Myth Busters Volume 1: Covenants, Housing & Taxes

In this week's episode, Juanita and Josh bust some myths around what the County is (or is not) doing. 

Topics include:

• Legal enforcement of covenants and HOAs
• Property taxes and the re-appraisal process
• Services for people experiencing homelessness
• Regulations, permits and affordable housing
• Larchmont Golf Course 

Have you heard something through the grapevine about the County? Submit your myth online https://missoulacountyvoice.com/myth-busters and we’ll answer it on-air!

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

 
Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

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Juanita Vero: 0:10

[intro music plays] Welcome back to Tip of I'm Juanita Vero, one of your three county commissioners, and I'm joined here with Commissioner Josh Slotnick. Dave Strohmaier wasn't able to join us, but we're here to talk about some myths and some busting of myths. Excellent. So what's your favorite myth that you like to bust?

Josh Slotnick: 0:27

Thanks, Juan. There are almost too many to We're going to address a few of them today. One of them is around covenants. And we have had plenty of mail and phone calls in the recent past saying "There are covenants in my neighborhood and my neighbor is disregarding the covenants there." What would be a disregarding of covenants? They have strung a clothesline across their driveway or they're parking their RV in their front yard. I mean, I imagine there are covenants in some places against these things.

Juanita Vero: 0:52

They built a rather large doghouse.

Josh Slotnick: 0:54

...an extra large doghouse, and they've need to be enforced and you all need to get out for your fat butts and do it. Juan, why aren't we enforcing these neighbors covenants?

Juanita Vero: 1:06

No, the reality is covenants are in the realm county doesn't really have any jurisdiction there. That's the agreement between private homeowner association members. And so you need to take those issues to your homeowners representative and or agency. And then the problem is, is that some HOAs are more active than others, and that's what we're running up against.

Josh Slotnick: 1:31

Absolutely. Yeah, you're right. For all you out there in podcast land, we have not rehearsed this. And Juan, that's totally, it's my understanding is you totally nailed it that these are called private covenants really with an emphasis on private. So it's not about government, it's between neighbors. And an HOA is typically the entity that brokers these things. So the sad truth is if you feel like your covenants have been trampled on and no one is listening to you and justice is far from being served... Lawyer up, folks.

Juanita Vero: 1:59

That is the sad truth.

Josh Slotnick: 2:00

The sad truth. That's the sad truth. You can always...

Juanita Vero: 2:03

I think, first start talking to your

Josh Slotnick: 2:06

I was going to say you could always try conversation, but it's easier just to go right to ballistic level. Let's just go right to the attorney. No, first thing, go knock on a door and talk to somebody and maybe you can work it out. It could be the person who's violating that covenant has no idea.

Juanita Vero: 2:22

Has no idea.

Josh Slotnick: 2:23

These covenants often were created four no idea that they can't build the XXL doghouse and string a clothesline from there to their roof.

Juanita Vero: 2:35

Oh, this one was my...This One's one of my

Josh Slotnick: 2:38

Yeah. Yeah.

Juanita Vero: 2:38

Services attract homeless people to Missoula.

Josh Slotnick: 2:41

That's why I came.

Juanita Vero: 2:43

That's why we're all here. Unless you're native, Salish.

Josh Slotnick: 2:46

Yeah. Then you were always here. So when we went out to the ACS the other day.

Juanita Vero: 2:53

Acs stands for...

Josh Slotnick: 2:54

For Authorized Camping Site, that the city they've got the managerial hand and walking around out there you could really see this is a this is a rough spot.

Services are there: 3:04

there's a bathroom, there's water. Folks from the HOT (homeless outreach team) and from Partnership Health Clinic are going out there to offer services. But when you were there, you've got your own ten by ten slice of gravel to put your own tent on. And, you know, it's awful hot, it's smoky and then it's going to get cold. We have about four weeks where it's really comfortable to sleep outside. It's hard for me to imagine someone would hitchhike across America so they could get their own ten by ten slice of gravel.

Juanita Vero: 3:33

So what do you think people are really saying people?

Josh Slotnick: 3:38

I think what people are saying underneath address the homelessness crisis with services, that people who are homeless and will see that and hear that and decide "I'm going to go be homeless in Missoula instead of being homeless in Spokane because I'm going to get X." And then when they go get that thing, that thing comes at the cost of taxpayer dollars. And lo and behold, you out there in taxpayer land are paying money so we can bring homeless people to Missoula, if I understand it right, The data just does not bear this out that the great majority of people who find themselves unhoused in Missoula County are from western Montana. And people say, "Oh, they're homeless folks, they're transients," Look at the word that. It means transitory. People are moving. Certainly people have come here from other places and they're without a home and then they move on and some other people come and they move on. And that's the nature of transients. But we're attempting to make sure that for everyone who is unhoused and who's here can find a way out of that lifestyle.

