Well, tomorrow morning when you Saturday morning.

I figured it had to have a post outside of the city.

I can't get together.

So I don't know what was to be discussed.

But if I get them to be asked, well, they end up with the same goals on it.

If you're able, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Diving into the agenda.

Item B changes to the agenda.

Are there any changes to the agenda?

I do think Dan Clark is here.

So I would like to move his presentation up.

To occur right after item EM and before the unfinished business.

And then we'll do that, then we'll follow with the unfinished business and the new business.

Okay.

If there's no objection, that's what we'll do.

And any other changes.

This means for people that want to give public comment, there will be a public comment time period before Mr.

Clark gives his presentation, and there will be one afterwards.

So you can you can pick your time or if you have time constraints, you can uh give your public comment uh relatively soon.

Okay.

In fact, right now.

Um next thing on the agenda is public comment on anything within the jurisdiction of the study commission.

We ask that you keep your um comments to a period of three minutes or less.

Please start with your name and your address.

Um there will be another two other time periods uh for public comment.

One will occur um before the unfinished business section when we will be talking about um kind of windowing down the issues uh that will go into our ultimate report, and then at the very end of the meeting, there will be time for public comment as well.

Um we ask you not repeat yourself though.

Um so if you want to talk about something in the unfinished business section now, you can do so, but you can't talk about it later as well.

Um if there is anyone who would like to give public comment at this time, please step forward.

Thank you very much.

Good evening.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Um, for the record, my name is James Linsky, and uh I live on North Tracy Avenue and have for 50 years.

Um thank you very much for your work on this really important study commission.

I'm really concerned that there's so little attention to what you're doing in your work.

I haven't been here because I've I've been watching, I've been doing other things, but um I'm really concerned about I'm very happy with some of the things you're recommending, but I'm very concerned about a couple of them, and one of them is the issue of wards.

Um and um I I know that Mary Bateson has sent you a number of missives about her very specific, well-documented concerns about wards and and disagree with them, and she's my next door neighbor.

And uh I am in gre agreement with her totally.

I'm not gonna repeat what she said.

She couldn't come tonight.

Um, but you all know what she said.

I I want you to know I totally agree with Mary Bateson.

So I want to for the sake of brevity, I want to quickly share my additional reasons to oppose splitting Bozeman electorate into the wards based on my 14 years experience as an elected county commissioner.

During that time, I served on a three-person commission, sometimes in the majority, sometimes in the minority.

Counties in Montana are divided into three county commission districts, and candidates are required to live in their district to be elected.

However, once they are selected to vote uh to run for county commissioner, every county uh elector, the countywide can vote for them.

So they can't just be responsive to the one district court that they represent.

They have to be responsive to the entire community.

I also served with two commissioners who were both rural residents with agricultural constituents.

If they only needed to represent those issues and priorities, they would not have needed to represent the electors who lived in Bozeman, Belgrade, Manhattan, Three Forks, Big Sky, and West Yellowstone.

And I, who lived within walking distance to the courthouse, needed to learn about the agricultural needs in the county, and I had to listen to them and learn from them and vote for their interest as well as for urban interest.

The point I'm trying to make is as long as a commissioner city or county has to be responsive to all electors.

I think that if you're only if you're we're divided into wards, that you're only going to be worried about the electors in your ward.

And the fact is that what someone on the north side is a commissioner, they have to consider the goodwill of the entire city.

And I think that that's a very important thing to continue.

So I and I if I have a candidate that lives on the South Side, I want to like them.

I want to be able to vote for them.

And so I'm very concerned about this.

I hope you really take that into consideration.

And thank you.

Thank you so much for your service.

And I favor increasing the stipend for commissioners in respect for their hard work.

It's a very important position, and I think they should be properly compensated.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other public comment.

Good evening.

My name is Abby Jones.

I'm a resident here in Bozeman, and I'm here tonight to give public comment on behalf of the Gallatin Valley Sentinel.

I'm here to address the items you plan to discuss tonight, and specifically regarding uh filing vacancy, filling vacancies and commissioner compensation.

Uh, first regarding vacancies, filling a vacancy by appointment, even with a 60-day extension.

It ignores the clear reality of the incumbent advantage over the last decade.

Four out of the five appointees to this dis to this city decided to run for a seat at the next election and went on to win as incumbents, not necessarily because of overwhelming public support, but because of the power of the seat and name recognition on the ballot.

Some of you mentioned in the last meeting that extending the timeline for the appointment process to 60 days would allow more time for public input.

But look no further than the city commission's decision on items such as the gun three urban camping and many other decisions in recent years to see how public input and preference is often ignored, no matter how many comments are received or how long the public engagement process may be.

The argument that special elections are too expensive at 105,000 does not hold up for a city with a 500 million biannual budget.

This is two hundredths of one percent of the spending.

The right to vote for our representatives is worth the investment.

Furthermore, moving toward a ward-based representation would slash these costs significantly.

We agree that with the idea proposed by Carson at the last meeting.

If more than 12 months remain in a term, return that choice to the voters through a special election.

Second, we urge you to reject the transition of two full-time salary positions for commissioners and the mayor.

The argument that low pay excludes the non-wealthy is a fallacy.

Bozeman's current stipend is already the highest in Montana.

In fact, making these roles full-time is actually more exclusionary.

It forces regular working residents to abandon their established careers and professional trajectories to serve, effectively limiting the candidate pool to professional activists or those who simply want a career in politics.

We want a citizen government that focuses on the fundamentals of local government.

Public service should be a season of civic contribution, not necessarily a career path.

Finally, regarding structure, we support expanding the commission to a seven ward-based seats, as noted in recent studies on the municipal efficiency.

Larger populations require more granular representation to ensure neighborhood voices aren't drowned out by centralized at-large voting blocks.

One of the reasons Bozeman voters authorized this study is because they felt that their input was being ignored in favor of special interests.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good afternoon.

My name is James Diltz, and I'm a resident and property owner here in Bozeman at 2204 Buckrake Avenue.

So I make this comment as one of three people in attendance when Mr.

Taylor said that the low meeting engagement was a sign that the public was satisfied with our government.

I respectfully disagree with that statement.

I'm also making this comment as somebody who grew up here in Montana, lived on the East Coast for a few years, and then since moved back.

Since I've moved back, I've heard the name of this town called Bose Angeles more times than I've heard it called Bozeman.

That is obviously not meant as a compliment.

A lot of people are not happy with the way that things are going.

One other thing that I've seen that's concerning is that the citizens are starting to act like kind of the citizens do in New Jersey, where local politics isn't seen as a way to make your life better and improve your quality of life.

So in New Jersey, it's a politician is graded if he leaves office and quality of life is the same as when he entered.

So he or she is seen as a massive success.

And it's frankly very worrying that I'm starting to see that same attitude among my friends here.

But the good news is that this commission has the ability and the power to fix this.

Becoming a public servant should be seen as a civic duty, not a career, and especially not as a way to force agendas that don't represent the at-large community.

To this end, I'd make the specific recommendations that vacancies should not be filled by appointment, but rather by election.

The mayor and the other commissioners should not be full-time positions.

Finally, pay should not be increased, but rather decreased to copy the situation and better on communities.

Frankly, it seems like my hometown of Billings is doing a much better job managing its growth than Bozeman.

And so I think we should look to what they and other communities are doing.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Is there any other public comment?

Anybody in the hall.

Everybody always looks.

There's never anybody in the hall when there's so few people in the crowd, but I have to ask.

Anybody online?

Caleb.

There's not.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Next item on the agenda is the consent agenda.

Does anyone wish to pull any items on the consent agenda?

Seeing none.

Is there any public comment on the items on the consent agenda?

Seeing none.

Is there a motion?

I move.

We approve the consent agenda.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

The idea of the consent agenda is it's unlikely to be controversial.

Therefore, we don't discuss it unless someone wants to pull it on it, and we just vote.

So let's vote.

All those in favor of the items on the consent agenda.

So um so indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Motion carries unanimously.

Next item up is the correspondence or study commission update.

Anything to report.

I will say that I've been in contact with um the Gallon Valley Sentinel, and they've come up with a couple dates for Deanna and myself, and we haven't finalized them yet.

But they wanted an interview.

Um that's all I've got.

Anyone else?

Um, I just wanted to remind us all that Carson and I agreed to speak to the uh Valley Unit Neighborhood Association.

And I'm pretty sure it's the 26th of February is our date.

Keep reminding me the minute you said that I panicked.

We're good.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, Deanna.

Oh, Deanna.

Uh, I would just like to um uh say that I think that you and I should do a another um op-ed uh for the March 25th meeting, outlining the topics that will be discussed and encouraging uh participation, such as our last one did.

I'm ready to do that, or two other people can, with whichever works.

I'm I'm happy to help with one at some point if maybe the two of you should do this one since I'm gonna be recovering from surgery.

That's right.

Yeah, okay.

Cool.

Uh anything else?

Jen.

I'm glad you brought that up because I was hoping we'd have a pretty regular monthly series of op-eds.

I'll be happy to do one after Barb.

But also Becky and I will be speaking to the League of Women Voters of uh Bozeman area, and that will be on March 23rd.

We'll be doing a presentation.

