City Council 2025: Mark Nicholson

My wife, Laura Nicholson who is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician, and I have made Billings our family’s home for the last 21 years. Billings has been a good home for us, our bio kids, Margie and Kaj, and for our developmentally and physically disabled foster daughter, Justy, who has aged out of the foster care system and continues to live with us.

I am running for Billings City Council because I want to work on some of the challenges Billings is facing and make Billings an even better home for all of us.

I am a retired psychiatrist. During my first 11 years in Billings I worked for the Mental Health Center and much of my work was with the Program for Assertive Community Treatment (PACT). We treated some of the most severely and chronically mentally ill individuals in Billings and helped them keep their homes, stay out of the hospital and stay off the streets.

I submit that the city council would benefit from a member who knows something about mental illness, how it contributes to homelessness and what we can do about it.

Toward the end of my career I had my own solo private psychiatric practice, which means I had my own small business. My competitors included Billings Clinic and St Vincents Hospital. The practice was financially successful despite 90 percent of my outpatient practice having Medicaid-Medicare coverage. I had one full-time employee and two part-time, intermittent employees. I like signing the back of a paycheck but I like signing the front of a paycheck better.

Since nearly 19 percent of the work force in Billings is engaged in healthcare, the city council would benefit from a member who has been involved with not only the practice of medicine but also the business of medicine.

I intend to work in good faith with all stakeholders to solve problems. I am not interested in advancing partisan or ideological agendas. I hope to use the method that served me so well professionally: Listen to understand; ask questions to clarify; look for objective data; and formulate an accurate understanding of the problem. Then, seek evidence-based solutions. To this I will add that everyone needs to negotiate in good faith.

If we work hard enough, we will find ways to get along.

Housing

Montana has the dubious distinction of having the least affordable housing in the nation and housing costs in Billings have risen 40 percent over the last five years. The lack of affordable housing is an impediment to economic expansion. It is straining household budgets and it is at the root of the homelessness problem.

I am committed to accelerating development of more housing, especially affordable housing.

Crime Prevention

While it is true that crime has decreased in Billings over recent years, we still have a long way to go. The rates of rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft and motor vehicle theft are substantially higher than the national average. While the 2024 Center for Public Safety Management report did point out possibilities for more efficient use of our police force, implementing those efficiencies is unlikely to solve the problem.

Lack of space in our detention center is part of the problem and there are two things on the horizon that may improve that problem. Yellowstone County is expected to have more two more district judges. That will move more cases through the judicial system but we will be dependent on the state transferring convicted prisoners to state facilities to free up space in our detention center.

The Department of Public Health and Human Services is planning to build a state mental hospital in Yellowstone County. That facility would presumably accept individuals requiring mental fitness evaluations from our detention center and thus free up space. We must be very clear eyed, however, about how such a hospital would potentially increase the population of mentally ill individuals in Billings and what we will need to deal with that issue.

The criminal justice system-arresting, detaining prosecuting and correcting individuals who commit crimes—is all well and good but better yet is preventing crime before it happens. Most other communities have much less crime than we do. I don’t think we really understand all the things that make it different here. We need to see what other communities are doing to prevent crime before it happens and try and implement those things here in Billings.

Transportation Policy

Billings residents are more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident than they are to be murdered by someone they don’t know. Yet, the current Billings city council seems to insist on a transportation system that requires that residents depend on motor vehicles. This dependence on cars is also expensive. When a family can get by with fewer vehicles, they usually put that extra money into housing and heaven knows they need it. Furthermore, more than 80 percent of the money that a family spends to own and drive a motor vehicle leaves the community. And then there is the problem of parking, which can be summed up with two truths. Everybody wants free parking and there is no such thing as free parking; but I am not getting into that here.

Billings needs safe streets that work for everyone, whether they are driving a vehicle, peddling a bike, riding the bus, rolling a wheelchair, pushing a child’s stroller or walking to the grocery store. This is why I will work to make The 2024 Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan official city transportation policy and I will champion an “all of the above” transportation policy.

Billings has far more than its fair share of violent crime and about half of that is domestic violence. So far, the best way we know to reduce domestic violence is to provide victims and potential victims the resources they need to get away from dangerous situations. To that end, I would like to see the City of Billings to continue to support the Northern Lights Family Justice Center and the excellent work they are doing.

Billings is clearly an outlier when it comes to crime and we need to understand why that is. We also need to look at what other communities are doing to prevent crime and see whether we can do those things in Billings.

I like almost all of the strategies so it is hard to pick just two.

I like “(m) allow multi-unit dwellings or mixed-use development as a permitted use on all lots where office, retail, or commercial are primary permitted uses.” I would especially like to see mixed use development downtown because mixing commercial and residential use is associated with lower crime rates than are commercial-only zoned areas. Also, multi-unit residential development downtown would avoid the need to extend and maintain roadways, utility lines and sewer and storm sewer lines.

I also like “(f) allow for single-room occupancy developments.” A large number of employed individuals who are at risk of losing becoming unhoused would do well in single-room occupancy developments. Single-room occupancy developments could also be useful as supportive housing for moving troubled homeless people into stable housing. These developments would probably look like motels and could work like the boarding houses of yore.

I am aware of the problems this kind of zoning might face. Such developments would probably require special consideration with regard to public safety. The placement of such zoning would also need to be sensitive to the concerns of surrounding neighborhoods. Like the Gilda Radner’s Saturday Night Live character, Roseanne Roseannadanna, says, “It’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

President Jimmy Carter applied zero-based budgeting to the federal government and we all know how his presidency turned out. Because Billings is facing significant budgetary limitations, trying zero-based budgeting is probably a good idea. Frequent repetition of zero-based budgeting, however, is likely to produce diminishing returns. We should also take care that this process does not distract from providing the services our city government is meant to provide.

Tax increment financing is a way to use tax revenue to help pay for the development of woebegone real estate that produces a mediocre level of tax revenue into more profitable real estate that produces higher tax revenue. The development project also has to include added benefits to the community at large.

I would like to see disused properties downtown developed into multi-story mixed commercial and residential buildings.

Ideally, these properties would be managed in a way that makes them self- sufficient. Failing that, we could organize a group of stakeholders and task them with finding the necessary funding to operate and maintain these properties.

The City of Billings literally surrounds Billings Logan International Airport (BIL). This affords quick and easy access to the air travel. It also means that airport activities have greater potential to adversely affect the businesses and citizens of Billings. Keeping the administration of the airport under the elected Billings City Council would keep the airport more closely responsive to the overall interests of Billings. I could also support an airport authority with a board that included elected members of the city council.

I like that the Billings lodging industry is stepping up to impose fees on themselves and to work cooperatively to promote Billings. I like that they are not expecting someone else to do it for them. I like that the TBID does what it is supposed to do. I like that it has proper oversight. What’s not to like? I support it.