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HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-27-25 Public Comment - A. Sweeney - Report from the dedicated BBC UDC engagement event on January 16th x.pdfFrom:Alison with BBC To:Bozeman Public Comment Subject:[EXTERNAL]Report from the dedicated BBC UDC engagement event on January 16th Date:Saturday, January 18, 2025 2:54:00 PM Attachments:BBC-City UDC Engagement Report-compressed.pdf 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. Thank you to all the city staff, elected officials, and advisory board members who attended thededicated UDC engagement event requested by the Better Bozeman Coalition. Attached is the final report for the public record, that includes a list of attendees, the agenda, copies of the visual aids used, a summary of the feedback from the round table discussions andthe raw data collected by the recorders at each table. Thanks to all who participated, Alison Sweeney Chair of the Better Bozeman Coalition Post Engagement Report UDC update conversation with the Better Bozeman Coalition and the City of Bozeman January 16th 2025 In attendance: Mayor Terry Cunningham Commissioner Emma Bode City Manager; Chuck Winn Director of Community Development; Erin George Planning Manager; Chris Saunders Engagement Manager; Takami Clark Chair of the Community Development Advisory Board; Henry Happle Over 50 members of the Better Bozeman Coalition (BBC) Report compiled by Alison Sweeney, Chair of the Better Bozeman Coalition, with gratitude for the opportunity to have so many representatives from the City of Bozeman discuss the draft Unified Development Code with our members. January 16, 2025, 6:00 -7:30 p.m. Bozeman Library Community Room Agenda 1. Alison/BBC kick off meeting; background of why we’re here. Review BBC report + visual aids; ground rules and overview of meeting (15 mins) 2. Mayor Cunningham and/or Commissioner Bode give a few words about the UDC (10 mins) 3. Discussion: Go around in the circle and each person answers the following questions, including Commissioners and staff: (45 mins) a. Icebreaker: What brought you to Bozeman and what is one thing you love about it? b. Anything about the UDC that you’ve liked so far? Record every individual answer. c. What concerns do you have about the UDC? Record every individual answer. d. As a group, each table consolidates these concerns into topic areas that should be discussed further in phase 2 of engagement. All answers from b, c, and d will be turned in as community engagement data. 4. Q/A: What questions do you have about the UDC? (20 mins) The evening began with a short intro by the Mayor, and Commissioner Bode, followed by staff introductions, and a brief presentation of visual aids compiled by the BBC. In the spring of 2024 the BBC members authored a report titled A Neighborhood Friendly Unified Development Code. This report was referred to, though not discussed in detail. An image of the table of contents was visible throughout the evening on the monitors in the community room for reference, since most of the chapter titles remain areas of concern in the draft UDC. The report is available on the BBC website. betterbozemancoalition.net In June of 2024 the BBC brought Proffessor Patrick Condon of the University of Brittish Columbia in Vancouver to Bozeman to present about upzoning and density not reducing housing costs. Twice during his presentation he suggested Bozeman could limit parcel assembly or lot aggregation in order to facilitate the incrimental development of Missing Middle Housing that our Growth Policy Suggests we want to see. This visual aid was created to demonstrate the affect that limiting parcel assembly in the new UDC could have on our built environment going forward. Floor Area Ratio or FAR regulations continue to be of top concern to the members of the BBC. They are not included in the draft UDC, with a blanket square footage being allowed in the new zones. R-A allows a 5,000sq. ft building, R-B a 10,000sq. ft. building. This visual aid was created to show how keeping FAR regulations in our code with appropriate modifications, can prevent small homes from being scraped and redeveloped into mansions, which is contrary to our community goals. We were told we needed a new UDC in order to allow for more housing diversity in developed areas. The recent BBC 2-part blog post titled Cracking the Code demonstrated a few things. • That Bozeman has built more housing per capita than Austin Texas in recent years. • That most of the housing being built is actually multi-family housing. Careful analysis shows that our code is not preventing supply, nor a diversity of housing types from coming online. The blog post is available on the BBC’s website. The City’s GIS department has mapped housing types and the following image is available online in Bozeman’s Community Plan; A City of Unique Neighborhoods. This map actually shows that the greatest diversity of housing types occurs within the core neighborhoods of Bozeman including but not limited to the area covered by the Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District. Confronted by this evidence, we need to shift our mindset and our approach. Rather than encouraging redevelopment of Bozeman’s core neighborhoods we should instead focus on protecting the diversity of housing types found there since this is the type of neighborhoods (and cities) urban planners all across the country are trying so hard to create. We’ve already got it! Instead, this image suggests that we actually need to concentrate on making newer neighborhoods more walkable, with more diversity of housing types, rather than huge swaths of single-family residences, or huge swaths of large multi-family developments. This will be difficult as most newer neighborhoods have private covenants, but we can still concentrate on how to develop nodes of neighborhood- scale commercial