Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
I know the best spot in my ward for …
The best spot for viewing the city is by The Keep restaurant. And the best spot to walk your dog, to me, is Whitaker Drive.
If loving this is wrong, I don’t want to be right
Having the wild animals around like deer, raccoons, etc. That’s one of the reasons why years ago we moved here is we live on the fringe and there’s wild animals and, well, I want them around.
This year, I really want to achieve …
Lowering taxes and reducing the homeless population.
What I order for the table
I would ask everybody: “Hey, what do you like the best?” And get a consensus from everybody.
Never have I ever …
The thing is, I like soggy salad. When we get a salad to take home, I put salad dressing on it and I put it in the refrigerator for a couple days before I eat it. Never will I eat a salad at home without making sure it’s a soggy salad.
How can we alleviate tax pressure on homeowners and renters?
I firmly believe we have a lot of city employees that, unfortunately for them, are not needed. We have an awful lot of property that the city has taken off the tax rolls, which increases the burden on people. I want to pressure the city council and the mayor to divest the properties that the city has. But the number one way to reduce the tax burden is look at the Missoula Redevelopment Agency and how the tax money that’s being diverted to the MRA is spent.
Change my mind about …
Over the years, I’ve learned tax increment financing is a good tool. There are good projects around Missoula where they are using the TIF money as originally designed. But there’s more that they’re not.
The second area is the whole Marshall Mountain fiasco. That’s more property the city doesn’t need to own. The family that has trails near their homes, they have no desire to go to Marshall Mountain. Families cannot use our parks because of the trash, the homeless, needles, which says we need more police protection instead of 100,000 surveys.
I wind down by …
Having a beer or a glass of wine and reading.
What’s a specific approach or policy that a community elsewhere in the country has employed to reduce homelessness that you think might also work in Missoula?
There’s a county in New Jersey and they’re claiming they have essentially lowered their homelessness to zero. They employ them. And two things happen: that gives them self esteem and the ones that don’t want to work leave on their own. Now, you’re always going to have people living on the streets. That’s a given. But they have really alleviated it. And that is one area that I need to look into. Unfortunately, I’m too busy campaigning to dig into the details of that.
I geek out on …
Old cars.
My best dad joke
Oh, gee whiz. Well, I wish I had time to think of these. Um, no, I don’t have a corny joke.
Three infrastructure priorities?
Our roads are terrible because our city maintenance department is overworked, understaffed. See, there’s an area where I would be a proponent to help them staff up so they can maintain things. Number two, better services to the community. You have an 80-year-old woman and a deer is hit in front of her yard. She should be able to call city hall, get it removed, period. And the other is traffic control—lights, stop signs.
My cry in the car song
No particular song, just peppy oldies.
That fire levy though …
I support fire, police and our schools. And that should be our priorities. It gets to how we’re spending money. I know we have a city outreach coordinator making over $100,000 a year. Well, what do we need that for? The city council should be doing its job by reaching out to the community and the community should be able to reach into the city. OK, if we need that, which I don’t believe we do, postpone it for a few years.
Unusual skills
I worked for two major companies and what they discovered is I had people skills. We had everything from labor problems, union problems, to bad management. And for about 14 years of my career, I traveled to straighten out a project and make everybody happy. My wife says, “I wish I had your people skills—how you can get a group of people disagree and bring them together.”
Together, we could …
Lower taxes or ease the tax burden.
