Last Wednesday I vanquished technological barriers to officially talk with Monica Perez and Brad Binkley about the incestuous corruption of Zoom Town.
I am very happy with our chat, and find it amusing that the teaser for the subscriber-only last 30 minutes is for school board shenanigans. If the threat-assessors want to fully assess this content, they better pony up for the peek.
But seriously, subscriptions are just one of the ways scrappy content creators are trying to pay the bills, so consider subscribing the The Prop Report. I consider it some of the best money I spend in this information war.
First I gotta say I just LOVE that Gomer Kidston has to report on the notable and hilarious transformation of Chris Behan the DD of MRA to Chris Behan the LLC doing the DD’s work at MRA.
If you haven’t yet seen how Kidston rolls against local activists in Engen’s Missoula, or gone to the GoFundMe page to help me raise some dough to help with the costs of making the film, I have to wonder WHAT could you be waiting for?
I doubt Behan has had the time to check out the documentary because going from PUPA to full-on BUTTERFLY takes lots of energy.
Kind of like how I imagine writing crap coverage of this hilarity takes lots of beers, especially when you have to make the work of shoveling public money into the pockets of developers sound like difficult work:
Citing high investment interest and the current pace of development, the Missoula Redevelopment Agency’s board of commissioners on Thursday agreed to bring back a former agency member on a contract basis to help carry the workload.
Chris Behan, who worked for MRA for several decades before retiring last year, will return to the agency as Behan Development Consulting LLC. In doing so, he’ll bring his expertise back to the office as MRA grapples to keep pace with a number of large projects.
I added the emphasis on the GRAPPLING plight of MRA to “keep pace” because it’s such a fun depiction of why Behan Development Consulting LLC is coming to the alleged rescue of a now understaffed MRA.
And why are they understaffed? Because Chris Behan left, of course!
MRA has been short an employee ever since Behan retired in June. It has hired a new deputy director to replace him, though she won’t begin until later this year. And when she does, it will take her time to get familiar with the agency’s current slate of projects.
If these projects are so critical and the time to train a new cog is so lengthy, why did Behan retire in the first place?
What a silly question. Let’s just be happy Behan is still around to shepherd the GREAT REVIVAL of the NEVER DEAD obsession Mayor Engen has to see a developed monstrosity built on the riverfront at Orange Street.
Here’s the Queen of Gentrification, Ellen Buchanan, decreeing this be so to make the magic happen. With PUBLIC MONEY, of course!
MRA Director Ellen Buchanan said the list of projects is high and interest in investing in the city continues to grow. Help is needed now, she added.
“The amount of production in the office continues to increase as Missoula continues to attract investment,” Buchanan said. “We’re working on some of the largest projects in the history of the agency and the experience and knowledge that Chris can bring to these projects is immeasurable.”
Buchanan noted a number of large projects under the agency’s watch, including a sizable housing project on Scott Street, the conversion of Front and Main streets into two-way traffic, and the proposed redevelopment of the Brooks Street corridor.
She said interest in developing the Riverfront Triangle and specifically the old Fox theater site has also returned. That project was placed on hold in 2020 when the pandemic hit, though a new project has been rumored among city officials.
I love to see the word RUMOR associated with the Riverfront Triange project just two weeks after that aforementioned documentary was made public.
How you gonna get ahead of the rumors this time, Johnny E.? Does having a Behan LLC ringer with private sector protections on communication help with that?
Behan worked on the Fox project for more than a decade and is familiar with it.
“He’ll be available to assist with the development of the Fox site if a development proposal materializes, and it looks promising that it will,” Buchanan said. “No one has as much knowledge around the Riverfront Triangle and the Fox site as Chris.”
Yep, Chris has that knowledge all right. But does he have Gomer’s ability to NOT report on some other developments coming from MRA?
Last year, according to Gomer’s own reporting, Brian Sippy, owner of the Radius Gallery, was angling for some sweet TIF money to help him redevelop another property downtown. How much TIF? That was an open question (emphasis mine):
The developers plan to request assistance from the city’s Tax Increment Finance program to cover some aspects of the project, such as deconstruction, which the program is permitted to fund under Montana state law.
