died in committee in the House, what that did was focus on first and second-class Montana cities. And what that means is in State statute a second-class city is any city between 5,000 and 10,000 people in population. Over 10,000 is a so-called first-class city. So even…at least one of these bills before the Legislature was really not a state-wide ban in that it was applicable to every single roadway in the state of Montana but it was also focused on cities recognizing that there are those stretches of Montana highway where you might not see someone driving for a considerable length of time whereas that’s definitely not the case when you’re driving in one of our cities or communities in Missoula. What does this ordinance say or do? As I mentioned it’s generally applicable to any cell phone use while driving a vehicle or riding a bicycle. There are three exceptions, if you will, that I’ve incorporated into the ordinance. First, emergency use of a telephone or electronic device, dialing 9-1-1, a hospital, etc., you can still do that. Use of a cell phone or electronic device by law enforcement or emergency services, personnel, ambulances, fire, law enforcement that is still allowed under the existing language in this draft ordinance. And finally the third exception is use of two-way mobile transmitters or receivers. If you’ve had a chance to look at the ordinance, there’s also a schedule of penalties involved also that would be applicable to violations of the ordinance. I think that pretty much covers my rationale and I think there may City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 20 be another…a number of questions that some Council members may have and would like to discuss more in committee so like the Mayor mentioned, I will be sending this back to committee for further discussion but I would certainly like to hear what the members of the public have to say tonight.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. Strohmaier. At this point we’ll ask folks in the audience who are interested in this topic to step right up and tell us what’s on your mind.
Mike Fellows said, good evening, Mayor and members of the Council. For the record my name is Mike Fellows and I happen to be chairman of the Montana Libertarian Party. And I stand before you to oppose this ordinance. These types of laws I think are difficult to enforce and in reality maybe we should just ban the irresponsible driver. Do we really need one more reason for law enforcement to actually pull us over? I’ve seen various studies on this issue. One study comes from the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Joint Center of the organization at least the working paper looking into the link using cell phone while driving and accidents and applying new data methods that go further than previous studies, says Adrian Moore who’s Vice President of Research. He says the paper has three key findings. Number one was that safe drivers tend to use hand-free devices already so once you take that out of the effect of the statistics it turns out that mandating of hands-free devices won’t reduce accidents. The second he points out that the effect of using a cell phone while driving, it depends on the person and so previous estimates of the risk involved using cell phones while driving don’t take into account this observation may be overestimating the risk by 36%. And finally he points out that when more non-cell phone related differences in drivers are included the effect of cell phone bans on accident risks become very small and uncertain. So much so he says that a ban on cell phone use while driving will have no effect on accident rates. This should not surprise anyone, he says, even the cops who see accidents which involve cell phone use. Bad driving is the problem here and bad drivers will more often use cell phones irresponsibly. He points out that insurance and liability pressures are more likely to cure the problem than a cell phone ban which punishes all of us good drivers too. And I do use the cell phone once in awhile. But I think education more than anything will help dealing with these issues than simply passing…we saw it during some of the past legislative hearings over in Helena where they passed annumerical speed limit law that was supposed to reduce the deaths on our highways. They’ve made the promise of that, that really hasn’t happened so I think laws won’t work. I urge you to vote no on this ordinance. Thank you for your time.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. Fellows. Anyone else care to comment?
Josh Patterson said, I have a business here in Missoula, a construction company in general and we do site work for the City of Missoula and other municipalities. And one thing hat we find is often we’re required to provide emergency contact numbers in our contracts to those who need to get a hold of us. And all of my employees carry cell phones. I did some quick math while sitting here listening and on the phone that I have that’s maybe, if I’m lucky, 18 months old, I had 49,000 minutes of cell phone use which is all business or primarily business-related. I would say 80 to 90%. You know, it’s probably to 30,000 miles on the road for me and I think the cell phone use is very important for business people. In the City of Missoula we see it as one of the most difficult towns in the State to do business already. I think adding ordinances like this just increases to the already difficult business atmosphere. I feel that cell phones are a very important use for business people in this town. I think that to prohibit the use of them would be detrimental. Thank you for your time.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. Patterson.
Cedric Haines said, good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council people. I’m a fairly conservative person and I’m against most laws but I think this is an especially good one. If people are going to drive, they ought to drive. If they have some reason that they want or need to talk on the phone, they ought to pull over and stop. But when they drive they should give 100% of their attention to driving as safely as they can. Thank you.
Robin Spazioni, Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Board, said, the Missoula Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Board supports the adoption of this ordinance. And we as a Board support the adoption of this ordinance. However we would encourage the adoption of an ordinance that goes even further and bans all cell phone use including hands free. The studies that have been done, while you know showing that cell phone use is dangerous, didn’t differentiate between hands-free and hands-on cell phone use. And the danger is not in the actual physical manipulation of the cell phone. We do a lot of things physically while we driving and City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 21 we’re still pretty safe but with your mind being occupied otherwise, when you’re on a cell phone whether it’s hands-free or not, your mind is occupied on that conversation on the details of what you’re talking about rather than on the actual conditions of the road and the driving that you’re doing. Drivers can now surf the Internet, send and receive emails or faxes, communicate via cellular devices and even watch television and these activities can be substantially more distracting than the old distractions that we had such as, you know, eating, drinking, applying makeup and such, but they are more cognitively engaging and they’re performed over longer periods of time. And furthermore research shows that this is not just a matter of the use of the phone but that the cell phone disrupts driving performance by diverting mental attention from the information processing immediately associated with the safe operation of a vehicle. So, we believe that the use of cell phones while driving is a serious threat to public safety which deserves meaningful consideration and urge you to pass this ordinance and further amend it to ban all cell phone use while operating a motor vehicle or bicycle.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Spazioni. Anyone else care to comment on this item this evening? Lynn, I’m not sure that’s on at this point.
