Welcome to our April fourteenth City Commission meeting.

Um we have a exciting agenda this afternoon, this evening.

Um a reminder that all of our city commission meetings are open to the public.

If you have a disability that requires assistance, we do ask that you you connect with our Deputy City Deputy City Clerk, Alex Newby, and we can get you situated.

All of those instructions are available on our agenda and on our Commission website.

Um as we start this meeting, I would like to let's start with a pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence or mindfulness.

The first thing we do is see if there are any changes to the agenda.

City manager.

Mayor, there is one or Deputy Mayor, there's one uh change to the agenda uh with your concurrence.

I would like to move uh action item or only action item of the night to directly after the consent agenda and before public comment to accommodate a uh unexpected staff members uh conflict tonight.

Uh it would be very helpful if we could do that for him.

We're happy to do that.

So action item J, the resolution to create a special improvement lighting district will now move in front of item H public comment on non-agenda items.

Next we uh need to authorize the absence of our our leader, uh Mayor Morrison and uh Commissioner Bowden.

Yes, I can do that.

Um I move to authorize the absence of Mayor Morrison.

Second.

Mr.

Newby, would you poll us?

Commissioner Bodie.

Aye.

Commissioner Magic.

Uh Commissioner Sweeney.

Aye.

Deputy Mayor Fisher.

Aye.

He is excused.

Next, we have FYIs.

Any FYIs from the Commission?

Commissioner Bo Commissioner Sweeney's excuse me.

Thank you, uh, Deputy Mayor.

So um I did just want to let everyone know, since we have a full room, the Lakota group is in town this week doing engagement on our neighborhood conservation overlay district.

And you can engage with them tomorrow at the business improvement district meeting at noon.

Um you can also engage with them tomorrow evening at the historic preservation advisory board meeting at 6 p.m.

And um check out lots of information about the neighborhood conservation overlay on our Engage Bozeman webpage.

Thank you, Commissioner Sweeney, Commissioner Buddy.

Yes, I've got a couple of public um FYIs here.

First, I just want to note that the sustainability board met last week and give you a quick summary here.

Um we talked about the forest management plan and got a presentation um from our forestry department and had some really good conversations um, also including folks from Branch Out Bozeman and all of the work that they've been doing to plant trees all around town.

So um we had a great discussion about that, a lot of public comments in support of trees and how we're kind of thinking about trees in both public places and private places.

Um then we had I think what is possibly the first ever ranked choice vote of a um advisory board where our board members voted on the best poster design for um a fourth grade class submission for the Beyond Plastics poster, which will remind folks who walk into grocery stores to bring their own back.

And we um, you know, we we followed Robert's rules.

Don't worry, we did make a formal vote at the end.

But based on the ranked choice vote, um, the Monfortin fourth grade class won the poster contest.

So that was just very cool.

Um engagement opportunity at the Sustainability Board.

And then this past week, the deputy mayor and I went on a walk in Cooper Park with some Cooper Park neighbors.

It wasn't a formal neighborhood association event, but there were maybe 15 or more folks there.

We walked down seventh between Koch and Babcock and received a lot of feedback from from those neighbors.

And I'm just wondering um if we might be able to incorporate some of the feedback that they provided into the neighborhood conservation overlay district guideline updates.

So yeah, we received some written comment, which I think I can forward on to the city staff and perhaps the deputy mayor and I can collaborate on just a summary of of what we heard.

Um then the last thing I want to uh let people know about is MSU is having their climate week next week.

Um I think we've got a visual if we can pull it up, that would be great.

Um basically next week.

MSC will be putting on a series of events.

I think every single day, Monday through Friday.

These things range from thank you.

Great, there it is.

A event on Monday about women in climate change and climate change work, a concert, something about snow, uh, electric vehicle showcase on Wednesday, green drinks, of course, is in the um afternoon evening, and that'll be on campus this time.

Um you all can read ending with campus cleanup week uh with the citizens climate lobby at MSU.

So anyway, if you're looking for some ways to get engaged with Climate Week, that's a great place to start um start looking.

And I think that leads right into Arbor Day on the 25th, and then Earth Day the following weekend.

So we've got a real stacked agenda for sustainability and um climate.

So yeah, I hope you all will find a way to engage in any or all of the events.

Thank you, Commissioner Bode.

Speaking of fourth graders.

I would like to welcome PAC 671 here today.

They are in the front row, it looks like, and they're working on their uh community badge.

Um had a lovely chat with them.

They all got to practice with the Gavel.

Shows that I need to need to work on my form here.

But um thank you for coming today and and and learning about how to how we make decisions in our community.

I do also want to recognize that we received six uh we received almost two dozen letters in the past two days about the Fowler Avenue Housing Project.

The concern is understandable.

To get people thinking, we started the city started the discussion about housing on that site with a schematic that showed the development of some four-story condos.

What's missing is what happened next.

In response to that feedback, we all set those drawings aside and started a consensus-based conversation to ensure that we capture the diverse views of a wide range of stakeholders from neighbors to housing advocates to determine what best serves the community at that spot.

It's a purposefully slow process, and the commission puts just three principles on the table that I believe still hold true today.

We need housing on that site, we want it to be affordable, and we want there to be an ownership mop.

There is no current plan to put 84 housing homes there in four-story buildings with 168 parking cars, parking and lots jammed up against the neighboring homes there.

To claim otherwise is not just wrong, it is misinformation, plain and simple.

So by all means, let your preferences for that site be known to us.

We welcome, or at least, you know, I certainly welcome your ideas and hopes and vision.

But I I just want to say personally that there's no need to protest or fight or against or worry that we are starting with a predetermined vision for that property.

That that vision is going to come out of this community.

It's going to take time, and I I would hope that we as a community can give that process time to work.

Any other FYIs from the from the commission.

City manager.

Thank you, um, Deputy Mayor.

I um would like to carry on with the thoughts that you just uh stated there and give an update to the commission to the community on the on the consensus process.

It's pretty exciting.

Um as a reminder to everybody, no decisions have been made on this project.

And we are not going to build high-rise five-story apartments, sir.

We are not going to do that.

Uh we have outlined the consensus process and we're continuing to follow it.

So we just completed phase one.

Over the past um few months.

We've been listening to different perspectives on this project as a part of the phase one, which is the one-on-one meetings.

Um we learned a lot.

A summary of that report is now available at the Engage.boseman page.

It was put up today.

Um, this is all this is all brand new information uh in alignment with the process we said we would follow.

So these are informative conversations, and we are headed into phase two in accordance with the plan with the following sideboards.

City staff are pres are pursuing, as the deputy mayor said, a below market housing project targeting middle income residents who have been priced out of the current housing market.

City staff are not pursuing four or five-story development.

We are looking at a max of three stories at the most, a maximum.

Uh the upcoming conversations in phase two will focus on housing types.

What we want to see on that uh in an ownership models, um, examples of that may include dupe um duplexes, which are allowed by right in our lowest density um zones in the city.

Um townhomes, condos, a mix, the number of units, and the exact site design, parking spaces, green space, materials, etc.

Phase two includes a gathering of two uh groups of eight to ten people representing a variety of views and experiences in participating or to participate in these listening sessions.

So we will be in touch with folks who are moving forward in this process and invite everyone to follow along with how it moves forward.

If you're interested in updates on this project, you can sign up to get those updates pushed to you at Engage Bozeman.

Engage.bozman.net slash Fowler Housing.

And like I said, we are excited to report that the updated information should be live on the website.

It was posted, so it may take uh a few um hours for it to update, um, but it is up there.

And if anybody has any questions at all about this, um, please contact us and we'll be happy to have um conversations about this project.

We're excited about it.

There hasn't been a starter home neighborhood in in Bozeman for a long time now, and we are looking at a for sale uh ownership model, and I think this uh project can be something transformative for our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That brings us to commission to close disclosures.

Do we have anything?

Any commissioner need to disclose something about uh an item on the agenda tonight?

All right.

That brings us up to consent, and we have four items on the consent.

Uh City Manager, would you care to highlight one or one of those?

Yeah, go from like 22 on one week to four the next week.

That's just how the ball bounces.

I would like to highlight uh G2, um, which is a significant investment in our water um renovations project for our underground water supply system.

Umce again, we are experiencing favorable bidding climate, and this project came at significantly below the engineers' um estimates.

The exact details are in the consent item, but I think it involves four different projects.

Uh we're excited that um that to invest in our city's most expensive resource, and that's the thing that nobody sees, and that's our pipes, uh, which are all buried but uh provide vital um public service and health and safety to our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now we'll take public comment on items G1 through G4 on our agenda.

Is there anyone in the room who would like to speak to items G1 and G4?

Second call.

Third call.

Mr.

Newby, do we see anybody online?

Deputy Mayor Fisher, I see no request for public comment online.

Perfect.

Then I would entertain uh a motion and I move to approve consent items one through four.

Second.

We have a motion, we have a second.

Mr.

Newby, would you poll the commission?

Commissioner Magic.

Aye.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Aye.

Commissioner Bodie.

Aye.

Deputy Mayor Fisher.

Aye.

That consent agenda passed unanimously.

So now we bring up for the change in our agenda.

Action item J.

A resolution of the creation of special improvement lighting districts 796 for West Aspen and Fifth Avenue.

Yes, and um those who follow along, the city um, the city's business will uh um know that this is typically an item on the consent agenda.

Um we did receive one protest for this, which um we bring then as at as an action item.

That one protest did not meet the threshold to trigger uh a um the commission from being barred from creating this district.

Okay.

See you can tell how much we do this, not very often, but we did have um one protest, and we want to be open and transparent about the process because we received that.

Here is our our own David Fine to uh introduce this item.

Thank you, uh Deputy Mayor, City Commission.

I'm David Fine.

I'm an economic development manager with the city, and I'm here to present uh this presentation of special improvement lighting district seven nine six, which is for West Aspen and North Fifth Avenue.

Um this is a lighting district that encompasses a couple of projects.

Uh one we have done and one we have are about to do uh from up from a lighting perspective.

Um so this covers uh the electrical bills and maintenance for the Aspen Festival Street, including the string lights uh along that portion of the festival street, as well as lights that are along North Theft Avenue next to the Westlake BMX park, as well as additional lights that we plan to install along the park frontage and along uh the multi use path that extends towards Oak Street.

Um so we used a lineal foot assessment method for this uh SALD.

It's uh.28 uh dollars per lineal foot or 1,197 annually for the entire district.

Um again, these will be used to create, maintain, and energize the lighting district and the lights that we have already installed and will install uh will meet city standards and be dark sky compliant.

Um we made notice of the district on March 10th.

We mailed the notices per the MCA and we did receive one written protest, but that doesn't trigger the protest threshold, but it does trigger the action item threshold.

And that's why we're here today.

With that, I would take any questions you have.

Thank you, Mr.

Fine.

Any questions from the Commission?

Uh I don't have any questions either.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So now since this is an action item, we will open this for public comment.

Um public comment.

We do give three minutes for public comment.

The light will light will green light will start as you start speaking.

We ask that you speak your name, your relationship to the city of Bozeman, whether you're a resident or a business owner or uh and a uh and then at two minutes, the yellow light starts.

And we uh three minutes, the light flashes, it beeps, red light flashes beeps, and we ask that you wrap up your comments.

Any public comment on this agenda item?

Second call.

Third call.

Mr.

Numi.

Deputy Mayor Fisher, I see no request for public comment online.

Fair enough.

Then I will close public comment and uh bring it up here for a motion.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Having considered all protests and findings, they do not represent a majority of the property owners in the district.

Um the protests are not sufficient to prevent creation of the lighting district.

I move to adopt commission resolution to create special improvement lighting district seven nine six for West Aspen and Fifth Avenue.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Any discussion?

Quick comment.

Yes.

Mr.

Fine, your boys did really well.

They started off entranced with the fact you are up here speaking, and their interest quickly faded.

It has nothing to do with the with the riveting nature of the information, though.

Commissioner Sweeney.

I did just want to acknowledge the um sort of premise of the protest, which was the loud blaring driving noises crazy when we seem to have more street lighting.

And I think we're just seeing that all across Bozeman.

So I I do want to acknowledge the protesters' concern.

Um, and we will probably touch on that a little bit later in our action or in our work session.

So yeah.

Thank you for bringing that in.

Any further comments from the commission?

Mr.

Newby.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Aye.

Commissioner Bodhi.

Aye.

Commissioner Magic.

Aye.

Deputy Mayor Fisher.

Aye.

That passes unanimously.

So now we move back to our agenda to public comment on non-agenda items falling within the purview and jurisdiction movement.

So this is the time to comment on any matter falling within the scope of the Bozicity Commission.

Um we do uh you may speak on any item uh any topic, but we ask that you only speak once per topic.

All persons, uh we asked that you speak in a civil voice, uh courteous manner, uh, and that you be respectful of us.

This is our this is our kind of our town kitchen table where we we uh talk about ideas and we have differing ideas, and I'm hoping that we can be respectful, especially since we have five young members of our community learning about community community engagement.

Um please state your name, state whether you're a resident of the city or property owner within the city, and limit your comments to three minutes.

Go ahead.

Again, we take comment in the room first and then we'll move online.

Good evening.

Commission.

Good to see you.

Usually I'm on the other side of this.

I'm a local journalist.

My name is Matt Standal, and I do live here in Bozeman.

It's good we have the scouts here tonight because I want to ask you guys to please think about young people and think about mothers in this town when we talk about traffic accidents.

Um as you may know, there was quite a bad traffic accident on Sunday.

Young boy, I think he was maybe teenager, got hit by a car in Babcock, and he's in Salt Lake fighting for his life.

This was reported to be a distracted driver.

This is not the first time we've seen this in recent months with a mother killed last month by a potentially a distracted driver.

More than 400 million dollars for your biennium budget.

Find some more money for police.

Pull people over, get people to drive respectfully, and try to save some people's lives.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Standle.

I will note we are going to be talking about traffic safety later in this agenda.

And I would just ask to it just helps to have that agenda, that public comment during that agenda item, so it's part of the record and part of that discussion.

But please.

Good evening.

Hello, Nikki Bailey.

I live in Bozeman.

And sorry, I have a three-year-old, so I cannot wait until later.

Each one of us in this room should be very ashamed about our street safety.

This is the worst city I've ever lived in as a bike commuter.

And I lived in Sao Paulo, where a cyclist is killed every 24 hours.

And I tell people this is the worst city I've ever lived in.

There's very few bike commuting paths.

There's distracted drivers, people coal roll you, the bike lanes aren't plowed, and we wring our hands and say, well, Montana Highway is in charge of this road.

We should really be ashamed.

Go read Mark Egggy's op-ed or listen later tonight.

If it doesn't chill you to the bone that no, it was written the day before Elliott was run over.

I don't know what will.

A child was run over at a location that Bozeman's 2017 Transportation Master Plan flagged as dangerous.

We want safer streets, and we want action now.

No hand wringing, no, well, it's Montana Highway.

What are we going to do?

Are you really going to say that to Elliot's mother or to Leslie's children?

All of the safety improvements recommended in your 2017 Transportation Master Plan and Safe Plan are within your control, and I encourage you to do something about it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Bailey.

Good evening.

Hi.

My name is Patrick Moore.

I live at 409 Murrill Avenue on Bozeman's West End.

And I'm an elected steering committee member of the Valley Unit Neighborhood Association.

I'm here to express my profound dismay regarding the City Commission's recent decision not to act on a formal recommendation from the inner neighborhood council to discuss a proposed interim zoning ordinance.

I learned during last week's INC meeting via a report from Deputy Mayor Fisher that the Commission had declined to even discuss the INC's recommendation because the topic lacked the three votes required to put it on your official agenda.

This refusal to hold a public discussion on this matter is deeply puzzling, and it raises serious questions about the level of respect that the city commission has for the INC.

Now, in my role as a VUNA steering committee meet uh member, I regularly volunteer my time to serve as a conduit between the city and my neighbors.

I inform uh my neighbors about the commissioner walks, the street sweeping schedules, the traffic initiatives.

By the way, Nick Ross is a great employee.

I know you probably already know that, but he does great.

I've walked door to door for flyers for the Fowler Avenue Connection Project, and I've encouraged participation in surveys regarding downtown parking and mountain bike trail development.

I spend hours every month informing myself so I can be a good engaged boatswain presence in my neighborhood.

This leads me to ask is this engagement a one-way street?

It seems that the commission values the INC when it's serves as a megaphone for city information.

It ignores neighborhoods when we collectively ask for a seat at the table to deliberate policy.

During the April 9th uh INC meeting, Deputy Mayor Fisher offered to relay our disappointment to the rest of the commission.

Well, I'm here to tell you that disappointment is an understatement.

I'm insulted.

Our volunteers put in extensive time gathering information from our neighbors, compiling responses, sharing results, but the unanimously passed INC recommendation has been summarily ignored.

Consequently, the public is denied the opportunity to hear why our elected officials believe that an interim ordinance is supposedly a poor idea.

So I urge you to reconsider this issue and vote to place the IZO, the interim zoning ordinance on the agenda for your next meeting.

There's no time to waste.

The NOCOD review is currently underway.

Implementing an interim zoning ordinance is a logical step that the city has taken in the past.

At the very least, we deserve a public discussion.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Mr.

Moore.

Good evening.

Hi, my name is Tessa Whitmer.

I own a type two short-term rental at 602 North Wilson Avenue.

And I'm here alongside my neighbors, permitted compliant operators who learned two months after the fact that the new UDC had eliminated our ability to renew.

For anyone in the audience who's here in support of this comment, I'd ask that you please stand at your seats.

We're not here to relitigate the UDC.

We're here because of three specific failures that we believe require a specific remedy.

First, the City Zone Technician told us in writing, 11 days before the UDC took effect that nothing would change.

Quote, the UDC does not affect the short-term rental ordinance.

If your type two rental is allowed in the current zoning, it will remain allowed in the updated zoning.

We relied on that.

We kept operating, kept booking guests, kept making business decisions based on the city's written representation.

That technician has since acknowledged the information was incorrect.

Second, the city's own public FAQ promised that short-term rental regulations would be, quote, harmonized with the UDC and that, quote, substantive changes are not expected.

End quote.

Eliminating 72 of 319 active permits, nearly a quarter of the city's entire permitted short-term rental market is substantive by any definition.

That harmonization never happened.

Third, we were not notified until April 3rd, two months after the code took effect.

For 61 days, we operated in a gray area.

The city itself didn't know existed.

We're not asking to open RA zones to new short-term rentals.

We're asking for exactly what this commission did in 2023 when it eliminated type 3 permits, a legacy class.

Existing permitted operators active when the code changed, keep the ability to renew as long as their permits never lapse.

No new permits, just protect the ones that were operating legally when the change happened.

The city created that pathway before.

Thank you for your that bringing that to our attention.

This is not a time for us to discuss or have a discussion on this, but I believe Mr.

C Manager, do you have a very short update?

I do.

And thank you for bringing this issue up.

We became aware of this recently, and you are correct.

It was not harmonized in the way there were some unintended consequences from how those zoning districts were combined under RA, and we um fully acknowledge that it negatively impacted the my number I have is 65.

Um type two short-term rentals uh in the R uh in the um in the RA.

So what our intent is is is going to require a text amendment, and we are going to bring that to the city commission for the city commission's um consideration.

And so we hear you, we understand, and we are going to bring a couple options for the city commission to consider to allow those uh existing legal short-term rentals in the RA to continue.

Fantastic.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments.

