Loc Loc All right, Mike, I went without even looking at you.

No signal.

Uh good morning and welcome to the June twenty third city of Bozeman city commission meeting.

Um, we're glad that you're here with us this evening.

Um, a few housekeeping items before we get started.

Um, provide public comment associated with every action item as well as uh non-agenda public comments as well as on our consent item.

Um, we'll make sure it's telegraphed well in advance so folks don't miss the opportunity.

Um we'll start with public comment in the room, then we'll do online public comment.

Um, for anyone following along at home, uh, and you're listening either from calling in or cable channel one ninety will not be able to provide public comment, so if you wish to do so, hop on over to our streaming page on the city's website.

Um, we did have a uh a debacle with our public comment repository service laser fees.

Uh but they were all the comments were still distributed to us today.

We were able to get it figured out and laser features back online.

Okay, moving on to changes to the agenda.

City manager, I believe we have a couple of changes.

Yes, we do, mayor.

Thank you.

We are going to remove consent item F3 from the agenda tonight.

And we are going to move F9 to the first action item.

Great.

So for just to reaffirm, F3 is no longer on this agenda.

There is no date certain for that item, and F9 will be our first action item directly after general public comment.

Okay.

Any FYI from the commission this evening?

Yep, Commissioner Sweeney.

Thank you, Mayor.

While I was not able to attend in person the historic preservation advisory board meeting last week, they did agree to form a subcommittee to work on draft um demolition code language and ideas.

And uh thank you for Commissioner Magic sitting in on that meeting for me.

Great.

Any further FYI?

Just um the city manager, you can do who 4th of July.

Like any sort of announcement.

Yes, when it's returned, good.

Okay.

Are you gonna do the 4th of July?

Are you gonna go?

Um any further FYI?

Um I have just uh one that I want to share about, relatively unprepared, but just wanting to acknowledge uh a tragedy last week, um, the loss of uh of a child um on our on our streets um and knowing that that tragedy reverberates much farther out than just that family, but I know um our hearts with with that family.

Um that the tragedy of losing um not only someone on roadways that is such an avoidable um tragedy, but also of a child, and an un an unimaginable pain that that family must be going through, and knowing that for many of us that reopens some of the scars, some of the wounds of Leslie Brown that was just earlier this year, and Kelly Fulton, of course, and others that um have that we've lost um in this community, and just wanting to bring bring that tragedy and bring that pain into this room.

Um that is any further FYI from the commission.

Okay.

From staff.

I do.

Uh, thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Commissioner Magic.

It is our 250th anniversary, in case you haven't heard, as a country.

Um, on 4th of July, we invite everybody to come celebrate with our annual fireworks show at the fairgrounds.

And this is an amazing collaboration between our fire department and several private businesses in town who fund this thing 100% with no taxpayer money.

And uh we are looking forward to at 10 p.m.

Uh our fireworks, we're gonna light up the sky, and uh those are the only fireworks allowed in Bozeman, and that is a really difficult thing to police and enforce.

Um, but it's been the law for a couple of years now, and we've been pretty lenient about it.

Uh, we just ask the public to please understand that fireworks are prohibited in the city of Bozeman for a lot of reasons.

Safety is the primary reason, but we know that won't not everybody will respect that.

So the fireworks show 10 p.m.

at the fairgrounds, come one come all.

The second thing is that we are going to be launching a social media uh video series very shortly.

It's called Bozeman at Work, and we want to highlight some of our amazing employees across the organization.

We don't talk enough about the great things that this city does all day, every day, and we want to highlight some of the folks that are doing that work and get that word out amongst our community.

So look for that coming, and that'll be on the social media channels within a week.

Thank you.

Thank you, City Manager.

This is the first time hearing that it's our 250th anniversary as a country.

That's really exciting.

People should be talking about that more.

Moving on to disclosures.

Are there any commission disclosures related to any items in front of us this evening?

Yeah, Commissioner Bode.

I know that today we are going to have a action item on the opportunity zone, and I just want to name again that we have previously discussed the possibility of a land grant.

Wow, my words escape me.

Of there being a housing nonprofit, such as Headwaters, HRDC, or some other nonprofit in the community building a housing development in that area.

And the application for this opportunity zone lists housing as one of the goals for it.

And I just want to name that.

My partner works for Headwaters Community Land Trust.

Requiring me to recuse myself tonight because there's no discussion of actual allocations of funds to any one organization.

I just want to name that for the record.

Thank you for that.

Seeing no further disclosures, we'll move on to consent.

City manager, there are any items on consent you'd like to highlight.

Just one quick one, Mayor, thank you.

Item F 18.

This has to do with uh the sports park.

And because of the competitive bidding, climate, and because of the work great work done by staff, we were significantly under budget, and we were able to add some of the features that were value-engineered out.

So this is not new things that we're spending money on.

It's putting things that were originally planned for that sports park back into the sports park because of the great work of our staff, and we appreciate our partnership with the school district and the Sports Park Foundation to uh get that extra field and that parking lot.

Uh, one of the benefits of the parking lot is that it's going to uh address some of the strain that uh the limited parking at Gallatin High is causing on the local neighborhoods.

So we're looking forward to uh continuing that effort, and that's it, thank you.

Thank you, City Manager.

Um, before bringing it up here, we'll open up for public comment.

Um, so any public comment in the room this evening on our consent agenda, save for F3 and F9 that have been moved and uh designated as an action item respectively.

Second request for public comment on consent in the room, and one final request for comment in the room.

Mr.

Moss, are we seeing any public comment requests online?

I'm showing no request for comment, Mayor.

Okay.

We'll bring it up here for a motion and vote.

Um, before we get there, I want to just uh answer to some of the questions about the consent agenda that I think have emerged and they they emerge every so often when there's something that the public wants us to take off.

Um the consent agenda, there's nothing hidden in the consent agenda.

It's not any less accountable or transparent.

Um I understand that there's times where the folks want to hear us discuss deliberate.

And in my time on the commission, I believe we've heated that call nearly.

I'm not gonna say 100% of the time, because I suspect that there's some time that we haven't, but nearly 100% of the time that even one person has submitted comments saying take it off consent and talk about it.

We have done so.

And so, you know, just for the the public's awareness, like we uh, uh there's Monday mornings with the city manager, city attorney, clerk, deputy mayor, myself, um, assistant city managers, where we sit down and we talk about the upcoming meeting and the week the meeting two weeks out.

And in that is going through each of the consent items to see which things, you know, what's coming up.

And there's times where we perhaps decide that something could stay on consent that shouldn't.

And we when we get called out, we match that, and we have a presentation here tonight on that item.

Um there's nothing unaccountable, there's nothing less transparent, there's nothing less uh accessible about about doing it that way.

And it's there's a lot of important work that happens on consent uh that we try to get through really quickly.

So just wanting to kind of respond slash remind folks why consent happens and why why we take things off at really kind of the drop of a hat because if there's concerns, we want to be able to bring them out.

Um with that delay, uh Commissioner Magic, do you want to help us out with that motion?

Yes, this is a complicated one.

Let's see if I can get through it.

We believe in you.

Okay.

Um, I move to approve consent items one through two, four through eight, and ten through eighteen.

Exquisite.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded elegantly.

Mr.

Moss.

Commissioner Magic.

I.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Aye.

Deputy Mayor Fisher.

Aye.

Commissioner Boyd.

Aye.

Mayor Morrison.

Aye.

Motion pass the consensus approved five to zero.

Now moving on to public comment on non-agenda items falling within the purview and jurisdiction of the commission.

Um, so for anyone that wants to give public comment, you'll have three minutes.

Tell us your first and last name.

Uh everybody here knows the drill, but just for anyone tuning in online, um, you'll have three minutes.

Uh, the white will change to yellow when you got one minute, it'll turn red and then do a little beep uh when you're out of time, and we just ask that you tell us your first and last name and a little bit about your relationship with the city.

If I could before the clock starts, I apologize for the sunglasses.

I had surgery.

I look like Ozzy Osborne under here.

You look good.

All right, so I apologize.

Yeah, no problem.

Good evening.

All right, good evening, mayor, deputy mayor, and uh commissioners.

I want to uh credit the commission that sat in 1995 for building a deliberate safeguard into the ordinance 1409.

Once once annual tax increment, net of bonds of bond debt service exceeded the inflation adjusted 750,000.

The excess was to be returned to the taxing bodies, including the general fund.

The 15-year time trigger activating that mechanism arrived in 2012.

However, the district's annual net increment did not actually exceed that target cap until 2021.

Since then, the excess has grown each year so that in full year 25, the four-year cumulative total is about 2.4 million dollars.

In 2011, the city entered into an interlocal agreement with Gallatin County and the school district.

The county and school district do receive their proportional shares of remaining funds above debt service.

That is appropriate and well documented.

But section two of that agreement, the city had pledged its own proportional share permanently back to the TIF fund, denying the general fund of the return of ordinance that the order that ordinance 1409 required.

MCA 715 4221 states that an urban renewal plan may be modified by ordinance, not by an interlocal agreement, not by contract.

An ordinance requires public notice, public hearing, and a formal legislative vote.

I have not been able to locate such an ordinance in the public record, a contract between governments can implement an ordinance, but it cannot override one.

The result is a fund balance of 9.7 million dollars, 4.6 times the outstanding bond under MCA 715 4292.

This URD terminates upon provision uh of payment for that bond.

I would ask this commission to formally examine that option and fund the needed fire and police.

If not, dis dissolution, then 1409 is clear.

The inflation adjusted overages should above above the cap should belong to the general fund.

As previously noted, under four uh MCA 715 4221, only an ordinance can change that.

An interlocal agreement cannot.

Therefore, before $8 million is committed to a parking arrangement described in a single sentence with no named partner nor project project detail, MCA 715 4288 requires TIFF expenditures to be uh for specifically enumerated eligible costs and MCA 715 20 uh 4202 amended by the legislature last year in 2025 states that TIFF laws must be used to encourage the development or redevelopment of blighted areas.

Downtown Bozeman can no longer be considered blighted.

Ordinance 1409 itself requires that specific actions be proposed in detail for community review.

Bozeman now operates six TIFF districts, five urban renewal districts, one technology district in each growth with uh in each growth in property values above the frozen base years captured by a TIFF fund rather than any money flowing back to the general fund.

Um none of none of that appreciated property value contributes to police, fire, or services all residents depend on.

Unfairly, that burdens those outside the TIFF boundaries.

Residents deserve to understand that that arrangement clearly that clearly before a new mill levy request is placed before them.

I thank you for your indulgence on the time.

Yep.

Thank you.

We didn't get a name.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Bob Moldown first.

We know, but you know, for the record.

Into the mic, Bob Muldowney was the commenter.

He was distracted by his sunglasses.

Yeah.

Good evening.

Good evening, uh Mark Campanelli.

I am a Bogart Park resident.

Um I uh made some written comments about a TIFF board meeting who's uh that I listened to.

Um, and I just wanted to get it on you know orally on the record as well.

Um they skipped the disclosure section of the TIFF board meeting entirely.

And um when I came back to Bozeman after working my way back here, uh I worked for a workiva who did uh the public reporting for many big companies, so a lot of money at stake.

They required every employee not only to declare if they had stocks like per you could own mutual funds, but if you had any stocks, you were required to sell those stocks and make a declaration because they did not want any semblance of a conflict of interest among their employees.

There were firewalls way in place, even as of someone as it was in QA, even someone with access to the code base, I could not touch the prod databases, had no idea what companies were filing.

If I did, that would have been a huge problem.

But just the appearance they wanted to prevent of a conflict of interest.

So I also want to state that I there's a particular real estate broker that I called out.

I think he has good intentions.

I really do.

I from the background I was able to read about it.

I think he wants to see the Idaho Pole Company property who he had an interest in his brokerage selling, um, and he's now on the TIFF board.

I do think he wants the best for that property.

What I really, really worry about is the use of and and suggestion to use public funds through tax increments and lie tech, right?

For somebody who didn't even disclose the relationship.

Like it kind of happened by accident while he was you know talking about it.

I'm sorry, I'm a little upset.

I mean, I just I really really feel like this goes way beyond like um, I do apologize for being a bit emotional.

Um, also during the meeting they did discuss um moving wetlands that are not maybe historically in the right spot, I think is how it was roughly described.

Don't quote me, you know, you'd have to check the actual transcript, but I had given public comment previously that disturbing the soils in this area is what people are very worried about.

And so now they're talking about you know, moving the wetlands around.

I really think we have to have a plan in place to to just monitor what's going on if we you know start redeveloping that site.

So, anyways, um I appreciate you listening to me.

Like I said, I'm pretty upset about this.

I'm not gonna lie, and again, I'm not trying to drag anybody's reputation through.

It's really like city structures and policies that we really need to revisit.

Thank you.

Any further public comment requests in the room this evening?

Good evening.

Hello, um, Emily Kelly from Homeowner in Baxter Meadows.

Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners.

Um, homeowner in Baxter Meadows.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the commission regarding the fiscal year 2027 downtown Urban Wayne New District budget.

I would like to raise some questions about the TIFF eligibility of certain line items.

I do so in the hope that a brief review will help the commission with their decision tonight.

The governing framework for TIFF expenditures is ordinance 1409 adopted in 1995.

The finance section lists every action item and its authorizing funding sources.

That list is a ceiling on permissible TIFF spending.

I have reviewed the fiscal year 27 work plan against that finance section and found several items that appear questionable or without TIFF basis.

For example, the downtown Bozin Partnership Management Fee of 270,000.

The finance section's organization category contemplated the improvement district board, a public entity, not a private nonprofit.

The DBP did not exist when the district was created, and TIP is not listed as a source for private organizational overhead.

Another DBIP general implementation 200,000 is described as a flexible funding to respond to projects as they arise.

While planning has some basis in ordinance 1409, an open-ended pool with no specific project authorization was not the intent.

TIP eligibility is determined project by project.

Street lamp power reconfiguration SILD planning 50,000 is explicitly described as planning for a successor lighting district ahead of the 2032 DR DURD sunset.

Lighting improvements are TIFF eligible under ordinance 149.

Planning for the districts be placement is not.

Finally, the parking supply management plan and data collection, $5 million, warrants particular attention given its scale.

Parking supply is TIFF eligible, but allocating $5 million to planner future partnership is categorically different from providing parking spaces.

The public record shows no named partner, no signed agreement.

Funds are only sheltered from TIFF distribution if tied to a binding loan commitment, construction contract or development agreement.

I recognize these provisions can be read differently, and I raise these questions without any suggestion of improper intent.

I relied solely on public available records.

I respectfully at the commission asked the commission before approving the budget to request a legal determination on the record of which expenditures are affirmatively authorized by the ordinance 1409's finance section.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any further general public comments in the room this evening?

Second request in the room.

And one final request.

Mr.

Moss, are we seeing any public comment requests online?

I show no requests for comment.

Oh, hand just went up.

First up, we have Ricky Burns.

Ricky, are you there?

Yes, I'm here.

Can you hear me?

Are you wanting to comment on the budget or on non-agenda items?

On the budget.

Um, this is kitten.

Can you hold up and wait until we get to the budget item?

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm showing no additional requests.

Okay.

Seeing no further public comments on non-agenda items, we'll bring it up here and move on to two mayoral proclamations.

Um I'm just gonna read them seated.

Uh so we can because we got a lot of we got a lot of business to get to this evening.

Um, the first is uh in recognition um alongside many other communities in the country in recognizing July as parks and recreation month.

Whereas parks and recreation are an integral part of communities throughout this country, including the city of Bozeman, and whereas parks and recreation promote health and wellness, improving the physical and mental health of people who live near parks, and whereas parks and recreation promote time spent in nature, which positively impacts mental health by increasing cognitive performance and well-being and alleviating illnesses such as depression, attention deficit disorders, and Alzheimer's.

And whereas parks and recreation encourage physical activities by providing space for popular sports, hiking trails, swimming pools, and many other activities designed to promote active lifestyles, and whereas parks and recreation are a leading provider of healthy meals, nutritional services, and education.

Whereas park and recreation programming and education activities such as out-of-school time programming, youth sports, and environmental education are critical to childhood development.

And whereas parks and recreation increase a community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax base, increased tourism, the attraction and retention of businesses, and crime reduction.

And whereas parks and recreation are fundamental to the environmental well-being of our community, and whereas parks and recreation are essential and adaptable infrastructure that makes our communities resilient in the face of natural disasters and climate change.

And whereas our parks and natural recreation areas ensure the ecological beauty of our community and provide a place for children and adults to connect with nature and recreate outdoors.

Therefore, I, Joey Morrison, mayor of the city of Bozeman, recognize and procline July as parks and recreation month throughout Bozeman and encourage all to get out and enjoy our wonderful parks.

We'll just do it right now.

I'm gonna offer it to our director of parks and recreation, Mitch Overton, and then moving on to the second proclamation.

For much in the country for a variety of reasons, that it I think feels tough to unanimously and uncomplicatedly celebrate the birthday of our nation.

But I think nonetheless, there's a lot to patriotism doesn't have to be mindless about faith that our country's good and always has been good.

And I think that's the spirit of this proclamation submitted by the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Whereas on July 4th, 2026, our nation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

And whereas the journey toward this historic milestone is an opportunity to reflect on our nation's past, honor the contributions of all Americans, and look forward, look ahead to the future generations who will carry forward the ideals of democracy and individual liberty that make the United States a unique nation in the world community.

