City of Bozeman Week in Review - Week of 10/7/24

Entry posted by admin in City of Bozeman Week in Review Monday at 03:09 AM

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This past week was a big one for Bozeman, with the City Commission determining the future of urban camping on the public right-of-way (ROW) and assigning the number of mills that will be charged on property tax bills. In addition to the nearly six-hour commission meeting, four other advisory boards met, including the Community Development Board, Gallatin Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization, Sustainability Board, and Inter-Neighborhood Council. Below are the highlights from each meeting, and if you would like to read through the detailed, transcribed notes from this week’s meetings, please click on the links at the end of this post.

Community Development Board

Staff from the Gallatin County Planning Office gave a special presentation to the Community Development Board on the county's Future Land Use Map (FLUM) and Housing Strategy, which are in the process of being updated. The FLUM is a visual representation of Gallatin County’s Growth Policy and helps to inform zoning, and the Housing Strategy is intended to address housing affordability issues.
The draft materials are posted on the Envision Gallatin website that can be accessed here.
The FLUM and Housing Strategy will be presented to the Planning Board soon, and public hearings with the County Commission will start in November. They hope to have final adoption sometime in December.
The county’s housing strategy includes a “voluntary inclusionary housing ordinance,” which is similar to Bozeman’s Affordable Housing Ordinance, in that they will offer reduced standards such as additional height, different design standards, or procedural changes that make it easier for developers in exchange for a certain number of affordable housing units.

City Commission

Back in August, the commission gave staff direction to revise Ordinance 2147, which is the current urban camping ordinance, asking them to explore the options of outright prohibiting or increasing camping restrictions on the ROW, misdemeanor penalties, a permit system, and safe parking.
As recently as September, there were 139 vehicles / structures in the ROW.
Staff reported that since July 1, 2024, the Solid Waste Division has collected 23.5 tons of waste related to urban camping (excluding garbage totes) and hauled it away to the Logan Landfill. The Stormwater Division has responded to eight separate reports of illicit discharge related to urban campers, including sewage discharged into waterways and streets. The Neighborhood Services Division has collected 15 full pickup loads of trash (outside of routine monthly clean-ups), 36 five-gallon buckets of human feces, five bottles of urine, and 24 needles and other types of drug paraphernalia.
In the past two months, approximately 7.5% of all calls for service in the city were to areas of urban camping (1,102 calls for service), and over 100 calls have resulted in probable cause to investigate a misdemeanor or felony offense, which is 9.6% of the total cases opened by Bozeman Police Department.
Other concerns are engineering-related, knowing that the ROW was not designed for camping, and the decreased sense of safety.
In the city's survey conducted in August, 86.83% of the 2,000 survey respondents said that camping in the ROW should NOT be permitted on city streets.
The commission did have the option to completely prohibit urban camping.
Ultimately, the new Ordinance 2172 passed with some amendments. It prohibits camping on public property and rights-of-way unless a person meets the criteria for and has obtained a permit. Permits cost $25 and will be good for 30 days, at which time they will need to be renewed. If a person is found camping with no permit, the consequence is a misdemeanor with up to a $500 fine and / or up to 10 days in jail. If a person has a permit but commits a violation, it is punishable with up to a $100 penalty. The consequence for a person or company facilitating camping on the right-of-way is a misdemeanor with up to a $500 fine and / or up to 10 days in jail. Commissioner Bode initiated and obtained enough support to allow the city to waive the $25 permit fee if a person is able to prove that they cannot afford it. Staff originally proposed a sunset date on the ordinance of October 1, 2025, which would mean that urban camping would no longer be allowed under any circumstances after that date. All commissioners expressed concern about this date, thinking that it is too soon, so Commissioner Madgic initiated an amendment and received enough support to keep the sunset date in place but give the commission an opportunity to reassess and change it next summer. Cunningham, Fischer, and Madgic voted to pass the ordinance; Morrison and Bode voted against it, but for reasons having to do with their belief that they are “criminalizing homelessness,” not because they wanted an outright ban.
In other commission business, they approved affixing 158.23 mills to be charged against taxable property for FY 2025. Because the city adopted new sewer rates recently (after putting it off for several years), they were able to reduce the expected sewer assessment by 6%, which will offset what would have been an increase to property taxes. What this means is that for the median single-family household in Bozeman, their property taxes should go down by about $19 per year.
As a reminder, the decision on the number of mills to affix for property taxes was supposed to be made on August 27, but the city (and surrounding municipalities and county) discovered an error in the Department of Revenue’s calculation of newly taxable values. Since that time, the Department of Revenue spent a month in Bozeman and the surrounding areas trying to capture and assess the newly taxable growth, and while they were able to capture some, they did not capture it all. What this means is that property taxes are being overly-assessed to current property owners because of the failure to capture newly taxable properties.
The commission has directed staff to conduct an audit into the past few years of newly assessed properties because they do not believe that new construction has been accounted for properly in any recent years.

