Lee Clemmensen will rely on experience
Lee Clemmensen spent more than three decades as a public-school teacher. She'll need all the skills she honed in that profession as a member of the Missoula City Council, she said.
Now she's a member of the Missoula City Board of Adjustment, which handles some hot-potato zoning and ordinance complaints for City Hall. The board's recommendations go to City Council.
“I've spent a lot of time in City Hall,” she said. “I know what I'm getting into.”
“Clearly,” she said, “all of the ordinances need work. They haven't been written to stand up to legal challenge. We have government by loophole now, and those loopholes end up being exploited.”
Clemmensen said she prefers tight zoning for neighborhoods instead of design standards for houses and property. Every neighborhood has a different character; making design standards fit them all is tough, she said.
“(Well-written) zoning does several things: It promotes predictability, it can help reduce congestion and it controls reasonable use. You don't have a casino going in next door” in an unexpected place.
Planning also needs to be more long-range and more intensive, complete with modeling about residual effects of traffic plans, she said. In the long run, such work will save money and protect public trust, she said. “We don't wait for a disaster to happen before we deal with things.”
Clemmensen said she and her husband started walking Ward 3 before the primary, even though the race was uncontested in that election. They've made a list of everything they heard, again drawing on her lesson-plan training in organizing information.
Reducing traffic and safety hazards on Fifth and Sixth streets; protecting neighborhood character; requiring mixed-use and affordable housing in new developments, especially in the urban area; and supporting the downtown are cornerstones to her campaign.
Clemmensen also advocates for more public information and involvement, in particular the idea of an annual survey of how Missoula residents feel about trends and decisions. Corvallis, Ore., does one that helps guide public policy, but also gives residents a way to complain and learn about their city - and to monitor growth and change, she said.
Such a survey must be scientifically valid and would cost money, but it too would save money in the long run by avoiding lawsuits, securing public support for change and fixing problems while they're small, she said.
That too goes back to her background in education, she said. “I always want information.”
Clemmensen and her husband, Eric, also a retired schoolteacher, continue to work with students. They are volunteer academic advisers and the home away from home for members of the University of Montana Rodeo Team. “They keep you young,” she said.
Associations with college students led her to support a citywide license for rental property, she said. Some students live in terrible, unsafe homes, uninspected and without even the simplest of safety precautions, she said.
“If we don't do something, we're going to be legislating later by tragedy,” she said. “That's usually how we respond to things; we see something horrible happen, and then we react.
“I prefer to take precautions, to be proactive, on things.”
Profile
Lee Clemmensen
Age: 61
Lived in ward: 12 years; Montana native.
Profession: retired teacher.
Community service: member of Missoula City Board of Adjustment, University District Neighborhood Council Leadership Team, former Democratic precinct representative, academic adviser to University of Montana Rodeo Team, member of university neighborhood problem-solving team.
Family: She and her husband, Eric, have a son, Christian, and daughter-in-law, Stella.
Hobbies: canoeing, fly fishing, horseback packing, gardening, hiking.
Endorsing for mayor: would not say.
On the Web: www.leeinthree.com
Bob Jaffe says controlled planning is key
By MEA ANDREWS
of the Missoulian
Bob Jaffe isn't against infill or growth or subdivisions. In fact, they're all signs of a strong economy, which most Missoula residents want, he said.
The trick - and his reason for running for City Council in Ward 3 - is to do things right, with careful and controlled planning and firm standards for quality-of-life issues, he said.
Jaffe moved to Ward 3 about five years ago from across the Clark Fork River in Ward 2, where he was involved in the North Missoula Community Development Corp., an organization that works on housing, economic and neighborhood issues of particular concern to low-income families. (He continues as the corporation's secretary.)
He's also volunteered to help build neighborhood parks, and served on leadership teams for neighborhood councils in both wards.
“I've learned a lot about issues facing Missoula from these experiences,” he said, “from the importance of home ownership, to the importance of neighborhoods, to the importance of health and safety issues.” Sitting on the council would be an exciting chance to “help see growth policies reflect how we want to see Missoula change.”
One priority, if elected, is to begin an intensive effort to get neighborhood plans in place in all areas of Missoula, Jaffe said. Those become blueprints for how the city should grow and change, and set foundations for other priorities, including affordable housing, “smart” infill and design standards for houses, Jaffe said.
“Let's knock them out in six or 10 months,” and then tackle zoning and design standards to guide future development, he said.
“Have those in place, set standards so that the building that happens in Missoula will be quality building,” he said.
Jaffe likes neighborhoods that encourage bikes and pedestrians and wants the same amenities built into new development. But connecting existing bike trails around town also is a priority, so that people can travel without barriers, safely, from place to place, he said.
In all of these goals, having the public more involved is critical, and an important role of City Council members, he said.
“I really like the idea of getting people involved rather than just getting the job done,” he said. “There is a temporary benefit (to making decisions without public input), but it comes back to bite you in the end, in the form of anger from citizens, by people who feel disenfranchised.
“And that leads to lawsuits and a negative environment, and that hurts the community.”
Dealing with public comment “may cost more time upfront. But how much staff time is spent trying to fix something that's already turned ugly?”