We're waiting to hear back from the Bozeman business and professional women, and um just trying to do as much outreach to diversify as many points of view and uh public comments, which we are so glad to have, and so glad to see all of you here.

Thank you.

Becky, do you have anything?

Yeah.

I've got two things, uh actually three things.

One is um I replied back to another gentleman who provided public comment to try to understand more about what he was saying, what he was thinking, and we were able to have a good conversation to help me understand uh where he was coming from, so that was good.

And then um Dave Wooten, who is uh an announcer for K Sky Country, Carson, you and I were on the radio before for him.

He asked us to come back again on Tuesday, February 17 at 720 in the morning.

Um I can uh I could I can do that uh and do it, you know, over the over the phone, which is fine.

Um and uh Carson, I don't know that that you'll be um able to, or if there's two other people who would rather, I just told him that after today I would let him know who is coming.

So are there any wishes um in that area?

I I can do that if um if that makes sense.

I didn't think so.

I I may.

I w I am able to.

Oh, you are able to.

I can do it.

C-A-N, yes.

No negative.

Okay, okay.

Is there someone else in the room who wants to do it uh live at the studio?

You know, you have to be there at 7 a.m.

So you gotta be an early riser, but to do it with Carson?

Oh well, I'd do that.

What is the date?

February February 17 at 720 in the morning up by four corners.

Well, I can I can do it.

If you're asking someone else to do it, I'd be happy to do that.

So Deanna and Carson will be there?

Yep.

Okay, I will let him know.

Um and then um Anna and Stan have um uh put in our uh packet a summary of the advertising and media that they've been doing.

I'd like them to kind of just very briefly walk through that just uh five minutes um to bring out any highlights because there's a lot in that document.

There's a lot that's happened in the last month.

So uh Anna and Stan, are you on?

Yep.

I am here.

Great.

Um Mike and you put up that document and then Anna, go ahead.

Sounds good.

Can everyone hear me all right?

Sure can.

Perfect.

Um, so yeah, included in your packet uh is a summary of not only the channels that we engaged in January, um, but also the performance, meaning the reach of each one of those.

You'll see that it was a mix of of digital media as well as print coverage in the Bozeman Chronicle and then a social media campaign.

The goal with all of these channels, from newspaper ads to the social media um paid campaign to the leveraging the city's newsletters and distribution lists, as well as issuing a press release at the beginning of the month.

The goal of all of this is to be as simple and plain language as possible and to drive attendance at the meetings and engagement with the agenda that the the um that the study commission is is tackling in each meeting.

That's truly the aim of it, right?

So the conversation can happen within that public forum and folks can be informed about what's what's being discussed and and have a forum to to have their voices be heard.

We're really heartened to see the performance on the social media campaign.

I think the conversion there, meaning not only the folks that saw it, but that clicked through to learn more is impressive.

You can see um those statistics as well as a breakdown of demographics there.

We're going to be adding a couple more channels probably this coming month.

And I think another notable thing to note is that it has been helpful over the course of the past several weeks to develop a good working relationship with city staff, and so much of what we're creating is is easily replicable and we're getting it stood up and getting it within the channels.

So hopefully there'll be some some sustainability and ease with all of this going forward.

Any questions that folks have Deanna?

Uh yeah, Anna, I have a a lot of questions.

Um first of all what measure are you using to say that there was great success in um driving attendance and engagement?

Um because I don't see any measures here of that.

And I was quite concerned that your um the clicks.

You had a reach of 26,000.

You actually had clicks of 808, which is barely three percent.

You actually had clicks of 8, which is barely 3%, and then there was an 83% drop in um uh the actual land in the the uh landing page um uh performance.

And uh I was hoping to hear maybe uh that you had assessed what caused that weakness right there.

Uh was it the landing page or was it a misalignment of the the message and the landing page because there really wasn't much um uh uh action from the clicks and the landings.

So um uh I I'm not sure that uh that I would measure this as um something that brought us the results that we were looking for.

In fact, the the uh end here, and I do appreciate the work that was done in this, and and you know, in terms of the cost, uh uh there was awareness, but I I don't think we got any engagement.

And the the third party media coverage, those are newsletters that occur every month.

It's not anything that that really um uh resulted from this uh campaign.

So could you answer some of the things?

Um Deanna Um I'd love to have uh Anna answer you, and I heard you say that you have a number of questions um about the type of work they're doing or how they're doing their work, and I just want to ask that perhaps um uh while the work is important, we have a lot of things to cover this evening, and um spending this time in this way.

This is just an informational uh piece in this at this point about all the ways that the the information is getting out to the public and being reached to the public.

Um and so I just I just like to ask that we just be aware of our time tonight.

Go ahead, Anna.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

Deanna, I think you're getting to the crux of it here, right?

And what is what is the goal of this campaign?

And there is awareness first, there is engagement second, and to your point of you're looking around a room that is not full of people who are clamoring to offer public comment or engage in the discourse.

Yeah, that's the ultimate conversion.

That's the thing that's that's missing.

So then it's a question of okay, do we need different things at the top of the funnel, so to speak?

Should we have different activities or or should these activities exist at all?

And I think that those are really important questions in terms of how you want to um invest time and resources.

So good questions.

Thanks for for bringing them up, but I think that that is probably a bigger point of reflection for the study commission broadly for you guys to decide how you want to um how you want to invest there.

So are you uh I just want to clarify, Anna, are you suggesting that the commission um uh reevaluate what it is they want you to do in these campaigns and and give you new direction?

Or are you willing can can you just come?

I mean, taken the weaknesses that are are in these results.

Um can you come forward with maybe some changes in the plan for the next go-around?

Uh and and I you know, I don't intend to take a lot of time here, but it is it's money we're spending, and um, you know, I I I think that if we do it again, we need to have uh uh uh maybe a different plan.

Well, I I wouldn't describe it as weaknesses at all.

And um Mike wants to say something, so go ahead, Mike.

So I think um one thing that'd be useful to know uh industry standards for social media engagement between one and three three percent engagement is considered actually really good engagement from a social media campaign.

Yeah, but losing 83% to the landing page is not uh a good things that contribute to that loss to the landing page.

One if if and some of these are just kind of like weird technical glitches, right?

If the page is pulled up but they're but it doesn't load correctly and you lose folks, or if they're in a place where um where they can't click through and engage with it, there's a number of things that contribute to it, which is actually why they have both of those metrics to see who took the first step of clicking through versus who ended up on the landing page as well.

Yeah, so my I my question, Anna, is simply um are you going to take a look at that and make corrections for the next go-around?

Can we look forward to to some uh changes?

That's all.

I think sorry, I'm sorry, go for a bit.

I'm gonna jump in here a little bit.

Uh so the the landing page and where these are coming back to or the redesign of our website that we've been working through right now.

So we identified a couple of technical issues that were happening spectrum related that have plagued us in the last month around here as well as just the changing format in our landing page has uh has likely led to some of that uh disengagement as you're looking at it so the um the updates on my end weren't as expedient as we had hoped and and so I think some of that loss was coming from the web page updates that are now about 90% done.

Well if we spend the money again I hope that those are done and that we have a little better an approach that's going to give us more uh um uh actionable uh results yeah and uh I I think it's a a great point Deanna I think that again the broader point is even with all of these channels and all of this awareness right the the chronicle and their their digital version I think has a uh active readership of 35000 users right it's it's significant so it's significant awareness and then that translation we see that folks are engaging with it as Mike's doing pretty well for a social media campaign from a reach perspective we have a lot of eyeballs on it but it's not translating into those folks in the room and so then it becomes a question of how do you want to leverage working ventures and the plan that was agreed to at the beginning of this year is one where it would be as broad of an awareness campaign as as possible um that would cool really articulate to folks how they could get engaged in this process.

I guess I would just point one more thing out Anna and that is that as far as the uh the reach uh this was definitely um more focused uh with the younger uh um demographic out there we had very little engagement with uh 55 65 uh and over uh most of these who are young people uh 35 uh 18 to 34 so those are just those are just things that I would like to point out that I feel we could do better with and and um that's all well perhaps I should start saying again that the fact that no one's commenting suggests that everybody's happy with it and maybe we'll get a little more response that way too Jennifer I just want to first of all thank you for all of this work and I know it really came in throughout January that we didn't have a full month there was a lot of issues to just get through systems payments orders uh trying out some new media for this and I'm looking forward to February and also I think at this point I'm really pleased given the number of younger people who did not participate in the previous activities that we were hoping for with the surveys and other ways to hear from them so I'm I'm thinking because this is one component of a multifaceted communications and media campaign as you're as you're moving out for further from the digital sources into some of the print sources both student and Bozeman and all that we will reach our biggest audience which has been older people who are mostly retired and we're happy to see them because we're starting earlier than a lot of people can participate when they could show up starting at six o'clock so I I feel like we'll have a better sense with February I think do what you're doing do some more of it make sure I know you are the experts here but as it uh looks at intersectional uh perspectives of where we can reach our community um I'm I'm just thrilled that I'm starting to see this in a lot of different groups from B WAGs to um again the League of Women Voters other people that are hopefully going to bring their perspectives as well to our meetings thank you thank you any other question uh Mike not so much a question but uh related to the uh web updates we're hoping to have the vast majority of those completed by uh tomorrow end of tomorrow um so I think looking at our to Deanna's point I think looking at our um statistics on this campaign when we come back in February uh will be uh a little different uh insights and then additionally we have uh the data from our web team for the views on our website as well as our our meeting streaming and I can get both of those out and distributed to the group as well thank you anything else Becky Anna are you is that it or is there more I just want to thank um Anna and Stan for all their hard work um and also um in in our packet we saw the um uh executive summary from the commissioner meeting and from the employee survey and then also the um advisory uh board and commissioner information is coming forth and so uh we've moved from not a lot of at uh advertising

Becky, Anna, are you is that it or is there more?

