Month: April 2019

by William Skink

Why does Greg Strandberg continue to throw around bullshit numbers about homelessness in Missoula? I don’t know, the usually prolific spammer of other sites doesn’t often respond when I call him out, like I’ve had to do multiple times in the past.  

In 2016, when Strandberg was trying to transform his online trolling into a Council job, I wrote this post.

The following year I wrote another post about Strandberg’s ignorance. And this one. And this one. Last year I finally had to acknowledge that the ignorance is willful.

This latest post, though, is a real piece of crap. First, Strandberg claims there are over 200 people who sleep at the Poverello Center each night. Nope. Last year the Pov put a cap on how many they could serve, and that number is 175 people. Strandberg further claims there are over 125 people at the Reserve Street camps. I would like to know how he arrived at that number because it’s not accurate. I say that having years of direct experience doing outreach for the homeless shelter. There has never been close to 100 people in that area.

Then there are the jail numbers. Strandberg again makes an unsubstantiated claim about the jail being 120 people over capacity. He bases this on being “pretty confident” the state inmates aren’t accounted for in the jail roster. I am also “pretty confident” he is wrong about that, like he’s wrong about so much else in this post.

Despite parroting the Seattle is Dying claim that Seattle has a drug problem, not a homeless problem, Strandberg still focuses the majority of his criticism on Missoula’s homeless shelter, blaming it for the problems in the neighborhood and insinuating the Pov is getting rich on homelessness. One way Strandberg accomplishes this insinuation is by describing the Pov’s funding as “revenue”. 

Maybe Strandberg doesn’t understand the difference between for-profit businesses and non-profits. If he did he would understand why the term “revenue” is misleading. Here is a definition of revenue:

The income generated from sale of goods or services, or any other use of capital or assets, associated with the main operations of an organization before any costs or expenses are deducted. Revenue is shown usually as the top item in an income (profit and loss) statement from which all charges, costs, and expenses are subtracted to arrive at net income.

 

The Pov, as a non-profit, gets funding, not revenue, and it gets funding from city/county/federal sources in addition to donations from individuals. The idea that anyone at the Pov is there doing the work because of the money is not just laughable, it’s downright offensive. But that’s what Greg Strandberg does, he tries to be purposely offensive in order to get attention.

I don’t have patience when my 8 year old pulls this kind of shit, and even less so when an alleged adult is doing it.

Another area where Strandberg is full of it is the idea that there are just plenty of options for addicts to get treatment in Montana. There are not. The programs Strandberg references are option AFTER crimes have been committed and a person is facing prison. This distinction is important because all the studies show it would be more cost effective to provide treatment options BEFORE crimes have been committed.

The Montana options for in-patient treatment before the criminal justice system is triggered is essentially Rimrock in Billings, MCDC in Butte and Recovery Center in Missoula (I may be missing something, and if I am, I will update this post). There are less than 200 beds in the entire state. And how many people go through an addiction? Here’s a quote from the National Institutes of Health

A survey of American adults revealed that drug use disorder is common, co-occurs with a range of mental health disorders and often goes untreated. The study, funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health, found that about 4 percent of Americans met the criteria for drug use disorder in the past year and about 10 percent have had drug use disorder at some time in their lives.

Montana has a population of around 1 million people, so, based on the conclusion of this study, that means around 100,000 people in Montana have had a drug use disorder at some point in their life.

Are less than 200 beds enough for the amount of people struggling with an addiction in Montana?

The quick answer is no.

I’m getting really tired of writing this same post about Strandberg’s ignorance over and over again. Because it’s not ignorance. It’s purposeful opportunism as he plans another run at local office. But like all his other failed attempts to get government benefits, it won’t work.
 

 

by William Skink

Another cool million in public money will grease the development of another hotel downtown. We are told this will bring more tourists to roam the sidewalks, showering local shops with money. We are told a whopping 33 permanent service sector jobs will be created. And we are told it’s ultimately a benefit to Missoula taxpayers to use a million dollars extracted from Missoula taxpayers to help those cash-strapped developers because without that money being spent, that awful speck of blight just sitting there being economically unproductive would continue being blight.

So pats on the back all around.

