Myth Busters Vol. 3: Selling public land, disaster declarations and taxes

"Selling Marshall Mountain could reduce property taxes." "Any town in the county can incorporate if they want to." "County residents subsidize the City of Missoula." Have you heard these statements before? Are they true or false? 

This week the commissioners spoke with Chris Lounsbury, chief administrative officer for Missoula County, to get to the bottom of these myths and others.

Have you heard a rumor about county government? Visit missoulacountyvoice.com to submit it and see if it's true!

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

 

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:10] Welcome back to the agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Josh Slotnick and I'm here with my fellow Commissioner Juanita Vero. Dave is on his way to Spokane for a rail thing. And today we're joined by our compatriot Chris Lounsbury, our Cao chief administrative officer for Missoula County. And today we're going to talk MythBusters third edition. All right. I'll kick us off with the first question. Yeah. If a road is located within the county but outside of city limits. Missoula County Public Works will always maintain it. It's a county road, for goodness sakes.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:00:41] So that is a myth.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:43] Let's bust that bugger.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:00:44] Yeah, as I say. So we have both maintained and non maintained county roads in Missoula County. And usually there is. How was that decision made. So part of it is historic. A lot of roads were dedicated when Missoula County became a county. And those roads were not maintained at the time. And so as the county has expanded and population densities have increased, we've taken over maintaining some of those roads. So two different ways a road can be maintained or become part of a county road. So the folks who own the road, if it's a private road, can petition the county to take the road in as a county road. And as part of that process, they may also be able to have some input on whether it's maintained or not. The other way that it is, is when the county Public Works Department determines that certain number of vehicles or a certain amount of usage is occurring, then it can move in from a non maintained status into a maintained status.

Juanita Vero: [00:01:31] All right. Okay. This next one following the disaster like we had with the derecho on July 24th, Missoula County has to wait for the governor to make a disaster declaration before we do anything like starting to clean up.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:01:43] So I'm going to call that one a partial truth. Okay. So and the reason I'm going to call it a partial truth is we don't have to wait for the governor, but we do need a disaster or emergency or emergency declaration. And that comes actually from the chair of the board of county commissioners for the county, or from the mayor of the city of Missoula before we can actually swing into action and start doing things because they're local. Those happen really quickly. So Commissioner Strohmeyer issued that the same day that the event occurred, as did Mayor Davis here in the city. But what happens for the governor's piece?

Juanita Vero: [00:02:10] There will be competing issuance like so. So mayor says it's a disaster. And the county commissioner chair says it isn't.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:02:15] It can it depends on where the damage is. Right. So the mayor is responsible inside the city limits. And then the county commissioners are responsible for outside the city limits where the governor's piece kicks in, is Missoula County is required to spend a certain amount of money before the state will help us with costs related to that. And that's where the governor's declaration comes in. Do we know.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:34] What that amount.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:02:34] Was? It is. It's about $300,000 in the county outside of the city limits. And I believe it's right around the same amount inside the city limits for them to spend. And after that, we can ask the state to help with resources and with funding. So partially true in the fact that we do need the governor for certain actions to be able to be taken, especially when we're going to use state resources and ask for state money, but not true that we have to wait until he does it. We can act locally even before. That's great.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:59] All right. Any town in the county can incorporate if they want to. So, can I take a crack at this? Absolutely. And I think, Chris, you will be able to fill in the details. But if I remember right, for a town, a community to incorporate, they have to have a certain population density. They can't just decide, hey, let's do it. There has to be a certain population density. Is that right?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:03:19] You're right. It's 300 people in a square mile. So for every square mile, you have to have 300 people. And then the next interesting part is you have to create a minimum of two wards so that the people living for the purposes of voting, and each one of those has to have a certain number of people in it, 250 people with at least 50 electors inside of it. So not only do you need at least 300 people per square mile, then you have to be able to create two wards and meet another population threshold of 200 residents. They don't have to be voters, but then at least 50 of them have to be voters.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:49] So are there any communities that meet this threshold now?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:03:52] There are communities outside the city limits of Missoula that would meet that density with just a cursory look. Obviously, depending on what pieces people want to incorporate, would change the answer to yes or no. But when we look at places like Lolo, that has a high degree of density. Certain parts of Frenchtown have a high degree of density. Seeley Seeley Lake has a high degree of density along its downtown area, where they would probably meet the threshold for the population, and having enough people in each side of at least two wards to get to that 250 residents with 50 electors.