I just want to thank um Anna and Stan for all their hard work.

Um and also um in our packet, we saw the um uh executive summary from the commissioner meeting and from the employee survey, and then also the um advisory board and commissioner information is coming forth, and so uh we've moved from not a lot of at uh advertising and and outward messaging to a whole bunch, and that progress is huge, especially like Jan said, we didn't even approve anything until the 15th of January.

So having this all uh brought forward has been exceptional.

So thank you so much.

And I'm done with uh with that with this uh item.

Okay, I I think I want to say um we can only do the best we can do, we can encourage people to engage in multiple different ways, and we have we're continuing to do that, and I think um that's the best we can do.

Becky, do you have anything more under correspondence or study commission update?

Um, I do not.

Thank you.

Anybody okay?

Then let's move uh to item G on the agenda, Mr.

Clark.

Thank you, Chair Taylor.

Appreciate the invitation to be with you again this uh this afternoon.

Um I think today's topic that you've asked me to prepare uh to discuss with you is the the range of options with the uh the executive branch and how that relates to the commission, whether it's manager or uh an elected mayor, appointed manager, and then the range of options within those uh those two structures of government government.

Is that what I'm to understand?

Okay, um, so let's start.

Let me let me hand this out.

I made this handout that might help provide some common reference, and I'm I'm gonna struggle through today because I consciously decided to leave my flip charts in the car.

So I won't be able to get up and draw like I normally do.

So bear with me if I just get really anxious because I want to draw something on a flip chart.

Um so this handout, what I attempted to do, it's it's titled various models of executive power in municipal governments.

Um if we start with the commission executive form of government, and this is where we have an elected commission that serves as a legislative branch, and the executive branch is an elected member of the community at large, and they possess the executive powers.

So all the powers are vested with that uh of the executive branch are vested with that individual.

And uh within that structure, the the legislature has it identified in Montana within the executive branch, two options or alternatives that can be selected.

One being what we've talked about before, the strong mayor, and then what's also called the weak mayor, or what we like to term in this room is the strong council, right?

Because the weak mayor does not have great uh great vibes with it.

So this the strong council, strong mayor alternatives, and what that is is the level to differentiate those, it's the level of consent that the executive branch needs to seek from the commission in order to perform its its duties.

For example, if you if you turn to page three of that handout, this is what the state statute has identified in the law.

If you wanted to sell if a if a local government wanted to be a strong mayor form of government, they can adopt this uh these two statutes uh and still maintain the general governing powers structure.

Does that make sense?

And so if you look at what the strong mayor form of municipal government looks like, uh if you look down that A through E, they can appoint and remove without the consent of the council all non-elective officers of the town or the city.

So it puts them in a pretty powerful position because they're in charge of appointing all those uh uh non-elected officers, uh think of department heads, if you will, without any consent.

And typically what we have is the mayor or in the case of the governor will appoint the department heads with the consent of the legislature or in a city would be with the consent of the council.

So there's that that collaboration that exists within those two branches of government, the executive and legislature, legislative branches.

They work together and come to consensus around who we want to have running the departments.

In the strong mayor form, that's all that power to select those individuals is given to the to the mayor without any consent of the of the commission.

Letter B, it says exercise absolute control over all departments and divisions of the city or town created in the title, or that may be created by the council.

So they have all that control given to them to how they want to administer the affairs of those departments.

Appoint one or more administrative assistants to assist in the direction of the operation of the various departments and agencies.

So they can appoint someone to be their uh provide professional support for them, uh them as an elected official, they can appoint a professional to help them in the day-to-day operations.

We'll we'll come back to that in a minute.

Be the sole or solely responsible for the preparation of the annual budget in compliance with the procedure set forth in chapter 642.

So that means they they prepare the budget.

It is an executive function, they prepare the budget, and then they present it to the commission for their adoption.

Versus when you have the commission or the the strong council form is where they're uh collaborating on the creation of the budget, where it will say in the law that the mayor prepares with uh with in consultation with the commission and department heads.

So you can see there's this a gradient that you can select and with various different alternatives or options within your structure of government, how much or what areas would you like to provide stronger authority to the executive or would you like to have more uh collaboration between the executive and legislative branches?

Uh we'll go on.

It says appoint a budget and finance director whose functions include the preparation of the annual municipal budget under the direction of the mayor.

Um that's that is if if it and I'll just say this there is not a municipality in the state that has adopted this structure.

So far, it's in theory only.

It's it's exists in the law, it is an option, but no municipalities adopted that.

Um if you turn the page, this is the commission executive structure of government.

Oh, look at you guys.

Um what I did is I I took parts out of this uh part two of the commission executive structure of government, what we call the recipe or the plan of government for the comics, and I I pulled out just those sections that deal with this collaborative nature, this uh strong mayor versus uh strong council.

And what I did is I put in green, I highlighted in green, uh, so on two or 73213 supervision of personnel.

Uh number one, it says appoint and remove all employees of the local government.

So that's I'm sorry, the executive may appoint and remove all employees of the local government.

That means that mayor can appoint and remove all the all the employees without any consent of the commission.

The commission's role is to create the HR budget policy, but it's up to the mayor to do the all the hiring, uh managing and terminating without any input from the council.

So if you look at a range of options, that's on a far range on far end of the spectrum where the mayor has a lot of control over that in that relationship.

The second option is where it says the executive or the mayor may appoint and remove with the consent of the majority of the commission all employees of the local government.

I would say that's at the opposite end of the spectrum where the mayor doesn't do any HR movement, like hiring or terminating any employee without the consent of the commission.

And then the third one, which is the statutory, what's the word I'm looking for?

Default, the statutory default.

That's why I have it in uh bold.

It says that the executive or the mayor may appoint with the consent of the majority of the commission all department heads, but may remove department heads and may appoint and remove all the other department employees.

So what so that shows where the mayor uh works with the commission to agree on who's gonna be in the department heads, but after that, following the HR policy adopted by the council, the mayor then uh manages and terminates all employees, including department heads.

So it's a nice mix between the two, a middle ground between complete control by the mayor, hiring, firing, versus the mayor can't do anything without consent of the council.

This is that happy medium.

And then the third one is said, or the fourth one is says the mayor may appoint and remove with the consent of the majority of the commission all department heads.

So they're introducing the idea that they can appoint and remove those department heads with the consent of the council, but after that, the mayor has responsibility of terminating and hiring all the other employees.

So I share this with you because you can see as you are considering options for the charter that uh it looks at what is that relationship between the executive and legislative branches.

There's a range of options.

Um now I want to so I guess I'll pause there.

Does is that making sense for the commission executive form of government?

We can talk more on this in a minute, but just from what we've covered so far.

Jen.

I'm interested in um how Montana cities fit that have these stronger commission, what I would call manager executive governments.

Who might have examples of these one, two, and three?

To my knowledge, no one that uh operates with general governing powers and uses the the default has anything other than number three.

Now, when we go to the charters, so those charters with the commission executive form, then we're looking at the consolidated city county governments and the uh and the city of Haver.

Uh the city of Haver has adopted the the third option where the they still have retained that we want to collaborate on the appointment of the department heads.

Um but giving the executive authority to the the mayor to determine the hiring and termination of all employees, including department heads.

So it's that is a more common uh, and even with the city of Missoula, still has that that so I often hear around the state that oh Missoula has a strong mayor form of government, and that it's not the case because there is a lot of consent.

They're still with that mayor, although they are elected with the city of Missoula, their charter still requires consent with the council.

Um I have another for for for many many things uh that it's still a collaborative relationship.

Um let me see.

Is that answering your question?

Uh I think yeah, that gets to it, but we don't have this consent of department heads being hired here at all, right?

Right.

So that's gonna be on the manager.

So we'll get to that section of the the equation here in a minute, talking about the manager, commission manager form.

Right now, we're just looking at uh the commission executive, the mayor council form, what are the options in that strong mayor, weak mayor, or strong mayor, strong council uh relationship, and then we're gonna jump over in a second and talk about the manager and then a hybrid version of that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So Dan, um in other public agencies that I've been on boards of non-union employees and union employees have their own separate system underneath this, meaning someone decides to terminate them, but then there's a whole grievance system that collected bargaining.

Determines whether it's four clause or not, or whatever the contract language is.

Yeah.

But for non-union employees that get terminated, do any cities have an appeal process?

For instance, I remember a hearing when I was on the school board, a uh upper level um management person on the school board got terminated.

That person was able to appeal to the school board, and we had a hearing to determine whether that person should be retained or not.

Does that anywhere in the system?

Yeah, great question.

And so, yeah, that's that's usually spelled out in the HR policy that's adopted by the legislative branch.

So when the commission adopts their policy, it usually within that HR policy outlines what is the grievance process.