The Missoula Redevelopment Agency on Thursday agreed to allow the project to proceed ahead of an official request for tax increment. That request is expected next month or in January, and the amount remains undetermined.
“There’s no guarantee that by approving this without prejudice that the project itself will be funded,” said MRA board member Ruth Reineking. However, the board added, the developers’ track record shines favorably on their request.
Well, that favorable shine now has an official number for Brian Sippy and his Apple Lane LLC.
It must be nice to be a connected member of TEAM ENGEN. Stay tuned for more insight into the busy gentrification schemes of these wonderful people.
I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say the fourth installment of the Matrix franchise is a disappointment for anyone expecting the spark of creativity to find an honest breath within our real-life matrix of corporate cooptation, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t narrative value in what one-half of the Wachowski team managed to expose.
We’ll get to how this applies to George Carline in a minute.
Here’s a little context on the “meta-joke” of Thomas Anderson being forced to make a sequel to his popular VIDEO GAME series, the Matrix, by his corporate overlords, Warner Bros.
The Matrix Resurrections opens with the reveal that Thomas Anderson runs a big gaming company that made games, not movies, called The Matrix. And now its parent company, Warner Bros., wants a fourth game… which he does not want to do. The whole thing feels like a very obvious commentary on Wachowski’s personal feelings about making this movie, so we asked if it was specifically in regards to any trepidations or if Warner Bros. ever pushed back on being made fun of.
“Trepidation. I think that’s a fair word,” Mitchell said. “And the trepidation gets sublimated into Thomas Anderson’s general existential anxiety I think. [As for] any crapping [on Warner Bros.], this is done, of course, with respect and affection. In the most legal possible sense with respect and affection. But yeah, I think trepidation is a fair word. It was a big step.”
The article goes on to describe how information later leaked that Warner Bros, in real life, was more than willing to make Matrix 4 without ANY Wachowski.
How this relates to George Carlin is the fact his joke routine in 1992 about developing golf courses to deal with the homeless problem is now a real-life approach to solving the affordable housing crisis in 2022, something I wrote about yesterday.
Here’s the routine in words first. Below that will be the video.
I’ve got just the place for low-cost housing. I have solved this problem. I know where we can build housing for the homeless: golf courses! It’s perfect! Just what we need. Plenty of good land, in nice neighborhoods, land that is currently being wasted on a meaningless, mindless activity engaged in primarily by white, well-to-do male businessmen who use the game to get together to make deals to carve this country up a little finer amongst themselves. I am getting tired, really getting tired, of these golfing cocksuckers in their green pants, and their yellow pants, and their orange pants, and their precious little hats and their cute little golf carts! It is time to reclaim the golf courses from the wealthy and turn them over to the homeless! Golfing is a arrogant, elitist game which takes up entirely too much room in this country. Too much room’ in this country! It is an arrogant game on its very design alone, just the design of the game speaks of arrogance. Think of how big a golf course is – the ball is that fucking big! What do these pin-headed pricks need with all that land?! There are over seventeen thousand golf courses in America, they average over one hundred and fifty acres a piece – that’s three million plus acres, four thousand, eight hundred and twenty square miles – you could build two Rhode Islands and a Delaware for the homeless on the land currently being wasted on this meaningless, mindless, arrogant, elitist, racist, there’s another thing; the only blacks you’ll find at country clubs are carrying trays. And a boring game. A boring game for boring people. You ever watch golf on television? It’s like watching flies fuck! And a mindless game, mindless. Think of the intellect it must take, to draw pleasure from this activity: hitting a ball with a crooked stick and then, walking after it! And then, hitting it again! I say pick it up asshole, you’re lucky you found the fucking thing! Put it in your pocket and go home, you’re a winner! You’ve found it! No chance of that happening. Dork-o in the plaid knickers is going to hit it again and walk some more. Let these rich cocksuckers play miniature golf! Let them fuck with a windmill for an hour and a half or so! See if there’s any real skill among these people. Now I know there are some people who play golf who don’t consider themselves rich. FUCK ‘EM! And shame on them for engaging in an arrogant, elitist passtime.