Linda Smith said, okay. As someone who’s really trying to walk more and drive less and I’ve witnessed a number, as Dave Strohmaier was mentioning, a number of near misses of pedestrians and bike riders, mostly at intersections where the car drivers don’t even seem to notice that the person on a bike or walking is even in the intersection are trying to cross. And I was going to say about studies but I think that’s been fairly well covered. People seem to be so caught up in the business of their lives that they’re not able to use good judgment about when not to use a cell phone. And I think it becomes…that when it becomes local government’s job to regulate that…I think that’s when it becomes local government’s job to regulate cell phone use for the safety of all citizens, whether walking, riding bikes or driving. And there was a short article in the Missoulian on April 5th and the title of it says a lot: Woman Gets Six Years for Fatal Texting Crash. And I was just going to read a short piece of it. It says, a woman who crashed into a line of stopped vehicles while text messaging on her cell phone has been sentenced to six years in a California prison for killing a woman in one of the vehicles. Shasta County Prosecutor Stephanie Bridget said the 49-year-old woman had paid several bills by cell phone in the moments before the crash. She was in the middle of one of those transactions when she struck a vehicle that burst into flames killing 46- year-old Petra Wynn. So, seeing this article made me come down tonight wanting to say a few words about urging…well, that hopefully if we can proactively address cell phone use while driving, hopefully we won’t have to read about accidents like this happening in Montana. And I urge Missoula to take the lead since the attempts to address the issue at the State Legislature didn’t succeed this time. But I do understand that there’s growing support for this and I urge the committee to carry on and to…the Council as a whole to adopt this kind of ordinance for the safety and welfare of all of us. Thank you.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Smith. Anyone else care to comment this evening?
Tom Carlson said, my wife and I own cars, we drive bicycles, we walk, we even have a cell phone. In our business we’ve found out that we really don’t need to use those cell phones when we drive. But what really amazes me around Missoula is the number of close calls we’ve had. It just seems to keep happening with greater and greater regularity. In my business, when you start having close calls in the safety arena it means an accident is going to occur and to me hitting a child, hitting an adult because you’re talking on the phone, just isn’t worth it and I’d rather slow down. And thank you for introducing this ordinance. I hope you’ll really consider it and ask you to vote for it.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. Carlson. Anyone else this evening?
Katherine Wagner said, I feel real strongly about this. I’m glad you brought this up. Invariably I see somebody doing something stupid, a free lane to turn right, there’s a long line behind us, and they’re just sitting there and, yup, you can see their hand up to their ear. They’re not even paying attention. Weaving. I’m just thankful that they’re not behind me. I feel very strongly about this. I hope it passes and besides somebody that has to talk on the phone, what’s wrong with pulling over? That’s what I do. Thanks.
Mayor Engen said, thanks, Ms. Wagner. Any additional comment this evening on this item?
John D’Orazi said, I’m a local businessman. Good evening, Mayor, Council. Just right off the get-go I’d like you all to understand that I’m in favor of banning hand-held cell phones state wide, once the state City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 22 takes the initiative to do it. I don’t believe that anybody here has effectively looked at the cost or consider the expenses of trying to enforce this City-wide. Is there any numbers on the accidents from cell phone use? I’m here at the Council? I mean how are you going to tell them? Where are the signs going to be? At every boundary of the City limits? Because it will be legal in the County. So you’re going to have to have a sign everywhere. It’s going to have to say you’re now entering the City of Missoula, hand-held cell phones are now banned. You’ll be ticketed. By the blank faces here I guess that hasn’t been considered. Tonight’s KECI News announced that there were six accidents attributed to cell phone use in the City of Montana last year. So, again, I’ll ask if there’s any numbers on the accidents from speeding? Running red lights. Failure to stop at stop signs. Well, they have a number on the cell phone. So once again, like I say, I’m in favor of it and as you mentioned, five states have done it. And I think our law enforcement already has enough traffic violations for them to try to enforce that as our Chief announced, this would be a priority and I think that would just be an easy ticket in other words. It wouldn’t create any safety. You know, I’m sure there’s people that shouldn’t chew bubble gum and drive. So, anyways it, you know, if you want to consider that it distracts the mind, well, you better shut the music off and you better quit eating your donuts and quit drinking your coffee. But anyways, like I say I think when the State adopts it, it will be much easier than a city confined with our numerous city limit boundaries and the configuration of it. It’s not like drawing a box and say it’s illegal to do it here because I know I could use it down on North Russell because I’d be in the County. So, it’s a matter of logistics. Can you really do it and enforce it in the City? What about the guy that drives in from Salmon? I didn’t know. What are you…you know, how do you do it? And if you are doing a 9-1-1 emergency call, how’s the officer know that when he pulls you over? What if you’re just getting the call, you’ve got an emergency, you got to get somewhere. I mean it might…it seems like a wonderful idea. Don’t take me wrong. But I think it’s not a feasible idea for this Council to try to do it for the City alone. If you can get the County to come in then it’s a lot easier to say, County…Missoula County has banned the use of cell phone…hand-held cell phones while driving. Much more common sense than trying to do it City-wide. So, thank you for your time and just please take that into consideration what it will take to make that actually work, to function. Thank you.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. D’Orazi. Anyone else tonight?
Greg Lane said, I came here as a ham radio operator to see what was going to be said. I too drive, bike, walk and have seen violations. Agree with what this gentleman just stated about enforcement. That would hold more weight if it was County-wide let alone State-wide. And I guess that’s all I had to say. As far as the businessman said, there is a provision in the bill for hands-free which to my mind would be a lot easier than holding it to your ear, as far as business people needing to talk to people. But also what the gentleman just before me said about enforcement in the City versus the County, that it’s to my mind very difficult to draw lines. I applaud Mr. Strohmaier for bringing this forward but do think it should be State- wide if not County-wide.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Mr. Lane. Anyone else this evening? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and open it to Council questions with the reminder that this item will be returned to committee. Any questions this evening? Seeing none…I’m sorry, Ms. Rye. If I pause too long you just get nervous don’t you?
Alderwoman Rye said, I just have a rhetorical question and that is, how on earth did we all survive without being connected to other people 24 hours a day? I think we probably did.
Mayor Engen said, that does count as a rhetorical question. I have no idea, Ms. Rye.
Alderman Wiener, Chief Muir, would you describe what it would take to enforce this?
