Missoula and its nonprofit partners are aiming to raise $400,000 for a “housing sprint” to help connect residents at the Johnson Street homeless shelter to services and stable housing, city officials said during a meeting of the city council’s Housing, Redevelopment, and Community Programs Committee Wednesday morning.

The city announced earlier this month that it would be sunsetting operations at Johnson Street by August, citing budgetary constraints. The shelter will reduce its capacity in phases, beginning with a reduction of 30 beds by the end of April.

“Rather than concluding the contract, we’ve stood up a housing sprint as a thoughtful way to unwind the Johnson Street shelter,” Missoula Mayor Andrea Davis told council members Wednesday. “We’re working together to help folks secure permanent housing. The phased closure allows guests time to transition with community-wide support into the gradual reduction of capacity there.”

The city is basing its plans on a pilot housing sprint from last year that connected a dozen veterans with housing. Already, a group of 41 city officials and staff, nonprofit service providers and others have begun meeting to execute the sprint, which in theory will feature individualized, regular case management with people staying at Johnson Street and funding administered through United Way of Missoula.

A client exits Missoula’s Johnson Street homeless shelter on Sat., March 8. Credit: John Stember

At a press conference announcing the closure of Johnson Street earlier in March, Davis said the city will endeavor to put as many of the roughly 150 people staying at Johnson Street as possible in permanent housing, or at least connect them to family, transitional housing or a treatment facility. But she acknowledged that the city and its partners would be unlikely to house everyone in by the end of the summer.

Davis has expressed optimism that the city will be able to raise the funds required to pull off the sprint. But United Way of Missoula County CEO Susan Hay Patrick told council members Wednesday that the sprint has generated only about $15,000 of its six-figure goal so far. United Way will not be providing funding, just administering the money.

“We will put energy and commitment into the sprint fund, but we will be looking to the public sector, and to institutional funders, foundations, businesses,” Patrick said. “It would be too big a lift for us to do alone to add that to our other responsibilities.”

The city could provide its own funds, but that would require council action.

The shelter will likely have to start refusing people because of capacity reductions by the end of May, according to Poverello Center Director Jill Bonny. The Poverello Center operates Johnson Street under a contract with the city.

Council Member Daniel Carlino, a progressive and vocal opponent of the plan to close Johnson Street, said Wednesday that he is considering introducing legislation that would slow down the phasing out of the shelter or tie the reduction in beds to the amount of residents connected to housing.

City officials, though, have maintained that closing the shelter by the end of August is budgetarily necessary no matter what and a core part of this process.

“The gradual phase down is intended to work in tandem with the housing sprint,” Emily Armstrong, houseless programs manager with the city, told the council Wednesday.

To live and die in Helena

Proposed legislation to require regular voter reapproval of new and existing local tax levies is likely dead, along with several other bills the city of Missoula officially opposed (or supported) this session. At the same time, a bill the city has warned could kneecap tax increment financing, its go-to redevelopment tool, has advanced, along with others that affect local control.

City staffer Jessica Miller shared the full list of the city’s legislative priorities during a March 24 city council meeting. The 69th Legislature is more than halfway to sine die, meaning that many bills that didn’t make it out of the first half of the session are likely dead. The Pulp has already covered several of these bills individually. So we’ll just take this opportunity to relay some highlights from the city’s update on the myriad bills on its radar.

And remember, even though a bill may appear to be dead, it’s really, as Billy Crystal’s character Miracle Max in The Princess Bride would say, mostly dead, as it’s still possible for its core ideas to be reintroduced in another form, for example, as an amendment to a bill that’s still alive. In this list, a ✅ indicates a bill that’s still moving through the process. An ❌ indicates a bill that is likely dead.

Bills the city opposes

✅ HB 20, requiring voted levies be expressed in dollars, rather than mills, is headed to the governor’s desk. Amendments to the bill exempted school district levies from the requirement.

✅ SB 2, revising tax increment financing law

❌ SB 204, requiring voter re-approval of tax levies

❌ SB 254, preventing cities from using public funds to hire lobbyists in Helena

❌ HB 482, making local elections partisan

Bills the city supports

✅ SB 90, redistributes some tourism tax revenues for property tax relief

✅ HB 155, homestead exemption property tax relief measure for primary Montana homeowners

❌ SB 504, providing grants for permanent supportive housing

A full list is here.

And a note: The city’s official position on legislation does not necessarily reflect the opinions of all members of the city council. On Monday, for example, councilmember Sandra Vasecka, a self-described libertarian, said she had testified in support of the municipal lobbying bill and in favor of the tax levy sunset bill.

“Unfortunately it sounds like that’s no longer able to be a thing this session, but I had a lot of constituents reach out to me in support for those bills,” she told her colleagues.

The ledger #️⃣

$18M

The value of a contract for repairs to the runways at the Missoula airport that the Missoula County Airport Authority board approved this week. The vast majority of funding for the project comes from the feds. The airport will be closed to flights from Sept. 2 to Sept. 7 of this year.

The week ahead 🗓️

The Missoula Redevelopment Authority meets March 27 at 11 a.m. It will discuss a request for the inclusion of a property on Levasseur Street in the Front Street TIF district.

Find a list of all upcoming city meetings here and county meetings here.