Empowering Bozeman Residents

Too often I’ve watched highly engaged resident volunteers advocating for their home and quality of life treated with contempt by both staff and some commissioners. It’s time to stop taking direction from “investors” who don’t live here- it’s pitting Bozeman residents against each other. I want to be part of a commission that acts on your input!
It’s time for results; we deserve it.
Multi-generational, economically diverse communities, of renters, homeowners, and small businesses make up an ecosystem we each call our neighborhood.
Neighborhoods are recognized in Bozeman’s Charter, and in Bozeman Municipal code 2.05.1100 through the Neighborhood Recognition Ordinance.
The original intent of these mandates is incredible! We’ve experienced so much administrative drift and goal displacement that we no longer honor our Neighborhoods.
I want to bring the City of Bozeman organization back to a place where neighborhoods shape local government decisions that affect their livability.
To guarantee local government is more responsive to residents, Citizen Advisory Boards must be given real work to do. After the consolidation of advisory boards under former City Manager Jeff Mihelich, most boards have been relegated to a box check, weighing in as a mere formality, only when the policy is nearly finished.
Bozeman is full of highly educated and engaged citizens. Those that serve on boards and try to push for better outcomes are sidelined or removed. I want to empower them instead!
Urban renewal boards need to come back and should be made up of qualified professionals AND neighborhood residents, to make sure public resources are spent in accordance with public wishes!

Improving our Quality of Life

For a decade or more our City has pursued a policy of build anything anywhere anytime, and housing is still out of reach for working Bozemanites to own, and the majority of tenants spend too much of their hard earned income on rent .
We must take a more active role in creating housing for the folks who live and work here. As a founding member of the Better Bozeman Coalition I’ve researched and proposed tools that the City could implement for affordable housing creation AND preservation. Check them out.
Yes the state government likes to take away tools, but we create more tools!
I believe we can build more housing, while respecting current residents, by defining “infill” in a neighborhood friendly way.
It’s time to update our Bozeman Community Plan, aka the Growth Policy ! This document drives every decision our city government makes, and it is a VERY pro-density document prioritizing “infill” above all else. Trouble is, infill means different things to different people. Our community is fractured over this discrepancy.
When I first heard of infill, empty lots within city limits immediately sprang to mind. However, in the planning world, “infill” actually means redeveloping an existing neighborhood to its maximum zoning allowance!
No wonder we are seeing unsympathetic development displacing existing residents! I stand with any neighborhood that wants to define what “infill” means to them. And I’ll never forget when a Historic Preservation consultant said, “density doesn’t have to be a five-story building”. I completely agree!
People in Montana, including Bozeman, have cars. One of the highest rates of car ownership in the country actually. As we grow, we must account for the current reality while planning for what may or may not be a different future.
While a robust public transportation system is going to be an asset to our valley, we do not yet have a network that will allow most people in our community to live without a car.
The reality is and will be for some time, that most individuals who chose to utilize public transportation, will have a car at home.
That is why I believe that housing development must have parking. The state legislature continues to take away our ability to manage our own parking requirements. So we will need to manage growth in a way to minimize the negative impacts of their actions.
The core historic neighborhoods of Bozeman are the unwilling target of immense redevelopment pressure because they have a mix of housing types, unique character crafted over decades or a century, and are close to neighborhood scale commercial services. The redevelopment pressure is immense because these neighborhoods are desirable.
It’s time that we as a city prioritize all neighborhoods being safe, connected, and desirable. I want to be part of a commission that looks to improve the quality of life and desirability of all neighborhoods in our fair city!
No matter where you live in Bozeman, you matter.
According to the most recent economic market update report * Bozeman has not created any new jobs that pay well enough for someone to purchase the average home.
While construction and hospitality are vibrant industries in our city, we must diversify into other sectors in order to prosper as a community.

* page 29 says “Today, a household would need to earn 208 percent of the AMI to afford the current median home price of $784,500.” AMI for household of 2 is $105,000 (page 11) so to afford the average home in Bozeman a household (2 ppl) needs to make $218,000. On page 11 it shows that the highest paying new jobs in 2024 only offered $130,000/yr.
We cannot continue scraping every lot to build sidewalk-to-sidewalk high rises thinking it will help with affordability. It won’t and we’re ruining the last best place.
Mature trees and vegetation IN our urban environment improves quality of life and mental health, provides ecosystem services like storm water mitigation and natural cooling through evapotranspiration, which will become more important in a less predictable climate. Many in the city of Bozeman are already feeling the heat-island effect.
Our urban forest is a green asset, inherited from our predecessors, that matures over time. I support changes to our municipal code to celebrate, honor, expand and preserve our urban forest.

Managing Growth

Over the past decade, while we have seen redevelopment pressure increase in our historic core, our Historic Preservation capabilities have been systematically dismantled.
It’s been death by a thousand cuts. Bozeman’s Historic Preservation program is underfunded and understaffed. Our Advisory Board has no power. Our Growth Policy aka Community Plan is lacking a chapter on historic preservation.
Our sense of place is important to us, and most residents value what’s left of our small town feel.
I commit to rebuilding a robust Historic Preservation Program in Bozeman so that we can honor our diverse past and conserve our heritage properly in the face of continued growth.
We CAN meet the challenges of growth without destroying the things that make Bozeman unique!
We’ve built housing at one of the fastest rates in the country and it hasn’t brought prices down. The quest for density has not prevented sprawl. Corporate landlords are establishing a greater foothold in our community extracting the economic productivity of our workforce, to bolster investment portfolio dividends enjoyed elsewhere. And our current municipal code is inadequate to protect the things we love in the face of speculative development.
We must be more intentional about how we grow!
That means taking control of the development process, recognizing that building more luxury condos does NOT free up other housing for our workforce, and rewriting our growth policy to reflect the priorities of residents, rather than investors.
Our community is fractured because the City of Bozeman organization is silo-ed from the residents of Bozeman, and has pursued policies amenable to developers and not those residents.
I see our City growing as a collection of villages, where every neighborhood is a thriving ecosystem of economically diverse residents with safe schools and streets. I do NOT want to see high-rise developments blot out the “big sky” so that only those who can afford to pay for it enjoy the views we’ve all cherished for generations. By taking direction from our residents, we will keep Bozeman a place we all want to live.
Schools, police, fire and roads are being stressed beyond capacity by the build-build-build policies of the past decade. Some services are more efficiently delivered with increased density, others are not.
I commit to properly resourcing our Police and Fire departments so that our City can meet the challenges of increased population, but it will take a community conversation about how to pay for it.
We cannot afford to continue developing this valley with the mindset that scraping everything, dewatering open space, and sidewalk-to-sidewalk high rises will help with affordability. It won’t, and we’re ruining the last best place.
By acknowledging that we are not the only land users, we can begin to respect wildlife corridors, riparian areas, and sensitive habitat in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
Our agricultural heritage is important to our cultural identity, but as the valley population grows and changes the pressure to develop ag-land for housing is heightened. Family farms and ranches find it more difficult by the year to continue, and the next generation may not be interested in taking up the responsibility. It is the landowner’s right to sell their property for development allowed within City or County zoning regulations. If we truly want to prevent sprawl, we need to purchase those development rights from the landowners. Only conservation easements will guarantee open space is maintained. Density does not prevent sprawl. In fact, as the quest for higher density in Bozeman’s core has led to inflated land prices and decreased quality of life, it has displaced people in search of lower density more affordable living.
We CAN build new compact neighborhoods where people want to live, while maintaining the character of established neighborhoods, and respecting the site constraints of our natural environment.