For example, I I'm an employee and and we have an elected mayor who is ultimately the the chief executive who is supposed to be ensuring that that uh we're all following the policies.

I as an employee am disciplined and terminated, and I feel that the the policy was improperly applied to me and my circumstance.

So then I can appeal that.

Well, the the the some of the the challenge with that is if I'm appealing it, who do I appeal it to?

Back to the chief executive, who is the one that levied the discipline, right?

So that doesn't make sense.

I'm going back to the person who was the one that so I want to have an independent body, and so it is it in some of those HR policies, they may pull in the commission or the council to be that independent uh arbiter of the application of the policy given the situation.

So it becomes a quasi-judicial role of the commission where they're saying, what is the policy?

What is the infraction that was the person was accused of?

Was this policy appropriately applied given the circumstance?

And then we have due process, and everybody argues out that well, this is what happened, and the mayor can say, Well, this is what I saw happen, and and then the council sits in judgment, makes that determination.

So there are some policies that are adopted that outline that process, but that is typically not something that's incorporated within a charter.

It's something that's that is the again as we've talked before, the charters are usually that higher altitude.

What are the powers and responsibilities, and then the application of those powers and the the exercise the authority of those powers is usually spelled out in the ordinances and policies adopted by the governing body moving forward?

Great.

Thanks.

Thanks.

So Dan and Mayor in a strong mayor uh situation, um in your experience or what you've seen, does it incentivize the staff to please the mayor rather than do what's best for the city?

That's a good question.

I um so if you if you were to have the the structure or the the alternative option where you need to get the consent of the commission for termination, that can create a problem because what you're doing is you're you're moving a an HR issue into a political decision rather than an administrative decision.

And that's I think one of the reasons why many of the no city that I'm aware of has brought in on the I bring that I'll take that back.

I think there's two uh Conrad and and the city of Shodau and their charter, I think they have written in there where they need to get the consent of the council for termination, and that's it just becomes a little more problematic rather than have an administrative decision and process that is applied by the mayor or the the supervisor, that individual, then they then it has to get approval by the council who is not involved in the operations of the city.

And that's really where the we uh it creates a structural issue if we have the commission involved in the operations, and I think then you would have people feeling less loyal to a fidelity, I'll say it, maybe less of a fidelity to their job and to uh working for their direct supervisor because I know I still have the the ignorance of the commission I can appeal to, right?

If particularly if I'm friends with all the commissioners, that gives me a little bit more of a Teflon approach to my job because they're never gonna terminate me.

So I can pretty much do whatever I want, knowing that I'm not gonna leave this outfit unless the commission agrees, and three of the four members of that council are my hunting fishing buddies, right?

And they're not gonna fire me, so it gives me a little more armor to misbehave or or not do my job because I know the mayor is gonna have a hard time terminating me because I have to go to the council to get that ratified.

Does that make sense?

And so the oftentimes they'd much rather have more of the administration and the operations stay on the executive side, but the appointment, who are we gonna bring in?

Make that decision, and we're gonna have to agree on that.

Just like the governor when they appoint the department heads, the department of commerce, department of revenue, uh, fishwater parks, they have to go before the Senate for approval.

Same with the president goes before the Senate for the for the cabinet, it's a similar model that we've adopted here.

But if they're if but the president or the governor can terminate any one of those people without going back to the Senate for permission, and so it is an option.

I don't, other than those couple communities that uh included that in their charter, which has created some issues.

We get some calls because and some more HR issues come from that uh because we've diluted the management of those uh employees by including a political component to the administration of behavior.

Long answer, but does that kind of answer?

Yeah, no.

Keep going.

Good, all right.

Um so you can see a couple other options.

Uh the veto power, the veto ordinances.

So one option is the uh veto ordinances and resolutions subject to override by a majority of the commission is an option.

That's number one, uh, and 73214 veto ordinances and resolution subject to a two-thirds vote.

So that's that gives a little bit more power to the executive to veto something, knowing that now I've got to get a supermajority in order to override that.

And that and that's why it's in green.

And then we have a number three, sign all ordinance resolutions with no veto power.

So it's a very weakened position for the mayor and has a more power to the council that the that whatever the council decides, it's decided, and the mayor has no check on that decision.

Uh preparing the budget, prepare the budget and present it to the commission for adoption is is the strong one versus prepare the budget in consultation with the commission and department heads.

That's a weaker position for the mayor or stronger position for the for the commission.

And and I'll tip to the other way to look at this we have.

I can't remember the numbers now.

We probably have 760 some odd municipalities in the state that have 500 or less people.

So it's really one of those things.

We're all volunteers, we all show up.

Let's figure out the budget together.

And they're less uh less strict on those legislative executive roles.

It's really there's four council members, the mayor that sit down along with the department heads to figure out what's our budget gonna be.

We don't have much, what do we have to do?

And so it it that's why I believe that's the default, and that's why it's in bold.

That's the default option because most of our municipalities are smaller, and then the larger ones usually will pursue the self-governing powers and get and and can discuss that balance of power in their charter in a different way.

But but typically that uh collaboration with the budget uh process is the default where most of them are operating that way.

Even I think City of Billing or Bozeman, I'm sorry, Missoula, where the mayor I I believe consults with the with the council on the budget.

I can check, and I'll give you this handout here in a second.

Annual budget.

The mayor shall present to the council on an annual basis the budget.

Okay, so this is where their strong mayor, a stronger position for the mayor where they just prepare the budget in Missoula and give it to the council, and then they can have the ability to modify and change it.

And and so they'll have to go through that amendment process there, versus if they were to prepare the budget together, uh, then we all kind of find some consensus on that, and usually the budget once it goes through that consensus process is usually adopted fairly quickly, versus the mayor spending the time preparing it, dumping it on the legislative branch side, and then they tear it all up and start over again.

Kind of like how our legislature works with the governor.

He presents the budget the first days of the the session, and then it's all torn up and they the legislature redoes it.

Is that does that so that's so now we're that's what we've been talking about on, and I'll pass these around here on the commission executive side.

No, there I will mention there's a hybrid option, right?

Strong mayor, strong council, and then there's the hybrid option, and that's um found on page four of that first handout.

I just gave you it's uh seven three two twelve.

This is where it says the administrative assistance, the mayor or the executive may, and uh it's number two is the default, may appoint one or more administrative assistants to assist in the supervision and operation of local government, and the administrative assistants are answerable solely to the executive.

I'm sorry, it's the the one we were just working from, not the one I just handed out.

I apologize.

I just jumped again.

Page three or four, page two it's page three, it's just the next or page or page four, two, three, two, twelve.

Is that right?

So two, three, two, twelve, page four of the one that's titled various models of executive power.

And this is this is the hybrid option where you can still have an elected mayor, they're the chief executive of the city, but uh they have the ability then to hire an administrative assistant, and what is commonly referred to in Montana is a CAO or a chief administrative officer, and that chief administrative officer's role is to assist the mayor under the mayor's supervision, the day-to-day operations of the city.

And so that's what Missoula does.

They have a CAO and a deputy CAO.

So they have two people assisting them in the day-to-day assisting the mayor in the day-to-day operations.

There's uh Dillon has one, uh they have an elected mayor with a CAO that supports and assists.

Glendype did have one, City of Laurel has one currently.

So there's several of those communities that they they they say we we we enjoy the fact that we have an elected mayor as the chief executive, they're accountable to us, but they also benefit from having professional support by the CAO, and that CAO is hired and managed solely by the chief executive, unlike this commission manager form where the commission hires the professional manager and manages that manager.

In this situation, it's the mayor that hires and manages them.

It does require buy-in by the council because they have to budget for that.

Deer Lodge is another one that has a CAO.

So that they they have to budget for that, and then the and then they uh the mayor then hires and and manages that individual.

Yeah, but but still the the mayor is ultimately responsible for whatever happens by the CAO and is accountable to the public for the operations of the city.

So that's that hybrid option.

And so some of those, some of the communities, as they get a little bit bigger and more complicated.

One option is they'll they'll transition to a manager form of government, so they have the commission manager, or they can extend that time by having a CAO to support the mayor and still retain the same form of government.

So if you were starting out, well, Belgrade, well, that's a bad example.

They've they shifted early.

Well, yeah.

So I'll just leave that there.

Does that under you?

Does that make sense the hybrid option?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Any questions on that as an option?

So if you were to consider as a study commission and you're looking at this relationship that you have had since the 30s, a commission manager form of government in Bozeman, somewhere in the 30s.

I think you were the first in the state to adopt it.

Shortly after it became a thing in the United States.

It was a very early adopters in Montana or in the country for this structure of government, this commission commission manager.

And you're thinking, well, maybe let's try this other option.

It uh you could be similar to the way the city of Missoula operates in that they have an elected mayor accountable to the public through the electoral process, but they still have the benefit of the professional uh management by having that CAO who's uh responsible to the mayor.

Gallatin County, where am I pointing?

They have the similar situation, they have the elected county commissioners, and then they hire a you know, a CAO to help them with that operations, and they have a deputy CAO as well.

Um that's that's not an uncommon thing for some of the metro counties around the state, recognizing we that the voters enjoy that structure of government, but the complexity gets to the level where we need some professional support, they have that as an option if they choose to do it.

