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State of Missoula 2009 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Time flies when you’re having fun. Four years ago, I stood here for the first time as your mayor and told you that Missoula is a great place to live, work and raise our families. It may not be that way every day in every way for every one of us, but, generally, we've chosen to live in a wonderful place. My job is to help keep it that way for all sorts of people with all sorts of interests, needs and expectations. In 2008, we asked for a report card. We asked our citizens their opinions about life in Missoula. They told us they are widely satisfied. 81 percent rate the quality of life in Missoula as excellent or good 97 percent consider the city a safe place to live, and 88 percent are happy with the services provided by the City. That makes us pleased and proud. We took off from there. We’ve worked hard in the last year on issues and policies that affect where and how we live. One of my commitments to you has been doing the hard work of making sure that every Missoula resident has access to housing that is safe, desirable and affordable. Housing for all of us who work in the valley is vital to our economic health and the happiness of our households. Working with a team of local professionals, I developed the Mayor’s Housing Initiative. That led to a Community Housing Policy, which the City Council approved in November. It will lead us in this work in the coming year. A long public process led to the adoption this past fall of UFDA, the Urban Fringe Development Area, an innovative way to look at where our growth can responsibly go. We’ve planned for the changing households of Missoula and the need to use our infrastructure wisely while we preserve the unique qualities of each of our neighborhoods. The process and the product is a fine example of way we work together with Missoula County for the greater good. ---PAGE BREAK--- Another promise I made to you is moving forward as we work on rewriting our zoning and subdivision codes. Our codes simply weren’t working for us anymore. They were last updated in 1972, which, as our planning director is fond of pointing out, was before the advent of Internet, cell phones, FedEx and personal computers. We’ve held more than 80 public meetings, workshops and listening sessions on the rewrite and presented a first draft to the public. We hope to move toward adopting new codes this spring. Our Metropolitan Planning Organization adopted the Envision Missoula Long Range Transportation Plan after an unprecedented level of public involvement during the past year. It will shape how the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in transit, trails and roads – how we get around during the next three decades. Or five years, whichever comes first. We’re protecting our youth. We’ve reinvented the Missoula Forum for Children and Youth to provide even better service to keep our young people on a healthy path. The latest numbers show we continue to make progress in reducing our kids’ exposure to alcohol and drugs. Missoula residents responded to that work by passing a substance abuse prevention levy last year. We have a new Safeway store on West Broadway, thanks to an eight-year effort and $1.5 million in tax increment revenue bonds through the Missoula Redevelopment Agency and the City. That helped pay for environmental cleanup, demolition and other necessary work at the site. We teamed up with St. Patrick Hospital on that project, and we thank them for their patience. We all believe it’s important to retain a grocery store for the downtown and the urban neighborhoods around it. When you ask what government’s doing about economic development, you need look no further than our Redevelopment Agency. The MRA has been busy: Its staff also provided funding and expertise for the Greater Downtown Master Plan, the first long-range plan for the downtown. It will guide the growth of downtown for the next 20 to 25 years while protecting the surrounding neighborhoods. Our consultant, Crandall Arambula, did a great job with this, and hundreds of citizens participated. This is another example of how Missoula is demonstrating to potential investors that we’re serious about economic development and have the political will and community spirit to direct public investment in the most meaningful ways. ---PAGE BREAK--- I serve about 70,000 citizens of Missoula and thousands more who visit us every day. An informal survey of my own making suggests that one of every two of these folks is a transportation engineer. Everyone’s interested in traffic and everyone has an idea for fixing it. Here are some of the ideas we’ve put to work: We’ve improved traffic flow with a modest striping and paving project where traffic comes out of Miller Creek on Brooks Street. There’s more coming for that area with full reconstruction of Miller Creek Road from Briggs Street to the intersection of Upper and Lower Miller Creek roads planned for 2010. We’re moving ahead with our Russell Street/South Third Street project, which today is nine years in the making. Things take time in Missoula and they’re not always easy, but we’re working with the City Council and our colleagues at the state and federal level to move forward. Council took another step in shoring up our environmental document, a key hurdle to design and construction, last night. I’d like to think we’ll start building a road in 2012. If not, it won’t be for lack of trying. We’ve calmed traffic in the Jefferson School area to reduce neighborhood cut-through traffic between North and South avenues west of Russell Street. Our Higgins/Hill/Beckwith project will improve neighborhood connections between Mount and Beckwith avenues to the university. We expect the roundabout at that intersection to reduce crashes and reduce energy consumption. Construction is planned for this summer when school is out. When we drive, we also park. The Missoula Redevelopment Agency is the project manager for the Parking Commission to build a 300- to 500-space parking