Good evening.

Hello.

My name is Mary Bateson.

I'm a Bozeman resident, and I thank you for your attention.

To my dear City Commission.

Please adopt an interim zoning ordinance while the neighborhood conservation overlay district, the NCOD, is being updated.

At the July 14th 2025 City Commission meeting, the legality of the City of Bozeman enacting interim zoning was discussed.

So there is precedent.

And Bozeman is well positioned legally to implement an interim zoning ordinance.

A local government may adopt an interim zoning ordinance as an urgency measure to regulate or prohibit uses that may be in conflict with a zoning proposal that the governing body is considering.

This governing body is considering a new NCOD guideline.

Please prohibit uses that are likely to conflict with a future NCOD.

I support the Commission adopting an interim zoning ordinance to temporarily prohibit large new developments and demolitions within the NCOD until the update is complete and until the city can hire a new historic preservation officer.

There is public support for this action.

Hopefully, you will listen to the inner neighborhood council.

At a minimum, the city commission should discuss this proposal publicly to ignore this request.

Erodes public trust.

Please don't.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Bateson.

Good evening.

Hi, and Daniel Cardi, Bozeman resident.

Tonight I'm asking Commission to adopt an interim zoning ordinance within the NCOD until the NZO NCOD design standards update has been completed, and the city has hired a new historic preservation officer.

Also, as part of an ICO, I ask the commission to pause demolitions of large buildings and pause new development applications for buildings equal to or greater than 20,000 square feet.

My reasons for making these requests are as follows.

Under MLUPA, a local government may adopt an ICO as an urgency measure to regulate or prohibit uses that may conflict with a zoning proposal that the government body is considering.

The zoning proposal at issue issue is the NCOD design standards update, a process that could take at least a year.

Hence an IZO lasting for at least a year is needed to prevent inappropriate and non-contextual residential and commercial development projects from irreparably and irreversibly damaging the historical character and sense of place of neighborhoods within the NCOD.

And second, recently a total of 428 Bozeman residents participated in an NCOD-related survey administered by the Interneighborhood Council.

As part of this survey, 361 residents responded to each of the following three questions.

Would you support a one-year pause on demolitions of large buildings within the NCOD while the design standards are rewritten and adopted?

83% or 300 answered yes.

Question two, would you support a one-year pause on new development applications for large buildings while the NCOD standards design standards are rewritten and adopted?

83% or 299 answered yes.

Question three, what do you consider a large building?

68% or 247 answered greater than 20,000 square feet.

To conclude, I again asked the commission to adopt an IZO within the NCOD until the NCOD's design standards update has been completed and the city has hired a new historic preservation officer.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Cardi.

Good evening.

Good.

Good evening, State Commissioners.

My name is Gracie Caldwell.

I come to you to come to you today as the president of Campus Climate Coalition MSU, which is a student organization on the Montana State University campus.

Oh, that is a mouthful.

Okay.

There were a couple of events I wanted to highlight about climate week.

Students have been working on this since December.

Um they've been putting hours in each week reaching out to panelists, speakers, getting rooms reserved, fundraising.

Um we put together a really great line of events, and this goes for both the state commissioners and for the general public behind me.

Um there were three events I wanted to highlight that I think you guys might all be interested in.

The first, April 20th at 6 p.m.

in read 103 on the MSU campus is Her Climate, our future.

I'm very excited about this event.

As someone who's actually retiring from my position on campus climate coalition, I'm excited to talk about what it means to be a female leader in the climate action movement.

I think many of you may be interested in that discussion as well.

We'll be featuring speakers such as working.

Heather White and the I'm liking Ann Ready.

There we go.

Ann Ready, Heather White, Karen Kirk, and Dr.

Madison Stevens, who's a professor at Montana State University.

Another event I would like to highlight is green drinks on April 22nd from 5.30 to 7.30 p.m.

in the Norm of Jornston lobby, which is right at the parking structure.

This is a actually a monthly event that goes all throughout Bozeman.

If you're big in the sustainability field, you'll know how kind of a big deal this event is.

We are the first student organization who will actually be hosting it.

I believe it's the second time it's been hosted on campus.

The first time was with the Office of Sustainability.

But we as a grassroots organization, your support would be massive.

And then finally, I think you guys may be interested in the April 23rd take a hike from 4 to 5:30 p.m.

at Pete's Hill.

Uh, Professor Mark Fiji from the Department of Ecology will be doing a guided tour about how climate change impacts our wildlife.

And as a community centered around conservation, this is a very valuable learning opportunity.

I hope to see you guys at some of these events.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Caldwell.

Any other public comment in the room?

And I should note we're we are not going to be taking public comment during the special presentation, which next is next on the agenda.

So if you are concerned about utilities of the state of the courts, this is your also your opportunity.

Second call for in the room.

Third call.

Mr.

Newby, do we have anybody online for non-agenda public comment?

Deputy Mayor Fisher, I see no request for public comment online.

All right.

So that brings public comment and non-agenda items to a close.

Thank you for those comments.

And next up we have special presentations.

Mr.

City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor.

Our first presentation is the City of Bozeman Utilities Department.

Lots going on in our utilities department.

And here to tell that story is our utilities director, Mr.

Sean Coates.

Good evening, Deputy Mayor and Commissioners.

I'll do a brief overview of the utilities department tonight and uh highlight a few elements of the department.

Firstly, uh the department consists of essentially seven divisions.

Uh the stormwater, water conservation, water reclamation facility, water and sewer ops, water treatment, and then we have two divisions that support those others and the water resources engineering team consisting of three engineers and our supervisory control and data acquisition team, which consists of two people that help basically help us automate all of our systems.

Overall, we've got 70 employees uh in this group.

I'll start start with uh discussion on the stormwater division.

Uh essentially the stormwater division is governed by a state uh the EQ permit called the MS4 permit, and it basically uh dictates how we run the program.

Uh but the primary goals of the program are really to uh make sure that we protect water quality in the area as well as uh provide public safety in the in um uh the form of uh flood control management.

So looking at a few pictures here, you know, obviously on the left there, uh you can see you know a flood scenario where we've got a you know high uh storm event uh where we've got flooding on the street, and that's the type of situation we try to avoid.

So we do a lot of work uh improving pipe you know capacities, uh things like that, so that we can avoid that type of flooding situation.

The picture on the left uh is just outside of City Hall.

This is um uh pilot project just to show that you know permeable pavers can allow stormwater to drain into the soils and then get filtration through the soils before they reach the uh Bozeman Creek.

Uh what you see here on this picture is is a highlight of a very common stormwater system throughout the city.

Basically, every new development that comes in builds this type of a system.

So this is a stormwater pond.

Uh it provides stormwater detention for every storm event that comes through the city.

So any time we build a new um uh system, uh whether that's development, whether that's a new intersection, like in this case, we built third and graph, and all the runoff that comes off of our third and graph roundabout intersection now flows through this stormwater detention pond.

So most of the storm events basically just infiltrated right under the ground.

The larger events, then you'll have some overflow, and that overflow is limited to basically the pre-development condition.

So the natural condition.

Um we get very excellent uh treatment from these systems across the city.

Uh this is just a quick highlight of some of the work that our crews do.

You know, this is our crew cleaning off the sediments, you know, after the end of winter, where you know we've been sanding streets all winter long.

They go out and clean uh basically the permeable pavers off of Aspen Street, for example.

So make sure that those permeable pavers continue to accept stormwater runoff.

Uh what you see here on this slide is um, you know, kind of a uh summary of what's happened historically in Bozeman.

So prior to the 1980s, uh, we didn't build those stormwater detention ponds in the city.

So everything in blue was basically kind of that old mindset where you just get the stormwater runoff to the uh nearest drainage as quickly as you could.

So we've responded to that.

And since the 1980s, we've been uh working on basically adding these small footprint uh treatment systems.

Uh so we've installed 21 of these uh throughout the community on Bozeman Creek specifically.

Um, and basically what you can see here on the left is the installation going in, we can plug this right into our stormwater pipe system.

And on the right, you can see all the stuff that we pull out.

So it's a lot of sediments, oils, greases, even a hairbrush.

Uh, and then we pump that out, haul it to the East Gallatin landfill so it doesn't make it to Bozeman Creek.

Uh this is a picture of one of our crews uh cleaning out our storm water pipe system.

So we pull hundreds of tons of sediments out of our stormwater pipe system every year, and we haul that out to the landfill as well.

And again, that's all sediment that does not make it to our streams and rivers, which really do have a big impact on the aquatic uh ecosystems.

And we collect regular data as part of all of this work, and I won't go into the details here, but the data is showing we're making a difference.

So we're really excited to see the data and what what's happening out there in the system.

So, with that, I'll switch to the water conservation division.

Uh the goals of the water conservation division are really to protect and enhance our water resources.

So we do this by establishing the community uh water conservation ethic and then ensuring adequate water supplies are available to meet current and future demands per integrated water resources plan.

So we developed our first integrated water resources plan in 2013, and at that time we had no uh water conservation program.

So we said, you know, coming out of that plan, we wanted to make that a priority.

And today we have five FDEs dedicated to this program.

And the results have been pretty extraordinary.

I'll talk about those in a minute.

But early on in that program, basically we used more of the carrot in the stick approach uh for uh water conservation program.

And basically, these are all the kind of those carrot programs.

We have rebate incentives, so if somebody replaces something like shower head with a low-flow fixture, they can get a rebate for that.

Uh we've got free water use assessments, so somebody can ask us to come take a look at the irrigation system in their yard, and we'll do a full audit of that.

I mean, we'll look at every literally every um you know, sprinkler head in their system and measure flows in their system and give them recommendations.

Um we have free water saving products, we've got a water use portal that that basically allows our residents to look at their water use in real time and make uh course corrections as they go through the month before they get their monthly bill.

Uh we've got free publications, uh, we've got free educational classes, we've got classes that train our design professionals in the community as well as our residents.

Uh, even my wife has taken advantage of that program.

So we've had a lot of success with that.

Um water conservation policies since those early carrot policies, more the stick versus the carrot, you know, type of approach.

We've implemented water conservation uh utilities uh rate structures.

So basically, if somebody's using a lot of water, they pay more for that water on a per unit basis, uh, particularly in the summer months.

Uh we've got permanent mandatory outdoor watering restrictions, meaning that our residents can only water three days of the week and not more, uh, and that can only water between 8 p.m.

and 10 a.m.

uh during the day.

Uh we've uh developed the water conservation efficiency plan.

We've also developed uh water efficient landscape ordinance, which went into effect in 2024.

And the results of that, uh, we can see this general downward trend since the water conservation program was put in place.

And what you're seeing here is gallons per person per day water use declining essentially year after year, and there is a little bit of fluctuation in there because uh especially the last two years, we've had longer irrigation seasons and and and warmer periods, so you see that little bit of a bump in the gallons per person per day water use.

But the good news is if you compare us to other cities in the arid west that have water conservation programs.

So we're talking about uh Bend, Oregon, we're talking about Denver, Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.

We're actually using about 80% uh on a gallons per person per day water base of what their per person per day water use is.

So we've got a really effective program, and of course, they're highly motivated over there to do water conservation work.

And if you compare us to other Montana cities on average, we're using about 70% of the water that other uh Montana water Montana cities are using.

So very recent accomplishments.

Um we've recently been implementing uh very early stages of this, a commercial, industrial, and institutional water audit program.

We've done a lot of work with MSU in this program.

They've been great partners, where we go in and look at their industrial systems and just say, okay, you can make some tweaks to this system and you can gain a lot of water by you know eliminating that water loss.

And we've saved 18 million gallons of water since 2024 out of that program.

Another element, you know, again, referring back to the water efficient landscaping ordinance, which you can see on the photo here on the left.

You know, you can see rock instead of grass going in there in the boulevard space.

We've been able to save 21 million gallons of water since June of 24 through that ordinance.

So making progress there.

Switching gears to our water reclamation facility division.

So this division receives all of the sewage from the city uh before that sewage is treated.

That's about 7 million gallons uh of water per day, a little over 7 million gallons of water per day.

And it's treated to a very high level before it's discharged to the East Gallatin River.

And the other element of this process is we also generate and remove solids and treat those solids from the process, and then after they're treated, they're called to the Logan Landfill.

So I want to highlight a few elements of innovation at the water reclamation facility.

One is uh we've installed an AI software system, and that just went live about two weeks ago.

We're in the process of training that AI system.

Uh and so that'll do things like uh when uh when an operator needs to know that they need to make an order for chemicals because the chemicals are getting low, the I system is tracking that and automatically tells them to do that.

So that means they can spend more time, you know, doing things like maintaining a pump.

So uh pretty excited about some of the efficiency gains we're hoping to see out of that.

Uh another innovation is a capacity upgrade that we're currently designing.

Uh and what we're doing with that capacity upgrade is we're optimizing existing systems.

And as a result of that, you know, we can basically do that capacity upgrade at 20% of the cost of a traditional solution.

So uh, you know, really excited to use some of these cutting edge technologies to you know provide a cost savings to the community when we when we do this type of work.

And then lastly, um we've been working with our MSU and DEQ partners on a wetlands pilot system with the goal of basically using this as a final polishing step to the treatment system that'll help us remove nutrients, meaning nitrogen, phosphorus, and potentially other types of contaminants uh like BFAS chemicals uh going into the future.

So uh excited about the early work we've seen from that, uh very good results.

Um, and we've got the continued pilot operation there.

Switching gears to our uh wastewater, basically our sewer and water operations teams that maintain all of our pipes in the city.

So our wastewater group maintains over 250 miles of wastewater collection system pipe, including the manholes.

Uh we also maintain nine sewer list stations.

So basically, when we can't get uh sewage by gravity to the water reclamation facility, we've got to pump it.

So we've got nine of those pump stations.

Uh we clean that collection system on a regular basis, so we flush it, and we also root cut when we've got a lot of roots in those sewer mains to make sure that those mains are not backing up.

Uh we also video inspect those sewer mains so that we uh can detect problems before they become a problem.

And then lastly, this group taps wastewater services for new buildings.

So when we get a new building online, we got to make sure that gets connected to our sewer system.

Our water operations team, we operate and maintain over 308 miles of cities uh water pipes.

Uh this group locates, maintains, and repairs existing water lines.

Um they also again oversee the installation of new water services when buildings are coming online.

Uh this group installs and rotates uh water meters on a 15-year cycle, and basically we make sure that all those water meters are read monthly, and then we bill off of that, those water meter reads.

So our building, of course, for water and sewer comes from those those meters.

Uh, and then we respond to water distribution system problems.

Um, and that leads to an innovation with this group.

The work is piloted on 3% of our system, a new leak detection system that allows us basically to proactively look for leaking pipes and then go repair those before they become a major problem.

Um, so just from installing this on 3% of our system, we uh proactively identified 12 leaks and repaired those.

And we estimate that we saved about 198,000 and avoided water loss from repairing those leaks compared to the the system cost of about 71,000.

So we've programmed a full scale installation of this in our capital plan uh to really you know see those benefits going forward.

But what this does is it really avoids emergency repairs and helps us to limit the time it takes to do you know more minor repairs.

Uh and so just to give you an example of this photo here on the lower right, it shows an example of of where we were the size of a leak we were able to detect in a water service.

You can see it relative to the size of the pen there.

When we our crews dug that up, that that leak was literally just missing.

And yet we could detect that with our leak detection system.

So a lot of success there.

So that type of a system helps us kind of avoid this type of a scenario where you know a main break really damages the street section, and then our crews have to really jump in on an emergency basis and get down there.

And that's uh that's a bit of a dirty job to do those water main repairs to excavate that and do the repair work.

So, lastly, uh our water treatment plant division.

Uh the city has two water treatment plants that maintain our quality uh drinking water supply for the city and our sourdough plant and our Lyman Creek plant.

Uh water flows range from approximately 5 million gallons per day in the winter to about 15 million gallons per day in the summer.

Uh we sample and test over 5,000 water quality samples per year to make sure that water supply is safe for our customers.

So, again, our major objectives here are to protect public health and then meet the water supply demands of the city.

Um the last thing that will highlight is all of the utilities divisions literally serve the community 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

Uh we have on call staff literally around the clock, even on Christmas, uh, we get calls and respond quite a bit.

So that's it for the utilities group.

Thank you for that, Mr.

Coates.

We normally don't take questions during uh special presentation of this this nature.

So thank you for for being with us.

So next we have the state of the courts address.

Very excited tonight to uh welcome our Chief Judge Caroline Atterney to talk about all the amazing things uh that the courts are doing.

Welcome, Judge Turney.

And Judge Attorney, as you begin, you have offered to take questions from the commission, just FYI, right?

Yes, I have.

Yes, okay.

All right, so good evening.

Uh thank you for the opportunity again to present to you uh today.

I have many updates regarding the court from last year's presentation.

And then I also have Judge Harrington here and our court administrator Miranda Johnson.

Um, and I am excited to discuss many of their accomplishments this year as well as the work that they are doing as well.

Um, since we have a new commissioner, and uh because this is one of the few times that as a judge I have the opportunity to speak about the overall function of the court.

I'm gonna take a little bit of time to discuss what your Bozeman Municipal Court does uh and its jurisdiction.

Hopefully that will provide everyone with the context for the data that I will discuss uh towards the end.

Um I quoted Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court uh Corey Swanson last year, and I'll do it again because I think it's great.

Um judges cannot speak about the cases that they are working on out of fairness to the parties, but we can and should speak about how our courts function, how we spend the people's money, and how we fulfill their trust.

Uh so just generally, what's the purpose and functionality of the court?

And that's to ensure public safety, to uphold the rule of law, and to provide equitable access to the courts through the adjudication of cases, collecting fines and fees, and through the administration of restitution.

So it's just very uh basic overview.

And then what does the uh municipal court do and what is its jurisdiction?

So we are a court of limited jurisdiction, uh, and that means it's a misdemeanor court that handles misdemeanor criminal and traffic offenses occurring within the city limits of Bozeman.

Uh these are citations and cases uh from the Bozeman Police Department, the MSU police department, and are prosecuted by the city attorney's office.

Uh we are a trial court.

The Montana 18th Judicial District Court is our uh appellate court, uh, our direct appellate court, and then it can go on to the Supreme Court after that.

And we preside over hearings and trials um every day, and then those uh courts ultimately review those decisions.

We have exclusive original jurisdiction over all Bozeman City ordinances and infractions, meaning we're the only court that can hear those cases for the first time, but then those higher courts may review those decisions as well.

Common charges that we see in our court are traffic offenses, DUIs, domestic violence cases, which here in Montana are called partner family member assaults or PFMAs, thefts, trespasses, public order offenses such as disorderly conduct, assaults, and then we do actually handle parking appeals.

And then we also handle orders of protection, which are commonly known as restraining orders.

We do not have jurisdiction over family law cases, abuse and neglect cases, divorces, those all fall under the district court.

And then location of the court.

So we are at the Bozeman Public Safety Center on Rouse, and this facility opened in July 2022, and that has taken us out from the basement of the Law and Justice Center into this beautiful courthouse.

And so we've operated there for several years now.

I gave this tidbit the last time, and I think it's great, but the very first it wasn't a hearing, but the very first event that a judge presided over in that court was actually a wedding by Judge Harrington.

So a positive start to that building.

With the court personnel and the structure of the court.

Well, actually, let me go back just really quickly with the location there of the court of some of the hearings that we hold in that building.

So we hold court the majority of every day.

We have multiple days a week where individuals charged with offenses can address their tickets with the court.