Josh Slotnick: [00:04:20] And we're pretty unusual in Missoula County. If I understand it right, we're the only major county with just one incorporated city.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:04:27] We are the only urban county, only urban.

Josh Slotnick: [00:04:29] Yeah. My major, that's what I mean. Large population. Why do you think that is?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:04:33] It's a great question. I honestly don't know the history from it. It's just the way our valley has developed is that we've had the one incorporated city of Missoula, and that's that's where we sit.

Josh Slotnick: [00:04:41] So for these small communities, do you think it would be to their advantage or disadvantage to incorporate?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:04:47] That's a tricky question to answer because there's lots of different advantages to having local government. Right. So one is that you're again, the idea is government closest to the people is the best government. And so when you have a small community and you meet the threshold, obviously it gives you a great sense of local control because you're levying taxes, you're paying for services directly. The one thing that we can say, generally speaking, is that when you have an incorporation, most people pay more in taxes. And that's because now you have another level of government. So as a city resident, you pay in addition to school taxes and taxes to the state, you pay taxes to the county of Missoula and the city of Missoula, because we provide different services than the city, and we are required to provide them county wide, whether you are a city resident or not.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:30] So it's kind of autonomy versus costs.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:05:32] It's autonomy versus cost.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:33] Well, okay, the city of Missoula can annex any property that they want.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:05:37] Oh not true. That is a myth.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:40] Good job.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:05:40] So to say. So they in order for the city to be able to annex land into the incorporated city limits, it has to be adjacent to the city. The city has to be able to provide some level of service to it. I should say that first one was an And-or. So it either has to be adjacent to the city and adjacent.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:57] It doesn't have to be surrounded on four sides or three sides. It's just adjacent.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:06:01] It's just adjacent. Yeah. So it does not have to be surrounded. But that is one way that it can't. You can incorporate is through Wholly Surrounded. So let's look at a couple of different examples. Third Street to the west of reserve. So none of the land out. Third Street is fully surrounded by the city of Missoula, but the city provides sewer and water services. So a lot of times when development is happening out in that area, people elect to annex into the city limits to join the sewer in the water system. So they're adjacent to the city they've asked to be annexed in, and they're connected to a city service. So they meet the adjacency and they meet a city service sewer and water that's being connected to them. The same could be said for pieces of development that are happening in, say, East Missoula. What's really interesting about it is wholly surrounded isn't the only criteria for folks. You also can't be certain kinds of land. So if you're traveling down Russell Street, headed south from Broadway, you will notice that you drive by the Pink grizzly. And the pink grizzly is actually County. It's fully surrounded by the city of Missoula, but because it's an agricultural business, it's not incorporated into the city limits. It's still actually in the county. Interesting.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:07] They can do that by election, or they.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:07:09] Could petition to join the city. They never have. So they've never requested to be annexed in. But because of the nature of the business, the city can't annex them even though they're wholly surrounded.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:17] Okay. And even if they wanted to.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:07:19] Only if they wanted.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:20] To could they wanted to. Correct.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:07:22] Okay. Would they join the city at that point?

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:23] So I remember not that long ago, it did seem like the city was on a little run of annexation, and that seems to have really changed. In fact, it it feels like they've kind of lost their appetite for it.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:34] What what are you talking about?

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:36] Just generally speaking, I'd go back to maybe the early 2000 and things have really changed. They're not they don't they seem to have lost their appetite for annexation. Why do you think that is?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:07:45] That's a great question. And so actually I would agree with you. In the early late 90s, early 2000, the city had an annexation policy that was really focused outward of the city limits. The idea was to grow the city by adding land to the city limits. That changed when they adopted their new growth policy. And that that's right, it had vision. Inward was one of the criteria, which was the.