I'll say Yellowstone County so far has chosen not to have a CAO, and that those three county commissioners are choosing to continue to do the day-to-day operations as well as provide all the legislative functions for the county.

So those are it's not an uncommon thing in Montana to have, and it's a it's it's existed and written into the law.

You don't have to do well, the those with general government powers don't have to do anything to adopt that so far.

Okay.

Um the handout I just did too quickly there for you.

The one that says uh president of council, presiding officer, mayor, council chairperson.

So with your structure of government, the commission manager, where you have an elected commission who then hires a professional manager, managed by the commission, their performances managed by the commission.

The commission's only employee is the manager, and uh and directs the city through the manager.

Um that's the structure, and so you know uh, and the manager is responsible for the day-to-day operations, the hiring, and determining how the policies adopted by the council are implemented, and they have the the apparatus of the executive branch to execute those orders, ordinances, and resolutions.

So that's how Bozeman's currently operating.

Um within that structure, we often have a mayor that's also elected.

The mayor in this scenario, and the commission manager is part of and a member of the legislative branch.

They have uh, and so that is not an uncommon thing in charters uh in our state where we have uh like Bozeman, you have an elected mayor.

I was just in Great Falls, and it was interesting because they're saying, you know, we have very limited duties and responsibilities for the mayor.

How do we compare with other cities?

Well, I pulled out your charter or your charter, you have a more expansive role and and responsibilities.

Some what we would say, a few executive responsibilities have been delegated to the elected mayor who is a member of the legislative branch.

So they're a legislator, but given some limited executive authorities.

Outside of those delegated authorities in the charter for the the elected mayor, the rest of the executive responsibilities lie with the manager.

So if you want to turn in that handout, I didn't put page numbers, this is just how it off the press.

Look on the page five.

Great Falls, it has just two little bullets for Great Falls.

There we go.

The mayor shall be recognized as official head and representative of the city of Great Falls for purposes of presiding at the city commission meetings and the performance of ceremonial functions.

These functions of the mayor shall not be construed as conferring upon the mayor executive personnel or administrative powers or functions.

The mayor shall serve as a member of the commission with all rights and privileges of the city commissioners, and the mayor shall possess no veto over actions taken by the city commission.

So it's a very narrowly defined role.

You're basically running the meeting, and when the Kwana shows up for their annual convention in Great Falls, instead of it asking for the manager who is a bureaucrat to come and say, Welcome, you want to get an elected official, and this is the ceremonial role, and so they're often running around the to all the hotels, you know, during the week saying, Welcome to Great Falls.

Thanks for being here, spend your money before you leave.

Um ceremonial functions.

Umtrast that with Bozeman.

Now you switch over to Bozeman, page one.

No, did I put oh did I three where is it?

There it is.

Okay.

So the mayor still is a member of the of the legislative body.

So the mayor shall be a voting member of the commission, shall attend the and preside at meetings of the commission, and this is where I put in and where you see highlighted in this document.

These are the things I was determining to be more of an executive function.

If you don't see anything highlighted under a communities uh under one of these cities, uh responsibilities for the mayor, they really are just ceremonial, like we just saw in Great Falls.

There was no highlighted yellow with Great Falls.

But you folks, what I would consider more of a uh an executive function would be to represent the city in intergovernmental relationships, present an annual state of the city message.

So that so we see here where they have as a as a member of the legislative body additional duties, additional responsibilities and additional authority to engage in intergovernmental discussions to represent the legislative branch as the mayor saying, here's the state of the city.

Um add an item on the commission agenda.

Typically, the commission agenda is prepared by the manager, however, the elected mayor has a little bit of executive authority to say, I have something I want to put on the agenda, and they have the authority to place that without the consent of the rest of the commission.

Um let's see, uh sign uh let's see the city manager assign a subject to the consent of this the commission.

Uh what did I say there?

Add an item to the commission agenda prepared by the city manager, assign, I think it messed up there, subject to the consent of the commission.

Yeah, so it seems kind of weird, but oh my goodness.

What did I go here?

I'm a hot mess right now.

So, subject to the consent of the commission, uh, you can put items uh to subcommittee, you assign the items to subcommittees of the commission and perform other duties specified by the commission.

So that's if they want somebody to do something, the commission can by a vote of the commission empower the mayor to do something on their behalf.

You know, act in uh with extra power, right?

So I what I like to say, maybe this might help if I say it this way.

As a member of the commission, they have no power other than the ability to vote during a legal meeting.

That's the only power they have.

And if the mayor is a member of the commission, like in Great Falls, the only power they have is the power of a vote.

They have additional responsibilities beyond just the power to vote.

State of the city, put something on the agenda, assign things to committees, you know.

So there's you know, represent the city in intergovernmental conversations.

So when the city and uh Bozeman Belgrade and the city or the the county had a discussion during COVID about the health department and how they had you know the new law that came out, it it wasn't the manager that was at the table with Belgrade, it was the mayor at the time at the table having those conversations.

So, Dan, if I can add um the mayor shall not have any appointment power to city boards except where required by state law worth noting.

I I don't know if it's still state law, but it was what I I think I got three appointments to the planning board uh what as the mayor, and that was pursuant to state law.

Yeah.

Um so there is some power in any case for the mayor.

Yeah, yeah.

So this document that I provided for you, where you see the highlighted areas at it was my discretion to side that sounded to me more like an executive function beyond just a uh a legislative role.

So when you see a if you look at living or Lewistown, Lewis Town or Livingston, they're even let's see, white fish.

It's like oh Lewistown.

Yeah, it's a sentence.

They don't have a mayor.

The the council elects one of their members to be the chair of the council, and that's it.

They don't have an elected mayor, they don't know no one is even referred to as the mayor, they're just the chair of the council and they chair that meeting.

Other than that, we're we are a governing body, and that's it.

Um then that that puts that puts a lot more duties on the executive side of the equation.

They approve contracts, the manager signs the contracts.

Where in some cases it might be approved of contract by the commission with the mayor of the commission, you know, that's a member of the commission signs the contracts.

So usually it typically it's the commission or the the commission approves contracts and the executive branch signs them.

And in some cases, that the signer of the contract would be the mayor who is also member of the legislative branch.

I hope I'm not confusing you or yeah, whitefish, again, they don't they're they're electing someone from their body, and you know, other when the governor uh proposes military law, they're not going to the manager, they're going to the elected mayor, and other than that, they just run the meeting.

So that's that's also kind of common language you'll see in some of the kind of boilerplate language you'll see in some of these uh uh charters.

Um I didn't highlight for the two consolidated city counties because they have uh a whole lot of responsibilities, but they have an elected mayor or elected CEO, a chief executive officer is what they call them, they don't call them a mayor, and and they are like Missoula, they're elected, have full uh executive authority.

So not wanting to belabor this, but so we have the the commission executive form of government where you have the strong mayor, strong council, and then the hybrid, and then you have the commission manager where it's either the commission and the manager, or you can have this hybrid where you have an elected mayor who can have some limited uh executive authority to facilitate certain things that this the community may feel like we want that to be uh assigned to an elected, someone that's elected and responsible and accountable to us versus having all that delegated to an appointed professional that people might feel they have a little distance between them and that individual, the manager.

And so I think you in the city of Bozeman are leaning on that side of that spectrum of giving some of that authority and power to the elected mayor, more so than many of your counterparts that just have a ceremonial role for that mayor, and that's about it.

And I think Poulson, they're doing a study commission right now, and they're looking at your charter and wanting to include some of the things that you have in your charter for the mayor to bolster that position with a little bit more responsibilities that they and so they're they're debating that right now, including that in their final report.

So I I just want to jump in with a little comment.

The if you connect some of the dots, mayor gives state of the city address, says I think the city should create a its own minimum wage.

To follow through on that, that same mayor then can say in two months we're gonna discuss a minimum wage for the city, um, and put it on the agenda, subject to the approval, or whatever gets worked out with the commission, but but that is certainly in the realm of executive and executive function and power.

Yeah, um, it's not done that much that I know of, um, but it's certainly if you just follow that line in the language, could um could be used more.

Yeah, Barbara.

So I I have a question that you may not be able to or want to answer, but I'm I'm trying to get at sort of the the pros and cons of the two different the the commission executive and the commission manager structures, and um both in the Montana Standard and in the Dillon Tribune.

I recently read stories of those study commissions where the study commissions are actually talking about switching to our structure from their commission executive.

And so I'm wondering if if you can, and this is why you may not be able to answer or want to answer, but I'm wondering if you can shed any light on what have been the challenges that they've bumped up against that that are leading to their study commissions, sort of wondering and contemplating about switching to our form.

Well, yeah, I usually weigh in on these things with with with abandon.

Uh I'll try to not make any reference to any one municipality, but in general, uh as communities grow, there's a tipping point where there's a level of complexity that they start facing, and it's they find it challenging, and they find it challenging to find people within the community that are willing to run for office and take that role and have the capacity to perform in that position, right?

So looking at you know, some I think of one community, you probably figure out which one it is.

But say they got 10,000 employees, or I'm sorry, 10,000 people in town, they have 350 employees, they have a 25 million dollar budget, and and there's no qualifications be to be the mayor other than over 18, have lived in the town for two years and is eligible to vote.

