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HomeMy WebLinkAboutJune 4, 2009, Policy Minutes LINKED POLICY MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE CITY COMMISSION BOZEMAN, MONTANA June 4, 2009 ***************************** The Commission of the City of Bozeman met in the Commission Room, City Hall, 121 North Rouse on Thursday, June 4, 2009. Present were Mayor Kaaren Jacobson, Cr. Sean Becker, Cr. Eric Bryson, Cr. Jeff Krauss, Cr. Jeff Rupp, City Manager Chris Kukulski, Planning Director Andy Epple, Planning Assistant Director Chris Saunders, Deputy City Clerk Aimee Kissel and members of the City Planning Board. 0:00:04 A. Call to Order - Noon - 1:30 PM - City Commission Meeting Room, City Hall, 121 North Rouse 0:00:04 B. Pledge of Allegiance and Moment of Silence 0:00:38 C. Public Comment Mayor Jacobson opened public comment. No person commented. Mayor Jacobson closed public comment. 0:00:51 D. Round Table Discussion (Identifying potential future agenda items arising from the prior City Commission Meetings.) 0:01:14 Cr. Rupp Cr. Rupp brought up the problem the city is having with the mountain pine beetle infestation. He feels the city might need to take more of a leadership role regarding this issue beyond contacting homeowners about infested trees. 0:02:15 Debbie Arkell, Director of Public Service Ms. Arkell said that we have an Ordinance to require property owners to cut down a nuisance tree and this could be considered a nuisance tree because the beetles will continue to infest if this is not taken care of. This would be at the homeowners’ expense however. If the City were to take care of all the trees it could be difficult to do so on private property and we'd have to consider the homeowners that have paid to have trees removed themselves. 4 Minutes of the Bozeman City Commission Meeting, June 4, 2009 2 0:03:56 Cr. Rupp Cr. Rupp pointed out that this is primarily an economic issue, the cost of cutting and disposing of the trees. 0:04:11 Ms. Arkell Ms. Arkell explained that the District was accepting these trees at the city landfill but they stopped because they had finished all the chipping, but we've convinced them they need to open that back up, but they have to get chipped right away or the beetles will move on. 0:04:47 Mayor Jacobson Mayor Jacobson agreed that this is an economic concern. She asked the Commissioners if they would like to place this item on an agenda. 0:06:6 Mr. Kukulski Mr. Kukulski confirmed that the City Commission would like the pine beetle issue on an agenda as soon as possible to get some clear direction. 0:07:52 Cr. Krauss Cr. Krauss explained that the homeowners association he belongs to are paying to treat all the trees in their area whether they are on private or city property. He also pointed out that other natural disasters have occurred in the city and the city hasn't paid for all the damage to private property for those including other tree infestations. 0:09:11 Mayor Jacobson Mayor Jacobson confirmed that she and the Commissioners would like to see this issue on an agenda. 0:10:04 1. Roundtable Discussion with the City Planning Board Commission & City Planning 0:10:20 Brian Caldwell, President of the Planning Board Mr. Caldwell began the discussion saying that the planning board wanted to speak with the Commission regarding implementation strategies recently adopted in the 2020 Plan and that will hopefully be adopted in the Economic Development Plan and possibly forthcoming recommendations that may come out of the Neighborhood Plan for the downtown core area. Within those documents there are a number of recommendations that effect the development Ordinance as it relates to zoning and site development. The Board would like to take this opportunity to use their time to bring back recommendations for Unified Development Ordinance edits. They would like to know how best to serve the needs of the Commission as the Planning Board in an expeditious manner. 5 Minutes of the Bozeman City Commission Meeting, June 4, 2009 3 0:15:06 Dawn Smith, Planning Board Member Ms. Smith said that they would first look at the UDO as it relates to the adoption of the growth policy and how that affects the existing UDO because there are some discrepancies. 