This past week was a “light” week for the number of city meetings, with only the City Commission having met. That being said, in the four-hour long meeting, much was discussed, including the finalized public engagement plan for the Unified Development Code (UDC), approval of over $2 million in TIF funding to the development of a project called Wallace Works, and a discussion of the city’s Fire / EMS impact fees. Below are the highlights from each topic, and if you would like to read through the detailed notes from this week's meeting, click on the link at the end of this post.

Finalized UDC Public Engagement Plan

• Click here to access a copy of the finalized UDC Public Engagement Plan.

• Phase 1 of public engagement will occur from October to December 2024 and will include a survey on the Engage Bozeman website (https://engage.bozeman.net/), open houses across the city, and in-person presentations. During this phase, they want to figure out what areas of the UDC the community wants to focus on.

• Phase 2 of public engagement will occur between January and February 2025 and will include neighborhood workshops, a webinar, another survey on Engage Bozeman, more presentations, and a “Host Your Own UDC Chat,” where neighbors and organizations will be able to reserve a “toolkit” developed by the city to host their own discussions and provide feedback to the city. The goal for this phase of engagement is to look at the specifics within the focus areas identified in Phase 1.

• Phase 3 will occur from March 2025 and on and will include the development and a review of the new draft of the UDC and two public presentations on the draft.

• The city is planning to hire a professional facilitator to make sure the workshops and webinars run smoothly.

• The city will need to extend its contract with the consultant they hired from Texas, Code Studio (https://www.code-studio.com/). This also means there will be an added expense for the consultant.

• City staff will develop the “toolkits” for the “Host Your Own UDC Chats,” and then they are going to seek out feedback from groups they select to get their feedback on the kit before sharing it with the public.

$2 Million in TIF Funds Approved for the Wallace Works Project

• Wallace Works is located on the corner of Tamarack Street and Wallace Avenue, which is in the Northeast Urban Renewal District. (Planning documents can be found here: https://weblink.bozeman.net/WebLink/Browse.aspx?startid=262033&cr=1)

• The Wallace Works project is mostly residential with some commercial spaces mixed in. It has one “co-housing cluster” where four apartments will share “certain infrastructure like a kitchen,” but will have their own living space and bathroom. There will also be 21 studio apartments, 21 one-bedroom apartments, and three two-bedroom apartments for rent. There will also be 11 row homes and five “live / work” units for sale, which are three stories tall, with the ground level being a small shop / retail space. They have reserved 2,000 square feet of the 6,402 square feet of commercial space for a neighborhood market, that they call a “bodega.” However, there are no guarantees that the market will actually go in this space.

• Seven of the 49 apartments that will be available for rent will be considered “workforce housing,” which is a term the city is using specifically to make the units eligible for TIF funding. These seven units will be offered at 80% AMI.

• The actual amount of TIF funds being received totals $2,055,563, which the city will repay to the developer over the course of seven years.

• Commissioner Bode made an effort to see if the city could give the developer even more money to try to get the rents of the seven affordable units down to 70% AMI. Staff said they are not able to do this and says the city needs to build up a balance of TIF funds to be able to use toward the unfinished infrastructure in the Northeast Urban Renewal District before the district “sunsets” (expires) in 2042.

• Public comments focused on the impacts of this development to the surrounding neighborhoods, both with parking and increased traffic, and also with how it does not blend in with the existing character of the neighborhood.

• One of the developers of Wallace Works, Erik Nelson from Ness Partners, also sits on the city’s Downtown Business Improvement District Advisory Board.

Fire / EMS Impact Fees

• Impact fees are defined in Montana Code Annotated as “any charge imposed upon development by a governmental entity as part of the development approval process to fund the additional service capacity required by the development from which it is collected.” Impact fees can only be used for capacity-expanding capital projects and cannot be used for fixing existing deficiencies, operating costs, staffing, or repairs of any kind. Impact fees are paid at the time of the building permit.

• The city currently only charges impact fees for Fire / EMS, Transportation, Water, and Sewer. The city could be charging impact fees for Police, Stormwater, and any other city facilities with a 2/3 majority vote of the commission.

• The city hired a consultant from Idaho, TischlerBise (https://tischlerbise.com/), to help them with the impact fee study.

• TischlerBise’s study estimates that at its peak, which includes students and tourists, Bozeman’s population is actually 68,729, shown in the slide below.

• Building permit data is also used to calculate impact fees. As can be seen below, in 2023, the city approved only 193 building permits for single-family homes, compared to 1,075 permits for multi-family units. Since 2018, building permits issued for multi-family units have outpaced single-family residences more than 3:1. In 2023 alone, multi-family unit growth outpaced single-family homes more than 5:1.  

• The city is also using the growth projections shown below in the calculation of impact fees. They are assuming that the population will grow by 32.5% by 2033, and are anticipating the multi-family units will continue to outpace single-family homes by more than 3:1.

   

• The commission adopted the new Fire / EMS impact fee schedule, charging the maximum allowable fee, so the average single-family home (2,201-2,400 square feet) will pay $1,408 in new fees, which is a $986 increase compared to the current fee. The average multi-family dwelling unit (1,401-1,600 square feet) will pay $1,091 per unit, an increase of $812. The new impact fees will go into effect on November 1, 2024.

• The Transportation Impact Fees are scheduled to go in front of the Community Development Board in November and then to the commission in December. Water and Sewer Impact Fees will be reviewed in early 2025.

• Transportation Impact Fees can now be used for expanding bike and pedestrian facilities.

Other Miscellaneous Items

• Commissioner Emma Bode, who formerly sat on the city’s Sustainability Board, was disappointed by the findings of the City’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report and rallied for staff to complete a five-year review of the city’s Climate Plan to identify which parts of the plan have not been implemented yet. She would like to engage with the public to see how much they are willing to invest in making sure the city commission meets their Climate Plan goals. She gets support from Mayor Cunningham and Deputy Mayor Morrison, so the city manager will start looking into this.

• As the city neared the completion of over $5 million of renovations to the Bozeman Swim Center, they “discovered” that they are not able to install the bulkhead, which is a structure that separates a swimming pool into different areas for various activities. This means that they will be limited to the 50-meter pool and will not be able to have a 25-yard pool unless residents would be willing to pass a bond to rebuild (the newly re-built) pool, or wait another 10 years until the pool needs replastered. This oversight has major ramifications to residents, including to students and families from Gallatin, Bozeman, and Belgrade high schools who will not be able to host at-home swim meets.

• The city received a $4.4 million grant from FEMA to pay for the salaries and benefits of 12 new firefighters over the course of the next three years. This money will be used to offset the tax burden to residents, should they approve the Public Safety Mill Levy this November.

• The city is hiring an engineering firm to conduct a feasibility study on installing solar at the Water Reclamation Facility.

Stay tuned for next week's edition, which will include a run-down of the commission's decisions on the future of urban camping in Bozeman.

City Commission Notes from 10/1/24