Oh, but where will these 33 service sector workers live in Missoula that doesn’t cost-burden them with unaffordable rent? Solutions to that are forthcoming, we are told.

One idea floated last year to get some housing built is a by-product of Trump’s tax cuts, called Opportunity Zones. Liberals in Missoula may gnash their teeth in horror and dismay over Trump’s election, but that won’t stop the local candidates they vote for from supporting the use of a Trump-enabled economic tool to get a better return on real estate investment for investors.

The West Broadway corridor is a TOZ (Trump Opportunity Zone) that, we are told, could lure investors who then might develop housing. But it won’t be affordable housing for the poor people who make the TOZ a TOZ.

But what do I know? I’ll let the expert explain it:

Pehan said that subsidized affordable housing probably won’t see explosive growth in the area because those rely on grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“The level of subsidy needed to make HUD plans affordable, I don’t think those are the type of assets that are going to be invested in and replaced by the Opportunity Zone,” she said.

But, she said, if investors build more market-rate housing, that could bring up the total supply of housing and possibly drive down prices.

“Creating more housing provides relief on total supply and can help with displacement issues, but (HUD grants and Opportunity Zones) are two different tools,” she said.

What I am hearing from this is that the TOZ is going to entice development of market rate housing, which I presume will be multi-family housing complexes because that’s the kind of housing that provides a better return on investment. This is also the kind of housing people get stuck in because they can’t buy a home.

What middle-income people want is single-family housing they can actually afford to buy, not more apartments to be squeezed into because Missoula’s growth plan and investor expectations dictate this kind of development.

At least this TOZ is getting some critical attention that our elected leaders are actually paying some lip service to. In the article the “g” word—gentrification—was actually used to describe TOZ skepticism. Not only was it used, but it was used in the first paragraph:

There is anxiety about gentrification but also optimism for development in Missoula’s so-called Opportunity Zone, according to city officials who discussed the area in depth on Tuesday.

Later in the article we hear more lip service:

Missoula City Council President Bryan von Lossberg, who lives on the Northside, said he immediately got three texts from different constituents the morning the Missoulian ran an article explaining the Opportunity Zone.

“The first text included a picture of the newspaper and said it’s never good to be in an Opportunity Zone for rich people,” von Lossberg recalled. “That’s an important sentiment to hear and listen to and to share. It captures the angst on the ground. In this period of profound rapid change and development, there is wonderful optimism but also a profound sense of anxiety.”

The problem is lip service is not the same as action. Quotes in newspaper articles, well-intentioned studies, gathering public input, intentionality–it’s all just lip service to cover the fact Missoula is continuing to rapidly gentrify and it’s leaving more and more people behind.

At the end of the article the prize for the most tone deaf statement goes to Ross Keogh, an attorney already helping his clients take advantage of Missoula’s TOZ. Take it away, Ross:

A few people in the crowd expressed concern that rapid development by wealthy investors would turn Missoula into Boulder, Colorado, a town that’s seen so much growth recently that it had to put a moratorium on development.

“I’m also conscious that sometimes we look a lot like Boulder, but I like that I was able to ski last Friday at our local ski hill with some friends,” Keogh said. “And I think it’s important that we talk as a community about how this incentive doesn’t change our area.”

Yeah, the important thing is a lawyer can still have a ski day. I guess that means everything is just peachy in Zoo Town.

by William Skink

I saw a woman emerge from her tent–no shirt, just bra–and comb her hair. Luckily I had already dodged the shopping cart, otherwise the image may have kept me from identifying the metal hazard in my path.

That was my experience today biking home from work. The woman and the tent are within rock-throwing distance from the Reserve Street bridge. I saw a new tent today not 10 feet from water that will soon get higher and wash a significant amount of trash (and the tent, if it’s still there) down stream.

There are laws being broken but they are not being enforced. The clean-up collaborations I used to help organize don’t seem to be happening with the same scope or frequency. The Clark Fork Coalition has their big Clark Fork Clean-Up this Saturday, but I doubt this part of the river is going to be addressed.

Not unrelated, I recently watch an interesting piece on what’s happening in Seattle. I suggest checking it out.

by William Skink

As I put together last Saturday’s post about gentrification in Missoula I noticed that the information I was most interested in was often at the end of, or near the end of, the article. The phrase that describes this phenomenon is “burying the lede”.

