I'll start it in the office.

Oh, yeah, I think the mic is on too.

Thank you, Jesse.

All right.

I am calling the economic vitality board meeting to order.

It is April 1st.

Do we have any disclosures tonight?

I'll make a couple disclosures.

One, I was involved in putting together and circulating a petition to the city commission.

Oh, is there a del there's a delay?

Should I just keep going?

Um I was involved in putting together a petition and um to the city commission asking for them to consider um changing the height allowance in the B3 zone from 90 feet back down to 60 feet.

Um one of the cited concerns was about um being able to leverage, unable to leverage the additional height if it's given by right for affordable housing, so that might be relevant to the discussion about affordable housing incentives tonight.

Um the other disclosure I guess I'll make is that I recently authored a guest column in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that was about the neighborhood conservation overlay district, but did mention affordable housing and the multifamily vacancy rate.

So also might come up in tonight's discussion.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Any other disclosures tonight?

All right.

We don't have any minutes from last month, so we don't have to worry about that.

Or we may have minutes, but we don't have any to pass, right?

Correct.

We have minutes, but because um that they're just not prepared for your uh motion of vote tonight.

No problem.

We'll do that in May then.

Do we have any changes to the agenda?

Chair, I'm not aware of any changes to the agenda, but if you would allow me just a moment to clarify uh a statement in the um memorandum that I submitted to the EV board.

I just want to make sure that everyone is clear about the language that I used in sentence number one.

It was brought to my attention that the city that it could be construed that but by using the word finally in that first sentence, the city commission finally adopted that I was expressing some level of frustration as I was writing this, but that's in fact not the case.

The city commission has a preliminary adoption and a final adoption as part of the process.

And so what I was referring to very inarticulately in this first sentence was the city commission finally adopted in that it was the final adoption.

Just wanted to make that clarification.

Thank you.

Thank you for that clarification then.

All right, I'm going to um explain how people can give public comment.

So this is a time where people can comment on any non-agenda matter falling within the scope of the economic vitality board.

There'll also be a time in conjunction with each agenda item for public comment relating to that item, but you may only speak once per topic.

Please note the board cannot take action on any item that does not appear on the agenda.

All persons addressing the board shall speak in a civil and courteous manner, and members of the audience shall be respectful of others.

Please state your name.

Please state if you're a resident of the city.

And please state if you're a property owner.

If we're in a clear audible tone, and we do ask that you limit your comments to three minutes.

I think a request online.

All right, thank you, Jesse.

All right, we're gonna move into our discussion, and I'm gonna have Brett come and introduce um your our other presenter.

Thank you, Chair.

Yes, um, I'd like to welcome and introduce Brian Geyer, our community housing manager to the podium to present.

Pardon me, some material uh that we want to discuss with this board as it relates to updating the affordable housing ordinance.

So the affordable housing ordinance was adopted back in 2025, and uh we have seen some of the outcomes of the ordinance and uh we are also now in a position to see where it can be improved based on wo on how we've been using it.

There have been some changes at the legislative level that we also need to now change our local ordinance to reflect those changes, and we have some um uh we also need to think about um as those legislative changes impact our incentive program.

We need to start thinking about where can we find other incentives that might be suitable um uh for the affordable housing program through the ordinance.

So with that, I'd like to introduce Brian Geier, who's gonna talk a little bit about our proposed um some of our proposed changes, and our goal tonight is to um get these changes that we suggest out on the table for discussion for this body.

We also will be doing a work session with the community development board, um, who is the statutorily required body that must at some point in our process approve the ordinance before it goes to the city commission.

So our intent is to do um have this conversation with the EV board, do a work session with the community development board.

That's a non-action uh item as well.

Then we will uh bring an order, we will bring the ordinance back to this body for its review once it's been updated, and then we then go one more time back to the community development board.

Finally, then we go to the city commission.

So tonight is the first in a series of conversations about updates to the community housing ordinance.

And so uh with that, welcome, Brian.