More comments on the zoning rewrite
Highway Girl blogged them live from Monday’s council meeting. If you want everyone’s comments, go to 4&20 Blackbirds. I bet she was home in her pajamas watching MCAT. With a warm couch and ice cream. Ah, jealousy. Maybe we can bring couches and ice cream to the next long hearing in council chambers. But I don’t want to see anyone in their pajamas.
Oh, I saw Jack Reidy in the audience — of council chambers. I asked him why he wasn’t sitting in The Jack Reidy Conference Room. He’s the longest-serving council member, was council president for years, and they named that spillover room next door after him. He’s Mr. Common Sense and always looked out for working folks. He said his wife, Alvina, made him come to the meeting and he’d better not have to sit in that other room. (He wouldn’t weigh in on the rewrite before the meeting — just said he was listening for now.)
Oh, and comment on the ADUs if you want. This invitation is open to schemers, evil-doers and name-callers of all walks of life. RedTape does not discriminate. (Except I did delete a couple things my spam filter didn’t catch.)
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:36 am
The utter hatred of ADUs struck me as pretty surprising, but I suppose it always has. I think a number of ADU supporters, especially John Torma, had some good suggestions for improving ADUs: require owner-occupancy for occupied ADUs, set some standards for their development, etc.
The suggestion of opponents (essentially let’s just put off making the hard decisions) isn’t really a solution. If, at the end of the day, the votes aren’t there to pass this thing as amended (as I’m sure it will be), then we can take out some of the more difficult pieces, but elected officials should occasionally be expected to make hard decisions.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
What gets me is that upzoning to allow more units provides no design standards for the new unit, while zoning an ADU overlay does. As an evil developer rep, I’d say get rid of the ADU overlay and we’ll just go for upzonings. As the real-person MBIA rep, I say keep the ADU overlay and add whatever standards make people more comfortable.
Helping people get more protections, of course, never goes unpunished… [sigh]
Well, more hearings tomorrow. Maybe we actually get to discuss the pros and cons of the ADU overlays or of some issue. [fingers crossed]
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Thank you for your comments. Some of the discussion about ADUs reminds me of when people were up in arms about PNCs. One former council member called them “a cancer.” I knocked on doors of homes in PNCs, and those people loved their houses and appreciated being able to afford them. I’d like to do the same thing with ADUs. Knock on doors, the “granny pad” and the main home, and ask what works and what doesn’t. I’m sure neighbors would comment too, as would the planner-types who know how to fix the stuff that doesn’t work. I won’t get a chance to do that before tomorrow’s meeting, but maybe it’s relevant while the rewrite is still a draft.
– Keila
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Let’s go knock on doors! We can register voters while we’re at it and take some photos of development. I vote yes!
June 25th, 2009 at 8:01 am
During the 2007 city council elections, we actually had a small get-together for voters in Ward 6 that both Ed Childers and Lewie Schneller came to. It was hosted in what I believe was a PNC occupied mostly by young families. It was an outstanding example of a development tool working well. The big concern in the neighborhood was not the PNC, it was the group home and the mobile home court. Watching Roger Millar’s powerpoint brought back a lot of memories of the discussions triggered that evening.
There’s a lot of interest in living in Missoula. Without dense development, I’m not sure if there will be many tools to lower the cost of housing (and without dense development, housing inflation is sure to get even more absurd). Raising incomes in Missoula will also just bring more people to town to chase higher salaries. All things considered, this town is a pretty sweet place to live, which is why much of this conversation should actually set the economic questions aside and leave us with the question that we’re really debating: what do Missoulians want their town to look like?
I love near-downtown, dense development living. I like apartments and small houses on small lots and public parks/shared green spaces. Clearly, some others disagree. That’s fine.