HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-14-26 Public Comment - L. Semones - Attention HPABFrom:Linda Semones
To:Bozeman Public Comment
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Attention HPAB
Date:Tuesday, April 14, 2026 4:23:56 PM
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Dear Members of the Historical Preservation Advisory Board,
Please make a written recommendation to the Bozeman City Commission to adopt aninterim zoning ordinance while the Landmark Program and the NCOD update are being
completed. Not only is this portion of our UDC in progress, but also the city is without aHistorical Preservation Officer. As a board whose charge is to advise on exactly these issues,
the interim zoning ordinance would fall squarely into your purview. Below please find a basisin precedence for interim zoning at this time.
City Commission transcript on the topic of Interim Zoning, Commission meeting July 14, 2025
~Time 2:26: Commissioner Jennifer Madgic: can you please talk about, just briefly, what thatmoratorium would look like and if it's legal?
Community Development Manager Chris Saunders: Sure. The cities currently working under
chapter 2 part 3 which has its own language on what they call urgency ordinances which isdifferent than the language from MLUPA*. So we need to keep those separated. We cannotuse the MLUPA language until after we have adopted the language and so that's off the table.
So the urgency ordinance we currently are working under has an initial time limit and not
more than six months and we have to be able to articulate what has happened that justifiesthis urgency. Sometimes people use the term emergency ordinance. We’ve used that inseveral occasions and one that comes to mind is when the Federal Government years and
years ago decided that we weren't going to have two telecommunication providers in the
nation. We were going to have eight that provided wireless services and their expectation wasthere would be this wave of towers rolling across the country sticking up willy-nilly across thecommunity and so the city said, wait a minute. This has changed outside of our control. We
put the pause in place while we went through a code writing process that specifically adoptedregulations for telecommunication standards, and then that took effect. So we can do themand they require pretty intensive work on the staff side to figure out what is it we're doing,what is it we're correcting and that's how it worked and looks like the city attorney would like
to share thoughts.
Time 2:27 City Attorney Greg Sullivan:
The City of Bozeman, in addition to what Chris has said has used interim zoning, that's whatthe statute calls it for short-term rentals. That was seven or eight years ago, and so there's
two components that you have to keep in mind, and one is you have to make the finding thatthere is something going on in community that would require you to act quickly and theinterim zoning, all it does is dispense with the standard adoption for the amendments and soone of the things that it dispenses with is a public hearing in front of the zoning commission.
It also expedites the noticing procedure. There still is notice required and a public hearing infront of the commission. So all it really does is sort of shorten the timeframe that you wouldotherwise need to engage in if you had a standard zone text amendment or a standard zonemap of a process. so in addition, to get that shorter timeframe, you have to identify the thing
that's happening in the community that you need to address quickly, and you have to alsoidentify that you have a process undertaken or you are undertaking a process that would
address that same issue.
One more thing, Chris mentioned the current Title 76 statutes and what happens under the
MLUPA. They're pretty similar in the standard that you have to follow for interim zoning.
There is a protest that you have to consider under current state law, that protest provision. Ican't tell if it's applicable under MLUPA but I know MLUPA doesn't have protest. So, there aresome subtle differences, but I think what Chris has said is right on. I just want you to consider
the shorter timeframe and what you have to do to get that shorter timeframe.
* Montana Land Use Planning Act (MLUPA or SB 382)
Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to your discussion,
Linda Semones NCOD resident