You know, I need more.

All right, well, not forget them.

Rather than about that, we're going to work.

I just want to give some information on how people can participate in public comment.

If you would like to give public comment, please dial one, two, five, three, two, oh, five, oh, four, six, eight.

You can also give public comment online.

Please go to our website to find information on how to do that.

Do we have any disclosures tonight?

Um about FYI and.

Oh, I was, um, it was a change, not a disclosure.

Yes.

Okay.

Did you want to talk about that?

Yes, it's just a simple change.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm sorry.

I wasn't cluing into where we were.

Simple change to the agenda tonight, Chair.

Um, we have Rick Simpkins here to present uh the present to make the presentation on um land trusts uh in place of Lila Fleischmann who couldn't make it tonight.

Both uh Lila and Rick are from HRDC.

All right, thank you so much.

All right, any other disclosures from anyone?

Okay, we talked about changes to the agenda.

We have a lot of minutes to approve, apparently.

We missed you.

We couldn't, we couldn't get our minutes approved when you're not here, apparently.

Me and the technology were having some disagreements.

So if you if you saw anything, just let me know.

Okay, okay, all right.

Well, we have to approve the January 7th, 2026 minutes, the February 4th, 2026 minutes, March 4th, 2026, and April 1st, 2026.

Do we have a motion to approve these minutes?

I'll move to approve all of those minutes.

Thank you.

Do we have a second?

I'll second it.

Thank you very much.

Any discretion about the minutes?

Um, a few corrections if I could ask.

Um, I think for the January 7th meeting, I believe board member Lowerson was not in attendance, so that should be listed absent instead of present.

Um, and then for the February 4th meeting, um, board member Jones is listened twice as attending under the attendees.

And for the vote, it says 7-0 instead of 6-0.

And I think it's counting staff member of Bontineau and that vote count.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Those are those are my technology issues.

Thank you so much for noting those changes.

All right, with those changes included.

Can we go ahead and call for the vote for the approval of the minutes?

Yes.

Uh Daisy Rama.

Approved.

Yeah, Natsuki Nakamura.

Aye.

Albert Jones.

Approve is amended.

Uh Nathan Stein.

Uh, yes.

Kelsey Larson.

Yes.

And Chair Rogers.

Yes.

Motion carries as amended.

Thank you.

Again, I'm gonna give some information on how to give public comment.

So this is a time where people can give public comment that's not um that is non-agenda related that falls within the scope of the economic vitality board.

We do ask that you only speak once and that you state your name and state if you are a resident of the city, and if you are a property owner, please limit your comments to three minutes, and we'll go ahead and ask if there's any public comment that is not relating to anything on the agenda.

No, okay, uh online.

Is there anyone?

Uh, there are no requests online.

Okay, thank you so much, Jesse.

All right.

Well, I'm gonna go ahead and um have Brett introduce our guests today and give a little intro about what we're gonna be talking about.

Great, thank you, Chair.

Um I'm really excited tonight to to introduce our guests, our presentations, both of them.

Uh, we're gonna start a little bit about uh telling the story about Bozeman's fiber optic network that was started over 13 years ago and is uh you know come to fruition and is really making an impact in our community.

And so tonight, in order tonight we have our as our guest, we have Sarah Thompson, who's the executive director of the Northern Rocky Mountain Economic Development District, and uh she will introduce the presenter, Grace Gilbreth.

But I'd like to give Sarah a moment to introduce herself to the board and uh her organization is one that we work with quite regularly.

We're a member of the Northern Rocky Mountain Economic Development District, and so Sarah Thompson, do your do you work?

Thanks, Britt.

Uh hi all.

Um, as Britt said, I'm Sarah Thompson and the executive director of the Northern Rocky Mountain Economic Development District.

It's a little weird being right here because I've been sitting at this podium and many many times over the years in a different capacity, but um I'm excited for you all to hear about one of the projects at the Northern Rocky Mountain Economic Development District.

Quite the mouthful, let's just say NERMID has been part of.

And so who is NERMID, you may ask?

Well, NERMED is a nonprofit that serves Gallatin and Park Counties, holding the federal designation as an economic development district with the US EDA.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that we offer different services to the communities in this region to promote economic vitality.

And so this can be in the form of economic impact analyses, needs assessments, strategic planning, and community development.

Our portfolio is very diverse and it covers all sorts of topics from housing to child care to fiber internet, which you will hear about shortly.

Ultimately, NERMID is here to partner and collaborate with different sectors to ensure that their communities are sustainable, economically viable, and uniquely expressed.

So I will now hand it over to Grace, who will dive into a very fascinating presentation about fiber internet with Yellowstone.

While Grace comes up to the podium, I'd also like to introduce Sid Boswell, who's in the audience.

Sid is the CEO of Yellowstone Fiber, and if questions verge onto the technical side, Sid might be a person to have that.

All right, and then to get it into presenting, how do I show the back screen?

I know you can't receive the doctor here.

And then this thing always pops up.

Oh, Jerry, I think that's oops.

Thank you.

Oh, let me move my question.

Pretty much the end.

I don't know why it keeps doing that to me.

Is there an Xbox that we could do that?

Okay, I think that's a really good idea.

Oh, here we go.

Thank you, Sarah.

We got, oh, nope, just kidding.

Go to slideshow.

All right, perfect.

That was a teamwork effort.

All right.

All right, I'll get started.

Um, hi everybody.

My name is Grace Gilbreth, and I'm a project manager at the Northern Rocky Mountain Economic Development District.

As Sarah said, NERMED is a lot easier.

Um, and I get the opportunity to highlight the hard work of others in my role with the district and demonstrate that its community impact uh through economic storytelling is a way I like to think about it.

And today I'm here to present you about one such example, and that is the development of the Yellowstone Fiber Network by the City of Bozeman and its partners.

And I appreciate the opportunity, so I'll get started.

I'd like to begin with something that everyone already knows very well, and that is the fact that Bozeman is a growing community, and in a growing community, it is often infrastructure that determines whether opportunity becomes uh expands or becomes constrained over time.

And the decisions that we make about infrastructure today determine whether companies expand or leave, whether families can afford to stay here, and whether the value that is generated in the valley remains here into the future.

And I'm here today to show you how community-built fiber functions as essential economic infrastructure and what many now consider to be a fourth utility alongside water, power, and heat.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, familiar with the district, uh, this presentation is based on the findings of an economic impact analysis prepared by NERMED.

As Sarah said, we are a regional economic development organization, and we've been serving Park and Gallatin County since 2006.

NERMED works with local governments, businesses, and communities to support sustainable economic growth and strategic decision making through research, which is one of our specialties.

The City of Bozeman, as Britt said, is a member, and this report and this project is a result of that partnership.

This report was produced in collaboration with the City of Bozeman Economic Development and with Yellowstone Fiber, which is a nonprofit fiber network that was established by the city.

For a little bit of background on the network, Yellowstone Fiber began in 2012 as a city-led effort to address the need for reliable broadband infrastructure.

Local leaders at the time recognized that high performance connectivity was essential infrastructure in the modern era, and it was the city's early actions that made the network possible in the first place.

The first four million in initial financing was secured through local leadership, and this enabled the project, the product to launch in the first place, taking the project from concept to construction during this time period.

Crucially, the city also provided 12 critical easements on public land for the construction of fiber huts.

And without these easements, the construction of the network would not have been possible.

As the network could prove its viability, it attracted an additional 101 million dollars of additional private investment.