And whereas the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution is a non-political women's service organization established in 1890, whose members are lineally descended from the patriots of the American Revolution, and whereas the daughters are celebrating our nation's rich history and diversity of experience by honoring all individuals who achieved American independence, whose patriots believing in the noble cause of liberty fought valiantly to establish a new nation, and whereas the Montana Society of Daughters of the American Revolution invite all to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 2026, and to have a renewed love of American history, experience the beauty of our country, and ignite a spirit of adventure and innovation that will raise our nation to new heights over the next 250 years.

Now, therefore, I, Joey Morrison, mayor of the city of Bozeman, Montana, offered this commemoration to all residents of Bozeman, Montana.

Okay.

Thank you.

The deputy mayor is envious for his future opportunities to make proclamations.

Moving on to our first action item of the evening, formally referred to as consent item nine, our discussion on opportunity zones.

City manager.

Thank you, Mayor.

As Britt gets ready, I just wanted to make a couple clarifications to the Commission and the community.

This is the second opportunity zone that the city has done.

They last 10 years.

Last time we did it, it was on consent.

So I put it on consent again.

Understanding that it may garner some significant public comment.

I immediately informed the commission before the agenda went out that it was on consent.

Also, Britt reached out to three representatives of three neighborhoods that are inside of this opportunity zone to let them know that it was being discussed by the commission tonight.

So any disappointment in it going on consent, I own that.

And it was my decision, but we immediately let the commission know that this was on the agenda before the agenda was published, and we let the uh representatives of the three neighborhoods within know that as well.

So here tonight uh as an action item is our director of economic development, Britt Fontnum.

Thank you, Mr.

City Manager.

Good evening, Commissioners, Mayor, Deputy Mayor.

Uh it's great to be here.

I appreciate the opportunity to be before you tonight.

See how many times I can say that word in this uh brief presentation.

Um so tonight we're here to talk about an opportunity the opportunity zone opportunity.

Okay.

So first I'd like to start by just informing everyone what what an opportunity zone is.

So an opportunity zone was they were first um they were first designated by Congress in 2017 through the tax cuts and jobs act.

Um and it's intended to be a an area in a community that is defined by a low LMI census tract, which is designated by the Census Bureau, Federal Census Bureau, uh, as a as an area for investment.

So it's meant to be an investment vehicle um in federally designated census tracts that allow for increased opportunity.

So just to be clear, these zones are uh this entire program is a federal program.

The census tracts are designated by the federal government, and the role of the city commission in this process is to authorize the city manager in this case to forward our recommendation, our um our economic development staff's recommendation on which census census tracks would be placed in front of Governor Gianforte for him to decide if uh or which one of those tracks um he would choose.

There are 25 tracks that all governors get a chance to choose.

Um we will submit ours.

Others, if we if this passes this evening, we will submit ours.

Others will submit theirs.

The governor chooses.

I have no way of knowing uh or securing or guaranteeing that even if we submit an application that it'll be chosen uh by Governor Gioforte.

Um, so this is what opportunity zones are.

Why are they important?

Well, they're important for a lot of reasons, most of them speculative, I admit, because we don't know what type of investment opportunity could come around or come along uh if this zone is designed is designated uh by the governor.

But what it does do, and I will demonstrate how it does that in a moment, but it catalyzes private investment, it supports our workforce and housing development efforts, and it strengthens our economic resilience and competitiveness around the state.

So there are two tracks that we uh are forwarding.

Got Gallon County Track Six is the our first priority, and there are a couple reasons for that.

Um track six overlays this federally designated census tract, Gallant County Track Six, overlays two of our um active, actually almost two and a half, maybe, of our active uh urban renewal districts, and that's really important because opportunity zones represent an opportunity to actually um use another funding mechanism, private investment uh that would uh allow us to use our TIFF dollars in other ways.

So it does provide that.

That's just one example of how opportunity zones could be impactful uh in this area.

Uh once again, this green shaded area is a federally designated census tract.

It is not something that our office drew up to up to surround certain areas that we like.

Is it that couldn't be further from the truth?

This is the uh this is what the Census Bureau tells us is a low LMI census tract.

Therefore, this is the one that we're putting forward.

Now, why this one and not this one?

Well, because this census tract 11.02 has been a federally designated and functional opportunity zone for the last 10 years.

Um, and that's really important, I think, for this commission to realize because um I'm about to show you another little map here.

Um, this is uh from our GIS department.

I just want to point out the act the development activity that is going on inside that zone.

That includes an affordable housing project, it includes um uh other commercial projects.

This is an investment vehicle for for development in areas that would otherwise go undeveloped or underdeveloped.

Um, so that's what that's what these zones are uh that's how they were conceptualized.

That is the authority that um uh that created them, the authority that chooses them, and our your role is to um identify and then forward to the Department of Commerce.

So I'd like to just expand uh on the city manager's comments just briefly.

Um I appreciate you making those comments earlier, Mr.

City Manager.

I also wanted the commission to understand the tight time frame that we were under when we were trying to turn this around uh for your consideration.

So um this has been a um, and I don't want to overly um, I don't want to overly, you know, tag our community our uh department of commerce partners with this creating a challenge for us, but um they only let us know that this was even a deadline that the deadline existed on June the 9th.

So that was last week.

Um, because of a cancellation in an upcoming city commission meeting and a deadline that we missed for a particular packet in the previous commission meeting, this meeting tonight is the only commission meeting, the only one that we that we could get in front of you in um before the deadline of July the 7th.

So I just want to make it clear why it came about the way it came about.

So I am absolutely ready to answer questions.

Um I just wanted you to see the motion language that I prepared for you for this item if you choose to uh move forward with that.

Um sorry, wrong direction.

So I stand ready to answer questions, and I will put the motion back up uh here right now.

Great.

Thank you for that that presentation.

Um, leave word to Commissioner Sweeney.

Do you have any questions for Mr.

Fontenelle?

Thank you, Mayor.

Yes.

Um thank you for your presentation, Mr.

Fontaneau.

Um, can you talk a little bit about the incentive to invest in this area?

Who is getting the tax break, which taxes are those?

Um, because you said it bolsters local property taxes, but there is a tax incentive.

So can you talk a little bit about that landscape for us?

Well, I I don't know that I said it bolsters local property taxes.

What it has the potential to expand our tax base uh if the investment is made in in the city limits, like any other investment that would be made.

So um this is a program that is designed to um reinvest capital gains that are achieved from the sale and purchase of property within the zone.

So the the uh beneficiary of this program are the investors, and they are benefited through the creation of an opportunity fund.

Now, the opportunity fund is the pot of money that um that the investors use.

The city of Bozeman doesn't know about the fund, we don't touch the fund, we aren't aware of who's involved in the fund, we have no oversight of the fund.

This is a private investment fund that is structured by the federal government to do the work of investing in low to moderate income census tracts, but our relationship to that work is zero.

Okay, that may have just answered my next question.

Um, which is, you know, in the application, we're talking about affordable housing, um, high paying jobs.

What mechanisms do we as a city have to make sure that that is what we get rather than more hotels, which provide jobs for service workers which are not high paying, or more luxury condos, which feed our amenity community.

Well, there is no guarantee because it's not our program.

So the way that that would likely function is someone would submit an application uh using under our affordable housing ordinance, or they would apply for LITEC tax credits or some other mechanism that we currently use to facilitate the development of those types of uh those types of housing units.

Now, on the job side of things, we focus on traded sector business for a reason.

It's because they pay the highest wages, which allows people to hopefully buy into the local economy, which is which is expensive.

And so, uh once again, we can't guarantee any outcome because it's private property, it's private investment, um, and it's it's uh private, it's a private uh development.

So our mechanism would be through our regulatory process or through some other affordable housing um program element that we have at our disposal.

And could they develop without using any of the programs that we have, like just base zoning and absolutely um so we can't really steer the investment towards like environmental remediation in the pole yard.

It could be anything.

It could be a tool for an in for a private investor.

We have very we have no way of steering it.

It has to be investor driven.

We can um we can have an impact, we can perhaps influence some of those decisions by talking about our affordable housing programs or some of the other work that we do, but it's a private investment on private property.

Okay, I think that's all my questions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Deputy Mayor.

I think my main question was asked and answered.

Um let me just reiterate.

So this is, I mean, this is a federal program.

Yes, sir.

And um and the way um, you know, so investments would come in, and it would be basically like they would they would comply with like our wetlands ordinance or I mean that's how they would inter the these projects, we would have kind of control over these projects just as anybody coming in with a project.

What they would be applied, the zoning laws if they want to take advantage of an affordable housing ordinance or use LITEC, then those kind of restrictions and requirements would would kick in.

Yes, uh, Deputy Mary, and if I could just uh repeat what back what you said because I think it's accurate, and that is our existing zoning, our existing regulatory process, any existing incentives, anything that we do normally in our development today would be applicable in an opportunity zone.

Fair enough.

Thank you.

I think it's my only question.

Commissioner Brodie.

Thank you.

Um yeah, I appreciate the presentation as well and um the ability to have this conversation.

I I think one of the lines in the application is about um does this have community support?

And there's sort of a reference to um CR attached letters of support.

I've been reviewing the public comments and um have seen a number of letters from like the HRDC, um the Bozeman and Montana Chambers of Commerces, um, a number of kind of real estate organizations, um, the Bozeman Symphony.

I haven't seen any direct letters of support from kind of neighborhood association leaders, or you know, the the actual residents in these opportunity zones.

Um maybe I've missed a few, but um, could you kind of um explain to us the process in which you engaged with the neighborhoods and what the the conversation was?

The extent of our engagement was what the city manager has already discussed.

We reached out to the some of the neighbors that we know and that we know have networks within the neighborhood organizations, but given the timeline that I uh that I enumerated earlier, we did the best we could do.

Okay, understood.

Um I know it's a tight turnaround for short.

Um a number of the public comments talk about the poll yard super fund site and kind of speculate like, hey, this actually does seem like a place where an opportunity zone could make sense.

It's it's a really difficult location to develop.

Um and I just want to maybe put into the record and clarify.

We we don't have the tool to specify an opportunity zone in such a small geographic area, right?

Like we have to use census tracks as the the smallest geographic boundary.

That's right.

Okay, so um, yeah, we we couldn't just pull out the poll, pull out the poll yard um and focus on on that particular area.

We could not.

It has to be the designated census tract, the whole thing.

Cause that's the what that's where the LMI calculation comes in.

Gotcha.

Um and then my last question is just um kind of the the weighing of both census track six and um eleven point oh two.

Um I think census track 11.02 is um it just includes a lot of land that's outside of Bozeman city limits and not not necessarily a place that we're actively identifying as wow, we we really gotta fix the fact that there's not development here.

It's it's more that as people annex in, we we consider whether that would be to the benefit of our our community, whereas um census track six is more of a established area where we maybe have um some specific sites within the census track that that we find more challenging.

Could you just um kind of put a little bit more narrative around why you suggest applying for an opportunity zone in both census tracks?

Or I guess maybe continuing the opportunity zone and census track 11.

We're not applying for two opportunity zones, we're applying for one.

We just prioritize them as one and two.

So track six is the our priority because we feel like this area that we've described that we were talking about offers the most opportunity for investment, excuse me for that happening again.

But if you'll notice this, um I'm glad you brought this up about the development pattern, because that's why I put this on the slide.

Because as you notice the where the infrastructure exists, that's where the development is occurring.

Out in that far western side, there's no infrastructure out there, it's not even in the city limits.

And so the development pattern is is creeping slowly along that way.

I would suggest because there is an investment vehicle that allows that to occur.

Okay, so I think there's maybe just some confusion in the public comments, maybe amongst myself here as well.

So, so the um the supporting documents about census track 11.02 are kind of um for example to show kind of one of the existing zones that we have and how that's performed.

Well, it's it's more of a um here's here's where we've come from since the designation 10 years ago.

And if, you know, I'm I'm sort of uh paraphrasing.

I don't get a chance to talk to the governor, I don't get a chance to see the deliberations, I don't get a chance to make argument, I don't get a chance to do any of that stuff.

So we're just simply saying if 06 tract six is not to your liking, we can continue along with tract 1102 for another designation.

That's what we're saying.

Okay, thank you.

Um I'm gonna pass it on.

Commissioner Badger.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks, Mayor.

Thanks, Bret, for the quick turnaround on this.

Uh question I had, a couple of my questions have been answered, but about the 25.

Um, just looking at your staff report here.

So the governor has the opportunity to nominate 25 census tracts throughout the state.

That's correct.

There are 20.

Well, I should let me rephrase that.

It's mostly correct.

They can nominate as many as they want.

They're he's only gonna choose up to 25.

The governor is only gonna choose 25.

Or less.

Okay.

Do you happen to know the criteria that he would use to make a final choice?

And the criteria the federal government would use to make a final choice.

I do not.

Okay.

Interesting, thanks.

Um thank you.

Uh some of my questions have been asked.

I've got a couple.

Um, Brett really appreciate you making quick sprint together slides for us to chew on this evening.

Um, do we know?

So, you know, the Montana Department of Commerce has their website, they have a map of every opportunity zone in the state.

Um, and you see as you look along, virtually every city has an opportunity zone kind of smack dab in the middle and often overlapping at an area that's been tough to develop.

That seems true of Billings.

Seems true.

Missoula, seems true of Helena.

Um, do we have any indication as to what other cities are putting forward this time?

Like, are we are we kind of again with our peers or are we treading into this water largely alone?

We are submitting our material without knowledge of what others are doing.

But I'm aware that there will be some other submissions.

But I I don't know exactly who or how many.

So there wouldn't be any reason to suggest that other cities are not our foregoing in this time or are skeptical.

Um, I'm not aware of any skepticism from other communities.

A few just to clarify the so uh yes, the timeline that they gave us is frustrating.

Is that the window that we had in 2016 as well?

No, we had more time.

We didn't have what is it, basically 30 28 days, 27 days?

We had more time um in the previous application, and uh can't account for why the timeline was so compressed.

Um, the other is sort of on the and I understand there's you know that there's a million other factors that come into play into whether these work or don't work.

Um the the narrative and the research out there seems to be quite mixed as to whether they achieve their desired result.

Um what if what is our experience of ours?

Has it I I understand that it's you know brought investment in.

How do we how do we quantify?

You know, I feel like this is the eternal conversation that we're having with these types of tools of like how do we quantify what we're giving up or what's what somebody's getting a you know a kickback for or an incentive for versus what we're getting?

In this in this program, we're not getting anything except a designation that allows investors to um realize some capital gains for their investments inside the city limits.

I don't have a window into the funding, I don't have a window into the partners, I don't have a window into the governor's thinking, I don't have a window into any of that any of those areas.

It would be good if we could, but those are private investments on private property, and we don't have a window into any of those things.

But I can show you this map, which demonstrates all of the development activity going on inside the opportunity zone.

I would submit to you that that's not accidental.

The maybe a smarter way to uh ask this question is like anecdotally, in your experience or or David's experience, have we heard from folks that have built projects that said if this weren't for an opportunity zone, we could have never done this?

No one has ever come out and said that directly to me.

But we don't talk about it as an it's not a it's not a government tool.

So I'm not surprised that I'm not being included in those conversations.

Sure.

Um any further questions?

Yeah, Commissioner Magic.

Just um kind of on the similar lines as the mayor, taking a little step further.

Do we ever, or could you imagine us ever kind of playing the role of advocate to an investor saying there is this opportunity out there and helping kind of direct the kind of growth or projects we may want with that advocacy?

Yes, I mean, evidenced by the fact that we have a layer on our GIS system, I think demonstrates that we use this as a discussion point.

Um are you looking for property?

Have you looked in the opportunity zone?

And and it really ends there because some people just weren't aware that we had an opportunity zone, for example.

So, yes, like we drive people to LITEC census tracks, like we drive people to TIFF districts, like we drive investment in other areas of our community where there might be an incentive, we would do the same, we would do the same here, but it's it's a um it's not advocacy so much as it is an awareness.

Yeah, got it.

Okay.

Commissioner Sweeney.

So do the opportunity zones expire after 10 years?

Is that yes?

Okay.

So if we do not submit the application to continue, will census tract 11.02 expire.

Yes.

Okay.

Um it may expire anyway.

If they choose a different zone, it'll expire anyway.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

So if it raises the um economic analysis of the well, what I mean is if if the other tract is chosen, that tract expires.

Oh.

Because it's got a 10-year lifespan.

If this tract is chosen, then it gets another 10-year authorized reauthorization.

So you're almost proposing let this one expire and designate.

That's correct.

Ah, okay.

Thank you.

That was not clear from.

And then is there any kind of you know, say in five years, we're just seeing devastating gentrification and displacement of working populations from this area.

Is there an off ramp?

Is there a way for us to say no?

Actually, this was a mistake.

No, those deli I think that your deliberations on development projects on their own will be that opportunity for you.

Okay.

Well, but under MLUPA, we don't.

Well, the track the tract once established is is um uh available for 10 years.

Right.

Okay, thank you.

That's all makes.

Any further questions?

Yeah, deputy mayor.

Maybe kind of small, but there was some public comment reference in for census track six to the Bozeman Square project or the Kmart site.

Um, and that that but I just was my impression is my reading here correct in that having a project that's showing potential does not necessarily disqualify the the pro the sense the uh census area or the the as a for an opportunity zone, right?

It it's not it's not a the fact that we have maybe some projects in the pipeline in that sense, area is not necessarily disqualifying um to show that oh that this place doesn't need help.

So to be clear, that the Bozeman Square project that you refer is not in the pipeline.

There's no application, there's no there's just conversation.

So it's a potential.

It's a potential, you know.

Um and so there's it's not just I just want everyone to be clear about that.

There's no application for that project.

It's not in the pipeline, just to be clear.

There are other projects in the tract that are much further along than the Bozeman Square.

Um that all that may well be in the pipeline.