Police Chief Mark Muir said, good evening, Councilors. I would be glad to do so. With the provision that has been made for the hands-free, this is certainly an enforceable ordinance. Contrary to what Mr. D’Orazi said, the Police Department has no desire to make this a priority in terms of our enforcement, however, as I directed comment to Council to the Public Safety Committee, we will be happy to take the direction of this body and attack the problem in whatever manner that you believe is most appropriate be that a combination of education with enforcement, it will be a clear cut violation. It’s a primary violation as it’s listed. If an individual has a cell phone to their face, that would be a violation lacking the existence of one of the exemptions to this rule. I would tell you that from the perspective of the Department, it will certainly mean that we will enact changes within our own use and protocol because I like, Mr. Strohmaier, City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 23
I have to admit that I have operated my cell phone while I was driving my car and I have to even more importantly point out that I nearly pulled out into an intersection here about six weeks ago as a direct result of being on the phone talking and having a car pull out along side of me, and nearly drove through an intersection against a red light. I also had an interesting opportunity to review an in-car camera video today that suggests this problem goes even farther beyond just drivers and bicyclists but actually extends to pedestrians where I watched a pedestrian nearly walk out in front of a moving patrol car with its lights and siren, and they just walked right up to the intersection, actually it was on this side, and they walked right up to the intersection and started to walk out into the intersection as the patrol car is approaching. And I watched the, you know, the driver had to dynamite his brakes and you see the hood of the car go down and the person look in shock like they had no idea the car was coming. So, it is a distraction and I don’t think any of us can deny that. One of the questions that was asked, if I might, with regard to statistics, in the last two years there have been, because only the last two years have cell phone numbers been recorded through the Montana Department of Transportation. And in Missoula there have been 10 instances in two years. That contrasts to about 56 instances of other distractions within the vehicle and those are where a specific distraction has been made notice to the officer investigating the crash. There were just under 1,000 careless driving instances where careless driving was determined to be the most appropriate annotation of that individual’s driving and then nearly 290 inattentive driving. There are a total of 54 possible selections for a police officer to take note of with regard to cause of crash, and as many as five can be noted for each crash. So there are numbers that go back and forth and certainly inattentive driving could be combined with cell phone use, could be combined with following too closely, could be combined with speeding. Although I will tell you that speeding is not the cause of a crash, speeding is corollary to the significance or the injury level of a crash.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Chief. Any other questions this evening?
Alderwoman Hellegaard said, question for Chief Muir. I guess when I’m talking about it’s unenforceable what I see happening with the amount of students we have coming into this community from outside, it’s really unreasonable to assume that they’re going to know that this law is in existence so you’ve got your officers out there writing the tickets, take it over to the judge, I’m from Texas, how did I know, and they’re going to throw these tickets out so we’re going to be tying up your officers’ time, tying up the court time. I see these being very similar to the speed traps that we used to have, you know, so I’m more…believe that it needs to be done at the Legislature State-wide thing. And I will mention I was in Washington, D. C. for a good number of days last week and I can tell you I could not tell that ordinance was in place. The cab driver was on his cell phone the entire time, from the airport all the way to my hotel. So,
Mayor Engen said, you’re building up to a question though, aren’t you?
Alderwoman Hellegaard said, yeah, the question is, you know, from the enforceable standpoint, do you anticipate that the judges will be throwing these tickets out because people really don’t have…I mean, it’s unreasonable to assume that all these students are going to know and so that’s my question.
Mayor Engen said, I’m afraid I won’t let the Chief speculate as to what the judge may do.
Police Chief Muir said, I wouldn’t have any way.
Mayor Engen said, go ahead, Chief.
Police Chief Muir said, I wouldn’t speculate as to the court. I’m going to throw out a little different corollary and say that I just spent the last two weeks in Mexico. Thank you for letting me have the time off. And it took me less than 48 hours to learn, as a total outsider, where there was a complete 100% language barrier that the use of cell phone in the state of Morella, Mexico, while you’re driving a motor vehicle, is prohibited. And so I think that if the message can get across in that sort of a setting to a gringo here from the United States that we can accomplish that same thing with educated individuals who use those cell phones on a regular basis.
Mayor Engen said, any other questions?
Alderwoman Mitchell said, now that you brought up the prohibition of cell phones where you were just in Mexico, did you see first-hand very many violations of the law? City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 24
Police Chief Muir said, yes, I did.
Alderwoman Mitchell said, so people ignored it basically? Apparently or thought they could get by and not caught?
Police Chief Muir said, there again it’s kind of speculating on my part…
Alderwoman Mitchell said, yeah, thank you…
Police Chief Muir said, but certainly. And violations are going to occur and that was one of the points that I made to Council is if this does…if this is passed, I will expect two things. One is that you give me direction on how to advise my officers of how serious to attack this problem and how would you like it attacked and then, secondly, recognize that, and this is possibly where Mr. D’Orazi got his idea that we were going to make it a priority, is that it could very easily, in my opinion, in the first 12 months overtake very other traffic violation, in terms of the number of citations issue.
Alderwoman Mitchell said, wouldn’t that cover the cost of raises for the future, next three years?
Mayor Engen said, no. I’ll answer that, no.
Alderman Haines said, kind of below the radar question here but where does General Motors On Star operation fit in this?
Police Chief Muir said, that would count as hands-free.
Alderman Haines said, because it isn’t quite hands-free. You’ve got to push buttons. You’ve got to play with the dial on your radio.
Police Chief Muir said, I would say that holds true of any hands-free. There’s always going to be something, I mean very few people operate their cell phone on a voice activation level or an auto answer just simply because that’s quite dangerous in terms of letting out information.
Mayor Engen said, any other questions? Seeing none, thank you, Chief. Mr. Strohmaier, do you have a notion of when you might hear this again in committee?
Alderman Strohmaier said, the short answer is not exactly, we might have enough time next week to take it up. We’ll have to wait and see.
Mayor Engen said, we’ll keep folks posted. Thank you. This item has been returned to committee. Are you…you certainly can call me tomorrow, Mr. D’Orazi, and I’ll try to answer it for you. How are you all doing? Do you need to take a break or can we keep plugging away here? We’re okay? Okay, we’ll keep going.
COMMUNICATIONS FROM MAYOR Mayor’s Legislative Report
Mayor Engen said they have his legislative report. Little has changed. They continue to work on a question about maintenance agreements. The big money bills are all continuing to be discussed and we’re continuing to pay attention to everything that remains. One of our citizens passed away recently, Mrs. Sylvia Hefty, a long-time Missoulian, our sympathy to her family. Alderman Wilkins isn’t here tonight but Mr. Wilkins and Mrs. Hefty were well acquainted and Mr. Wilkins was kind enough to ask that Mayor Engen acknowledge her passing this evening. Last time Mrs. Hefty and the Mayor spoke was at a Friendship Forest meeting planning another trip.
GENERAL COMMENTS OF CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS
City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 25
Alderwoman Mitchell mentioned that she wish there was more interest being drummed up about the zoning rewrite. A group in town called ADAPT is a group of business people and is the cross section of members, realtors, builders, attorneys, a representative from the Chamber, a representative from MBIA, a representative from Moore and no politicians. They’re having an open house on Sunday, April 19th from 2 to 4:00 p.m. at the Broadway Inn and they’re going to have zoning maps and present things for people who are interested in learning about the zoning rewrite. Anybody who wants to learn more about the rewrite is urged to attend.
