Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
I know the best spot in my ward for …
A toddler playground. A draft beer. Mexican Moose taco Tuesday.
If loving this is wrong, I don’t want to be right
Cottage cheese on my Doritos.
This year, I really want to achieve …
I really want to achieve winning reelection. And I want to look at how we can, as the mayor said, trim the fat and cut off a limb. He said to do a 5 percent budget increase this last budget season would have been like amputating a limb. I would like to see how we can do that moving forward. It would be beneficial in the long-term.
What I order for the table
Tacos.
Never have I ever …
Never have I ever been skydiving. Last time I tried, it got canceled because of weather, which I was very happy about. And then when my husband signed up to go skydiving, he got into a car accident on the way. So obviously there’s a higher being that does not want us to go skydiving.
How can we alleviate tax pressure on homeowners and renters?
Oh, easy. Don’t increase taxes so much. And by doing that, we need to really look at what programs, studies, consultants, and lobbyists that we are paying that, while are good in the short term, I don’t think that they are necessary at this moment because people are being taxed out of their homes. And that is a reality that we need to deal with and we need to deal with it right away.
Change my mind about …
Missoula is being generous with the definition of blight regarding tax increment financing. So areas that are not blighted in the normal sense can technically be considered blighted underneath the current definitions. So a new building could technically be blighted and they’re using taxpayer monies to give to private business owners for facade improvements. I disagree with that. I do agree with urban renewal districts being used for sidewalk improvements and road maintenance. But I don’t agree with that being used for actual private business building facade improvement.
I wind down by …
I guess these days I wind down by watching my child go around the house in his Jeep for two and a half hours.
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?
The mayor of Anchorage was giving $1,000 vouchers to homeless folks to travel anywhere. So I have a call in to the mayor right now to see how it’s working out.
In Spokane, it was basically bringing property owners or publicly-owned properties that are condoning illegal behavior, such as open containers, open drug use, defecation on sidewalks–if you’re a neighbor to that community, then you can bring them to small claims court for violating your constitutional right to a clean environment.
I geek out on …
Let’s go with MCA and MMC. That’s Montana Code Annotated and the Missoula Municipal Code. And Wordle, the New York Times thing. I am in competition with my mother-in-law and her best friend daily.
My best dad joke
What do you call a fish with no eye?
Fsh.
Three infrastructure priorities?
Sidewalks. Streets/roads. Sidewalks are rarely available in a lot of my ward. They are on the main thoroughfares. But there’s a lot of inside streets where they are either crumbled or just non existent. There’s an issue with sidewalks and who pays for them. The city owns it, and yet the homeowner adjacent to the sidewalk is responsible for it. So I think there needs to be some sidewalk reform.
My cry in the car song
“God Bless the USA” featuring Lee Greenwood, Home Free and the Singing Sergeants.
That fire levy though …
Obviously we need another fire station and we need more firefighters. However, if we could cut down on our spending on other things that are not as important as the fire department, then we would be able to afford a fire station without having to put it to the voters.
Unusual skills
I can do a 360 on a wake surfer.
Together, we could …
Achieve happiness. We all disagree on something. It’s how you approach that disagreement and whether you view it as a discussion or a debate or an argument. And I prefer to choose discussion. And if we all just come together with our points of view and why we came to that point of view, it’s OK to accept them, even if you disagree with them. So if everybody had that mindset, then together we can achieve happiness.
