HomeMy WebLinkAbout03-31-25 Public Comment - D. Kaveney - Guthrie Appeal on Tuesday 4_1.From:Dan Kaveney
To:Bozeman Public Comment
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Guthrie Appeal on Tuesday 4/1.
Date:Sunday, March 30, 2025 12:24:48 PM
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Dear Commissioners,
I’m writing today to ask you to think about some things when considering the appeal ofthe Guthrie 2.0 that you’re scheduled to hear at your Tuesday, April 1 meeting, as well as
to ask you to consider how effective the AHO (both the original and the new, revisedversion) has been in promoting the best interests of Bozeman’s residents.
Local residents have appealed the city’s approval of the Guthrie 2.0 proposal because
the project violates various requirements written in city code. I’m sure you’ll be floodedwith comments from people much more knowledgeable about these requirements than
I, so I’ll leave specific comments about the Guthrie’s compliance to them, but I will say Ithink you should deny the Guthrie’s application because I find the arguments about how
the Guthrie does not conform to the city’s own requirements for the NCOD to be verypersuasive.
I hope when thinking about the Guthrie, you'll also think about how we got here.
Unfortunately, the state legislature has prohibited you from using the simple andeffective tools to produce affordable housing that many other municipalities employ
(inclusionary zoning and vacancy taxes among others). This leaves you withcomplicated, incentive-based alternatives, such as our current AHO, that seem to me to
be both ineffective and undesirable, and that produce myriad unforeseen, negative,second order consequences. The foundational idea behind the AHO is that the city will
give very valuable public resources, such as parking spaces, open spaces, andnavigable streets, to developers in order to encourage them to build affordable housing.
This greatly diminishes the quality of life enjoyed by people who live near these projects,while it’s not at all clear the projects will actually do much, if anything, to address our
problem with affordable housing. In effect, the city argues that citizens should be willingto give up tangible, existing things that are important to them and their neighborhoods,
and reduce their quality of life, in order to allow the city to gamble on some slim chancethat doing so might help address our affordable housing problem. It’s not a compelling
proposition.
The Chronicle published an article on Friday, March 28 about the Guthrie appeal. In it,Andy Holloran explains that he’s very serious about following the city’s rules, which is
why all 16 of his applications so far have been approved. That’s true. However, judgingfrom Bozeman residents’ reactions to these applications and approvals, very few of us
think these things he is building will be good for the community. The fact that HomeBase can follow the rules and build things the public views as detrimental to their city is
telling us the rules aren’t working in our favor. Developers could work with a different setof rules that produced results beneficial to the city – but we need to change the current
ones in order to accomplish that. You can begin by revoking the AHO.
I’m not a religious man, but I’ve always liked the Serenity Prayer, “God, grant me theserenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.” Our affordable housing problem has beendecades in the making – the 2020 population explosion just brought it to a head. Wewon’t be able to fix it quickly. Given the legislature’s restrictions on your powers,you’re not going to be able to fix this problem – certainly not with the AHO – andineffective efforts to do so are costing the city too much. It’s time to exercise “thewisdom to know the difference”. Revoke the AHO and use the UDC revision toemphasize stewardship of our city rather than bulldozing paths for new residents.
Sincerely,
Dan Kaveney
Bozeman