During two separate state of the city addresses this week, Bozeman Mayor Terry Cunningham promised to “demystify the process.”
Cunningham said during the second address on Wednesday that it feels like people are talking at each other a lot, and assuming bad intent of those they disagree with.
“I think we need to recognize that we can work together; we have worked together in the past. This community has come together to do some great things,” Cunningham said. “How do we do that? Everybody needs to be at the table, we listen, we build empathy, we create a set of shared understandings, demystify the process, be transparent. No sudden moves.”
About 30 people packed into a small meeting room on Wednesday at a fire station on the west side for the second presentation. Cunningham gave the first during the lunch hour on Monday at the Emerson Center for the Arts and Culture. At both, he gave mostly the same speech, featuring comments on city issues from residents, some of which were critical of city policy.
Regarding housing, Cunningham shared comments from longtime Bozeman residents Jack and Jane Jelinski, who spoke about the unified development code rewrite — which garnered intense pushback last fall by those concerned it would push more density into older Bozeman neighborhoods.
The commission halted the UDC process amid the pushback and plans to restart the review of it this year.
“The public does not need to be ‘educated’ about the UDC,” the Jelinskis wrote. “They have studied it and rejected it.”
Cunningham also shared a comment from Bozeman resident Nathan Stein, who wrote that the city had an opportunity with the UDC rewrite to address the city’s housing crisis.
“Bozeman’s housing shortage is a shared responsibility, and every neighborhood has a role to play in growing to meet the needs of the moment,” Stein wrote.
Cunningham said after Wednesday’s speech that he wanted to include comments that were critical, because he knows a lot of people are thinking the same thing.
“I think (it’s) part of making people feel like they’re heard,” Cunningham said.
The state of the city was held outside of city hall, and outside of normal commission meeting hours, because Cunningham said the commission is trying to work on its citizen engagement efforts. During his speech, he shared some of the commission’s draft priorities for the next two years, the first of which was to foster and build “public trust, support and pride in local governance.”
The restart of the UDC engagement process is set to be a test of that goal.
Deputy Mayor Joey Morrison, who attended Wednesday’s speech along with Commissioner Douglas Fischer, said said holding the state of the city addresses outside of city hall was a “departure from the norm,” and something he thinks the city needs to do more often.
“We’re going to be using a lot of the same tools you saw here, being in non-traditional places, more informal settings, hearing more from elected officials with staff,” Morrison said of the UDC review.
The city is working on a engagement plan for the UDC they hope to roll out in the next month
“I’m hoping it will be like nothing else we’ve done before, that it’ll feel more like a dialogue than a lecture or speech,” Cunningham said.
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