A local media piece in the Missoulian today about a national media piece in the Washington Post about Hamilton, Montana caught my attention. Not because a national rag was able to find Hamilton, Montana on the map and not because Hamilton seems to be bucking the trend of dying small towns.

No, what got my attention was the part of the article where Hamilton’s Mayor, Dominic Farrenkopf, talked about how he would like to see Hamilton grow, and, more specifically, what mechanisms are being considered to prime that growth:

Hamilton’s 40-year-old mayor, Dominic Farrenkopf, told the Post he’d like to see Hamilton grow by another 1,000.

On Tuesday, Farrenkopf said that’s right as long those new folks arrive over the next 15 to 20 years.

“I think growing responsibly is really important,” Farrenkopf said. “We have a lot of good things happening here and there is potential for more… But the key is that growth needs to happen slowly and responsibly.”

Working with the city council and county commission, Farrenkopf is encouraged by moves to create an urban renewal district and a separate opportunity zone in the community that could unlock potential for new light industry in Hamilton, with its promise of good paying jobs.

I’m sure Farrenkopf is encouraged. Developers and Real Estate peddlers are also probably salivating. But there’s a little problem: where exactly is the urban blight in Hamilton to warrant a URD? The article points out that downtown Hamilton is doing great and boasts not one vacant storefront downtown. To renew an urban district there needs to be something to renew. That is the “blight” the URD is designed to address.

While conventional thinking seems to view almost all growth as good, the notion that good paying jobs will automatically follow development needs to be critically examined. More growth and more people creates more demand for government services. If Hamilton starts going down the URD road its citizens could find themselves in a similar boat as their northern neighbors in Zoo Town, footing higher tax bills so developers can get sidewalks built for their project with public money.

Beware of what your elected leaders are planning, citizens of Hamilton. Missoula should be a cautionary example of how the mechanisms of priming growth can get out of control. You’ve been warned.

by William Skink

There is a screw the poor sentiment in Montana that is obviously deployed by Conservatives and less obviously deployed by Liberals. 

At the State level it’s the political wrangling over Medicaid expansion where this is most obvious. Conservatives throw fiscal conservatism out the window when it comes to punishing poor people for needing government-funded health coverage.

They don’t care if the State gets sued and has to spend precious resources defending work requirements in court.

They don’t care if emergency services and ER triage continues serving the under-served, adding to the skyrocketing cost of health care services for all of us.

They don’t care that turning down Federal funds for Medicaid doesn’t hand back the money to some general fund for savings, but will instead go to other states with legislatures less inclined to expensively punish the poor for being poor in America.

In Missoula screwing the poor is done more subtly, but if you look at where money goes and where it doesn’t go, you can see what the priorities are–and it’s not to make the lives of poor people in Missoula any better.

One recent article about County funds administered by the Salvation Army shows the disparity between need and available funds. Because of the harsh winter the small amount of funds went faster this year than expected:

Montana’s unusually frigid winter this year forced the Salvation Army to plow through its entire $39,600 rental and deposit assistance program by March 8, prompting the group to request and receive an additional $7,000 Thursday from Missoula County.

The money was supposed to last through April, but fell short almost two months early. They turned to a $10,000 rental assistant grant through the Emergency Food and Shelter Grant, but that only lasted until March 15.

“Since running out of that funding last Friday, we have 32 households on a waiting list hoping for a little help to stay housed,” Julie Clark, a social service coordinator at the Salvation Army, wrote in a March 22 letter to Nancy Rittel, a grants administrator for Missoula County. “With an extra $7,000 we could potentially help up to 20 more households and keep them in housing.”

And how much was actually requested of this program? That info is at the bottom of the article:

Clark added that the total amount of aid requested this year was $130,600, so The Salvation Army’s assistance was only 30 percent of what was sought.

To contrast this use of County funds, it was recently reported that millions of dollars will be raised to house bugs. Yes, bugs. Yes, millions of dollars. From the Missoula Current:
 

The Missoula Insectarium and Missoula County Extension and Weed District will build a learning center and offices at the Missoula County Fairgrounds, bringing more diverse uses to the property and restoration of the land and buildings.