That's called open court.

And so you can schedule to see a judge on that.

We also see individuals arrested overnight and who were unable to post bail on a daily basis from the jail.

We call those in custody appearances.

We have judge trials on a regular basis basis, motions hearing changes of plea, which are when someone previously pled not guilty and wishes to resolve their case sort of short of trial.

We hold jury trials, and the citizens of Bozeman can be called for jury duty.

And it's not uncommon for the court to be in session for the majority of each day, most days of the week.

All right, so back to the court personnel and structure.

So we have two elected judges.

We have Judge Colleen Harrington and then myself, and then we are both required to be attorneys.

And then we alternate the role of chief judge every two years.

I'm on my second year, and then as the chief judge, which oversees the court administration and operations.

And then this team assists in maintaining court records, assisting the public, and ensuring that the court operates efficiently and effectively.

And so what do our clerks do?

And so they're responsible for in court and out-of-court duties.

In court, they assist the judges in maintaining the record, and that includes that electronic record and maintaining the physical files.

They ensure that we have all the necessary paperwork and prep all of the court files.

When they are not in court, they're directly assisting the public, including defendants and attorneys.

They assist in filing and going through all the paperwork with individuals to ensure that what occurred in court is both accurate and clear.

The clerks are also responsible for ensuring that all statutory and legal requirements and court orders are met in regards to getting those convictions to the right agencies, processing the warrants, there's uh issue uh driver's license suspensions, and then also lifting those suspensions, uh, restitution, fines, fees, and more.

And they are the front line with the individuals who more often than not are facing the worst day of their lives, many of which have chemical dependency issues, um, mental health issues, and take out their anger and their fear on the clerks.

They're also responsible for being the bailiff if we have a jury trial, which means taking a charge of the needs and ultimate uh of the uh of the potential and ultimately selected jurors, which is an increasing task as we're seeing more and more jury trials in our court.

And then we're also seeing a significant increase in uh non-English speaking individuals coming to court for various reasons, and the court provides interpreters predominantly by phone on demand, but this increases the amount of time required for many tasks, not just in the courtroom, but also for the clerks for checking people in and checking them out with that uh additional uh time.

And then the clerks also ensure that the public can address any citations that they've received.

So even if someone just pays their speeding ticket online, the clerks are still touching that file multiple times.

They're processing they're basically bringing that in, processing it, and then also accurately addressing it on the back end.

Um, and our clerks have been working really hard.

Uh we've had some turnover this year and some limited staff, but they have maintained a high level of accuracy and customer service.

And they've allowed us as judges to be able to conduct court with an even the ever increasing speed and also the workload that we're going to talk about at a little bit at the end here.

And so we're finally fully staffed.

We're really fortunate with the team that we have, very excited.

We still have a couple that are training and really getting up to speed for the court.

And then we have the treatment court staff.

There's a treatment court coordinator and a case manager, and they oversee the screening acceptance and progression of participants in the treatment programs.

And so let's talk about those treatment courts.

So just very generally, uh, the court is not required by law to start or maintain treatment courts or any sort of diversion or alternative sentencing programs.

Judge Harrington always believed in providing opportunities to assist individuals to get out of the justice system.

And so Judge Harrington's efforts have resulted in our two treatment courts in the Bozeman Municipal Court.

So just very generally with treatment courts, they support rehabilitation and decrease recidivism.

So they take an evidence-based approach and are consistently working to ensure that they are meeting the best practices developed through nationwide studies and trainings.

It also saves taxpayer money by not having individuals in jail for long periods of time.

They continue to live and work in the community and maintain and support their family and employment, and then overall reduces recidivism, so less future cases.

And then there's a collaborative treatment team, so that includes the treatment court coordinator, case manager, and Judge Harrington, as I said, presides over both treatment courts.

There's a prosecutor, defense attorneys, treatment providers, probation officer, community liaisons, and law enforcement support.

So it's a big collaborative approach for each of those courts.

And then it is a commitment to long-term change.

So these are 12 to 24 month programs that demand a high level of commitment from those participants.

They need to engage in treatment, consistent testing, and other educational requirements while also attending court hearings.

It's very involved and requires a significant commitment.

So the first is the VETS treatment court, and that was established in 2018.

It's an alternative to incarceration for military veterans and service members whose involvement in the justice system is rooted in a substance use disorder, mental health disorder, or trauma.

This court can accept both felony and misdemeanor participants.

There are currently 12 participants and eight pending referrals.

And it is funded in part by the City of Bozeman with additional funding support from donations, the Rimrock Foundation, and Gallatin County.

And then we have the Bridgers Treatment Court, whose first court hearing was in June of 2024.

It accepts high-risk high need individuals who have been charged with DUI second, DUI third, and aggravated DY.

So an aggravated DUI is typically twice the legal limit, so about above a 0.16 BAC.

And the treatment court only serves Gallatin Valley misdemeanor courts, and it is a grant-funded program, and as the commission knows, will eventually require the city's funding assistance to maintain the court once grant funding is done in FY 2028.

Next year they'll be working with a grant-funded consultant to develop sustainable funding, and we'll also have a third-party grant-funded program evaluator to review and ensure that they are following best practices.

Actually, as of today, and 17 current participants.

So I'm gonna go now into some of the modernization and efficiency improvements that we have done so far.

So these are some of the achievements that we've done in the court.

And so that's to enhance some of that administrative oversight and operational efficiency.

We wanted to address evolving duties and supervisory requirements of this role while also addressing the ever growing and increasingly busy court with two full-time judges.

And then we have some career advancement initiatives.

So basically with we have three clerks that have been promoted to clerk twos based upon their time and experience with the Bozeman Municipal Court.

And then as I said, we're currently fully staffed with seven clerks total.

We are asking for an additional clerk position in the biennium budget for the commission's review, and that's going to be based on some of this increased workload that I will address shortly.

But that is also helping these clerks have some career advancement and also to promote retention within the Bozeman Municipal Court.

And then some streamlined operations.

So we've been looking for some process inefficiencies, updating policies and procedures so that we're decreasing unnecessary and duplicative work for the clerks, and then while maintaining those requisite and legally required court records.

Miranda has been instrumental in bringing her experience and extensive knowledge with court state systems.

And so has been really kind of identifying some things that maybe we've been doing for a long time that we could just do better and more efficiently in decreasing those number of touches that the clerks have to do on everything.

And then we working going to be working on streamlining non-appearances and non-payments to address those issues in a more timely way.

We're also looking at some new technology that can work with the state required programs while still maintaining confidential criminal justice information safely and integrating with city systems to make citation import more efficient.

And then so as you'll see shortly, the number of citations that our clerks have to process have increased significantly.

And so it used to be a one clerk job duty, and now we're really looking at potentially giving that to two clerks to be able to maintain that workload.

And then we're also going to continue to update the website, make it uh more publicly accessible and ADA compliant resources for those who are handling cases in front of the court, especially for pro se litigants, so those are self-represented uh litigants in the court.

And then another issue that we're also addressing is the digitization and retention of documents.

Um we are um uh mandated to maintain a record, right?

And um, and then uh we do have to still effectively manage physical space and then ensure that compliance.

Um we're uh basically uh I think I skipped a page here, that's why it's not flowing a little bit.

All right.

Um we uh recently updated the municipal court ordinances for record retention and management.

I came before the commission this past fall.

Um and we've been scanning as a court since 2007, but we still need to verify that all of those records are actually in the digital record.

Um, and then we can start getting rid of essentially unnecessary files or ones that are not mandated to be uh retained any longer.

Um this is what our files dating back to the 1990s look like right now.

Things are separate.

Um, those boxes that you see there can't contain hundreds and of citations.

Um it's it's gonna be a big task to be able to do that.

Um but uh the importance of that was just highlighted just this week where um uh we received district court order to release records from 1998 to an individual.

Um he needed to show that a charge was not on his record because it was affecting his travel with his family.

Um, and it frankly took too much time and stress to be able to find that file.

Um so if we are able to actually digitize and do proper retention, we'll be able to be more efficient and more accurate with being able to pull those records when necessary and get them to individuals and also agencies that require them.

We're also being mindful about how we're processing cases now initially uh to prevent future backlog of unnecessary paper files, and that's to update uh this is all to promote access to justice because we want to ensure timely and clear communication with the public and agencies and enhance public confidence in the judicial system.

All right, just a mini civics lesson for a moment as well, um just before I go into the numbers that we're seeing as well, um, just to give a little bit of context.

And so for separations of power, um, essentially we are a distinct branch of government, and so that's why I said we come for the state of the courts to present to our legislative branch how the court is doing and what we are doing, and then budget and general staffing numbers are addressed by the city commission and through the general fund.

Um so the legislative branch, um, both state and local passes laws and codes, and then the range of available sentence, so minimum and maximum jail time and or fines.

The executive branch, then law enforcement and prosecutors make those charging decisions.

So what charge or charges to cite, whether to give a warning, etc.

And then the judicial branch ensures due process and ultimately if an individual is found guilty, uh sentences within those range, the ranges that are prescribed by the legislative branch.

So an example of that would be a speeding ticket.

So there are both state and local ordinances that prescribe speeding tickets.

And then the legislative branch, either state or the commission has established what those speeding tickets are, what those minimums and maximum penalties are for those speeding tickets.

Then it would uh police officers or the city attorney's office through a complaint, choose which of those speeding tickets that they are going to essentially give to that individual, obviously working within probable cause, um, but there they have that discretion to basically charge those individuals, and then it would come to the court where you have due process, you can go to trial, you can plead, you can simply pay it, um, you have all of those different options available to you and all of your rights, um all of your constitutional rights, and then ultimately the judges then make that sentencing determination within those boundaries of the of the sentence the available sentences.

And then every time we are sentencing, this is Montana correctional and sentencing policy, um, and so that is Montana Code annotated 4618101.

So for every sentencing that we do, we need to consider these different factors, um, and that may be a more truncated version of that analysis if it is a speeding ticket situation, or it may be a much more elaborate and extensive evaluation if it's, for example, a deliberate homicide, but we are mandated to uh to consider this with every single individual that is in front of us that we are sentencing.

All right, so as we go into the as I've been saying, we have an increased workload, and so um I'm going to um basically uh go through a few of these different factors that we have.

One is we've had an increase in jury trials, um which we talked about uh last year.

I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more again.

Um we have that surge in interpreter minutes as well.

I discussed here earlier that we have an increase in non-English uh speaking individuals that um need access to the court, and that also um in includes victims as well and witnesses.

We have had um some jury trials where we have uh victim witnesses and witnesses that require an interpreter, so um there is that it's not just for the defendant.

And then also uh just a general signific uh significant workload growth.

So jury trials overall and F so the first two numbers I'm gonna give you with the jury trials and the interpreter numbers are gonna be fiscal year, just because that um goes to budget a little bit more clearly.

Um and so jury trials overall, FY24 was six.

That wasn't that was pretty much in line with what we had been seeing in years past, and then FY25, we had 17.

Um, and then FY26, we as of April 10th have had 14 jury trials, and then we have 11 more settings scheduled.

That's not 11 more trials, that is 11 more settings, and we set multiple cases for jury trial days because some may resolve, and then um so then there's a decision of which case is gonna go forward.

So we have the potential for um at least 11 more uh jury trials to go forward before the end of the fiscal year.

Um, interpreter services, um, and so in FY23, that was the number of minutes that we used for court services.

So that was um checking individuals in, um, taking payments over the phone or at the window, um, also in court, and then also checking individuals out after court as well.

And then um, and that rose significantly in FY24, and then in FY25, and as of April 10th, um, this is uh the number that uh we were able to come up with uh numbers for interpreter minutes.

Um, and now going into the trends of uh the case numbers and citations.

So these values, as I said, will be calendar year, just because that's how court calendars operate.

And as I stated before, municipal court presides over citations filed by the Bozeman Police Department and the MSU police department, and then a prosecutors by the city attorney's office.

Some of those are charged by complaint and after an investigation and a request for prosecution, so just a slightly different process of how it gets into the court.

And just that the court does not make any charging decisions.

That's law enforcement and prosecution.

So when you're looking at these numbers, we're not that we're simply receiving this information.

All right, we're receiving these cases, and I'm just trying to show you some trends of what we're seeing.

So and before I go into that, we don't have the full numbers for the year yet, right?

We're just in April.

And it's very hard.

There's an ebb and flow to number of cases based on population, based on the weather, based on a lot of different things that may be happening.

And there are different times of the year where different kinds of cases fall in the court.

And so the best way that we could compare time frame and the increase was by doing it just by the quarter.

So we're looking at the first quarter of each year from 2023 to 2026 because we have those numbers to do that direct comparison.

And so in 2023, we had 1,315 cases.

In 2024, 1,266.

In 2025, 1,291.

In this quarter, we had 1,873.

And so we have case numbers.

This is the ticket number.

So there's certain cases that are CR numbers or CV numbers, different designations, but ticket numbers are typically what's been filed by the police in the court and establish a ticket number and a case number.

And just to be clear, case numbers, cases can have multiple citations in them.

So we're talking about, you know, you could have a speeding ticket that's a case on its own.

You could have a DUI with other moving violations, so you could have multiple citations within one case.

And so this is looking at cases, and we'll go into citations here in a moment as well.

And so I just looked at when the date that we reach this number each year.

So the way that the courts designate that is TK24, 1528 means in 2024, case number, ticket number 1528, or ticket case number 1528.

So 2023, we hit that on June 5th, 2024, June 4th, 2025, June 9th, 2026 on April 10th.

So two months earlier.

That could lead to a 53% increase in cases, depending on how you're trying to make those projections.

But we're just trying to get a grasp on what we're going to be seeing for workload in the case in the court.

And as I said, citations versus a case is different.

So this is the citations themselves, the tickets themselves as those numbers.

And just once again, we do not control what is cited, what is chosen with those citations.

We're just looking at the patterns and the trends here with those citations and trying to get a grasp for staffing and resource purposes for court operations.

So this is a summary table.

So breaking down those numbers I gave you earlier of that first quarter in the ticket numbers and the citation numbers.

And so those will reflect those numbers that I showed you earlier.

And then this next table is the year over year comparison.

And so you'll can see that you know there's different types of cases that are increasing or decreasing.

For uh 2020, the change from 2025 to 2026.

I'm just gonna call your attention to first, just general criminal offenses are trending upwards.

Um we are seeing an increase of over 78% in traffic.

And so when we look at kind of the summary of what those citation trends are, uh 2026 overall in the first quarter, we're seeing a significant rise of citations and cases in this court, regardless of how you're doing that analysis, how you're making that determination, whether it's by cases or citations and looking at that.

And so that is impacting court operations.

Um as I said, our clerks, even if it's just a ticket that is paid online and no one even comes into court, so it doesn't get over to the city attorney's office for them to come into court and prosecute, it doesn't get to a trial.

Those clerks are still receiving those, looking at accuracy, um, processing it, and then also closing that as well, and then getting it out to the requisite agencies for each of those.

Um traffic offenses, that is where we are seeing the largest segment of the court's workload, which once again is um impacting the court more significantly than necessarily other um parts of the court system.

Um many of those do not go um to the public defender's office as referrals.

Um there needs to be a potential for jail time for us to do a referral to the public defender's office, and many um traffic citations do not have the potential for jail time.

And then also criminal offenses are still trending upwards.

Um, and so we do still have that um growing demand for judicial resources beyond simply traffic cases here as well.

Questions?

Well, thank you for that really informative discussion.

Thank you for coming here to us tonight.

It's it's great to have you give us an update.

I really appreciate it.

Um questions from the the commissioners.

Commissioner Bodie, you would start us off if you'd like to.

Great, thank you.

Yeah, thank you so much for this presentation.

I was literally typing are the increases in the citations related to our traffic enforcement, and then the slide came up there, and I was like, wham.

Um anyway, yeah, that was really helpful data for you to present and also I think context for for all of us to be reminded of and for some of us who may not be as aware.

Um I am really interested in how we can continue supporting the Bridges Court program.

You mentioned the funding was going to kind of sunset in fiscal year 2028.

Um do you have uh a number for us?

What should we be anticipating is this commission's kind of bill to keep that going?

Yeah.

And and in that, I I don't have that um Renee Boundy is the treatment court coordinator, and she um uh basically uh worked with the for the grant funding with Joe Harrington and getting the um Bridger Court um going and uh funded and then um so I I can't speak to that exactly.

I think that those numbers will be coming to you eventually, and as I said, that there is that um grant funded uh consultant that will be helping um with looking at some uh sustainability beyond the city of Bozeman.

So I I think I I can't tell you a number, and I don't know if it would be right to give a specific number or even trying to estimate at this point.

Okay, great.

Yeah, just just a can I give a feedback?

Okay.

Yeah, so we're we're about to do our two-year um uh budgeting process, and I know that that funding goes through fiscal year 2028, but this budgeting process will include fiscal year 2029.

Um we do still kind of review and then approve smaller process in fiscal year 2029 for for our budget.

So I I think it's possible we could have that conversation at that point.

Yeah.

Um, but any amount of being able to put a placeholder aside early, I think is helpful.

And and I just um Renee has been involved with um the finance department and in making sure that those conversations are had and um and so finance is aware of kind of when those might be coming in and when those might be coming to you eventually for your approval and for that discussion.

Um so we're just we just don't want you to be surprised um when that time comes.

Um, but I I think everyone um in the city and city finances is aware of that.

Um I just don't have those numbers for you.

Okay, yeah.

Um that's that's helpful.

And I think kind of the same question on that new um clerk position.

Um I think the earlier we can know the the better would be great.

Yeah.

Yeah, and as I said, I that's a request that we've made um through the budget process here.

Um, and um, and so that will be coming to you for a decision on that.

Um, and it with a ref with a kind of a reflection of the overall court budget as well.

So okay, awesome.

Thanks.

Um, my last question is just about how this commission can be a good um friend of the courts and uh a good um kind of mutual communicator.

I feel like sometimes we're in a weird place where we're both elected bodies and we kind of get to operate in our own way, and also we're very much interconnected and need to be working together.

And um, I've had the benefit, I think, of maybe having three.

This is maybe my third presentation that I've seen, and oftentimes this is the only time that I get to interface with you all.

It's kind of a weird, like stilted format.

And I mean the presentations are great, and I very much appreciate when I get to see you all before us.

But yeah, in your mind, is there any way that this commission could be creating better opportunities for communication between the commission and the courts?

Well, as you said, as elected officials, we can communicate at any time.

And so and this are there are different uh communication protocols and different limitations, I guess, or lack of limitations on those conversations.

And so you are always welcome to come to the court and visit and ask your questions.

Um and um if there are specific things that you want to know, um, you can always let me or Judge Harrington know what what you're looking for, and then um we may or may not be able to provide you with that information.

As I said, there's some limits on we can't talk about cases that are in front of us, but we can explain the procedure, and we can give you some of the data that we have.

Um, and then um you're always welcome to observe court.

Anyone is welcome to observe court, it is open.

Uh the treatment courts are also open for observation as well, and then the graduations, um, and so uh there's a lot of that ability as well for us to have those communications and then to also for um the commission and for the public to understand what this court does.

Great, thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Buddy.

Mr.

Magic.

I don't, but thanks so much.

That was great presentation as always.

Commissioner Sweeney.

I have no questions either.

Just um want to express gratitude for very thorough presentations, great understanding.

Um Commissioner Body had my kind of main question, and I was also right again.

What's driving the workload rise?

And then, of course, you walked us right through it.

