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HomeMy WebLinkAbout08-20-24 Public Comment - M. Kaveney - City Commission mtng. 8_20_24 AHO work sessionFrom:Marcia Kaveney To:Bozeman Public Comment Cc:David Fine Subject:[EXTERNAL]City Commission mtng. 8/20/24 AHO work session Date:Monday, August 19, 2024 8:12:54 PM Attachments:City Commission AHO Comments.docx CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Please add the attached letter to the CC file for the AHO work session on 8/20/24. Thank you,Marcia Kaveney City Commission AHO Comments August 20, 2024 CC Work Session Dear Mayor Cunningham, Deputy Mayor Morrison, and Commissioners Madgic, Fischer, and Bode; I have reviewed the staff’s recommendations for revisions to the Affordable Housing Ordinance (AHO) and appreciate the hard work that staff has done on this issue. I can see they heard many of the complaints and have recommended some good revisions. I have also reviewed materials offered by the Better Bozeman Coalition and appreciate their insight and research into other ideas that are less extractive of the city’s land and water resources than the ongoing trend of upzoning and incentives that may return many unaffordable units. I offer the following comments for you to consider during your work session on the AHO. I would like you to repeal the entire AHO (or put it on pause) and plan to have it reviewed and redrafted along with the UDC update and with substantial participatory public work sessions. This request is based on the former lack of community input, flaws revealed with the Guthrie proposal, and the timing of the upcoming UDC update. I think the deep incentives should be repealed immediately and perhaps permanently. While eliminating or relaxing parking requirements might work in a city with established public transit or one with mild winters, it is not conducive to most Bozeman residents. Not only do we often have long harsh winters, but the city now sprawls to the point of having no central location for essential services (medical and grocery), yet our public transit is limited in it’s service area. I urge you to eliminate the administrative-only reviews of all AHO projects and house them instead within a PUD type of application with public hearings. In addition to pausing the AHO rewrite, I think this is an appropriate time to call for a moratorium on all new annexations, except for land wholly surrounded by city, while we wait for the thousands of current expected units to be built out. This is especially important to allow for the UDC to be updated to meet the 2020 Community Plan/growth policy. We are 4 years behind it’s update while operating business as usual. We are to guide development to meeting the city’s many environmental or affordable goals until those goals are codified. I would also suggest restructuring any new site plans and infrastructure of already annexed land to be built concurrently (to avoid increasing empty city streets (i.e. urban camping areas) and requiring ALL future development to use a PUD/PDZ style process with public hearings. This would arguably allow the city to avoid future Canyon Gates situations whereas a year after they were given full approval for denuding the property and regrading it to suit their vision of almost 500 units and a commercial area, we now have an empty hot urban wasteland with no vegetation except invasive weeds, no built environment in sight, and the developer trying to sell off entire parcels. Lastly, I would like to see the city require some sort of building/insurance bonds since we have learned that a developer’s promise is no guarantee. i.e. the Lehrkind Brewery Building (the wall), the eviction and removal of an entire trailer park (affordable housing ) by Blue Sky developers before defaulting on their plans, and others we have yet to experience. Some of my suggestions might seem extreme but I think it is time to fight for what we want. We have no shortage of market rate housing for the wealthy residents and/or newcomers and I believe it is a disservice to the local residents to incentivize subsidize additional housing if the project includes a majority of market rate units. To do so essentially gives away our resources of water, land, urban forest, and available sunlight (solar panels/gardens) without getting a good return on our investment such as- affordable apartments or homes complete with small outdoor spaces and adequate parking. If you find you disagree with me and the many other residents to repeal and redraft the entire AHO or at least repeal the deep incentives, then I ask you to please consider the following during your work session on Tuesday, August 20, 2024. 1. Restrict the use of the AHO to busy arterials such as North and South 19th Ave., North 7th Ave., Oak St., and Huffine. These areas are centrally located and/or have access to public transit and will not break up existing historic neighborhoods. 