And today, in total, approximately 105 million dollars has been invested to build and continue to expand this infrastructure, all of all of which at no cost or risk to the taxpayer Bozeman.

And this large-scale long-term economic effort was made possible by early public leadership and sustained private investment working in tandem.

Our economic impact analysis evaluated multiple phases of the development of the network.

We chose a 2015 period, a 2022 to 2024, and a projected 2025 to 2027 period.

We selected these periods of time as they represented large periods of expansion and investment activity in the network, and we created our analysis using operating budgets, local data, and industry-accepted standard economic impact multipliers.

For a little preview of what I'll be going over today, I will walk through a few key takeaways from the report.

Fiber as long-term economic development infrastructure and its local impact that we're already seeing, how the network structure drives affordability for the customer through competition, why fiber stands apart as a technology, and what this means for the community over the long term.

I'll start with why this matters as infrastructure, not just as internet service.

Fiber is a foundational infrastructure in the modern era.

The effects of this infrastructure show up in the economic activity and where the value stays within the community.

And I'd like to highlight a few key figures from our report.

Over our three study periods, the Yellowstone Fiber Network generated over 135 million dollars in total economic activity across our study periods and generated more than 1,400 jobs across those three study periods.

And those are just the net the jobs that are directly attributed to the construction and operation of the network, and that does not include the jobs that are enabled by the presence of the network.

And of those 1,400 jobs, over 80% of the value that they generated was retained locally in the valley.

I'd like to emphasize that this is only the tip of the iceberg, and once this infrastructure is in place, firms can expand locally and talent can stay here.

This can manifest in sectors like technology, cybersecurity, photonics, advanced manufacturing, and the growth of remote work.

These effects are harder to quantify in a report, but they are central to understanding the network's long-term impact.

And the numbers I've showed you on the previous slide, I want to emphasize they are real economic impact, but it doesn't capture the entire picture of the benefits that Bozeman is experiencing.

At the household and business level, this infrastructure provides reliable and high capacity service.

It supports remote and hybrid work, which has grown in prevalence in the valley in the years since COVID and is now a persistent part of the modern economy.

And it supports healthcare and education services.

And here in Bozeman, that is not a matter of convenience, it's a requirement.

It also improves resilience dramatically.

Schools, hospitals, and businesses experienced significantly less downtime when using the network.

And many of these institutions, including the Bozeman School District and Hospital, were original anchor tenants of the network and helped to establish its early viability.

For schools and hospitals specifically, this reliability is critical.

Even short disruptions can interrupt learning or delay care, and this creates risk.

For these institutions, downtime disrupts essential services, and that's why the resilience is crucial.

And this is where fiber can make a difference.

Fiber networks are built with redundancy so that there are multiple pathways for the data to travel.

So if one line is interrupted, the data is rerouted and it can go on, service can continue without disruption.

So because of this, services can operate even during disasters.

Another feature is that firms are able to compete and scale both nationally and globally without having to leave the region to do so.

The reliability and performance can attract and retain a workforce that is used to this level of connectivity going forward as well.

And many of these benefits are not captured in our economic totals.

And because of this, the numbers that we've shown you should be understood as a conservative floor and not the full ceiling of the benefit that we should be experiencing.

The broader effect is a more resilient and productive local economy that can create that can create value, retain value, and operate at a national level while we're maintaining local.

These outcomes are not incidental, they're driven by the structure of the network itself.

The structure of the Yellowstone Fiber Network is built to enable consumer benefit.

And the open access model allows multiple providers to compete on one shared network.

This is different from traditional internet service provider models, because the infrastructure is shared with among multiple companies instead of being controlled by a single company in a more monopolistic structure.

And because no single provider owns the network, providers have to compete directly for the customer service by either offering better service pricing or reliability.

And this structure enables competition in a similar way to a public road that can support multiple transportation services.

This follows basic economic principles as well that when providers compete, they have to offer a better experience in order to attract customers.

Through this competition, customers gain choice and they're not locked into a single provider, and local ownership also ensures affordability and reinvestment in the community rather than profit extraction from out of state providers.

So by separating infrastructure from the delivery of service, the network creates healthy competition in the system, expanding affordability and quality to its customers.

And this addresses affordability.

The next question is how does it perform as a technology?

And that comes down to the quality of the technology itself.

And I want to acknowledge that, of course, satellite and fixed wireless do have roles in providing service to the more remote or rural parts of Montana, where terrain or geography leave people no other choice to experience service, but they face structural limits and they're not built to scale in a growing community like Bozeman.

First, these technologies are externally controlled, so pricing and long-term availability to the community are made outside of the community.

They also rely on shared bandwidth.

For example, low Earth orbit satellites such as Starlink can provide about 10 gigabytes per second of service shared across all users in that satellite's region.

And as more people log on to the system, the performance declines.

And in contrast, fiber can deliver that level of speed to a single house exclusively.

The performance is also affected by terrain and weather.

So if it's an adverse weather day, your service is disrupted.

And they're also less scalable for service in a growing community like Bozeman.

And fiber addresses a lot of these issues directly.

It's locally owned and operated, so the decisions stay within the community.

It provides dedicated capacity with symmetrical speeds, meaning users can send and receive information equally quickly.

And performance does not degrade as more people begin to use the system.

It's also not dependent on terrain or weather, since the cables are buried underground, so they're protected from that.

And it's scalable without needing to rebuild the infrastructure.

So as the technology scales, you don't have to upgrade the fiber cables themselves.

You can just upgrade the technology on the ends of the fiber cables.

And when viewed together, these characteristics define more of an infrastructure rather than a telecom service.

And because this is infrastructure and not just a one-off solution, uh, that means it's also rec replicable to other communities.

Bozeman is currently the only community in Montana pursuing this model, and among very few nationally doing so today.

And what stands out in this is the role of the city in making this project possible.

This reflects a forward-looking approach to infrastructure policy and a willingness to take a long-term view on community investment.

What Bozeman demonstrates is that the model is replicable to other Montana communities if given the chance to do so.

It's an open access public-private approach that is community driven and could scale to other communities in Montana if it was given the chance to do so.

Because of that, the report is now being used as a case study in other communities nationally, and they're looking to Bozeman as an example of how to approach broadband in a different end, innovative way.

And that level of national attention also reflects the city's leadership and the policy decisions that made this model possible in the first place.

This is not a simple telecom project, it's a long-term economic infrastructure that delivers durable benefits to the community.

Local leadership and forward thinking planning made this possible.

And those investments take time and significant capital to achieve, but they create benefits that build and compound long after that initial investment period.

So more connectivity leads to more business activity and greater economic resilience, and all these factors compound each other as time goes on.

Bozeman chose to invest in infrastructure that keeps opportunity local and supports long-term growth, and the outcomes that we've demonstrated are a direct result of that investment.

Our full report is available on the NERMED website if you'd like to read it further, or if you have any questions that you think would be addressed by reading the website by reading the report.

And yeah, thank you.

I appreciate it.

And if you have any questions, I believe we have time for that.

Thank you, Chris.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for that presentation.

And you do have some time for some questions, you said.

I think so.

Yeah, right?

All right.

Please cool.

Any questions as you like.

Yeah.

We're gonna open it up for questions.

So I think if we can just go down the line, if you don't have a question, you can just pass and go to the next person.

I am not a professional on fiber, so I have to put that disclaimer out there.

But I heard all of the um benefits.

Um, one of them being keeping um keeping it local, having open access more affordable.

What is the downside?

Why are our communities not joining in efforts like this?