And so, and and their qualifications are they they have enough yard signs to get elected, name recognition, whatever it might be.

Mayor may not have the capacity to manage the that level of complexity.

I will say it is still an option for them to hire that CAO that they can bring in and provide that function.

So you can have that that political animal, if you will, that that political engagement from an elected mayor and and benefit from the steady hand of professional management in those broader, more complex areas.

And that is an option for these communities that they're choosing not to, and it creates, you know, and it and it becomes a a like a Richter scale, right?

One one four-year stint, you might have a highly competent, capable person, stabilizes the community, things are going well, and the next year it can all fall apart.

And then you got this, yeah.

It's and then we're we're there like every three months, trying to mediate conflicts, trying to, you know, just trying to help them get through the next four years until another election.

And then we're and and then usually the people stand up and say, or you know, someone says, All right, I can't stand that.

I'm gonna quit my job at whatever company and I'm gonna go there and deal with this.

Um, and so you get that back and forth.

So those are some of the risks.

I I would I would love to see that CAO option for some of those communities in that transition to look at that uh as they're transitioning and trying to decide how you know, but the other part of it is well, okay, let me back up.

If they were to go to the commission manager with general governing powers, with me general governing powers, commission manager in the law, it spells out specifically what the duties of the manager are.

It's in statute, you can't change it.

It's not even an option to change it.

It's you know, it has sub-options, right?

It is that's it.

Uh so it's a somewhat of a rigid plan.

If they adopted a charter, they can be more flexible of how they want to do that.

Or if they have in the hybrid where they hire the CAO, they can decide what responsibilities they're gonna delegate to the CAO and what do they want to have the mayor do.

The mayor could might come with a very strong background in in uh finance.

They might be an accountant, but they may have no clue about human resources, no clue about public works, no clue about you know managing pools or roads or you know, any of that stuff.

But but they're good at the account.

So they may say, look, we're gonna hire a CAO or the CAO, we're gonna give you the responsibilities to do with these other things where the the mayor, the elected mayor will be responsible for these other things.

And they can that's something that they can work out, and it creates a level of flexibility, uh, where it's a little more rigid if, but if you have a uh it's it's more rigid if you're just general government powers.

That's where if you're gonna jump to a charter, then you have that flexibility at the beginning to set what that what that relationship's gonna be.

Um like the uh Missoula, they just mentioned in their charter that the mayor can hire the CAOs, but they don't describe in the charter any duties, responsibilities to those CAOs.

They make the list of what the duties and responsibilities are to the mayor, and then the mayor can decide what they want to delegate, which might be mayor by mayor.

Mayors have different skill sets, and they might modify and change those job duties of those CAOs as the mayor changes, and so it just creates a little more stability.

Is that kind of answering your question as we kind of unpack that?

But I think there's a tipping point.

There's a tipping point where there's a level of complexity that it might make sense for us either to bring on the CAO or consider shifting to the manager.

But it's interesting is you looked in that the document here from Michigan, then they grow big enough and then they flip back.

You know, once they get you know half a million or whatever, then they flip back to that that manager, you know.

So now we're looking at you know, those corporate CAO types that might look to jump in that space.

So it's but it seems like there's that that spot between very small, it's for elected mayor, the mid-range, like Bozeman, you know, from 10,000 up to whatever that magic number is, is the manager form, and then it flips back to the commission uh executive form.

So Dan, could you talk a little bit about the um I don't know what the right word is, tampering commission and mayor tampering with the employees of a city?

Um and Bozeman certainly has gone through that issue.

Yeah, um, and um at least in in my time, I found a level of congeniality with the heads of the departments to be very valuable for me to understand it.

Um the charter says, except for the purposes of inquiries and investigations, the commission or its members shall deal with city officers and employees uh solely through the city manager.

What do other cities do?

How does that work?

Um, because it's a question that I think we have as to whether we should weigh in on that in any fashion.

Yeah, that's a um I I that's one of those important parts of the charter because it clarifies the roles and responsibilities.

We know where the line is or the what what our lane is and what the manager's lane is.

Um it provides that clarity.

Now I will say each manager uh has the ability to create the culture that they feel comfortable with.

So as I travel around the state and I work with these commission manager forms of government, I I try not to assume how strict that line is, because some managers they they have found a equilibrium at a certain level of familiarity between the commission and the department heads.

They say, hey, I don't have a problem if you want to email the department head with a question.

That's fine, just CC me as the manager on that.

I need to know what's going on.

I just got to know where the flow of information is, and when you're responding, I just got to know what's going on.

Others might be very strict and say, no, if you want to ask something from a uh ask me and I'll ask them and I'll come back to you.

And so part of that, which both of which would work, it's it's what they're willing to, the the culture that the manager is willing to allow, and it's gonna be different for each manager.

Um I I do find that when they step step over that line, it does create a bit of chaos.

And it's it's poor communication, misrepresentation, uh, and it creates more drama than necessary, so then a lot of energy is spent with all this drama rather than trying to deal with the issues of the of the of the citizens.

Um and that's never a good thing when we it's self-inflicted.

Some of this drama that's it's unproductive.

Um had another thought.

So then the question about by for inquiry.

I would just say that that's a formal process.

That that I'm just gonna say, hey, I've got an inquiry, so I'm gonna jump in.

There should be a process that if there is a a need for a formal inquiry about something that's going on in a department, that there should be a policy that provides guidance so that we're not making that up for each issue how that process is going to look.

But we're gonna determine as a commission when this happens, we're gonna initiate it this way.

We're gonna have a hearing, we're gonna do, you know, we we can call witnesses, whatever, whatever that process is.

I think it's important they uh uh create a uh mechanism that they can trigger that has a level of formality, whereas a part there's due processes is part of that equation, and everybody knows the rules when we initiate as a commission an inquiry into a department or some sort of uh administrative function.

So part of what I hear you saying is that perhaps in the hiring period of a manager, a question should be asked.

It's something like how comfortable are you with informal or what level of communication with your staff are you rather than hire the person and then find out what they're gonna do.

Um, because we've seen city managers that say you can't talk to anybody in my staff and others, um, and frankly, the the language inquiries the model city charter describes what that is, and it's more liberal than I think what they're what we're doing in Bozeman at this point uh as well.

And so maybe it's a hiring tip for the commission.

Certainly when we hired when I hired, when I was on the commission that hired a new city manager, didn't enter anybody's mind.

Yeah, and that conversation didn't occur at a time probably when it should have.

So on the other hand, in earlier days, um, you tell me whether this violated the rule.

There were department heads that I played golf with upon occasion.

Didn't talk about city business, but you got to know them better.

Yeah, which had to do with then how you listened to them.

And to add to that, it it builds trust, right?

Trust is a product of a relationship.

I can't trust somebody I don't know.

So so part of it, I think those those wise managers try to figure out where is that that level, because I want to have a high level of trust between the commission and the staff, right?

And and the managers of the middle, and I've got to facilitate that relationship building and trust between the two, because I it's important that this the commission feels that they can trust the the staff in carrying out their interests and their directions, and they're gonna look to that manager in order to facilitate that, right?

They're the pinch point to make sure that happens.

So yeah, so I think it's uh I think those the good managers, they you know they've gotta they they're clear about where the lines are, and usually there's a lot of flexibility within the the absolutes.

Cool.

Oh Becky, I look up, she just doesn't know what I'm looking up.

Becky.

Thank you, both.

Hey Dan, thank you so much for this information.

Um I have a kind of a dual question.

You know, when we think about the city manager, and sometimes people will say, yeah, well, the city manager, we don't have any control over them because it's the city commission, and you know, I think about a mayor to Carson's point, a mayor may get elected because he has the most signs in the yard, may not have the skills, and and we have really an impossible way to unappoint that person.

Um, but uh city manager can be managed because they're hired and they can also be let go if they're not doing their job.

When I look at and just do a quick search for things like evaluation, annual review.

Um I'm curious as to two things that that kind of touches on how do how do we have appropriate oversight and ensure appropriate oversight of the city manager um going forward no matter who sits in the seats, no matter who gets elected, which is the purpose of the charter, of course.

That this is kind of a document that guides anybody who ends up sitting in the seat.

Um, and so when we look at other organizations, um, me as a nonprofit professional been on other boards, it's there's always a very clear way of how we're gonna hire the chief executive, which is basically what the city manager is, and then also a requirement to do an annual um 360 review by a third party um professional development professional, so that uh information comes up and down about how well this person's doing.

And then so I'm wondering how often you see that, and if you think it's a good idea, and then I'm gonna tie that to um I know that that in hiring chief executive um across the country, the thing to do now is you're on an annual contract.

You're on an annual contract, and you know, we can't let you go for nilly willy, and I can't think of the word, but um, it has to be for due process.

But but every year we can say no, thank you.

Yeah, you know, we're good.

And um, and so we do an annual review and we have an annual contract, and that really helps the commission have direct oversight of the city manager.

We don't run into situations where this and I am absolutely not talking about our current city manager, I'm not talking about any specific person.

So I'm gonna be clear.

Um, but this city manager isn't listening to us their direct report.

So this city manager is off the rails, because a 360 review would demonstrate that people have good communication with and trust with the city manager who they work for him or and the commission and the and advisory board people were kind of but above the the city manager.

