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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-30-19 Public Comment - A. Sherman-1 - HRDC Warming Center SiteFrom:agenda@bozeman.net To:Agenda Subject:Thank you for your public comment. Date:Wednesday, October 30, 2019 12:45:25 AM A new entry to a form/survey has been submitted. Form Name:Public Comment Form Date & Time:10/30/2019 12:45 AM Response #:304 Submitter ID:21527 IP address:71.15.198.155 Time to complete:17 min. , 52 sec. Survey Details Page 1 Public comment may be submitted via the form below, or by any of the following options. Public comment may also be given at any public meeting. Email: agenda@bozeman.net Mail to: Attn: City Commission PO Box 1230 Bozeman, MT 59771 In-person delivery to: Attn: City Commission City Clerk's Office City Hall, Suite 202 121 N. Rouse Ave. Bozeman, MT First Name Andy Last Name Sherman Email Address sherms43@gmail.com Phone Number 4065561411 Comments Dear Commissioners, What a mess Ordinance 1997 has created in our neighborhood! If your intent when passing this ordinance was to have homeless shelters placed in overpriced homes in the center of residential areas, purchased by obviously over-funded non-profits (much of that funding apparently coming from me via your grants,) then shame on you. If this wasn't your intent, then shame on you for not getting involved in the current fiasco at 3025 Westridge Drive. The HRDC has been about as shady as an organization can be in this matter. Contacting immediate neighbors (5 households?) when this obviously impacts fully four large Southside neighborhoods and two primary schools is asinine. On a good day, I could still throw a snowball and hit 3025 from my front porch at 3006, and yet I am apparently a "non-impact" neighbor. What a joke. The latest fiasco is yet another "secret meeting" set by the HRDC for Wednesday 10/30 for those same 5 "impacted neighbors"--a meeting that was quickly cancelled today--I'm guessing the HRDC surmised that they were about to have hundreds of concerned neighbors rather than the select few they wanted. Their solution? They will go door-to-door tomorrow to talk to concerned "impacted" neighbors. Unfortunately, our neighborhood will be largely absent as we WORK. What an ineffective mode of communication on the part of the HRDC. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I am pretty sure we are all opposed to homelessness. Having this "plan" play out in the media via letters to the editor where anyone opposed to having this homeless shelter in our neighborhood is labeled as "lacking compassion" and shamed has really started to burn me. My wife and I donate 4 figures per year (going back five years) to an organization called Heifer International. We buy livestock, water pumps, water filters, grains, windmills and solar panels for third world communities. We donate 4 figures per year (going back 15 years) to the Salvation Army. We donate heavily to the Heart of the Valley and other animal shelters around the state. Having my naive neighbors (and strangers writing into the Chronicle) shaming me for not having compassion is absolutely ludicrous. Having two homeless gentlemen die from exposure in Bozeman is sobering. Building a shelter is arguably the fix, although I personally believe the money would be better spent at the front end of the behaviors and situations that lead to homelessness: lack of education, addiction, parenthood at the wrong time of life, and mental illness. We all know that if we build a state of the art homeless shelter to house 200 people, it won't be long before we have 201 homeless individuals needing a warm place to sleep. Ordinance 1997 is nothing more than a tool for spot zoning (apparently for select causes) and you have created nothing more than a czar at our city level, by-passing any due process for the public. Removing the component of a public hearing for matters as important as zoning changes makes any existing zoning absolutely worthless. The explanation by the HRDC that this is "just a temporary shelter" makes no sense against the backdrop of the HRDC BUYING (not renting) the house. (Did they look into leasing the old Heebs? What about the Northern Lights Barn on Huffine?) The house at the center of this fiasco was owned by another non-profit (Youth Dynamics in Billings) and I find it hard to believe they wouldn't rent out the property on a truly temporary basis considering how many people looked at the property while it was on the market and walked away pinching their noses. "Affordable Housing" has become such an overused buzzword in Bozeman, that we are on the cusp of having the general public become jaded to its significance merely echoing the mantra spewed by our leaders and our local media. I, for one, refuse to start waving the palm fronds when I hear this jargon. Personally, I would love to live in Jackson Hole. Does this mean that the politicians in Jackson Hole are beholden to me to provide me with a house? Ridiculous. My wife and I really struggled to move from Billings to Bozeman, and we are better and more careful people because of our struggles. In my opinion, this select zoning is more about control than about compassion. From the HRDC's own numbers, they claim each homeless person costs taxpayers $28,000 per year. Really? I'm guessing much of that money somehow gets circulated through the "non-profit" till and comes out smaller with the HRDC dictating how their cut gets spent. I defy you to find a precedent for this homeless shelter scenario anywhere in the U.S. I think I speak for all of my neighbors opposing this shelter location when I say that if I wanted to live down the street from a homeless shelter, I would buy a house down the street from a homeless shelter. I'm pretty sure I would pay a lot less than I did for 3006, and I'm also pretty sure I would have different worries and problems. Arbitrarily placing 36 unvetted strangers in the midst of a pretty average neighborhood is an anachronistic act to say the least. Trying to sell this as a "Womens' shelter," then a "Womens' and childrens'" shelter, then a "Women and their children and families" shelter is the definition of being disingenuous. When pressed, the HRDC said they don't turn anyone away if they have a bed available. So I guess "families" is synonymous with "men." Pretty compassionate, but also pretty reckless when you are bringing unknown, unvetted, often transient individuals into our neighborhood. Why would any compassionate person knowingly put salt of the earth Bozeman residents at such a risk? In trying to come up with some sort of logical path as to why this proposed location for a warming shelter was chosen, I always come back to the question: why did HRDC buy the house? In the context of the information they have dispersed, and the apparent constant need for funding our homeless population, (over)paying $429,000 for an R-1 home makes no sense. Please get involved and address the fallout from Ordinance 1997. Andy Sherman If you would like to submit additional documents (.pdf, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .gif, .jpg, .png, .rtf, .txt) along with your comment, you may alternately address agenda@bozeman.net directly to ensure receipt of all information. 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