Juanita Vero: [00:08:04] I didn't have anything to do with that.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:08:06] It might have, but I'm not sure I was going to say, really. It was the idea that they had a lot of land that was now inside the city limits that wasn't very densely developed. And where we want to see density is where we do have things like public water, public septic through sewer. And so there was really this desire to focus more towards inward development and infill, as opposed to continuing to grow outward.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:25] I think at the time, sprawl, the word sprawl kind of entered our popular lexicon and was really looked at negatively. But, you know, it looked looking at the city of Missoula or just our community. Let's say there was a moment when the term sprawl, it had like a cultural moment and people were a little riled up. We shouldn't be sprawling, but the decision seemed to be so difficult. Infill versus sprawl. We just in the greater Missoula County chose both. That's what it looks like. And I think I think part of that look inward came from that concern around sprawl.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:08:56] Yeah, I think that's true.

Juanita Vero: [00:08:57] And we we grew out beyond. I mean, we're surrounded by some slopes and some rivers. And it allowed us or forced us to look inward.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:04] Yeah. For sure. I mean, if you compare Greater Missoula to Greater Bozeman, we have geographic impediments to development that they just don't have.

Juanita Vero: [00:09:13] Oh. Here's one. Um, if enough people say they don't like a development or a subdivision, the commissioners can deny it.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:09:19] Oh, I'm going to turn to you guys and say, yeah, so.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:21] I'm going to say I'm going to say no and let you fill in the gaps here. We have a pretty defined decision space around these things and quite small esthetics or our personal choice. Those aren't part of that decision space really. The developer would have to be asking to do something that is not in line with statute. If they're in line with zoning, if all the sanitation is dealt with, if they got all the appropriate thumbs up from MDT and from the fire districts, there really isn't much ground.

Juanita Vero: [00:09:50] Those decisions are made after the commissioner even makes the decision. So it's like, yeah, you're.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:55] Right, you're right on that. That could those things could kill it. This, this is a tough one because people are pretty accustomed to speaking their minds as they should. And yet we cannot make a decision, a thumbs up or thumbs down decision on a subdivision just based on popular opinion. Something actually has to be wrong with a subdivision.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:12] Would you have to add?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:10:13] So what I want to add is this is why it's really important that folks get involved in things like the growth policy and zoning when those opportunities come along. Because most of Missoula County is not zoned, which means there aren't really standards that we can reflect back to. When you want to look at a subdivision and say, hey, these are the pieces that don't comply with what the area or the neighborhood wants.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:32] And you just said when opportunities come along. So how does a person find out about said opportunities?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:10:37] Yeah. So one way is through our Lands and Communities department, they have a specific section called planning, Development and Sustainability. And they are getting ready to undertake major revisions to the growth plan. And they will be looking as they go through that process of what the appetite is for certain areas to consider zoning, and that will be an opportunity for folks to get involved in those efforts all kick off, I believe, in fiscal year 2025 that we just entered a little over a month ago.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:01] I remember just a few years ago, we did the land use element that kind of gave birth to zoning. The land use element came out of so many public meetings, so much public engagement, and I went to a bunch of those meetings. It was really interesting to see people are not interested in zoning generally, but they're very interested in in zoning specifically when it comes to their neighborhood. They come to a meeting, we attempted to do a general meeting. We're going to talk about zoning. Nobody is interested. When you say we're going to do zoning in target range, all the target rangers come out and have real strong opinions, and it's super important to get those opinions. As you are noting, as we move forward, looking to a greater land use policy for the rest of the county, I would really strongly encourage people to get involved and speak their mind about what they want to see where they live, because eventually there will be zoning and the zoning will reflect that land use policy, and that should reflect what people want. Lot.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:11:52] Absolutely.