Last June a Portland-based company called EcoNorthwest got $30,000 from Missoula County to develop a housing plan. Six months later, the Missoula Current has an article describing what this money has produced:
Contracted by the county to explore solutions, ECONorthwest has presented the outline of what could become the county’s first housing strategy. Dubbed “Breaking Ground,” it explores the issues that have contributed to rapidly rising prices and the tools that could help address them.
So, after six months and thirty grand, EcoNorthwest has produced an OUTLINE that “could become” the county’s first housing strategy. How exciting!
Because this Portland-based company will be helping Missoula County identify housing solutions, and because Missoula County recently paused the development scheme of transforming Larchmont golf course into a planned community, I decided to poke around the internets for Portland golf course development ideas.
Over the last week, news stories in The Oregonian and the Portland Tribune have raised the issue of Portland’s public golf courses’ financial insolvency. It so happens that we’ve been mulling over the idea of redeveloping these properties for some time. As golf declines in popularity, redevelopment is becoming increasingly attractive to cities nationwide.
This guest post is from 2019, so the notion of transforming golf courses is not new. Here’s more on the rationale that I suspect will be reapplied once the county property review is complete:
A plan for redeveloping Portland’s golf course properties would have to balance the need for additional housing with the other benefits the open space can provide to the community at large. We took the Eastmoreland Golf Course for a test case. It’s adjacent to two light rail stations, and thus a good candidate for additional housing units. As one of us is a Reed alumnus, we’re sensitive to the neighborhood’s attachments to the open space and the beauty of the site, as well as how it enhances the surrounding community, and our design takes that into account. We think this plan, or something similar, if accepted, is worth a guarantee to the neighborhood that it can stay single family in perpetuity (with ADUs, of course) and place a permanent moratorium on demolitions. Quid pro quo is only fair. We’re completely sympathetic with neighborhood concerns and this would be entirely consistent with our general approach of balancing preservation with strategic infilling where appropriate.
The emphasis here is interesting because one could almost see it as a veiled threat. If the neighborhood does NOT accept this plan, will the single family character of the neighborhood be attacked by density zealots?
Back to the first link, here’s an example of how EcoNorthwest took thirty grand to tell us something that is VERY OBVIOUS to anyone with half a brain:
Oscar Saucedo-Andrade, one of the consultants, said Missoula’s shortage of housing remains the main contributor for rising costs. And as costs rise, local wages aren’t keeping pace. Median incomes in Missoula County have risen 15% over the past decade while housing costs have risen 109%, according to the plan.
“This creates increasing affordability challenges,” he said. “We’ve seen that renters are the most impacted here. They’re paying more out-of-pocket for housing compared to owners. About 50% of renters are cost burdened compared to 20% of owners in 2019.”
If there was a CAPTAIN OBVIOUS award I think Oscar Saucedo-Andrade would win, hands down. What exactly is the value of what this company has produced? Do we really need to know that cities like Bozeman and Boulder are experiencing the same thing?
But Missoula isn’t alone in the challenge. Consultants cited the “four B’s” in Bozeman, Boulder, Boise and Bend, among other cities in the West experiencing new housing pressures. While state law limits some solutions in Montana, other tools have been implemented elsewhere, from an excise tax to a housing bond to fund affordable construction.
“I think you’re all experiencing similar housing pressures right now,” said consultant Lorelei Juntunen. “Boise’s housing market is completely through the roof right now and has a similar trajectory to what you’re experiencing.”
Amazing insights, thanks Lorelei! Now what should we do about it?
Actions recommended in the plan range from removing regulatory barriers to disposing public land. The county is currently taking an inventory of its public holdings and will likely present its findings this year.
The city has for the past few years used its property holdings to help direct the outcome of projects unfolding in a public-private partnership. The county could explore something similar, though Juntunen said coordination will be key.
I bolded the admission that Missoula COUNTY is going to repeat the brilliant policies of the CITY because, you know, our Mayor and City Council critters have been SO SUCCESSFUL in addressing the housing crisis within city limits.
I’ll keep tracking the development of this County plan because I believe the push to transform community parcels, like the golf course, has NOT gone away completely, despite public outcry against the scheme.
This week’s podcast episode is a conversation I first posted last February with my former co-worker at the Poverello Center, Patrick Duganz. I think it’s timely, and also my interview planned for this week had to reschedule.
