Politics Pop: Gas stations phase in new tax – Missoulian

“I would expect that as retailers start paying this tax and seeing it and paying more attention to it, they’ll slowly up their prices,” Missoula County Treasurer Tyler Gernant told the Missoulian. “But ultimately, it’s a competitive industry, and they try and price their gas to remain competitive so I would imagine that it will phase in over time, countywide.”

Missoula County voters passed the tax in June in a nearly split vote with 51% or 22,059 voters, supporting the tax while 49%, or 21,140 voters, opposed it. The revenue generated from the tax will pay for repair, maintenance and construction of roads in the city and county.

The tax will generate an estimated $1.1 million, which will be split evenly between the city and county, and will also be used to help get matching grants from the federal government.

“For every local dollar that you spend on roads, you can get about seven dollars in federal matching money,” Gernant said. “And that’s really where we’ll see the most bang for the buck on this is the federal match.”

The revenues will be distributed twice a year, and 1% of the total generated revenue will go back to the retailers to help with administrative costs, Jeremy Keene, the city’s Public Works Director, said in a meeting Wednesday.

COVID cases on the rise in Missoula County

Missoula County reported 21 new positive COVID-19 cases on Friday, while the state reported a new record high for cases in a single day on Friday with 224 new cases. The previous state high was just a day before on Thursday, when 214 cases were reported.

As of Friday, Missoula County had a total of 128 active cases with more than 575 close contacts. Some of those cases have been associated with “clusters” of cases affiliated with the University of Montana in the areas of athletics and Greek Life (fraternities and sororities). The Missoula City-County Health Department reported 25 total active cases associated with UM as of Sept. 16 when the data was last updated.

Even as cases increase, Missoula County Public Schools is considering bringing all students back to classrooms, five days a week, as early as Nov. 9.

Of Missoula County’s 128 active cases reported Friday, 66% of those cases are attributed to people ages 10-29, according to an email sent Friday by the Missoula City-County Health Department.

A volunteer associated with Missoula Parks and Recreation program also tested positive for COVID-19, according to a press release the department sent Friday. The individual’s last exposure to program participants was Sept. 9, and an initial investigation by the health department indicates the potential exposure is limited to fewer than 15 recreation program participants, the press release said.

Despite the increase among youth, a group of parents and students from Frenchtown and several Missoula high schools gathered on Thursday to protest crowd-size limits for high school football games. Missoula City-County Health Officer Ellen Leahy said during a Board of Health meeting on Thursday that football is different than other fall sports like volleyball and cross country because “they immediately, off the bat, have many, many more players that could mix during a game,” though she also said the department is taking another look at its restrictions on spectators for football.

On Thursday, Health Officer Leahy also said in the Board of Health meeting that Missoula County recently learned that FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) determined that no testing will be reimbursable by the agency.

Leahy said Missoula County is not pulling back on testing, but it will be “looking carefully” to see if those costs could be covered by the CARES Act.

“I appreciate all your support to do the testing and expand the testing including the quick testing that we’re doing,” Leahy said in the meeting.

Pod living could be lonely  

A 46-room communal living development slated for Missoula’s Westside neighborhood could provide housing for recent college graduates or members of the workforce of nearby medical complexes, restaurants and retail businesses.

However, members of the Missoula City Council’s Land Use and Planning Committee noted that statutory language for group living facilities could pose some obstacles for couples hoping to reside at the “dorm-like” structure targeted to younger Missoulians.

Council member Heather Harp noted on Wednesday the language for group living facilities mandates one person per bedroom suite, and asked “How do you defend that when someone might be in a relationship with somebody and all of a sudden, they want to live with their partner?” Harp posed the question of whether those residents would have to move out, which developers and others with the city said they would look into.

The committee will need to approve the use of the property for group living due to the land’s zoning.

The development would include 46 studio-sized rooms with a bathroom, space for a microwave, and a sink. Each of the four buildings would have a large common kitchen and space where people could spend time. The units would be about 250 square feet in size and would cost about $600 a month, including most utilities.

“It’s very similar to a dorm-like scenario,” Julie Landis of In2itive Architecture said Wednesday. “…There’s an easy transition for someone in college to transition into a living unit like this.”