'Not like the past': Local government review vote comes at a time of change for Bozeman | City

“We have enough controversial events happening in the city, and I feel like it's happening in a way that's different than it has in the past,” said former Mayor Carson Taylor, who served on the committee in the 2010s and supports a charter overhaul.

In the fall of 2023, a draft new Unified Development Code encouraging increased density caused uproar among many residents in the city’s downtown district, increasing pressure on the city government.

The committee suspended consideration of the UDC proposal within weeks of the backlash, but the tensions it caused continued through the November general election.

Then in late January, a video was leaked online of former Mayor Jeff Mihelich in a private video conference complaining about Mayor Terry Cunningham, commenting on Vice Mayor Joey Morrison's campaign promises and calling concerns about the city's bear awareness program “small town crap we'll never get over.”

Outrage erupted, with dozens of people making public comments and attending city commission meetings to demand his resignation.

Mihelich resigned a few weeks after the video was made public after negotiating a roughly $200,000 severance package, but the incident has put a spotlight on Bozeman's city government system, with many expressing concerns about the mayor's position in particular.

“I think we all realized this spring how painful it is for the citizens of Bozeman to feel truly disrespected by their mayor, and the only way they could hold him accountable was to offer him a $200,000 severance package,” said Emily LaShelle, an activist with Repair Bozeman, which advocates for an overhaul of the city charter.

The existence of a mayor-form of government, whether five commissioners are enough to govern a growing city of more than 50,000 people and whether those positions should be elected through districts are top of mind for advocates of an overhaul of local government like LaShelle.

Brian Close, a Bozeman attorney and state legislative candidate, was one of five people elected to the Municipal Review Board in 2004.

At the time, Bozeman operated under a set of ordinances and powers given to local governments by the state Legislature.

An earlier effort to pass a charter failed dramatically in 1996, when widespread support for a proposed charter collapsed under opposition from city officials just weeks before the election, according to Chronicle archives.

Close said that when the question of whether to create a search committee passed by just two votes in 2004, his main goal was to stabilize city operations.

They kept Bozeman's government structure largely intact: five commissioners and a mayor.

One of the big changes from the 2006 charter was the requirement that the mayor be directly elected, rather than having the most votes in the commission election be the mayor. The charter also established a unique leadership system for Bozeman, where the successful candidate in the mayoral election will first serve two years as deputy mayor before beginning a two-year term as mayor.

It also requires voters to ask in 2010 whether to expand the commission's positions from five to seven, which Close said would happen once the city's population reaches 40,000.

The 2010 vote was rejected.

“That was a mistake,” Close said.

Many pushing for a charter overhaul point to Bozeman's growing population.

Bozeman's population was about 35,000 when voters approved the current charter in 2006. Today, the city's population is more than 53,000.

“Representation is a big issue and whether five commissioners are enough to serve a community of 50,000 people,” Commissioner Jennifer Magic said.

For LaShelle, the issue is the size of the commission and who it represents, noting that city commission members have historically tended to come from the southern part of the city, near the Montana State University campus and from older, more affluent parts of the city.

Rachelle has spent a lot of time in recent years canvassing door-to-door around the city for the tenants' association and Morrison's campaign, and what struck her was how people who live in the same area tended to say they knew or knew current and former commissioners in their neighborhoods or social circles.

LaShelle said she's heard even more stories west of Bozeman from people who don't even know the commissioner's name.

“They feel deeply that there's a lack of communication,” Rachelle said.

The creation of wards is a concern for LaShelle and other members of the Bozeman delegation, with former mayor Taylor saying he doesn't think the neighborhood council system goes far enough to ensure equal representation across the city.

The 2006 charter also established a neighborhood council system, which Close said was meant to be a democratic way for residents to communicate with city government and gave the mayor additional powers, such as control over committee agendas.

“The issues on the south side may be different than the north side or the west side, so let's revisit that,” Taylor said.

Magic, himself a South Side commissioner, said the idea is worth exploring.

“As a voter, I want to hear more from people who live on the west side and the north side. I want to see more geographic representation of our residents,” Magic said. He noted he had questions about the idea, including what would happen if no one ran in a particular district and whether simply expanding the size of the commission would be enough to increase representation.

Close said he considered district voting and initially thought a combination of district voting and city-wide commissioners would be a good solution, but then changed his mind.

He believes the benefits of districting are tempered by what he sees as drawbacks, including potential unfair drawing of districts and problems drawing fair districts in rapidly growing cities.

“If we created districts tomorrow, within three years they would be democratically obsolete,” Close said. “One person, one vote will be gone and new parts of town will be under-represented.”

LaShelle said her group is also interested in looking into the “reallocation of power” between the mayor and the city's election board.

Dan Clark, director of the Montana State University Center for Local Government, said Bozeman's mayor system is fairly typical and is used by 14 other cities in the state. He likened it to how a school board operates: Voters elect members, who then hire a superintendent who runs the day-to-day operations of the district.

Clark said the reason the city manager, rather than the mayor, runs the day-to-day operations is because the more complex the work, the greater the risk of mismanagement.

“The city of Bozeman has a budget of roughly $250 million, and do we want to elect someone from the community … or do we want to hire someone who has the background, education, certifications and career experience to fill that position?,” Clark said. “A city is a large, complex organization, and it takes a lot of skill to run it.”

Close strongly opposed the idea, saying he feared putting an elected mayor in charge would lead to the “politicisation” of policy implementation, rather than keeping politics in the policy-making process and then leaving it to bureaucrats to implement.

Other ideas include whether city commissioners and mayor should be full-time positions with full-time salaries and whether there should be some tweaks to the charter to make communication between city clerks and commissioners more efficient.

Close said he knows the charter vote is likely to pass.

“The system is certainly under stress and we need some kind of process to assess where we are, and this is an opportunity to do that,” Close said. “What bothers me is that everyone thinks they already have the answers.”

Close said he thinks many of the concerns people have are related to changes in the way the Legislature handles local government, the economic hardships surrounding housing Bozeman is facing and other factors.

“The problems we have are political, not substantive,” Close said. “Not because of the charter, but because we're suffering through this awful situation… There's no question that the system is under stress.”

LaShelle said he was only speculating about possible charter changes at this point.

Any changes are unlikely to come soon: If the June 4 vote goes through, candidates will be able to run for the five seats on the expeditionary committee for the November election.

A commission would then be formed and given two years to review the charter, study other forms of government and propose recommended changes to the charter and city operations, with a final proposal to be put on the ballot in 2026. If it gets to that point, the changes likely wouldn't take effect until 2028.

Vice Mayor Joey Morrison, who supports a review of the city charter, said he wants the committee to analytically look at ideas people have on wards, expanding the commission and changing the mayor's position.

“I think the answers to those questions are a little more murky than what a lot of people in the community want to hear right now,” Morrison said. “At least what I'm hearing is that everybody wants to say, 'Get rid of the mayor, get a strong mayor,' or 'Get rid of citywide, get districts.' Some of those things have great merit, but I think it gets more complicated than that.”

LaShelle said Bozeman Representative and the tenants union plan to cooperate fully with the process.

“(The current charter) was written in 2004 to address the issues that Bozeman and the city had. Bozeman has changed a lot since then and the needs are much different now,” LaShelle said. “It's time for people to get involved, to step up and not just sit back and watch, but to get angry that the city isn't working.”