This morning we started with a brief Public Safety meeting to confirm the appointment of Jason Diehl as the new fire chief. Mike Painter will be retiring at the end of the year.

After a short break we went into what was one of the more frustrating PAZ meetings I can remember. It’s possible that it really wasn’t that bad and it was just me. I found the whole thing excruciating. Just because we are discussing regulations about accessory structures does not mean we need to hear everyone’s story about every shed they have owned.  It seemed like the group was having a really hard time staying on topic.

We did eventually finish the discussion with a vote to send it back to the floor. The items of concern were settled to allow for zero setbacks, no limit on the number of structures, and no dimensional minimums. This only pertains to structures under 120 square feet that do not need a building permit. Jon Wilkins has asked for this item to come back to committee on Monday night due to concerns about the number of structures. He was a no show today, which was unusual, so he didn’t get to participate in the discussion. I thought we covered the topic adequately.

This is an area where we think the city is over regulating. It is a little ridiculous to expect people to come in and get a permit for their garden sheds. There are of course extreme examples out there but this is not a reason to burden the entire population with unnecessary expense and city bureaucracy. I’m pretty comfortable that relaxing these rules will not lead to any mayhem or degradation of our neighborhoods.

We also returned to the discussion of road standards in the subdivision regs. This too was difficult. We were trying to work through the rules on lane widths for different types of roads and how it ties in with fire code. The fire trucks are ten and a half feet wide but need about twenty feet to lower the ladders and open up all the cabinets. A lot of the discussion had to do with collector streets but I’m more interested in how we handle the residential streets. Most new subdivisions that these rules will pertain to, are mostly building residential streets, not collectors. The wider we require the neighborhood streets, the less room there is for houses and the more expensive the houses get. This one still needs more work.

During lunch we had another session of the sidewalk committee. In addition to the new cost share formula we approved last week for new assessments, we agreed to recommend an offset for people who are currently paying assessments. We didn’t settle on all the details but did include that it should apply to the remaining principal of existing assessments; be based off of a formula similar to what we apply to new assessments; be applied to the current year payment and not an entire pay off of the balance; and a fourth thing that for the life of me I can’t remember.

Outstanding issues are:

1)      Who is included? There seems to be agreement that developers do not get to use this in new subdivisions. But what about sidewalks that are ordered in with building permit? The ones that get ordered in with additions in existing neighborhoods seem to make sense. But maybe not new subdivisions where they are cutting in the driveway apron for a new house. These actually account for a lot of money.

2)      What about all the people who paid outright for their sidewalks instead of joining the assessment program? Shouldn’t they get some kind of rebate too if we give it to their neighbors?

3)      What can we do to increase the rate at which we get sidewalks installed in the city?

At some point we will also need to get into options for how we are going to pay for this. The most likely target is to increase the city wide special district fee. Of course, a county gas tax would go a long way towards helping the program. This reminds me to mention the thoroughly disappointing article that was in the Independent last week.  I explained the whole thing we are working on to Jessica but apparently there was already an article written about a gas tax and she was just looking for a quote or two. She pretty much ignored all the stuff I explained about sidewalk financing and latched onto the side note that we may try to pay for it with a proposed county gas tax. The little illustration/comic that accompanied the article was also kind of insulting. It was hard to miss the anti-city/anti-tax sentiment. There appears to be a real conservative force at the Independent that can no longer stand the progressive garb. I’ve always thought of that paper as the progressive Missoula weekly. But then the snarky, know it all tone of a lot of the articles leaves me thinking that this is not the voice I want to be associated with. And now the conservative streak that has been coming out lately confirms that whoever they are speaking to it isn’t Missoula progressives.

I digress. Back in committees we finished up with Public Works. Now that the Russell EIS is finally done the next step is to enter into an MOU with the state to get the thing built. The draft agreement that was presented to the council has some serious problems. It essentially asks us to hand the whole thing over to the state. The only role the council will have is to ask the tax payers for more money to pay for the thing once they tell us what they are going to build. Over the next few weeks we are going to work on turning that into something that actually makes some sense.

We want to make sure we have at least 50% representation on the committee that will select the consultant and significant representation on the body that votes on various decisions during the process.  We want final decision making authority to rest with the city on all matters as long as state and federal laws are complied with.  It makes sense for construction to be led by the state, especially since a bridge is involved, but design should be handled locally. This will be an important issue to watch over the next several weeks.