So um that is a coincidence that is worth remarking over, but that census tract is designated by the federal government, not by the city of Bozeman.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, Commissioner Badgick.

One last question.

That northern line is gripping.

I'm sorry, Commissioner.

Could you say that about it?

The northern boundary of track six is just northern, lane.

This blue line here.

Yeah, okay.

And what was the question?

I'm sorry.

It's Griffin Lane.

Oh, is that uh I didn't look at the street names, I'm sorry.

I but that's Main Street there.

It looks like um could be that looks like um, turning into Bridger Drive.

I'm just seeing that that mobile home park that's on the corner of Griffin and Rouse is outside of it, which is curious about that's probably a separate census track, but seems like it's a low income opportunity to fix up the mobile home.

All right.

Go ahead.

Any further questions?

Okay.

Um thank you for the mission.

Um we'll open it up now for public comment on this item.

Um for we'll start with public comment in the room.

Um you'll have three minutes.

Uh please just introduce yourself.

First and last name, relationship to the city.

Um you'll have three minutes, it'll turn once that light turns yellow, it means you got one minute left and it'll beep red, telling you that you're out of time.

Good evening.

Thank you.

Uh my name is Ross Keo.

I'm actually from Missoula, Montana, uh, but happen to be here today.

I am deeply involved in opportunity zone structuring across the western United States, and I wanted to share that perspective if it's helpful for the Bozeman City Council.

In particular, I'd like to talk about the Rivara project in Missoula.

This is the currently largest affordable housing project.

It happened because of the opportunity zone designation in that census tract.

That's what got the developer to the table.

So it got the developer interested in it.

When it comes to housing over the last really 10 years, but for the opportunity zone incentive, we would have not seen the level of housing development that we saw, in particular in Bozeman.

I helped any number of clients on the development side look at projects, look at capital stacks and figure out how to structure projects and the incentive that existed in particular in Bozeman moved the needle on those projects and made them possible.

I think those are misplaced and are unlikely to occur.

Developers don't look for neighborhoods to to tear down and to rebuild.

So if you're buying into buildings or structures that already have significant capital invested into them, you make that math more challenging and problematic.

Those are more likely to happen, or probably won't happen unless this is unless that this um designation is provided at site.

Um unfortunately it's it's a it's a tool, it's a tax tool, it's limited by what the federal government gave us.

Um it works a lot like a 1031 exchange.

Uh but we do, unlike 1031 exchanges, you as a city council have the opportunity to select a zone.

And I think it's absolutely critical for the city of Bozeman to send a strong signal um that they have a zone that they would like to see prioritized, and for you as city council um folks to use the tools that are in your bucket, primarily land use planning, to dovetail and prepare for a 10-year period of potential capital focus and development in this area, and would encourage you to do so.

I'm happy to answer any questions about the incentive.

Uh I would tell you that with the new cyclone if this came up, this is something that is permanent.

So every 10 years, opportunity zone selection based on zones that meet the eligibility criteria should be coming before the Montana governor to make zone selections.

And that process didn't have to happen on this short of time frame.

And ideally, what would have been happening and what the incentive wants to see happening is that you use this as a lens to focus development with other planning tools on the zone that's selected.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any further public comment in the room this evening?

Good evening.

Good evening, and we take the Bozeman resident.

Um, just a point of clarification.

Um, if you don't, if you would permit.

It wasn't clear to me.

Are we only applying for one?

And not two or three anymore.

We're applying for one zone.

So we get one zone per city.

So we are saying this is our hierarchy in the proposal.

I I'll admit that's still not quite as clear.

Um anyway, um, anyway, for my comment.

Um also appreciate I was one of the people that uh was reached out to last week.

My understanding is this very, very tight turnaround, so we've all been kind of scrambling and it it was clear to me like I I did not have the capacity to do extensive engagement on this.

It's a complex thing.

Umpportunity zones, they are they're like power tools.

Right.

I mean, like, I actually thought about bringing like my like early 90s worm drive saw with me as like you know, a prop, but I didn't want to make anybody nervous.

Um, but yeah, like uh the one I've got, I mean, uh, was handed down to me.

That's it's built at least 16 hubs, right?

Um, but they're also very inherently dangerous, too.

Um I'll be honest, I don't particularly love where this tool comes from.

Like the idea that like, you know, CAD is gonna like cash out a whole bunch of Dogecoin and like, you know, put it in a new Lululemon, not while avoiding all capital gains.

Don't love that.

I think we should all pay our fair share taxes, but be that as may, I don't believe that Bozeman has the luxury actually of saying, no, thank you.

We don't want to use a tool that other all the other communities are using um to attract investment.

Um, but I do want to pair that with elevating what I think are valid concerns.

Um, as far as the Idaho poll goes, I'm not real comfortable relying putting any eggs in a basket right now that might rely on EPA oversight given what's going on on the federal level.

Um the difference in the prioritization of the two different um tracks, one is largely greenfield, the other one, a lot of potential for redevelopment, and we know that that is quite a contentious thing.

Um so just, you know, this is gonna be on a 10-year cycle, so it's just something to think about is um if we do go the route where there's a lot of that redevelopment potential, yes, we need tools.

We need to be able to attract investment.

Um, but it should be paired with a serious commitment to dial in the land use um policies, the land use plans, the area issues.

Um I'm gonna run.

Oh, this is so distracting.

But um, if you'll permit me just like 30 more seconds.

Um the other commitment that you need to make is for uh vetting and recruiting, right?

A couple months ago, I saw the economic vitality board meeting.

You know, Britt was presenting them.

He said very clearly, we do not recruit, we never have, and unless somebody says something different, we're not going to.

So the answer, like the idea that it's just people who show up, not adequate.

So look at your prioritization.

Oh my god, I hate this thing.

Uh, such a strange place.

But um, look at the prioritization, pair it with the dialing in of your land use plan, and definitely pair it with active recruitment for the businesses and development and built environments that we actually really want in this community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any further comment requests in the room.

Good evening.

Hello again, Mark Campanelli, Bogar Park neighbor.

Uh, thanks for having a public discussion on this item, and City Manager Wynn um for admitting that you might have made the wrong judgment call on this.

I view that totally in the column of building trust.

So thank you.

Um example, uh, I am taking a stab at a software startup that aims to reduce the technical and financial risks in electricity generation of solar farms.

So it involves uncertainty quantification.

I'm a geek, I'm a math guy.

So, anyways, as part of this work, I learned about the now expiring federal uh production tax credits, PTC, and incentive tax credits ITC.

Turns out that big banks like Wells Fargo are often the players that lined up for the uh incentive tax credit ITC.

That means getting things built, not making sure they produce, which is a PTC.

That would be more of a long-term view on the world.

Um this involves the strategy that you just need to build a plant good enough to get to the flip date, at which point the saying goes, I'll be gone, you'll be gone.

And unfortunately, the financial longevity of these plants is becoming an undesirable issue in the PV industry.

So you have to generate enough money in year 10 so that you can replace your inverters, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So very good intentions, not the result most people want.

And it's just like open secret amongst all of us PV people that like this whole system has just been completely abused.

Um, in any event, um, so I'm a little bit skeptical of programs that target a class in our society that already has most of the capital and is essentially looking for tax sheltering and potentially an opportunity to cash out after 10 years.

I really don't understand the details of the program per se.

Um, are they really making decisions based on Bozeman's long-term prosperity?

I'm skeptical.

Uh with the polyard URD, my reading of this is that the city annexed in a collection of environmentally distressed parcels, green field that allowed the owner to unload them with buyers having the expectation that the taxpayer will step in to help remediate the remaining damage, at least up to some affordable housing criterion.

If you haven't heard the term that for this is moral hazard, what you what will you do or what can you do with this particular tool to mitigate the moral hazard?

I'm not saying it can't be mitigated, but with this tool, maybe not.

Mr.

Fonno's comments kind of made me think, even if that's the case, there's not a lot of say.

I've driven through some places in Montana that by the looks of it could really use more investment opportunities than Bozeman.

So thanks.

Thank you.

Any further comments in the room this evening?

Good evening.

Good evening, Matt Payne, 515 South Black.

I uh I came for the general fund item, but I thought I'd lend a little context to the situation.

Um being interested in an objective truth, as Britt pointed out, absolutely nothing changes in those areas uh of the opportunity zone.

The only the only thing that changes the likelihood of investment flowing into those areas.

So the question you have to ask yourself is do we want to see capital flow into those areas or not?

Um on the flip side, the the single biggest beneficiary of a new opportunity zone is the existing landowner in that opportunity zone, as their property values increase immediately.

And sometimes that happens at a transfer, right?

Of the person on the other side of that street, in this case, take Durston.

Property values on the north side, north side of Durston will increase, property values directly to the south may decrease as it is now more likely for for new development to occur on the other side.

That diminishes as the distance decreases.

So to Commissioner Sweeney's point, if we want to see certain types of development happen in those zoning is your tool.

So if you look at the existing opportunity zone, we have we have technology um campus, we have high paying jobs in the photonic sector, people making very, very good money in those areas, and those those projects exist because of that opportunity zone.

You also have you know light tech deals and and cheaper apartments going into those areas for lower paying jobs.

So if you want to impact the type of development that happens, zone appropriately for what you want to see developed in there.

People come to me and say, why don't you develop a child care?

And I'd love to develop a child care facility for you.

However, no one wants to run one because you know it's just too difficult.

It isn't that we don't want to do that, it's the incentives don't exist, the staff isn't there.

So use the tools that you have and just choose whether or not you want to see capital flow into those areas or not.

That is really the only decision point, and we will you know adjust accordingly.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Any further public comment requests in the room?

Good evening.

Hello, not Suki Nakamura Bozeman resident, um member of the economic vitality board, but not speaking on that behalf.

Um, I've also attended some educational events by the students against genocide group, but certainly not speaking on that behalf or on behalf of that group.

Um I guess I just want to reflect back some of the words in that presentation that this is mostly speculative, and these can stimulate jobs or can stimulate uh affordable housing, but that there's no guarantees.

Um but it's also important to note that census track 11 has been an opportunity zone for for 10 years, so we it shouldn't be speculative.

We should be able to say there are concrete benefits from this.

And we can we really say that those positive community developments are benefits that happen because of that opportunity zone that would not have happened otherwise.

Um we've seen development all over town, so looking at that map, that's just a snapshot of the much of the development that we've seen all over Bozeman.

Um again, how can we say that development in those areas wouldn't have happened otherwise?

Um MSU has had record enrollment year after year.

Um they've stimulated a lot of that housing that's been sprawling to the South and the west.

Um, so maybe I think that would have happened regardless of that opportunity zone, given the MSU has just grown so much.

Um also, regardless of an opportunity zone designation, light tech projects can happen, which is how we've been getting affordable housing mostly around Bozeman.

Look at Midtown, Midtown has seen multiple light tech projects proposed and in development.

Not an opportunity zone yet, but we so again, there doesn't it's not contingent on that.

Um I'm also just kind of confused by the assertion that we have sufficient infrastructure, especially given that the city approved reimbursement to the developer of the innovation campus, $3.6 million for infrastructure.

So if we have that, if we have that sufficient infrastructure, we shouldn't be putting aside tax outfalls to help that developer do that.

Um also confuse why the city would want to actively pursue a program that has no oversight and no guarantees.

Again, words from the presentation tonight.

Um a few expressed a few on this commission have expressed that it's already pretty hard to have enough oversight.

Um, some of our TIFF dollars, um, as we've seen with the innovation campus or um some of the other projects that have been proposed.

TIFF is already kind of a weak tool to have oversight.

Um, anecdotally also LightTech projects, some of them are well maintained, some of them are not, and we don't really have oversight by encouraging um through that tool enough as it is.

So, if in this one's even weaker, we have zero guarantees with it.

So I don't know why we would pursue a program that has no guarantees and no guardrails.

Um, also a note about displacement.

Montana law is quite restrictive of what we can do to control displacement.

Other states have a lot more protections for renters, so even though displacement happens everywhere, we really don't have those tools to guarantee or even try to have some guard bills in place.

So I would ask commission to not submit an application for an opportunity zone for either census track.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any further requests in the room.

Good evening.

So Dan Cardi, Bozeman resident, I live in Midtown.

I think the bottom line here is that the beneficiaries are the investors, not necessarily the community as a whole.

The proposals contain verbs like should, could, no verbs like must or shall.

So the city cannot guarantee any particular outcome other than what's allowed under base zoning.

And there's absolutely no guarantee of mixed income affordable housing, which is what we really need, or any guarantee of affordable housing at all.

Interesting that a previous speaker mentioned that investors don't seem to go after built areas.

That statement is incorrect because anybody familiar with the North Central realizes that investors will destroy neighborhoods to build whatever they want.

So again, the bottom line is the beneficiaries are the investors, not the community as a whole.

And I would ask the commission to recommend that neither of these proposals goes forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any further requests in the room.

And a second request in the room.

Final request in the room.

Mr.

Moss, we're seeing any requests online.

First up, we have Jason Delmu.

Mr.

Delbu, can you hear us?

Are you there?

Uh yeah, thank you.

Yeah, can you hear me?

Yep.

Sorry.

Um good evening, Mayor Commissioners, Jason Delmu, 18 East Peach Street.

I'm on the community development board and um consistently involved with the Northeast Neighborhood Association, but speaking on my own behalf.

Um first, I just want to thank Manager Fawn Note Department for uh quickly, if not almost immediately reaching out to me and Amy Hoitzma, who's the president of the Northeast Neighborhood Association to uh let us know about this and also responding with um link to resources.

Um that continues the pattern of that department of being very proactive with the Northeast Neighborhood Association, such as with respect to the Northeast Urban Renewal District.

Um I just want to make sure or empathize or have it be debunked by staff that so we're talking about this is a federal income tax credit um that allows folks who have um unrealized capital gains tax to realize them and roll them into an investment in an opportunity zone.

So you know, at the margin, instead of somebody realizing, let's say a million dollars and paying 15 to 20% capital gains tax on that, thus resulting in having you know 800,000 that you had earned 50,000 left to invest.

This would let them invest the whole million.

But really, that's probably not what's gonna happen because it's probably a question of which opportunity zone would they choose.

And so if Bozeman doesn't have a zone, then they just wouldn't be part of the option for somebody looking to do that.

Um it just seems like it it decreases the costs of a project, so it can make some projects possible that wouldn't have been made possible as a result, it could allow for some increased affordability in those projects or the rent or the prices being lower.

It's also possible that it could just uh make it more profitable.

Um, but it seems like this is a federal income tax allocation of what would otherwise be federal income tax revenue, and so it doesn't seem like as far as Bozo's concerned, it's uh neither here nor there.

Um it seems like at the margin it could benefit the community, or it could be a wash, but I don't really see how it could um cause a detriment.

Um thanks for listening.

Thank you.

Mr.

Moss, are we seeing any further requests?

I'm showing no additional requests for comments.

Okay.

Um we will close the public comment hearing on this.

Um are there any clarifications from public comment for staff?

Yeah, um, let me just scroll down here.

Oh, okay.

So I'm curious um when we will next have the opportunity to make a recommendation to our governor.

Is this like this is our one moment in the next 10 years and we have to wait 10 more years?

It's not a rolling basis.

Like next year we'll if perchance we don't vote to recommend any zones and we have zero next year, could we say wait, actually we do want one?

A couple of things could happen if that were the case.

Number one, the governor could pick it anyway.

That's one option.

The second option is that another EDO with a service area of Bozeman um or the surrounding areas could submit it, submit the application, um, and um which may or may not result in a in a zone designation, um, or or nothing could happen.

So those are the three outcomes that I that I envision.

But in any event, it won't come back around again for 10 years.

If you don't mind, Maryland, one moment to clarify, there was a question earlier that I didn't have an answer to, so I'd like to answer it now, which is um what are other cities around the state, how are they uh pursuing this or not?

And um, I just I found out from our colleagues in Missoula that they are pursuing opportunity zones in a very similar fashion and that they've ranked theirs as well for the can for the governor's consideration.

Thank you.

Can you just define what EDO is?

Economic development organization.

So that would be like a prospera or a Northern Rocky Mountain Economic Development District type of organization.

Okay, and we have no sense for if either of those any of those are also submitting an application for either of these.

I think they're watching what happens tonight.

Okay, and then they would have time between now and the deadline to potentially submit their own application.

By July 7th.

By July 7th.

So if we don't tonight, would you say the odds are high that they might submit one anyway?

I wouldn't say they're high.

It's just an it's an option, but I don't know that they are prepared to do that or not.

It's it's just allowable.

Gotcha.

And then regardless of if anybody submits one at all, the governor could just say, you know what, this is actually one of the best spots in the state.

We're gonna we're gonna do it regardless.

Or he could not choose one at all.

Um, he could choose the second priority over the first, or he could choose the first priority.

It's really any of those scenarios are possible.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

We'll bring it up here for a motion discussion and vote.

Um Commissioner Sweeney, I believe, word to you.

If you don't want to make a motion because you choose our telegraphing to oppose, that's fine.

Deputy Mayor.

So I moved to authorize the city manager to sign the opportunity zone proposal and submit to the Montana Department of E commerce.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded, Deputy Mayor.

Okay, sure.

I guess I didn't realize I inherited the first chance to talk at this.

Um, first of all, I just want to appreciate the responsiveness of staff on this.

This is a big application to put together in a in a few short days.

And I also really appreciate the proactive effort, or that maybe just the immediate response or an instinct to reach out to the neighborhoods.

Um I I think that's that's very professional and and um say what we want about you know this whole process.

But I I just appreciate the responsiveness to an opportunity and the professionalism in putting this together.