2. Include provisions to deny the incentives on a case by case basis and provide each case with a public hearing and comment period. 3. Be consistent with definitions across documents such as studio vs. efficiency, one bedroom, etc. and follow the national standards (staff recommendations). 4. Require on site storage areas for all units. Require free indoor secure bike storage. 5. Require one level of indoor or under building parking such as ground floor or lower level. This is an excellent use of land and is used in other major cities and reduces impermeable surfaces/heat islands. *6. Require retainment of 75 % or more of existing mature trees and shrubs with highest emphasis on the retention of mature trees. (Nationwide, it is often our most vulnerable populations that suffer the ill effects of low tree canopy and urban heat islands. Let’s not remove old growth for new housing. i.e. Canyon Gate, 7th and Aspen, etc. ) 7. Provide incentives ONLY for the missing middle housing units currently found in the R3 description. We have scads of 4, 5, and 6 story apartment buildings going up all around town but rarely is R3 being used and yet, it was determined to be “missing and affordable” in the Bozeman Community Plan 2020. Goal N-3.8. 8. I agree with staff to decrease the AMI% threshold to 60% maximum and I would add requiring at least 65% percent or more of units to be affordable with the shallow incentives and 85% of the units be affordable should you choose to continue with deep incentives. This is where we establish our goals and fight for what we want. 9. Requiring affordability for 50 years as suggested by staff is an improvement, but I would rather see it in perpetuity. 10. Establish some kind of safe guard for not demolishing existing small homes, duplexes, triplexes, etc. in any neighborhoods. Extended NCOD? 11. I agree with staff recommendation of allowing “income averaging”. 12. Establish a method of supporting tenants to be able to stay in place as their earnings increase so they don’t have to move if their earnings increase beyond the initial income limit. This supports individual stability and true community. I expect there are already formulas available for doing this. 13. I disagree with staff’s suggestions for open space to be limited to balconies and for parking to be 1000 feet away off-site. I also disagree with unlimited lot coverage. As I mentioned before, vulnerable populations are subject to living in urban heat islands and our boulevards are sometimes too narrow for mature trees to thrive so I think it is imperative that we require some landscaping for shade to be on the property and not just in the boulevards. It is especially important to remember new plantings will not provide shade and ecological services for about 3 decades. As a current example, the 7th and Aspen affordable housing project is planning to demolish 2 very mature spruce trees with upwards of 24 inch diameters- trees that if not on private land but out in the wild would be considered rare old growth and valuable for the ecological services they provide. If left in place on the site’s west side, they would continue to provide valuable shade and a visual shield for the residents and also habitat for our urban wildlife. 14. In response to the Gold, Silver, and Bronze levels of incentives, I find that we give away more with the Gold but don’t get more in return than the Silver. I think the height requirements should, in all cases, never be more than what is described in the Silver level. And parking requirements should always be at least 80% of number of units and underneath the building. I think in the future rewrite of the ordinance, there may be value in using different levels for incentives instead of shallow vs. deep. 15. Also, regarding parking and deep incentives, I don’t believe current fulltime traditional students should be included as part of the target audience of the deep incentives, if they are. Many apartment vacancies currently exist near MSU where students can meet most, if not all, of their needs without cars. The streamline bus system was developed to serve students without cars and does a fine getting them where they need to go. To conclude, let me reiterate the importance of pausing the AHO, pausing the annexations and up zonings to eliminate sprawl (remembering that city sprawl does not slow county growth), and repealing the deep incentives permanently or until the UDC is updated to serve the 2020 BCP, at which point we can begin again with a better handle on our resources and our goals. I hope you will continue to support expanded public involvement. A townhall with at least 3 commissioners present may be a great way to continue the AHO discussions and start things off for the UDC. And my thanks again to staff and the commission for all the hard work being done to address housing while keeping in mind current residents, historic neighborhoods, and our finite resources. Sincerely, Marcia Kaveney Bozeman resident