Juanita Vero: 4:37

I think what people kind of get confused by, providing their homeless populations with bus tickets to Missoula." And and that is not the case. But there is an element of truth that I think people get confused by or latch on to, is that, yes, it is true. If you are living in Billings and you have a sister that you've regained a relationship with, someone in Billings will provide you with assistance to get to your sister in Missoula. So that is true. There are transportation systems available, but, it's not like they are being shipped about without a destination, without support on the other end.

Josh Slotnick: 5:14

The other side of that same coin, we've heard them on buses and send them out here."

Juanita Vero: 5:20

Good point. And it doesn't work like that.

Josh Slotnick: 5:22

You can't grab a person and forcibly send We have a whole bunch of constitutional protections around the removal of autonomy and liberty like that.

Juanita Vero: 5:33

And then also, I think you've talked about

sorts of things: 5:38

medical care, getting your vehicle worked on food and supplies, education, legal services, all of that. So so, yes, people are going to be coming to this area regardless.

Josh Slotnick: 5:49

Everything.

Juanita Vero: 5:50

For everything.

Josh Slotnick: 5:50

And, you know, we are not much different than If there's a population center in the United States, there's going to be a population of unhoused folks in that same bubble. If you go to places where populations are pretty small, you're not going to find very many unhoused folks.

Juanita Vero: 6:05

Exactly. Oh, here's this next one. Regulations and planning process caused the housing crisis.

Josh Slotnick: 6:10

Ooh. Yeah. Dang. Yep. We've heard a lot on this one. So for anybody who's been following the news, you would you'd be able to speak to the fact that the housing crisis is everywhere. Life is desirable where people want to live. So if you're going to bend or to Bozeman or to Bellingham or even some places that don't begin with 'B' like Asheville or Missoula, we have the same issue. There is a greater demand than there is supply. And we're all reeling from the 2008-2009 housing crisis. And now what's that's like a decade plus away? What do you mean? How could that be? Well, in the wake of that economic implosion, people who were in the housing business got out of the housing business. And as population grows, we need to continually be to be adding to our housing stock. And we as a nation took a handful of years on a hiatus from building housing. Our populations grew. Housing stock didn't keep pace. Add to that the pandemic where you could almost live anywhere if you're a remote worker and those places that have high quality of life, you can move here from wherever. And lo and behold, we didn't keep up with our housing building. So we're in a supply-demand crash. Certainly we could do a better job. Everyone everywhere who works in the world of permitting and regulation can always do a better job.

Juanita Vero: 7:20

And we are working on that. I mean, we just July 1st updated our zoning codes the first time in 50 years. I mean, this is a...

Josh Slotnick: 7:28

It's monumental.

Juanita Vero: 7:28

Monumental, once-in-a-career opportunity. So I mean, the planning staff that spent seven years working on this is hats off to them. It's huge. So, yes, regulations and planning are constantly being updated and we're making ours more responsive. And this is exciting with the zoning code update that went into place to inspire a greater diversity of housing for folks at all ages in their life, whether they're single and just starting out as a young person to family, to aging. So this is pretty exciting stuff.

Josh Slotnick: 7:55

We have a really beautiful, wonderful county Ravalli County. Ravalli County has a small has a smaller population, smaller government, has a much smaller planning department and it's quicker to get your house plans permitted, etc., through Ravalli County County than Missoula County. It's smaller. Their median home price is higher than ours.

Juanita Vero: 8:15

What is our median home price now?

Josh Slotnick: 8:16

It's over 550,000.

Juanita Vero: 8:18

Oh oh and we're at 510,000?.

Josh Slotnick: 8:21

It's probably different today than it was

Juanita Vero: 8:23

Oh yeah. It's going to change at the end of

Josh Slotnick: 8:26

Yeah, but I'm just bringing that up. There's a whole lot going on in a home price. The greatest side of that is supply and demand. The county to the south of us has an even more intense demand, fewer permitting regulations and a higher median home price.

Juanita Vero: 8:40

Yes. So again, back to the myth that housing crisis, that, that was incorrect. You live in a rural area and your taxes subsidize services for people who live in the city.

Josh Slotnick: 8:50

Yeah. Yeah. What would you say to that?

Juanita Vero: 8:52

To your we we hear that all the time. Yeah. But the reality is, yeah, there's fewer of us out here in Greenough and there's more folks in the city. And so it's actually the opposite. The city folks subsidize our rural roads.

Josh Slotnick: 9:07

That is a hard pill to swallow if you live in For a lot of folks who live in rural areas, they make that choice very intentionally. They want to manage their own affairs. They don't want anybody in their business. They appreciate the opportunity to engage in a pretty high degree of self reliance and to hear that someone else is paying the lion's share of plowing. My road kind of feels crappy when you know you could plow that road yourself if you had to. But it is, it is the truth. We went to go visit the good people of Condon the other day, and when we were able to collectively take a hard look at how much, how many dollars are raised in Condon specifically to work on roads, it was a little more than 80,000 bucks.