Um it kind of um it to me this this comes down to um we have tasked our economic development team and you city manager to to seek opportunities to develop our our our city and and this is an opportunity under federal law, and so I feel it's it's an appropriate thing to have pursued, you know, under our existing policy.

I've heard a bunch of a number of different things in public comment um that I just I'd like to react to.

Um, and the first is the one that hits closest to me is kind of the ethics concern.

Is it ethical, you know, to um to is this is this kind of federal tax policy uh, you know, there's concerns in the public comment that that this federal tax policy is in unethical.

It takes advantage of it gives uh a write-off to the to richest 0.1%, it gives the a write-off to those who have the money at the expense of those who are are just trying to make a buck or trying to you know trying to get by.

Um I think you know, when I look at our federal tax policy, there is a lot of I I would I would argue, and I think you can make a strong case that things that are unethical that are disagreeable that are just downright unfair.

But these are the rules we play with, and this is the rules that you know, we're celebrating 250 years as a country, we have been making decisions as a country, and this is the rules we made as a country.

Um it's our tax policy, and and if the, you know, um it's it's not our role, I think, as a as a as a commission, and it's certainly not role as of staff to say this is a tax policy that we're not going to, or I should say it's definitely not staff's role to say, oh, this tax policy is unfair, and therefore we're not gonna pursue this.

That is a policy decision we as a commission need to make, and we have not made that decision.

The second thing I want to talk about that we've heard a lot about in public comment is this idea that there's no guarantee.

Um that's true of so much.

And if we were to wait for, I feel like if we were to wait for a guarantee to develop, I mean, we, you know, um we'd be frozen in in place.

Um there's there's just so few.

I mean, there's no opportunities that these are opportunities that we're going to pursue.

We're gonna create an environment where investment comes, and and that um I think is is an appropriate opportunity to pursue and and to uh to create these windows, this is how kind of the market works.

Um and then the the final thing I just want to speak to is just this um this notion that we're we are yes, this is speculative.

We are playing in open markets.

We are trying, we're competing not just within Bozeman, but but not just within Montana, we're competing nationally to um keep this city growing and thriving and and to rebuild places like the polyard, to bring out empty lots like the Kmart lot, right?

Um, the capital stacks to make affordable housing are really complex.

It takes a lot of different, you know, we've heard time and again from staff that just the tiniest little things, but for those little advantages and incentives that we're allowed to provide, these a lot of this kind of the housing that we are now benefiting from would not have appeared.

And so here's another opportunity to um to kind of add to that capital stack to move that capital stack in our favor.

And so I'm going to support this.

I appreciate staff bringing this forward, and I think it was an appropriate thing for us to pursue as a city given our state law, federal law, and our our commission priorities and policies.

Thank you.

Commissioner Bowdy.

Thank you.

Yeah, I also want to start by appreciating staff for working really quickly on this to bring it before us.

Um, had you not this commission would not have had the choice we have tonight to decide whether or not we want this tool.

Um I I've learned that perhaps even if we decide we do not want this tool, others may decide for us that we will be using this tool.

Um, but I I again just want to appreciate the chance that we get to have this deliberation tonight because of the fast action of our staff while recognizing that it's not ideal how tight this timeline was, and I very much would have preferred to have a much more robust engagement conversation with the neighborhood with our community, and think um just have a little bit more time to chew on what the actual impacts of this could be.

So given given that context, I'm still grateful that we could have the deliberation that we're having tonight, and um want to appreciate Commissioner Sweeney for pulling it off of the consent so we can have this conversation as well.

Um my immediate reactions to the um question answer and the public comment that we've had um tonight is that this feels like a very blunt tool.

Um, it has the potential to maybe push some sites that we have been really struggling to develop over the finish line in a couple key areas that could be really beneficial to our community.

It sounds like we have no um ability to um pick and choose which of those sites use this tool within the census track and um what those projects are, and um I think everyone here would agree that um if we could maybe I shouldn't say everyone would agree, but I think many of us would agree that um we would be excited about being able to direct this specifically towards mixed income housing development opportunities.

Um it seems like we can use it for that, and it may be used in a number of other ways.

Um, so like I said, it's it's a very blunt tool.

Uh perhaps for the federal government, a census track is a very small geography.

Um I'm imagining myself in that role, and that would feel like a target, targeted um you know, incision, and uh here at the local government view, I'm like, wow, that's that's a big portion of our of our community.

Um I think learning that another group could be watching this deliberation and decide to submit an application anyway, if we do not, or that our governor may decide to um elect certain census tracks regardless of our decision is um I think it makes these deliberations feel like a little bit um less less weighty in some way.

Uh certainly our um position on this is important, and it signals to the community um what our our desire is for the area that we govern over, and um it's clear that this tool was not meant to be um controlled by by local government.

Um it's it's something that's kind of uh a much more overarching application.

Um I want to appreciate the prioritization that our staff identified.

I do think that census track six makes more sense to me than census Tract 11, both because of the growth and change we've seen in Census Tract 11 and the fact that it includes a lot of undeveloped land that I don't think we're all trying to encourage sprawl in that direction.

Um I think I'm much more interested in a tool like this to help us get projects over the finish line that are more in fill focused.

Um so I yeah, want to offer some appreciation to that.

Um this feels like a tough choice for me to be honest, and I I think I'm I'm leaning towards voting um yes, and I would also like to hear from my other commissioners.

Commissioner Magic.

Yeah, thanks, Mayor.

Um thanks my fellow commissioners, thanks to staff once again.

Thank you on short notice for the turnaround.

Um, thanks to members of the public who have engaged on this in short notice, including the individual from I think Missoula, it just has all made us think, and it's a thought provoking sort of concept to think to mull over in a short time period.

I think where I'm going on this, in reading through the application, it says track six represents one of the most strategically important areas for investment in Bozeman because it sits at the intersection of housing, employment, and infrastructure.

And Commissioner Sweeney, or excuse me, Commissioner Bodie mentioned this the idea of infill.

And I sure would like as a planner as a city commissioner to see development in this area serving these purposes, housing employment and infrastructure in this hub that we call our the city of Bozeman, then having that kind of development go further afield, which is what we're seeing right now.

The economy and development is pushing that kind of growth many times further afield.

We're seeing a lot of housing in Broadwater County, Broadwater County for the past number of years have said this a couple times up here, is the fastest growing county in the state.

There's a reason for that.

We make development very difficult here in Bozeman, and there's good reason for that too.

But I think that there are advantages to adding some little bit of incentive to developers to develop here as opposed to Broadwater County or further afield.

I've heard that people are commuting from Butte to cut people's hair in Bozeman, and that's not right.

So we have a responsibility to do something about that.

We are a community of environmentalists, conservationists.

When I went to planning school, my professor said she knew I was cared about the environment.

She said, if you want to be an environmentalist, you need to be an urbanist, don't you?

It was a question back in me.

And I've thought about that for years.

It's like so true.

As painful as it is to see some of the growth and rapid change in our community.

I do believe that we need to take responsibility for growing here responsibly.

I don't want it to be kind of rampant growth that ruins neighborhoods.

So that goes to, I think assurances that we have, and we have to make a commitment to land use tools, things like zoning and neighborhood plans.

Right now we have an opportunity with the midtown area plan to tighten kind of what we would like to see within that area.

And that falls in the heart of this opportunity zone.

So I would like to make a commitment that people participate in that process.

And that development that comes in has to look at that plan and meet the goals and visions of that plan, even though it's a non-regulatory document as much as possible, and we make a commitment that if there are regulatory aspects of that plan, let's put that in zoning.

So I was skeptical.

But once again, I'm going to be an urbanist, and I believe that development in this area makes more sense than Broadwater County review.

Thank you.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I am very morally opposed to anything that gives tax incentives to the wealthiest in this country while our federal government is cutting Medicaid and Medicare, which actually benefit Montanans.

But this is serious.

And I feel strongly about it.

That's not the only reason.

This tool, this, this opportunity zone designation, this is like a train without a conductor.

We have no oversight.

We have no tools.

How many thousand dollar hotel rooms does Missoula have?

How many five million dollar condos sell regularly in Missoula?

We have to think about Bozeman.

We are not in the same market.

As far as promoting density in this area and redevelopment, sure, I agree, it's better to develop here than to develop the farmland in the southeast part of town that is some of the most fertile farmland and also can be used to recharge our aquifers.

However, our future land use map includes all of those lands.

We have every intention of developing those lands.

So every time we're saying that, we're lying.

The zoning on the north side of town in this area is an enormous mismatch from what exists on the ground.

So we will literally be offering these neighborhoods up on a plate for redevelopment of a type that we cannot control.

One of our commission priorities is to protect neighborhoods, our heritage, and our natural environment.

If we go ahead and do this, it is really troubling to me that the governor can go ahead and designate this anyway.

He could decide to give his cronies in the investment world our city for their playground.

We don't need to support that.

If this goes through this evening, I'm gonna hold each one of my colleagues to a promise to develop neighborhood level plans to tighten restrictions in our historic neighborhoods, the Story Mill historic district is not in the NCOD, but it is in this opportunity zone.

It has no protection whatsoever.

We don't have the tools in place to use this responsibly.

I feel like it is throwing water on a grease fire.

We heard Mr Payne say the property values are going to increase immediately because of this tool.

I'm encouraging you guys to please look at Bozeman.

We are desirable we are growing does it have to be at breakneck speed without control all the time.

I cannot support any letters of recommendation for opportunity zones and census tracts in Bozeman.

I'm sorry.

Um thank you to my my colleagues first I I want to really extend an appreciation to Britt and to Jesse um you did not make a decision for us in fact not submitting would have been making a decision for us.

It would have meant there's no discussion happening tonight and so just really want to appreciate the swift action of your team in giving us the opportunity to discuss this.

Some of the uh the the what I feel like I've seen some of the public comments and texts that I've I've received um as well as calls I I've had over the last week as I'm trying to grapple with this has been the almost the the the ugly confrontation of naked capitalism like welcome to the conversation if you're just now getting mad that the rich are getting richer at the expense of poor people I've known nothing else for 30 years of my life and this those that's the sandbox that we're in and if we are to continue to stand and say we're just gonna wait for the perfect thing well I'm I'm thankful that's not a the temperaments of of those that have been before us and and around the country have recognized imperfect tools are all that we have um it yeah this item I think I resonated with what Commissioner Body you had to say it is it is a frustrating continued dynamic of you know if if the desire for a community is to you know have amenities have desirable things uh without private investment it means we're paying for it and we've been being told a lot that people don't want to pay for it um we could ask the voters tomorrow hey do you do we want to raise a bunch of money to build an art center or a library in this area instead of private investment we would be told no we would be we would be told that's not that's not where we're at right now and and so consistently feeling the you know the kind of duplicitous ugliness of having to utilize and rely on the private sector uh and the the ultra wealthy that have yes preyed upon exploited and taken advantage of of the system of commerce that we have in this country that we get to see the macro scale and micro scale and being at times feeling unable to say no to that system because there is not another one that's afforded to us in Bozeman in Montana in 2026.

And I I am begrudgingly likely to to support this out of a few pieces.

One, I actually feel one I think NERMED and others would be apprehensive to submit an application.

I think it would be hard for them to see the deliberation of the elected leadership of the community saying we don't want to do this, and them saying we'll do it anyway.

I think that'd be tough.

I also feel some heartburden at the possibility that we say no, and the governor gets to decide to usurp us and say we're it's happening anyway.

I think that also feels that feels worse than supporting it for for some for a variety of reasons.

Um I think the prioritization of these two makes sense.

I think this is a a stronger designation and a stronger area than what we've had for the last 10 years.

Yeah.

These tools are these are ugly tools most of the time.

Any further discussion?

Commissioner Bowie.

Yeah, I I would just um like to appreciate hearing the perspective from from all of you.

This has been informative.

Um I am curious about um, I while I appreciate the prioritization if we're if we're submitting two applications.

I think the prioritization is correct.

I I actually question if we even should submit an application for census tract 11.

Um I I know that the governor gets to decide ultimately to do whatever he deems best here.

Um but if we do have um if there is kind of strong consensus that we don't think 11 is as good as um as six, uh, would it send a stronger message to just not even include it in our application?

This is maybe a question I have.

I guess I don't feel prepared to make a compelling reason why we would cut one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I mean that's that's frankly, that's that's kind of a you know, that's why I I think we have professional staff.

You know, they looked at these applications, they looked at the city as a whole, they looked at the census tracts, and um, and it has been one of ours.

Um you know, I I know there is a lot of greenfield down there.

There's also a big school district site down there that was gonna be, you know, a potential um uh school that will never come out of the ground unless we can put a pipe there to get you know city services there, and that pipe is expensive.

So um, you know, it's it's um uh but but I I think it comes down to something where it's like I'm I'm trusting staff that they have looked at these areas and and um and see a need, and and uh you know, and I I agree that there's a need there, and and that's where I'm I'm happy to let them they know this process much better and and put that in there.

I think I think my understanding from staff is that these are the two tracks that we have that are eligible, period, not necessarily that one track that that both tracks for sure are ones that we should consider, um, but I mean maybe some clarification would be helpful there.

Thank you for the question.

We were asked to submit a prioritized list, so that's what we came up with.

Um what you see before you is our um professional judgment on which tract should be prioritized number one, which is six, and which one should be number two, if even considered at all, which is the eleven point two.

So that we just did what the commerce suggested that we do for the application.

Gotcha.

Yeah, I I found the the comment um compelling that perhaps um student wages are sort of disproportionately um deflating the the median income in this area, um, and for the reasons of trying to avoid um more development try to disincentivize our sprawl.

Um, I think I'm I'm less excited about this zone.

Um and if it was chosen over six, I would I'd be pretty disappointed about that, I think.

Um and sure that could happen anyway, but I I think signaling I I would I I think if the only application we had before us was for this site, um census track 11, I I might vote no.

Uh is maybe the the gut feeling I'm having right now and only putting an application for it for census track six.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I would like to thank the staff for the presentation this evening and putting that together quickly.

I have been struggling on this commission with.

Sometimes, and this is a perfect example where this ended up on consent.

What I see as the role of staff is to bring us unbiased information with options and potential outcomes of those options, of choosing those options, and then we get to weigh what we decide is a worthy risk.

If I had not removed this item from consent tonight, we would not have had this conversation.

We would not have had the transparency of knowing where everyone sits on this, and we wouldn't have had the public process where our citizens can get to understand what is at stake and what we've decided.

And so while I thank staff for putting together this presentation really quickly, I was upset that it was on consent.

Thanks.

I think our city manager might have uh a clarification or a comment.

If it's the commission's direction to only submit one zone, we can do that.

It would just be an amendment to the motion.

Are you saying without amending, or I should go ahead and make that amendment?

With amended.

The current application before you puts both of those zones on there, you could make an amendment to this motion that would only put number six.

And I just wanted to clarify I was gonna pull this item, whether the commission decided to or not.

Thank you.

Um I move to uh remove the application for census tract 11.02 from this um motion.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Do you have any further comments on that?

Um I think I've already made my argument, so for the um interest of brevity, I'll pass for it.

Great.

Any discussion?

Mr.

Moss, would you pull the commission on the amendment to remove tract 1102?

Commissioner Bowden?

Aye.

Commissioner Magic.

Aye.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Aye.

Deputy Mayor Fisher?

No.

Mayor Morrison, aye.

Motion passes four to one to amend and remove 11.02.

Now to the main motion.

Any further discussion.

Neighborhood area plans.

Growth policy amendments, future land use map.

Mr.

Moss, would you pull the commission?

Deputy Mayor Fisher?

Aye.

Commissioner Bowdy?

Aye.

Commissioner Magic?

Aye.

Commissioner Sweeney?

No.

Mayor Morrison.

Aye.

Motion is approved four to one.

How are we doing?

Let's take a break.

We need a break.

10 9 minutes, 7 30 will reconvene.

And then we've got it.

Thank you, Mayor.

Tonight we have the resolution adopting the fiscal year 27 annual operating budget in the 2027 biennium budget.

This is the third time we've come before you with this topic.

And we are excited to be here tonight and to discuss that and any other questions the commission has.

Welcome, Melissa.

Thank you.

Good evening, Commission.

For those that might be watching at home, I just wanted to give a quick recap of what we've discussed so far and where we are in our budget process.

So the commission has adopted the urban renewal and BID budgets as of May 12th.

We distributed the budget document on May 28th, and we've had two work sessions so far.

So the first was on June 2nd, where we discussed our enterprise funds and some of our special revenue funds and our internal service funds.

And then on June 9th, we discussed general fund and special revenue funds.

And we're here tonight, June 23rd, to hopefully adopt this budget.

I wanted to also just remind everyone that our general fund budget is here in front of you tonight and recommended, but we do not actually know what our mill levies and what our available property tax revenue will be until August.

So we'll be back on August 18th to discuss more details about what our revenue will actually look like in the general fund, and hopefully it comes in pretty close to what you've seen here.

So just a quick financial summary of what we're looking at adopting this evening by budget unit.

We've got 689 million of resources over two years for this budget, and we've got 609 million of requirements that we've put in this budget over two years.

We end up with an ending fund balance of 80 million across all of those different budget units.

One thing I did want to talk about this evening is a shops complex project.

So I've brought this up a couple of times.

I think you know we've talked about it quite a bit starting last December with the capital improvement program presentations.

We've known this shops complex project was coming.

We've known it as early as 2010 when we started working on master planning and our space needs for our public works facilities.

And so over the years, we have been creating different versions of this facility master plan.