structure on the corner of Front and Pattee Streets in the Front Street Urban Renewal District. It’s one of the key catalytic projects identified in the Downtown Master Plan and will provide parking for downtown employees, the new First Interstate Bank and its office space and customers of Macy’s and other stores and offices. Sometimes you pay me to worry, but because of the remarkable human beings who work with me at the City of Missoula, I never panic. Our police and fire department staffs – the men and women who wear the dark-blue uniforms and who drive the big red trucks – continue to keep us safe. The Police Department, under the leadership of our new chief Mark Muir, successfully navigated a visit from the Hells Angels Club last summer. With planning and organization, they were able to make the week low-key and safe for all of us. ---PAGE BREAK--- Our Fire Department had a very busy year, supported by our tax-paying citizens, the City’s administration and the City Council. For the first time, we provide fire, emergency medical and rescue services from five stations around the city, including a brand-new Station 2 and a remodeled Station 3. We now have five engine companies, which we’ll operate during the next five years with the help of an $800,000 federal grant for firefighter salaries. I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Tom Steenberg, who retired as chief a month ago. Level-headed yet passionate, Tom got the job done and inspired others to do the same. We have a great team carrying on that commitment today. Our Fire Department has a new Wellness-Fitness program, thanks to some seed money from an Assistance to Firefighters federal grant. We think it will benefit our employees and our community by reducing job-related injuries and illness. We know that quality of life is at the top of the list for Missoulians and that they value the things that make Missoula uniquely Missoula. We work hard at creating and protecting the amenities we all enjoy. Last summer, we opened The Lake, our new 50-meter swimming pool. It’s in Playfair Park just next to Splash Montana Waterpark, where kids and adults have had fun since it opened summer before last. Last summer, the two facilities saw 180,000 visits. We continued to work on Missoula’s trail system. Coming up is another piece of the Milwaukee Trail, between Russell and Reserve streets. The project will be funded with money from the 2006 Open Space bond and federal money, which stretches out local dollars. We’re working on the needed easements now. That stretch of trail will go through the Emma Dickinson neighborhood, giving those folks a well-deserved share of our trail system. We continue to improve our stewardship of our 3,600 acres of conservation lands. A survey that we completed with the help of the Missoula County Weed District on the health of grassland plant communities in the North Hills, Mount Jumbo and Mount Sentinel is helping us chart the way to our conservation goals. City staff, consultants and citizens are working now on a Conservation Lands Management Plan that will guide our management of vegetation, wildlife and trails on those lands. ---PAGE BREAK--- Here in Missoula, we believe in parks. We took big steps forward on two important and well-loved community parks continued this year with a master site plan for Fort Missoula Regional Park and a master plan for Memorial Rose Garden. We don’t forget the smaller parks: Lafray Park in the River Road neighborhood is getting its first phase of improvements, making it a green space with trails through the park connecting it to Johnson Street. Sometimes it’s the little things that are important. We wanted to reduce the danger of pedestrians tripping and falling on uneven sidewalks, so we purchased a small grinder. After our crews finish with snow removal, they grind off sidewalks defects. This not only improves the safety of all of us who walk; it also reduces the City’s liability costs. Quality of life includes health. Our city-county health department, with help from Missoula County Public Schools and the MSU College of Nursing, measured where our kids stand in the national epidemic of overweight and obesity. They learned that 27 percent of our third-graders are overweight or obese. That’s too high; the national goal is 11 percent. They’re bending big effort toward this problem working with the schools, the Parks Department, St. Patrick Hospital, YMCA and other partners who care about getting kids away from the screen and into the outdoors and onto the basketball courts. Our health department staff is committed to helping mothers feed their babies in the healthiest way. They’re a member of the Missoula Breastfeeding Coalition, which provides the breastfeeding tent at some of our summer activities at Caras Park and other venues. Their public health nurses and their WIC staff are trained and certified in the skills needed to support nursing mothers. And they have a breastfeeding support hotline. They work hard as advocates to help babies get this perfect natural nutrition for the best start in life. And we worked to be greener. We collaborated with NorthWestern Energy, Mountain Water and volunteers on our Green Blocks residential energy conservation pilot project. The result was a demonstration of energy savings at 91 Missoula homes, 60 of which received insulation, free of charge; the project insulated 42, 499 square feet of living space. The project also installed in those homes 43 programmable thermostats, 44 hot-water tank wraps, 68 low-flow showerheads, 159 water faucet aerators, 252 feet of pipe insulation and 490 compact fluorescent light bulbs. Our hope is that it goes on as an example to other Montana cities. ---PAGE BREAK--- Our newly formed internal Green Team, led by Jackie Corday and attended by employee volunteers, is looking at everything from paper use to green purchasing practices – just because they believe in a sustainable Missoula. Missoula in Motion kept cars off the road. Its members logged about 750 work trips per day by alternative modes of transportation, saving almost 2 