Juanita Vero: 9:42

This is a good stat, yeah.

Josh Slotnick: 9:44

That would pay for one road operator and that etc.. It may a little bit extra. No, no gear, no roadwork, no machines, no nothing. When regularly the county through our office at Seeley is sending five people up there to work on roads with gear. And that's made possible not because of that 80,000, but because of the other 115,000 people that live in Missoula County.

Juanita Vero: 10:07

There's a statistic that I'm hung up on now, seal a half mile road in Missoula County.

Josh Slotnick: 10:18

You know, as a state, we're in a similar It turns out that we get more federal money than we put in. This is the case with money and population. It flows from its source, which in our case...it's hard

Juanita Vero: 10:30

To population centers.

Josh Slotnick: 10:31

...to talk it up. But it is. Yeah, it's the coasts and the money flows from the coast to the hinterland at a far greater velocity and volume than the money flows from the hinterland back into the population centers.

Juanita Vero: 10:43

What else have you heard? Okay, so this is what I was scrolling through Missoula County Voice and this one comes up, the county decides to reappraise your property any time [they] need money.

Josh Slotnick: 10:54

They're just vicious.

Juanita Vero: 10:55

The county is bloodthirsty.

Josh Slotnick: 10:57

Well, in actuality, the State Department of and they do this every other year on a reappraisal cycle. And if you look at your taxes, you probably will notice that that appraisal value is not really what the market value is. Well, you might look at that and be like$350,000. I know my house is worth $500,000. It probably is. That appraisal is based not on an actual appraiser standing in your front yard, looking at your beautiful landscape and counting up bedrooms, etc. It's done on an algorithm, on square footage, and nobody ever visited your house. And it happens every other year. The county doesn't have a say in this. We can't say we need money. We're going to reappraise. We are reliant on the Department of Revenue for coming up with those numbers and they do it every other year.

Juanita Vero: 11:41

And what did we learn? There's 127 categories of...

Josh Slotnick: 11:46

That was nuts, residential and commercial and

Juanita Vero: 11:52

Agricultural...yeah.

Josh Slotnick: 11:53

So we could probably come up, put our heads

Juanita Vero: 11:57

Oh, let's talk about building permits and Doesn't that just contribute to the affordable housing crisis?

Josh Slotnick: 12:03

Sure, sure. Yes, indeed. The cost of a building permit is built into the cost of a house, and that permit doesn't cost all that much. When you look at how much a house costs, we're talking about a couple of thousand. And in the world of building permits here at Missoula County, we don't take tax money to do that. That is a fee for service model. So the folks who are doing building inspections, they literally get paid out of the costs from selling building permits. So if you are sitting at your house and your house is fully completed and you're not building anything, you're not buying any building permits, you're not applying for any building permits, you're not paying for anybody else's building permit.

Juanita Vero: 12:40

How about land use applications?

Josh Slotnick: 12:42

Same thing, except land use applications. It's even better in a sense, because with land use applications we recognize that as a community we need housing and we recognize that a house is more than just good for that family. It benefits the entire county. So when we look at a land use application, we've decided to split the cost of that 50/50. 50% on the county, which really means everybody who lives here and 50% on the person who's doing the subdivision. We split those costs. So in terms of the cost of that subdivision getting attached to that house, only 50% of the costs of the subdivision are attached to the house. The other 50% are borne by everyone who lives here.

Juanita Vero: 13:22

Because we all benefit.

Josh Slotnick: 13:23

We all benefit. And again, we're talking in the hundreds of thousands.

Juanita Vero: 13:28

How about the Larchmont golf course?

Josh Slotnick: 13:30

Why don't you talk on Larchmont?

Juanita Vero: 13:32

Larchmont is safe. You're safe to play golf another day. No, not to be flip. We are in the process of doing a land assessment and looking at all county lands and how we can be best using or developing our county lands. And so coming up this fall, we're going to have that assessment complete. So November and yes, Larchmont will be part of that. We're a long ways from actually developing Larchmont or even having that discussion in a mature way.

Josh Slotnick: 14:00

There you go. Thanks for joining us, And if you out there have a myth you'd like to bust, let us know. You can do that at Missoula County Voice. And thanks for listening today.

Juanita Vero: 14:10

Thanks, everyone.

Josh Slotnick: 14:13

Thanks for listening to the Tip of the Spear If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you like and if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them. The Tip of the Spear podcast is made possible with support from Matt, better known as Missoula Community Access Television and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division. If you have a question or topic you'd like us to address on a future episode, email it to communications at Missoula County US and to find other ways to stay up to date with what's happening at Missoula County, go to Missoula Dot co slash county updates and thanks for listening. [outro music plays]