Um, I I was at a talk with um our county attorney, Audrey Cromwell, where she mentioned that a lot of um kind of the the you know, the inmates that you know in in the jails, uh the defendants she's seeing are dealing with um you know emotional or or you know uh um behavioral or mental health crises.

And um I'm just wondering, you know, uh we were we have you had a uh a Bridger treatment um graduation, which was great to see that kind of support that we're giving folks who are dealing with a second or third DUI or an aggregate DUI.

Do you see I'm wondering, you know, if your observation is similar to what um uh Ms.

Cromwell has is kind of seeing, and is there um do you see any um I mean no there's no easy solutions to any of this, but any observations or suggestions that we may want to consider as as we look at this issue as a community?

Uh yeah, so I I don't have any numbers or any statistics for you.

Um I can kind of speak from general experience of a court that we do consistently deal with individuals that are um involved in the justice system due to mental health disorders or are in crisis and that is impacting their criminal thinking, um, or that may uh they may lack the resources to support their mental health uh treatment and medication availability, and then end up in a situation where they're um before the court.

Um we do have limitations on what the court can do.

Um and um essentially we're we're not in a position to do what's called an involuntary commitment.

So that's in one of those situations where a district court um there's a process involved where someone is in a crisis and as a danger to themselves or to others and requires commitment, whether that may be the state hospital or some sort of form of community commitment.

Um so those are a district court matter, and we're not in a position to address those.

Um, but we do frequently encounter issues of fitness to proceed in front of our court.

Um, and that means that the individual is suffering from a mental disorder that um creates a fundamental lack of understanding of the process and the roles of the individuals in the court, and then also cannot assist in their own defense.

Um and those are situations that could result in admission to the state hospital, but not something that um as a practical matter that we as municipal court judges um can get someone to the state hospital or for a community commitment.

Um and so we lack tools essentially in the court system in our court system to address those cases.

We don't currently have any diversion programs.

Um there is um uh county attorney Cromwell um has the AOT program that you may have heard of, which is the assisted outpatient treatment, um, but that is not available to cases outside of the district court.

Once again, that's a community commitment um situation, and that is uh the limitations of the grant for that require that it be through the district court.

And generally in our court, these lack of fitness issues, those cases are dismissed because really it doesn't assist in preventing future recidivism.

So and doesn't address the concerns or restitution by victims, which could be individuals or or local businesses.

And then it simply basically feeds into that cyclical nature as well.

So we would see likely see that individual again because they're not receiving the support that they need.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And then just turning a little bit quickly to this increase in court in cases from last year.

So I suspect, and you know, we've we've essentially just started, you know, we do have a new traffic unit out there on the streets.

We have new officers coming in from the police academy that are now getting out on the streets.

Um it seems like as we add officers as we focus on traffic enforcement, we may want to think also about support for the court system to process all of this.

But um I I guess I just want to just to make sure that that there is, you know, we're gonna be discussing our budget here in a over the next few months, passing it at the end of June.

And I just want to make sure that you have channels, open channels with the city manager and the powers that be here in the city to make sure that you know we're we're uh you're getting the resources that you need, or we're having that discussion here about how we divvy up very limited resources.

And I appreciate that.

Uh it's not new, it's not news to um the city manager about what we're seeing.

Um, you know, we've been going through the uh staffing in the budget process through the city and have presented um some of these numbers, and we're um, you know, earlier in the year we didn't have as much of those numbers, and then just um we're continuing to update and make sure that um we are tracking that and tracking what the impact is on the court.

What's difficult for us is that um we can't really always be proactive as the court because as I said um time and time again that we don't make those charging decisions, we don't make those policy decisions.

That's up for um the legislative branch and for the executive branch.

And so all we can do is look at these trends, receive the information from these other departments, and so kind of look at what staffing is going to be like for the police department and look at okay, yeah, there is this traffic division, but knowing that we can't necessarily always know what that impact is going to be, what that direct result is gonna be on the court, um, and you know, growth of population.

There's so many different things that go into those numbers.

And so sometimes we are well routinely we are being reactive while we're trying to be proactive.

Um but yes, as I said, um with the city with the city, um, they've been aware of kind of this increase in the numbers.

We've been giving them that data and going through that process.

And as I said, you know, we have requested an additional clerk position to try to address that workload.

Um, and then um we've been doing these uh efficiencies, we've been trying to do kind of more modernization, changes in policies and procedures, um, so that we can make the existing work um more efficient so that the clerks can do that better.

Um, and then um and uh and then additionally, as I said, one of the other things that um we're looking at is other technology and other programs, which do have a fiscal note associated with that, um, and just trying to make sure that we're um addressing that in the budget, um so it's not a surprise.

Um, but also as I said, we don't always know when that's coming or when we're going to need it.

Um, and so we're doing the best that we can with it.

Thank you.

City manager.

Yeah, I'd I just want to um add a little color to that.

Judge Tierney's being a little modest.

She's made a very compelling case to us.

The relationship that we have with the courts is um um very positive.

And I thank Judge Tierney for bringing her needs in an understandable and compelling way to both the staffing plan and also the budget discussions, as I'm sure you're aware.

But we are in the recommended budget this year, which we are now putting together.

And just all the great work that they do in that.

So as we continue to prep our budget, as we continue to estimate our revenues in this incredibly uncertain time with what the legislature is doing to municipalities, she's at the top of the list in terms of recommended stuff.

And it's just it's really our justice system at its best where you're taking somebody who has had the best worst day of their life, and you are helping them become their best selves.

And so and really getting them on a positive path.

And so I really do appreciate that work as well.

Any further questions, comments from Phil Mush?

Well, thank you again for taking that.

Yes.

Why don't we take a seven minute, I believe, is the is the new standard.

Seven minute break.

Forty seven, not too bad here.

Next episode is our work session on traffic safety.

I will do this just to let folks in the audience know we'll have a presentation from staff.

Then we take public comment where you've got three minutes to talk, and then we'll bring it back here for a discussion among the commissioners based on what we heard from staff and what we heard from the public and what we have seen in the public record letters, letters to us via email.

Commissioner, I mean, sorry.

City City Manager Wynn.

Thank you.

Deputy Mayor, uh just a couple um comments to set the stage for this.

In October of 2022, um a beloved member of our community, a teacher at the high school, Kelly Fulton was killed.

Uh he was killed uh when a driver ran a red light.

Kelly was crossing on a green, and um at 15th and Oak.

The next month, November of 2022, the City Commission had a conversation about this and instructed um the your staff to uh develop the streets, the safe streets are for everyone, safe initiative, which includes the four P's that um Director Ross will get into, um the physical design of roads, the policies.

The Commission adopts policing and promotion, which is education and conversations and in our community.

Since then, we have had a few other fatalities.

Um your staff and this commission has worked very hard at making those improvements.

Um nothing we can do uh will ever um address the pain and the suffering that the family and the community has gone through recently, and um we are not in any position to minimize that.

The position we are in is to do everything we can uh as a community to make our streets even safer.

The key for all of these is distracted driving.

And that's the thing that I think upsets us the most as we drive around this community.

We see bad driving behavior all over town.

And I'm really proud of our police department for the effort that they have made, changing the culture of the police department, putting focus on addressing dangerous driving.

And that's what a speeding ticket is.

You get pulled over because you are driving dangerously.

And we have no other way to change behaviors in some of our drivers other than enforcement.

What Nick and his team have done is worked with every other city agency in our city department involved in this and are doing incredible work uh with the resources that we have in changing the physical construction of our roads.

I think this city commission heard and had a lot of questions about the design of College Street between 8th and 11th.

Um call it a road diet, some call it a um um uh acknowledgement of pedestrian and multimodal transportation.

But these things are important to us.

I know they're important to this commission, and for sure they're important to the community.

So, what we want to do tonight is have a conversation, update the commission on what we've done, what we are doing, and what we're planning on doing.

And then uh our chief of police, Jim Velkant is going to present on uh the activities of the Bozeman Police Department relating to enforcement of our existing traffic.

I'll stop there and turn it over to our director of transportation, Nick Ross.

Mr.

Ross, it's always good to have you here.

Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Fisher, members of the Commission, thank you very much for having me tonight for the record.

My name is Nick Ross.

I serve as your uh director of transportation engineering.

Um thank you, City Manager Wynn for uh the introduction.

Um this frankly won't be easy.

Um, and it certainly won't be a victory lap.

Um, but it will hopefully set the stage for what can be done differently and better in the future by way of reviewing what we have done since the adoption of our safe plan and what we have planned next.

Um getting into it, we get to talk a little bit about philosophy.

And so in development of our Bozeman Streets Are for Everyone plan.

Uh, we had to identify how we were going to go about prioritizing safety in our town.

Um we chose to approach this uh with what is known as the Safe Systems Approach.

Um Safe Systems Approach is a holistic effort for traffic safety focused on specifically prevention of severe and fatal injury crashes.

Uh this is roughly modeled after um what is known as the vision zero system or strategy first developed in Sweden, um, adopted by uh many of the Nordic countries and and European countries from there.

Um some key points for this whole philosophy, right?

Uh it assumes that mistakes are going to happen.

Mistakes are going to happen that lead to crashes.

Those are going to be an inevitable.

What the system does is work towards reducing the severity of those crashes in response to them when they do happen.

And so some of the key philosophies within this is that we acknowledge that death and serious injury crashes are unacceptable.

That we as humans are going to make mistakes and we are vulnerable.

Responsibility for safety is very much shared across both users of our transportation transportation systems and managers, and that our safety efforts are proactive in nature and not simply reactive.

We distilled all that into our Bozeman Streets Are For Everyone plan.

We chose at the time not to sort of pull the boilerplate or boilerplate safe systems approach because we wanted a program that spoke to Bozeman about Bozeman.

And so we distilled that into four key topics that we established actionable steps to take in response to the tragic fatality with Mr.

Fulton.

Those are, as Chuck said, physical changes to our roadway, policy changes to enable those physical changes, the enforcement of behavioral activities that our engineering simply cannot control.

And then finally building a culture of safety through education and promotion of the importance that we all hold to this initiative.

We're going to talk a lot about speed.

That's very intentional in the safe systems approach because of how speed affects the severity of crashes and the chance of survival when you're in them.

Even small changes in speed are very effective at reducing fatalities and severity.

Again, we cannot prevent every crash from happening.

What we can do is take steps to reduce the severity of them and make sure everybody goes home after.

Policy initiatives that we took up that we took on and completed after the development of SAFE Plan first started with project we called Safe Seat Safe Speeds for Bozeman.

We use the National Association of City Transportation Officials speed limit setting guidance to reevaluate not only how we go about structurally setting speed limits within city-owned city-maintained streets, but then going through the practice of adjusting and lowering speed limits on roughly 11 miles of street across the city.

Through that project, we set maximum speed limits at no more than 35 miles per hour.

We brought consistency to street types and speed limits on them across the city, and we added emphasis here on school and park zones where many of our most vulnerable users are active on the streets.

And while some may turn their nose up at strictly speed limits, we do have evidence that those can be effective alone before even working on safety improvements in the physical realm.

Just lowering speed limits can be effective at modest decreases in speed.

This is why we took it on.

This is why we thought that was the first place to start.

From there, the most major policy uh revision that we've done towards safer streets is through the adoption of our revised unified development code that was finally completed in 2026.

Two major initiatives that we did through our UDC was first and foremost adjusting and lowering actually what's known as our level of service standards for streets.

Why that one criteria, that one policy decision is so important, is because that standard alone is what often do drives no pun intended, the actual design of the streets after we set that policy.

This alone ends up what often dictates signal phasing, signal control, number of lanes on streets.

So while we would love to be able to maintain a high level of mobility and never have to wait at a traffic light, we understand in practice that requiring that level of vehicle delay or lack thereof is exactly what drives the most dangerous designs of our streets.

And so this commission took a massive step towards safer streets by adjusting that level of service down from a C to a D.

We've also revised our traffic impact study standards, specifically with additional section on safety evaluation and the evaluation of impacts on local streets to make sure that when development does come to Bozeman, we are mitigating for the impacts of that development as much as we legally can.

Finally, on the policy realm, we've begun putting our budget where our values lie in the safety realm.

We've been awarded upwards of 30 million dollars in federal grants over the past three years through the Safe Streets for All program, the multimodal project delivery grant program, and transportation alternatives program that are all going to be bringing safer projects to our city.

We began flexing every opportunity we have in our budget of revenue sources that we collect in transportation, including the utilization of our arterium collector district to take on more corridor projects, intersection projects, and shared use path projects that are directly required for safer streets.

We've also created a much smaller fund, our STR20 annual multimodal improvements fund in our street maintenance district to do small projects, whereas the Arterium Collector and Street Impact V funds are taking on those multimillion dollar projects.

Our STR-20 multimodal fund is the one that has the most flexibility to take on small improvements throughout the year.

And I'll also add here that this commission has recommended for adoption through our capital plan an additional $250,000 a year, strictly in ADA pedestrian ramp upgrades and sidewalk maintenance improvements as well out of the street maintenance district fund.

With our policy changes in place, we were able then to go forth and uh redo or revise our engineering design and construction standards for the city Bozeman.

Part of that built on uh the at least in the transportation side uh after adjusting speed limits that also allowed us to adjust and lower design speeds for each of our street.

Lower design speeds then allowed us to modify each element of the street we designed for an interest of increased safety.

Lane width is just one of the elements of the street that have a functional impact on the speed and safety of vehicles on that street.

We've also adopted roundabouts as our primary intersection control for especially our major intersections of arterial and collector streets, roundabouts are proven time and time again in data to reduce and eliminate again those most serious crashes, those head-on and right angle type crashes that lead to so many of our tragic accidents.

And finally, within the physical realm, we've adopted a policy of requiring shared use paths in lieu of bike lanes on all of our major streets or our arterial and collector streets.

This again is backed both in data that we see here as the need for or as the vehicle volume and speed increase on a street, the need for physical separation from those vehicles is critical in order to provide safe biking conditions.

All these physical changes are ones that we're both doing as individual projects and incorporating into our major major capital works moving forward.

And again, all of these have the goal of changing behavior, changing driver behavior, inducing safer actions through policy and through physical changes on our streets.

Now, Chief Felkamp, we'll be able to talk a little bit uh about policing before we get to wrap up with next steps.

Good evening, commissioners.

Uh, thank you for this opportunity to share with you about what we're doing in the in the police department.

Again, I'm Jim Veltkamp, the chief of police here.

As has been discussed and is as is clearly visible here, uh, the plan of the four Ps includes policing and enforcement, but that's just one part of it.

Uh there's people there are people in the community that think we should have a police officer and a patrol car at every intersection to enhance safety.

There are others, and I I get emails and calls about this that say uh traffic enforcement doesn't make a difference.

Um it's not the answer, so don't do it.

We clearly believe that it is a part of the entire solution, uh, just a piece of it, but a critical piece.

Well, there are many other methods that the city uses.

Um, we have to have traffic enforcement, and that is clearly the role of the department.

The goal of traffic enforcement is simply to change people's driving behavior.

That is the goal.

Uh a change in that driving behavior helps enhance public safety by decreasing the number of crashes we have, reducing injuries and damage.

For some drivers, just being educated about driving safely is enough.

For others, uh seeing the traffic, seeing patrol cars out, maybe that's enough.

For others, being stopped and warned is enough to change the behavior.

But there are others who simply need a traffic citation and the clear penalty that comes along with it to actually change their behavior.

So, like it talks about out there, we are focused currently more on speed violations, the conflict related infractions, and those are the ones like running a red traffic signal, a stop sign, uh dangerous driving, distracted driving, the things that are going to cause the crashes.

And then obviously the crash areas, the the places that we know in the city where we have the most crashes.

Along with those traffic stops, then obviously come all the other things that officers observe, whether that's drivers without insurance, without a valid driver's license, those types of document issues or vehicle equipment issues, those all tend to come along with it as well.

So, what are the steps we have already taken?

I appreciate Judge Tierney uh teeing it up pretty well for us that we are clearly uh doing our part right now for traffic enforcement.

Last fall we re-implemented our traffic unit.

We currently have two assigned just to do traffic full time.

Uh last year we had about 4,700 traffic stops, but that included the two of them making traffic stops in the fall.

This year I just checked this afternoon, and it looks like tomorrow we will hit 4,000 traffic stops across the city.

So we have our traffic officers who are working extremely hard.

Um we've also changed some shifts.

Some of our patrol teams are working different hours trying to align our calls for service and activity in the city with when officers are working.

So the second bullet point there is a patrol team focus.

Every other week, each patrol team has a day when they are not assigned to take calls.

So they're doing training, they're doing community outreach, they're doing proactive enforcement, which sometimes they just go out and run and look for traffic violations.

Another thing we're doing is consistent communication with transportation and engineering, um, having consistent meetings with them about problem areas in town, um, making sure that the information and what officers are seeing is getting to them so that we can work on solutions together.

As I was waiting in my office watching this online before I came down here, ironically, our crash investigator stopped by my office, asked why I was there, and then we got to chatting, and he said just tomorrow he has a meeting with an engineer uh in Nick's shop to discuss a problem area in town.

And that's not something I would have normally heard.

It just happened to come uh come through my door this evening.

Another thing we're doing is we just put in a grant application through the state for an additional traffic officer funded by the state that would solely be dedicated to traffic and DUI enforcement.

Uh the photos up there, we got a couple new patrol cars.

Those are interesting cars because they have unique graphics on the side.

From this angle, they are very bright and shiny, but you look at it from a couple feet different, you can't see the graphics.

And so they function both in both capacities for us.

And the top photo I intentionally put there, um, it's a couple of our officers.

As you can see, they are literally standing in front of one of the grade schools.

What they did was took out their uh handheld LIDAR radar units, and we're looking for violations, and we're just waving people to the side of the road and talking to them.

So I really liked their thinking outside of the box.

Clearly, the goal there was just to change behavior, not just issue citations, although sometimes we need to do that, and they were doing it in a clear problem area right in front of a grade school.

Another thing we've done is our school resource officers all have marked patrol cars now.

So we'll see them around the schools a lot more.

These have unmarked cars.

Now they assist by checking um for traffic violations before and after school.

Next steps.

What are the next things we're doing?

Well, first of all, we're gonna have our motorcycles come back this year.

We haven't seen the motorcycles in town for several years.

A lot of that was due to a lack of staffing.

So the additional staffing that we've been authorized the last couple years have helped us get caught up a bit, where we have capacity to assign people solely to traffic, and that also allows them, allows us to then bring out the motorcycles.

Second thing that we're doing is hopefully uh having a dedicated supervisor.

So in our staffing plan, we have requested an additional sergeant position that would just be in charge of this unit.

They would supervise he or she would supervise the traffic officers and our crash investigator and make sure that they keep their focus on exactly what they need to be doing.

Along with additional staffing as we get fully staffed, um, we hope to add more officers to the traffic unit.

So I would like to at least add a couple more to that unit as well as we hire the additional um staffing.

So on that note, first a thank you to municipal court for corroborating the work that our officers are doing.

They are out there working extremely hard to try to change behavior and reduce traffic injury and crashes.

And secondarily, uh a small plug for for their staffing requests, because I with our plans, they're going to need additional staffing.

Beyond that, additional focuses at the bottom is something we can do with more staffing in the traffic unit.

So years ago, the concept was traffic officers just drove around town relatively randomly and looked for whatever violations they saw.

But we are trying to take a much more surgical approach to that.

