Dan Tidswell – Ward 4

The reason I am running for city council is probably similar to the reason many of the other candidates are running, I got tired of seeing the city not work for us and decided instead of complaining I may as well do something about it. Furthermore, as a dad watching most of my kids pick up and leave Billings in search of better job opportunities was pretty disheartening. I would like to see kids grow up and be able to stay in our city.

The main issue I am focused on right now is public safety. If we want to continue attracting people and business to our city we have to first make sure people feel safe here. My second issue ties directly into my first and that is to support local businesses. Small business is the lifeblood of our community and if elected I will do everything in my power to help them keep their doors open especially after how hard Covid was on many of them. Last but not least the third major issue I would like to fix if elected is making our local government more transparent. In my time running I have realized unless you know someone it’s pretty hard to find exactly what’s being proposed or even voted on in our city. I want people to be involved and care about what’s happening in their community but when you make it almost impossible to find, that’s not easy to do.

As Billings gets more and more people moving here the number one thing we need to make sure of is that our economy can support them. We have to make sure there are enough well-paying jobs so that all of them can support their families. I believe the main way we accomplish that is to cut down the regulations put on small businesses in our community so that they can expand and thrive so there are jobs for our new neighbors.

I want to start off by saying I am absolutely in support of a public safety mill levy and if one with responsible and prioritized spending came forward I would intend to vote yes. However, the levy on the ballot this year, I don’t think I can support. I have talked to multiple people about this issue and the general consensus is that there is a lot of wasteful spending in this levy and I personally don’t feel comfortable asking the people of Billings to put their hard-earned dollars towards things that aren’t needed or have already been accomplished.

I think it’s incredibly important for the council to encourage private investment in our city, especially downtown. I vow to do just that but again I’m going to tie this back to public safety. We have to clean up our downtown if we want businesses to move in and revitalize that area. Our downtown truly has so much potential and I want to do everything I can to help unleash it.

I truly don’t think Montana is ready for a local option tax yet. There is a pretty simple answer on how to not further burden property owners with more taxes and that is to cut wasteful spending. We too often have a conversation about more spending but rarely talk about if there is something we could get rid of in the budget, which there always is, and move that money to more important issues like the infrastructure mentioned in the question.

Moving forward with both park maintenance and the building of more parks I would like to see more private sector involvement. The government often leaves these parks in shambles and it usually takes volunteer groups like Billings Bright and Beautiful to bring them back to their original glory. I think the city should encourage programs like that one and have businesses sponsor new parks or clean-up groups as a way to foster community engagement and save the taxpayers a little bit of money on the parks department.

Sadly this housing crisis was a nationwide problem and Billings was no exception. My answer to this question is similar to some of my other answers. Get the government out of the way and let private enterprises do what they are best at. The city has enacted endless regulations that discourage our local builders and contractors, so much so that many of them build in the county rather than the city to avoid the loss.