HomeMy WebLinkAbout12-02-17 Public Comment - M. Fiebig - UDC Update, ADUFrom:Michael Fiebig
To:Agenda
Subject:UDC Code Update
Date:Saturday, December 02, 2017 11:24:02 AM
Dear City Commissioners,
My wife and I live within the "Conservation Overlay" in downtown Bozeman, in a 615-square
foot home built in 1910. We love it. As young professionals, we appreciate living in a vibrantdowntown, surrounded by public lands and agriculture. Our tiny home has no garage, though
our lot is large enough to accommodate one with off-street parking for 3 cars. As you canimagine, we would love to build a detached garage with a second story ADU above it that we
could use as a rental to help pay for it, and to help us stay in a home that costs us more everyyear.
In order to do so, we would need a couple of things changed in the city code: 1) Our home was
platted before 1997 and is R1, which I understand would not currently allow a detached ADU.We would hate to have to ruin our backyard and harm the character of our neighborhood by
attaching the garage and structure to our main home. We also do not want to move outside ofthe city in order to be able to afford a garage. A detached ADU above a garage would look
much nicer than an attached one in our case, be much more functional, and allow us to staywithin the city. 2) Our main home is tiny, so our ADU would need to be able to be taller than
our main home. Our home sits on a 5-foot bank above Willson Ave, which would block anyview of even a 2-story ADU built on our alley. 3) Since our main home is only 615-square
feet, the rules stating that an ADU must be a small percentage of the main unit by squarefootage would quickly make our ADU worthless. To be worthwhile as a long-term rental, we
would need to be able to build an approximately 500-square foot ADU above a detachedgarage.
Thank you for your consideration. We are invested in Bozeman as a community, and want to
see it grow smartly through urban infill and livability increases, instead of displacing growthto become sprawl outside of downtown. We would like build an ADU as part of this smart
growth, offering a rental property between the University and downtown, while allowing us tostay in our home via the extra income and garage space that it would provide. We know that
we are not the only people in our demographic that are facing these issues within the code, butthat the city will be better off in the future by accommodating young home owners such as
ourselves.
Sincerely,
Mike Fiebig
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Michael FiebigPersonal: fiebigmi@gmail.com
Work: mfiebig@americanrivers.orgC: 406.600.4061