0:15:34 Cr. Krauss Cr. Krauss pointed out that some of the recent UDO text edits were commission driven. Chris Saunders has the pulse of what needs to happen as far as UDO edits as it relates to the 202 Plan, but if the planning board is not able to bring edits forward themselves they can certainly write a letter to the Commissioners with their ideas and the Commissioners can bring those forward. We would hope that the Transportation Plan might have some edits in it as well. 0:18:20 Ed Szczypinski, Planning Board member Mr. Szczypinski said they could review them to see if that is the case. 0:18:31 Cr. Krauss Cr. Krauss said he was in agreement with Mr. Szczypinski. 0:18:50 Chris Mehl, Planning Board member Mr. Mehl said in addition to UDO text edits, the other part is implementation. A lot of recommendations don't involve just the UDO. He would like to know how those recommendations should be brought forward and whether the planning board should be involved in that. 0:19:48 Cr. Krauss Cr. Krauss asked if the planning board would develop the fiscal note and how we pay for those things because that would affect his decision. 0:20:05 Mr. Mehl Mr. Mehl said that the economic plan does call for a cost benefit analysis. 0:20:16 Mayor Jacobson Mayor Jacobson asked who would do the cost benefit analysis which is a good deal if done properly. 0:20:36 Chris Saunders, Assistant Director of Planning Mr. Saunders said the cost benefit analysis referred to in the Economic Plan is specific to when the City is loaning funds, etc. If you want to expand that, we can it'll just be a matter of where we want to cut that off and how complex we want it to be. 0:22:19 Mr. Caldwell Within Chapter 16 of the 2020 plan is a series of priorities of the objectives of the plan and the planning board would like to go through those and try to respond as to how they affect the UDO and other things. 6 Minutes of the Bozeman City Commission Meeting, June 4, 2009 4 0:24:51 Cr. Krauss Cr. Krauss provided an example of how he is understanding the direction the planning board would like to take. 0:25:29 Mr. Caldwell Mr. Caldwell explained they would like to be involved in what triggers certain types of review. 0:26:45 Cr. Bryson Cr. Bryson said that he would be supportive if the planning board wanted to develop some objective criteria for compliance with the UDO. 0:26:58 Mr. Mehl Mr. Mehl said that the planning board is looking for the Commissioners priorities so they can keep those in mind as they make recommendations for implementation and the UDO. 0:28:27 Mr. Mehl Mr. Mehl said the Planning Board was also interested in getting other types of direction as well. For example they are interested in City, County relations and might possibly want to have a joint City/County Planning board meeting. 0:29:11 Mayor Jacobson Mayor Jacobson asked the City Commissioners if the Planning Board were to come up with a plan to proceed and then the Commissioners would take a look at that and decide upon some priorities. 0:29:36 Cr. Krauss Cr. Krauss agreed with Mayor Jacobson saying she had a great idea. 0:31:33 Mr. Caldwell Mr. Caldwell spoke to the Planning Board's desire to have the 2020 Downtown Neighborhood Plan recommendations adopted as swiftly as possible. 0:32:35 Mr. Epple Mr. Epple said that he and Chris Saunders can work with the board to help develop a prioritized list that would be the planning boards work program. 0:35:26 Cr. Bryson Cr. Bryson said that we should be ready to develop when development is ready to develop instead of being reactionary. That policy discussion is worthwhile for our planning board to have. 0:35:58 Mr. Kukulski Mr. Kukulski brought up several subjects that have been talked about in the past that the 7 Minutes of the Bozeman City Commission Meeting, June 4, 2009 5 planning board may want to take a look at including the possibility of different priorities for the core area and also revisions to the downtown parking regulations. 0:38:05 Mr. Saunders Mr. Saunders said that staff is keenly aware of the parking issue and they are beginning the research process. 0:41:00 Mayor Jacobson Mayor Jacobson responded to Mr. Caldwell's urgency with the Downtown Neighborhood Plan saying she to feels this plan is a priority. 0:41:26 Cathy Costakis, Planning Board member Ms. Costakis spoke regarding the possibility of the Planning Board looking at the City Codes and comparing them with our plans and priorities and other cities codes to investigate whether they match with our community. 