MISSOULA — Gwen Jones who currently serves as the president of the Missoula City Council says she wants to bring her experience back to City Council during a change of administration.
“This will be, I'm just finishing up my second term. So, I'd like to do a third term. And I thought long and hard about it. Last year was a really challenging year with the mayor [John Engen] getting cancer and dying. And I was interim mayor for a period and ran some really rough meetings. But we got where we needed to go ultimately with an appointment and a budget passed. So, I thought long and hard about it, and the reality is we're going to have a new mayor coming in a new administration. We're going to have several new councilors coming on. And I think it's important for me to stay on Council because I will be the longest-serving person on this new Council, if I'm reelected."
"It's absolutely true that it takes two years to get up to speed on Council to really understand all the ins-and-outs and get to know people, and establish the relationships to be effective. It takes a long time because this is not like it's a company that produces one product," Jones continued. There's 900 employees in the City and they are completely different departments that do vary. So, there's — it's a vast spectrum. So it's that bringing that experience and continuity and institutional memory. I think that is really important as we head into a new era in Missoula government” Jones said.
Next year, the budget process in Missoula will be tougher as funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) will no longer be available. Jones says that during the next budget process, the city is going to need to look at how to address rising taxes and if there is room to open a second shelter.
“That's the $64,000 question. And yeah, first of all, we need to get a mayor elected. And the mayor prepares the budget then that comes to Council. So, that's how the conversation starts on the whole budget. We will be out of ARPA dollars. And I think we as a community are going to have to have a conversation as to — we've got rising taxes and we can talk about tax reform. We've got rising taxes and rising needs and how are we going to address that? What is the appetite in Missoula? Do we have the appetite to set up a permanent second shelter after the Poverello? And it would not be Johnson. We need to have a much longer process on figuring out the right place for it and how to do that. Will there be a capital campaign to raise the money? I think local government can lead the discussion, but it's really a community discussion because local government is working really hard to meet a lot of these goals. But we run up against some sideboards and funding is one of them?” Jones said.
When it comes to taxes, Jones says that since her time on City Council, she has seen the tax system in Missoula not change despite being on a bad trajectory.
“I was elected in 2016. And after my very first budget that summer, I thought to myself, 'Well, that was not very much fun. That was really difficult.' And I spent the next year educating myself on property taxes because I needed to understand the system much better. And way back in 2016, even [then] it was clear to me that we were on a really bad trajectory. And I met with a lot of different people who have a lot of different expertise in these areas. And what's unfortunate is nothing has changed, and the trajectory is getting worse in that our property taxes are going to keep going up. And we're at the same time going to keep providing less services than we have historically in the past because the system and the equation isn't working at all."
Jones says that the City is not able to keep up with the growth and expenses that keep growing for the city.
“Our taxes are higher than ever before, but we are plowing less streets. Our fire department is taking longer to respond to calls because we need more capacity in those areas. So, there's this gap that's getting bigger and bigger and it's incredibly troubling. And over the years, I've gone to the legislature numerous times to testify in committees and at the main legislative sessions on how we desperately need tax reform, be that a local option, sales tax or whatever it is. We need to diversify our tax base because right now we are pulling all of the dollars out of the same pockets. And I don't care what you label it. If it's a school bond or a library, it's still the same pocket. And after a while it's just untenable,” Jones said.
Jones says that the changing of the economy not being addressed by the legislature has been the most impactful thing on the city and that tax codes should be shifted to match the current economy in Montana.
“I think until the legislature addresses this and changes the rules and allows for more flexibility, we're going to be in a really difficult place. And I could talk forever about why we're in this situation. And it goes to a changing economy that's no longer based on natural resources. It goes to a series of laws the legislature has passed since 1999 where they have continued to pay back taxes on corporations and businesses. And when you do that, you still have to have X amount of dollars to run a local government. You shift the burden onto residential taxes and commercial property taxes. So, a lot of things have shifted, and then this last year with the huge rise, the rise in property values. And so, the reappraisals are much higher and the legislature not addressing that. That is another huge rise in taxes. So, I can tell you, I sit on the board of the league of cities and towns and every city and every town across Montana. This is a huge issue. So, I'm hoping at some point, the legislature addresses it."
