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HomeMy WebLinkAbout09-22-20 Public Comment - J. Moor - Community Plan Update (my comments)From:Jay Moor To:Agenda Subject:Community Plan Update (my comments) Date:Tuesday, September 22, 2020 12:56:59 PM Attachments:Plan2020Comments200922.docx I would be grateful if you would forward the attached comments to members of the Bozeman City Commission and the Bozeman Planning Commission. Thank you. Jay Moor 22 September 2020 To: Members of the Bozeman City Commission and Planning Commission Subject: Bozeman Community (City/Land Use) Plan Please accept the following comments on the draft community plan. Forgive me, if, in my haste, I have misinterpreted the various documents that make up the plan and its appendices. I have reviewed the draft and find it to be a standard, pro forma document, that checks all the boxes but is still not what I would call a “comprehensive plan.” That is, it seems to be purposefully fragmented, leaving important sectors of urban development (i.e., energy, climate, transportation, etc.) for separate analyses that may be out of sync with or detached from the drafting of the city plan. Connections to the city plan are by reference not by any apparent analysis. It is difficult to determine whether the plan is guided by or guides sector documents in any obvious way. Energy/Climate Plan This disconnection becomes critical with regard to the city’s Climate Plan, which is a timid exhortation to citizens to be more responsible consumers of energy. It assumes that NorthWestern Energy will continue to be our monopoly energy supplier, although there are strategic reasons to assume otherwise. First, is NWE’s performance vis-à-vis the Public Utilities Commission. NWE has captured that regulatory commission, as it is now constituted, and the city of Bozeman, containing a large segment of NWE’s customer base, should be looking for ways to create competition for that utility in order to lower prices and bring more sustainable options to its citizens. One of the ways might be for the city, with partners like Butte, Helena, Great Falls,, Missoula, Livingston and Billings, BLM, the nascent Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority and energy companies (public and private), to stake out the most promising geothermal sites in Montana, which are concentrated in our region of the state, reserving the land for future geothermal energy drilling and development. NWE claims large-scale geothermal is not cost effective, so it has been resistant and hasn’t explored the subject, publicly. As with solar and wind power, large-scale geothermal electricity generation will undoubtedly become competitive. That’s why an early commitment is needed to develop geothermal as a large, exportable source of constantly renewable clean base load electricity. As an example of the potential for geothermal, just one Japanese geothermal plant in Kenya has provided 16% of that nation’s electricity for several decades, and the Kenyan government is intent on developing other sites in the Rift Valley. Geothermal doesn’t obviate wind and solar as sources, but it can produce electricity at a scale that contributes a great amount to our economic base and would be attractive to investors. See: https://geothermal.org/images/Montana-Geothermal_Energy_Potential- Power_Production-WEB.jpg 22 September 2020 It is my concern that the transition to renewable sources of energy as outlined in the city’s draft planning documents is woefully slow. By the time 2040-45 rolls around, the climate issue may be settled to the detriment of humanity and the planet. In the Bozeman Climate Plan, residents are encouraged to “consider” electric vehicles, but the community plan doesn’t facilitate electric vehicle hookups or other infrastructure that must be planned and developed, similar to (but more further advanced than) telecommunication infrastructure. All commercial development should provide underground cable chases, and all parking facilities, including on-street parking, should have EV hookups. This would, I assume, require some amendment to the subdivision ordinance and add some expense to land development. It would, however, overcome one of the main stumbling blocks that individuals face in choosing an EV over a combustion engine vehicle. To ignore this infrastructure necessity is not even neglect, it’s dereliction. Strategic Plan Let me turn to strategic planning and its purposes. The Bozeman Strategic Plan (a different document from the community plan) as presented is of fairly short duration (several years at most). As such, it serves no purpose in the governance of Bozeman that the community plan would not serve over a much longer time frame. There is a misunderstanding, perhaps semantic, of what a strategic plan is. In my experience as head of strategic planning for a United Nations agency (UN-Habitat), strategic planning is what an organization does to anticipate and ameliorate the future impacts of external events, ranked by their probability. The purpose is to keep options open – not to close them off because of preconceived notions, ideology, current costs, sunk costs, political discomfort, or some other reason. Stuff happens. The job of a strategic plan is to anticipate that “stuff” and to design a system to counteract the projected negative effects and to take advantage of the positive. Recent analysis by Pro Publica suggests that places like Bozeman may become a destination for climate refugees. Not in the distant future, but starting now. How would an unknown number of families fleeing wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, heat and humidity affect the Bozeman plan’s assumptions and projections? What can be done so that we don’t preclude mitigation measures that may be necessary in the near and distant futures? Another potential development that is under scrutiny at this moment is the resumption of passenger rail service along the former Northern Pacific rail line or Southern Route. It will meet opposition from towns along the Highline, but logic, economics and demand for service by the un-served portion of Montana’s population, including Bozeman, will eventually cause the reinstatement of service that extends from Chicago to Seattle and to Denver and Salt Lake, touching all the major cities of our state. Where in the Bozeman city plan is there a discussion of passenger terminal location, local intermodal transport routes and associated land use requirements? See, for example: https://missoulacurrent.com/business/2020/08/big-sky-rail-authority/ What I have outlined above is an opportunity for Bozeman to take the reins in climate action by planning for the integration of geothermal electricity generation, of electrified passenger 22 September 2020 rail service and of other electrified modes of vehicular transport. A land use plan should follow from this type of strategic planning not lead it from a position of stale ideas. I won’t go into the potential for a general economic collapse and what it would do to all investments in Bozeman. But even a small probability should be enough to generate a serious discussion of how the city would cope and what measures should be in place to mitigate economic disaster, a taste of which we are now experiencing. Job creation through infrastructure development should be one of our main safety nets. Other Considerations On a less dramatic level, why does the plan ignore what I call The Commercial Mess across Main Street from the Gallatin Valley Mall. According to the planning maps, that area seems to be in the county. That is not sufficient reason to ignore its impact on our other commercial areas, which is considerable, and its related transportation impacts. It might help for the planners to consider some useful planning techniques including Threshold Analysis and Design With Nature. The latter technique was developed by Ian McHarg in the 1960s and has been applied all over the world as a way to identify essential environmental constraints and resources in guiding development. I am very surprised that, in an economy that is chugging along pretty well, economic development takes such high (unreasonably so) priority over ecological systems and environmental conservation. Threshold Analysis is a technique for increasing coordination and cooperation between economists and physical planners and could be quite useful in planning for Bozeman’s future. See, for example: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00420986820080251?journalCode=usja https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-10/the-legacy-of-design-with-nature-50-years-later I could go on but will stop here. I have tried to address the draft community plan, some of its related (but disjointed) parts and what I see as deficiencies. It is a nice document but neither very bold nor decisive. Worse, it tends to assume that tomorrow will be similar to today. I’m afraid you will find it to be not very useful as a guidance mechanism and may, in fact, nudge the city in the wrong direction. Again, I apologize for any wrong assumptions or interpretations of the planning document under review. With best regards, Jay Moor 2400 Durston Rd. 327 Bozeman, MT 59718 (406)586-0097 jjmoor@msn.com