And just a couple of weeks ago, we got some preliminary numbers from our shops facility concept design that we kicked off this year, and we've really refocused our projected needs on what we need today, what we need in fiscal year 29, and we've optimized the project based on what um buildings we already have, what we can reuse, and what land we already own in order to make hopefully a palatable project that we can phase in over time, but get these day one needs met.

And the reason I want to talk about this tonight is because typically this is something that would be proposed as part of the capital improvement plan or as part of the budget.

The timing just didn't line up to get all of this information in time to print our biennial budget document.

So we spent the last two weeks looking at our financial models and trying to run the numbers.

Right now, according to our concept design, we're looking at a total total project costs of 84,147.600.

And that includes design that we do have already budgeted.

So we have eight million that's already been included in the document in front of you.

Um the additional cost would be anticipated to be funded by debt proceeds, and it would be split between a majority of enterprise funds and some of our special assessment districts.

So water, wastewater and stormwater staff would be housed in these buildings, street maintenance staff, parks and trails, and forestry staff.

And so just as a reminder, we have this household impact slide that we have looked at a couple of times.

And another reason we wanted to discuss this tonight is because between now and August 18th, when we're also setting our utility rates, we will have some new estimates based on this shop's complex project that we would like to propose.

So we ran some numbers, and I do want to point out that this is some of the quickest numbers that we have run in order to try to get this in front of you being said, we were very conservative with our modeling.

So we think this is very much on the high end of what this project would actually cost us.

We still have some work to do to see if we can move some other capital plan projects around in order to make some more room in these first couple of years for this project.

But ultimately, we will be paying debt service back over 20 years.

And a maximum impact of 28.33 cents in year two, and that's per month.

And then just to highlight the amount that's directly attributable to shops complex, so this is the amount that we haven't put in front of you yet, is um ten dollars and eighty-six cents in fiscal year 27 and $9.10 in fiscal year 28.

So just um again adding to this timeline that we are going to be bringing rates in front of you on August 18th, in addition to the property taxes.

So that's when the final decision would happen on what our rate increases are.

And again, we'll work, we'll work hard between now and then to hopefully minimize those impacts.

That's all I had for a presentation this evening.

Um, and I am here for questions.

Thank you for that brief presentation.

Um I believe we are to the deputy mayor.

Thank you.

Um, and thanks for for working these numbers in and getting us a revised thing.

I tend to agree that you know getting the most accurate numbers out there to even, you know, is is really helpful.

And and um we knew that the original was gonna be.

If if we add this, and I I would when it comes time, I propose we add this.

But given that we're looking at the whole whole budget here today.

Um I just had a question about um the C Bozeman Creek funding, right?

We we have got some momentum going in there.

That contract expires at the end of the year.

Um, we don't necessarily know what the next plan is going to be, but I'm just uh you know, we we often kind of put some items in the budget to um to know that there's a need there.

I think the housing inventory is one of those things.

We don't know how it's gonna go exactly, but we have money.

Wondering how you might propose or how staff might propose.

We um if we as a commission want to keep that kind of momentum going there, how do we how would you suggest we we proceed?

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

I'll take that question.

Um, that is a remarkable project.

It has a lot of community support.

It is not a city-led effort, it's a community-led effort.

Um, we don't have the results of that yet, but we will soon.

And um, we believe it's important that we keep the momentum up on that project, even though we don't know exactly what the results will be.

We do know that it will require further uh action and further collaboration with our community.

So uh with that in mind, we um would recommend that we add 150,000 to the city's budget and that that come from the first um uh time period of vacancy savings that would equal that amount.

In other words, uh our our positions are our new positions or open positions are funded immediately.

We don't hire them immediately.

So we know and anticipate some level of vacancy savings in that.

We believe it's uh uh it would be uh appropriate to with the commission's uh authority to uh allocate those to this project, even though we're not sure what the future looks like.

We know there's a future, and we know that there's gonna be projects, and we know that there's gonna be a lot of public pri uh private conversations in there, and we think that's appropriate.

So just to clarify, we can we can put in a hundred and fifty thousand dollar line item into this budget, even though the funds are gonna technically come from savings of positions that we are also allocating for, but we're not we know we'll have okay.

So we just we can work that magic somehow.

Yes, okay.

I think that's my my major question.

That's my first big question.

I have a follow-up question to that question, which is um the the vacancy savings.

Do you have a sense for how they are distributed between our funds?

Are they coming out of our general fund or um from some of the enterprise funds?

Yep, they are distributed throughout all the funds.

The only funds that we have, the ability to uh uh attribute to other one time efforts are those in the general fund, the any vacancy savings in the utilities in the utility funds stay in the utility funds.

Do you have a sense for um I mean, I mean, clearly we don't know how long it'll take to hire different positions, but do you have a sense for what portion of those vacancy savings might come from the general fund?

I think the intention is for the 150,000 would all come from the general fund.

All of it, so none of it can come from the related enterprise funds.

It potentially could, and we have funded the first um tranche of Bozeman Creek funding from multiple sources, including parks and trails and stormwater.

Um we felt with the amount that that we're talking about this evening and the facts that we are hoping to get this shops complex um designed and pay for it paid for in the next couple of years, that we would put that entire hundred and fifty thousand in the general fund.

So you're saying any vacancy savings we might have in those um in those enterprise funds we would use to kind of knock down the rate for the shops complex.

Yes, okay.

Um there, I think has been an alternative um circulating uh pulling a certain amount from um different enterprise funds like parks and um wastewater.

Can you explain that proposal?

I think when we started this project, we could attribute some level of uh uh tied to certain efforts that the city was doing.

We don't know what this plan is going to um recommend.

We don't know the projects, so it's really hard to know what fund would be uh you know could be used for that particular effort because we don't know what the effort is yet.

So I think the general fund is a safe um safe place to look at pulling that funding from through those vacancy savings in the general fund.

If we if those projects come out and they're different, we could certainly have a conversation with the commission about uh reallocating uh where that 150,000 came from.

But we know it's too early to do that now.

So you're saying like perhaps one of these projects will be completely focused on streets, and if we had 50k from parks, then we wouldn't be able to use that.

I mean, doesn't it seem like all of the projects proposed have some amount of intersection with both streets and parks?

We don't know that because we don't know what the projects are gonna be.

That wouldn't be a um inaccurate assumption, but we don't know that.

Okay.

Um can you I want to go back to the shops complex proposal.

I I'd like to see the slide where you talk about the impact to our monthly um impact.

Yes, there.

So I guess I'm confused about why the maximum.

Never mind.

I read the slide again and I get it.

I thought I just needed to see it.

I'm there.

Um, great, thank you.

So, um my last question is about the disability um liaison position.

I was able to hear from our city manager that um we do have six thousand dollars in our existing budget for a part-time position that would be 10 hours a month previously allocated or previously budgeted in our our um biennium budget before, and so um that's kind of carried over to this one.

I'm just a little bit confused about which fund that's actually in.

Could you point to um which fund that that allocation is in?

Yes, right now it's in the city manager's office in the internal service fund administrative services.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Um I think I'm gonna pass it on.

Commissioner Magic.

Yeah, thanks, Mayor, and thanks to my hello commissioner to ask a couple of the questions I was gonna ask.

I would like to talk briefly.

We haven't done this in the past couple of meetings with director Ross, just about continuation of our safe plan, streets are for everyone plan, and just kind of your perspective.

We've heard from cheap belt camp adding additional police.

Uh we're concerned, of course, about traffic enforcement, that falls into the safe plan.

But from your department's perspective, um, how are we doing and how do you see the budget helping keep our streets safer, particularly for, well, for everyone, but pedestrians and cyclists in particular.

Thank you, Commissioner Magic, for the question.

For the record, Nick Ross, Director of Transportation Engineering.

Um, I think tomorrow night's uh transportation advisory board meeting with the staff report I'll provide uh is a good example of the commitment this commission has made while relatively small, but to double our STR 20 multimodal fund to $300,000 annually in the capital plan carrying over into our budget, uh, and its ability with just that relatively minor but significant increase to take on uh a significant number of additional projects that we'll be able to deliver as soon as next year.

So from that commitment, this budget very much reflects this commission's priority to continue making our streets safer.

From there, we're about to begin both our uh first comprehensive safety action plan and our overall transportation master plan update.

That is going to be the guiding document that is going to include a funding portion as well.

So I have a more accurate and clear answer to provide you with what level of additional effort may be needed to truly advance these multimodal safety goals in our community.

Uh so from that interim, this $300,000 a year, which is uh more than any other community directly provides in Montana for this type of small project, but very intentional improvement to the safety of our streets.

And then we're about to embark on a very detailed community conversation through the planning activities about not only what our needs are and what projects need to be developed to serve those, but ultimately what they're gonna cost and how we go about funding them.

Thanks for all of that.

Um 300,000 in the whole scheme of things as a big city is kind of a drop in the bucket.

That is also supplemented by grants, and there will be a commitment to continuing to kind of look for other funding opportunities.

Seeing you nod your head.

That's correct.

And you there's no argument that in the grand scheme of a $300 million dollar annual budget, that's a small drop.

It does represent um, you know, upwards of about 10% though, of our streets' capital budget.

That would go towards only capital improvement projects.

So again, within the sort of the bins of spending that we have authorized to use on these type of projects.

I mean, I would argue, if you don't mind, that it is relatively significant in the scheme of what we have available to provide specifically for this portion of our city.

Okay, and if people, I think there is a lot of interest in our city in improving the safety on our streets.

We've heard a lot from folks.

It sounds like there's a couple of good opportunities and ways for citizens to get engaged in the process.

You mentioned the master plan, transportation board meetings.

And we will have an opportunity to present our uh draft engagement plan for the Transportation Master Plan update.

I presume uh we can fit that into the upcoming schedule to make sure, as we've been doing for these major efforts, that our commission gets an opportunity to review how we plan to engage.

And quite frankly, um, I am I have an I I have an eye towards engagement fatigue coming up because of the breadth of engagement that we're going to be doing on these exact issues.

Got it.

Well, hang in there, take care of yourself, no fatigue.

For the public with the public.

Got to be engaged.

Thanks.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Oh, I'm not sure.

Oh, I not done.

Okay, ADA, uh disability corner to say plan shops complex.

This might be a question for city uh assistant city manager.

So the shop complex is kind of embedded in one of our neighborhoods.

We've heard a lot of comments from neighbors over the past about the impact of that development.

What are some of the assurances that we can give neighbors in that area that the shop complex, if we add this to the budget, make it bigger, whatever it's gonna be, is not gonna further negatively impact that neighborhood.

Good evening.

Uh John Henderson, your assistant city manager, and thank you for the question.

Uh, pleased to report that we've already been in engagement with uh some of the adjacent neighbors and and that neighborhood association.

And uh it I gotta say it's it's a really unique opportunity to be able to involve uh citizen input this early in a project such as this.

Typically, you don't see that opportunity arise until you get into the formal development review process.

Uh so we have gone I I think the extra mile to make sure that we're sensitive to people's needs and and their understanding of what impacts might result as this project.

Um, I can I can uh elaborate a little bit further on that and and commit to uh preservation of some of the green space that exists currently uh around that parcel uh along, especially along North Bozeman and and Aspen Street there.

Uh there's some beautiful mature landscaping there and trees that that we intend to preserve as a part of that design.

There's also plans in the Pratt plan for uh the parks recreation and active transportation plan for uh the consideration of a bike way, a bike boulevard that would uh go along Aspen all the way from 7th to the new footbridge that was just built across the creek across from Rouse.

Uh so there's a lot of opportunity there to kind of tie things together and make sure that we end up with something that's gonna be an improved uh condition for those folks.

Okay.

If I could add one quick thing.

Thank you.

Um John and his team have done amazing work on this.

Um part of uh this our preferred alternative takes our biggest our largest equipment out of the current shops complex and moves it further down on Rouse.

It puts it inside right now during the coldest days, those graders have to idle for 30 or 45 minutes before they can even move.

So that's impacting the local neighborhood.

The traffic in and out of the current city shops complex is impacting the local neighborhood.

Most of that large equipment's gonna go down on the further north and be inside.

So we're pretty excited about that in terms of wear and tear on the equipment, in terms of productivity of our workforce, uh having that equipment uh housed in a in in a temperature controlled environment's gonna lengthen its life, reduce costs, make our staff more effective, all these things, in addition to what John just said about preserving what we've heard is an important green space around our current shop.

So less impact, we're gonna keep the green space, we're gonna take care of our people and our equipment.

It's a good product.

Okay, great.

Real quick follow up, and I'm done.

Um you have spoken, but I don't think it's been on the record just about uh how some of the decision making went into whether or not we should move this shop complex further afield.

What from a sustainability perspective kind of led to our decisions to keep it where it is?

Yeah, again, thank you.

And we knew from the beginning that uh we've we have some significant challenges to overcome.

These are uh these are very significant needs that require significant investment.

Uh and so from the beginning we did a market analysis, we looked at greenfield development, we looked at uh land leases, land exchanges, uh variety of different parcels around town, and at the end of the day, we're we're landing on uh what I think we already knew from the beginning, and that was there's a tremendous value in just leveraging the land that we already own.

Uh, that land already has water and sewer services uh that feed into it, uh, and that's a lot different than if we were to develop on a brand new parcel, we would have to bring water and sewer uh into it.

Uh the other major factor here will be uh operational efficiencies associated with maintaining the location of our uh equipment near the majority of the services to the core town that we provide.

Uh and so when we looked at some of the areas a little further afield, uh we did some rough math and analysis to understand you know what those travel times and traffic safety hazards would would really look like.

Uh and it's again significant.

Uh so from a sustainability standpoint, um, there's really no better uh solution than uh relying on assets that you already own in a location that's ideal uh and and really well suited for uh further development there.

Appreciate that okay.

I'm done.

I didn't see that.

Anything anything further?

Thank you.

Commissioner Sweeney, are you?

Okay.

Commissioner Sweeney, you got the floor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, again, I just want to reiterate thank you to um assistant city manager Henderson and all of those that worked on the shops complex.

Um, for the public, some of us commissioners in non-quorum groups did get to see more in depth the process of getting to this point.

And I think in this instance, our staff has been really responsible and um really pretty conservative while allowing for growth in the future.

Um, this is something that previous commissions have put off and put off and put off, and we really have to do it now.

Um, some of our staff are using porta potties.

It is it's a really critical situation, so I'm really pleased that you made the impact as small as you did.

Um, I think if you ask most people, are you happy to pay $24 a month to have these things function?

They would be pretty on board with that.

Um, so thank you.

And then um thank you, Melissa, for um all of the budget preparation, but also some last-minute questions that I myself had about uh the neighborhoods association and that budget.

Um, have a few questions.

I guess I'll start with the neighborhoods.

Um, you know, the budget is broken down kind of, you know, departmentally, it's we it's not a lot of itemized.

This is for the public, uh, not a lot of itemized detail.

So I was curious about um the budget for the neighborhoods program, um, because I see it as a really valuable communications tool, and so I did get um feedback on that, and the question I have is what is the MSU CATS program?

It's 35% of the expenditure for the neighborhoods program.

What is that?

Yes, I it's it's a critical program, and I am going to um get some information right now from Takami about what that is.

We've talked about it previously, it's a very successful program, but give me a few minutes to get some details to you and I'll get those.

Okay, excellent.

Because I served on the neighborhood council for two years and I don't know what that is.

So I guess as far as the neighborhoods, I have no amendments that I would like to make tonight because I did receive the information so late.

I haven't had a chance to formulate things, but I would like to just ask my fellow commissioners maybe over the next year, since protecting neighborhoods and heritage is one of our priorities, that we could maybe dive into the neighborhoods program a little bit.

So anyway, there's some in-house things, but also we should probably have a conversation about how we resource the neighborhoods program maybe by next year, or we could do a budget amendment at some time.

Which brings me to my next question, which is in section five of the resolution.

It says, pursuant to sections 7, 6, 4,006, and 7, 6, 4012, Montana Code annotated, the city commission hereby delegates appropriation and budget amendment authority to the city manager for the expenditures from the following funds: debt service funds, fee-based budgets, trust funds, federal state, private grants accepted and approved by the commission, special assessments, monies borrowed during the year, proceeds from the sale of land and funds for gifts or donations.

Um I understand a lot of that authority needs to be delegated in order to manage, you know, day-to-day operations of a city, but um in what instances would a budget amendment come in front of the commission?

What type of thing would that look like?

Yeah, primarily um budget amendments would come.

So all general fund budget amendments that are creating new appropriations would come to commission, um, with the exception of things like grant-funded items.

So once the commission approves a grant, we use that as our authority to create budget authority rather than bringing back a separate budget amendment to you and putting putting that on the agenda.

Um, so pretty much everything in the general fund would come um, yeah, I think really that's most of what would come in front of the commission.

There are some special revenue fund items if they're not funded with fees specifically.

Um, so like in our special assessment districts, for example, we do consider our special assessments fees.

That is something that doesn't typically come in higher than what we planned because we select those numbers before we do our assessments.

So it's probably a bad example.

Um, but primarily, uh what it does is it grants the city manager authority to take restricted revenues and assign them to projects.

Excellent.

Thank you very much for that clarification.

Um I don't have further questions, thank you.

Commissioner Sweeney, I I did phone a friend.

And the CATS program is uh it's a collaboration between MSU and the city that allows students to help the city by providing research projects that we don't have the capacity for as staff.

So it gives the MSU students real world uh experience to do work uh through their uh classes up at MSU.

Um every year a professor uh has reached out to us and we talk about the projects that they would consider us doing.

So it's it's uh it's a really great example of uh the university and the city working together.

Um this particular year we're doing something in the belonging and Bozeman plan research, researching homelessness in the student population.

So those kinds of things that wouldn't happen but for the relate the students up at MSU or are the examples of things in the CATS program.

