Month: May 2018

by William Skink

In response to a KPAX piece about city leaders looking “for further input on citizen survey”, Lead Based Saint had this to say on the Twitter (commas added):

Prioritizing, a basic function of municipal govt, takes a survey and an open house? How thick is the bubble around City Hall?

Instead of paying $24,000 for a stupid survey and now soliciting more feedback, City Council and the captain of our municipal ship, Sailor Engen, should do something simple: prioritize needs instead of wants.

Needs include everything the city of Missoula requires to function, and surprise, streets are definitely a need. When I see all those poor bastards lined up on Flynn Street hoping to take a left onto Mullan, I think some basic infrastructure needs are taking a back seat as the housing density creeps into the County.

And here are some things that are not a need: a play wave, a baseball stadium, and an art park.

If City Council would just start there–prioritizing needs over wants–I think there would be less citizen anger and less chances of committing municipal malfeasance, like the art park bill.

You don’t “need” an open house to understand that needs are not the same thing as wants.

And you don’t need to pay a dime for this valuable advice. I offer my consulting services for free.

by William Skink

Before launching into another brief tirade on city finances I will admit I am not the financially responsible one in our household. I don’t run wild and put our sustainability at risk, but I am more susceptible to impulse buys than my partner is.

One thing I don’t do is run up credit card bills I can’t afford. When I splurged on a Courtney Blazon original, the Dana Gallery was nice enough to allow me to pay in increments. If I had deeper pockets I would have no problem finding ways to spend money.

The dynamics of running a household with dependents (children, dogs, cats, chickens) compared to running a city is made all the time, and probably not fair, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to ask you what you would think of me if I maxed out my credit card buying art instead of making sure my kids had enough food to eat.

You would think I’m an asshole, right? I certainly wouldn’t have a willing partner anymore if I behaved that way. Nope, I’d be shown the door and searching for a divorce lawyer.

You see where this is going.

Last week City Council learned taxpayers are on the hook for $175,000 for the art park between the MAM and Adventure Cycling downtown. And because we’re not just paying off this unexpected debt the cost will be much more:

The Art Park celebrated its ribbon cutting outside the Missoula Art Museum on April 22 last year. The project was initially approved by the City Council in 2016 at a cost of $668,000, though the project’s costs increased to around $900,000, which the council also approved.

As part of those costs, Bickell said, the council increased its general fund participation and the fundraising committee increased its amount, both intended to cover the anticipated $900,000 cost.

“What happened at the end of the day, the project ended up overspending about $50,000 that didn’t have initial City Council approval, and the fundraising side fell short,” Bickell said. “Those two things compounded and created this issue.”

While most of today’s City Council members didn’t have a hand in the project, they still expressed dismay that fundraising efforts have stopped and that taxpayers will cover the bill.

“We’re stuck with a bill we never anticipated, and now we’re financing it for 20 years, and that bill will be even more as a result of the financing,” said council member John DiBari. “This doesn’t sit very well with me. I want to support the police station and the legitimate part of the Art Park, but not the chunk of money the city bore no responsibility for originally then got stuck with.”

Add this to the growing pile of examples that the city of Missoula is financially incompetent. The park bond, Max’s wave, the pedestrian bridge, Southgate mall bailout, baseball stadium bailout, litigating the stupid gun ordinance, throwing money at Arts Missoula to hire some sensitivity trainer, and now the library, which the Mayor is urging MRA to throw money at because–THE HORROR–a fourth floor community room might have to be sacrificed!!! From the link:

To date, the library has raised $4.6 million in private philanthropy, along with $705,000 in other revenues, plus $30 million from the bond that passed in 2016, according to records provided to MRA.

“We were showing we were about $1.25 million over what they could deliver,” Ellingson said. “One of the logical ways to shave off that $1.25 million was to shave off the fourth story. But as someone who has worked really hard on this library and wants it to be an iconic establishment for downtown, I was not very willing to let go of that fourth floor, and neither was the board or downtown.”

Set on keeping the top floor, the foundation approached Missoula Mayor John Engen and MRA to discuss the funding shortage. With encouragement from the mayor, the foundation proceeded to include the top floor in the final design.

“We had to make a decision at that point about whether we could move on, because you have to decide early on if it’s going to be four or three stories,” said Ellingson. “We felt in order to make a decision to go ahead with that fourth story, we needed to pursue help from the MRA.”

The foundation approached MRA last month with its request, which was originally higher than the $500,000 agreed upon Thursday. They also found support from Engen, who lobbied for the funding on the library’s behalf.

Engen said the city supports the project and voters do as well, evidenced by the passage of the $30 million bond. The top floor, which has been indicated in renderings since the project’s inception, is intended to serve as a community meeting space.

“Deleting the top floor of this facility as a function of a commitment to the community doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me,” Engen said. “I have faith in the library that we’ll get a building that matters to this community for a long time. It’s a minimus pledge today. It’s perfectly reasonable.”

I guess in Engen’s mind the voters passing a bond also means the voters signaling yes, please, use more public financing to make sure that crucial fourth floor community space stays in the plans.

I would suggest maybe soliciting some feedback from the public, but even when that happens the Mayor finds a way to spend $24,000 dollars:

Nearly 80 percent of Missoulians think they have an excellent or good quality of life, according to a city survey, although that satisfaction depends somewhat on income.