Jones says that when it comes to the homeless, it’s not just a crisis facing Missoula, but all over the country. Due to federal court decisions, the City is limited as to what it can do.
“It's a really hard problem that across America people are experiencing it. And a lot of people in the Inner Mountain West — and we are in the Ninth Circuit, which means that the Ninth Circuit Court holdings apply to us — the federal government, the federal courts. And that means that if we don't have enough shelter beds, homeless people are allowed to camp in the public right-of-way unless there is a safety or health issue. So, we have some constraints on us. This year, a big focus was on setting up the Johnson Street shelter to provide more capacity. We've got the Poverllo, we've got the Johnson Street shelter opened up, [a] Temporary Safe Outdoor Shelter, which is great that houses 40 people. We've got the Villagio in Trinity which are...affordable. It's 400 units — affordable housing apartments — that are leasing up right now. And then Blue Heron — which is located in Trinity off of Mullan [Road] — which is 30 supportive housing units for people coming in off the street who really need certain attention. So we've got a lot of things happening and a lot of it's really good."
Jones that working with the private sector could be a way to get those who are unhoused into affordable housing.
“I don't overestimate it. I don't know that we're ever going to solve house housing issues and houseless as an issue in Missoula. But I think the more folks we can get housed, the better there's going to be a really hard component of addiction and mental health issues, which we don't have the tools honestly on a local level to deal with that. Those are hard. But I think our goal needs to be to get as many people housed as possible. And that's good for those folks and for the rest of the Missoulians who are already housed. They want to be able to use their parks and have them be clean of needles and be able to use the commuter trails. I think there's some capacity to work with the private sector more to see if there's some more interventions that can be done. Because. I will be honest, local government doesn't have any more money at this point to put towards it. And next year will be even harder. But that's as we head into the winter, I'm hoping that the numbers start to recede because we've got a lot of interventions that are set up."
Taxes continue to rise in Missoula, and rising costs are also contributing to the amount of taxpayer dollars that can go toward services in Missoula. Jones says that if the City were to cut taxes, it could mean cutting services.
“As for what we can do on Council to decrease taxes. It's first of all, the City's taxes are only 30% of your total tax bill. So, anything we do is only going to affect that part of the pie. And we will have to, in order to do that, we would have to cut services. I'll just put that we have collective bargaining agreements we need to meet. So, every year our baseline goes up. So, it would be cutting full-time employees, and you get into some really big issues. If you start cutting — especially public safety — we have people who have expectations about how fast fire will arrive. We want a police force that is not working so much overtime that they're getting burned out and not making good decisions under stress. So it's a hard issue, and whoever comes in as the mayor is going to have a lot on [their] plate. It's a heightened era. As I tell people, this is not a sleepy time we're living through. This is a very difficult time,” Jones said.
Jones says that she got her start in local government on one of the neighborhood councils in her ward. She says that when it comes to more participation in Neighborhood Councils, it’s improving.
“I actually started on the neighborhood council. I was on the Rose Park Neighborhood Council leadership team from 2014 to 2016 until I got on Council. And I think the neighborhood councils just took a big hit with the pandemic because people were not meeting and they were not meeting in person and the Zoom thing was just subpar. So I have to tell you the neighborhood council meetings, I've gone to recently have been pretty well attended and I don't know if that's just my ward — if we've got some really active neighborhood councils. But I think I think it's on the upswing honestly. And we've got two really good people in that office who are doing, who are working it,” Jones said.
Jones also says that if reelected she would want to continue to support the Neighborhood Councils program.
“The other really key item is having the Big Dipper truck come. Because if you have free ice cream, they will come, they will come for ice cream. So it's that's been very successful. So I think we just need to continue to support that program. People are excited to kind of get back into it. And I always tell people when I was on the Rose Park neighborhood council leadership team I liked it because I knew everything going on in the City long before it hit the newspaper. So it's, it's a great vehicle...if you want to lean in."