And Takami is proud of that program she told me all about it.

I just needed a a little bit of a brain jogger to remember.

Can I ask a follow-up question that I realize you may not have the answer to how does that mesh with the neighborhoods program.

I don't I don't know that it does specifically to the neighborhoods but it's more of the city's outreach the more the city's uh relationship with MSU which is part of the town gown function of Takami's group.

Okay.

So for if we wanted to you know take that out of the neighborhoods program and kind of think of it as something else separate other outreach.

The neighborhood's budget is about 6000 minus 21.

About 38 thousand dollars a year between 15 neighborhoods so that's and that does not include as I mentioned to you earlier in the email that does not include the staff.

Right.

Okay.

So and our neighborhoods coordinator has uh historically cultivated that relationship with MSU so that's why it's there.

If the commission didn't want it specifically there and wanted to put it somewhere else we could do that for optics but that relationship between the neighborhoods coordinator and Montana State University we talked about it today on the strategic plan uh call with with MSU that um it's a really important effort.

Right okay so I just did the math so per neighborhood we have 15 neighborhoods right now we're spending about 2,600 per neighborhood something I did learn from this an analyzer um itemized budget is that we have toys we have um games that neighborhoods can use for events I didn't know that.

So maybe we need to make the neighborhoods a little more aware of what resources there are for that program.

So thank you.

All of my questions were asked.

Did you have further questions?

Okay we got both of y'all deputy mayor just a question so we have 19 million dollars in there for uh fire station number four which is a dependent of course on a on a ask of the of the community and a successful yes.

But we as a you know there's a lot of other needs we I think on a certainly in our priority list certainly with our minds coming from the commission we have committed and I'm forgetting the date to have a discussion as a commission of what those what those kind of asks how to prioritize or rank those asks for the community.

It feels a little uncomfortable to put one into that budget and I'm wondering you know understanding that often with these budgets you pull on one string and God knows what comes out right if we were to say take out that $19 million dollar for the fire station does that have any cascading impact in the rest of the other budgets well I guess um maybe I'll I'll speak to why it's in there.

It is one of your the city commission priorities in the city commission this has been a need a public safety need as our city grows response times lengthen um both in geographic response but also activity based on a growing population.

So that problem has been a challenge for us for a number of years.

We did attempt a public safety mail levy a couple years ago that failed that did not the need still exists.

So that's why it's in there.

It's gonna take a uh a large um well, a lot of work's been done in terms of costing that.

It's gonna take a a significant uh public education effort, and that's why the public education money in there.

If you wanted to take it out, that's the commission's decision, certainly.

Um we could have that work session, and then if you decided that was something we would do a budget amendment and put it, put it back in.

That's extra effort, but if that's the commission's direction, as your city manager, I believe that is as high a priority as this city has uh for public safety.

Certainly there's a lot of other needs, and it is this commission's um decision uh on what what moves forward.

But just to clarify, it would not change the numbers in this um in the estimated homeowner impact.

That new slide we had.

Right, that that is in the future.

Okay, that's all new money for the construction of the station and uh the uh staffing levy.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for asking that, Commissioner Fisher, um Deputy Mayor Fisher.

I um I was gonna ask the same thing.

And uh a follow-up is I I do know that we have $70,000 um budgeted each year for ballot education on the fire station.

And I'm just curious if we were to remove that fire station bond explicitly for fiscal year 2028, and give ourselves the option to put it in a different year and have that more robust conversation.

The deputy mayor um referred to.

Would it be possible to hold that ballot education line item maybe more generally, knowing that we are anticipating running some ballot questions, but we have not, as a body decided which ones and in what order?

Yeah, and that 70 grand was only supposed to be in one year, so we removed it out of the second year.

It's a 70,000 dollar effort for that bond issue and mill levy.

So I think that was uh that was uh um that was in there twice unintentionally.

The um so the other thing is the funding cliff we have for the 12 firefighters on the safer grant.

We can cash flow those, assuming a bond issue passes in November of 27, we can cash flow those um between the end of the safer funding and the beginning of the collection on the mill levy.

After that, if we don't have a bond, we are one of two things significantly cutting and eliminating other general funded departments to keep those firefighters on, or we are looking at a reduction in force, those are the two alternatives.

If a bond issue does not pass, or if the commission chooses to put a bond issue in a subsequent year.

27 gets us the ability to keep those 12 firefighters, six of them are for the quick response unit.

The other six were hired in anticipation of a fourth fire station.

Heard and um not to get into discussion, but I I think uh looking at the different options that we have.

One of the options is to run a staffing levy that's more focused on retaining those particular firefighters without the fire station, and um not signaling that that's my my interest, but I I think I have a desire to have that conversation broadly.

Um I just want to lift up the question I I asked about keeping the ballot question line item, anticipating that we will be running something.

Does that require an amendment to move it from perhaps it's in?

I tried to look and see that where that exact line was and wasn't able to find it in the fire um sections of the budget.

I guess I'm just curious where that currently lies and if we would have to move it to perhaps the city manager's office.

It doesn't require a formal amendment just to hold it in the budget.

Um it would be helpful if the commission made an amendment just essentially saying that that 50 that amount would be more general, and what we can do is that will allow us to update the bullets in the adopted budget to explain that it's not dedicated for a specific levy, but it was originally budgeted in the fire department.

Gotcha.

Okay, and then just one more follow-up.

You said that um it was a mistake to have both years in there.

Was that a mistake that um was actually transferred through all of our number crunching?

Like there is 70K potentially out there for both years that we've pulled back in, or was it there wasn't ever actually that additional 70K?

I think it might have been initially put in as a placeholder, not intended to live in the fire department, but it tended to be, you know, for potential future ballot education, knowing that we do have to call that out specifically in the budget.

Um that's what I think happened, is it got moved into fire and shouldn't happen?

Okay, so is there 70K in there for two years of the biennium still?

There is.

There is okay, great.

It's just one belongs in a more general place and another belongs in the fire station.

Correct.

Okay, that's super helpful.

Thank you so much.

Any further questions?

Um, I think for the sake of the public being able to opine on what we might be considering, it would be helpful to know if there are proposed amendments.

Yeah, Deputy Mayor.

So uh I would definitely I would move to, I mean, this is what the proposed amendment I would like to make would be to um add the city shops complex.

Um, I would also like to propose adding the hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the city budget for the postman C.

Bozeman Creek plan using the vacancy savings as outlined by the city manager.

And um I am noodling over, I mean, I'd be curious to hear some conversation on what we want to do about the fire station.

Uh I am tempted, I'm inclined to um remove it until we have our discussion on our priorities.

Any further amendments that folks are thinking about?

Um, yeah, I'll also signal interest in removing that fire station um line item for now, knowing that we're going to have a robust conversation and then the subsequent kind of amending of that ballot education line item to be a little bit more general until we as a body can um discuss where and what order we want to place that in.

Um I also just want to lift up the 1,000 request for the CWD C C D, yeah, CWD study, which I think I actually lost track of and don't actually know.

That's been taking care of oh, yeah, great.

It's not part of this budget.

Yeah, excellent.

I um I am gonna just walk back from that statement, then pass it on.

Any further amendments?

Commissioner's meeting, yeah.

Um, in light of our commission priority to streamline the development review, um, and the fact that we currently and projectedly are subsidizing the planning department 1.9 million per year in the budget.

I would like to maybe earmark some projects for that funding specifically, um, and these do have sort of long-range planning implications, which is what you know, I think a general fund subsidizing the planning department is appropriate for long-range funding um mechanisms.

And so the first one that I would kind of like to earmark for FY28 is a hundred and twenty-five thousand for pre-approved building plans, the creation of pre-approved building plans with neighborhood consent.

Um, and then in light of the fact that we are probably going to have an opportunity zone, um, I'd like to carve out a little more of that FY28 budget specifically for um a midtown neighborhood plan that would cover the opportunity zone area.

Um, I will just note that the Missoula redevelopment authority allocated $500,000 for neighborhood plans um for two areas of their opportunity zone.

So um, you know, I'm anticipating if we can streamline review, get things running more efficiently, maybe by FY28, we have some of that money available to do these long-range funding or long-range planning projects.

Um, so that's sure.

So thank you for that.

The subsidy that is that we're currently anticipating is just to keep the current operations going with the current planning staff and the current projects that are currently underway.

So if the commission wanted to add those things, it would require additional funding to the planning department.

I don't know how much uh capacity is with the current staff, but the plan.

So I talked with the director.

We're doing two really important things.

We're doing a development review process, which is currently underway right now, and we're doing a planning fee study.

So we're hoping that there are efficiencies in the development review process, and knowing those and doing this planning fee study, we'll be able to more appropriately bring to the commission the cost of doing planning services in the city of Bozeman.

So we need that subsidy just to keep the current operations, the NCOD, the landmark program, we're coming to the commission in a little while on height in the B3 and zone edge transitions.

That's all work the staff is doing right now.

It's gonna require the existing subsidies.

So my request to the commission would be that if you wanted to add those projects, we add additional funding to do those projects, and I don't know what that is tonight.

I would have to confer with the planning director.

We're also uh bringing to you a fee increase of 15% earlier than we wanted to before because we need to get that subsidy down.

That subsidy is concerning.

Now there's the general, there's the subsidy that Commissioner Sweeney spoke about for long-range planning.

That's roughly two mils in our budget.

This other one is just general fund money that it takes the difference between what we bring in and our costs of operating the planning department.

So for clarity, um, between the 15% increase in fees and the streamlining of review, are we not expecting any savings from that 1.9 million per year?

I think eventually, I don't know when we're gonna see that.

The planning department's budget that's before you is no new staff.

It's a significant reduction in our contracted services.

So we have um really I Aaron has done a really great job in working with her to address that that subsidy that was a little bit of a surprise, but that really is related to the applications that come in.

And as you know, growth in Bozeman has slowed significantly, it has not stopped.

So we still have a lot of work to do.

There are still applications being submitted all the time, but the number of those and therefore the fees we collect are reduced, have been reduced.

Commissioner Magic.

Uh just to follow up.

Um, so I agree with the concepts of pre-approved plans.

Um I'd like to find a way to kind of do that here in the next couple of years.

Um I trust staff to kind of work that into their um budget if that's something that we direct them to do.

Uh and midtown, I believe that 100K could cover things.

Um, we I don't think we've talked about really what the scope of that is, and I think the scope can be a combination of URD neighborhood plan to have two concurrent plans.

I don't think makes sense when you really want one plan that's covering the whole area, and we've already allocated money for that.

So, yeah, we're not quite to discussion yet, but I appreciated that.

Um, wanted to telegraph to the public if there are proposed amendments they may wish to opine on.

So are we ready to move to public comment?

Okay, we will open the public comment portion of this action item.

Um, starting with public comments in the room.

Um you'll have three minutes, same as before.

Uh, tell us your first and last name, your relationship to the city.

Um, you'll have your three minutes.

Good evening.

Good evening to you all.

Thank you.

I'm Steve Noble.

I'm here with my colleague Jim Madden from C.

Bozeman Creek.

This will be a very short report because I wanna thank uh City Manager Wynn and Deputy Mayor Fisher for already proving the rationale behind the Creek project, your project.

Um, there's still a good deal of work to be done.

Um, and we'll be back here uh at your next meeting in July on the 14th to share with you a lot of the details, along with the consultants and a number of members of the C Bozeman Creeks advisory group.

So you'll really see the the extent to which we've come so far already with enormous community engagement, and how much work we still have to do before we ever get to the point where we're actually commissioning projects and shovel ready work.

So we're looking forward to that next month.

We really are, and um, I would hope that you would then consider favorably that motion, the suggestion that's on the table and thanks to you for uh giving it the past, present, and future summary so well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Hello, I'm Katie Madison.

I'm the executive director at Haven, and I'll be even briefer.

I just wanna say thank you tonight for all of the work that you have done on this budget, uh, and in particular to say thank you to Commissioner Bodie for um suggesting that we keep the shelter funding for Haven Family Promise and HRTC at that original budget $500,000.

It's a huge smart investment in our community.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Any further comment requests in the room.

Good evening.

Hi again, everyone.

Uh Mark Campanelli, Boogroup Park neighbor.

Um the discussion of that MSU program in the neighborhoods, I think is pretty interesting.

I may have met a student that was involved in one of these.

Um I think my memory gets so bad.

I think we were doing the traffic calling, you know, painting on the road at the Galligator crossing, and there was a group of students there, and they said, Oh, my professor is looking at you know, water control and story mill ditch or something like that.

That may have been that program.

Um I would just definitely strongly I I love intermixing with with having opportunities to intermix more with the neighborhoods at MSU, like the thing they do at Story Mill, or sorry, uh um shoot, story mansion.

And I have the M on Story Mansion every every spring, I think, or every fall.

I think that's great.

Um, but like just communicate it back to the neighborhoods.

We'd love to know that this is going on, especially if money's being spent.

So, um, but not only because money's being spent.

Um I've had a thought with regards to the Bozeman Um Creek Vision Plan.

Um I've had an idea of doing sort of like this flood watch symposium where neighbors can come together and learn about flood insurance, how that works, what happens if there is a flood.

Will FEMA want to take my property if it floods and I have insurance or I don't have insurance?

Um I'm I'm I'm just concerned about people not really turning out.

Um, also an opportunity to talk to Allied Engineering about the preliminary engineering review.

I would love to see what their assumptions were and be able to push back a little bit.

I'd be very friendly about it, but um that affects our neighborhoods.

I was out canvassing finally.

Um I was supposed to do this at spring break, and I got super sick, and then it didn't happen until now, but canvassing for the neighborhood association and um lots of basement apartments right in that flood zone.

So it's it's fun to try to figure out you've count the mailboxes and then you try to figure out where's that fifth one.

Oh, it's down those steps around the side.

Anyways, um the only other comment I make with regard to budget is I'm really have been talking with a lot of friends and neighbors about is there a place for the middle in Bozeman anymore?

Um, one way my life can go is I rent out my house to, you know, I get the flood insurance, I pass all those costs on.

I never do an ADU, and I just milk my place until it floods.

Um and I don't want that to be my future.

Um, but I just have to point out with the cost of everything here, like that's where people in the middle end up being.

I know that sounds like a first world problem, but I really am trying I'm trying to spin this as like I want to keep investing in the community.

We need to encourage people to get to the middle and to keep investing with caring about those around us.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening again, Commission Emily Tlaido Boswell resident.

Um, I just want to say thanks for receiving my uh written public comments for last two.

Um I did try to generate some, you know, engagement around the budget, but uh it's just kind of a dry thing, so um, but I commend the uh the dialogue that's in that that's happened, and I I appreciate the responsiveness.

Um, some of you guys have responded to my questions.

Um I'm also saying this also to calm my nervous system because I always say, like, when you're sitting out there sometimes and you listen and you like hope you can accept this criticism, but some of them like, what are you talking about?

We're talking about a fire station in that part of town.

You just voted to basically signal we don't want capital to flow to that part of town.

You say you do it because you don't want to prevent sprawl, but I don't see anywhere in the budget uh to buy conservation easement to buy the details like the development rights from that property owners out there, so like I'm like it can be frustrating, and now I'm escalating my nervousism, so we're gonna bring it back down again.

Um I've said this in both of my written comments.

Uh, the competition for the general budget, it's out it's not okay.

And it's not that things like housing or haven't or um the Bozeman Creek or long-range planning, which it does get we we we have mills that are already dedicated to that that have been approved by the voters, so laundry long range planning is something that voters said yes, let's please do this, we will put money to set.

Um it's where is the money coming from, right?

When we talk about using vacancy savings for something, I'm like, okay, well, where did that come from?

Right?

There's only a couple options there.

Either staff has been overworked to compensate because we're understaffed, or the public has sustained a decrease in the level and quality of service that they're receiving because of the vacancy.

It's not just money sitting out there for the taking.

Um, and so before we think about getting congratulatory about making hard decisions, let's actually make some hard decisions about this stuff, and I want to remark um my comment for the planning department in particular.

Um I'm a big proponent of systems that are motivate evolution on these things.

I know you're not gonna get super granular, you don't want to micromanage apartments.

That's that guy's job.

Um, but we really do need performance metrics that are meaningful.

It was clear to me some departments are really well trained in developing performance metrics.

Some could probably use some help in that way too.

Um, but I I hope that you consider the amendment that I suggested for the planning department.

Um, at least to adjust the performance metric for plan review.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any further comment requests in the room?

Second request for calls in the room, and a final request.

Mr.

Moss, who do we got online?

First up, we have Chris Brown.

Good evening.

Yeah, good evening.

This is can you hear me okay?

We sure can.

Oh, great.

Thanks.

I appreciate uh the opportunity to speak to the commission tonight and the mayor.

Thank you for all your uh hard work on the budget.

I want to particularly thank uh John Henderson's leadership for the uh see Bozeman Creek, Bozeman Creek project, but also for all his hard work on the uh works complex, the city complex that he was talking about today.

Um but on the other hand, I would also like to speak as a homeowner of 2719 McCormick Street and Harvest Creek subdivision.

And you know, our taxes have been going up pretty substantially every year.

And it looks like, based on the current proposals in 27 and 28, we're talking about a fifty-two dollar a month increase in our real estate taxes.

And I appreciate all the services and all the great things we had in Bozeman.

It's a great place to live, and that's why I'm here.

But I think that we're if we continue on this path, we're gonna be pricing people like myself and others out of the Bozeman market.

And you're gonna end up with a lot more landlords and a lot less homeowners.

So I think that like the previous comment are made.

I think we have to start looking at some hard decisions on the budget going forward, and I would definitely advocate moving firehouse number four to the future.