Can you touch on those two points around how do we ensure high quality and oversight of the city manager?

Yeah, that's great questions.

And I think uh a lot of what you're referring to there, I would believe would be found in the contract that the city has with the manager.

Uh and typically the the contracts that managers have, they can be released without cause, and it's a majority vote of the commission at any time within the length of that contract, they could dismiss the manager.

And so that's one of those, you know, uh if if the public is really not happy with a manager and they're expressing their displeasure to the commission, and the commission tries to self you know correct that behavior or whatever it is, the manager just can't quite get it together, then a majority vote in that person can will be released from their contract.

Now now, of course, they're gonna protect themselves in that contract, right?

It's all part of the negotiated process, they might have a buyout and all those other things, but that's that's what the industry, you know, that so the the being aware of what the city manager industry is and what's common, right?

So if you're way out of step, if you're way out of step with what many other cities are, and you're creating a much more risky environment, it's gonna be harder to find managers, you know, the qualified managers come work for you.

It's like there's too much work here, there's too much risk, I'm assuming.

Um, and so usually we don't have in charters typically that level of specificity of and and allow that that as times change, those those values within the industry change that that commission can keep up with what are the standards.

We want to be at least consistent with our peers so that we have the access to the best pool of candidates and not do something that might put us outside of that that range of what's common and acceptable for a risk that a manager might have.

And because then you'll get a lot of good people just pass you over.

It's yeah, uh it's too much risk.

But usually they'll have in that that contract that you know, it might be a five-year contract uh with annual reviews and with set benchmarks and goals and that typical employment relationship.

But at any time, uh you huge faux pas.

You mess up, you compromise that public trust.

Three of us out of the five, you're you're down the road.

You might be writing a big check as they leave the door, but you have that flexibility to hold them accountable.

So that's one of the things I think with the public recognizing that if there's there's truly a cross-threading between the public and the city, or between the council and the manager, right?

And if it's something that's the managers screwing up, and the the commission's frustrated because we've given direction, they're not doing it, or whatever, they're incompetent, not following through, we've got to let you go.

Um, or it could be something that the the commission is screwing up, that they're just not making taking the action that the public wants has nothing to do with the manager.

It's just it's it's the politics of it.

They still might release the manager just to say, say, well, we got rid of them and we'll start over.

That's that's that's happened on occasion, if that made sense.

Cool.

Other questions, Mike.

Not really a question, but to follow up on uh Dan's point.

So I just reviewed our charter to make sure I had this correctly.

So we have the process for appointment and hiring, as well as removal in broad terms and process in the charter.

The review that Becky had mentioned, that is a um contract term.

Um so the city manager has an annual review uh for their their performance to their employers, the the five elected commissioners, and uh part of uh to Dan's point, I had the unique situation of starting at city clerk during a city manager recruitment.

So the the process by which they um determine what would go into that contract, they bring in uh professional consultants, they talk about what they're willing to offer, what is you know uh best practices in the in the field and and what they need to negotiate amongst themselves what they're willing to incorporate in a contract, and then that goes out to the wider world in the recruitment and application process.

So anybody who's applying for that job has the for lack of a better term, sales pitch of what is going to be required, expected, and you know, generally the terms, and then they choose to apply, they go through a typical hiring, well, sort of typical hiring process, and then they negotiate the final terms of that exact contract language.

So that is um a lot of wiggle room in a process that two paragraphs in our charter frame for us.

So I think it's uh kind of an uh important distinction to note.

Yeah.

Jen.

Thanks, and what a lot of information we're getting.

Um, and I would just say I think from watching several managers leave or somewhat be driven out.

I think we want to be as clear as possible on all of these things, and I want to appreciate Becky's proactive point on really how do we set um uh and we haven't fully agreed.

We're we're talking like we're in a permanent city manager.

I might personally feel that way, but I know we are look trying to look at a variety of things, but assuming if we do continue with the city manager, we want to really build in some of those proactive um uh methods to make sure the clarifications, the understanding of the roles, and I'm also just looking at the removal because we did have some removal recently, and it's it is not easy, it is not easy at all.

And I think we want the balance of fairness to anyone in a role that might have to be uh looked at for that, and at the same time, um it should not be a huge bulgar being pushed up the hill, which I have seen.

But I did want to ask about the Lansing report, and um and ask if you might look at the Lansing lens, if you will, which they talk about, which made me very happy and excited, performance on page seven, performance of different forms of government.

And you know, I started my questions with you, Dan, before with effectiveness, and how are we measuring effectiveness in terms of structure?

And wanted to see when um the research in this report, it was a part of the agenda, a large part of the uh opportunity to read many things, but in this um the key question is what form of city government is most effective.

They look at the three types that you just talked about.

And I'm wondering, in terms again, of uh looking at the system that we have, this hybrid uh model within Montana.

Can you speak to what has been most effective with the kind of system that we have now?

If we were to choose to continue to choose this system, um, is there any effectiveness measurements, or can they be developed or can they be applied from the Lansing study to what we want to include for our own um proactive ways of perhaps amending the charter?

Oh, that's a good question.

You know, sample size is pretty small because we have 14 municipalities that have managers out of 127, and it's so variable.

And I'm I guess I see effective, and and I guess I'll say that most of the time when I see effectiveness, I think it's it it is way more dependent upon the people than it is the structure.

That I think the structure has a part to it, right?

That this the structure of the framework that we're operating in could be a barrier.

Um but I think by and large, it's the people we choose to elect is going to be the a stronger indicator for the effectiveness of government.

I guess that's my that's been my experience working around the state for the last couple decades is that we we can have very small but hugely effective.

Uh and it's this the spark plug that gets elected, and suddenly that town, which was never on our radar, suddenly is there, they're showing up everywhere, they're learning everything they can, and they're making a huge impact in that community.

Um it's the same structure, government.

And then six, eight years later they retire, move or whatever, and then we're back to they're gone again, they're off the map.

We we never hear from them again.

Um so I I guess that makes sense.

Um so you could not to say not to do it, but I think um trying to look at the existing charter and what levers do you want to pull that could improve the effectiveness of the city may still be such a small percentage of the overall impact of the city's gonna have, and it's gonna be based on the people we elect, if that makes sense.

And it might we could do a spend a lot of energy on something that might only move the needle a very small bit because it's really the people that we put in there.

I I can understand that, and I also think we've kind of addressed that by not wanting to elect uh a variety of key staff people because we want the qualifications that are most needed, and I was really kind of asking it about it in terms of the city managers and that system.

Does it continue as this Lansing study proclaims that it is the most effective?

Um the city uh sorry, the the council manager style is is the most common and supposedly the most effective in terms of efficiency, financial status, and management.

So I didn't know if you bring that lens to our own state if you've done that at all.

Nothing formal other other than like I say that tipping point, and I think it's where you know uh there's too much risk involved uh for some of these communities, it's just we've we've we've been doing this for long enough, it's time to bite bite the proverbial bullet and and let's go this way.

And what usually what's the thing that's preventing them from making that shift is they think, well, it's gonna cost us too much, it's gonna cost, you know, we're gonna have to hire a manager for 130,000, where our mayor right now is getting paid you know 25,000.

And and usually those that make the shift, they say, Boy, uh that was money well spent because of the efficiency.

So here think of think of this.

In if you've got a mayor and you could have a mayor that's elected that chooses just to show up to the meetings.

That's all the more they're required to do, right?

They could just show up to the meetings, and then where is the the seat of where does the power then rest in a municipality when you have an absentee mayor?

It the power goes to the department heads, and they pretty much run the city, and then there's a lot of infighting and siloing, because I I want to build my kingdom, I want to build my department, and so there's a lot of that jockeying going around, and so there's a lot of that infighting less effective when you have an absentee mayor.

If you have a mayor that's involved in trying to pull it all together, that means they may not have another job.

This is all they're doing, and at 25,000 a year or 30,000, it's not enough.

And so it's so we're we're really struggling to try to get that, and that's why I think there's a tipping point.

We say, you know what?

Maybe if we were to hire the manager and and then the manager is responsible for making those departments run like a Swiss watch, and that's it's going away from that siloing and the infighting and bickering to where we're under a unified vision, we're under unified objectives, and we have benchmarks and outcomes we're looking for.

We are accountable back to the council, and I think it elevates uh is what I've seen, it will elevate.

And so they'll often look back and say, Boy, we we should have done that earlier.

I can see in my mind already, some of these communities when they finally make that leap, it's like, oh my goodness, why didn't we do that earlier?

And I think they'll be able to be able to stretch those tax dollars further under that professional management than they would with an absentee mayor.

Great.

Great.

We are uh running out of time, but sorry, I'm uh I want to give everybody a chance.

So Becky, keep in mind if you have anything else you want to ask, go to Deanna now.

Well, I'm I'm uh gonna change the subject a little bit because we are talking about the mayor, and we're kind of assuming um that he's going to be elected um at large.

And um I I'm wondering if we should be looking at other options uh perhaps, or what are the other options?

And um uh what what cities in Montana are just uh having the commission sitting commission elect the mayor and assume the duties that are um uh given through the charter.

Um is the and and uh are what are the uh advantages or disadvantages of something like that.

Okay, well, let me let me start with off the top of my head, there's uh like Livingston and Lewistown uh are appointing one of their the commission is appointing one of their the members of the commission to be the the chair, not even assuming anything other than just chairing the meetings.