million vehicle miles on Missoula streets in 2008. Thanks to innovation and approval from the Department of Environmental Quality, we’ll begin our hybrid poplar project at our wastewater treatment plant. We’ll plant 300 poplar trees this spring and then use that field of trees for land application of wastewater to further protect our Clark Fork River. It’s a pilot project, and we’ll have participation from our friend Dr. Steve Running from The University of Montana. We’ll be upgrading our wastewater plant’s head works, which is the receiving structure for wastewater that flows into the treatment plant. This project will increase flow capacity, control odor and use new energy efficiency equipment, as well as meet the new DEQ requirements. We’ve contracted for the design. We’re also upgrading all of the City’s major lift stations. We care about quality of life downtown. Our city’s Panhandling Working Group, a coalition of professionals in human services, mental health services, business and local government, promoted the Downtown BID’s Real Change Not Spare Change program last summer. Their work attracted a grant from a local family foundation that raised almost $33,000 for three Missoula agencies that help people with food, shelter and clothing. Economic development continues to be important in Missoula. We work closely with Montana Community Development Corporation, where the available small business funding available grew by $6 million last year. That brings the total available to $11 million. In addition, MCDC received an allocation of $40 million in New Markets Tax Credits, which provide remarkable incentive for investment in our community. ---PAGE BREAK--- We also work with the Missoula Area Economic Development Corporation, the Missoula Downtown Association and Business Improvement District, the Chamber, and many other small and large businesses every day. Too many folks in too many departments do great things to mention here. From the attorney’s office to municipal court, from the finance department to the cemetery, from our maintenance shop to our IT department, we’re taking care of the public’s business in ways that don’t make headlines. All of that work is important, and I’m privileged to work with the folks who get the jobs done. I want to thank them and especially my colleagues in the mayor’s office, who manage complicated schedules, citizen concerns and daily surprises with efficiency, elegance and a genuine respect for those we serve. Thanks, too, to members of our City Council, who serve the citizens of Missoula with me. We can’t discuss the state of Missoula without discussing City finances. As I told council members last night, we’re working on saving money and planning for a modest budget for next year. We’re collecting less money than we hoped, but not as little as we expected. Local government runs lean. Our employees are pulling together to do more with less. We’re cautious but optimistic and, for better or worse, are ready to respond to facts as they unfold rather that react to fear-based speculation. Under the leadership of Finance Director Brentt Ramharter and the help of the Missoula City Council, our credit rating was bumped up to AA and our financial management assessment is “strong,” according to Standard & Poors. Translated, that means we have excellent credit. If you’ve noted recent headlines, that’s a big deal. And recent headlines have been grim. A troubled economy, war, uncertainty. It’s all a bit overwhelming. In the last weeks, you’ve heard from folks much smarter and articulate than I about the promise of America. I can only talk with you today about the promise of this place. Missoula’s seen tough times before and some of us have been around here long enough to remember those times. We remember mills and storefronts going dark, classmates with wherewithal and good grades moving to the coasts, dirty air and polluted streams. We were another Western town in the depths of recession, a changing economy and at the mercy of forces beyond our control. ---PAGE BREAK--- But we recognized the promise of the place. We cleaned up the air and the rivers, acknowledged the fun and the funky, invested in our downtown and our natural spaces, built trails and planted trees, fixed buildings and sewer lines. We did all that by working together. We made the choice, every day, to live, work, learn and play in Missoula. That’s the choice we all make today. Whether you were born here or wish you were, you choose every day to call Missoula home. You and I share a responsibility to keep the place great, to keep the promise of Missoula alive for our kids and theirs. We need to work together and remember that, on balance and all things being equal, most of the world would love to live right here in Missoula, Montana. So in 2009, we’re going to work with the State of Montana to ensure that we receive our fair share of transportation dollars. We’ve argued among ourselves for too long over too little, and that needs to end. We’re going to work with our Congressional delegation to ensure that Missoula, one of Montana’s critical economic engines, is fueled by any stimulus package that the President Obama signs. We’re going to work with serious folks who come to the table to adopt a downtown master plan and to update our zoning and subdivision regulations. We don’t have to agree on every detail, but we need to realize a return on these significant and wise public investments. We’re going to work together with our schools and our university to bridge gaps, and grow good citizens. We’re going to work together to fill potholes and save lives. We’re going to work together to lift up our poor, comfort our afflicted, rehabilitate our addicted, house our families, feed our hungry and put folks to work. We’re going to work together on the mundane and the sublime, doing what local governments were meant to do: We’re going to take care of people and our place. That’s our promise to each other. It is my sincere hope to see you next year and deliver good news about 2009 as your mayor. Thank you for the privilege of serving you.