Can we take a step at that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Grace is delivering the report and did all the work on the analysis, but there are many people involved in the crease.

I can tell you the downside.

It's hard.

It's really hard.

And it takes a long time.

And when you get companies, um, and I won't name names because it's not the names aren't important, but when you get companies that come in and sign exclusive contracts with communities like Sapin and other cities around Montana, they now own the customer.

And that's what we're trying to avoid and prevent from happening in our community.

So it takes uh it takes a long time, it takes a lot of initiative, it takes um some stubborn your toe a lot before you figure out the right way.

And I just don't think many communities are geared for that.

And so the uh I think the challenge is the difficulty right now, anyway.

Uh, no, I thought that was a really good answer.

Um, it is hard, it is a challenge.

Um, and the city did fund the initial study, um, which I cannot remember the amount.

It was 2013 or 2014, but that study was uh probably around $50,000 dollars that the city had to invest in a consultant to come up with the plan.

After that, they formed a board, a nonprofit or not for-profit at the time, that uh was able to go out to eight local banks, and with the support of the city as an anchor tenant, the schools is an anchor tenant, and the county is an anchor tenant.

Um, we were able to obtain about four million dollars of capital from eight local banks using a community reinvestment act loan.

So it was not easy.

It took a lot of effort and time, and I do think other communities are interested in it.

I just don't know that uh they have the elected officials that will stand up and support something like this over the long haul because it's not an instant fix.

This has been 13 years in the making, and so I think a lot of communities also want somebody else to fix their problems.

So they want to go to Charter or CenturyLink or whomever their local um providers are and ask them, hey, step it up.

And uh in some places it happens, but in most it does not.

Thank you.

Two questions.

Um, one of the slides mentioned there's a mix of public and private investment involved.

Were local financial institutions a major part of the private investment?

In the initial four million, as Sid said, it was eight local banks that uh chipped in for the initial four million dollar, and then after that, I believe it I'm not sure the loaf of like local versus.

Yeah, so um in a nutshell, oh, the first the first four million were literally like hat in hand going around to local banks trying to raise that capital because we knew what the initial investment was gonna be for the construction of the initial ring.

So the banks got together, eight of them, which I've never seen eight banks in the same room before, but they got together and they all agreed that they would that they would loan that money, and they did.

Um the second the the other um funding came from the from private bonding using the conduit revenue bond structure through Galvan County.

Okay, thank you.

And my second question, a little more open-ended, yeah.

Um sometimes, like building, you know, especially on the outskirts of the city is constrained by the availability of utilities.

So there's like a like a poll aspect where utilities pull you know development, but sometimes planned development, I think can also push utilities in a certain direction.

And this board does a lot with like looking at potential new development or looking at um changes in density and development, things like that.

I wondered if you had any comment on the push-pull relationship as new housing is developed, whether it's in completely new space or it's changing density in an existing space.

Yeah, absolutely.

I can speak to the historical uh way that that has progressed.

Um I know that when Yellowstone Fiber began, the initial goal was to connect all of the Bozeman School District buildings.

They wanted to get service all throughout downtown, uh, through that corridor and in the cannery district as well.

And I think that establishing those early pathways was really crucial to the network success as far from my perspective.

And as far as future development of the network, I think Sid could probably speak more to their strategy as far as that goes.

But yeah.

From a network development perspective, um, so the city is no longer a part of the organization, so there's a there's some separation there.

So I haven't been too involved in that.

But on the network development side, you know, they have an engineering plan that sort of follows or tries to help me out here, tries to like um determine where the where the development's going so that they can try to meet where it is.

Sure.

So um uh Grace was correct.

The original network we focused on some business areas around town, uh, some out in West Bozeman, North Bozeman, the Canary District, both sides of Main Street, um, the hospital area, and a few others.

And that was what we felt with the original $4 million when uh when COVID happened, um, we started losing all of our customers because they were business customers and everybody started going home to work.

And um that's when the we we went out to the bond market and decided to build residential.

Since then, yes, we do work with the developers.

Um I'll give you a very current example.

We're working with the Northwest Crossing, which is now buildings, southwest corner of Baxter and um Oak.

And uh we are we are pulling additional material, additional fibers up there for that development, so that when you know those homes are built, they've got the same access that we built in the rest of Bozeman.

Um so it is a push-pull, and we do work uh quite well with the developers.

Um you mentioned uh that that development can drive infrastructure, and that's sort of the the Northwest Crossing example.

Um another one that we see is I actually get calls from business owners or developers daily asking is fiber available here because we're looking at building a multi-tenant building, or we're looking at building commercial office space.

So it it we do work with them and uh in in uh some cases developers have even contributed some funds to the network to help us reach those areas.

Um there's a there's a new neighborhood out uh towards the east, sand hills.

Um that development came to us and said we really want your service in that development, we will pay for you to get there if you will then distribute the fiber within the community, and we did.

So we do work um not only within the city but out in the county.

Uh we are right now mostly within the city.

We're in 714 and 718 or 715 and 718.

Um, but we are looking to expand uh including to Belgrade.

Um right now we have to be very careful with capital, there's a lot of competition.

Um Montana Opticom already has fiber out in Belgrade in certain areas, and there's really no need for us to overbuild if they have the same capacities.

Thank you.

Um thank you for the presentation.

This is all very new to me.

So um I might still be formulating my questions.

Oh, I was curious about your comment about that the infrastructure is different than the service.

Um, so is Yellowstone fiber the infrastructure or the provider?

Yellowstone fiber is the infrastructure.

So there are, I think it's five six providers.

It's six different providers that then operate the service on the infrastructure.

So in order for the customer to, they they approach the company, they approach the company and they say, Can you come set up your service in my house through the Yellowstone fiber cables that are built there?

And then if they find that that is unsatisfactory, then they have the option to switch to a different company using the same cables, but providing maybe better service.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, and then you mentioned that most of it's in the city, but you have some out in the county of infrastructures.

Yeah, when it was established, it was as Bozeman fiber, and then uh recently during uh COVID, it switched to Yellowstone fiber.

So that's definitely more of a county-facing uh future plan.

Uh so I'm not exactly sure to the extent that we're out in the county and outside of Bozeman city limits, but I can I think Sid can speak to that as well.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's like mostly following demand, I'm assuming.

I'm sorry.

That's gonna like mostly follow demand as okay.

Um there's uh there was some federal dollars available in 2022 ARPA funds, which are now being spent, and um there was also the BED funding and uh we did apply for federal funding to move out into the county, um, and we were not successful.

I think there were 78 uh projects awarded, and we were number 79 on the list, um, which was kind of painful because we spent a lot of time putting together the grants.

Um but uh uh the the long-term goal would be to expand out into the county.

Uh we chose Bozeman to start, and that's because of the density.

Um we have to have enough capital and enough ongoing uh customers bringing in uh their service fees for us to be able to look outside.

Um but we will we have uh plans to uh you know continue to expand up Spring Hill, uh Sipes Canyon, uh Mackelhatton.

So there's some areas which still have pretty poor service, uh Mountain View, which I don't think is within the city limits.

Um they've uh they've got some pretty poor service over there.

So there's a lot of areas we'd like to serve.

Um, and we do um opportunistically if we can if we can afford to reach it, and we know that we can get an economic return on it.

And how much infrastructure is on MSU campus?

Um we do have a couple of different customers on MSU.

Um we are in the sub and provide internet connections to some of the third part, some of the independent businesses there, and then um we also have worked.

I have to think about it, but um we've worked with a couple of providers to try to um bring competitive access to the university.

