Meet Stacy Rye, Ward 3

AGE: 38
OCCUPATION: Coordinator, University of Montana Women and Gender Studies Program
MARITAL OR PARTNERSHIP STATUS: Married to Paul Bowles
EDUCATION: University of Montana, bachelor's degree in anthropology; two years of graduate study in sociology
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: for executive Director of Brain Injury Association
PUBLIC SERVICE: Missoula City Council; Rose Park Neighborhood Council; Literacy Volunteers of America;Ward 3 ice cream social; campaign volunteer for President Bill Clinton, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, and numerous City Council and School Board candidates.
PARTY AFFILIATION: Democrat
ENDORSEMENTS: Missoula County Democrats, Missoula County Democratic Central Committee, Missoula Area Central Labor Council, Mayor John Engen, Missoula Independent; Missoula Chamber of Commerce rating: 1.2 of 3.0.

Questions and answers

What qualifies you to be on the City Council?

“First of all, I was the director of a nonprofit for five years. That’s an enormous amount of work. In the nonprofit world you don’t get paid, but you do get to wear a white hat. I’ve sat on City Council for four years; I’ve put in a lot of hours, probably 20 hours a week at least. I’ve chaired the Administration and Finance Committee; I’ve worked on state issues such as public power …. Working for a non-profit, you have to be able to write and vote on by-laws. You have to be able to report to a board in an objective manner. I was staffing that board. Now, on council, I am the board. So I’ve worn both hats at the same time, and to know the difference is critical. Politics are one thing, but crafting policy takes some skill and people have to know how to be able to do it effectively and objectively.”

What are the best and worst things the City Council has done in recent years?

“Transportation and growth are our two most contentious issues. In regards to affordable housing, we have had a difficult time with it. We kind of agreed to put an end to some policies which the community had been extremely reactionary to in a negative way, mainly density bonuses and PNCs. We haven’t gone back and revisited why those policies were put into place in the first place and what, if any, positive things came out of them. So that’s a problem. We’re there to see the community in 50 years, not what happens next month. Montana Public Power, going forward with that bid, was just thrilling. It is a state issue, and the cities took an initiative to do something about a bankrupt supplier. I think the widening ordinance was remarkable. Missoulians care about quality of life issues. There’s an old lumber mill that ran for a lot of years in Missoula that is being cleaned up and turned into a mixed use neighborhood.”

What one thing would you most like to accomplish as a member of the City Council?

“Definitely something about affordable housing and growth. Some sort of inclusionary zoning would be wonderful, just the idea that we have a developer put in 10 percent of their development as affordable housing. We talked about a land trust non-profit in town that could help take care of that, that would be excellent, or an affordable housing bond. I mean, this community really has picked up when it comes to things like open space and parks, things like that. I think it’s time to do something regarding affordable housing, because affordable housing and economic development are tied together. Anybody that claims to be a big business candidate, if you don’t have the work force here to support those businesses and (a workforce) able to live here on $12 an hour, then you’re not going to have that (businesses). So if you’re not pro-affordable housing, you’re anti-economic development.”

What can the city do attract better-paying jobs?

“Work-force housing, have housing available for people to be here. Businesses are attracted to a couple of different things. They’re attracted to the work force that’s here, which is largely educated, much more so than the national average, and amenities. It’s our job to provide the unsexy infrastructure like sewers and roads, but it’s also our job to make sure that business owners are attracted to open space and trails and things like that.”

What should the city do to encourage the development of more affordable housing?

“The city has two-fold responsibility. One is the development of work force housing, and the other is the social justice argument that the government is here to serve all people, not just the people who can afford to live here. I think we have some responsibility to encourage by regulation or manipulate the market by regulation to some extent to help the market and median house price. The median house price is $210,000. There has to be some recognition of power, too. It used to be that parents or families could help college graduates with the down payment. A down payment on a 20,000 dollar house is about $2,000. Families would scrape that together and help kids buy houses. The down payment on a $210,000 dollar house is $21,000 dollars.”

Should Missoula endorse a troop withdrawal from Iraq? Why or why not?

“Since I co-sponsored the ballot initiative, I certainly do (think so). One or two cities here or there that have no power or say in this issue means nothing, but the more cities that do it and the more populations that work for it fill up a bucket. If one city is a drop, many cities start to fill up that bucket. If federal officials are acting contrary to what the general public has said that they want, and their values aren’t being listened to; then they start to look to local officials to do something about the gap in those belief systems and value systems. If it were to pass, it gives a message to three congressional representatives in Montana as well.”

What is Missoula’s most pressing traffic problem and where should the city turn for the money to solve it?

“The most pressing traffic problem is that we don’t have the money to fund anything. I would say possibly Russell Street. Russell Street has been due for improvements for at least 11 years and it had a $20 million price tag about four years ago. I would guess its now about $40 million. We just don’t have that kind of money. So far we have about $6 million in our combined budget. That’s nothing, that’s peanuts. We also have Reserve Dtreet, Miller Creek, the Higgins-Hill roundabout – it’s a never-ending list of improvements, and drying up federal and state funds. We don’t have leadership at the federal or state level to either fund this realistically or come up with a viable solution, and we’re paupers here, our budget couldn’t possibly come up with that. So, we have to face some harsh realities here and, in my view, we do need those improvements. We can’t build every single road to be four or six lanes to carry single occupancy vehicles. That is a hugely inefficient waste of money. If we throw a little bit of money, like 10 percent of those budgets, at different modes of transportation we could make a huge difference, huge. We have a tiny little gas tax that goes to supporting single occupancy vehicles. I don’t know why we continue to go down a path leading us to a train wreck.”

Should the city encourage or discourage more housing in existing city neighborhoods? Why or why not?

“They should encourage it, especially if it doesn’t increase the overall density. If we have a parcel of land that’s zoned for apartment building, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to build condos, town homes or single-family homes. It doesn’t increase the overall density of that parcel of land. If you have an eight-plex you can have eight houses or eight condos. I would like to see Missoula look at the possibility of mother-in-law units. And that would probably increase the density but they’ve been built for decades behind existing houses. They’re small little cottages usually, they’re attractive. We’re talking tiny. So that would increase the density and that would increase student housing, which I think is not great right now and I don’t think students want to live out behind Wal-Mart. I’d rather students be one or two per cottage rather than eight per house.”

Should the city limit the number of unrelated people who may share a house?

“No. It’s unconstitutional. They can’t do it. It’s not right. It’s a dead issue, hasn’t come up in years.”

What specific problems in your ward would you like to see solved?

“Parking for the university. I’d like to see the city and the university get together and determine how that can be mitigated. I don’t think the answer is necessarily more future parking lots at the university because it just encourages more people to drive. So that’s a huge problem. Housing is a huge problem in Ward 3. And I feel like development is not. We have a diversity of housing plots and neighborhoods, but we don’t have a lot of affordable housing. It’s more toward the 60th percentile of the median house price. We don’t have any under the 60th percentile.”