BOZEMAN — You may have heard about the WARD ballot initiative recently and wondered what it means for Bozeman’s affordable housing and water conservation. Well, MTN’s Esha Walia decided to find out.
WATCH: Bozeman voters will decide on the WARD ballot initiative that could change how developers build in the city
“There is no housing shortage in Bozeman, but there is a shortage of affordable housing,” said Daniel Carty, who is part of the group WARD – which stands for water adequacy for residential development.
WARD is behind the Bozeman Water Adequacy Ballot Initiative – which Bozeman residents will be seeing on this year’s ballot.
“The WARD ballot initiative is a citizen-driven path to conserving Bozeman’s finite water supply and providing affordable housing to the Bozeman community,” said Carty.
MTN’s Esha Walia took a step back to see what this initiative is all about.
Let’s first start with the water component. As Deputy Mayor Joey Morrison tells MTN, when a developer wants to build in the city of Bozeman, they have three options to get their project approved regarding water:
1. Bring their own water rights.
2. Have conservation efforts in places to offset the amount of water they use.
3. Pay cash-in-lieu of water rights, which means paying the city directly to negotiate water rights.
Most developers use the last option.
Under WARD’S ballot initiative, developers would only be able to secure cash-in-lieu of water rights if they commit to making 33% of units affordable, meaning they are available to those who make 60% or less of Bozeman’s area median income.
MTN asked Carty why WARD decided to group affordable housing and water rights together.
“Bozeman has a finite water supply that, depending on who you talk to, could run out in the mid-2030s or later,” said Carty. “It also has a lack of affordable housing, so we thought that linking those two via cash-in-lieu of water rights was the way to go.”
Morrison says the city is not concerned about the current water supply and says the initiative is “unlikely to produce affordable housing and conserve water in a meaningful way.”
Morrison says another concern the city has with the initiative…
“We have found through a variety of economic analyses that this ballot initiative makes effectively all development within the city completely financially infeasible,” said Morrison.
He says this could push future development out of Bozeman and into the county.
Carty disagrees.
“We disagree with that as well. Demand is high in Bozeman, and the city does not have the density to handle the infrastructure,” said Carty.
To learn more about the upcoming Bozeman election, visit this link.