Um so we have current um proposals out there to bring service to Rini Library and AJM.

And I'm fortunately I'm not an MSU grad.

I'm an Aggie, so I came from a long way to get here.

But um, uh, so we we do work with the university and um we are also at Fire Station 2 and at the University Police Station.

Okay.

Great, thank you.

Uh I really don't have a question because I think all the questions I had have been asked.

I just wanted to thank you again for the presentation and just state how uh excited I am and what a unique model this was.

I guess I do have a question.

Have any other states uh look to uh Montana and in regards to what we did here in Boseman as a potential model?

Uh actually, yeah, the um this report was uh produced also in partnership with Utopia Fiber, which I believe holds the they're the service providers for Yellowstone Fiber.

Um so they have I think 20 uh cities in Utah right now, and then California, I think is just starting to do something like this, like as of this year.

So Bozeman is very much like on the cutting edge of this type of model.

But yeah, it's it's starting to spring up other places as well.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, trend center.

Yeah, exactly.

So first off, I really enjoyed reading the report.

It's a really interesting solution to the problem of how fiber tends to be a monopolistic utility.

Uh so as an economist, I was excited about it.

Um, I did have a couple of questions coming out of the report.

One was um it looked like from one of the cost analyses that you guys serve about 8,000 households or so.

Um, and how many businesses?

How many businesses?

That's probably.

Um we've currently passed 16,000 households, um, and I don't know how many businesses because they're really hard to count.

Um, but we service about 3,500 residential customers and 350 businesses currently.

All right, neat.

Um, and I guess we've sort of been getting at little bits of this as we've gone along.

Um, what's sort of the geographic area of service it sounds like?

Does it cover pretty much anywhere within Bozeman City limits that you guys are fairly close to connecting to, and what have kind of been the drivers of where we connect to and where we don't?

I'd say the coverage in Bozeman is pretty consistent.

They keep uh very detailed map and they're building every day, so it's always expanding, but uh the most up-to-date coverage, and there's a color-coded map of if you put in your address, it'll tell you if you can access Yellowstone Fiber uh wherever you live.

So that's that's pretty nice.

And uh one other question for the areas where we've built service to already.

Um, is this proving economically sustainable?

Are we breaking even on it?

I believe that might be more of a sick question.

Um because we're a 501c3 and nonprofit, we were able to get tax exempt bonds.

So we're about 250 to 300 basis points lower than what we would be able to do as a private entity.

Um will we make our debt payments?

Uh I have a forecast that shows we will.

Um it's uh it's challenging.

I'm not gonna say it's easy.

Um, but yes, we we right now we do have a plan to be able to settle to service all of our debts as well as potentially go back to the market for some additional funding to build out additional areas.

Um, and our bondholders, um, you know, they're they're pretty smart people.

Um they go over our uh plans, our financials.

Uh I I do uh continuing disclosure monthly, uh, and then I do a larger continuing disclosure quarterly.

And um right now, yes, we we will stay in the black uh going forward, and we would like to go back to the market and get more money.

Of course, like everybody else, we'd like lower interest rates.

So we are sort of uh right now we're building north of the interstate.

So Bridger Drive, um, all the areas around um Manley Road, Griffin, and the new um I never remember the name, the northeast area, the new industrial park.

Um, so yes, we do think that if we can get an appropriate take rate, meaning about uh 40 to 50 percent of the subscribers in those areas, that we will be able to make a positive return and be able to continue to expand.

Exciting.

Thanks for working hard and the important job.

I think my question's for Sid too.

Sure.

Yep.

Yeah, the last stops in.

Uh thank you both uh for the great presentation and and the color and context from you, Sid.

Um I think my my first question is in line with um with what Al was asking about how Yellowstone Fiber is plugged in with the development community, and it sounds like you guys are pretty well plugged in with the development community.

I think my question is often in not often, always in green field development, there are infrastructure improvements required of developers that are breaking new ground, and that includes water sewer, um, electrical.

I'm curious.

Do we have um local regs that require them to invite you guys in to lay down conduit or fiber when they're breaking ground?

You would think it would be more efficient to do it on the front end rather than go back in and dig new holes later on.

Correct, open trench is around two dollars a foot.

So we love open trench uh directional boring is around $30 a foot.

So it does make a huge difference if we can get in early.

Um we are uh we have a joint trench agreement with Northwestern Energy, and so typically what happens is a development will um get their utility plan, we can get access to that through Northwestern Energy, and we can develop our network to follow their electrical plan.

Um so we do work together.

Um, all the other providers can get in there as well, provided it is already platted in the right of way is established.

Um some developers don't do that early in the phase.

They wait until they have streets, curb, gutter, and infrastructure in before they plat it.

So that therefore, if that happens, the developer can pick and choose who is allowed to participate.

So it kind of depends on the developer and how they operate.

Um we prefer to be in the former where they platted ahead of time and there is a right of way, or we are invited in if it's still private property, uh, which is what's happening in Northwest Crossing.

Williams Homes has not platted that yet.

So there is no official right-of-way.

Um so we are in their, we're in their private property until they plat it where it will become right-of-way.

Um and they also uh have let other providers in there.

So there's still competition not only from us that have six providers, but there's another terrestrial-based wireless or wired fiber or uh copper solution available to those to those developments.

Cool.

Thanks.

I've got I've got a couple more just to say you can probably stay up.

Um I'm curious, and and I guess this is coming off of Kelsey's question as well.

I'm curious, like, if we have experienced a financial tipping point in the positive sense for the organization, and and if we have what was it?

Was it the initial four million in capital that allowed Yellowstone fiber to establish itself and you know have sustainable operations and kind of expand from then on?

If we haven't gotten there yet, you know, what does that look like?

Is it and and I guess is there a target kind of number of households served that would generate the revenue that you guys you know need to kind of kick kick on beyond where we're at?

Yeah.

Multi-part question, take it how you will.

So the first one to answer the first question, um, the network actually achieved profitability in 2019, and then COVID happened, and we were no longer profitable.

Um, but we built a business model that was able to attract that private investment.

Um, and we continue to do that.

We we issued um uh conduit bonds in 2021 and again in 2025.

And so going back to the market, we still were able to uh attract enough investment to to uh get the amount of funds we needed.

Um to answer the the last question about is there a tipping point or is there a number of subscribers?

Um, yes and no.

Um there's various ways that we um earn revenue, number one from residential subscribers, and that is a large piece, but there's also a lot of businesses in Bozeman that um pay higher rates for higher SLAs, meaning uh service level agreements.

So if they have a outage, we respond to them faster.

Um so we have a mix of revenue, um, and uh right now we forecast around 40% take rate would allow us to achieve full debt service and be able to go back to the market, and we don't have to have 40% to get there to go back to the market if as long as we have a as long as we can show we can reach it.

Um, and right now we're adding about 1,600 customers a year.

So that's quite a bit.

Um we're really busy in the summer.

Uh we do between 10 and 20 installs a day all summer long from May to the end of October.

Uh, and then we sort of slow down with the weather, and um we also don't build mainline in the winter based upon um the availability of asphalt.

Uh the city has moratorium on some things like cutting streets and putting top hats on because they'll destroy snow plows.

So we uh we're very seasonal, but we do um we do know what what we have to make to be able to pay our bills, and it is like I said, a mix of revenue, and right now businesses are are being very strong.

We're we're growing leaps and bounds with businesses because the competition is just not providing a reliable service.

Great.

