PCEC Comments on Livingston Future Growth Map

Good news! Thanks to you, and significant community engagement, the City Planning Board & City Commission have agreed to extend the review of the draft Livingston Growth Policy.

They are doing exactly what the community asked, and will host two dedicated meetings to review the future land use maps. (January 20th and February 3rd).

Congrats!

Read PCEC’s comments on the Livingston Future Growth Map.

This is a big win for our community, and a big opportunity for you to help shape how and where we grow. It wouldn’t have happened without the dozens of residents who showed up at the first public hearings to give input, and the hundreds of residents that sent comments. Thank you! 

We are also grateful for the citizen board members of the Livingston Planning Board that are ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work. 

Now, we need to keep showing up! We are seeing unprecedented growth in our community, housing prices are skyrocketing, and this is our opportunity to help shape how and where we grow.

In this email we have provided the schedule for the seven Planning Board meetings through April, zoom links to upcoming meetings, talking points and more. It's a lot of content! More info here: https://www.pcecmt.org

Thank you Johnathan, for your contribution to this effort. We hope to see you for the first meeting this Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. via Zoom. Here is the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88130996506

In community,

Michelle

Future Land Use Maps - January 20th

(Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88130996506) 

This meeting is incredibly important, and exactly what we asked for when we submitted a petition asking for a discussion of Future Land Use Maps. 

This important meeting will help determine where our community should focus and prioritize growth: 1) within or close to city limits with infill and redevelopment; 2) expansion of city limits with new subdivisions. 

Already, some changes have been made to the draft Growth Policy and maps, which you can see here. These include adopting more strategies that prioritize infill development. 

The Future Growth Map is extremely important to how our future grows, and there have been multiple iterations of the map. We need clarity on which map we are using, and whichever map, we choose needs to avoid sprawl.

This shows the city is listening, and our input matters. If you can, please take the time to attend the meeting on Wednesday. If not, you can send written comments to planning@livingstonmontana.org.

You can see some of the changes so far. The first Recommended Future Land Use Map looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

This is because of the dozens of you who have showed up and said, we don't want sprawl. Let's continue to show up and make sure our community drives future growth, pushing for infill and redevelopment over expanding the city limits.

Talking Points

As we contemplate future growth of the Livingston, we need to consider the cost of future growth. Does it make sense to greatly expand our current city limits (see map) if we’re having trouble maintaining the streets, sidewalks, water, sewer, parks, trees and other facilities that currently serve Livingston?

Compact development within current city limits, infill and redevelopment are fiscally prudent strategies. Prioritizing this type of growth, over sprawl, helps maintain and create neighborhoods that support our local businesses, our downtown, taking advantage of our current infrastructure system instead of building more. 

Prioritizing infill and redevelopment helps our environment by creating a walkable, bikeable community, reducing the need to use cars to get places. It reduces the overall amount of land we consume with new development.

Talking points:

  • Support our downtown businesses: infill development and redevelopment helps support local businesses, drives people into our downtown and grows our economic core.  

  • Prevent sprawl: We value our open lands, working ranches, and the Yellowstone River. We don’t want to see Livingston sprawling into the County’s open space.

  • Fiscally conservative development: It doesn’t make sense for the City to spend taxpayer dollars to extend services and build roads sprawling into rural parts of the County. 

  • Public Health: People in our community are happier and healthier when everyone can walk or ride their bike to school, to the store and to the services they need.

  • Community Character: Infill development preserves and improves our community character. It makes our home a more desirable place to waik, bike and do business. 

  • Climate Change: We want to be able to get around our town without getting in a car for everything.

City Planning Board Growth Policy Review Schedule

January 20:

  • Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction & Future Land Use Maps

February 3:

  • Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction cont. if needed.

  • Chap. 1: Introduction

  • Chap. 2: Population & Community Character

February 17:

  • Chapter 3: Land Use

  • Chapter 11: Land Use Recommendations

  • Chapter 4: Natural Resources

March 3:

  • Chapter 5: Housing

  • Chapter 6: Economy

  • Chapter 8: Transportation

March 17:

  • Chapter 7: Local Services

  • Chapter 9: Public Facilities

  • Chapter 10: Inter-Governmental Coordination

  • Chapter 12: Implementation

April 7:

  • Readability: general layout, page numbering, etc.

  • Appendices

April 21:

  • Public Hearing for Final Recommendation

Upcoming Community Conversations

Thanks to the more than 50 people that attended last week’s community conversation on county planning tools. If you missed the conversation, you can view it on YouTube.

We have two more exciting conversations coming up. You can always find this information on our website events page: https://www.pcecmt.org/events

Jan. 27, noon: Yellowstone River Recreation Study

The presentation will be given by Whitney Tilt, with Conservation Benchmarks, and Jeff Reed, of Reed Fly Farm, who both were actively involved with the project through the UYWG. They will discuss data collection methods, an analysis of the data and what it tells us about summer river use and the plans for data collection in 2021.

Join via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/93822990361 

Feb. 3, noon: Building a Walkable & Bikeable Community

As our City gears up to develop our own Active Transportation and Trail Plan, we are bringing national and local expertise to better inform interested parties and assist us in the public process. Our featured speaker is Joe Gilpin from Alta Planning and Design, experts in pedestrian and bicyclist planning.

Join via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/96283445075

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