areas to serve these new neighborhoods. Many residents outside the core of town can’t even walk somewhere to get a cup of coffee, let alone groceries or meet other needs. In order to comply with state legislation passed during the 2023 session, Bozeman is required to comply with a new chapter of code called the Montana Land Use Planning Act or MLUPA. The State legislature created 14 options, and Bozeman needs to choose 5 of them. At City hosted UDC open houses held in December of 2024, attendees were asked to put stars next to the options they would prefer the city adopt. The following visual aid was created to show the 5 options Bozeman residents support the most, and identify the least popular options. Our current code already allows for 3 of the top 5 choices Bozeman residents prefer, so we don’t have that much work to do in order to come into compliance with SB-382, or MLUPA. Something our residents have demonstrated loud and clear, over and over, that they do NOT want is to grant concessions in design, mass and scale, required parking, or impact fees. Bozeman residents do not want increased building heights anywhere in town, and there are actually compelling economic reasons NOT to increase height limits that exist now, since we are not built out to them yet anyway. Those reasons are summarized in two blog posts by Strong Towns titled, A case for height restrictions, and More on height limits. Those can both be found through their website strongtowns.org The following visual aid was created to illustrate the proposed height increases in the draft UDC by zone, and importantly, the affect of the Affordable Housing Ordinance (AHO) incentives as currently drafted. The final visual aid created by the BBC for this engagement event illustrates problems with current and proposed Zone Edge Transitions (ZET’s), questions about the zoning district boundaries on the map, and design provisions that could be adopted into the new UDC in order to reduce the impacts of large developments where they border established lower density neighborhoods. Several growth policy references demonstrate it is in the communities interest to make these changes to the status quo development patterns. At this point in the event we engaged in our round table conversations to introduce ourselves through the ice breaker question, and address the UDC questions provided. Each table included a city representative and one volunteer recorder. There were six different tables. The rules provided for the conversations were as follows. 1. Only one person speaks at a time 2. If you disagree, do it respectfully 3. Be creative; think out of the box 4. Brainstorm how it CAN be done, not why it can’t 5. Keep participating! The ice breaker question was, “What brought you to Bozeman and what is one thing you love about it?” Some of these things folks loved about Bozeman were recorded as well. The questions for the recorder to gather responses to were as follows. 1. Is there anything about the draft UDC that you’ve liked so far? 2. What concerns do you have about the draft UDC? In the final minutes of the round table session each group was asked to consolidate their responses into differect categories that could be addressed in more detail in phase 2 of UDC engagement in the future. 3. Consolidated areas of concern. What should we address in more detail in phase 2 of UDC engagement? The raw data from these round table discussions are attached at the end of this report for full transparency. Before brusquely cleaning up the community room for the Library’s closing at 8pm each City representative spoke to what they heard during the round table conversation amongst their group. City Manager Chuck Winn Was moved by the passion of the conversation, and how dearly the neighborhoods are held. A participant at the table acknowledged the loss of community in a former city she lived in, and as a longtime Bozeman resident of over 40 years, he understands that concern. He can say, this commission IS listening and focused on this, and whatever the commission is focused on, the staff is focused on. Mayor Terry Cunningham Noted that when people are passionate about their city, that’s a good sign for the city. The themes he heard in conversation tonight are tracking with what they’ve been hearing elsewhere so that’s good. Building heights. Parking issues. The importance of the NCOD. The tree canopy. We talk about walkable bikeable communities where we can get something conveniently, but how do we get those in areas other than downtown? How do we replicate that in other areas? We want our neighborhoods to be wholistic and livable. We are citizens of Bozeman but we live in a neighborhood. Community Development Director Erin George Also noted that the themes are tracking with the open houses and the survey. They’re hearing about the change people are seeing, how neighborhoods are changing, and that many people don’t want them to change. Their table talked about a sense of place, and quality of life in communities. The need for clarifying the NCOD, strengthening environmental protections, and the AHO incentives. Planning Manager Chris Saunders Said he heard a lot about parallel projects including the Affordable Housing update, the Landmark Project, and the Integrated Water Resources Plan. While those projects are independent they are connected. Their table talked about land trusts for affordability, and dividing existing structures into smaller units. Commissioner Bode Their table all agreed they want affordable housing, but that we are giving away too much to get it. People want to see the city making sure we invest in, and honor, neighborhood character. They also discussed how to put more emphasis on neighborhoods and making sure they are empowered and have agency in this process. Chair of the Community Development Advisory Board, Henry Happle, and Engagement Manager Takami Clark, both defurred