Um, and I think my last question is maybe for for Sid and for Britt.

Um, I'm curious, you know, when this was all still an idea, um, how we arrived at the public-private slash nonprofit partnership model as opposed to pursuing something like you know, straight up municipal owned broadband.

So we did not.

Thank you for that question.

Um, you know, in the early days, we were just naive enough not to not know what the hell we were doing, and I think that was an advantage because if we knew we were getting ourselves into, we probably wouldn't have done it.

Uh and so, you know, the open access model comes from the consultant group that we uh hired to do the plan as Sid referred to earlier.

Andrew Cohill brought that model to to us as a as an option.

Uh he was very key uh very keen on that model because he knew and he as he described to us if you uh if you if the provider owns the infrastructure, they own the customer.

And he used the example of um service delivery in packages.

He's like, you don't build a road for FedEx, for UPS, for DHL, and for the postal service.

There aren't four roads all leading to one place.

There's one road, and everybody shares the road, and everybody you know contributes to the upkeep of the road.

So that that really got us thinking, like, well, yeah, I mean, that that's makes that makes sense to us.

Um, and um, and so that that's that's my memory.

It's been a long time now, but that's my memory of how we we got that idea.

Yeah, so um if I think back to the days of the original study, um you there were several options presented.

Um, and as a broadband former broadband consultant, you know, what we do when we come into a city is we look at what the city has.

Um Bozeman is not an electric city, so it didn't make sense for us to try to build another leg of uh uh utility that the city already exists are that already existed within the city.

Um, so uh the study had a lot of options.

I think it was a lot of back and forth with the economic development um group at the time as well as with the commission to settle on what the model would look like.

Um I think they knew going in they wanted some sort of public-private partnership.

I think the consultant brought the open access model to the table and also presented a different different ways you can implement that open access model.

A lot of those were built, a lot of open access networks were built with the Obama stimulus, the ARRA package.

And a lot of those were open access because that allowed the government the federal government to say we're not just benefiting one private provider, we're building a local utility and allowing competition over that.

And I think Britt spoke very well about the roads, digital roads.

That's what we built.

We built digital roads, and we're allowing, you know, our six service providers to compete for service on those roads.

And each one has a little niche.

Um there's two local homegrown companies that have been here in the valley for quite some time that are service providers, they're doing great on the network.

They've grown substantially.

One of them was a local wireless provider and jumped in right away and has been one of our biggest service providers.

There's another one that's uh uh a technology and security services company within Bozeman, and they jumped on as a provider as well because they offer some enhanced security on top of their services, which anybody who has a DOD contract or has HIPAA compliance issues can hire a provider now that not only brings the internet that also provides those compliance services.

Can I sum up with one one other thing?

I because this has been such a long time since we've talked about this work.

I some of the names I'm about to mention, I'm gonna name some names, and some of them that I'm about to name you probably recognize, but but they're not associated with this project, even though they were instrumental in getting this done.

The first person I reached out to uh when I needed four million dollars and didn't have a nickel was Jim Ness at First Security Bank.

Um, the other one I reached out to is Bruce Parker at First Interstate Bank.

Those local banks, not the big banks, not the national banks, but the local banks are the ones who came to the table and said, we see the value in what you're trying to accomplish.

We see the benefit to the community, we see the benefit to our customers eventually.

And so, but for those eight local banks who had very little to gain uh in the moment except seeing our helping us to realize our vision, um they are the ones who who really jumpstarted this whole thing.

Um so I've credit a lot of credit to Jim Ness, a lot of credit to Bruce Parker, who's still on the board if I'm not mistaken.

Correct.

Bruce is still on the board.

So they they deserve a lot of, you know, you don't hear their names, but they deserve a lot of credit.

Well, it's fascinating stuff and a great project.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.

Chair, can I just sum up by thanking the original anchor tenants?

But for the school district, Gallatin County and our own city, believing in us and what we were trying to accomplish, none of this would ever happen.

So I thank them for having um, you know, believing in us when we brought them this wild idea.

I also thank uh Sid and his team for actually developing it and bringing it to fruition, and I like to thank Grace and Intermed for helping us tell the story.

Uh so really appreciate all that.

A lot of people involved in this really, really great project.

All right, thank you again for that.

Very, very thorough and exciting presentation.

All right, we have another presentation.

Would you like to introduce our guests today?

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

So I'm really happy to introduce Rick Simpkins to the to the EV board.

Rick is uh works in housing at HRDC, and he's here to present some material and answer questions related to land trusts.

And the reason this is really timely is because we're working on a project that's considering a land trust solution for uh homeownership as we can consider our options through the consensus process with the Fowler Project.

And so I'm really happy to welcome Rick.

I appreciate you being here, Rick, and um he's gonna give a presentation and we'll answer some questions.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Uh first little public comment.

I love Yellowstone Fiber in my house, so that was great to hear a little more about it.

Um make the switch if you haven't.

Thanks for having me, guys.

First, first I wanna say I made this in Google Slides.

We are now in PowerPoint uh and it didn't like my formatting.

So hopefully none of the content's gonna be changed, but you know, just try to imagine there's some spaces between letters.

Um I'm here with HRDC.

We are a community action agency.

We serve Gallatin Park and Mark Counties.

Um we operate the food bank, we built and operate the emergency shelter, we have energy assistance programs, uh, we run Head Start classrooms, we're really involved in a lot of um, you know, aspects of daily life here in those counties, um, but we're also a community housing development organization.

Um, and in that work, we work to develop and preserve affordable housing across the spectrum from that emergency shelter to transitional housing, rent restricted rentals, rent subsidized rentals, uh, all the way up to below market and shared equity ownership, which is what I'm gonna be talking uh to you guys about today, community land trusts.

Um, and then also we do a little work um developing housing capacity for organizations and governments, um, especially some of our rural communities.

Um the very basics here, um, CLTE community land trust, I'm probably gonna use both, is a model for affordable community development.

Uh it can be used in ag and commercial, um, but really we're gonna be talking about housing, and that's what it's used most often for.

Uh, the basic premise here is that a community nonprofit or government uh organization owns the land, and then the improvements being the home, is sold to a private individual in a standard home sale.

Um the buyers then lease the land from that government organization or nonprofit, uh, and that lease governs the entire relationship between those, gives them the full rights of enjoyment to the land and to use it.

And also, when you go to sell the home, restricts the price at which you can sell the home for to the next buyer.

Uh, that is the key to ensuring the affordability stays in perpetuity and doesn't just go to one homeowner that first buys one of these properties.

Um, because you don't own the land and because there's subsidy in it, that's what makes it more affordable.

It used to really be like you don't own the land, so you're not paying for the land cost, and that's not exactly how it always ends up, but for you know the high level of this, you're not buying the land, you can subtract that out from the purchase price.

Uh this is not uh new idea that HRDC had or that anybody in Montana had.

Um, there are community land trusts across the United States, more than 300.

We have six community land trust organizations here in Montana.

That's HRDC in Galton Park and Marr Counties, uh, Front Step CLT in Missoula, the Big Sky Community Housing Trust in Big Sky, Headwaters Community Housing Trust here in Bozeman, uh Trust Montana works all across the state, and Northwest Montana Community Land Trust is in Flathead Valley and Northwest Montana generally.

Um of the history of how HRDC has been using community land trusts.

Um we developed the first community land trust in the state in 94.

That's the West Babcock CLT.

That is now 25 detached single-family homes that are affordable at 80% AMI.

Um most recently, uh in 2018 and pictured there on the left, is two tiny homes that were built on a remainder parcel of land.