I don't think it has much support, honestly, and I think we have to start making some hard decisions on, you know, where is our taxpayer money going?

Because these increases are unsustainable.

And I think that we need to have some hard decisions and some more discipline on the commission.

So thank you for your time.

I appreciate all your hard work, but I think from the ground level, I think you've probably heard it from many people other than me, but I think we want we have to have some of these tough decisions and tough discussions about budgets going forward.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Are we seeing anyone else online?

Next up, we have Ricky Burns.

Ricky, are you there?

Yes, sir.

Commissioners, can you hear me?

We sure can.

Excellent.

My name is Ricky Burns.

I'm the ADA coordinator for Bozeman Montana with Ability Montana.

I'm speaking today on behalf of the disability liaison position that is being brought before this commission for this year's budget.

I ask yourselves what's in a name?

On the bottom of this city's budget, it does say the most livable place.

I ask you now to live up to that name.

We're talking about spending all this money on increasing our city, growing our communities, and building all around us.

Yet this $6,000 ask that's being asked of the commission right now to provide this position helps us live up to the best last place to the most livable place.

Projects like Lindley Park, Trails, the disability, downtown accessibility map that's now available on the city's website, are all key items that have been brought to you by people who are leaders, people who stood up for disability and accessibility in our communities and matter.

If we're going to go forward into the future, it is important that we fund projects such as this, fund positions that lead us into the future with a flaming torch that we currently hold.

We've stood up for accessibility in such a way that now it's being recognized across the state, and I ask that you fund this position to make sure that that continues.

If we don't, then we only go backwards and we take our community with us.

It's really important right now that you vote to support this, as well as vote to support an ADA coordinator in your future.

I may not be around forever and may not be around to hold the torch to lead the charge.

That makes our city the most accessible one in the United States.

I ask that you look at the projects that have been completed around you, look forward to the Bozeman annual ADA celebration next month, and to all of the things that we have to do in the future, like repairing our sidewalks downtown in the alleyways that came from walk audits that I completed myself with my team, and other projects that we look forward to in the future, like creating phase two of the Lindley Trails Project to connect Cyprus to the rest of Lindley Park.

Things like the Sweet Pea Festival, the Bozeman Fleet Market, and Bozeman Pride Festival are all things that all of our community enjoys.

On the day of pride, I saw families and bikes, people with strollers, people with walkers, people with roll-aters, all using the beautiful trails that were completed.

Due to the tasks that were done by myself, the city, ability, and others that all team together to make sure things happen.

If we don't have a liaison, there's no one to lead the charge.

And projects like this will never get completed.

So I ask that you use this money in the best way possible to fund this liaison position and hopefully a ADA coordinator position going forward so that we can live up to our name as the most livable place and be the best last place in the United States.

Make Bozeman the most accessible city in the US.

Join me and let's make that happen.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Mr.

Moss.

Next up, we have Kristen Newman.

Good evening.

Good evening, Mrs.

Kristen Newman.

I'm calling in support of the disability community liaison staff position.

I encourage reflection on what the liaison role was intended for and why I had recommended it as a staff role after I saw and experienced the significant value of this position within city work firsthand.

The liaison is a direct link between a community and city staff.

It's a role to help lead city initiatives and bring in community partners when appropriate, while also ensuring the quietest of voices are elevated within city government.

It's seeking out those voices and bringing them to the table.

It's a collaborative role, not an advocacy role.

It's a role to ensure the city is prioritizing and making improvements the way the city needs to be while understanding the operational constraints the city faces.

The priorities the city implements may not always be what outside advocates feel are priority, and your liaison will be able to help take a holistic approach to gathering feedback from community advocates while also supporting staff in implementing not just belonging and Bozeman goals but also ADA initiatives.

It's an invaluable leadership role and leadership that cannot be outsourced.

I want to use the annual community chats as an example of an area that this role was envisioned to lead.

These chats were implemented by the city during the Belonging and Bozeman project, and we're intended to continue as a city initiative.

The vision of these community conversations was to maintain them as a bridge between community and local government, which is not a bridge other community organizations can effectively maintain in the long term.

The most important part of this initiative was to have a city representative, your liaison, facilitate the conversation and assist staff with addressing concerns and ideas that arose from those conversations and be a person someone can follow up with at the city.

I facilitated the second annual community chats when I worked at Ability Montana to serve as a bridge during your staffing gap.

I did this because the community still knew me from my role as the city's community liaison the year prior, and my hope was to maintain the momentum for your new staff liaison who would be facilitating community outreach and engagement of this nature moving forward.

Now we are going into fourth annual community events, including a celebration without the intended disability leadership within city staff to support and facilitate citywide collaboration and inclusion that you're which who is your community liaison.

Is my sincere hope that the city will hire a liaison soon and that their scope and role within in the implementation of city priorities, including the collaboration with the many disability community partners and Bozeman will be clearly defined and supported by your staff and leadership.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Moss, are we seeing any further requests?

Next up we have Jason Delhi.

Good evening, are you there?

Good evening.

Yes, good evening again.

Uh Jason Delmu.

I'm on the uh CDB and involved with Nina speaking only on my own behalf.

Um regarding the city shop complex, I just want to express the gratitude to manager Henderson as well as staff from the parts and engineering departments in um collaborating and meeting with the neighbors on that mature vegetation.

Um, and also Mr.

Henderson or Manager Henderson gave us insights into the complexity of storing and servicing the city's assets and buildings in order to be able to provide services and um it's just really impressive the amount of creativity and physical responsibility and determination that uh has gone into uh the assessment of of that complex problem.

So uh just wanted to uh voice that appreciation to him and the other staff.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Moss.

I'm showing no additional requests for comment.

Okay.

Seeing no further comments come before the commission.

Uh we will close the public comment hearing on this item and bring it up here um for commission discussion.

Um do we want to start with any amendments or is there big picture discussion that folks are interested in?

I would say can we start with the amendments?

Well, we have to make a motion.

We gotta make the main motion first.

But main motion I move to approve the 2028 biennium budget and fiscal year annual, fiscal year 27 annual operating budget as presented.

Don't we yeah?

It's the the 2027 biennium budget and the annual operating yes, second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

Um would you like to propose any amendments?

So let me just jump right in with the amendment and the amendment after it.

Yes.

Um so I guess I would move, I would move to address a city shops complex, which for 76.147 million dollars.

To this biennium and replace the uh uh the estimated residential impact chart on page 28 with the revised version that you you have shown us today.

And I would further add this part of this motion three requests of staff.

And I don't know if we can do this, but one is that we spend the next few we spend the next several weeks between now and when this comes back to us in August, optimizing those rate impacts to make sure those numbers are as tight and as accurate as we can.

That's the first request.

The second request is that we squeeze this total project cost as hard as we can to really just value engineer this thing.

Maybe not within an inch of its life, but maybe within two inches.

And then the third thing is that also the staff move around, really look hard at our capital projects plan and and move things around to make room, you know, again to really uh minimize the the impact um uh uh to our to our our taxpayers and our our ratepayers.

Um I'll second for the purposes of discussion here.

Okay, so uh I'm gonna say the motion that was made followed by three points of discussion.

Oh, with those you can't you can't add those.

I I don't know if that's uh the notice part of this discussion here, but I'm we would do all three of those things anyway.

Okay.

So it's just a simple add 76 million dollars to the budget for the city shops complex.

It's gonna counteract mine because I was gonna say make it as exorbitant as possible.

So I'm appreciated you got there first.

Do we do we have a second?

Yes.

Okay.

That motion's been moved and seconded.

Do you want to speak to your motion?

I just think this is an expensive project, but it's a much needed project.

So it's there's two tensions here.

We need this to be a vibrant and uh and thriving city.

We're gonna hit taxpayers and ratepayers hard with this.

Um, and so that's my request then for those three, which I won't repeat, that we just really work these numbers really hard between now and September or August, so that we we can, you know, hopefully prove some of these numbers a little wrong and and be a little easier.

Commissioner Bowdy.

Yeah, um, I I want to acknowledge that um uh the deputy mayor and I discussed this, and I was kind of originally in support of like, yes, let's put it into this budget now.

Um, I did second for for the purposes of discussion because I I'm actually feeling differently since since we chatted.

Um I think that I'm I'm very in support of this effort and do ultimately want to put it in the budget in August, but I I'm realizing that this is a really substantial change to our budget on the night that we are adopting it, and we have um a pretty small group of people in this room in this moment.

We we've heard I think one or two comments um in reaction to this, and I would um appreciate having giving the community more opportunity to let us know what they think about this, um, while also signaling that there is support from the commission to go this direction and get um those kind of finalized numbers by August when we make the the adoption based on our taxed um assessment values.

And yeah, I I think one of our priorities as a commission is to engage meaningfully with the community and this feels at odds to that, even though I I think all of us up here, I guess I won't speak for all of you, but seeing kind of the um charts and the discussions that that we've had, I I really see why this is needed and do want to support it.

Um I think that getting that feedback and comment after we've made this vote would feel different than um receiving that comment before once we've made that you know final evaluations in August.

So for that reason, I'll I'll um not be supporting the motion, but don't want to signal that I don't support that's a double negative.

I do support the overall effort.

Sure.

Thank you.

Commissioner Magic.

Thanks.

Um I have been prepared to support this amendment.

Um, and I believe that I still am going to, unless I kind of hear more opposition or more uh reasoning to postpone it.

Um I agree very much with your rationale rationale.

I just uh don't know.

I think it's a good faith effort to do that.

I'm not sure it's gonna make any difference.

I don't know if we're gonna see a lot more engagement, um, but I'm willing to kind of possibly do that for the good faithness of it.

Sure.

Commissioner Smeeney.

Yeah, thanks.

Um I'm gonna support the motion to um adopt the city's shops complex um into our budget.

Um I've always thought it's crazy that we adopt this budget in a three-week timeline before we know our assessed values, so definitely agree that it's bonkers.

Um, but you know, our chickens are coming home to roost.

We've had several commissions put this off.

Um other communities saved their ARPA funds.

We did not.

So now we get to do this.

That's right.

Um yes, I will support this motion as well.

I would say that for one, um, I think this is a clear top level need that if all five of us are telegraphing, we need to do this.

Um I also don't, I don't I wouldn't want to set folks up that are wanting to opine that they're opining on a decision that's made.

Um, so just you know, in in the in the kind of to Commissioner Bodie's point of engaging meaningfully.

I don't know if we're if we're saying five out of five of us want to do this, if it's possible, if these if these models work out, we want to do it.

I don't know if that's um, I think I'd rather be as upfront about rate impacts as early as possible.

Okay, ready to vote?

Mr.

Moss.

Deputy Mayor Fisher.

Aye.

Commissioner Bodie.

No.

Commissioner Magic.

Aye.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Aye.

Mayor Morrison.

Aye.

Amendment is approved four to one on incorporating the shops complex rate increases right now.

Perfect.

All right, then uh uh second amendment I would propose is adding 150,000 to the general fund wherever you guys feel appropriate for the C Bozeman Creek um planning effort project effort.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Is there any discussion on this?

No.

Well, I mean, I uh I think I let me just speak.

I mean, I hear we we uh I hear this this worry that we're not making a hard cut by or a part decision by actually finding funds on this.

We're essentially we're we're we're the vacancy fund using vacancy fundings kind of reduces the elasticity.

We use that as to as a shock absorber when when things come up unexpectedly, like the the legislative uh change on the levies.

So this will remove some of this.

This will essentially force us to punt some hard decisions later down the line.

That said, there is also a lot of unknown in what the C.

Boseman Creek is going to come out, what this knee is going to be.

And so kind of really wrenching hard now for a somewhat theoretical or somewhat um you know project, you know, when we don't quite know the full demands that that we'll need for C.

Bozeman Creek makes me more comfortable to say, okay, we have there's a lot of of um elasticity here, and and I'm comfortable with that for now, recognizing that we're going to, you know, those vacancy savings have a role, they have an impact to our city staff.

Um I don't like using them.

I don't like seeing them in our our budget, but but it's part of the reality of running a government that we have some wiggle room, and I'm content to let it be for now.

Commissioner Bodie.

Yeah, um, I'll I'll also be in support of this motion.

I I feel somewhat reticent to use general fund money on something that I think we can fund out of our enterprise funds.

Um, and I I don't like to see it competing for that that general fund.

Um, and hearing from our city manager that because we don't have a clear sense for what exactly the projects will be, it's difficult for us to determine what portion should come from which enterprise funds at this point feels compelling.

Um I also want to address a public comment we got about how having these vacancy funds is um is a signal that perhaps we have um fatigue of our staff or um that we are having uh trouble hiring because we're not paying enough, and um I think we heard from our city manager that uh a large portion of these vacancy funds is for um FTEs that we are creating in this moment in the next biennium that we won't be able to hire for tomorrow because it takes time to put out the um the job description and go through the hiring process, and we can't do all of them at once.

We we stagger those.

Um, and yet we the way that we budget is the the full amount on day one.

Um so I I don't think that the vacancy funds um immediately signal that there's a problem with our um employee satisfaction with their jobs or um that we're not we're not paying enough, and in fact, I know our city manager has done a lot to improve um the competitiveness of our of our pay.

Um well that may be some some portion of it.

I don't feel it's a substantial one.

So um with all that in mind, I I'll be supporting the motion.

Commissioner Magic.

I'm gonna be supporting the amendment as well.

I appreciate some of the caution.

Um I really appreciate just uh the momentum we've had in this project and it's a number of years now.

We're gonna have our at our next meeting, July 14th, a discussion on the vision plan, really looking forward to that.

Continuing all of those might create stuff.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I do want to thank Commissioner Bodhi for her questions about funding this from um vacancy savings.

I'm I'm gonna support it because of the answers to those questions.

Um, you know, funding a one-time thing with sort of a one-time savings, doesn't bother me uh like you know, propping up a budget with vacancy savings.

So I'm gonna support this.

Um thank you.

I'm also going to support um it's an inelegant solution, but I think using you know the the levers that are true and unfortunate at times within city government.

Uh it's no news to us that you know we have positions that are open all the time.

It's tough, you know.

Um it's tough to fill them.

Um and also I want to, you know, ensure that we're maintaining some of the momentum on this project that could truly be, you know, a generational project that sort of marks a time when Bozeman today and the next Bozeman um that has figured out how to celebrate its namesake creek.

Mr.

Moss, would you pull the commission?

Deputy Mayor Fisher.

Aye.

Commissioner Bodie.

Aye, Commissioner Magic.

Aye.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Aye.

Mayor Morrison.

Aye.

Amendment passes five to zero.

All right.

One last one.

Let's see if the role continues.

I'm gonna actually I'm gonna move to remove the fire station, the 19 million dollars from the fire station out of the budget and update the fire outreach to more general education ballot outreach.

Second.

So for my understanding, it's both of those items.

Great.

It's been moved and seconded.

This is a tricky one.

Um I do not want to signal you know that we we do not support our fire fighters.

I mean, the the response times on the west end of town are a serious concern.

Um at the same time, we heard from voters two years just two years ago that they that they're fine with this as is.

Um and so, and we have also committed to having a larger discussion about there are many, many needs in front of us as a commission as a community that we cannot pay for without additional community uh support, so um, and that ranges from the streamlined bus service to um mental health and behavioral crisis uh response to um to a library and the swim center to to affordability to our public safety.

So I would prefer it to me it's neater to have this uh discussion without uh you know, with that with that kind of spot open and saying, okay, which is which of these debates are issues are we gonna put in that spot, rather than having that spot taken and say, okay, wait, we're gonna take one out and put you know, put one in so I appreciate city manager and and and uh all the staff for identifying this as a top line staff need this top line city need that will weigh very heavily and be very important in our discussion.

I just don't want to fill that chair right now, Commissioner Bowdy.

I couldn't say it any better than the Deputy Mayor.

I'll be in support.

Commissioner Magic.

I am not gonna support that.

I trust staff's instincts and putting the budget now.

I also believe that we need to go back out to the public with another public safety ballot issue, and hoping that we do that, but um it's public health and safety.

We're talking about fire safety, so I'm not gonna support it.

Commissioner Sweeney.

I'm gonna support the amendment.

Um I do feel like we have a lot of competing needs um as the deputy mayor articulated, and to throw this one in as sort of a default.

I I would like us to have that conversation first.

So I will support this amendment.

I have nothing further to add.

I'm happy to support this motion.

Mr.

Moss, would you pull the commission?

Deputy Mayor Fisher?

Aye.

Commissioner Bowdy?

Aye.

Commissioner Magic?

No.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Aye, Mayor Morrison.

Aye.

Amendment passes four to one.

I'm gonna stop my streak there.

Okay.

Are there any further amendments proposed?

The deputy mayor got mine, so I'll pass it on.

I stole it.

Uh Commissioner Sweeney.

I would like to propose that.

125,000 from the general fund subsidy to the planning department for FY 2028 be carved out and dedicated to the creation of pre-approved building plans for small infill projects in cooperation with neighborhoods.

Second, it's been moved and seconded.

Would you like to speak to your motion?

Yeah, I think um there's a couple different ways we can do this, uh, but at the at the very base level, what this is gonna allow us to do is get regular people into homeownership with a little bit lower barrier.

They can save on architecture fees, they can save on the planning review timeline, um, it's gonna reduce the barrier to small infill projects.

And if we do it in coordination with the neighborhoods, it's going to rebuild trust and allow us to bring housing online that doesn't create conflict.

Those are mills dedicated, and this is general fund subsidy.

So what are we getting for this?

This is a community benefit that will have tangible impact on people's lives and create livable spaces for new neighbors by thickening up our little village.