Alderman Haines commented on the Planning Board hearings. A number of people are telling him that they don’t see these as public hearings. You have four-hour sessions like that and the way they’ve been operating they tend to be more workshops than they are public hearings. That may grow to be a significant issue as time goes by.
Alderwoman Hellegaard followed up on Alderman Haines’ comment. She has had quite a few comments from her constituents asking that the Planning Board reduce those meetings to two hours, 7 to 9:00 p.m. They don’t feel that we should be rushing this through with eight hours a week in public meetings.
Alderman Hendrickson said there’s been mandate by the public for Alderman Haines’ bridge asking to please get that bridge.
Alderwoman Walzer said as a build-up to Lowell School’s 100-year anniversary, there is going to be a big event this weekend. They will be building an outdoor classroom on the Sherwood side of Lowell School so they need volunteers to help in garden construction, food, drinks and kid activities. It’s a joint project of Lowell Elementary School, the Flagship Program, Garden City Harvest, Ponderosa Council of Campfire U.S.A., Garden Guy Landscaping, VanDeMuirs Wild Land Conservation Services, Able Tree Service, Rainmakers, Stamping Ground, Studios and many more. This big garden construction party is both Saturday and Sunday this week from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. People can just show up or if you want to formally volunteer or donate you can call Lisa at 532-9865. It’s a community and school project together and all the kids are really excited about it. She also promised Tom Benson from the Cultural Council (missoulaculturalcouncil.org) that she would give his plug this year for the Meet Me In Missoula Campaign. Everyone should come visit Missoula the weekend of May 1st. There are a lot of programs out, some in the hallway, where you rip off the little postcard, address and send it to your friend and it says, meet me in Missoula.
Alderman Wiener promised one of the people putting on the ADAPT event that he would go, so politicians may be present but he promises not to speak unless spoken to.
COMMITTEE REPORTS Administration and Finance Committee 04/08/09
Committee of the Whole 04/08/09
Plat, Annexation and Zoning Committee 04/08/09
Public Safety and Health Committee 04/08/09
Public Works Committee 04/08/09 Resolution 7413 Resolution—Adopt a resolution relating to Lolo Street—Missoula Avenue to Rattlesnake Drive curb and sidewalk improvements, Project 08-004; of the city’s sidewalk, curb, gutter, and alley approach program, ordering in the sidewalk, curb, gutter, and alley approach improvements and directing notice be given to affected property owners.
City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 26
Alderman Wiener said, I move that we adopt a resolution relating to Lolo Street—Missoula Avenue to Rattlesnake Drive curb and sidewalk improvements, Project 08-004 and if you’ll allows us some leave, Mr. Harby had a few slides, I believe five, in answer to questions that arose in committee pertaining to the width of the sidewalks and the context of the project.
Mayor Engen said, and the motion is in order.
Doug Harby, City Engineering, said, there were several questions that were asked at the end of the Public Works Committee meeting. One was the cost of seven versus five-foot sidewalks. There were some other questions about the possibility of creating an SID to help pay for these sidewalks. I’ve put together some a couple of quick slides just with some information regarding this. Again, this slide here shows the total cost of the project. Again the City’s in it for about $253,000 for prep and paving, drainage and all that stuff…we’ve been over this. Utilities, looking at about $85,000. And then the assessments on the original estimates were $210,000. As we’re going through these revisions, we’re paring that down to about $157,000 so you can see that the assessments are becoming a smaller and smaller portion of this project as we proceed with changes. Again, just to review the schedule, we’d like to get this bid as soon as possible. We feel that soon bid prices may start going up as more and more work comes out. What I did, and thank God for all my money-spending on my youngest child’s college education in economics, we did a little…I dug out some old bid tabs and we did a little comparison on…calculated from the Consumer Price Index formulas and some other formulas that he ran through that…I have no idea how it figures it, it takes a whole page for the calculus. But in 1989 we pulled a sampling of our bid tabs. The unit price in ’89 for a lineal foot of curb was $11 and for a square foot of sidewalk it was $2.50. Corrected to 2009 dollars, that was about $20 lineal foot and $4.50 a square foot. In ’99 it had gone up to $13 a lineal foot and about $3.25 a square foot. Corrected to ’09 dollars it runs about $16.90 a lineal foot and $4.23 a square foot. In ’05, this was when we did Hickory Street, this was when the prices kind of peaked out on us, it was $18 a lineal foot and $5.50 a square foot. There hasn’t been a significant Consumer Price Index change in that. Then in 2009, the last bids that we opened, the average bids were about $15 a square foot and $4 a square foot. So as you can see by this, it’s really never been cheaper. We are in an economic downturn, the contractors are looking for work. We opened the bids today on another project up in the Rattlesnake, around the school, and although the prices are a little big higher than this $15 and $4 a square foot, simply because it’s a very difficult job with traffic control and things, but I believe we had six or seven bidders on that. In ’05 we had one bidder so you can see that it’s a very competitive bidding process right now. This is the list of the properties that are involved in this project. And the original estimate that went out on the letters was based on an average cost of the work taken over the last three years, including the 2005 estimates you can see on that first column there. The second column you can see that the estimates are quite high and they’re kind of scary. What we did is we went and revised some of the design to try to bring some of these costs down plus we took the average bid prices from the Johnson Street Bridge, not the low bid but just the average from the eight bidders that we had there. And with design changes and bid corrections, estimate corrections the second column…you can see in the second column where it lowered the prices considerably, like 1145 Lolo with some design changes we were able to get it down from $28,000 to $15,000. We revised the bulb-outs there on Raymond. We had a substantial drop in estimated costs. The cost reduced it to a five-foot sidewalk as reflected in the last column, the 2255 was already a five-foot sidewalk running from Missoula Avenue to the bridge. Just keep and note too we plan on doing five-foot sidewalks west of the bridge. That width was set through the…by the City Council, through the Sharon’s Gardens Lot 5 Subdivision and that they allowed a variance to five- foot sidewalks on the Lolo Street frontage and seven-foot on the Greenough frontage. So these are the reduction in the prices. They’re not huge because it doesn’t take…it’s just a material savings, it doesn’t take much more labor or time or equipment to set a seven-foot sidewalk or a five-foot sidewalk. But you can see that some of the…a couple of people that testified in the Public Works, the property owner at 903 Lolo and 910 Lolo, by going from a seven to a five we were able to drop their prices roughly around $1,000 or so. The other question that came up is could we do an SID to pay for these? And I wasn’t sure if the question meant do we charge everybody in the Rattlesnake to pay for this Lolo Street project and not worry about any more projects up there for whatever the term the SID is, I didn’t think that was really what was asked. So what I did is I put together a little thing here…well, I guess I’m getting ahead of myself, I forgot I