The 29,000-square-foot building will house offices for the Missoula Extension Service and Weed District and space for local 4-H and family and consumer sciences programs. Those uses will occupy about two-thirds of the building.

Sounds expensive. So how much will this cost? According to the article, just phase one will be 20 million. But, Missoula tax paying citizens, at least the bugs will have a wonderful home in which to live, right?

I know our local elected officials can get a little touchy when facing criticism, and I say that from direct experience, having inspired a verbal confrontation by a City Council member because I wrote a poem about sidewalks that the Missoulian published. During that interaction I got a peek into how maligned that council person feels regarding how local media reports on local issues, like taxes. 

Well, wouldn’t you know, there is a convenient Missoulian article (just days after Jesse Ramos criticized MRA) that takes a look at local taxes, an article that conveniently doesn’t mention Urban Renewal Districts until the very end, and even then what is said is of little actual substance. First, here’s a little of the PR effort:

Missoula residents pay lower taxes, per capita, to the city than people in Bozeman, Helena and Kalispell, and slightly more than taxpayers in Billings and Great Falls, according to the city’s Finance Department.

Jessica Miller, the city’s citizen services manager, gave a presentation recently on the city’s taxes to a Citizens’ Academy, part of a series to educate people on city issues. It was organized by Missoula City Council members Heather Harp and Gwen Jones. The event was recorded by Missoula Community Access Television and reviewed by the Missoulian.

“Despite all the headlines you’ve seen in the paper and various other news media that Missoula has the highest property taxes, what a lot of those folks are commenting on is the number of mills that we assess,” Miller told the crowd. “That can be kind of misleading.”

And here, buried at the end of the article (notice a theme here?) is the part about URDs:

One person in the audience wanted to know if the city’s Urban Renewal Districts pay higher or lower property taxes than everyone else. In those districts, all the new property taxes generated since the day the districts were formed is administered by the Missoula Redevelopment Agency. That money goes back into those districts in the form of Tax Increment Financing and not into the general fund.

The city’s chief administrative officer, Dale Bickell, explained that everyone pays the same.

“Personal property pays the same in an Urban Renewal District,” he said.

The question is dumb and obviously comes from someone who doesn’t understand that it’s not that property owners within URD’s pay higher taxes, it’s that URD’s contribute to everyone’s taxes going up to feed demand for essential services that the general fund can’t keep up with because the benefit of increased tax revenue is being redirected to the MRA piggy bank.

These over-used financial mechanisms priming gentrification across the valley is a reality that our enlightened city leaders are trying to obfuscate with the numbers thrown around in this presentation. By the way, what the hell is this Citizen’s Academy anyway? An indoctrination camp?

I hate to break it to our enlightened city officials, but no amount of perception management will change the absurdity of spending $25,000 of our public money, mismanaged by MRA, on a dog statue. And no amount of perception management will change the problems of pushing big bonds for things like parks, at a cost of 39 million dollars, only to have Parks and Rec ask for more money (which they did last year) because they can’t afford to manage all the new green spaces. From the link:

The general fund budget for parks and recreation currently stands at $5.82 million, though the department is seeking a 7.5 percent increase to $6.2 million. The current budget, Gaukler said, isn’t enough to cover the department’s growing list of responsibilities around maintenance and upkeep.

“We understand this is a substantial change in numbers,” she said. “We wanted to show you, predominantly what that does, is keep the 60 percent for maintenance constant.”

Those maintenance costs continue to increase as Missoula grows. Last year, the city opened a downtown Art Park, the South Reserve Street pedestrian bridge and the Orange Street roundabout, among other additions, adding $88,000 in unfunded maintenance costs.

Gaukler said additional projects expected to come online this year will add an another $193,000 in maintenance costs. Other costs, identified as cyclical in the budget, are also mounting, including some that carry high dollar figures, such as the Northside pedestrian bridge.

The PR effort in the Missoulian shows that the majority of our elected officials still don’t get it. Considering how many economic indicators are screaming of a looming recession, if not worse, it would be nice to see a proactive reassessment of our community’s priorities toward real inclusiveness of all levels of income.

I suspect economically disadvantaged human beings would be more appreciative of assistance than bugs. Just a hunch.