So we can highlight specific areas of town, locations of town that we're having problems.

We can can look at specific issues.

Do we want to try to deal with the cyclists and remind them that they also need to obey the traffic uh laws?

Do we need to focus on crosswalks and set up at a crosswalk and just stop people violating that law?

We've done this in the past, for example, where we even had an officer ride on a school bus with a radio, and as they're riding along, there's a patrol car nearby, and they just witness and call out the violation, and we pull the person over.

So with more capacity in our traffic unit, we can very surgically look for specific issues affecting this community and address those issues again rather than just randomly driving around town.

So that brings us to the last of the four Ps, and that is promotion.

Uh more so than the others, our departments share this component of the plan because promotion includes a wide variety of methods that we that we utilize.

So, first of all, with um a lot of assistance from our communications staff with the city of Bozeman.

We have really professionalized and increased our education, even our social media.

There's a uh a snip of one of our officers in the top right just doing a short video talking about how we want to keep Bozeman safe.

We have um plans coming up to do a lot more traffic safety messaging and videos, which will go on our social media channels and then also be posted on our YouTube channel.

Uh we get questions, legitimate questions from the public at times.

For example, what do I do about this new pedestrian crosswalk on 19th or Keggy?

Because there are a few different styles, and people should know what they're expected to do, but they could get confused if it's a solid red light versus a blinking red light versus uh amber light.

Well, what do I do in each situation?

So we want to do more videos to educate because I think that will help change most people's behavior.

Uh another thing that we started doing is our traffic officers just this year started talking to drivers ed classes uh about safety.

Um trying to try to intervene early and get an officer in front of these um young new drivers uh before they even take the wheel.

Our school resource officers also have a role in this.

They talk to kids consistently about safety, whether that's bicycle safety or safety around roadways, as part of their entire uh message to the to students about safety.

We also um hold bike rodeos several times a year in conjunction with the diff with a wide variety of groups.

Even that we set up traffic cones, we have uh little fake traffic signs where we have them ride their bikes through the cones and then practice stopping at the stop sign and turning left, turning right, um, just trying to plant the seeds early of what it means to be a um be safe around transportation.

And then our message boards.

There's a not great photo on the bottom right corner of one of our message boards.

We have three of those message boards which are programmable, and we have a fourth trailer that just has a radar unit that just displays the speed.

So currently, um, just today our crash investigator was out moving a couple of those around, um, and he said the radar trailer just needs a couple new um things fixed on it this spring, and that'll be out too.

So we'll use all four of those uh this year and make sure we keep the message out there to the community.

I will turn it over now to uh Director Nick Ross again.

Thank you, Chief Bellcamp.

Um so before we move on to what's next on the uh policy and the infrastructure side.

I did want to take a moment to also highlight our transportation demand management and our safe routes to school program that are both led by Candice Massel, our transportation demand management coordinator.

Candace does a ton of work with our school district specifically to do walk audits and help encourage safer behavior uh for both those walking and biking to schools and also importantly those dropping their children off at schools.

So what's next?

Um we will begin in uh uh uh roughly next month to uh complete our safe streets for all safety action plan.

So this was a federal grant for a planning and demonstration project that will be able to develop our first actual full-fledged safety plan in the city of Bozeman.

Um that importantly will be identify prioritization of projects and recommended funding levels to accomplish the safety goals that we have, and it will qualify us for the capital grant round of the Safe Streets for All program.

So the SS4A safety action plan will be done in partnership with our overall transportation master plan update, which will begin in July of this year.

Uh on the infrastructure or physical side, uh, we do have a number of very significant safety projects coming up over the next couple years.

Um we'll start we'll first start by adding left turn lanes and improved signalization at Oaken Ferguson.

This again is a project that shares both Arterium Collector and Street Impact Fee funds to specifically improve a safety problem on our streets.

We'll use the Arterium Collector District funding to complete a renovation of Collis Street from 8th to 11th this summer.

We'll begin and complete two major arterial projects on North 27th and the Fowler Avenue Connection that will both not only be designed to our modern safety standards, but will serve to draw traffic off of our local street network, where we're seeing problems with cut-through traffic and speeding right now.

We'll continue using our SDR20 multimodal funding to install uh up to four additional rectangular rapid flashing beacons on our trial routes.

We'll use that funding also to do permanent traffic calming with our launch of our neighborhood traffic calming program dedicated to our local or neighborhood streets.

And then finally, we'll begin year one of our uncontrolled intersection project, which will finally bring two-way stop control to all of the unprotect or excuse me, uncontrolled intersections uh across our city, more than 300 of them.

Um with that, I will turn it over to Commission for questions.

Thank you very much for that informative discussion.

Um started us off with questions though.

Yeah, thanks, Mayor Deputy Mayor.

Um Thanks very much, Chief Fellcamp, Director Ross.

Um great presentations and very much appreciate where we've come here the past couple of years.

Obviously, have taken kind of making improvements seriously, and I feel like we have made a lot of improvements, even though as we all know, it's it's just a little bit, you know, it's like little steps at a time.

And I think it's um I'm I'm curious.

I'm I'm gonna start with just a couple of questions for both of you and really interested in kind of hearing from the public and having kind of a good understanding of what is holding us back from finalizing all the things out there that we would like ultimately to do.

And Nick, I know we've talked about some of this, but if you could kind of talk a little bit about some of the things that uh make reaching the final goal difficult.

Sure.

Um thank you very much for that question, Commissioner.

Um maybe more at the structural level, you know, uh we do acknowledge that some of our highest volume, highest speed and highest crash routes in town are not ones that City of Bozeman has the right to control in operations and design.

Um we do partner with the Montana Department of Transportation on those routes to push for safer management.

Um I am tepidly positive that we are seeing change.

Um, for instance, um, although uh we might not have agreed on the need and design of the project to begin with.

Um you may have noticed that we have gotten leading pedestrian intervals uh programmed into the signal system on seventh on 7th Street after that project and those signals were installed.

Um so structurally, we don't control all of the streets in town and how they're designed and operated.

Also, uh we are no different than every other city in this country that operates with fiscal constraint.

We have, in my research, the most robust capital improvement plan of any Montana City.

We invest millions of dollars a year in transportation projects that are focused on safety.

For a city of 60,000 people, that is already a remarkable commitment from a tax base of our size.

However, it remains true that we do have a transportation master plan with hundreds of projects that represent hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment.

And we have fiscal constraints for what we can accomplish with what we have available to us.

So from a very, very high level, it's the uh ability to influence the design and operations of certain streets and the funding that we have available from a tax base that still remains uh relatively small, particularly at the scale of the cost of major transportation improvements that we have in front of us.

So minus some of those fiscal constraints, obviously be able to do more.

Kind of cut through the wish list.

Yes.

Um I'm not gonna talk about MDT.

I questions for um cheap belt camp.

It's great to hear that uh maybe it's great that uh 78% increase in traffic citations.

In talking to one of your enforcement officers, I was kind of struck by the fines and the kind of the low amount of the citations, and that they perhaps are not the deterrent that we would hope them to be.

Can you talk about how those fines are set and whether or not we have any control to change those to make them more of a deterrent?

Sure.

I I have to uh reference Judge Tierney's explanation.

I thought she did a very good job of explaining the three different branches of government and how that works.

So clearly, as part of the executive branch responsible for enforcing the laws, we have absolutely no say in what any fines or penalties are going to be.

Uh the judges have a range of penalties, but those are set by the state.

So they are mandated under Montana Code annotated and set at exactly what they will be.

There are times where, depending on how a specific track foot violation is committed, so a subsection of a certain Montana Code annotated could result if you violated this code this way, it's this fine.

If you violated it this way, it's a different fine.

Outside of that, um everything down to even speeding, what type of zone you're in, what type of roadway you're on, um, how many miles per hour over the speed limit, and the number of offense within a year it is, is all set by the state.

So most of those are capped.

And I can tell you that looking at municipal courts bond book, which means the amount that if an if an officer were to hold that person in jail on that charge, for example, say they charge with a DUI and running a red light, the red light violation, the bond to get out of jail would be $100, and that is a set amount that can't be changed.

And has there been any recent attempts to kind of adjust those?

From my recollection and my too many years of being here, I don't recall those ever changing.

In fact, a lot of the speeding citations or the speeding bonds are quite low across the state.

Yeah, I seems to me I would heard like 20 bucks for some.

Yes.

And that there's some individuals who have quite a few stacks up, and there's really no consequence.

You know, they just pay the fine.

It does an impact their insurance and off they go.

So when an officer stops somebody, they can run what's called a KQ or a driving history to look at what their driving history is and charge it based on that.

Uh the prior penalties don't always show up.

Sometimes there's been an issue where it hasn't been entered, and so the record's not correct.

Uh what we see more often than not, though, it's is it's not just the speeding, it's not just the red light violations that we're stopping people for that are the repeat offenders.

By that point, when they're stopped, we're often charging and/or arresting them for driving while they're privileged to do so is suspended due to all the prior violations.

So then the fines go up because that's a much higher violation than just if we were to charge running a red traffic signal, for example.

And eventually they become an habitual offender, and then the penalties get very steep.

Okay.

Good.

Commissioner Magic, you have earned bonus points with this question because you have prompted the city attorney to that.

So uh I haven't had a chance to talk to Jim about this, but we are currently having discussions with members of the Bozeman Police Department about how to implement the fine provisions for things that are also covered by state law that are in the municipal code.

So a long time ago, City Commission established fines for for violations.

So we've been looking at that along with members of the patrol division to kind of determine the pros and cons of citing under the municipal code versus citing under state law.

One of the biggest factors that we're trying to contemplate in the charging, or at least in our advice to the to the department on what it cites, is that um citations issued under the municipal code do not end up on a driving record.

In order to do that, we need may need to change state law.

So we've been having that that discussion internally.

Right now, Jim is absolutely correct that the direction has been that we cite under state law primarily for that idea that those violations will show up on their driving record.

So I just wanted to make sure you know there are municipal code fine violations, uh violations that has fines associated with them, and that's the reason that right now and over the past period of time, we have chosen along with the department to cite under state law.

I see.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um Commissioner Magic, I would just also add that um just as as Nick Ross talked about Bozeman being lead leader in the state for the amount of money we uh budget for these kind of improvements.

Bozeman was the first city in Montana to uh uh sign a contract with a red light camera uh company.

And if you've ever driven in a city with red light cameras, it is remarkable.

Nobody runs a red light.

And uh that's like having a police officer, and it's not a gotcha thing, you have time to stop.

The red light camera is there right after we signed that contract, the state legislature prohibited red light cameras in Montana.

And those are the kind of things I think um the legislature has been um not very supportive of uh addressing um uh aggressive and dangerous driving across the state, uh, but certainly not allowing municipalities to adopt their own codes and their own regulations and their own set of fines.

I think that that's unfortunate.

Um, but there's a culture in Montana, particularly in the rural, that even um objected to uh open containers, uh any law against open containers.

And it's quite remarkable when your legislature is uh influenced by eastern Montana, rural, and then we try to apply those same laws in a more um dense urban environments in our cities, um those same kinds of philosophies and actions don't work, and it's unfortunate.

Yet again, uh the legislature has tied municipalities' hands to make decisions that impact safety in their own communities.

So that's a common theme that we've talked about before.

We're not gonna give up, but um red light cameras are amazingly efficient in changing behavior, and we're not allowed to do that in Montana.

Thanks.

Thanks for that.

Prostrating bit of information.

Um Chief Fell Camp.

If you could um have kind of a wish list, kind of perfect world to try to fix what our city is facing and some of the complaints, what would that be?

Just a short summary.

I think at this point uh to get to authorized staffing.

Uh if we get our requests for this year, we'll be at 80 authorized sworn officers.

Uh and my goal, if we are at 80 would be to have that dedicated supervisor for traffic officers, then the fifth would be the state-funded DUI traffic enforcement officer, uh, and then a crash investigator working along with that group.

I think at some point a second crash investigator.

However, I guess in my dream world, we wouldn't need a second traffic crash investigator.

But that position would be spread out different parts of the week, maybe later into the evening, because right now we only have 40 hours capacity there.

But having a dedicated group, which at that point would be more like seven or eight people, just focused on this issue.

One of the things that police chiefs have to constantly think about is what does their community want from their police department?

We have a very safe city.

Our violent crime per thousand residents is very low.

We don't hear about that near as much.

But what we do hear about are the things that people see every day.

And what people see every day are the traffic violations.

So to be responsive to this community who has told us over and over and over, I would love to get that to that full staffing with that full dedicated unit.

And then the next step would be as the city grows, make sure we continue at that same rate of growth in the police department so we can meet and appropriately respond to all the calls for service we have to go to.

We can't skip going to those, yet still have the appropriate capacity beyond that to add an officer at the right increments as traffic continues to grow.

Got it.

Thanks for that.

Seems like you've thought about that a little bit.

Yes, a lot.

Last question: would you do anything with fines if you had the ability to change the fines?

I have not thought about that solely because I know I don't have the ability to change the fines.

And that we do it as revenue generating.

Nothing is further from the truth because we don't get any of that money.

I think I was referencing earlier, there's a certain segment of the population that needs a traffic citation to change their behavior.

And I think a section of that group, their behavior would be changed further if there were more substantial penalties.

I think there is still a small segment that regardless are still going to drive inappropriately, unfortunately.

Great.

Thanks very much.

Thanks, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Commissioner Magic.

Commissioner Sweeney, do you have any questions?

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

I'm going to ask everyone to be patient with me.

I have a lot of questions because I'm really learning right now.

So you have all probably thought about a lot of these things, but I'm just coming into this.

So I suppose since you're there, we'll start with you.

Um, Chief Feltkamp, thank you for everything that your department is doing.

It is noticed.

Um I can tell there's more officers on the street.

So is the reason, so I having taken the Citizens Police Academy, I understand and really appreciate the culture of hiring that you guys have.

You are looking for the right officer, not just filling this the positions.

Is that the leading factor behind why um we're not at authorized staffing levels, or are there other um factors influencing that?

I don't think there's any way we could point just to one factor.

Uh law enforcement across the country has had a difficult time hiring people.

Um there's obviously a wide uh variety of perceptions of the job.

There have been a lot of uh social issues and concern about the actions of a few law enforcement officers, which doesn't help.

Locally, we still get very good applicants.

Um I think it's mainly because Bozeman has the name Bozeman and people still want to be here.

Um so our numbers of applicants are still high compared to a lot of other communities, but they're still quite a bit lower than they were just eight, ten years ago.

Um I think it's a combination of the career itself, uh, the cost of living, the pay, um, knowing what officers face on a daily basis, it is not easy just even to go out and make traffic stops three an hour where people are not happy with you and and the danger that they put themselves in.

Um, and that's just one component of the job.

So I can't blame one thing.

There are a lot of factors that go into it, and as we try to get authorized to authoriz staffing, we try to chip away at each of those issues from all the things I mentioned to how well are we taking care of our own people, does the schedule work for them, or we're trying to do the work-life balance.

Does a schedule work for them?

We're trying to do the work-life balance.

There's a lot of factors that go into it.

And we've looked at our um requirements for being an officer.

Should we have a different type of officer that we hire just traffic officers versus police officers that respond to calls?

We've looked at a lot of those different things.

Uh a lot of them have a reason that we haven't proceeded, like the one with suggestion I just made.

Um, but we're constantly looking at that and evaluating.

Excellent.

Excellent, thank you.

Yeah, I can imagine um someone doing traffic stops all day long.

You do want them to have a high level of competency interacting with the public.

So thank you.

Um patrols do this alternate um week schedule of traffic duty.

Is that a sustainable practice for your officers?

Can they keep doing this?

Um, or is this you know an added stress on the department?

Uh they can keep doing it to some extent.

One of the primary focuses of that overlap day is all their training and certifications.

And as you're aware, um, we do a lot of training.

And so we want to make sure they are fully prepared and trained to do their job.

But then kind of secondarily to that, we ask them to go do proactive enforcement, um, wellness, go have lunch together, build your team, check on each other, uh, and then community involvement.

So proactive enforcement can also take a wide variety of of looks.

It's not just traffic enforcement.

There are a lot of other issues in town that we want them to be addressing.

So I think it is sustainable to a certain amount, but it can't become the solution.

It needs to be dedicated traffic officers whose efforts are enhanced by the patrol overlap days.

Thank you.

Um I think that's all the questions I have for Chief Feltkamp.

I wonder if I might ask a few of Director Ross.

Um again, I'm just getting acquainted with our transportation and streets and everything.

So there might be some uh beginnering questions here.

Um the neighborhood traffic calming program.

Um the last I heard there was still money in that fund for more projects.

Is that this the state right now?

That's correct.

Uh we are using our FY27 um STR20 multimodal allocation uh to complete all of our um, I believe we selected 12 additional projects out of the 19 applications that we got that will begin installation this summer.

Okay, so you have had plenty of applications?

We received 19 qualifying applications this year, yes.

And you're looking at I was gonna ask, if you didn't get enough applications from neighborhoods, are you gonna go out and do some?

You know our problem.

Okay, good.

The neighborhoods are stepping up.

That's great.

Um do we have, I I know that there is this difference between streets that we can control the speed limit on and streets that we cannot control the speed limit on.

Do we have a map of that somewhere?

Um you can find it with our on our infrastructure viewer.

Okay, under transportation.

If you toggle through enough buttons and I can help you with that uh a little guidance, um there's a difference between what are uh a layer that shows what are um called on system routes.

So on system refers to uh the state highway system broken down through national highway system routes, primary routes, secondary routes, and then urban routes, which are those that are city maintained, but on the state highway system that become particularly challenging for our goals here.

Thank you.

Um with the streets that are within our power to control the speed limit.

Um is it correct that I saw in your presentation?

Our max is 35.

35, and those are only for our uh what are um determined to be principal arterial streets in our functional classification network.

So those are the um oaks, the north um uh North Cottonwoods, uh the the high mobility, higher volume streets that are planned within our transportation program.

And these are the ones that are typically like two lanes in each direction, is that those are typically the only ones that are multi-lane streets, yes.

Yeah, okay.

That's more of a conversation than a question, sorry.

I appreciate that we have made progress in the UDC by lowering our level of service, which will ironically make us able to have safer intersections.

Is there things we can do retroactively?

We've heard a lot of public comment about a road diet.

Specifically shrinking some of those two lanes in each direction to one lane in each direction.

Can you that sounds like a huge can of worms?

What is the possibility?

What's the landscape?

Can you speak a little bit to that?

Sure.

So uh road diets are a proven safety countermeasure that are often used for uh streets that lack multimodal facilities with limited right-of-way, and are operating at a level of traffic volume that is under capacity for the amount of lanes that are provided.

So typically when evaluating the effect efficacy of a road diet, you look at the geometry of the street itself.

They're most effective when you have those four-lane streets without left turn lanes.

That's the most classic road diet is a four to three road diet.

Um oftentimes those come in uh um much older cities that were built quite frankly to a population level that they don't have anymore.

And so they're not experiencing the same traffic volume.

The lack of traffic for the amount of capacity on the street combined with the benefits of safety improvement, make those specific streets good quality road diet candidates.

Um my number one target for a road diet in Bozeman is Main Street Bozeman.

Um it's the classic conditions for a four to three road diet.

It last lacks bike lanes, it lacks left turn lanes.

That's why we get complaints all the time about lack of turn signals on Main Street because there are no turn lanes from which those can be served.

Um that from a context perspective, in my opinion, would be a classic candidate for a road diet.