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:53] Well said.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:54] Oh, okay. How about this one? Selling Marshall mountain will reduce property taxes for county residents. So, Chris, would you mind talking for a moment about how the open space bond works?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:12:04] You bet. So open space bonds are voter approved. In this case, the citizenry voted overwhelmingly to pass the last set of open space bonds. So those bonds will get issued over time to pay for those costs related to acquisition of land easements and those kinds of things. But because they're voter approved, they can only be spent for those things. It's really tightly defined in the ballot language that folks did. And that cost is just kind of a known cost going forward, right? We all those of us who live in Missoula County, will pay taxes towards those open space pieces. And that doesn't matter whether we purchase Marshall Mountain or an easement in Condon, or no matter where that occurs at. Right? That same thing will happen across the board for everybody's taxes. So once we've purchased either that easement or piece of property or those kinds of things, we're preserving them into the future in all perpetuity as open space. Once that happens that that acquisition has happened. It's really hard to undo something like that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:55] Yeah, yeah. We were acting off of democracy. As you pointed out, people voted overwhelmingly to voluntarily raise their taxes, to put money aside to either buy land and sort of fee title for public access, or to help private landowners with conservation easements on working lands, which is typically the way that the county goes. This was an unusual one in that we partnered with the city, and it was recreationally unusual for us in terms of how we typically spend money for open space, but not unusual at all in terms of how we behave as Montanans. We have a long, proud tradition of public land. Marshall mountain had been public in that people could access it for more than five decades. Half a century. There was a moment when it felt like that land was going to go away, and we were able to work in partnership with the city and in partnership with a friends group to make this happen. So for the next multiple generations of people who live around here, they too can access Marshall Mountain.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:13:48] I think that's a great point. Josh and the other piece that I'd hearken back is when we talk about kind of being unusual in Missoula. It is true, but it's not our first one either. You know, when we look to Mount Jumbo here inside the city, when we look at that view shed that was purchased through the use of open space funds to be able to preserve it. People had used it for hiking and for walking and for all of those things forever.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:08] 1997. Right?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:14:09] In 1997, that's when that purchase happened. Can you imagine what Missoula would be like if that was all fully developed as homes? That open space provides such an amenity for the public, especially as we look at things like infill and density. And as Missoula County continues to grow and have more and more folks here who want to recreate outside.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:27] You're totally right. I mean, think of all the kind of classic Missoula promotional photos or short videos. You see the L and the M in these mountains and the North Hills and the Tawney grass, and then the rattlesnakes behind them. Look to the south, look to the south. In the evening, it's all lit up and it's totally fine. There are houses there. That's great. It's a good place for people to live. But this iconic landscape of our valley would look completely different if that same cityscape were to be on all the hills, and I'm not saying they shouldn't be in the South Hills. Good on them, but it really is has become part of our culture, part of our place. I do want to note I said earlier, but I also want to note that most of the open space projects that the county has been involved in have been conservation easements on working private land to keep land in agriculture, or in timber, or in wildlife habitat land specifically that was vulnerable to development. And in fact, we just did one the Stowell property up near Condon, 150 plus acres of beautiful, I mean, just absolutely stunningly gorgeous land with very high development potential, easy access flat. You could build a whole bunch of one per five, one per ten, one for one housing there, and those houses would be worth a lot of money smack dab in the middle of grizzly habitat. This family came to us and willingly they donated a third. A third of the money came from Montana Land Reliance, and a third came from the open space bond. So we were able to use the open space bond to leverage two other sources of money, and this 150 acres is adjacent to a bunch of other easement property as well conservation easement property, which is really important. We're talking about wildlife because wildlife move on corridors. They don't Island hop.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:16:03] No corner crossing.