0:43:17 Cr. Becker Cr. Becker said there are non-profits that could do audits of our codes such as Smart Growth America and the Yellowstone Business Partnership. In addition, Cr. Becker brought up the upcoming Economic Development Plan, and the priorities that are likely to come out of that document after it is adopted. 0:46:22 Mr. Caldwell Mr. Caldwell said that this meeting has produced good direction for the Planning Board to make the best use of their time and he thanked the Mayor and Commissioners for their time. 0:46:35 Mayor Jacobson Mayor Jacobson thanked the Planning Board for all the work they did on the Bozeman 2020 Community Plan and for their upcoming work on the next phase. 0:47:14 2. Sourdough Dam Communication Strategy (Arkell) 0:47:19 Rick Hixson, City Engineer Mr. Hixson explained that the City is very close to placing on an agenda a services agreement with Great West Black and Beech for the Sourdough Dam Project. A big part of this first contract is a communications strategy. This is a little outside of the normal realm of engineering and the strategy is like an advocacy position. Mr. Hixson would like to make sure everyone is okay with having this communications strategy as part of this contract. We felt it was important to this project to make sure everyone is well informed and that everyone is on the same page regarding communications. 0:50:40 Mr. Hixson Mr. Hixson explained that this project has a different communications strategy because in a sense it is an advocacy of the project. The purpose of the strategy is to move the organization 8 Minutes of the Bozeman City Commission Meeting, June 4, 2009 6 forward to some known destination or preferred future. It will be unmistakable that the city's interest is in building the dam. 0:53:02 Cr. Bryson Cr. Bryson said that this is actually a marketing strategy to market our position that the dam is necessary. 0:53:46 Mr. Hixson Mr. Hixson would agree with Cr. Bryson and said that the strategy is communication that helps an organization achieve a valuable result. 0:54:24 Cr. Becker Cr. Becker said his understanding is that we are looking for someone to communicate the complexity of this project who is a professional communications consultant to improve the exchange between the public and the government. 0:57:18 Mayor Jacobson Mayor Jacobson brought up the point that a communications strategy is needed because this is potentially a very explosive subject. 0:58:02 Cr. Krauss Cr. Krauss agreed there are many people still out there that don't understand why we need a dam, and a communication strategy will help the Commission from having to be a point people to explain the benefits of a dam. Cr. Krauss is reluctantly seeing the need. 1:01:21 Mr. Hixson Mr. Hixson confirmed with the Commissioners that they are comfortable going forward with this. 1:01:57 3. Notification of Mayor’s Initiative (per City Charter) to add a proposal to rescind Condition 16 (9:00 p.m. time limit) of the Story Mansion Community Center Conditional Use Permit to the City Commission Agenda on Monday, June 8, 2009 (Mayor Jacobson) 1:02:00 Mayor Jacobson Mayor Jacobson explained her desire to have this item come before the City Commission. 1:04:02 F. FYI/Discussion 1:09:50 Mr. Kukulski Mr. Kukulski began a discussion regarding a request made by the tea party for the 4th of July. We denied street closure and permitted the sidewalk use and approved the assembly permit in front of the Courthouse. Mr. Kukulski stated he walked Main Street from end to end talking to 9 Minutes of the Bozeman City Commission Meeting, June 4, 2009 7 area retailers and restaurants getting some feedback. Mr. Kukulski said he anticipates public comment on Monday requesting that we reverse our decision to not close Main Street. 1:11:02 Mayor Jacobson Mayor Jacobson asked City Manager Kukulski what it would cost to close down the street and received the reply $1,100. Mayor Jacobson then said that she says no. 1:11:11 Cr. Bryson Cr. Bryson would like to hear what they have to say. 1:14:18 Mr. Kukulski Mr. Kukulski said that he has had lots of requests to get something up in front of the blast site so you can't just look through the chain link fence. 1:14:54 G. Adjournment Mayor Jacobson adjourned the meeting at 1:27 p.m. ____________________________________ Kaaren Jacobson, Mayor ATTEST: ______________________________________ Stacy Ulmen, City Clerk PREPARED BY: ______________________________________ Aimee Kissel, Deputy City Clerk Approved on ___________________________ 10