Um next, uh, we had the Livingston CLT.

Uh the land was donated by the city for this purpose.

Um we've built 12 town homes, I believe, with um some habitat for humanity involvement to help that get started.

Uh those are also affordable at 80% AMI.

Uh and then we jumped forward to 2021.

Uh Willow Springs, it's on uh the Northwest in Bozeman here, 24 town homes that are affordable at 120% of AMI.

You'll notice that, you know, in the 90s we were able to make those affordable at 80% AMI.

Things in Bozeman got a little less affordable between you know the 90s and the late teens and early 20s.

Uh now we're at kind of 120% AMI to make this work.

Uh we also developed Meadow View uh in 2021.

That's 52 condos.

It was the first condo style community land trust, where it's not individual lots, but one lot owned and then leased back to a larger organization that sort of handles that responsibility.

Uh in developing that housing, we helped create the Big Sky Community Housing Trust, and we've since transferred all of those.

Well, that responsibility, not the homes themselves to the Big Sky Community Housing Trust.

Um we have Bridge Review, and Nathan Stein knows better than anybody, so correct me if I've got this wrong.

Um it's a mixed income pocket neighborhood, 62 homes, I believe 31 or also, 33.

Yeah, that's right, there's the extra two.

We're priced affordable at 120% AMI.

And what a beautiful picture that is from your website.

So photo credit.

Oh, well, great.

Affordable at 120%.

The pricing is always a little under just to make it affordable for people.

We also at HRDC have a scattered site land trust program.

We currently have five homes in it.

The one pictured there is in Livingston.

It's a single detached home.

Those come about because uh homeowners generally that have owned their homes for a long time go to sell their home and realize that the price they could receive in the market is more than somebody who works in our community can afford.

They know that the home will either be torn down or turned into an Airbnb or just used as an investment vehicle, and they'd really like to see the opportunity that they had when they came to Bozeman available to the residents of today.

They work with HRDC to sell us the home at an affordable price.

We put all the legal uh mechanisms in place then, and then sell it to another homeowner and create this permanent affordable home.

Uh if you know anybody that would like to get involved in a program like that, please have them contact me.

We'd love to do more of those.

Um we had an opportunity to do a very informal case study.

This is not um, you know, we're making some assumptions here to make this work, but it really helps illustrate um the benefits of CLT ownership and and also the drawbacks of CLT ownership.

Um first uh we had three town homes, one that was becoming a scattered site land trust home of ours, another next door for sale on the market, and then just down the road, one being used as a rental uh where we knew the renter and could get sort of the price information as it changed.

Um so you'll see rent started out 1,600 by the end of you know three years later, almost jumped up to 3100.

We took figure out that total housing cost over that time, about 79,000.

The renter you know no longer sees any benefit to that money spent over time.

We'll jump jump to the far right, regular ownership.

It sold on the market, um, they had their regular housing cost, and then when they went to sell it three years later, uh, and this is not you know a typical period for housing growth uh price growth in Bozeman, but um it can happen, right?

So the home price essentially doubled, and they were able to walk away with a quarter of a million dollars in profit, which is great for them, but not so good for the person who had to buy the home at a $500,000 price rather than a 260,000 dollar price.

Uh in the middle, we have the CLT ownership option.

Um, the initial price would have been 264,000.

Uh, somebody was willing to walk away from $54,000 of that to make the home affordable for a local uh, you know, working here.

Uh you can see their you know total monthly housing cost is $1,300, just about compared to the $2,300 for the regular ownership.

There's some other you know, benefits to CLC ownership that can lower your payments uh generally.

Um let's say they sold, they didn't, they still live in the home.

Um but if they had sold at the same time as the market rate unit, they would have been able to sell for two percent uh per year of appreciation.

That's what we cap that to in our ground leases.

Uh they would have also paid off almost $13,000 in off of their mortgage, and they'd walk away with about $18,000, which is nowhere near the quarter of a million dollars that the market rate homeowner left with, but that home will be affordable in perpetuity and is far better than the rent where that money just went away, went to somebody else.

Um, what I want to highlight here is the stability of the CLT ownership.

Um that person's housing payment stayed roughly the same throughout this ownership.

It still is roughly the same.

Insurance might have gone up, but they didn't, you know, receive a large rent increase from their landlord.

Their landlord couldn't come and sell the home from underneath them, forcing them to find housing at an extremely difficult time in Bozeman to find housing.

Um, it makes a huge difference to that person to have that stability.

It lets them put down roots, it lets them take risks, like going back to school.

I personally know the person who bought uh this home actually, um, didn't work there then, but just a coincidence, and that's what he did.

He used that stability to go back to school and try to, you know, change his life for the better.

Um couple of the keys to these community land trusts.

Uh it's a one-time investment to make these homes affordable, but it creates permanent affordability via the resale restriction.

That public subsidy or private subsidy if given by an individual is not privately captured.

It's gonna stay with the home from the first homeowner to the 10th homeowner.

Um previously there's been some housing programs in Bozeman that made houses affordable to folks.

Uh, and then when those people sold those homes, those first buyers, they sold at a market rate and the home was no longer affordable, and there's really no way to go back and make it affordable.

The subsidy required is uh much lower today than we think it'll be in 10 years and 20 years.

Uh, and the same thing is held true for the past.

Um2s require some ongoing stewardship for the property.

Uh, these can't really just be set and forgotten.

The sales process is a little more complicated than with a market rate home.

Um, and we like to stay up and make sure that if if a homeowner is getting behind on a mortgage that we're getting out in front of that.

Um, we wanna make sure that the home is right for them.

Um, and then also compliance checks.

We want to make sure that they're following the ground lease.

Some things in the ground lease uh require the home to be a primary residence.

We don't allow these homes to be short-term rented, um, and really uh that that annual compliance makes sure that that's what's happening.

Um we also make sure that the homes are insured enough that if something were to happen, we could rebuild that home, keep that subsidy in place on it.

Would be a new home, but on that property and in a like product.

Um there is access to financial supports uh in these homes that don't really exist for market rate ownership, below market financing exists, um, down payment assistance programs exist that really help um some of these buyers stretch to get into these homes that they wouldn't be able to without these extra financial supports.

Um, we see this as sort of a middle step between renting and a full market ownership.

Somebody can stay in one of these homes for 10 years and the amount they've paid down on their mortgage and the 2% uh appreciation per year can be enough then that they sell and have a down payment to get into the regular market and sort of live that American dream of homeownership.

Um I do want to add that you know these are generally the largest purchase that somebody will make in their lives.

They might make a you know future home purchase, but um, this is a big deal to those individuals.

Uh they do a great job taking care of the homes.

If we walk down the street, you know, where we did that case study, nobody would point out the home uh that was a CLT home compared to the market ones, unless it was just a little nicer than not being a rental.

Um we're really proud of this program existing.

We're really proud to operate it.

Um we love the stability that comes for these folks.

Um, there's a lot of support for lower income.

Not a lot, that's that's the wrong term.

There are supports for lower income folks at below 60% AMI.

We have low income housing tax credits that provide rentals, um, people you know that are able to afford the market can, but this really hits a sort of middle income, the missing middle, it's called, um, that doesn't have access to a federal housing program, but still can't afford to find adequate housing and put down those roots.

Um, just check my notes, make sure I didn't miss anything.

Yeah, no, I think that's it.

Um, I was asked to keep it pretty high level.

So if you have any questions, I'm happy to get down into the weeds of how all of it works, but just wanted to provide that overview.

