Seeking to improve quality of life for people under 20 years old, the City of Boise produced a “roadmap” that makes a number of suggestions to improve the city’s offerings, but doesn’t lay out any concrete plans.

The Youth Roadmap – 31 pages of process and summary – took a year to complete and cost $103,150, paid to local research company Rathbone Falvey.

Two suggestions in the roadmap are directed at the Boise School District — to integrate stress-reduction strategies and to expand upon its “community schools” model.

To make transit more accessible, the city announced it will offer free bus rides for youths aged 18 and younger from May until August in 2026. A Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health grant will fund the program.

During the past summer, the city surveyed 269 youth and 717 parents, yielding respondents from all Boise ZIP codes. It held committees and discussions with community stakeholders to generate the report presented on Tuesday night in the Boise City Council Chambers.

It found three “interconnected problem areas:” poor youth mental health, high cost barriers for activities and opportunities and transportation infrastructure that teens feel is inadequate.

“Only about a third of Boise youth feel mentally healthy each day, with academic pressure, mental health provider shortages, and cost barriers compounding mental health challenges,” says the report.

It recommends improving mental health resources for students, providing more non-competitive sports, arts and music programming and improving public transit.

Besides making recommendations, the report also pointed out things the city feels are already working effectively.

Boise city councilman Jimmy Hallyburton, a driving force behind producing the youth roadmap, spoke about a thanksgiving dinner he attended at the Whitney Elementary School Community Center in south Boise.

Hallyburton said it felt like “a place where you can be, nothing is expected of you. Come on in, we’re not going to check if you’re supposed to be here,” for young K-12 students. He said Boise could use more events like that, citing poor weather as one of the biggest limitations on locations for youth to spend time together outside of school.

When the weather turns, “a lot of those natural gathering spaces that we have in the outdoors kind of disappear,” said Hallyburton.