threw this slide in here. Just too kind of remind you folks on the financial options available to the property owners, they can always go with a cash payment, they can select their own contractor or go with our contractor, irrespective they can go with a cash payment. That saves them the interest and the finance cost of doing the assessment program. We can go through assessments, 8, 12, 20-year terms. The 20-year was added when the prices went up in 2005 and now it’s been legislated by the State so we City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 27 were able to offer this in all cases. In fact in future projects, not necessarily this one, we’ve been defaulting to eight-year. We’re considering defaulting to 20-year. The people don’t respond on what they would like to do, it’ll default to a 20-year term. That will be in some projects after this project. We have a partial deferment. This is also a result of the Hickory Street. We went through and determined what was the average assessment over a 10-year period to get curbs and sidewalks installed? And we figured out at old prices it was about $6,000 was average for everybody and that includes grandma that’s got 100 square feet or maybe a whole corner with curbs and sidewalks. So it’s really a big spread and this is the mean that we came up with. And they have to be owner-occupied, single-family residential properties and they would be assessed a maximum of $6,000 up to 20 years and meridian cost deferred until the property changes ownership so when they get the money for selling their house or whatever, they can pay off that. There is an interest accrued during that time based on the rate of the bond sale of that year which runs a little over 4% in the last few years. We have a total deferment. They’re also for owner-occupied single-family residential properties that mean income requirements. And these are requirements that are set through the OPG grant programs I believe. I kind of spaced out figuring out what those requirements are but they’re fairly generous. I think probably…I think it’s around $40,000 for a family of two. And then we have some Community Development Block Grants that we’re using on the Johnson Street Project. It’s something that was put forth by the Homeowners Association. It helped…I think we had 21 people out of 99 properties that was able to help on that. Okay, now to the SID. What I did is look at let’s see if we want to do an area wide SID in Rattlesnake Valley. And so I kind of came up with a plan, the valley streets are a little faded, are a little hard to read but…and again just note that the numbers are very broad estimates based on a very preliminary location cost. This is just something that I kind of pulled out of my head, where would the sidewalks be the most important? I took out that the properties that had paid for sidewalks in the last 15 years and just kind of looked at the area through the Master Rattlesnake Plan and some of the areas where we’ve done work, we have partial work, we need some completions and came up with this plan just to kind of give out an illustration of what can happen. Now one of the things that is concerning about this project is first there’s 41.5 miles of streets, about 2,300 separate parcels, going to say range from little houses to…Andy Sponseller’s property is up there. Approximately 500 parcels have paid for sidewalks in the last 15 years. That brings it down to about 1,800 parcels could be included in the SID. Cost estimates. Of course with an SID there’s a lot more cost that don’t go into the dirt as there is with a City project such as Lolo Street. But the construction costs would be about $15.5 million. In the case of an SID that includes streets, paving, anything that has to be done to build these sidewalks. The City certainly wouldn’t have the resources or anything to have the Street Department to do the paving and participate in a project like this, like we are in Lolo Street. That’s why, you know, these smaller projects work a lot better. Engineering. This would have to be engineered. Typically engineering is 25% or so of the cost. $4.5 million. Here in Lolo Street we have very engineering. Then the SID costs, by the time you go through all the bond counsel and revolving fund and the different funds that are involved in creating a SID is about $4 million so you can see it’s about $25 million just to complete this system. And again these are really rough numbers just to kind of illustrate what, you know, could happen with that SID. Figured on the cost per parcel is about $1,400 and that’s based on an average 125-foot frontage taking the number of miles of streets we have and dividing them by the parcels and that sort of thing. So a typical 125-foot frontage, with this kind of a really broad-based SID, would be about $14,000. If this was done for Lolo Street, the cost would actually be higher than what we’re proposing. So I think that takes care of all the questions that were asked and I can take any more.
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Doug. We have a motion on the floor. Is there discussion on the motion?
Alderman Wiener said, I just want to ask my colleagues to support this. I don’t think anybody questions that this project should happen. Whatever heartburn that we’ve had is over how we should pay for it even despite significant contributions from the entire tax base and from the utility rate payers there are a disproportionately small number of people who are going to pay for this specific facility. And a disproportionately small number because lots of people from adjacent streets will benefit. Drivers who are after all the reason that we need sidewalks in any event will also benefit by not having safety hazards in their way. Still this is how we’ve been doing it. The downtown sidewalks which I think people would agree are just about the most public facility we have were built this way. And I’m certainly open to doing it another way. I would have supported a gas tax if we had wanted to put that on the ballot. I’m willing to talk about Street Maintenance Districts. We certainly deceive ourselves to think that we aren’t going to find a way to replace these assessments or SIDs without a different source of revenue. And if we’re worried about spreading the benefit…the cost over the benefited population, then something more broad City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 28 based would be an appropriate replacement but, you know, sidewalks don’t pay for themselves and I can’t hold up this project or advocate holding up this project until we figure that out.
Mayor Engen said, further discussion on the motion?
Alderman Haines said, Doug, could you put that last slide up there please? The cost you have there for engineering and the SID costs, those look high and I don’t have anything to base that on. They just look high. So I couldn’t argue very much against those but the engineering costs, those aren’t in the slides of your first slides are they?
Doug Harby said, I do have those in the total cost…let me run up to that…I think right now, yeah, see engineering consultant about $11,000 , the third line down, that’s what we paid to have the engineers go out and design it and stake it for us.
Alderman Haines said, I guess I don’t understand the connection. Pardon me for being dumber than most but I don’t understand why the difference in that cost, 25 versus 11.
Doug Harby said, okay, in this particular case all we’re having the engineer do for us is give us grade and alignment on the street. That’s all he does. There’s no public meetings. It goes from preliminary design to putting the stakes in, then he’s done. We do all the contract administration, all the public administration, assessment administration, all the different processes that it takes to get a project through. Where if this was a SID the engineer would be standing up here right now talking to you guys and we’d be paying them $130 an hour.
Alderman Haines said, I’m wondering why this cost couldn’t be spread over more parcels, the one you’re looking at right there.