to BBC member Dianne to summarize their table’s conversation thus. She said their table’s conversation fell largely into 3 buckets; Needing to preserve neighborhood character, Parking is needed because we don’t have an effective mass transit system yet, so it’s unrealistic to think that it’s not necessary, and we need to map what we care about as a community so that we can effectively protect it. Our zoning needs to reflect that. They talked about the Affordable Housing Ordinance and how they would like to see different incentives for different zones meaning different incentives for greenfield development than for infill development. They want to eliminate the incentives for upzoning in our historic neighborhoods because right now we are encouraging change in those historic districts, that we value because we’ve upzoned them and made them attractive to developers. The NCOD is not protecting those areas the way we want it to. We want to create better height caps and better transitions between zones. This event was recorded, and the video will be available on the Better Bozeman Coalition website Resources page soon. betterbozemancoalition.net Below I’ve tried to tease out some themes that were especially poignant or mentioned more than once in the recorded feedback. Summary of draft UDC Likes To be honest this was probably the thinnest response area. It seems it’s always easier to focus on what you don’t like. • People liked that there are pictures in the new UDC. • Multiple people liked that it was paused; one said this gave citizens a voice in the process, another said they liked the pause because it was an opportunity to repair trust lost in the first round. • Someone liked the opportunity to fix things that aren’t working. • The draft is a better legal document. • Multiple people said the format is easier to understand. • Several people like that the new draft doesn’t upzone as much as the first draft; one of these said they liked that R-A is set to include R-1, and R-2 but not R-3. • Someone like the idea that a UDC lays out rules to be followed which gives predictability to neighborhoods. • Multiple people like that the NCOD is being included in the update. Summary of draft UDC concerns The list of concerns was wide ranging from broad perceptions to specific observations. For example one person commented that they are concerned about demolishing historic resources to create investment projects. On the flip side someone cited that the specific section of existing code 38.410.010 needs better enforcing in the new draft (Community Design and Elements, General Standards, Natural Environment). Here are just a few direct quotes. “the UDC seems to be canted towards the developer and not the residents.” “community engagement has been strong, but doesn’t seem to be having an impact on staff direction.” “need to look at what’s on the ground before determining new zones so the good is preserved” “development doesn’t track with water” “City needs to work for the residents that live here now more than future residents” • Density was the most mentioned topic; the excessive push for density leads to a loss of sunshine, history, beauty, and quality of life, while not increasing affordability. • Zoning was a big topic; R-4 zoning was listed specifically as a problem. People cited problems with existing and proposed zoning. One person said they don’t want their zoning changed. • People are concerned that preservation doesn’t seem to be prioritized; preservation of NOAH was mentioned, preservation of trees and natural resources were mentioned multiple times, and the NCOD isn’t valued the way people want it to be. • Lack of ZET’s or poor ZET’s in the new draft was mentioned multiple times • Increased building heights are seriously concerning; including multiple suggestions that the 25ft wall plate height is too high. • Decreased parking requirements in the new draft UDC are concerning to multiple people. • The AHO incentives were mentioned multiple times, and though this is a separate section of code, it does interact with existing and proposed zoning regulations. • Locating Fraternities and Sororities was mentioned several times, with one person stating they should not be able to locate in a single-family home. • One poignant comment that seemed to reverberate through all the concerns was that people don’t like drastic and fast changes. We need to slow down the rate of change. Consolidated areas of concern Looking at this slide from the City’s UDC open houses in December, and using this to identify which areas of the draft people are most concerned about, it seems to be all of them! Admittedly, some are more concerning than others. Something we cannot ignore is that the impacts of any zoning districts or regulations created, will be different when applied over green-field development vs. established neighborhoods. We should not discount the possibility of creating new zoning districts to be used going forward with new annexations, and keeping existing zoning districts (with some modifications to better protect what exists in historic neighborhoods) while at the same time retiring those districts from further use. This approach has been taken in other municipalities and may be appropriate to Bozeman. Otherwise very consolidated areas of concern seem to be the following, in no particular order: • Form and Intensity Standards, including building height, wall plate height, mass and scale, ZET’s, FAR, parking, privacy provisions, and solar access • Historic Preservation and Neighborhood Conservation (NCOD) including demolition regulations • Natural Resources, specifically trees and water • Affordable Housing, specifically the incentives in the current and proposed draft AHO • Uses, specifically Fraternities and Sororities • Where the zoning districts fall on the map The remaining pages contain the raw data feedback from the round table discussions.