Okay.

And any thoughts on oak or cottonwood or those?

Um those are I would say more challenging from the perspective of not only the volume they carry, but what might happen to that volume if we were to restrict those streets.

So typically we do require our neighborhoods to be built in a traditional form, which are on grids, connected to one another, just like downtown Bozeman is.

Um if we were to induce a situation where we we turn that trigger for congestion on our major routes that are built to serve that traffic to a point where people chose alternate routes, the potential is they choose our neighborhoods as those alternate routes.

And so while not saying a full-fledged no, um, certainly not saying in the future as these principal arterials get expanded into areas of lesser density that may need lesser volume, may see lesser volume.

We don't have to perpetuate that by any means either.

Um but I I don't have a strong technical justification right now for road diets anywhere else.

Okay, thank you.

Um then um with Keggy Boulevard, the new project, um, since there is quite a lot of federal funding.

Are we limited in the level of service that we have to deliver in order to use or get those funds?

And do you have any concerns about that project?

Um I I I have significant concerns for the KE project.

I wish we didn't have to build the Katie project.

Uh but the fact is that we have no parallel routes in that part of town to serve an exceptional amount of demand from a 20,000-person university and a lot of residential growth in that part of town.

Um we lowered our own level of service standards for that project.

Uh a level of service C, which was our previous standard, would have required a six-lane road.

So we have already accepted significantly more delay than our code typically would have allowed and justification of only building a street that I tried everything I could to justify not expanding when I was handed that project uh with this job.

Thank you.

I know a lot of that work was before I even started paying attention, so I'm sure that you did an amazing job and tried really hard.

Thank you.

I think that's all my questions.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Sure, we can always come back, Commissioner Sweeney.

So Commissioner Boddy.

Thanks.

I appreciate some of those questions also and they um nick some things off of my list.

So I'll start with policy since you're up here, Director Russ.

Um the SAFE plan.

Um is our safe plan vision zero?

I I heard you say that it um came from the ethic of vision zero, but is is that the vision of our state plan?

I mean uh so especially at the time where we were developing the SAFE plan, it it's true that vision zero as a concept has become and was the type of potentially politically fraught concept and phrase, like 15 minute cities, like agenda 21, things that have had altruistic intention, but have been twisted throughout my career with the means that doesn't serve what we're trying to accomplish here.

We can call our safe streets for all safety action plan a vision zero plan if that's what we want to do.

It will follow the same exact principles and have the same exact goal.

We chose with our safe plan to build something that spoke to Bozeman and not necessarily jump on something that has attracted unfortunately, in my opinion, um detractors in the past.

Okay, thanks.

That's good context.

Um it looks like we've exceeded the timeline and checked off all of our to-dos for the safe plan.

Do you see a need to establish some more goals?

Um like what could that be?

Absolutely.

Yeah, um, that will be a huge part of our safety action plan and transportation master plan update uh within the next coming year.

We get to start those projects with establishing goals that the plans are set to accomplish.

Uh and then from there, the safety plan specifically, again, our our Bozeman safe plan was was a framework, right?

It was establishing our intent as we move forward.

The safety plan will be that data backed plan that will tell us where our high crash corridors, high crash intersections are, be able to be more predictive and prescriptive about what projects we tackle and when you want to get kind of right down to why we're having this work session in this moment.

Um Leslie, in the accident that killed Leslie Brown, we know that a car slowed down and stopped to let her cross, and then another car in the other lane didn't.

Um I have been a pedestrian and a cyclist in that exact situation, seeing that second car speeding by and waiting for them to go.

I've also been that second car and been slamming on the brakes, being like, oh my gosh, this person was in my blind spot for so long of my approach up to that crosswalk.

And I'm just curious if there is anything that structurally we can do to prevent those types of situations.

Um crossing enhancement uh pedestrian beacons uh can be moderately effective at drawing more um more attention to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, but particularly at locations where um you do have the risk for a double threat crash like that.

Um I I do also have to say though that um you know that is only one small addition to a suite of visual indicators in the roadway environment at that exact location that was telling that driver everything but to take the action that they did.

And so we can't promise, and what I don't want is to give the false sense of safety to a pedestrian either, that just by hitting that button, they can proceed because it requires the behavioral modification of the driver to be safe at that location.

Thanks for that.

And I I know how intense you know this this moment is, and I I can hear the emotion in your voice, and I'm feeling sorry.

Um Yeah, I I was reading through the public comments, and somebody said, why is the speed limit 35 by the regional park?

And I know that you said oaks a major arterial.

We we want to keep those high speeds, but I I'm thinking about like eighth, where it's normally 25 and drops down to 15 by by Cooper Park.

Like we we do have precedent for dropping speed in distinct zones.

Is that something we could consider?

Absolutely consider.

Um regional park was established before we did our Safe Speeds for Bozeman plan, before I was director here, before we made through code amendments the ability to administratively approve park speed zones.

I will say that is a hundred-acre park with half-mile sides on three of them.

The uh chances of establishing a half mile-long 15 mile per hour zone and achieving compliance are unfortunately next to zero.

Um what you see with uh across the country with large parks like this is um they tend to be the wheels that don't have those special speed zones applied, whereas more of our neighborhood level parks do, because it might be only a block long.

Um so if we were to take that approach, I would highly recommend that we look for a way to make it uh targeted to a length in a location that will both benefit the potential for crossing movements and also refine it to a point where we can actually get some potential compliance out of it.

Great.

Yeah, so we we can just look at where the exact crosswalks are, the places that we think are the most dangerous, and maybe not the whole half mile, but those kind of targeted zones.

That's that's really helpful.

Thank you.

Um of our public comments talked about prioritizing safety in um how we identify what capital improvement plans um projects should should come first.

And I I think you touched on this with our level of service change.

Is there anything else that we can be doing to use the safety measure as kind of what bumps projects to the top?

Um, to be frank, we have a uh a fine transportation master plan right now, um, and it did a good job proposing, you know, literally hundreds of projects.

Um, but it gives us no direction on priority.

Um so with this transportation master plan update that we'll bring to our community this year.

I very much intend to establish some methodology to give us some prioritization from a cost-benefit standpoint from some level of metric that gives us some guide of what we should be doing when otherwise budgetary, uh, you know, we are stretching our available revenue streams to the maximum extent we legally can.

Um even our impact fee program, which is based on fees paid by development to offset specifically the demand of additional transportation trips on the system.

We are using that to do all of the same types of safety projects on those street expansions or new streets that we can only apply impact fees to.

Um that's not necessarily a state statute.

That's been adjudicated by the United States Supreme Court through the takes and takings clause in our constitution.

So there's not a path to collecting impact fees to go build bike paths.

There's a path towards building transportation corridors with impact fees that include these safety elements, but not taking that money to go do standalone projects.

Yeah, that's that's frustrating, and also yeah, I I understand the complexity there.

Um that's really good to hear though, that uh the update to our transportation master plan gives us an opportunity to add prioritization framework, and maybe we can make safety one of those structures.

Absolutely prioritizations.

Um, I've got like a handful of like miscellaneous policy ideas.

Um I'm curious if we have the ability to prevent people from doing um legal right-on-reds in Bozeman.

Could could we change that law at the Bozeman level only?

Um we would be able to do that at signals that we control.

Um and so the again, the the major routes, 7th, 19th, Rouse, Maine, Huffine, um, those are all those to Commissioner Sweeney's question on system routes.

Uh so we effectively have two different signal systems operating in the same city, those that the city of Bozeman owns, operates, maintains, and controls, and those that um are controlled by the Montana Department of Transportation.

So we'd have to specifically signal each one of or sign each one of those intersections so that drivers are not confused about whether this is a city of Bozeman maintained intersection or uh and yeah, and uh no right turn on our rides require this this signing on the mast arm regardless.

And so there would have to be signing done.

Uh I will say that as part of our um, and this is frankly just administrative, it's not written down anywhere, but um we have we have moved away from building dedicated right turn lanes at our major street intersections to begin with.

Um anytime you put that right turn slip lane in is exactly what tends to induce drivers inching up through the crosswalk as pedestrians are usually crossing at a location where they can't be seen due to the blocking of that site line by a car next to them.

Yeah, and you know, they're they're looking to the threat of cars coming from the left, but not looking right where the pedestrians are crossing.

Yeah.

Um, thank you.

Um I know that we've started putting some bulbed out sidewalks in certain areas.

You know, the the design of um college between 8th and 11th is a great example.

Um, but I'm I'm curious if there's a way that we can institutionalize that as a policy of you know, under these circumstances, we will, or the the default will be to have a bulbed out crossing.

So within our engineering standard update, um, we now require um traffic calming to be built with the creation and construction of local streets.

So instead of retrofitting them, traffic calming elements have to be proposed by what is typically the developer's engineer to be built with those streets at the time they're constructed instead of retrofit.

Um so that is one step to sort of institutionalize uh as you said.

Um we are also with every street mill and overlay project we do, doing a complete streets review.

And so, like this summer, we will be adding uh curb extensions to uh Babcock and Black and Babcock and Bozeman uh to improve pedestrian safety as we do the mill and overlay project.

Um always a great moment when you're like we're already doing that.

Um thank you.

Um Deputy Mayor, I've got more, but if you want to interject and loop back to me at any point.

Well, I'm wondering, I've noticing that look at the time.

I notice I believe we have maybe some members of the commission, I mean of the audience who are potentially approaching their bedtime or maybe even past their bedtime that are hoping to testify.

And so I'm wondering if we could uh take public testimony and then maybe come back to questions of staff.

I know it's a little unusual, but I just I want to be conscious of the folks who are in the audience.

That's fine with as long as I can ask some more questions about that.

I would like to come back to questions, but I would love to get to some of the given the given bedtimes we need.

Those are important.

Great.

Thanks.

Let's open this up to public testimony.

Um it's a standard three-minute testimony.

Um if it's your very first time testifying, do not be do not be afraid of those those beeping and flashing lights.

We want to hear from you.

We do ask that you maybe move the microphone down a little closer to you and um and just stay your state your name and whether you're a resident Bozeman, and then talk to us.

Good evening.

My name's Audrey.

I'm seven years old, and I've been really scared about the um crossing.

Um thinking that we can make the crossing signs red.

Well, thank you, Audrey, for that comment.

That's a very good one.

Could I take the rest of our time?

I have an update on E-Light.

Is that okay?

Um I just wanted to get an update to everybody.

Um I've been in touch with Elliot's family.

Could you sorry, could you give us your name?

Can you hear me now?

Okay.

Um I've been in touch with Elliot's family.

Um, spoke with his mom very late last night.

Um his father said about five o'clock today they got no medical news, so they're taking that as good news from him.

So just uh yeah, very sweet boy.

Um sad situation.

So um I will read mine.

Um's Courtney Johnson.

I'm a resident.

Um I'm a planning and development professional.

I'm a mom.

Um I live over by six schools within a quarter mile with over 2400 children.

And I represent 500 neighbors that are very concerned.

And um I come with solutions.

That's what I like to lead with.

Um as quickly as development is occurring in Bozeman, how do we know that the completed site conditions are actually safe?

During entitlement site plan review and traffic studies, safety is only predicted based on assumptions and design criteria.

I ask that the city consider establishing a post-approval safety review for areas specifically around schools, parks, and high conflict high conflict pedestrian zones, while also providing resources to address any life safety improvements identified after the construction is complete, potentially through an impact fee rebate program.

Leave that to you.

Um secondly, I asked the city to take a serious look at how traffic impact studies are being relied upon.

When these studies are prepared by private consultants paid by the development applicants, it creates a conflict that undermines public trust.

The feedback I've received from several residents is that they've been trying for years to share their safety concerns.

Families are not comfortable calling 911 on a near miss, relying on a school officer, or attending a commission meeting late on a school night to be heard.

We need a better reporting system that doesn't feel like you're being a public nuisance, but you're trying to be part of the solution.

We hear about the tragedies in the news, but we're not capturing the repeated close calls that happened before tragedy strikes.

If policy decisions are being made solely on incident data, you guys are not seeing the full picture that your constituents are seeing on a day-to-day basis.

An app should be able to fix that, one mom said.

Lastly, I respectfully request a formal response to the resolution of intent submitted to the city clerk on July 22nd, 2024 regarding a residential district parking proposal in response to safety concerns.

A work session was held by the transportation board on September 25th, 2024.

But since then there has been no clear procedural path to bring this matter before commission.

After nearly two years of advocacy and being told to be patient, our neighborhood would really appreciate a formal response.

We have the full neighborhood support, meeting the threshold of the 60% requirement, and we meet all the designation criteria outlined in municipal code 360430.

Lastly, in closing, um, we have a policy issue.

It's the structure of health, life, and safety.

And without city resources for staff, without the procedural follow-through, and without the enforcement traffic unit has been wonderful.

The moms all, I can't tell you what it means to see them out there.

Um without these measures after policy, we are being ineffective.

Accountability must be at every level, from the drivers to city systems to the decision makers.

I asked commission to support city staff in carrying out these recommendations and the funding needed to do so.

Two moms asked me to share quotes.

These are not for me, but we're done waiting, waiting for someone else to be killed.

And if a pedestrian, sorry, this is a hard one.

If a pedestrian sees the inside of a hospital room, then the driver at least needs to see the inside of a courtroom.

Thank you all for all you do.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Ms.

Johnson.

And we'll look to we'll I'll follow up with the city manager on the July 22nd, 2024.

Um response.

Good evening.

Hello, my name is Gloria Overcash, and I'm a resident of Bozeman.

Um, coming to you as a mother and a teacher and a friend of the mother of the boy who was hit on Sunday.

I didn't know that you were going to be talking about this at the meeting tonight.

I'm just here because I'm a Cub Scout mom.

And um just wanted to come up here and speak for the mothers and speak for the children.

I've known uh Desiree for a long time, uh, probably 12 to 14 years or so.

Um I'll read a little bit of an update from her public Facebook today.

I actually texted her a little bit ago and said that Elliot was already topic of conversation at the meeting earlier.

Desiree and her family live two streets away from me and our children bike on the same streets, the same neighborhood.

Uh my son will tell you in a minute.

He can't even bike to visit his best friend because he'd have to cross Babcock and I won't let him.

Um, I'm not gonna read the whole thing that she posted.

Um read the end.

I asked for our Galata Valley community to join us in prayer for the driver.

At the same time, we must do better as drivers.

Please look up, please pay attention, please watch for children, animals, pedestrians, and bikers.

A vehicle is not a place to go into autopilot mode.

Lives depend on our attention.

Elliot's life was preserved, and I don't understand how other than Jesus, he is alive, and I praise the Lord for this.

When I saw Elliot on the road, he had no color, and I was worried.

I had no idea if he would survive this or not.

I pray to the Lord, please not again, not again.

Please don't let his life stop here.

If you don't know Desiree's family, they did lose their first child.

This could have ended so much differently.

Gallatin Valley, let's not have any more accidents.

Summer is coming.

Let's slow down.

Let's stop rushing.

Let's pay attention.

Let's do better.

And please continue praying for our sweet Elliot as he continues this healing journey.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Abukach.

Good evening.

My name is Kenyon, and I just want to say that I can't even visit my best friend, which is a five minute bike away because I have to cross Babcock.

And I just want to say that.

Kenyon, thank you for putting that as a room.

And you've been here for three hours.

I hope you get like maybe two community uh community badges.

So thanks for being here.

Any other public comments?

Yeah, please step forward.

Um this is your opportunity to give public comment.

And if there's others who would like to give public comment, I do encourage you standing up on the side just to give us a rough idea of how many.

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name's Noah Brown.

I'm a resident.

I actually live like a block and a half away, so I walked here.

But I like to start, I'd say I'm a pedestrian cyclist and driver, and I take risks in my life, such as like skiing hidden goal or ski racing my friend Mark up uh in big sky, like on tiny skis.

But I don't think biking or walking should be that type of risk in Bozeman.

And I wrote some notes.

I had a thing written up, but by listening, I changed it up.

But I'd say we can't keep blaming distracted driving as like the main cause of these fatalities.

I'd say making the street design so that it's you're not going the speed that's they kill somebody by driving.

Or being I'd say when I'm driving, I feel encouraged to drive over the speed limit because there's cars behind me, tailgating and the street is wide, so making it harder to drive fast.

And then I'd say, I agree agree with you, Emma, that there shouldn't be right on reds.

And then kind of with that like speed change versus attention change.

So adding things that it's not just, oh, somebody's crossing, I should slow down, like from flashing lights, but like constricting the road so it feels like, oh, I've got to slow down, and maybe there's not even somebody crossing that makes you feel that.

And then one question, I guess it's more for Nick.

What would it take to get a road diet on Main Street?

Is it like we have a protest, we block the traffic, make it bring it to the state more?

Like that's one question I have.

And then one way to reduce traffic on Main Street is could we make it paid parking so people aren't looking for a parking spot on Main Street?

Like there's more open parking.

And then I guess I'd say I was one of the 19 people that I applied for a calming, traffic calming on North Bozeman.

And I'd say it's a tedious process just to try to get any changes done, so how can we make that a simpler process?

Or I've heard of policies where you don't have to go through all this approval to do something like traffic calming, like having an approved, like if you go buy the supplies, you can implement this approved design on like local neighborhood streets.

And then for those same streets, could we put a 20 mile an hour speed limit in 2025?

Like what's the reason for keeping it as 25?

And then also, can we enforce loud cars?

Even though they're not a safety, it's just they keep me up at night while I'm trying to sleep.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Brown.

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Lynn Paul, and I live here in Bozeman.

I'd like to talk about how to combine one of the first discussions tonight, which was the um fouler development.

And many of the developments that I've biked through, um, the new ones really have nice shoulders, and you feel very safe in those.

And so I'm hoping the fouler development will have that same structure.

Now the dangerous part is getting to the uh fouler development on the valor road.

Um, as you know, it is a very narrow road.

Hardly any shoulder.

And to have that traffic, all that traffic coming down that road is very scary.

I bike that a lot.

And what happens when there's the development is um being built is that you get a lot of the big trucks, you get a lot of maybe a semi, the cement trucks.

I mean, it's very scary on that road.

So what can be done to help, especially during that time when there's a lot of construction traffic to keep people safe, because it's that's not a good road.

So I was just trying to combine the two.

The one thing that I have liked as a cyclist is I'm not sure what they're called, but um when you can press the button and then the lights will go.

That is real that's really nice.

Yeah.

And it seems like people of the motorists honor that and stop.

It's been very nice to have that happen.

It's like both the the um motorists and the cyclists are doing what they can to be safe, and that's a nice combination.

Um mention of helmets and promoting helmets, but for cyclers, my gosh, that's that's a given.

So somehow, when that when we're talking about safe cycling, to have that brought in.

Um let's see, I think that's about it.

That's the points I wanted to make.

Yeah.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms.

Paul.

Good evening.

Good evening, Mr.

Mayor, Commissioners.

My name is Mark Egggy, I'm a city resident.

Where were you on Sunday when a boy named Elliott took his bike out for a ride and was hit by a car on Babcock Street?

He's critically injured.

KBZ, uh KBZK reports he suffered severe injuries, five broken ribs, a broken collarbone, pulmonary contusions, multiple lacerations, a serious trauma to his lung that doctors are closely monitoring, and his head was reportedly has deep road injuries from being dragged between the car and the pavement.

The city's transportation master plan that was adopted in 2017 identified the need for safety improvement at Hunters Way and Babcock, where this incident happened.