Doug Harby said, which cost graph?
Alderman Haines said, school for an SID but use this data here. I guess there’s something in the process here is lost on the…I can talk to you later but I’m having problems with this.
Doug Harby said, sure, the…just quickly, there’s more costs involved in a SID than there is in this curb and sidewalk assessment program. There’s more overhead costs. We like to put the money into the ground so that’s kind of the difference between a SID and a curb and sidewalk assessment. And, you know, we find that it’s really the cheapest way to go but it’s a lot more work for us. And so I guess that’s what the main advantage is. I do all the leg work and all the talking and everything and the engineer, they just have a junior engineer putting the grades down. Is that what you were looking for or…?
Alderman Haines said, not quite but I don’t think this is the place to go after it.
Doug Harby said, sure.
Alderman Haines said, I really have a problem with what you’re…
Alderwoman Mitchell said, Doug, it looks to me like you’ve done considerable effort trying to figure out ways to make this more palatable to the people that are financially affected by it. I see this happening. It’s happened in the past. It was a big thing with Hillview Way. We have a small street here. It seems like what was one time a semi-quiet road now becomes a connecting path for people to get across town, and the people that happen to live there get socked with the cost, and I have a problem with that. I’d like to see some leadership from our City’s head of government on ways we can do this. We’re not going to get the option tax, it went down to defeat. We’re not going to get other stuff but we need to have something thrown out there so we can chew on it and figure out how we can avoid this situation over and over again. When I went up there today I saw a narrow road. It seems to me like you could eliminate the bulb-outs. They’re costly anyway. I know you did scale them down somewhat. Is that correct from the original?
Doug Harby said, yeah, that’s correct.
City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 29
Alderwoman Mitchell said, and the amount of traffic that I encountered was next to none although I do understand that road gets used but it seems to me if we remove the bulb-outs, put a 15-mile traffic limit speed on that road because it’s not a very long road. And because of the angles and the curves in it, and the people that we heard testify push their strollers and ride their bikes with their kids and walk, it actually seems reasonable. I drove it at 15 miles an hour and I was pretty happy driving that speed. Nobody was behind me so I didn’t hold up anybody else. And five-foot sidewalks and I think we could improve this stretch but I do have trouble socking cost that for a road that’s badly needed up there for connection falling on so few shoulders.
Mayor Engen said, Ms. Hellegaard, on the motion.
Alderwoman Hellegaard said, and I don’t know that it is to the motion but it would certainly go to whether I’m going to support it or not. Doug, at the TTAC Subcommittee this afternoon we were talking about House Bill 645 and that we might have some extra money freed up for some additional sidewalk work. Would this project be something that you might looked to putting some of those dollars to mitigate some of the costs for the homeowners?
Doug Harby said, Lynn, what we’re doing with that money…one of the things that we’re going to be cautious of is federalizing these small projects where we have to come in and…the $11,000 engineering consultant cost, in this case, if this is federalized that would probably be close to $50,00 or $60,000. What we’re planning on doing with that and there’s a lot of expense in these projects that we’re doing such as the slant street things is the installation of handicap ramps. So what we’d like to do with that money is do a City-wide or do as many handicap ramps as we could. We can federalize that. We can consult it out. Actually I’m meeting with the stake guys tomorrow to see if we can do it in-house to put as much money into the ground rather than paying consultant engineers to design every single of 800 handicap ramps. So, that’s what we’re trying to do and we want to prioritize the areas that are high priority streets and then start going into the areas that we’re doing this work. In this particular case there’s no more added expense for handicap ramps than there would be if there weren’t any there because it doesn’t cost any more to put a handicap ramp in a new curb and sidewalk than it does to build it without one.
Mayor Engen said, additional discussion on the motion. I’m sorry, Dave, you were in the cue and I missed you.
Alderman Strohmaier said, that’s okay. I am in support of the motion and I would urge my colleagues at this table to support it also. This I think is well…I don’t need you, Doug, that’s fine. Thanks anyway. I think by the comments that we’ve heard from folks who live on Lolo Street over the past meeting or so and other comments from community members demonstrate very clearly that there are dangers associated with this street, this main connection between the east and west sides of the Rattlesnake Valley. I don’t think this is something that can wait any longer. We’ve waited many years. It’s only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or killed along this stretch of highway. I do think, and I will qualify my support for this by saying, that I think the time is nigh that we need to set a new course in how we fund sidewalks and street maintenance in this town. When it comes to the subject of leadership I guess I would say that there are 13 individuals sitting around this table tonight and any one of us can make a referral. If you have a good idea bring it forward. I don’t care of it’s an election year or not. The time to change our approach to major infrastructure projects needs to happen. I don’t think it’s going to happen in time to address this current situation with Lolo Street but I do think it needs to happen at some point, even if that means breaking with a century-old tradition and policy of property owners paying for their own sidewalks. As far as the SID question which I think is what Mr. Haines was getting at, can we more broadly spread the cost of this project out. I know Mr. Jaffe also had some questions about that and I think it’s an idea that warrants some consideration, and I’ve certainly considered it over the past week myself. I don’t…I mean driven around up there, having looked at maps, having talked with staff I don’t see any very transparent or great way to drive the lines, to delineate the lines for an SID in this particular area. Do you go clear up to the school, Rattlesnake School? How far south do you go? I mean if we’re thinking in terms of where pedestrians and folks are traveling, there are some places in there that have existing sidewalks already. There are a couple of dead end streets. It seems like a no-brainer that that…and those might be places that may never get sidewalks any time soon. That might work. I don’t see any good way to figure that out and still get some construction work on the ground this construction season. I appreciate that staff has done in trying to mitigate costs. I think bulb-outs are absolutely essential. What I’ve heard from the Neighborhood Councils, Upper and Lower Rattlesnake, consistently is the need for City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 30 traffic calming measures along some of these main thoroughfares. It doesn’t, as much as I’m in support of lowering the posted speed limits in areas around town, I think the ultimate solution is physical change to some of our roadways to get folks to slow down. So I think we need to do this as the motion states. It’s seven-foot sidewalks. I guess I am convinced by the presentation this evening that the costs of having the benefits of having the seven-foot sidewalks outweigh the costs so I’m okay with moving forward with that.
Mayor Engen said, further discussion on the motion?
