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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-16-26 Public Comment - B. LaMeres - TIF AGENDA E.5 Midtown Urban Renewal District FY 2026 Annual Report, FY 2027 Work Plan and Budget and FY 2028 Work Plan and BudgetFrom:Brian LaMeres To:Bozeman Public Comment Cc:Lisa Sebena; Brian LaMeres Subject:[EXTERNAL]TIF AGENDA E.5 Midtown Urban Renewal District FY 2026 Annual Report, FY 2027 Work Plan andBudget and FY 2028 Work Plan and Budget Date:Thursday, April 16, 2026 8:29:01 AM 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. Hello TIF Board Members – We wish to comment on Action Item E.5 Midtown Urban Renewal District FY 2026 Annual Report, FY 2027 Work Plan and Budget and FY 2028 Work Plan and Budget. Our concern is that, once again, as we look over the work plans and budgets for the upcoming years – including the Unscheduled Future Projects – we do not see any work scheduled anywhere near our properties. (We apologize if we are just overlooking something). And this has been the case every year since the Midtown URD was created. Some of you might be surprised to know that the Lewis & Clark Motel – and in fact that whole block – is within the Midtown URD. You can read more background further down below in some of our previous emails to the Commission. Contrary to what you might be thinking, we are not requesting any specific projects to be completed near us, other than to address the blight that was identified as a supporting reason for our properties to be added to the TIF / URD. We definitely would like that blight to be addressed, although it sounds like nobody is really sure what specifically that blight is. Otherwise, if there really is no blight that was ever contemplated to be remedied by TIF / URD funds, then we would like to be removed from the District so that our tax increment can be returned to the City’s General Fund (and to the County and School District if they are still participating). That is really what we want, especially given that Public Safety within the City is supported by the General Fund. And as you may have observed at Tuesday’s City Commission meeting, Public Safety concerns are on the rise in Bozeman. And the increase in driver-related traffic concerns, including fatalities, is growing even faster than crime. And, again, all these concerns are almost entirely funded by the City’s General Fund. And we heard over and over from the Commission meeting how scarce the resources are in the highly competitive General Fund. So this is a no-brainer for us, and we’re hoping that your fresh eyes and ears will see it the same way. To recap, please either provide us with the reason(s) that we are in the TIF / URD and the plan for addressing those reasons, or else please remove us from the TIF / URD so that our tax increment can go towards funding Public Safety in Bozeman to help slow down the crime, injury and death. Thank you! -Lisa & Brian PS We fully support the grass-roots initiative for Interim Zoning during the NCOD update. Lisa Sebena & Brian LaMeres Lewis & Clark Motel 824 West Main Street Bozeman, MT 59715 Bozeman and Three Forks 406.586.3341 ♦ 406.285.3474 www.lewisandclarkmotels.com info@lewisandclarkmotelbozeman.com From: Brian LaMeres Sent: Tuesday, May 6, 2025 11:57 AM To: comments@bozeman.net Cc: Lisa Sebena <Lisa@lewisandclarkmotels.com>; Brian LaMeres <Brian@lewisandclarkmotels.com> Subject: agenda item J.4 Midtown Urban Renewal District Fiscal Year 2026 Work Plan and Budget, Fiscal Year 2025 Annual Report Hello again City Commission – Picking up on the conversation further down below from about this same time last year. The response provided during last year’s Commission meeting by your staff person to our concerns expressed below was, respectfully, pretty pathetic. For starters he characterized our email as accusing the City of a “money grab”. I realize you hold this particular staff person in pretty high regard, but that’s quite an insulting tone to take when we’re just trying to have an informative discussion here. But go back and listen again to your staff person’s answer. He basically said that there’s a very slim chance that any TIF improvements will ever occur near our property due to the complexities involved with projects involving the Montana Department of Transportation. And this was clearly and obviously a known fact at the time our property/properties were added to the District. But our properties were still added to the Midtown District nonetheless. Yet (and I apologize if I’m just missing something) as I look at your Work Plan and Budget for Midtown on tonight’s agenda, once again I do not see any proposed improvements anywhere near our area of the District. So our tax money – instead of being used to fund dire essential needs like the Police Department – is instead being diverted to improve other areas of the District far, far away from us. And again, our own tax money is arguably being used to beautify the environment around our competition. Or the money is being used for “affordable” housing. Housing that by your own recent acknowledgment really isn’t affordable, but since it technically meets the definition of affordability that’s on the books, we’ll call it affordable. So again, we’d prefer no response at all instead of the kind of response we got last year – we’re mainly just getting this on the record. Thank you! -Brian & Lisa Lisa Sebena Brian LaMeres 824 West Main Street Bozeman, MT 59715 From: Brian LaMeres <Brian@lewisandclarkmotels.com> Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2024 11:58 AM To: comments@bozeman.net Cc: Lisa Sebena <Lisa@lewisandclarkmotels.com>; Brian LaMeres <Brian@lewisandclarkmotels.com> Subject: agenda item J.3 Midtown Urban Renewal District 2025 Biennium Budget and Fiscal Year 2025 Work Plan and Budget (Fine) Hello City Commission – Just a reminder that in 2015 you expanded the boundaries of this TIF district, yet since then the bulk of the projects in your Work Plan and Budget seem to be within the original district boundary. A cynic might say that the only reason you expanded the boundary was to be able to capture the tax increment from more properties, and that you never really intended to address the “blight” that you identified on these newly captured properties. If you pose this question to staff, they are probably going to reply with “all property owners within the district have the same opportunity to submit a proposal or apply for grants/financing” or something like that. With all due respect to staff, would you be satisfied with an answer like that? Or would you rather prefer that the City got to work addressing whatever blight they had identified so that eventually your property would have that blight distinction removed? That is what we are asking, since we have paid well over $150,000 into this TIF since the district boundaries were expanded to include our properties. And suffice it to say we would much rather have had that money spent on public safety and the schools rather than to construct amenities and beautify the environment surrounding our business competition on North 7th Avenue. Thank you! Lisa Sebena & Brian LaMeres Lewis & Clark Motel 824 West Main Street Bozeman, MT 59715 Bozeman and Three Forks 406.586.3341 ♦ 406.285.3474 www.lewisandclarkmotels.com info@lewisandclarkmotelbozeman.com