Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
I know the best spot in my ward for …
Pizza, at Old Chicago.
If loving this is wrong, I don’t want to be right
Freedom of privacy for my daughters.
This year, I really want to achieve …
Working with City Council through the neighborhood committee to achieve some of the things that constituents need or want. Primarily, because I’m Ward 2, traffic on Reserve, traffic on the north end of Reserve out by Stockyard Road, and just adding some signage and restricting some left hand turns there that will make the road safer for the drivers.
What I order for the table
Some sort of side dish that’s healthy (even though I may not eat from it, I make sure there’s a healthy option for the table).
Never have I ever
Gotten a tattoo.
How can we alleviate tax pressure on homeowners and renters?
Taxes are based on the budget and to relieve it on the homeowners it has to get taxed somewhere else. So it’s not a quick and easy solution there. But it needs to be done because everything new that’s added in Missoula is added on the backs of property owners. That domino effect trickles down. We can’t get to affordable housing if you keep raising taxes for the property owners, because they’re just gonna raise taxes on the renters to absorb that.
Change my mind about …
Funding the police.
I wind down by …
I really don’t.
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?
I was in Twentynine Palms, California, when I was in the Marine Corps, and we got a $10 million grant from the federal government. Part of that was $2 million to build affordable housing. The affordable housing was built on city property. So the biggest holdup here is city property, making it available for developers and getting rid of the building fees. We have to get the cost down for the developers to be able to complete it and sell it to the public.
I geek out on …
Volunteering for my community.
My best dad joke
I had a dream I was swimming in an ocean of orange soda. It was a FANTA-sy.
Three infrastructure priorities?
Traffic (on Reserve Street), affordable housing built on existing city property that’s available and supporting urban sprawl (spreading out the city more because we’re running out of places to build).
My cry-in-the-car song
“Buffalo” by Jenner Fox Band
That fire levy though …
You have to first solve where that funding is going to come from. That could be through taxes on the tourists that visit our area every year—3.5 million tourists that come here and drive down our roads and don’t pay into that. We have to find a way to capture that tax population to offset it away from the property taxes.
Unusual skills
Planning.
Together, we could …
Reach out to the federal government to help with Missoula’s homelessness.
