<body><div><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=4aSOcp_1GoLJVO300" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=4aSOcp_1GoLJVO300" width="1174" height="660" >When will the first mayor under the new term structure take office?What role does the new compensation board play in city governance?BOZEMAN, Mont. — Bozeman voters approved changes to the city charter that will expand the City Commission, introduce geographic wards and change how the city’s mayor serves in office.The amended charter updates the governing framework voters approved in 2006 and will be phased in over the next several years.Carson Taylor, chairman of the Bozeman Government Study Commission, said some of the changes are relatively straightforward, while others will require additional work before residents see them take effect.One change alters the way Bozeman’s mayor serves.Under the existing system, a person elected mayor first spends two years as deputy mayor before serving the following two years as mayor. The amended charter changes that structure so the person elected mayor serves as mayor for the full four-year term.Taylor said the current system can create confusion for voters and make it harder for a mayor to maintain continuity in the position.“They elect a mayor, there’s been a campaign, the mayor has made promises or said, ‘This is what I believe,’ and then you’re not the mayor for two years,” Taylor said.The amended charter also expands the City Commission from four commissioners and a mayor to six commissioners and a mayor.Taylor said Bozeman’s continued growth was one reason the Study Commission decided to let voters determine whether to expand the governing body.“There’s a lot of work involved in being a city commissioner. If you could spread that out a little bit with six as opposed to four, and we left that up to the voters and they approved that overwhelmingly as well,” Taylor said.Another major change creates geographic wards within Bozeman.Commissioners will be required to live within the ward they represent rather than being able to live anywhere within city limits.Taylor said the idea grew in part from periods when several commissioners lived close to one another, creating concern that newer parts of a growing city could lack a commissioner who lived nearby and understood neighborhood-specific issues.“It’s harder to understand what the issues are and what the problems are in a given area, a given neighborhood in town, if you have nobody on the commission that lives in it,” Taylor said.The city will still need to draw six ward boundaries.Taylor said a neutral group will be appointed to recommend those boundaries. He said the wards should be compact, roughly equal in population and drawn in a way that avoids unnecessarily dividing established neighborhoods and neighborhood associations.The boundaries could later need to be adjusted as the city grows or annexes additional land.One question involving the ward system remained extremely close Thursday.Voters were separately asked whether commissioners who live within wards should be elected by voters citywide or only by voters living within their respective wards. Unofficial results showed the ward-only option holding a narrow lead, but the outcome had not been finalized.Taylor said the two systems offer residents different kinds of representation.Under an at-large system, all Bozeman voters would vote for the ward-based commission seats up for election. Under a ward-only system, residents would vote only for the commissioner representing their ward.“If you’re thinking as a voter, ‘I want to fashion the culture, the politics, whatever you want to call it, of the whole commission,’ you want to have that at-large vote,” Taylor said. “If you, ‘I want to have one commissioner that’s sort of my person that I know because they live nearby me,’ then you want the other option.”Taylor also acknowledged that requiring commissioners to remain residents of their wards could create complications, particularly for renters.Under the ward system, commissioners would be required to maintain their principal residence within the ward they represent. Taylor said that could create a problem if a commissioner renting a home had to move outside the ward during a four-year term.“That was one of the downsides to doing a ward system,” Taylor said.The amended charter also creates a compensation board that will make recommendations on pay for commissioners and the mayor.Adding two commissioners will increase city expenses, Taylor said, although he said the change will not affect the current tax year because the expanded commission is not expected to take office until the new structure is implemented.“It will cost more to have more commissioners,” Taylor said. “That was one of the downsides to the idea.”He said spreading the workload among additional commissioners could also affect how compensation is eventually determined.Taylor said the cost of the additional positions would represent a small percentage of Bozeman’s overall city budget and would need to be addressed through future budgeting.The charter also makes changes intended to increase public involvement in city government.Taylor said the Study Commission heard from residents who felt they were not being heard by the City Commission. The amended charter includes expanded public-engagement provisions and calls for a full-time city staff member to serve as a liaison to neighborhood associations and the Inter-Neighborhood Council.Exactly when some of those provisions begin remains part of the transition process.Taylor said the Study Commission will meet again Nov. 18 to begin finalizing the charter language based on the choices voters made and developing the implementation timeline.Some changes could happen relatively quickly, while others will take longer because sitting elected officials will be allowed to complete the terms voters elected them to serve.The charter provides for the new commission election structure to take effect with the 2029 city election.The mayoral change will also be phased in rather than cutting short the existing succession process. Under the charter schedule, the first mayor elected directly to a full four-year term will be chosen in the 2029 election and take office at the first City Commission meeting in January 2030.Bozeman will remain under its commission-manager form of government, meaning elected commissioners will continue setting policy while the city manager oversees day-to-day administration.For Taylor, the broader goal is to create a system that better reflects a growing city while giving residents more opportunities to participate before major decisions are already far along.“One of our themes was, let’s try and minimize the surprises by making people more aware of what the situation is, when they can have input into it as opposed to when it’s too late for the input,” Taylor said.</div></body>

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BOZEMAN, Mont. — Bozeman voters approved changes to the city charter that will expand the City Commission, introduce geographic wards and change how the city’s mayor serves in office. The amended charter updates the governing framework voters approved in 2006 and will be phased in over the next...

Bozeman voters approve changes that reshape city government

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BOZEMAN, Mont. — Bozeman voters approved changes to the city charter that will expand the City Commission, introduce geographic wards and change how the ci

Bozeman voters approve changes that reshape city government

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