Roads in Missoula often see potholes, and that can be due to weather and heavy vehicle use. Jones says that the city needs more capacity to attend to the roads.
“When I was talking about property taxes and tax reform, I was talking about the fact that we're providing less services even though taxes are higher now. And, our pothole rate growing just a signal that we are not staying on top of it and it's not sustainable. You want to be keeping your roads in good enough condition so that you don't have to always redo them. And once they go past a certain point, they really degrade. So, there's a science to it. We need more capacity there. What we have done in the past is we've had some really good luck getting federal grants in build grants — the grants for downtown — and that can make a big impact on our roads. So, we're going to keep doing that. But I kind of come back to the long run. We need to be in a more sustainable situation with our revenue. And I always look at Whitefish. I've got a lot of relatives that grew up in Whitefish. [Whitefish] had the worst roads in all of Montana, a tiny community, and then logging trucks plowing through it. And then they got a local option — sales tax. So, they could diversify their tax base and now their roads are awesome. So, it's a good example of what you can do when you have sufficient resources,” Jones said.
Housing is also a crisis in Missoula as affordable housing is not as available to many residents. Jones says that the city needs more inventory.
“Affordable housing is a super complicated topic and very, very strong economic forces that influence, I think. And we've had — we were already, our housing prices were getting high. And then the pandemic hit, everything blew up and a lot of people moved here. So first of all, we don't have enough inventory. It's just a supply and demand. We need more inventory. So, on the inventory side of it, we've been working on code reform. Does two things. Number one, it will streamline the code to make it simpler for builders to use and time is money. The quicker they can get things built [the] simpler. It is less expensive. It also gives us a chance to bring our zoning and all of our code into compliance with our growth policy — which is a great growth policy that's actually incredibly forward-thinking, that talks about basically having more density. But how do we do it? Well, how do we do it so that people will accept it into the City and not have pushback against it? And it really comes down to how can we make it look. People want to know what their neighborhood is going to look like. So those are the things we can focus on with the private sector. And then I think on the other side of the equation is subsidizing housing,” Jones said.
Jones says that the City should be creating subsidized housing for people with lower incomes. Additionally, she would like to see a universal rental application but cannot do that because of the state legislature.
“So intentionally creating affordable housing that is subsidized for people in lower incomes. And we've got a lot of tools — affordable housing, trust fund, low-income housing, tax credits, CBC DBG and home federal grants — and we use those in those areas. I think if Yellowstone stops filming that would be helpful. So that's, I believe on the horizon. And if we can have a couple of really hard winters and smoky summers, maybe that will help. Which — I'm joking. But...I do think Montana and Missoula has been a hot spot for the last few years and hopefully, that focus shifts somewhere else, and we can at least try and plateau our prices. And working with the private sector. I do think there's also potential for a universal rental application. Now, we can't do that because the legislature doesn't give us the authority to do that via a resolution or an ordinance. But that could be a voluntary effort here in Missoula. And so there's things like that. It's, yeah, I think we need to get more built and the tools that we can control are code reform. We cannot control people moving to Missoula. But we can control certain aspects like code reform and subsidize some subsidizing some housing. So I think we're going to keep, we've got a lot of good things in place and a lot coming online and we just got to keep working on it,” Jones said.
When asked why voters should vote for her, Jones says that she would bring a level of experience and wants the opportunity to serve her community as a new administration comes in.
“I would say I've really enjoyed being on City Council for the last eight years and learned so much. And I want to have the opportunity to continue to use all of that information and all of the relationships I've built to help this new administration come in and make it effective as we're going to have a lot of change in Missoula after 17 years of the same mayor, we're now going into a transition period. So, I think it's, I would really like to be here in person to help with all of that because I think I can help a lot,” Jones said.
Election day is on November 7, 2023.