Thank you so much for that presentation.

I'm sure we have some questions.

I'm gonna do the same thing that I did before.

We're just gonna go down the line.

If you don't have a question, just say pass.

And I am gonna ask that you just ask if you can limit it to one or two questions, and then once everyone's done, if we have additional questions, I'll just open it up again.

And it's gonna be easy.

I'm quite familiar with CLTs and I admire the work that you guys do.

Thank you for doing this.

Thank you.

It's a lot more work and it requires a ton more effort on an ongoing basis, but um I think it's worth uh pursuing.

Um, we are cheernitting you guys.

What are your projects?

What are you currently working on?

Uh in just the CLT space or no, just with HRDC.

Oh God.

Um I'll have to stick to community development projects because there's uh many more uh ongoings that I am aware of at HRDC.

Um we're working on fundraising for a CLT project in Gardner to provide um really stable housing that doesn't exist there.

Most of the housing there is not built to codes, so we're building a four-sale product that you just can't find.

Not uh a huge, I'm forgetting the exact number of a huge percentage of the housing there is short-term rentals.

Um it's really made it very hard for that community down there.

Um we are partnered on a number of low income housing tax credit developments.

Hidden Creek broke ground just last week.

Um we have a few more uh in the works closing in the next couple weeks, hopefully.

Um early stages for future uh low-income housing tax credit projects to close next year.

We are still stabilizing the Belgrade trailer court that we purchased in February of 2024.

Um trailer courts are tough.

We didn't know what we didn't know, and and you know, two years later we're really still trying to figure out how to get stable financing and stop any rent increases that we can from going on there.

Um the sewer system needs to be fully replaced, and we're still figuring out how to make that happen.

Uh in Park County, we're developing a uh voluntary fee program for housing uh to fund housing, and that's kicking off very shortly.

Um, we have we have so many.

Um we really do.

We keep a lot of irons in the fire at all times.

Um we uh have a project with the city of or town of West Yellowstone, excuse me, um, to help them look at uh they they grew by 80 acres, which is a really big deal for a town completely constrained by what Yellowstone National Park and Forest Land, um, and helping them figure out how to make sure that that housing that gets built can be a community asset long term.

Um yeah, I'll I'll leave it there, but I'm sure I'll sit down and remember many more that we are doing.

Perhaps I would have said I should have raised the question like what are you most proud of?

But I think I we get an idea.

Thank you.

I was just wondering, can these homes be passed down in the event of a death of the owner?

What happens then?

Yeah, they they can be passed down.

Um we do require that the new owner also meets the eligibility requirements.

Um so they would still have to be in the income range for the individual home.

Um and then they would continue, we'd sort of qualify them, put the new ground lease under, and then that would be it.

Um if they don't meet those requirements, they aren't local, they want a short-term rent it while they you know live somewhere else, then we sell the home to another buyer and the proceeds would follow who the house would have gone to generally.

Um, but they they can be passed down, yes.

And how long are the leases?

Is it like 80 years?

I don't know.

Uh for the land leases.

Either 75 years renewable for another 75 years or 99 years renewable for another 99 years.

So they're they're permanent.

Um cool.

Um, I was wondering um first, what screening do you guys do for buyers in this process?

And second, do you find that people who could afford a market rate home generally kind of screen themselves out because of the interest rate cap or the uh appreciation cap?

Yeah, we look at uh income, household size, um assets that might exist um to make sure they don't own another resident somewhere that they're gonna live in.

Um we require them to take a first-time home buyer course, sorry, home buyer education course.

They're required to be like a HUD-defined first-time home buyer, which means they could have owned a home, but if they got divorced, they become a first-time home buyer again.

If it's been three years since they owned a home, they become a first-time home buyer again.

Um yeah, we we screen out some people or don't screen them out, but if if folks can afford a market rate product, we generally advise them that that's what they should buy.

Um, you know, we we love the CLT program and the stability it provides, but it can't provide the wealth building that a market rate home can.

And it's a great point, and something I I wanted to speak to is these homes have to compete because they're priced, you know, affordably.

But if someone can substitute a like good there, they're going to, because it's it's generally a better one.

So even if you know, we have conversations with uh people that want to do our scattered site land trust program that maybe own a million dollar home and they can sell it to us for seven or eight hundred thousand dollars, which is a really generous amount of money to leave on the table.

But it concerns us that if someone has 700,000, they maybe can't buy as nice of a home with that, but they can go buy another home or something or a thousand dollars of buying power.

And that's what we would recommend they do.

So we we try very hard to say, you know, you won the lottery and you can buy this, but we don't think you should.

Um and for the most part, people kind of hear that conversation and decide, oh, I can't buy this town, you know, I can't buy the single family detached home I can right now, but I can buy a market rate town home, and then maybe in three to four years, five years, I can buy the single detached that I'd like to have.

Um, you know, same story, town home to condo.

So they really do have to be quality homes that can compete in the market.

Um, we like to say they need to be about 30% below market and not have an easy substitute.

Makes sense.

Thanks.

Thanks, Kelsey.

Forgive me for not really having questions as much as just wanting to add a couple of um of pieces.

Thanks for the presentation, Rick.

Um, Headwaters Community Housing Trust, we are a community land trust.

It is our identity and and uh core programming.

Um totally agree with everything Rick had in his presentation here about CLTs.

I think I would just um two notes uh I wanted to emphasize, and Rick, I'm glad you just touched on like the marketability of the units, that's a really important piece with pricing.

Um, but the stewardship aspect of running a community land trust, um, it's not like an also piece of it.

It's it's core to the programming, and I know that Rick and our colleagues at HRDC are well aware of that.

I think it's really easy to measure measure impact of community land trusts in terms of you know numbers of of homes added to the housing trust or preserved, and obviously that that is a hugely important metric.

Um, but there's a lot of ongoing work that goes into preserving the affordability of that initial subsidy.

Um, and that looks like managing the resales over time, managing weighted drawings, weighted lotteries to select buyers, um, supporting homeowners through the life cycle of home ownership.

So that includes, you know, if someone wants to finish out their basement or if they want to add solar panels to the roof, uh, we're walking, you know, side by side with them through that process to make sure that it's all you know up to code and they don't they don't get burned on the back end for missing something, keeping in mind that most of these folks are generally first-time homeowners.

So if they're kind of learning the ropes of that process, um we step in for refinances as well to make sure you know they're not getting over-leveraged and you know, putting the affordability of the home at risk if something were to happen.

Um, and that that's a full-time position in our organization is just managing stewardship of the housing trust, supporting homeowners and protecting that affordability.

Um I think the only other thing I wanted to add is, you know, and and I think Rick showed this really well in that in that case study.

Um, thanks, Rick.

Um, I I think the only thing I would add would be like if you were to project this out another 10 years, the CLT homes grow increasingly affordable relative to the rest of the market over time.

So while today, you know, that home might still be affordable to a household at you know 100 or 110% of the area of median income.

If the rest of the housing market is appreciating at 4% annually, while these homes are appreciating at two or two and a half percent annually, the market runs away over time while these homes um get more affordable in comparison.

So you're not just creating affordability um in the short term, but you're actually creating this alternative decommodified market um of homes that are um permanent affordable and increasingly affordable to middle income and moderate income folks in the community.

So we love community land trusts, obviously.

Yeah, and I guess I'd just say, you know, every anybody who's been in Bozeman long enough knows somebody that moved away because they couldn't afford the housing here or because they knew they wouldn't be able to buy a home here and this program really allows that bridge to be gapped and that stability not for just the individual but for the whole community.