Alderman Hendrickson said, I didn’t support this in committee and am not going to support it tonight. You know, the difference between a five and a seven-foot sidewalk might be $1,000, $1,500 on a certain parcel of land. That’s $1,015 to the homeowner, advertised over X amount of years and it’s, you know, I can’t justify, you know, the cost. I know things are cheap now. I, you know, I’ve always voted for sidewalks, curb and gutter. I don’t think, you know, it needs to be a seven-foot sidewalk. Staff has done and always has done a lot to minimize the cost for the homeowners, property owners. I don’t think this is the time to start heaping bills upon people on certain times. I do appreciate what Doug says, that things are cheap right now and they may not get cheaper and go up. We do have to find other ways. If we weren’t broke in the CIP we could probably use some CIP money but we don’t have any CIP money, and why is that? Well, so I am not going to support this. I’d like to but I’m not.
Mayor Engen said, further discussion?
Alderman Haines said, Jason, I want to support this in the worst way but I don’t…I just…I think it’s so unfair the way we’re going at it and, Doug, I don’t know if you can do more with the design or not. I’ve been in your shoes and I know it’s tough when you’re trying to squeeze a couple more dollars down but I…it just seems to me we’re just laying too much money on too few people. And when we start talking about the urgency of this process and this project, I have to look at Hillview Way. I mean I can get you pictures tomorrow that…of all the cars that went off that road this winter. I mean they’re in people’s yards and everything else up there and it’s already had fatalities in the past. I just don’t see anything here that even comes close to the emergency that they’re living with up there. I understand…Steve talked the other day with me that he’s talking about putting small amounts of money into smaller-type projects. I don’t remember enough about that to talk intelligently about it but I…it just ain’t fair folks. We made a bigger area for the Pineview Park and I think why can’t we do that here? Why can’t we spread that cost out more? And, as I said, Doug, I don’t totally understand the costs you’ve got when you’re talking about an SID but I’m thinking it can be done cheaper than what your figures show it can be done.
Mayor Engen said, further discussion on the motion?
Alderman Jaffe said, I guess I, at the moment, am not in favor of the project. In general, I’m always real supportive of sidewalk projects. I’m just struggling, you know, the same thing the other guys are struggling with. The level of assessments for whatever reason it’s striking me a little bit differently on this one that, you know, we’ve gotten a ton of emails from people and public comment people saying we really want the sidewalk. It’s like, well, none of them have to pay for it. I think we have one comment from somebody that is being assessed that’s in favor of it but, you know, all the folks that are so supportive of it none of them are picking up the tab. And it’s just tremendous, you know, the idea of being billed for $10,000 to $15,000 for something that all your neighbors are really excited about. It’s just killing me. We’ve made it really clear, I think, over the last few years that we’ve got to come up with a different way of doing this. From what I understand some Street Maintenance District ideas are starting to be floated around. But it’s…I don’t know that I’m going to support any more of these projects until we do come up with that other mechanism.
Mayor Engen said, I’m going to weigh in here briefly. There are a couple of things at play here and, Mr. Jaffe, it’s been my experience on the Hickory Project in Ward 3 not particularly popular. Excessive outcry, not excessive but plenty of outcry on the project. And Council I think demonstrated leadership at that time and got those sidewalks done. We’ve done the same in the University neighborhood. We’re doing the same in the slant streets. We’re working through neighborhoods, engaging in these sidewalks projects. You’ve seen…Doug showed you tonight the level of public investment. The money that other folks, you and I, and the folks we serve who won’t generally every day directly benefit from these projects are paying for. And as…it may not be completely obvious every day to every property owner but the fact of the matter is that these projects are terrific investments in their property and its value over time. I happen to live in a City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 31 place where I paid for my sidewalk when I bought the house. It was a function of the subdivision and all went into the price of the home. But in these areas where no one I think fairly required the developer to install that infrastructure, we have to retrofit and we have to figure out ways to get that done. There is value for the homeowner, the value of a street in front of their house that works, a sidewalk that works, access that works, traffic calming that works. And I can tell you as a person who served that ward as a Council member, I heard a lot about Lolo Street traffic. And Ms. Mitchell anecdotically, I’ll tell you the folks who live on Lolo Street will tell you it ain’t a quiet country road. And we need to acknowledge that. We need to modernize the road and we need to do that as fairly as we possibly can. Folks, if you had a larger SID you’d have folks here saying I don’t get benefit from it, I don’t want to pay for it, this ain’t fair to me. We’ve had larger SIDs, Hillview is an example. I’m not sure what the right border was on Hillview Way but it didn’t work for you. You didn’t pass the SID. We didn’t get the project done. So if we’re going to talk about leadership tonight, I think you’re seeing it demonstrated by the two folks who are representing the ward, who are doing their best to acknowledge the pain that some of their constituents are going to feel, the folks who they hope will support them again and balancing that with a larger community need, a public investment and the opportunity to fix a problem that’s overdue in fixing. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I’m looking for a more perfect solution. And I love the idea of a Street Maintenance District; that’s not going to get us all the way there. There will be still be pain with these projects because somebody’s got to pay for them. Ultimately somebody’s got to pay for them. So we make that payment as reasonable, as fair and we extend it as long as we can and if you’re income-qualified, it can go away or it can be deferred. But in the end it still adds to your property values.
Alderwoman Walzer said, thank you. I’m in support of this mainly just because I see going on around all over the City that people are being ordered to put in curb and sidewalk when they do a significant improvement to their property. My neck of the woods there are two projects where the landowner added on, maybe added on to the house to a certain point that they had to put in curb and sidewalk 120 feet plus of it. Along the side roads that have no sidewalks at all, they’re the only sidewalk there. It’s City policy is what we do. We believe in sidewalks. I believe in sidewalks and I think the City in general…we require subdivisions to have sidewalks. We believe in sidewalks. There are different times in a property owner’s life or house life that eventually you’re going to get a sidewalk and in this case this is a time for Lolo Street. My neighbors, it was their time when they chose to add on. But again I agree with the Mayor that don’t forget that this is really increasing the value of your property. I was taught that at a young age. And when you go to list a piece of property, they point out that there’s sidewalk and curb there or not. Maybe they don’t point out that it’s not there but they definitely point out that it is there. And so I think this is really important and sooner or later the majority of the City will have curb and sidewalk and Lolo I think is taking advantage of a nice quiet time. Nobody’s helping my neighbors with the engineering costs and the extra stuff and whatever the City’s been able to do with this nice bulk pricing. So I think they…it’s a great deal and they should jump on it.
Mayor Engen said, further discussion on the motion.