So, I just I just have a clarifying question for me for the commissioner for I don't know who, but where did that hundred?

What does that 125,000 come from?

What does it get us in terms of how many plans, et cetera?

Right.

So I had a conversation with a member of the community development board who happens to also be a private consultant.

He submitted a public comment back in January, I believe it was.

Mark Iggy, about other communities that had done these pre-approved plans.

And asking, you know, what would be a reasonable number to request for this item?

What could get the project done?

And he came back with multiple options for us.

If we need to pay a consultant or an architect or something to do this, we might get five plans for 125,000.

If we want to get creative and involve the MSU architecture department, we could have a competition for people to present plans and then do a neighborhood engagement and um, you know, approve plans in that way.

Some communities will ask for submissions and then give a $2,000 reward for a set of plans if your plans are chosen.

So I think the 125 is a number that would get us started with a packet, even if we had to do it from scratch, it could be less if we get creative.

Okay, so it's became from a community development board member who's looked at other cities.

Yeah, and he works as a private constructor.

Okay, and we deal with squishiness all the time, so I don't know.

It's a little squishy.

Yeah.

I I guess I'm I don't know that I can, I mean, I'm all in favor of pre-approved business building plans.

I think we it would be a great thing for us to do.

It's I think it is part of our priorities.

Um it should be if it's not, but I I agree that we should.

I what I hear though is from staff is that this um subsidy, I have a trouble calling it a subsidy, but it this 1.9 million dollars that we pay for planning is a um is staff who are doing the job, and and I um I I don't see where we're gonna get that, you know.

I would I would much rather do this when we find the efficiencies and then say, okay, we've got this much money, let's put it into something, right?

But and then have a better sense of you know how much these pre-approved building plans are gonna cost.

But as it is now, I just I feel like we're playing with real staff here that that's gonna impact the ability to plan for for the for the future of this of a of a really important department.

And I I don't want to take 125 out of that.

Commissioner Bowdy.

Yeah, um, I'll say that I I'm excited about the idea of this year's catalog, and I I want to support the project.

Um, and I am um a little bit taken aback by how much we subsidize the um planning fees from the general fund, and so I I think you've identified two things that I'm interested in pursuing further.

Um, however, we do have a housing work session on our agenda for August 4th, as one of our um city commission priorities, we identified housing affordability and um a bunch of ideas, and we haven't, as a commission um had that discussion about which of these options are we gonna go after in the next two years.

Um I recognize that it's kind of hard to be in this budgeting place and not know what those things are gonna be and if we need a budget allocation for them.

Um, but I just worry about saying this is the thing we're gonna put money towards um before we've had that discussion about the the other choices that um that we have already discussed and that may um present themselves in that in that conversation, and so I'd like to kind of punt this to August 4th and um make sure that we talk about this then, Commissioner Magic.

I very much agree with the philosophy behind this, and I've been a proponent for it.

I wanted use it on my own property, and I'm feeling cheapest about supporting it because I feel like it's gonna benefit me, but I tend to agree with my fellow commissioners.

It's like I almost don't want to vote on it because I want to keep it out there, um but to talk about it on August 4th, um I will just broadcast that I do support this and think it would be a great idea, and we'll help in fill um some of our particularly kind of downtown area lots.

Um yeah, I I feel similarly um we've talked about this.

I think this is an important thing for us to try to figure out how an off the shelf product can can happen, especially for small undeveloped parcels and and ADUs and things like that.

And I think it's not explicitly a priority, but I think it's it, you know.

I feel like we've teased at it under the guise of the um streamlined development review, simplifying the the development process for for smaller projects.

Um, and yeah, I was gonna say a similar thing to Commissioner Bode, we'll have an opportunity to talk about this on August 4th and see and direct, you know, provide direction.

Staff can figure out is 125 not ambitious enough?

Is it you know what what what would it take to do this?

And then we can um we have to approve the 20 FY28 budget anyway.

Yeah, commissioners meeting.

One more thing in defense of this.

Sometimes it can be an incentive to streamline the development review, knowing that you need to carve out some money.

So we better do things faster and be more efficient with our staff.

I also feel like if you don't fund it, you don't get it.

We've been talking about it for years and we don't have it.

So I'm gonna hold you guys to the fire on August 4th, and we're gonna have a real conversation about it.

Thank you, Mr.

or do you want to vote on the motion?

Okay, Mr.

Moss, would you pull the commission?

Commissioner Sweeney.

Deputy Mayor Fisher?

No.

Commissioner Boddy?

No.

Commissioner Magic?

No.

Mayor Morrison, no.

Motion fails one to four.

Um, any further amendments?

Should I bother making an amendment for a neighborhood plan?

It is your discretion.

Trouble is we can't use urban renewal funds to do a plan for the entire area.

Around midtown.

Um what if we that's already spoken for?

Okay, I move to carve out 50,000 from the general fund subsidy to the planning department in order to complement the downtown urban renewal dist or the midtown urban renewal district funding for the midtown urban renewal district plan in order to expand that plan to cover the area encompassed by the opportunity zone.

I don't know.

Okay, can we do that?

Second, it's been moved and seconded.

Would you like to speak to your motion?

Yeah, so um being cognizant that urban rural funds can only be used within the district.

I guess I'm trying to cobble together some way to give us the tools to manage this opportunity zone before it is crashing down on our heads.

I feel like the Northeast neighborhood has a lot of plans.

They have the RUDAT report, um, doesn't mean that we as a commission end up following them often.

We probably should follow them more, but I want us to have a plan for the midtown area.

Before we do this, I I think our city manager would like to offer a comment.

So perhaps in the similar vein of the previous motion, you would give us some time to explore that idea.

I think $50,000 for the size of the opportunity zone is going to be woefully inadequate.

Um so I don't know, like I'd love to talk to some folks that are better at neighborhood plans and maybe have a conversation so that we could be able to more uh comprehensively address the idea maybe when we have the August budget meeting.

Would that be acceptable to the commission?

I'd be willing to do that.

Yeah, I tend to I tend to agree.

A we have the same problem with your carving money out of staff that we need, um and B, you know, I just really struggle with making, you know, creating projects and programs that uh from this dias without you know, kind of by the state of our pants.

We don't know, we don't even know if that's gonna be an opportunity zone, you know, yet.

Um, and so I'd much rather wait until we have more of a plan, we have some dollars attached to it, we can start to think about where those dollars might come from and then uh move forward.

I'll go ahead and withdraw the motion.

Okay, any further discussion or amendments?

Are we ready to poll a commission on the main motion?

I think we need to discuss.

Oh, yeah, we have not there's been no discussion on the budget real large.

But but I think it's um the deputy mayor's motion, so if you want to kick us off, sure.

Uh um I just I'll be tight.

I I think this is a tight budget, I think it's a responsible budget.

Um I understand, Commissioner Bode, the concerns over the um adding a shop complex at this hour.

Um, but I I really worried when we heard the concerns about the you know what this what the shop the need for the shop complex, the impact to its its rates, that going out with with um some some uh much lower numbers and then hitting folks later would you know so it's it's would be also somewhat unfair to our to our residents.

So um, for instance, I'll be talking with the city manager and I will be talking with this chamber tomorrow.

Um if we if this budget passes, I we will be talking to the chamber board about this, and I'm uh I'm I'm bracing for a tough conversation, but I I'm glad I will be glad to have that conversation earlier rather than later, right?

So um uh you know, I I I am sympathize with the fact that that taxes are increasing in this budget that we're about to improve, and we need to be really careful with, you know, we we have considerable tax fatigue in this community.

It will make for a difficult conversation when we do talk about what additional thing we put onto the ballot in 2027.

Um, uh and I don't have an easy answer for that other than the fact that we have that we are a growing community and we we have needs, we are working as hard as we can to keep those uh to meet those needs while being as conscious as we can about the cost of that.

Um I do want to speak very briefly about this kind of these questions about shifting costs to enterprise funds or to like say stormwater or something like that.

If you're a resident of the city of Bozeman, you are paying for sewer service and water service and stormwater service.

You're paying an arterial street assessment, you're paying a parks and trails assessment.

So, you know, this notion that oh, we got to get things out of the general fund and into you know, maybe into some other uh other funds and assessments.

I you know, it's all hitting the taxpayer, it's all gonna be someone we're gonna pay for.

So um I'm okay with with kind of you know, I just I think I think that that's shifting a cost to other other um uh uh components of our of our fees.

We all pay these fees, and so um I'm happy with this this work that we're we're working with the the staff's effort to kind of um reduce the the capital plan projects going forward to so we can reduce some of the burden of this shops complex and some of these other things we're paying for, and um, looking forward to um to voting yes on this budget, Commissioner Bowden.

Yes, thanks.

Um I'll also start by appreciating our staff and our city manager for putting together this draft budget and the yeah, multiple presentations and countless hours that each of our departments spent on this, painfully ranking their priorities to um you know not get everything that they asked for, and I know that's very difficult task.

I think that it's made more difficult by a challenging budgeting environment created by our state legislature kind of changing the way that property valuations occur, and um just wanna acknowledge how much this team had to work together to get to where we are in this moment, and kind of the uncertainty that we're still grappling with in advance of the final evaluations in August.

Um I was gonna say it's the end, we'll see it's now it flows well.

Um I'm honestly I think kind of frustrated with the way that this process works for the city of Bozeman.

Um it feels very backwards to me to be passing the budget in June, um, and then not actually having the finality of it in August.

I've done this twice now in this role, and have been told that it's kind of just like the really awkward hamburger that we deal with as um as commissioners and leaders of this town, and um what I've learned is that there are actually a number of our peer communities in the state doing it differently.

Um, the city of Missoula does not approve their budget until they get their final evaluations, and um their department heads actually give presentations on everything that they asked for with those ranked priorities for weeks leading up to the um budgeting session, and so everybody who is on their council gets to hear everything that was asked for and the ranking of it.

And something that I found really challenging, um, while I want to first commend our city manager for being really responsive to questions that we've asked and getting us all the information that we know to ask for.

Uh a real challenge I experienced is not knowing what I don't know and um hearing all of the things that were asked for and kind of the priority of them gives me the information I need to understand what was said yes to and and what was um declined.

And I I think I would end up supporting um the majority of things that our our city manager put into this draft budget because I know that you have an incredibly um detailed view of the the whole city, and um I also think that having that context could help me be a better um leader and uh a better commissioner for for the city.

So I'd be really interested in considering a different process for this in um the next biennium, or potentially even if we make small amendments to our budget one year from now when we have to you know to comply with the state, pass our biennium budget again.

Um trying what that process could look like.

And I also wonder about um not having the finality of it done until August.

I recognize that puts our departments in kind of a weird place for just a couple months, not knowing what the final um budget will be, and I know that our peer communities across the state do that and um will back pay staff if salaries change or there's like alterations.

They're able to kind of adjust for that.

So not necessarily a criticism of our current staff, but maybe a question of like how could we do this differently going forward?

Back to the current budget.

Let's see.

I want to lift up just a couple of things.

Commissioner Sweeney talked about the neighborhoods program and the ability to kind of rearrange the way that we fund that.

And I will just add my two sense that I do think that it's pretty strange that we ask our citizen neighborhood associations to pay for a park reservation and insurance when they're hosting an event that is explicitly to benefit our city.

And I actually don't know if our city staff pays for the park reservation fee when we have our annual barbecue or I'm thinking not.

Do we do that, C Manager?

Okay, so we actually pay into the okay.

Well, anyway, I'm interested in having that conversation in the future and figuring out how to remove barriers, but I don't feel that it's um rising to a level of needing to make a budget amendment in this moment.

Um I also just want to note um that we haven't kind of touched the police budget in this conversation, and I um want to have a broader conversation on our upstream efforts to make sure that people are not in positions where they are subject to crimes or committing crimes and um needing the support of our EMS services, and I'm not seeing that type of investment um in our biennium budget uh that I would like to see going forward.

Um, public safety is one of our commission priorities, and we've kind of defined that as like adequate policing, but we haven't actually defined what adequate means to us as a commission, and I think that's a really important conversation to have.

Um, so I would love to direct our city manager to um get uh a slot on our six-month agenda to talk about that, um, and hope that there are some other commissioners that might join me in um having that conversation.

And all of that said, I will be in support of this motion.

Commissioner Badgett.

Thanks, Mayor, and thanks to my hello commissioners for your comments.

Um, I'm not gonna repeat any of them except to also thank staff.

I would add just thanking members of the public.

It seems like every year we keep getting a few more people participating and commenting on these processes, and I think that is a really good thing.

The more you can kind of get involved in the not just the sausage being made, but the how the sausage is paid for it helps you be a better community member and helps inform how you participate and comment on the things that we do.

I think there is not um, I don't see much extraneous fluff in this budget.

You don't see us adding a lot of pet projects.

I think what comes closest to pet projects are things that government should cover, public health and safety, strong police, um basic housing needs, the HRDC, family promise, haven't contributions, streets.

Uh and I think one thing that we have going for us is these departments in the city of Bozeman are really fantastic and good to begin with.

I wouldn't say there's fluff in them, but they are above average departments for a city of our size.

We're really, really lucky.

To have departments run by the high quality of people, and I think that speaks not only to the employees, but the residents in Bozeman.

You know, we have a high standards, and we push our staff, we push our commission and our government.

I every year get the tax fatigue and feel responsibility when we do increase taxes.

Um so I'm I'm definitely gonna be sitting with that beyond this meeting.

Thank you.

Commissioner Sweeney.

Thank you.

Yeah, um again, thank you to staff for working on this for almost a year, I'm sure it's been crazy amount of work.

Um, and I want to thank my fellow commissioners.

I kind of came into tonight thinking people were gonna go after the police allocations, and I was ready to like get a saber out and fight because I really want this traffic unit.

And so um, you know, I just want to elevate that tonight we are doing a huge thing for public safety by allocating these resources to the police department so that they can have uh a permanent, more sustainable um traffic unit.

So I'll leave it at that, and um yeah.

Look forward to all of our work sessions in the future where we try to do things.

Yes, I'm now feeling like we're gonna be crunching for the next 18 months.

Uh yeah, I'm really excited and really appreciative of staff.

I think this I similarly am curious about a different timeline, but I think the process parts that were under our control this time um felt really rock solid.

The number of the work sessions in advance, even a break meeting between where we could ask questions, um staff could you know have spend some time on on what are the things that we were thinking about.

Um I think that process went really well.

Um feel really excited about some of the momentum that we have around like accessibility ADA work.

Um the liaison is you know obviously just one small piece of that modest improvements we've made in the last year, but um, I mean Nick's Nick's crew has I think you know almost $800,000 set aside in uh FY28, and that's that can be pretty transformative and so really excited for for those opportunities.

Um the last thing I want to say just I don't want both for the public and for our staff for it to not for it to feel as though fire lost something tonight, that there is anything less than extremely high levels of support from this commission and recognize the you know all but yet dire for solutions to access to EMS services in the west side of Bozeman.

Um, knowing that that is a conversation we're we're gonna have to have.

And the the impetus to remove it from this budget was to say it's a conversation we have not had yet about that specific ask or what the menu is and how we want to go forward.

I think that was prudent, um, and I you know, of course, support it, but I don't want it to feel like tomorrow fire departments waking up and seeing commission that's gonna have our back.

Um wanted to reiterate that it's any anything anything but the case.

Um I think that's all that I want to add.

Deputy Mayor.

I am glad Commissioner Body and Commissioner Sweeney both brought up the public safety.

And I do think that that's this is uh I just want to speak very briefly to that.

I think, you know, this is a budget that really does protect public safety um in several ways.

I mean, we we only hire 18 new staff people over the next two years in this budget, which I gotta say for an organization with almost 600 employees to only add 18 people over the next two years in a growing city is astonishing.

Half of those employees, more than half, 9.5 of those full-time positions are in our police department.

And I think that's also prudent.

Um I also, but I also want to second um Commissioner Bodies, and I hope there's a third who could join, that we need to have that discussion.

We always put it off, it seems, on what does public safety in this community look like?

And are we, you know, we had we talked a little bit last two weeks ago about upstream versus downstream.

Um where do we put that marker?

How do we help those folks who are in a crisis so that their first person who responds to them is not a police officer?

Um, and and maybe gets them some help and breaks that cycle that sends the police officer to them two weeks later.

So I would love to have that thing.

I think that conversation.

I think we could have we have room in our our six-month calendar where you know, potentially September.

I would hope a third commissioner could join us in having that conversation.

Um at the same time that we present a budget, I think that really deals with a lot of our public safety needs and puts off a big question about how we deal with the fire station for another day, does not mean we are not supporting fire.

That conversation is gonna happen.

Um, the city manager and I spoke about that last week.

We're trying to find time where that we'll slot that in.

Okay, any further discussion?

Mr.

Moss.

Deputy Mayor Fisher.

Aye, Commissioner Boddy.

Aye.

Commissioner Madison.

I Commissioner Sweeney.

Aye.

Mayor Morrison.

Aye.

Um, motion passes five to zero.

Um, now we're moving on to FYI.

Any FYI from the Commission.

Wow, the rare no second round of FYI.

Yeah, there we go, Commissioner Madge.

I think it's so warm in here that we're all eager to leave.

I am so ready to get out of here.

It is hot.

No further FYI.

Any FYI from staff?

Just a huge note of gratitude to the commission for their hard work on this and to Melissa, who um ran out of here as soon as the vote was over.

Um but Caitlin's here, and we have an amazing staff, as you mentioned, and I'm proud to be a part of this organization.

So thank you, Commissioners.

Thank you.

All right, seeing no further business to come before the commission.

This meeting is adjourned.

Goodbye.