HomeMy WebLinkAbout09-22-20 Public Comment - B. Thompson - Bozeman Community PlanFrom:Brent Thompson
To:Agenda
Subject:Bozeman Community Plan
Date:Tuesday, September 22, 2020 7:46:43 AM
To the Bozeman Planning Board and City Commission,
While it is laudable that the City of Bozeman updates how to accommodate the growth it is forced to accept, the real
problem is regional in that there is a failure to concentrate, channel, restrict, or limit growth in unincorporated areas.
For example, for miles towards the Big Sky area there is a series of one story single use structures surrounded by
asphalt on land the should have remained in agricultural use. There is no possibility of patronizing any of those
businesses except by insect splattering, fume spewing, atmosphere heating, tire grinding, and bird and animal killing
vehicle trips. Thus, the sprawl towards Big Sky is a 100% vehicle oriented or dependent situation of unnecessarily
long and, again atmosphere heating, vehicle trips.
The solution to have prevented such landscape blight and traffic problems would have been a state wide land use
program focusing on development radiating out from any given city, not leap-frogging over areas and the outright
prohibition of development in unincorporated areas particularly the type that wasted land with huge expanses of
asphalt. Although it is an alien concept, it is possible and desirable to have regulations for maximum parking
allowed as well as minimums. This serves to allow more development on a smaller area which over time serves to
reduce sprawl. For most a stipulation limiting parking would seem ridiculous, but multiplied over hundreds of
planning actions, the result is a more efficient use of land and of course less sprawl, traffic, and resource waste.
As it is, the City of Bozeman itself can incorporate intricacies into its planning and development program for land
conservation which ultimately means across the board resource conservation, but that effort will be undermined by
the sprawl development in unincorporated areas. It is too late for Bozeman and Gallatin County to be anything but a
traffic snarled mess, but it may not be too late for other counties to accommodate growth in a less wasteful way if a
better statewide land use policy discouraging sprawl is implemented.
There is no way land 10 miles out from Bozeman was needed for commercial development. That was a mistake that
will never be undone. Should it be stopped at 10 miles or should it be allowed to continue even further towards Big
Sky? My guess is that the sprawl and resource waste will intensify all the way to our public lands on Highway 191.
Pity is’t it?
But again, a municipal master plan update is still worthwhile.
Brent Thompson