It's location number seven in the list of crossings that I asked you to fund in my comment last week.

The same TMP recommendation made nine years ago that has not been built.

Your 2017 TMP also identified the need for safety improvements at the crossing where Leslie Brown was killed just weeks ago.

It wasn't an accident.

It was the compound effect of this body of your predecessors, eight times passing a budget that did not fund the needed safety improvements that were that were identified in the transportation master plan.

Um a few comments to the discussion tonight.

The notion that MDT doesn't want our streets to be safe, that's Baldur Dash.

The agency is led by a man who spent half his career dedicated to making Montana's road safer.

They want it to work with them.

Um the resources that we have, you know, STR20, it's not new, uh, but in the time FY 16 to the present, um, it's gone from $25,000 a year to 150,000 a year in the same period of time that our total five-year budget has gone from 100 million a year to 300 million a year.

We've added 200 million dollars to our five-year capital plan and 125,000 to our line item that's supposed to improve the safety for castrians in this town.

When Craig Willard foresaw the need to complete our grid, he didn't say, well, shucks, I guess we can only build 200, 200 linear feet of road a year with the budget that you have.

He created a vision for the arterials and collectors district, which over the next three years will fund $15 million of improvements in our system, including some multimodal improvements, um, which is a hundred years worth of funding compared to the STR20 fund.

Like, can we can we do better?

I think we can.

I know that cities move slow and uh give credit we're due.

Like there is progress being made.

I think you know, the safe plan is great.

There's there is money flowing to good projects.

But the pace of change is not commensurate with the urgency of the problem.

So on behalf of the nurses, teachers, and children's community, people who've already lost and people are trying not to move next.

I'm asking for no more cop-outs.

Don't blame MTT.

Don't say, ah shucks, we just don't have the money.

We can't afford to have safe streets.

Please.

I'm asking for urgent action.

Make our streets safer.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Good evening.

Gene McGinnis, I live in Bozeman.

I think I represent the upper limit and the young fellow here, the lower limit of the people here.

And I encourage any new developer, even retrofitting for bicyclists.

I am 87 years old.

I regularly bike.

I bike this afternoon, five and a half miles.

I live up at the knolls, uh biked up there.

That's a fairly safe area to bike.

But uh my concern is uh also the bicyclists need to pick up the ball too, because I see violations by them as I ride or I drive.

I recently was waiting at uh uh Bedcock or Mendenhall and Rouse, and I saw this guy blatantly run bike right through the red light.

And true there were no cars coming, but that's not right.

A bicyclic bicyclist has all the rights and responsibilities of a driver, a motorist.

And so I'm just here to encourage safe biking.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss McKinnis.

I am guilty of that, and I will do better.

And the other public testimony in the in the room tonight.

Um traffic safety.

Second call.

Third call.

Mr.

Newby, do we see anybody online?

Yes, Deputy Mayor Fisher, we have Valerie Melton.

Ms.

Melton, you are able to unmute and you have the floor.

Hello, can you hear me?

We can perfect.

Um my name is Valerie.

Um I am a school bus driver here in Bozeman.

Um it was adjusted earlier tonight that maybe police officers would be possibly riding on buses in the future.

Um I would love to advocate to make that happen.

Every day I see at least four to five people running my reds, which is a traffic violation and is a huge problem in our community.

Um I have kids crossing the street.

I have to tell them to wait until cars go by because they still don't respect the bus traffic light um and the stop arm.

Um so yeah, just wanted to hop on here and give my two cents on that.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you, Valerie.

Anyone else on Zoom?

Yes, uh Deputy Mayor Fisher, we have Michelle Piazza.

Ms.

Piazza, you uh are able to unmute and have three minutes.

Thank you.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay, thank you very much for the floor.

Um I just want to reiterate a couple things I heard tonight and then ask uh a couple questions as well.

I think education is key, both for driving and for bike cyclists.

Uh I think the woman indicating we should have helmets is is spot on.

Um I think that's probably part of the reason why young Elliot is still with us.

Um is there a way that intersections can be standardized to some consistency.

You go through Oak.

And seventh and the intersection looks different.

You can go straight and one lane and turn left, or the left and the straight are in the same you know, lane, and you can only turn right from the right lane.

Every intersection in Bozeman has a different configuration, which if every time, and especially given the new people that we've incorporated into our environment here, every time you come to an intersection, you have to figure out where's the left lane, where's the right lane?

Where do I go through?

Um, I think that just adds to driver distraction.

Yes, you should be a driver and you should plan for that.

But that is one thing when we moved here 13 years ago, it was like, why is every intersection configuration differently?

So I don't know who can speak to that.

Um the next thing is just um the speed.

We live off of Blackwood, and that has turned into the new I-80.

It is, you know, heavy truck speeding that I've called the county several times, and they said no, it's a county road, they can, you know, heavy trucks can use it, uh, the speed limit is 40, but there is no one that goes 40 on that street.

It's 60 miles an hour.

And the other gentleman said, you know, I'm I'm pushed to drive faster because everybody's tailgating me.

That is happening so much in Bozeman.

I don't know if it's because of the new people we have here or just people aren't cognizant of the speed limit.

So uh those are my thoughts.

And um, yeah, if someone could speak to both the the lane configuration and the um the uh crosswalk configuration.

If one time you go up and you have to press this button to do this and it blinks, and um that means you can start approaching the crosswalk.

I we don't have consistency.

So if every time someone walks up to uh an intersection, they have to try to figure out what they should be doing.

I think that just compounds the issue.

Thank you, Ms.

Piazza.

Thank you so much.

Mr.

Newby, do we have anybody else on Zoom?

Um Deputy Mayor Fisher, we have no further requests for public comment online.

All right.

So I'll close the public comment on this work session.

We were partway through questions, Commissioner Bodhi.

You were partway through your question when we politely when we go.

So thank you for for pausing for a moment.

I'll let you pick it up.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

That was um very instructive, and I really appreciated hearing what everybody had to say.

Um let me just get back to where I was here.

Um, one of the public comments that we had written asked about bicycles going onto the sidewalk for a roundabout and identifying that as kind of a dangerous thing.

Um Director Ross, I I think we did this once or twice and decided it was a bad idea.

Is that right?

Is that our policy now to not put bicycles onto the sidewalk?

Uh Commissioner Bowden, thanks for the question.

Um this speaks to uh varying levels of skill and comfort from our cycling community.

Um the reason that best practice from a safety perspective and city policy is to separate the cyclists from the motor vehicles at the roundabout, is specifically because while there are very much cyclists in our community that feels safe taking the lane and navigating aroundabout right with traffic, um very many of our folks don't.

And so um, even if you look at um European standard for standards for roundabouts, they they typically don't merge the cyclist in with traffic at those points where there is the most opportunity for conflict between cyclists and cars.

Um it's not to say that everybody will feel the most comfortable in that situation, but it is specifically why uh we design our roundabouts in that manner.

Um great, thank you.

Yeah, I am thinking about um the situation um with young Elliott just this past Sunday, and um especially with the change in how fast people are going on bikes.

E-bikes is something that is really on my mind.

And um, you know, I I see small kids on e-bikes, I see adults, but um, we're able to just go way faster than than we used to.

Um, and I I think these kinds of situations where um someone's ripping through a sidewalk um at a faster speed than maybe a person in a car is anticipating, um, just give me heartburn, like thinking about those future accidents.

And um, I guess this is kind of combining my roundabout question, the next one, but I I'm just curious if you're watching e-bike regulation in other cities, and if you think that Bozeman is getting close to a place where we might need to consider some some policy to help regulate where e-bikes are on our streets.

Um thank you for the question.

Uh Candice Bastle, our transportation demand management um planner in the transportation department is currently working on uh draft policy that we hope to bring to this commission that will result in an ordinance that establishes um uh use place and um uh general policy goals around regulations of e-bikes.

Awesome.

Another slam dunk of we're already on it.

I'm sure I'll have a lot of thoughts at that time.

Okay, we have worked through my policy questions.

I have a project question, which is that we took a ton of community feedback about where we identified uh pedestrian and bicycle gaps.

And um we've also you know started instituting our plans in the capital improvement plan.

But um I feel like it's not very transparent to the public where those identified spots are, or that we have a plan for them, or that maybe we don't have the funding now and they're unscheduled.

And I'm just curious if it would be possible to build like a similar tool as the community development viewer, but for bicycle and ped pedestrian infrastructure things where people could go, oh, what's the plan for that intersection?

Um I had a near miss in this spot.

Like, is that on the city's radar?

Uh we actually do have that um the bicycle pedestrian gap analysis um study that was completed um last year uh on our infrastructure viewer.

I don't believe it's on a public layer.

Um, so it's possible that we could um trigger that change to where um if somebody is not familiar with our infrastructure viewer, it's a remarkable uh GIS asset for the community that allows them to look at um a number of our infrastructure systems toggled on and off at the same place.

Uh so it's possible that we could host that publicly.

Um maybe this is also just an opportunity to improve the um how do I want to say it, the user experience of our bicycle pedestrian gap analysis plan that is hosted on our website already.

Uh so that was uh something that we very much do want to be public as far as where we make project selects from it.

Um it did provide uh at least a rough prioritization of gaps, not necessarily projects to fill them.

Um we use that in order to uh develop our list of STR20 projects every year, uh frankly, along with a bit of a geographic and public interest preference as well.

So for Oakst Oak Street specifically, um we um completed three projects last year alone on Oak Street that were all influenced by public interest and public feedback that we've gotten.

Um so we try to do a bit of a mix of being responsive to where we hear the most complaints along with the planning that we do to back those up.

That's awesome.

And yeah, I'd be really excited about that being a public layer, and I I can imagine a number of other transportation nerds perhaps in this very room that would like to look at that data.

Um I did go look at the gaps analysis and um wasn't able to find that layer myself.

So thank you for that.

Um kind of similarly on the website interface.

Um we heard a comment about how do we report near misses.

Um I've had near misses.

I I think all of us have had near misses and have felt uncertain about you know what what can be done about that.

It occurs to me that we have um kind of a reporting tool within the neighborhood services department to report um you know code compliance issues.

Could we add a layer or a uh type of I don't know, some some kind of system so people could report near misses through that tool.

Uh I think that is, and I have a a note here too.

Um look at that for options.

I think that will involve several different departments and where that information goes and how it's uh used, I think is really critical.

Um so let us work on that.

Okay, great.

Um yeah, I I'd love to see it.

Okay, I have just one enforcement question.

So if I may call Chief Wellkamp up to the mic, thank you so much for waiting.

Um I know that we can't have red light cameras to ticket people.

And I was trying to pull up the Montana Code annotated language to really understand um what specifically is in there, but could we use red light cameras to like shame people?

So if they run a red, um we could send them a letter that says, hey, we think you may have violated the law, and just so you know, running reds kills people, and I don't know, it could be like like the no-smoking campaigns where you buy a pack of cigarettes and there's like a horrible picture of people's lungs on it, you know.

But then there'd be like disclaimer at the bottom saying like we can't enforce this and you know, Montana Code says this isn't a ticket, but just so you know, like we saw you.

Is that is that legal?

You know, there'd probably be a pretty broad legal review to determine whether what the legalities of that were, along with that, clearly there's a substantial infrastructure that would have to go in place for that, plus staff to try to monitor and actually follow through on that, but I'd have to rely on the city attorney's opinion on how far we could go with something like that and what is viable and what's not.

I think one of the interesting uh conversation to be had is is does Bozeman along with other municipalities um find a sponsor and present some legislation this year or two or next legislative session to um maybe overturn that law or to give us the ability to do that.

I think as the chief um mentioned, uh I'm sure there would be objections with the state for uh installing anything on their mastheads and their signal arms, uh which would be required for a large part of our community.

So I'm really interested, and I again took another note.

Um I'm gonna have some conversations with uh um Montana League of Cities and Towns and see if we can build some uh some uh effort to uh maybe address that this legislative session if that's the commission's direction.

Thank you.

Great.

We've come to the end of my long list of questions, so I will pass the mic on.

Thank you so much.

No problem.

I just I mean, I I have a question I've been struggling to ask all, or struggling with form all day.

And I it's really maybe it's more a question for the city manager.

But uh it it speaks to a little bit to what uh Commissioner Magic started with with how what's holding us back, and a little bit to what Mr.

Egggy uh you know wrote about and spoke about today about this a vision of how can we do better?

And I'm wondering kind of maybe maybe I'll address it to you, city manager, and then we you can parcel it out.

But what do you need from us as a commission or us as a community to say, okay, we need to put in kind of a kind of a visionary and a holistic plan that that just you know puts it feels like we we we've been talking about, you know, Keggy, we've been talking about oak, we've been talking about you know Babcock.

It feels so often like we are you know talking pedestrian safety in some ways, either as retroactively or in reaction to a development proposal, like someone's putting in a street, we're gonna try it in Fowler, we're gonna work really hard, and what and I'm really proud of the work we did on Fowler to make it pedestrian safe safe.

I'm really proud of the work we're doing on Oak, I mean not Oak uh College to make sure that that stretch between 8th and 11th as we redo it is safe.

I'm wondering how do we get uh proactive so that we're saying, okay, we've got uh a network of ditches, and we're gonna put paths along those ditches and and and make and really and get bikes and people off the streets so that if you're going from A to B, you're in a car, you're taking one path, and you're in a bike or on a on or walking, you're taking a totally different network or path.

Um I'm wondering how do we get some funding so that when, say, the school, you know, it's my my one of my biggest regrets as a school trustee is not pushing harder when when we as a community build Gallatin High to lift oak over that passageway between Gallaton High and the new sports complex.

You know, it was a hundred thousand dollars, and the school district said no, we want to put that into classrooms.

And now we live with this, right?

We're now we're trying to reverse engineer a crossing to get our sports players and our, you know.

So and how can we get a network of trails through the city as we grow that is um that is where our kind of where we want to put trail, where it makes sense to put trails in.

And I know that we have a uh transportation director and an engineering director who is all in on this.

I mean, I've seen the energy, I've seen the intensity, I've seen the emotion, and I've seen the work.

And I'm sorry, this is a run-on question.

But how do we um we have a chance we're we're drafting a transportation master plan, it's time for to renew one.

Um this feels like in some ways this goes beyond, or how do we make that more of a kind of a safety focused and and really produce a vision where and a plan for like okay, in eight years or five years, here's what this this city and this trail network and this pedestrian network is going to look like.

That's what I've got.

Let me start off by saying that um I I am I am continually amazed by the amount of great work vision and solution-oriented uh efforts that this staff does all day every day.

The fact of the matter is that we have actual constraints, and we have actual state laws and rules that apply to how we assess fees, how we use the districts that we create, and then we have the challenge of educating our taxpayers that they should be paying more for this effort.

So I'll stop on that there.

What I think what I think we can do, and and um I I am so appreciative of Nick and I'm so appreciative of Jim and the efforts they're doing, and then we have a lot of people working working behind the scenes.

I understand that it is easy to look at the city and say you're not doing enough.

And and that's a valid point.

What I have to do as your city manager, and what you have to do as a city commission is to um have conversations, look at options, and then maybe put something on the ballot, create look at creating another district that will impact the cost of living in Bozeman.

So it is all comes down to what decisions, these decisions about how we allocate our resources, and like Nick said, we the city of Bozeman does an incredible job of allocating resources toward this effort.

And um so I what I'm what I'm gonna do based on a lot of uh of notes I took is to uh have this conversation with the director team, and it involves finance, it involves legal, it involves transportation, um, engineering, all a lot, the police department, all of these things that um we are in a enormously fiscally constrained, and every dollar that we spend on this comes from our taxpayers.

So we have a lot of challenges in front of us.

Um this is an important challenge.

We also have the cost of housing, we also have public safety, we also have a lot of other things on our plane.

Water, uh all takes all of this comes from the same taxpayer.

So I am energized by this conversation.

I know our staff is amazing, and we will talk about it and uh come back to the commission with um maybe some options.

I don't know that this budget year, the first year, there's a lot of opportunities unless we want to make some really significant cuts to important work this city is doing, and I don't mean to be a downer on this at all.

I am an eternal optimist, but I'm also a realist.

So my response to that question, Deputy Mayor, would be for um you, the commission, to let your incredibly talented and um uh innovative staff come up with maybe some things that this commission could consider.

Um and I'm I'm not saying you know, in a couple years, I'm saying let us start those conversations as soon as we can, along with all of the other things that we're gonna be talking about on the 28th, um, which are big important needs to the city, all require the same resource from the same taxpayer.

So that's our challenge.

Uh, I think we're up for it.

I think we can make some important uh decisions.

The fact of the the matter is that uh um this is not all up to us.

We have partners that we have to convince.

Commissioner Magic knows exactly what I'm talking about and has been a tireless champion for uh you know trying to make change at the state.

Um so I'll stop there, but that would be my response right now.

Um thanks.

Thanks for that.

Um everyone else.

Um I I think what I would kind of propose to the commission is to have a second round of discussion.

Um what I would like to see is I would like to meet Chief Feldkamp's vision and wish list, Nick Ross and his team's vision and wish list, and find a way to make that happen.

I think you know, we are like we saw at our last week's meeting, a privileged community that comes up with creative solutions.

And I think that we can brainstorm options to help get us over some of our fiscal issues.

To me, this is predominantly about money.

You know, if we had a big infusion of cash, I think we have the will.

We have the will certainly on the commission.

I think it's the means that we have to work on and selling kind of making radical change in our community, which I am interested in doing.

So, you know, if we can have part two of this conversation, ask more questions, drill down, but then have all of us kind of work on how do we get there?

How do we involve our community in helping us pay for some of this?

Are people willing to increase their taxes?

Can we get foundation help from the private sector, whatever it ha is, but I think we could get there based on what I know of people in the city of the SMEM?

And Commissioner Matrix, I think I I want to put a pin in that because I totally agree.

I think we need to talk about what we what we want to do next.

But I I want to just make sure to give there was some, I know there's some more questions, and I want to make sure we get those questions in the room.

But I do hope that we can answer, ask some more of, you know, get the questions further from commissioners, and then talk about kind of where we as the four of us want to go next with this, if that would work.

I just maybe I just have one other question.

Is uh there was a public comment about kind of all right, we've we've um we've had what is it, 19 um 14 crossings flagged in the traffic uh on our in our traffic plan from 2017.

You know, it is tragic that that both the intersections were Leslie Brown and Elliot were were hit, we're having flagged.

Could we you know what's the is there a capacity?

What would it take to put to uh fast track those in possibly even in this year's budget?

Could we get those done by 2027?

Um what would that you know, what would that look like?

And and and I know that there's trade-offs to doing that, but I would uh how do we assess that?

Sure.

Uh so to start, unfortunately, we have far more than 14 um dozens, right?

Both in the Transportation Master Plan and in our bike pit gap analysis.

Um so many that um it does ask the question of the efficacy if we put a flashing light at every single one of them.

How much does that continue to be a conspicuous treatment as opposed to one that becomes just another sign or just another uh light that our drivers continue to disobey?

Um otherwise it does come down to funding.

Um again, and and this is in support of what City Manager Wynne said is that we could always do more with more.

Um, but we very much take an appreciation at the staff level of a responsibility for that funding that we are allocated from our taxpayers.

Um it would take um I uh my respectfully, you know, I I I do believe that it takes a much more um honest and accurate view of importance and priority that I'm not sure we can just throw um the whole transportation master plan on the table and come up with the dollar amount for it.