Chairman, I ask a question to Rick.

Rick, you were talking earlier about some of the restrictions on the on the homes, and so you know, and they make sense to me.

Uh the the uh what did you call it?

The uh owner occupancy, maybe.

Owner occupancy, you can't have uh you can't you can't use it as a short-term rental, those things.

But I'm wondering, um, can you can you rent a room out?

Uh the groundless we use has changed over time.

Um, but currently, yes, you are allowed to use uh you know that to supplement your rental income.

Um we do require a copy of the lease that the lease is a long-term lease, not a short-term lease, uh, and that the rental rate cannot be more than the total mortgage payment being made by the homeowner.

I see.

Thank you.

Can I just sum it up, Chair, real quick?

I just would like to thank I mean we're so fortunate to have experts in our community like Nathan, like Rick.

I'm just I'm very appreciative of of that of the your you guys' resources in your organizations as the city evolves our housing program from a you know, with a lot of rental units that we've been working on over the last several years um into a more of a for-sale model using community land trust.

We're gonna really we're gonna really need these guys that these kind of organizational expertise to help us navigate uh the complexities of uh of these of these um land trust models.

So um I'm learning a lot from you guys, and so I really appreciate it and thank you very much for being here and helping to educate us on uh what this looks like.

Yeah, happy to come back anytime and talk about it.

And thank you guys for donating your time to work towards a better future for Bozeman.

Thank you for coming out.

We really appreciate all of you coming out and giving these presentations and updates.

Uh I think that these uh presentations, that we should allow some public comment if we have any for these presentations.

I know normally um we don't, but I think it's important just because the um the economic infrastructure of the optic fiber was really compelling, and the presentation that we just heard is really compelling.

So I'm gonna go ahead and open it up for public comment.

If anyone has a public comment relating to this, please state your name.

Please tell us if you're a resident and if you are a landowner, property owner, and limit your comment to three minutes.

Do we have any public comments in regards to the special presentations that we just heard?

Uh no requests online.

All right.

Thank you so much.

All right, we get a uh update on our engagement framework that you talked to us about, I think a couple months ago, right?

Yes, um, that's right.

Rogers, I um I actually have an update from Takami Clark that I but I I can't remember exactly what it says, so I need to pull it up here because she asked me to make sure that I I really communicated this well to the board.

So it was in your packet, so I mean it's not something that you probably haven't seen already.

But um, she just wanted me to make sure that uh that the board knew that they were launching um well, I'll just read it.

The city of boson is revisiting its engagement framework known as the engaged boseman, known as engaged boseman.

Public engagement is starting is starting on the project now, asking residents to give any feedback they have regarding how they've participated in engagement.

I saw a post today, for example, uh uh that was asking that very question.

So I know that this campaign is underway.

Um, and then the second paragraph is just a little bit about uh where the history of where the engaged boseman program came from.

So um just to commute just wanted to communicate that to you there.

The link is in your packet.

Uh so if you were to take that um take that survey, you could find the link there.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Do you have a question for for Brent?

Yeah, I just wanted to confirm.

When I opened the survey itself, it said it was due by May 18th, I believe.

Even though this says June 15th, and so does Engage website.

So I think I'm guessing the survey just needs to be updated with that language, but I'll let them know.

I don't I don't really know.

The details on that, I'm sorry.

No, we can go to that.

Uh we do have our summer months coming up, and we just wanted to find out what people's schedules are.

If people are planning on traveling, uh, if there are any months that maybe we feel that we can skip.

I think last year we took July off.

Does that sound right?

I don't remember if it was June or July.

Do either of you remember?

Um, so yeah, I'm just interested in knowing if anyone has any summer plans and or is going to be gone.

What's that look like for us?

I will be gone in July.

Okay.

Just to give you a heads up.

Thank you.

I don't think I'll be traveling, but we do have a baby due in early July.

Okay.

That's exciting.

Um I will either be unavailable online for June for June.

Okay.

I'm not going anywhere as usual, so I'll be here.

I should be around for uh all of the summer meeting times.

Um I think the only day that I will not be available is that last week of June, first week of July.

So if this meeting's scheduled for the first of July, I would be out for that one.

Well, it seems like a lot of us have uh July as a month that is busy.

How do we feel about just not meeting in July and meeting in August?

My response would be yes.

Okay.

What are you thinking?

August would definitely be better than July for me.

Okay.

Yeah, we're good.

Everyone good?

Unless there's just something that's so important that we need to discuss in July.

I think that it makes sense to just um just hold off until August.

That sounds good.

We just need to make sure we we are prepared for whatever the schedule looks like so that we we know when to bring things to the board.

Um since since it sounds like July is the agreeable cancellation month, um, I would put an item on the agenda for June just to formally cancel the meeting if that if that's okay with the with the board.

Yes, that makes sense.

Okay.

All right, do we have any other FYI?

From either Brett or our commissioner early.

Sure.

Um I I gotta say I was I was really glad to see that you folks um took on or had this presentation on the land trusts.

Um the commission on the in our last meeting in April.

I'm trying to think where month we are, right?

Uh uh June, July, and actually we're still in May.

Um last meeting in April, we we kind of dove deep into the work plan for our our various commission priorities and looking at new ways to kind of you know uh support affordable housing.

Public, you know, public funding for affordable housing is one of our priorities.

I think it's one of our top priorities.

If I had to judge the you know comments from the from the commission.

And and so it's you know, looking at land trusts, looking at revenue bonds, looking at you know levies, all these things are going to be on the table, and so it's great to have you guys getting a head start.

And I'm thinking I'm gonna assume that most of these ideas are gonna come rolling into you at some point.

So um belonging in Bozeman is another big thing that's also this part of this uh preview of this this um uh uh the advisory board, and and so we'll we'll be looking at uh and I'm sure we'll we'll see some of that coming up in the next few months as we decide, you know, kind of which which um which parts of that plan to tackle and and how um and then jobs didn't get as much talk in our work plan, but there were a lot of things to talk about.

But jobs, child care, those are also commission priorities, and you've you've dug into those before, and we'll have those here again.

So, thank you.

So belonging in Bozeman and child care sounds like what we're gonna be uh getting some reports on, focusing on for the next couple of months.

And housing and how how we support public how we how we can publicly support affordable housing.

So I think that's gonna be the we're gonna have a couple of the commission's gonna have a couple of work sessions like that will get deeper into those and then I think we'll we'll work with or work with staff to figure out how to and the advisory boards to figure out you know how how to start surfacing ideas out of the community and and tackling these ideas.

Great great well thank you so much for that letting us know what we have to look forward to all of these things are really really important to our community and I'm sure that we'll have a lot of uh a lot of discussion and hopefully public comment yeah we want to hear we want to hear from the community chair I have one FYI if you don't mind I just please thank you personally thank you very much for appearing before the study commission and providing your insight which I think is uh super important and um and I you did an outstanding job representing not only this body but uh the boards in general so thank you very much for for doing that I appreciate it.

Well thank you for the for the thank you I was very pleased to represent our board and to highlight the talents of this board and to make sure that um that our community knew how much we care and that this is an act of service and uh I hopefully I I did that to the best of my ability but I am really proud of of all of us that are on this board and I thank you for serving and giving so diligently to our community and I just wanted to make sure that that was recognized.

All right great meeting we're gonna go ahead and call this meeting for adjournment it is 7 26 we get out a little early.

Goodbye