Gallatin Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) – Transportation Technical Advisory Committee (TTAC)

David Holien, the Transportation Alternatives Program Manager from the Montana Department of Transportation gives a presentation to TTAC on the Transportation Alternatives Program, which is one of the biggest sources of multi-modal funding.
There is $1,399,044 in Transportation Alternatives (TA) funding available to the Gallatin Valley MPO in FY 2025. There is a total of $16 million in TA funding available statewide.
To view MDT’s Transportation Alternatives website, click here.
See the attachment at the end of this post for a description of MDT’s Transportation Alternatives Program, eligible entities, and eligible projects.
The MPO’s TA funding can only be used in the Bozeman urban area.
Because the Gallatin Valley MPO is new, over the next two months, they will be developing their application process and scoring criteria to be able to allow eligible entities to apply for some of the available funding as early as January 2025.
The MPO is getting funding from MDT to install two continuous count stations to gather traffic data. There are currently only 18 of these stations across the entire state. The MPO TTAC selected the locations for these, and they will be installed at the intersections of Jackrabbit and East Valley Center Road and Baxter and Love Lanes.
The MPO has funding to add two more continuous count stations, and they plan to decide their locations at the next meeting.

Sustainability Board

There are two at-large positions on the Sustainability Board becoming available at the end of the year. Those interested can apply online at https://www.bozeman.net/departments/city-commission/city-boards/apply-for-an-city-board/.
Sam Hall, an energy resource professional with the Montana DEQ gives a presentation to the board on the rebates available through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
The IRA was signed into law in 2022, and city staff calls this the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history.
There are several rebates available through the IRA, which promotes the “electrification” of homes.
Many of the rebates are not available in Montana yet, but Bozeman is one of two cities (the other is Missoula) that have been given funding from the DEQ to run pilot rebate programs. The hope is that the funds will be available statewide by mid-2025.
The state has been given $71 million of IRA funds, and they plan to spend at least half of this money in low-income communities.
IRA funding can also be used for workforce development to train industry professionals and apprentices on how to design and install heat pumps and other electrification technology.
Montana’s energy rebates website can be found here.
Mayor Cunningham committed the city's Economic Development Department to work with local banks and credit unions to see if they can create a special lending program for helping people fund the electrification of their homes.
The city will be offering a few educational events the week of October 1^st. More details can be found on the city’s Sustainability site here.

Inter-Neighborhood Council

Police Chief Veltkamp and Bozeman Fire Training Captain Thime give a presentation on the Safety First: First Responder Mill Levy and Fire Station 4 Bond. A copy of all of the slides can be found in the detailed notes linked at the end of this post.
If approved, the Fire Station 4 Bond would allow the city to build a new fire station on the southwest side of town off of Fallon. This would help them to reduce their response times and provide greater coverage in this area of town.
If approved, the First Responder Mill Levy would allow the city to hire six police officers each year for five years, to hire 22 firefighters, and add 11 non-sworn staff.
Chief Veltkamp says that it’s not uncommon for there to be only 3-4 patrol officers on duty at a time.
The police department’s last staffing plan said that by 2021, they should have 79 officers. They were just authorized 76 officers in July of this year. About half of the 30 officers needed are to get them caught up to their current staffing needs, and the others should be what they need to keep up with staffing demands for at least the next five years, but could keep them covered longer depending on how much the city grows.
The police department is so short-staffed, it’s not unusual for them to have one officer responding to extremely dangerous calls that would normally require a response from multiple officers.
The financial impacts of the bond and mill levy, if approved, are a total of about $35 per month for the median single-family homeowner, $4 of which is to finance the new fire station, and $31 of which will fund additional public safety staff.
The Community Development Department is going to resume creating links to planning documents on the Community Development Viewer map, which can be found here.
Those interested in signing up for e-notification on a variety of topics, including new project applications submitted to Community Development can sign up here.
The city also has a website called Engage Bozeman, which they are supposed to use for the purpose of getting the word out about various projects and seeking input from the community. The website can be found here, and you must remember to go to each project page and “subscribe” to receive related updates.