HomeMy WebLinkAbout11-24-20 Public Comment - M. Brown - CIP budgetsFrom:Marilee Brown
To:Agenda
Cc:Ralph Zimmer; Jason Delmue; Betty Stroock; Nancy Davis; Kirk Utzinger; Sherry Heis
Subject:CIP budgets
Date:Tuesday, November 24, 2020 9:25:26 AM
Mayor and Commissioners,
I am writing to talk to you about the lack of funding in the CIP for stand-alone bike andpedestrian projects as identified in the Bozeman TMP. Currently, those stand-alone projects
add up to 27 million. Yet you and staff are only allocating $75,000 out of maintenance(limited to between the curbs) and $25,000 out of the general fund.
Seriously? It would take 270 years at that rate to pay for those projects. And that does not
include inflation.
That is like telling your child you expect them to go to college and will pay for it but then onlycontribute $200 per year to their education fund. Talk about sabotage!
There needs to be better funding. Last year PTS asked you for about 600,000 to cover projects
that would literally be unearthed on streets and property where sewer pipes were going inanyway - thus saving taxpayers money in the end. But that was ignored. Why? Because there
is no funding source in the City for these kinds of projects that will help reduce pollution andallow people to make living more affordable? How can that be? It’s in all the City plans to
require multimodal travel and eliminate parking.
The people keep voting to increase their taxes for districts that they think will help them getaround under their own power. And yet none of the districts so far have plans to pay for such
projects.
We need to quit paying lip service and pay out real cash.
Please stop leaving multimodal projects out in the cold. We need some substantial fundingthis year just to keep up with what the City literally keeps digging up – much less doing the
bare minimum of projects that have been identified by BABAB and PTS as critical to publicsafety ($233,000 is requested this year - not including the projects mentioned above that were
not funded last year).
Thanks for doing your best to resolve this situation soon – I’m not planning at this time to waitfor 270 years, are you?
Marilee Brown,
Chair, Gallatin Alliance for Pathways (GAP)Executive Director, Safer Bozeman