Um that was done at a level that um, you know, Oaken Hunters, for instance, that we were, I'm sorry, Oak and Back or Hunters and Babcock, for instance.

Um I'm not sure what solution prevents the crash that we just saw.

Okay, we identify that as a problem, but the solution becomes much more challenging when understanding the actual cause of that exceptionally, exceptionally unfortunate accident and crash, not accident, but crash.

Um I struggle as much as I would love to say a big number and then go do it.

My staff would love to have a big number to go do it.

Um my duty to you in this public, though.

With a question like that, having a valid answer for you without some further conversation.

Fair enough.

I really appreciate that honesty and that frankness.

Let's go go back around.

Commissioner Magic, do you want to have further questions?

Commissioner Sweeney.

And I just want to state Commissioner Sweeney.

So do not hold back.

Well, and I think I mean at this moment, I'm have asked the questions of staff that I think I have.

I would definitely support having another work session because I feel like we haven't had the sort of brainstorming and conversation that we should be having.

There's a whole issue of culture that we haven't even touched on.

And I think it would be valuable for us to have that conversation and maybe think about some things that we can do that are not quite budget related, but maybe public campaign related.

We have a really incredible interneightening.

Yeah.

I want to have that conversation, but I want to get through the questions first.

And I know Commissioner Bode, you had some further questions on it.

I just have one more.

From the public comment, uh, one of our commenters talked about the struggle of applying for those neighborhood calming applications.

And I I haven't done it myself.

I don't know what that looks like.

But I have seen um really wholesome videos from other communities of people getting out there with a paint of can or a can paint themselves and like doing the thing.

Um I know we've got a limited budget, and I I am just curious your thoughts on that commenter's idea of if we run out of the budget for the ones that kind of go through the city.

Could we create a you know standard approved plans, people can apply and maybe fund their own project using like our our standards?

Um that's exactly the um sort of um fork in the road path for uh the projects that don't necessarily either qualify for our program or um don't fit the need base relative to the additional projects uh that we're evaluating.

So um the barrier entry um was a very, very hard cover topic of conversation we had with staff internally and with the transportation advisory board.

Um I had the honor of running the traffic calming program for the city of Pittsburgh.

Um we started with the petition system.

Um we uh um changed that to just a pure request and received 700 in the first year to the point where we caused a lot more frustration, quite frankly, than we solved solutions, because now you're one of 700 that are in the queue.

Um with frankly, the ability for one person on an entire block to state that it's a problem and then have the city come in and do something about it.

So it also caused consternation amongst the neighborhoods for better or worse, about whether or not a certain type of treatment was really wanted by that community.

And so um we tried to walk a fine line on the barrier to entry to conversation that established community interest, shared interest in bringing a solution to a street in a way that uh did not quite frankly overwhelm our resources to actually accomplish anything with it.

If I can just repeat back to you, you're kind of saying if if we allowed anybody with the means to buy a can of paint and you know, paint a certain section of the road, it might create more problems than I would say maybe to reframe it a little bit.

We would we absolutely would support having a toolbox, for instance.

Um who was allocated those resources and where is definitely a conversation that we would want to have with commission.

Okay, thank you.

All right, I would love to have that discussion now where we you know talk about kind of next steps.

And I'd love for it to be more of a freewheeling conversation, but first from the city manager.

What do you need to hear from us this evening?

What do you is there something in particular you want to hear from us?

I mean, what you need from us or direction or I know it's uh it's our conversation, but I just it is.

I I think we wanted you and the community here from Jim and Nick.

I think you did that.

I think you asked some questions.

I took a bunch of notes.

Um, if it's the commission's desire to have another work session, um some idea on what you would want topics covered.

Um but really this is the commission's work session, and and we're your support team.

So let me preemptively extend this meeting to 1030.

We may not use it all, but I just want to be there.

Um Mr.

Magic, would you want to start us off and then we could just jump in?

Yeah, I would like to continue this to a second work session.

I think it's important that the mayor be here and be part of this.

I think it would be great if it could be earlier in the evening so we get better public participation too.

And um just have an opportunity to think out 10 bucks and creatively have the public help us think creatively and do it soon.

I like that.

Yeah, the reason I was kind of having this moment of urgency is because I can tell you're all looking at the clock, and I know everybody likes to get done by 10, and I just feel like there's so much that we could cover with freewheeling conversation.

Um I I have to just throw a bone to the um bicycle and pedestrian gap analysis.

Um this was my first time really diving in, and every single pinch point that my neighborhood identified is in here and it's ranked by a priority, and it so we have some great data.

Um also I think what you're describing with the trails and um connected routes and stuff is the Brad Plan.

And it's getting codified this year.

And so, you know, there's a um there's a an area that has been identified by a neighborhood that could potentially be eligible for TIFF funding, but it would be putting the money towards green infrastructure rather than standard, you know, driving infrastructure.

So, you know, I think there's room for us to be like really creative um and support, you know, through a lot of different means and funding sources and diverse things, um, but we are gonna need some time to do it.

So I would support another work session and the mayor to be here as well.

So thank you, Commissioner Manchuk, for saying that.

Um yeah, thank you.

I um would also support another work session, and and that said, I do have a lot of comments I'm ready to make now.

Um so if it's okay, I'll I'll give you those those thoughts.

Um just kind of framing this up though, I I just want to know like I'm not sure that there's ever been a meeting where I've been as close to tears for so long.

Like this has been really emotional and really hard.

Um, and I I know that we grapple with so many important issues in the city, and and many of them impact the quality of life for our residents.

And this one feels so difficult to me because it's not just the quality of life, this is actually life or death.

What we're doing up here tonight.

Um I I hope that we can choose uh a path that keeps more of our residents safe.

Um I I'm really resonating with the comments that say we we actually know a lot of what we need to do.

We've we've studied this issue, we've collected a lot of public feedback, we have the data.

Um it sounds like we need to be creative about the funding and our relationships with um other other agencies and people in the community, but um I don't want to delay any of this by any amount more than we than we have to.

And I I really do think we have the tools that we need to to take action.

Um so first I think that of the public comments that I read, there were a lot of very specific intersections and pinch points noted, and I just hope that staff can go take a look through all those if they haven't already and just check their notes and make sure that there aren't any that we you know haven't already flagged and and if so, add those to the list.

Um the the second thing is that um I know that we have a really constrained finances right now, but I I do think the suggestion to double the annual multimodal improvements fund from 15 150,000 to 300,000 is a reasonable suggestion for this upcoming budget, and I I hope we can talk about it more in um a following work session, recognizing that we're gonna have to find somewhere to cut 150,000.

And that's never a great conversation.

Um I will note that we've had twice now our city manager say that a uh project proposal has come in under the the expected bid amounts.

And I I do wonder if there's some some wiggle room there, but um I'll I'll leave that for a future conversation.

Um it sounds like we've got the data to we we already have a dashboard showing where the pedestrian and bike gaps are, but it's maybe not as public as it could be.

Some direction that I'd give staff is uh get that up in a public space um so that our community can understand what's already on our radar and they don't feel like they're they're shouting into the void.

It's it's a way for us to show the community that we have been listening and we know where those spots are.

Um and I I wonder if paired with that very same dashboard, there could be a portal button to report a near miss.

Um maybe that exists in a couple of other places, but I could just imagine if I was a pedestrian or a cyclist that had a near miss going to that portal, seeing if it was already on people's radar, and um either way reporting that like I had a near miss there, and hopefully that could help prioritize that intersection or that pinch point as a place for for improvement sooner.

Um I also think we should consider lowering the speeds next to the Gallatin Regional Park.

Um and I understand that that's complicated, but some direction I'd like to give staff is to bring this a proposal for what section of that half mile park length could we do that in.

Um how how big could we make it and realistically expect it to be uh followed, and you know, I think we using that information can decide if we think it's a reasonable um action that will actually have an impact.

We've talked a lot about funding.

I just want to make aware to this body that the urban transportation district does have the ability to put a levy question to the the entire urban transportation district, and they're not constrained to just buses.

It can be for transportation more broadly, and I I think that we as the city commission should really be communicating with the urban transportation district about a proposal to work into a potential levy question some funding for um bike and pedestrian infrastructure and safety improvements.

These problems don't end just at our city of Bozeman um border, and I I know that we are struggling to figure out how to fund some some longer bike paths that connect Belgrade and Four Corners.

And I just I think that there's an opportunity there where we could maybe go to the voters once with um one ballot question rather than than two if if we are considering a safety levy.

Um I like the idea of advocating in the legislative session for some some more um flexibility around red light cameras.

Uh I know that there's some um concerns about people's private information related to that, and I I want to learn more, but um it just seems like a really impactful tool, and I I struggle with the dynamic that we have right now.

Um I'm almost to the end, I promise.

Um I I know that we have improved our relationship with MDT, and I think the um rapid flashing beacon and kind of pedestrian island across 7th are kind of um the proof of that.

I know that that was hard fought and and won, and it is an improvement to two seventh.

And I I think we need to keep building on that relationship.

Um, I know that we have staff that are continuing to build on that relationship, but I I'd like to see more wins like that along seventh, along Maine and along 19th.

Um I I think all the things that I have said up until this point take precedence on the no right on red policy, but I I do think that a near-miss dashboard where we're collecting this information could help inform whether or not we need to consider banning rights on on reds in this town.

Um, and that could help us know if if that's you know a top-tier action or or something else.

But I want to keep that on the radar.

Um that's that's the end.

Uh I I look forward to having a broader conversation on all these items, and um I I can send out an email with those those listed.

And if there are two other commissioners or more who who would also be interested in those actions, um, know that I I will be advocating for them.

So uh I yeah, I I still I continue to struggle with this this desire for well, first of all, I I I fully second, I think uh another round of discussion on this.

This is a commission priority.

Um we are jumping the gun ahead of uh discussion on our actual priorities, but I think that's uh you know this was this was really productive, and I'm I'm grateful for staff to to do this.

Um but I I I do struggle with this desire for um you know kind of a bigger and a more a little more ambition.

And I I I that is not a knock on on what staff is doing now.

Um it is not a uh you know uh uh you know um I'm trying not to be polyano or just say, well, we'd get you know bring me to the moon here, but I do think um, you know, just kind of looking to the public comment, looking at people identifying all these different intersections.

It's like we need a we need a different framing, a different framework.

Like if we had if if we had a trail system where you're not on dealing with intersections, we don't have to fix the intersections.

Um I mean, I will never forget uh, you know, when my kids were really little trying to get across town from our house to to you know to equinox summer camp.

Um uh it was a total head scratcher.

And so we we wanted to be on bikes and and and we had a whole bunch of neighborhood kids.

We took a little bike train, and we we said, okay, here's how you cross uh Hoffine and Babcock, no easy thing.

Here's how you bike down Babcock until you can squirt right down Hunter's way, you know, and you can get to, you know, and and so we did that, we did it a couple times.

We finally said, okay, guys, you know what to do, go off and go.

And that very first afternoon, one of the girls hit a garbage can that someone had let out in the bike drilling and lost her two front teeth.

And um yeah, so you speak about you know being in tears.

I mean, uh, this has been a really emotional hearing, right?

Because there are countless stories of this.

And if we could just inter, you know, just get our pedestrians and our bikers off of uh separated from cars, then all we have to deal with are e-bikes, you know.

And so um, but but that's gonna take a huge amount of money.

A lot of the stuff is it's like a clogged artery, it's already built.

And and but it's going to it starts with kind of a vision and starts with you know, kind of how do we some creative thinking of how we solve that.

And that's where I would love to see us as a city get to again, not knocking the extraordinary work that we're doing on you know to make Fowler a street a safe street, or to make um, you know, I I understand that I heard the emotion in in uh Mr.

Ross's voice as he's thought about how he's gonna make KB uh uh a pedestrian safe speech street.

And what I'd love to do is is say, okay, we you know, gig is gonna be a big road, but we're gonna have we're not gonna put pedestrians along there, and we're gonna get pedestrians safely across it somehow.

And so that's the kind of discussion, and I don't know how we have that discussion.

I don't know how we put that vision out there, but that's where I would like when I hear can we do better.

I I agree.

I don't want to knock with what we're doing.

But I I would love to have the space and and the the um you know, we have the muscle power in this community to kind of come up with some plans, and I'd love to know kind of how we how we do that.

And maybe we get deeper into that in this in this next round of discussions where we start to hear visions.

I know we have the staff who could produce a vision like that.

Um and I would love to just start it, but we have to start talking about it.

Any other comments or discussions?

I mean, this is again, I I I really want this to be a discussion as opposed to us going down a line.

I feel like I have a lot more I could say and responding and adding to your list and asking more questions.

So thus yeah, I'm kind of reserving it for second second round.

Would it be possible to have that second round before our budget um vote I'm gonna be honest with you?

I that's gonna be very difficult to have.

We are working so hard on the budget right now that to interject some big changes, not that I'm telling you no, it's your it's your budget.

Uh it's gonna be really difficult to allow um this thing has to be adopted in June.

Yeah, and it's in the middle of April now, and staff is working really hard on it.

That's why my comment earlier was um let us have this conversation.

I it's going to be very difficult to change this year's budget to substantively impact provide extra dollars without significant cuts in other programs that this commission is community supports.

And so yeah, I'm going to be the wet blanket here.

It is all about money.

The staff is doing everything they can.

It is about money and it's about big money.

And I think what we can do is bring some options for the commission to consider in this interim period.

And I I understand the the urgency.

But I do like Commissioner Bodhi's idea of doubling the amount that goes to traffic coming and trying to find a way to do that.

But coming up with the significant other funding, I think we're gonna have to be super creative and not depend on this you know, biennium budget to do that.

I would also just like to um be the third voice that would like to see us double that traffic safety.

I think it's um STR20, the annual multimodal improvements.

Um our commenters suggested that that way specifically.

I appreciate the conversation and we will um work on that.

I'll be the fourth voice, actually, that to encourage.

I mean, I know that those are all there's trade backs, and it would be helpful.

I mean, maybe it would be helpful to also hear, okay.

This you you hear from the four of us that we would like to see that.

I understand there's pressures.

Um, would love to know what the the you know where that where that trade-off might be.

But I don't think 150,000 in our budget is a you know, we should we should be able to hopefully find someone.

I do think though that this the you know the vision, I I mean I'm thinking it's more like a five-year, eight-year, twenty-year vision, right?

And that's not we don't have to worry about this year's budget or next year's budget, frankly, but it but it's something that I I would love to see us start.

And I have no idea how to do it or whether it's the will of this commission, but but I think a second conversation when we're a little fresher would be and when the when the mayor is here would be well worth it.

Agree, and I like the idea of kind of spreading it out, absolutely we're gonna have to, but I also like the idea of kind of urgency when it comes to a campaign and a vision, and I think we can do that and fill in all the other pieces, uh, including the funding piece.

But I I feel a sense of urgency based on the momentum, the the push from our community things that have happened, things that have haven't happened.

Um so I would like to, you know, have a very public sort of um push to say, hey, we're taking this seriously, and we want to make some change.

And I mean, I can't even tell you how many times I wrote down urgency on this piece of paper.

Um, but you know, something that I'm thinking, you know, that we can, you know, talking about a campaign, something that we can do that is really grassroots that we use our inner neighborhood council infrastructure for that can be really low budget or no budget.

What can we do to sort of get this word out and you know I think that's where a brainstorming session of like grassroots people have you know energy behind this issue right now, and how do we bring the public in and really use that energy to do something collectively that builds the community spirit in the community like addressing this together.

So that's I yeah, I I think with the kind of four knots of yes, we want to see that annual multimodal modal improvement fund increase.

Um that feels like the the meaningful urgency before the the budgeting session, and while um I think there's a lot of urgency in the rest of these other items that I'd like to see, I I can imagine having that conversation um earlier this summer and kind of building out um some of these goals into our existing projects.

Um I I just want to take a moment to acknowledge how many other things I had on my list for staff direction that I crossed off because staff already have plans to do them or have already done them, or it's already an existing policy.

Um, and I I know that I ask for a lot, um, but I also um I'm just very impressed with all of the things that have already occurred.

And um I I know I've said it before, but um as as tragic as these moments are where we have to grapple with community members dying or being seriously injured.

I know that all of these policies improvements we have made have prevented deaths, and we we are not mourning those because of the investment that we've made up to this point.

And so the one other thing on your list, Commissioner Bode, was to bring a proposal for the speed limit around Gallatin Park.

And I'm um I've heard very clearly from staff that that you know speed limits you know it's it's hard to try and uh you know, kind of Mr.

Ross said it's hard to get behavior changed by lowering a speed limit.

I'm wondering if we would want to hear maybe for our our second round of discussions.

Maybe like a proposal for how we're going to address oak and gallatin park, you know, with and and I've I've heard parts of it, but I I haven't um and maybe it's there's a lot that has been in the room, but I would love to just maybe have a little focus discussion uh of how we're going to address oak in Gallatin Park.

Is it you know, and why why would a speed limit network?

What you know what would it would what would the where are the flashing beacons gonna be?

When are we gonna put those in?

Um I know that that has all been in here somewhere, but um the maybe if if that would be I would fully support something like that rather than say, okay, we need to the solution needs or the proposal needs to be to put the speed limit authority, but I would love to just have a maybe a little broader if that would work for you.

Are you suggesting that um separate from the second work session?

We can have a more concise conversation about that specific area.

I I think maybe even within that work session we could do it, but I would just love to hear from staff what their plan is to address oak and round gallating park.

If I could ask um respectfully ask, uh you gave us a lot to work on tonight.

And um I would ask for some time to work on that with staff.

And I we all heard the urgency, we feel the urgency too.

Um it's important that we do the right thing the right way.

And there are some things, as Director Ross said, that you can do that feel good that will actually increase um danger um these roads.

So this commission's been very gracious on giving staff the time it needs to um thoughtfully consider these and to come up with solutions.

So I took a lot of notes tonight.

I would like some opportunity to sit with Director Ross and um please give us some time to work on these things.

Um yes, the uh um the speed limit in an area uh adjacent to Gallatin Park is one of the things we'll work on, and I would just ask for some time to do that.

Certainly, and I think um I think when we have our discussion on the 20th about priorities, we'll see that there are a lot of priorities in this town, right?

And and this one has a lot of emotion to it, but there are other, you know, there's priorities that have all those priorities have a have a fair bit of emotion.

So all right.

Any further last words, comments?

Oh, we still have stuff to do.

Excuse me, sorry.

Thank you, uh, Mr.

Ross, Mr.

Wynn, for your time, Mr.

Belkamp, Chief Fellcamp.

Um, I really appreciate that.

All right, let's move on to appointments.

Yes.

Uh Commissioner Magic, you have an appointment for us.

I do.

This is to the transportation board, our final member uh I'm to appoint Simon Rusinsky to the transportation board.

Second.

We have a motion, a second.

Is there any public testimony on Mr.

Gruzenski's Brzezinski's appointment to the transportation board?

Second call.

Third call.

Mr.

Newby, anything online.

No, Deputy Mayor, there's not.

Perfect.

Let's call the commission, please.

Commissioner Magic.

I Commissioner Sweeney.

Aye.

Commissioner Bodie.

Aye.

Deputy Mayor Fisher.

Aye.

Passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Any FYI, final FYIs.

Commissioner Sweeney.

I know we've all had a really emotional evening and we're all really tired.

Um, but I do just want to follow up on the inner neighborhood council letter asking us to have a conversation about interim zoning, and would really like to have another voice on this commission support that.

So just putting that out there.