HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-23-24 Public Comment - K. Silvestri - City Commission PrioritiesFrom:Kenneth Silvestri
To:Agenda
Subject:[EXTERNAL]City Commission Priorities
Date:Monday, January 22, 2024 5:39:49 PM
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When considering the City’s priorities for the next two years, I implore you to rethink the
current quantity over quality strategy to housing. While affordable housing is needed, it
should not come at the expense of the people who own homes here, invested their whole
lives in this community and their neighborhoods. The push for upzoning and density above all
else has led to deep divisions in this community between homeowners and renters and
homeless people and business owners. Moreover, it has caused a significant portion of the
City’s population to lose faith and trust in its local government. Many of us feel that are voices
don’t matter anymore and we are merely a product to sell to deep pocket out-of-state
commercial real estate developers with empty promises. The failed attempt to acquire part of
a cherished community resource in the Bozeman Public Library only validated those concerns.
How that even became a possibility is shocking.
The City has adopted an equity and inclusion plan but then intentionally excludes
homeowners from planning and development processes while consistently dismissing their
concerns over dense, upzoned developments that radically alter their neighborhoods, disrupts
their lives, and privileges developer interests over our interests by giving them every variance
they ask for with no corresponding guarantee of affordability. It seems like this equity and
inclusion plan only works for people who have a tremendous amount of wealth and power or
those with none at all, thus leaving out many in the middle who bear the most costs of dense,
upzoned development.
The City also claims to value environmental sustainability but is depleting our most vital
natural resource in water to maintain an unsustainable level of growth and development to
the extent of contemplating an energy intensive and environmentally damaging piping project
from Canyon Ferry Lake.
In closing, the City Commission can make the hard choice by balancing out the quantity with
quality to restore public trust, adhere to these values of equity and environmental
sustainability, and take steps to reduce division. Or, you can continue on this quantity above
all else path that undermines those two fundamental foundations of any community and
government.