Alderman Haines said, I guess the example that keeps sticking in my mind is comparing this to the Pineview Park construction. I know there were a lot of people up there that were saying, we think we can do this, some of this ourselves, and I don’t know whether that ever turned out. I’m not familiar and kept up with it but the argument was we have to broaden out the SID to reduce their costs. And here it seems we’re taking the opposite toll. We can’t broaden it out because it would increase the cost. Doug, you’re going to have to work with me. There’s something wrong here somewhere and I think these people are going to suffer for it.
Mayor Engen said, further discussion. With that, Ms. Kaley, you’ve been very patient tonight.
Karen Kaley said, thank you Mayor John and everybody else. I don’t like standing doing this but I guess that’s what I have to do. I want to thank the Council members who were on the committee for really listening to what some of us had to say and you were concerned about how this is going to impact some of us. I can’t remember or repeat some of the good things that have been said here. I know it’s going to increase the value of my property eventually. The timing is just so bad and I hope you can understand that. Costs, that’s the biggest concern to the homeowner but that’s only one and I don’t think I’ve heard anybody here mention what some of us talked about and that’s the character of our neighborhood. I would give any one of you a tour. I can show you what’s happened in the last decade in terms of the impact of infill. It’s the character of the neighborhood that a lot of us are concerned about. It’s a road I City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 32 said in the meetings, I don’t like to repeat this because most of you were there and you heard it. It’s a sidewalk that leads to nowhere. You walk into the woods a block up from my house. We’re attached to the wilderness area and we’ve come in with this Cadillac sidewalk project. It just doesn’t fit and so if we’re going to have sidewalks, okay, as I said I was the first one to hook up to sewer when it came through. But why are you so opposed to paring this project down so it fits better in our neighborhood? Why…this road is so narrow. Why two seven-foot sidewalks? I really appreciate your efforts to go back and try to pare things down and it really bothers me that you’re not hearing that that would be good for us. Why two sidewalks? And you explained how you can’t have a sidewalk on one side and not the other because then only one…a smaller segment of people are paying but if you can bring the price down by doing that and maintain some of the character of our neighborhood, I think that’s a good thing and it would fall on my side and, you know, I think that’s a good thing. Why two? I would propose one sidewalk, five-foot, none of these fancy, frilly boulevard things and a bike lane on the other side and slow the speed limit down to 15 miles per hour. The biggest problem up there is the traffic. It’s the…and the sidewalks are not going to stop the crazy drunken drivers that speed up and down that road. You have to be there at night. These sidewalks are not going to stop that. So I think we left out those two big concerns: the speed of the cars is the biggest problem for pedestrians, for people who live in their houses, for cars that are parked in driveways. The character of the neighborhood is…this just doesn’t fit so I would…and I think what’s frustrating here is your…is it Paul or Doug has spent an enormous amount of time working on this project and we have been given just a blip in time to respond to it. And we got the notice in the mail and it was a done deal and congratulations to the proud owner of a $20,000 stretch of sidewalk and you can pay cash if you want to. I think we needed to be involved and if you did this in neighborhood councils I guess I missed it but we needed to be involved sooner so there wasn’t such an ownership by the people who spent enormous amounts of time doing the work. It’s hard to let go of a project that you have so much ownership of. So, I just think the speed is the biggest problem. I think the project is just…doesn’t fit our neighborhood. And I really do wish you would pare it back because you would then reduce the costs and we can go from there. And I would also say again, please find some other way while we’re all still alive to do this differently because the burden is just…it just doesn’t make sense. You should be…go ahead and make cell phones illegal. Use the money you collect to build sidewalks in the City, you know. This just isn’t right the way we’re doing this and if we can’t do it for this project, so be it, but please pare it down. Don’t approve it the way it is and find a way to do this, and involve the people who are going to pay sooner…
Mayor Engen said, thank you, Ms. Kaley. We’ve had debate. We’ve had public comment. Are we ready for a vote? With that, Ms. Rehbein.
RESOLUTION 7413
MOTION
Alderman Wiener made a motion to adopt a resolution relating to Lolo Street—Missoula Avenue to Rattlesnake Drive curb and sidewalk improvements, Project 08-004; of the city’s sidewalk, curb, gutter, and alley approach program, ordering in the sidewalk, curb, gutter, and alley approach improvements and directing notice be given to affected property owners.
Upon a roll call vote, the vote on Resolution 7413 was as follows:
AYES: Childers, Marler, Rye, Strohmaier, Walzer, Wiener
NAYS: Haines, Hellegaard, Hendrickson, Jaffe, Mitchell
ABSTAIN: None
ABSENT: Wilkins
Resolution 7413 carried: 6 Ayes, 5 Nays, 0 Abstain, 1 Absent
Mayor Engen said, and the motion carries.
City of Missoula City Council Minutes –April 13, 2009 - Page 33
Urban Wildlife Subcommittee 04/03/09
NEW BUSINESS (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, REPORTS)
ITEMS TO BE REFERRED
Administration & Finance Committee Claims-Consent Agenda (Brentt Ramharter)
To Committee of the Whole: Workshop on findings of fact and conclusions of law (memo).—Regular Agenda (Marty Rehbein) Presentation on the 21st Century Schools (memo).—Regular Agenda (Mayor Engen)
To Conservation Committee: Confirm the reappointments of Mary Lou Cordis and Pat McHugh to the Cemetery Board for a term commencing May 1, 2009 and ending April 30, 2012 (memo).—Regular Agenda (Mayor Engen)
To Plat, Annexation and Zoning Committee Informational briefing on the FEMA revised preliminary floodplain maps (memo).—Regular Agenda (Todd Klietz)
To Public Works Committee Approve and authorize the Mayor to sign an agreement with Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) for City of Missoula Street Maintenance Division to perform large scale paving projects on state routes as described on the attached Appendix C and in accordance with our state route maintenance contract (memo).—Regular Agenda (Brian Hensel) Informational item only for consideration of an amendment to the HDR, Inc.’s Engineering Services Agreement for project close out and contractor’s claim resolution (memo).—Regular Agenda (Gregg Wood) Approve an exception to MMC Chapter 9.30 Noise Control during construction of the Scott Street bridge overlay (memo).—Regular Agenda (Steve King)
MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS, PETITIONS, REPORTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS - None
ADJOURNMENT
Mayor Engen thanked the council members and the staff for their service.
The meeting adjourned at 10:15 P.M.
ATTEST: APPROVED:
Martha L. Rehbein John Engen City Clerk Mayor
(SEAL)
Respectfully submitted by,
Nikki Rogers, Deputy City Clerk