Missoulians who make more than $75,000 a year are much more likely to say they have an excellent quality of life, though only 15 percent of those who make under $15,000 think they have a poor or below average quality of life.

Those results are from a phone survey commissioned by the city of Missoula and completed by researchers at the UM Social Science Research Laboratory for $24,000.

The data can help Mayor John Engen and City Council budget with clearer, citizen-driven, priorities.

Ah, so the city spent money on a survey that discovered people who make more money are more likely to say they are satisfied with the quality of their life? Brilliant.

Boy, it sure is a good thing there is no budget crisis here in Missoula. Carry on, Sailor Engen.

by William Skink

by William Skink

Back in March, Jon Tester defended his vote on the banking bill by claiming he was helping community banks:

Senator Jon Tester called a press conference yesterday after the banking de-regulation bill he co-sponsored passed the Senate. The bill rolls back restrictions for some banks enacted in the Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

Tester’s bill was popular with Senate Republicans, and won support from 15 other Democrats.

“Our bipartisan bill will cut the unnecessary red tape for small community banks and credit unions in Montana, so that families, small businesses and farmers and ranchers are able to access the capital and the business loans that they need to expand their operation or survive through a difficult time,” Tester says. “Our bill will remove regulations for banks on main street, while holding Wall Street banks accountable.”

Tester says his bill helps small banks by freeing them from the cost of complying with expensive regulations in the Dodd-Frank law. Dodd-Frank places tighter restrictions on banks with more than $50 billion in assets. Tester’s bill removes those restrictions on banks with up to $250 billion in assets.

Tester got plenty of criticism for this vote, so of course Democrat partisan Don Pogreba jumped in to do his duty and lament how poor Jon Tester was getting unnecessarily dinged from the left for selling out to big banks:

Frankly, Tester may be wrong about the need for this repeal, but his vote is to protect the viability of smaller banks in Montana who simply could not compete with larger institutions more able to process and manage the requirements Dodd-Frank placed on them. If anything, Tester’s vote helps level the playing field between those larger banks and the smaller institutions that serve us. To argue that Tester’s vote is a giveaway to megabanks is to ignore both his record and the literal text of the bill.

So, is Tester and his cheerleaders correct? Or, were the critics correct? Let’s go now to this Intercept piece, titled Bill Aimed at Saving Community Banks Is Already Killing Them. This article gets into the actual nuts and bolts of the bill and explains why some of the provisions passed with the help of Democrats like Tester will actually have the opposite effect on community banks:

A separate Crapo bill provision should also spur merger activity. Section 207 increases the Federal Reserve’s “small bank holding company” threshold from $1 billion to $3 billion. Banks that are eligible for this designation can operate with higher levels of debt than would otherwise be permitted. That, again, broadens headspace for hundreds of banks at the smaller end to combine without losing this significant benefit, which enables them to juice returns by using other people’s money. Half of all buyers and nearly all of the sellers in bank M&A deals since 2010 were below $1 billion in assets, according to the investment firm FJ Capital Management.

The increased pool of cash-flush buyers should blunt the mild regulatory relief in the Crapo bill for smaller banks. “It’ll be less expensive to operate a community bank,” said Brown, who is an M&A lawyer. “But the fact is, they have an aging shareholder base, an aging management and board, and a lot of them want out.” And more buyers chasing deals means higher prices, making selling out even more attractive. It’s like a Silicon Valley startup exit strategy, applied to community banks.

SO, TESTER’S CONCERN — that a more concentrated banking sector will pull out of rural America, leaving large chunks of the country behind — is made, if anything, worse by the bill he supports.

It look like the critics were correct, and Tester and his cheerleaders are wrong. Instead of helping community banks, Tester has made it easier for them to be gobbled up.

Despite this, plenty of Democrats will still fall in line to vote for Jon Tester. They either don’t know or don’t care that Tester is deceiving them in order to help a banking industry that was never held accountable for nearly bringing down the global economy 8 years ago.

I have a smidgen of sympathy for the average voter’s propensity to be manipulated. People are busy trying to make ends meet and don’t always have the luxury to read up about issues. But the supposed progressives doing the cheerleading for a deceitful politician like Tester? I have no sympathy for them.

Don’t expect the Montana Post to acknowledge that Tester deceived them and the banking bill is doing the opposite of what he said it would. It is not their intent to actually inform voters about what their chosen candidates are doing. Nope, a truly informed voter would understand people do not impact policy, and public opinion doesn’t matter to politicians.

Politicians do what the big time donors and lobbyists tell them to do. Jon Tester is evidence of this, a sad reality you won’t hear about from his cheerleaders.

by William Skink

  

corpses fill her smile
in New Jerusalem
with J-Kush strapped beside her
blades of grass get trimmed
don’t worry, on public radio
he says they shoot at legs
no other voices allowed to speak
no liberal outrage fed
when a video of laughing soldiers
killing civilians with glee
combined with a growing body count
can’t be kept off tv
you’ll hear reports of “clashes”
and other sanitizing terms
turning hope for humanity
into human food for worms
so sharpshooters, take your shots
kill children, women and men
Gaza is a concentration camp
waiting for the final solution