“I think one perspective I bring is an element of (working-class) Missoula,” he said. “I'm struggling with issues like coming up with the mortgage payment every month, raising a family, making ends meet. I think there's a difference between those of us trying to make things work even as they change, and those who are trying to keep it the same.”
Also a plus, Jaffe said, is his experience as the owner of, and employer in, a small business. Small-business entrepreneurs are the backbone of Missoula, and make it a unique place to be, he said.
But starting and owning a business is “an entirely different skill than growing a business and employing people,” he said. He suggests a city-supported program of mentoring grants for small-business owners to help each other as they add jobs to their homegrown businesses.
“There is a sense that some outside force is affecting us,” he said. “People need to know that they can be the force that decides Missoula's future.”
Profile
Bob Jaffe
Age: 38
Lived in ward: five years; lived in Missoula 18 years.
Profession: owner of Cedar Mountain Software.
Community service: Leadership teams of neighborhood councils, member of the Third and South Russell Streets Redevelopment Citizen Advisory Board, board member of North Missoula Community Development Corp. for five years, including four years as president.
Family: He and his wife, Beth, have two sons, Ari, 5, and Zach, 7.
Hobbies: “I have two kids. Spending time with my family is how I spend any extra time.”
Endorsing for mayor: would not say.
On the Web: wwwjaffeforcouncil.com
On the issues
Affordable housing
Lee Clemmensen: Supports city involvement in down payment plans to help people buy homes; likes land-trust investments, where land itself is owned by government/nonprofit agencies; wants more accountability with new developments to ensure affordable housing agreements and promises are met. “What has been put out there in the past few years is very, very little affordable housing, but the years have been extra profitable for the building industry.”
Bob Jaffe: Rewrite density-bonus and planned-neighborhood planning tools so they ensure affordable housing (“The concepts are good; let's revisit them and see why they don't work”); likes land-trust arrangements to help lower cost of housing; more intense density review would help plan areas/projects for affordable housing.
Animal control
Clemmensen: Add at least one more control officer; enforce leash laws; consider building another dog park for dogs to roam free; require owners to pick up waste. “I don't want to see dogs on (school) playgrounds, where kids are going to be playing.”
Jaffe: “Aggressive dogs are a hazard. People need to take a really hard look, a colder assessment (of pets). If an animal is a threat to the population, it doesn't have priority.” Supports tighter leash and dog-waste laws.
Business and economic development
Clemmensen: Supports extra effort to maintain downtown because “Ward 3 is so dependent on downtown.” Keep anchor stores and businesses, such as Macy's and St. Patrick Hospital, downtown; offer tax incentives for downtown businesses; upgrade technology infrastructure for downtown. “It always scares me when I see downtown businesses move out to North Reserve Street.”
Jaffe: Supports city-sponsored mentor/education program, perhaps with small grants, to help small-business owners in Missoula. “It's a low-investment way to bring a huge dividend. I'm a small-business owner, I know how hard it is to make a business work. This would support people already here.”
Sewer and annexation
Clemmensen: Sewering not an issue in Ward 2; separate sewer from density issues elsewhere. More intensive zoning and long-range planning needed. “We're building San Jose-style, one lucrative subdivision after another. But what are they going to look like in 20 or 30 years?”
Jaffe: Sewer for water quality, not for annexation; institute long-range, more intense planning to anticipate better where and how growth will happen.
Transportation
Clemmensen: Make bus rides free; add more park-and-rides and make them physically attractive and safe, and add incentives for employer/employee use; start long-range planning for eventual bypass connecting south Missoula to Interstate 90; conduct more intensive planning/modeling before traffic projects are installed. (“Traffic is like water. If you divert it one place, it will go somewhere else.”) Ban big commercial and logging trucks on Fifth, Sixth and Brooks streets; reconfigure Fifth and Sixth to reduce lanes, slow traffic, improve safety.
Jaffe: Safety and quality-of-life issues “trump shortening trips for motorists around town. People do whatever is easiest: If you make it easy to ride a bike, more will ride a bike.” Supports free bus rides. Cut traffic on Fifth and Sixth to one lane, with a bike lane, to restore the neighborhood feeling along the streets.
City-owned utilities
Clemmensen: “This is a deal which will not particularly benefit Missoulians because it isn't an acquisition of the electricity, the gas or the oil; it is only buying the transmission lines, not the power. We won't have any influence over the price of power.”
Jaffe: “I have serious concerns and think the benefits may outweigh the public risk. A lot of what we want to accomplish (with the city owning transmission lines) can be done through the Public Service Commission. I'm wary (without more information).”
Impact of ballpark
Clemmensen: Insist that noise-mitigation promises are enforced and installed in the ballpark (berms, lower-volume public address system).
Jaffe: Do not install big parking area for ballpark to accommodate parking for one or two large events a year; find other solutions, such as park-and-rides.
A top ward issue
Clemmensen: Safety of students living in rental homes. Advocates rental standards and licensing; plans to start a voluntary program whether elected or not.
Jaffe: Institute design standards for small-lot construction. By setting egress, ingress, height, viewshed and other standards in advance, neighbors and landowners will know “how we can make a project that is a continuation of the neighborhood” while still allowing for smart infill and urban-core growth.
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