HomeMy WebLinkAboutGoals and Objectives Discussion Organization Email 0402191
Lacie Kloosterhof
From:Henry Happel <hap@fastmail.fm>
Sent:Tuesday, April 2, 2019 1:21 PM
To:Jennifer Madgic; Lauren Waterton; Cathy Costakis; George Thompson; Jerry Pape; Paul
Spitler; Mark Egge; Chris Mehl
Cc:Tom Rogers; Chris Saunders; Lacie Kloosterhof
Subject:It's Hard to Be Creative and Easy to Be Critical, But...
The “Phase 4: Goals and Objectives“ document up for discussion at our Planning Board meeting this evening
raises some fundamental questions about our new Growth Policy around 1.it’s organization, 2. it’s relationship
to other planning documents, and 3. the articulation of goals.
Organization: I would like us to end up with a Growth Policy that is clear, readable, and displays some
analytical rigor. To me that means taking the major themes and discussing them, to the extent possible, one at a
time. The Goals and Objectives document sprinkles major themes here and there. Examples are discussions
about density, mobility, and relations with the County. I think part of this results from what I consider the
original sin of our Vision Statements. You can talk about almost anything under “The Shape of the City“ or “A
City of Neighborhoods“. I am starting to think that the Vision Statements should be set forth early in the
Growth Policy and populated with some nice prose developed by the consultants that will make everybody feel
good. We could then get down to brass tacks and address the difficult issues around managing growth and
improving the lives of our citizens.
I think I know what the major issues are: -
Land Use Designations,
Density,
Housing Affordability,
Infrastructure Development and Maintenance,
Mobility- traffic, public transportation, biking and walking,
Parks- locations, amenities, and maintenance,
Commercial Development to Support Neighborhoods,
Annexation Policy,
Policy Coordination with Gallatin County…
but you may disagree. A good place to start might be, with guidance from the Community Development
Department, to agree on major issues, a discussion that gets masked by the vagueness of the Vision Themes.
Once agreed upon, could we not take each of the major issues and discuss it in turn (here again with guidance
from the Community Development Department) to reach some consensus on goals and then objectives for
each? And could we not then use that as an outline of a clear, readable, and (to the extent possible) logical
Growth Policy?
Relation to other Plans: I think we owe it to the citizenry to clearly set forth what the relationship is among the
various important plans that the City has adopted or has under consideration. The first of these is the Strategic
Plan. I think it is easy to articulate that relationship- the Growth Policy adopts the goals set forth in the Strategic
Plan.
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The relationship of other plans, however, have as far as I know never been clearly articulated – the
transportation plan, the water plans, the economic development plan, the PROST plan, the various
neighborhood plans. (The one exception appears to be the new Downtown Plan.) We need to be clear what the
relationships are between those plans and the Growth Policy, and what the relationship will be between those
plans as they may be revised and the Growth Policy.
Articulation of Goals: Community development plans tend to use words like “encourage”, “support,” and
“prioritize” with regard to various goals. If we are going to use these sorts of words, we need to say how... how
we are going to encourage, or support, or prioritize. And then we need to say something about metrics. And
then we probably need to say something about what the goal is going to cost the City. If we are not going to say
how, I think we should be explicit about leaving it up to the City to make that determination in the future. For
some goals, that may be entirely appropriate. One example is affordable housing. The City is engaged in an
effort trying to figure out how to develop more affordable housing, but the details are yet to be finalized. I think
we would be wise to articulate affordable housing as a goal, and articulate that goal in terms of creating X
amount of affordable housing over the next Y years, but leave the details about how that is to be accomplished
for the City to decide in the future. The same might be true for example of “bikeability”, setting forth a goal of a
certain amount of increased bike ridership in Bozeman, but not trying to say how this should be accomplished.
Lots to talk about.
Best,
Hap
p.s. To avoid getting anywhere near violating the Planning Board's public meeting requirements, I ask that you
not reply to this email other than at this evening’s meeting. I’ve cc’d Lacie so that she can include this email in
the public record.