Juanita Vero: [00:16:05] Corner crossing. The taxing and spending in Missoula is way out of control compared to other counties in Montana. What up? Missoula?

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:12] Can we do this in tandem, Chris?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:16:14] Absolutely.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:14] Yeah, this is one of my favorite ones. So there are pundits across the state that get very amped up around spending, and they put up graphs and charts and say, oh my goodness, look at Missoula County spending like drunken sailors. This just absolutely has to be stopped. Two thirds, two thirds of our spending does not come from local property taxes. And in fact, because we have such incredibly skilled staff and great partnerships, in just a handful of years, we've been able to bring in more than $100 million in federal money for infrastructure projects. If you think about the city, the county and the MPO all put together, we're spending that money actively spending that money to do things like rebuild South Avenue. Redo the highway 200 corridor. That spending does not come from local property taxes. Now a person could say, oh, but it's still tax money. But I heard only 1 in 4 Americans lives in the West. That means if we're getting federal money, it's mostly coming from the far away east. Places where people who hate spending also probably don't agree with the politics. On to taxes. Our tax increase in Missoula are absolutely on par with our other surrounding counties.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:15] Missoula County.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:15] Missoula County. The thing to remember with the tax increases, we at Missoula County do not raise taxes on any individual person's house. What we do is we raise taxes on the entirety of all property owners in the entire county. That total number goes up typically by less than the rate of inflation. How much of that burden actually falls on one person's house is dependent really on two things. One, how much is their house worth and how much is every other property worth in the county? Think of the value of your house as a portion, a percentage of all the value of all the property in the county. That's the same percentage of the total tax burden that falls on you. We raise taxes. For what? 4.2%. And 2.5% of that was we were statutorily obligated for the sheriff's retirement system. So 1.7%. That's way less than inflation. But for sure, most people's taxes are going to go up by more than 4.2%. And it's because if their homes went up in value and some other properties went down, their percentage, their portion of the whole increased, and that's what ultimately determines their tax liability to fix this, to really fix this is not about us not increasing by 1.7%. It's having the legislature change the rules on valuation and tax rates. So we see the different 16 different classes treated more equally. Right now, homeowners and renters carry the heavy, heavy burden in part because we don't have the industrial economy we used to, but also in part because we've made it really easy for a handful of industries to show that their properties lose value every year in the same market, where homes escalate in value.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:18:48] So actually add to it. So I would love to add just a little bit. Josh so you're absolutely right that those are the major drivers. What I would say is that when we look at peer communities around the state of Montana. Missoula County does a really good job of staying at or below those peer communities around the state of Montana when we look and again, not to mention anybody specifically. But when we look at Yellowstone, Gallatin, Flathead, you know, some of the places that are often called out as as being much more in check. The reality is, the percentage increase when we look at the property tax side of the equation is almost always very close. And that spending piece is a function of the fact that we have a very successful grant, public works and other departments that are very good at bringing in those federal dollars, which have allowed us to make incredible investments in this community, that long term benefit every property tax owner. When we look at Sxwtpqyen as an example, the growth, the build grant that was happening out there, being able to put in infrastructure again means more people in our community will be able to be in housing, which when those houses come online, help to spread out that property tax burden in a different way. We have this new grant that's going to happen out along highway 200. That's going to change the kind of look and feel of East Missoula for generations to come compared to where it is. And so it is really important to separate out spending from the fact that property taxes fund a portion of that spending, but they do only fund a portion of it. So really, when you just take a total number, it's not a very accurate reflection of what's actually happening.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:14] It almost needs to be a different word than spending to to accurately describe what's happening.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:20] People use spending as a proxy for taxation, and because two thirds of spending doesn't come from local property tax dollars, it's not an accurate proxy. If you are concerned about taxes, as everyone should be. Look at our rates of taxation. Don't look at spending. Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:33] Spend.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:34] Again, if two thirds of the money comes from somewhere else, it is not an accurate proxy for taxation. And why it go with a proxy? Go with the real thing. Just look at our actual rates of taxation. Yeah.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:20:44] And and the reality is the county faces exactly the same pressures that homeowners and businesses face, which is the fact of goods and services are more expensive. And in order to be able to fund those things and be able to continue to do projects and be successful in that way, it does mean that then we have to raise some level of property taxation in order to be able to keep up with those inflating costs.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:03] We work in the same market as everybody else. I just want to want to add one other small thing in terms of taxation. We are under a statutory cap. It's called the mill cap. We can get the money we got last year, plus a little bump that's equivalent to half the three year average of inflation and any new growth. If all we could do was go up by half the average of inflation. Meanwhile, we're buying asphalt and paying for people's time at the full rate of inflation. We go backwards every year. Were it not for new growth, our county would have a really hard time maintaining our statutory obligations in terms of services delivered. We're a grow or die situation, super, super difficult for small rural counties that don't grow. We are on the beneficial side.

