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Tonight, City Council will discuss proposed subdivision regulation changes recently endorsed by the Yellowstone County Planning Board. Proposed changes include:
The Billings Chamber supported the new lighting requirements at two recent Yellowstone County Planning Board meetings. With our experience conducting dozens of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) evaluations throughout Billings, we've seen how critical lighting is to the perception and prevalence of crime in Billings.
When a business requests that we conduct a CPTED evaluation, it's often because they're having issues with property crime, theft, transients, or a general perception of safety concerns. Usually we find that inadequate lighting is a factor. Most businesses think they've got plenty of lighting, but when we come out and take measurements with a light meter, few properties are close to meeting the minimum standard recommended by the Illumination Engineering Society.
Updating the subdivision regulations to include a lighting requirement ensures Billings builds safety into the city. At the same time, we're hyper-aware of the fact that this increases costs on new housing, and, on the margins, may result in fewer new homes in subdivisions (which doesn't necessarily mean fewer homes in Billings overall if development shifts to infill). We recently surveyed our members with our bi-annual Public Policy Priorities survey, asking a number of questions, including a ranking of 13 issue areas (see the "In Case You Missed It" section below). The top two priorities identified were public safety and housing supply.
PROS & CONS list from staff memo
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