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HomeMy WebLinkAbout03-09-21 Public Comment - R. Carpenter - Kagy Blvd ExpansionFrom:agenda@bozeman.net To:Agenda Subject:Thank you for your public comment. Date:Tuesday, March 9, 2021 2:28:26 PM A new entry to a form/survey has been submitted. Form Name:Public Comment Form Date & Time:03/09/2021 2:28 PM Response #:902 Submitter ID:35793 IP address:71.15.196.35 Time to complete:9 min. , 36 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 First Name Randy Last Name Carpenter Email Address randy2029@gmail.com Phone Number 4065828937 Comments Dear Commissioners, I would like to highlight that, aside from the pros and cons of the design of Kagy Boulevard, the public engagement process for the project does not measure up to the (appropriate) goals of the City’s community engagement initiative. As Commissioner Wallner so rightly stated to the Bozeman Chronicle, “The days where a consultant comes into town and you stop by and just essentially give some feedback to that consultant, and that was your community engagement. I want those days to be over...Citizen engagement is not three minutes at the mic on Tuesday night.” Nor does the Kagy public engagement come close to matching the citizen engagement the City undertook for the Public Safety Center. For that project, the City held dozens of contemporaneous public meetings, created a project website replete with information and FAQs, hosted project booths at events, and made presentations to community organizations. According to the Chronicle, “City of Bozeman employees spent more than 556 hours on the center ballot initiative and the City put roughly $27,827 into getting the word out on the details of the bond”. The City put that engagement to the ultimate test, a public ballot (of course, that effort fortunately paid off in significant resident buy-in that led to a successful vote). Yes, it is a larger project than Kagy, but it's worth noting that the 1.1 mile Kagy road improvement project is almost half the cost of the entire Public Safety Center. The public outreach and education effort for Kagy, on the other hand, was done 5 years ago. At that open house, 80% of the participants supported a 3-lane option. The project then went to a stakeholders’ group that made the decision to adopt a 4-lane design – a decision that was to my recollection barely reported to the public until we learned that the price tag was too large for the funds available at the time and the project was shelved. Flash forward to late 2020 and a few of us learn that the 4-lane project, which we understood hadn’t been decided upon, was included in the City’s CIP. What feedback the public was able to give to this decision was, to quote Commissioner Wallner again, literally “three minutes at the mic on Tuesday night”. Instead, the City is apparently now going to take the design decision to the public, but to what end? If it is to merely educate the public on the merits of the project that the Commissioners have decided to do, in my opinion that is a day late and $16.8 million too short. Public engagement would be mere window dressing. As I said at last week’s Commission meeting, I realize that Kagy does need improvement, and that making a decision that balances larger community goals is a difficult challenge. If, after a robust public engagement process that fairly and objectively scores and compares alternatives, the City were to choose the 4-lane project, it would be reasonable decision. But it appears that won’t happen, and for that reason I think you are making a long-lasting and regrettable mistake, one that fails residents on both the merits and the process. 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. Thank you, City Of Bozeman This is an automated message generated by the Vision Content Management System™. Please do not reply directly to this email.