Juanita Vero: [00:21:42] Absolutely true. Brings another myth. County residents subsidize city residents.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:21:47] That one is false. Just if you think about it. Relation to scale of that. Every city resident pays all county taxes except really for two. So they don't. City residents don't pay for county roads and they don't pay for the health department, which includes animal control shows up as three lines on your tax bill. But it's really two functions that they do. And that's because the city has its own road fund, and the city has its own fund that pays for its portion of the health department, but all of the other services they contribute to. So they contribute towards the sheriff's department. Even though the sheriff's office does not provide services inside the city of Missoula other than to serve civil paperwork. So two deputies versus the 60 deputies that are normally out. So 58 of those deputies don't really provide services inside Missoula city residents also contribute to the jail, just like county residents do proportionately. You could say the city uses more space in the jail, and that may be true, but the reality is the facility itself, all of those costs, whether you have one person from your community or no people from your community, statutorily, we have to have a detention facility that can hold those folks. So the city residents helped to subsidize that as well. And that's true for everything. Whether it's when you come in to register your motor vehicle or go through the clerk of district court's office or through justice court, those services are all have some sort of subsidy that comes from city residents towards them. True, there are also subsidized by county property taxes, but proportionally, because the vast majority of our population is in the city, the city pays for more of those services, and the county residents benefit from having a higher level of service than they would if the city weren't contributing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:09] For sure.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:10] Would you say that louder for the folks in the back?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:23:12] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about it, the one the example I always go back to is 911, right? So 911 dispatch center. Everybody wants their call if they're having their worst day to be answered. And we want emergency responders in order to staff a facility 24 over seven. Right. You have to have a minimum of a certain number of people to do that. And in a county of Missoula, you need about 5 to 6 people on at any given time to answer both the phones and talk to the emergency responders. That happens largely because of the city of Missoula. Right. City residents are contributing into the nine one fund at a larger number than the rest of the county is, but that means that county residents actually get a higher level of service. So they get things like emergency medical dispatch, where they can give lifesaving directions over the phone for somebody who's having a medical emergency that they might not be able to get in a smaller community. It means they get things like the mobile support team, right, which again, is dispatched out of our 901 center to calls, where we have somebody who's having a severe mental health crisis. It means they get just that higher level of professionalism and standard, and the number of people who are available to assist them when something happens in their community. Because the population center of the city of Missoula allows us to employ more folks to be able to meet the needs of the community. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:16] Juan, I just heard a new myth an hour before this one. Here we go. Here's the myth. The counties should sell Smurfit so somebody can do something with it.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:24:24] Well, I'm going to just go with that as false. The county doesn't own the land. There is a private property owner who owns the land, and we cannot take property from private property owners and sell it as we choose, or do with it as we choose, because private property rights are not only important in the state of Montana, but they're also important at the federal level as well. So we smurfit-stone we can't sell.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:43] Smurfit-stone not ours to sell.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:24:44] It is not the counties to sell.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:46] So where can folks go to find more of these myths? Go to the.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:50] Myth Buster page at Missoula County voice.com and you could submit any new myths. We are actually in myth collection mode right now. Always, always. It's evergreen.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:01] Okay, well, thank you so much. Before we close, what's a great book or nugget of wisdom you've come across?

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:08] Movie. Chunk of culture. Anything I think is worthwhile.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:25:12] There's all kinds of Limerick. I don't have any limericks. I am not poetic like the rest of the commission at all. I have no talent whatsoever in that space. So what I will say for this little piece at the end here is that anything that you can get your hands on to read is always a good thing. But Stephen Fry, as a narrator, has got to be my new favorite narrator of a book. I've been listening to a cool book on Greek mythology, which he narrates and kind of fills in a few of the little, shall we say, gaps that might exist in the story, with his own kind of fun style, which has just been a kick to listen to as a as a nice break from the things that I am normally listening to, but it's also human.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:49] It's all the same stuff. It is. It is Greek mythology. We're just playing it out.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:54] Yeah, and it's it, it is incredible how timeless some of these things are. Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:58] So what's, what's what's the story you're listening to?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:26:01] So he has three books out on Greek mythology. I am on book number three, which is the story of Troy. Oh, so which has been fantastic, but his first one is just the Greek gods. It it certainly is not portrayed as Helen's fault. He he faults the person who took Helen.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:17] Aha! Not. Ha!

Chris Lounsbury: [00:26:19] But. Yeah. No. We're great. He's a great narrator and adds such fun little twists in it. It's. It's just great. So it's a good it's a good break if you'd like something entertaining to listen to.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:28] Fantastic.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:29] I got to add a plug. Oh, yes. Anybody out there who's interested in any Missoula County thing? Reach out to somebody like Chris Lounsbury. You're not going to find a smarter or more kind person. We are so lucky to have you. We are.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:38] So lucky.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:26:38] So lucky. I am lucky to be here. I've enjoyed every moment of my career here. So.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:42] Well, thanks for coming by today. Yeah.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:26:44] Thank you.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:44] Thanks for listening.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:45] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:53] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:26:59] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:11] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:27:19] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.co/countyupdates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:27:26] Thanks for listening.