So that would be on one end, and on the other end would probably be the Bozeman like where you have some of these uh select responsibilities and duties uh assigned in the charter to the elected mayor, right?

So they're and they're running for that office as mayor, and there's certain duties with that office when they get elected in the commission manager structure versus Livingston and Lewistown, where they are elected as a commission, and it just so happened that I got appointed by my fellow commissioners to be the chair this year.

Uh so you got that gamut.

Um I forgot the rest of your question.

So there's that range, and anywhere in between where you have City of Great Falls, where they're elected as the mayor, serves for two years, but they're really ceremonial, and they're I'll just say that.

I don't want to, yeah.

I was just with them last week.

I I will not divulge the things we talked about in those meetings, but there's some struggle there.

But anyway, the so they just had that elected mayor with no ceremonial, just only the ceremonial duties.

Uh, but it is an office uh and a and uh and a figurehead for that city, and they run the meetings, but that's about it.

So that's kind of in that middle, and then you have uh in the case of Bozeman where you're elected with some limited executive functions.

Um I would say the majority have that as a as a standout office that people will seek.

Um also West Yellowstone is like the others, uh, like Lewistown and Livingston, where they're selected from their members, but they call them the mayor, right?

And they they have some, I don't know if they had many duties.

Uh I don't think they had many responsibilities in West Yellowstone.

It was just, yeah, when the governor contacts them and goes to the mayor, not the manager, is about it.

Am I getting to you?

Yeah, I'm I'm just um wondering if there's any um uh what the rest of us are thinking in terms of this because I'm jumping ahead a little bit to uh the the seven wards, and if we were to uh have wards and we had seven wards, um uh we would we would need to think about having six wards and an elected mayor, if we uh excuse me, if we went to seven commissioners, um we would be looking at having six commissioners and an elected mayor, and then that would reduce the um uh uh number of districts that we had and perhaps their representation, and um it might be efficient to look at some other forms here where we would have the greatest number of uh districts to give us the the best representation, and um and the mayor just be selected from uh uh from that group.

Or if you had you know seven commissioners and then the commissioners just select one of them, yeah.

And they select a mayor, and then uh anyway, I'm just throwing that out there to see if there's any uh yeah.

And like I said before, it's all an experiment, right?

There's no right or wrong.

And so part of it is you're just trying to figure out what is what is it we're trying to accomplish uh as an outcome, and and will this structure that we're uh considering going, do we expect it to give us what we're looking for?

And you won't know until you try it.

Right.

And I I'm just uh I'm just wondering if uh representation uh on the commission is um more important than um an at-large mayor who has very little power anyway.

Um and it's a trade-off.

Yeah, and it could be it, you know, seeing as that figurehead, uh the the as on as I'm just thinking with that scenario.

If you had seven commissioners uh selected from seven districts, and then they elect one of the the members of the commission to be the mayor, uh yeah, it would it would probably you'd probably want to have it as a very uh just facilitated the meetings because if I'm the mayor and I'm I'm taking on a broader, more community wide role, but I have to be accountable to my patch of Bozeman, and there may be things that I'm pushed to do as the broader mayor of the community that my patch may not like, is that makes sense?

And so well, so when you're electing him from the group versus being elected at large, then you're representing everyone, or if you had as was in the comment where we are living in that district but elected at large, which might help with that as well.

There's all different ways of looking at that.

It's fascinating.

I do think we have to try and move on and we're edging into discussion, which is good.

Um Becky Thank you.

I have just one more question for now, and I'm trying to keep it specific to the mayor.

Uh Dan, um, we could sit and pick your head all day long.

Um but I'm curious, you know, when I think about uh communities that say, okay, we're just gonna invite um vote in all these commissioners, and guess what?

Today you get to be the mayor, or this year you get to be the mayor.

It's like I didn't want to be the mayor, I want to be a commissioner because the mayor has more responsibilities.

And I'm curious, are there any communities that have designated full-time mayor?

Not a designation with uh with the uh commissioners, but that that they say, okay, the mayor is a bigger job, it's gonna be full-time.

Is are there any communities like that, or do you see that, or do you see benefit in that?

Um so in the commission executive or the commission mayor form of government, we have some mayors around the state that choose to be full-time, they're retired or whatever it might be, and so it's a choice of theirs, but it's not a requirement of the position.

Um even in Missoula, uh, well, we'll we'll say in Missoula, they're elected as the chief executive for the as the commission executive structure of government in their charter.

But even in that case, the mayor of Missoula still has a full-time job.

They have the CAOs that do the day-to-day operations, and they check in and make sure that they're doing and meeting the obligations that that she has made as the mayor.

Uh but we'll look at the antac and butte silverbow, both of those chief electeds uh chief executive officers that are elected are full-time.

That is their job, they're pull, they're paid.

I I I want to say Butte's paid 120,000 a year, and that's that's their job.

So they're elected, it's a job, they do it full-time, they're running the whole operation.

So we're kind of a mixed bag, if you will.

Yeah.

So is the mayor of Missoula is not a full-time position?

I or did that misunderstand you?

No, it's it could be.

It's my understanding that she still maintains her her day job.

But I think the previous mayor, I believe it was that that was their full-time position.

Uh unless you know different.

I thought she was still working.

So I I just know from experience living there that when John Engon was the mayor that he just essentially dedicated his full-time after part way through his first term.

So when he was hired, he had other employment, and then he opted to just make mayor of Missoula his full-time gig.

He still had CAOs at the time as well.

Correct.

Yeah.

And I and I uh I just in my limited experience with this current mayor, I think she's still working full time, or maybe limited time.

I don't know.

Maybe I could be talking out my ear hole too.

Cool.

Never mind, we'll figure that out.

Yeah.

Um, anything else, Dan?

Thank you very much for your time.

Um we're gonna get into unfinished business and be making some decisions.

Um I need a bio break.

Um so uh let's come back no later than when the uh big hand is to 12, six o'clock.

And we will start promptly then.

Thank you.

This meeting is adjourned.

Or recessed.

This meeting is recessed.

It being 6 p.m.

Next item on the agenda is unfinished business.

Item F1 discussion and discussion items continued.

First item is processed to appoint a mayor pro tem.

I guess to lead this off, I on my own um did a proposed language which appears in the materials that we've got under amend section 2.06, and this would be under section 2.06 D, appointing a vice mayor.

But I I liked Vice Mayor better than Mayor Pro Tem or anything else because sometimes the mayor is asked to do things that are either public relations or building community, you know, appearing at the uh opening or the ground breaking of some big community uh thing that that we want to sort of build community with, and if the mayor can't go um you don't want to send the pro tem, you want to send the vice mayor.

Somehow that sounds um better.

Um perhaps that also comes into play because at least when uh in in the mayor dums that I have known, you know, there's a convention of um taxidermist comes to town once a year.

They asked the mayor to come, welcome them, and uh uh in fact I think the taxidermist they asked me to pick my favorite piece of taxidermy that was there, and it got the prize for the mayor's choice.

So stuff like that, uh I I think it's just easier if you're the vice mayor filling in for the mayor who couldn't make it, sorry, as opposed to the mayor pro tem.

It just sounds like you're could be anybody.

That's the reason for that language, but I'm not wed to any of it.

So with that, um we're gonna start and we're just gonna go around the table again.

Um and the change from last time is I'm just putting myself in the rotation where I sit rather than waiting.

I think that's a better process.

So we're gonna start with Barb.

Yeah, I'm Barb and Becky's going last.

Okay.

Otherwise, I'd be going last.

Having said I'm not going last.

Hey, Carson.

Yes, Carson?

Yes.

Can I uh can I just add one thing to tee this up just a little bit?

So the idea is that we have a mayor in the past, we've had a deputy mayor at their last meeting.

We decided that when the mayor is elected, they should be able to be the mayor, and we shouldn't have like a deputy mayor fill in for two years.

But then what happens if the mayor is on vacation or something bad happens to the mayor, and all of a sudden no one's there to run the meetings, right?

So for that, we need to figure out how do we appoint a vice mayor?

And what you've written just just so people don't in case they don't have it.

In the month of January following each regular city election, the commission shall elect from among its members a vice mayor who shall serve and function as mayor in the absence of the mayor.

Said vice mayor shall serve until the first regularly scheduled commission meeting in January after the next regularly scheduled election.

If the vice mayor office becomes vacant, the position shall be filled by vote of the commission at the first commission meeting following said vacancy.

So that's what you've proposed for those who don't have it in front of them.

Go ahead, Barb.

Yeah, Mike, could you post it?

It's in the materials.

But go ahead, Barb.

Yeah, so I support calling it the vice mayor instead of mayor pro tem because nobody knows what mayor pro tem means.

Um I support the language that you um included and having the commission elect the vice mayor from their members.

So that's all good.

The one thing I would say is that I don't think it belongs in section 206 of the charter.

I actually think it belongs in section 2.03, where we talk about the mayor.

Um, because that's the section where I went in and made the change that we had agreed to last time about eliminating the the you get elected as mayor and then you serve your first two years as deputy mayor.

So I it feels like that's really where the process for appointing a vice mayor should live.

point oh three where we talk about the mayor um because that's the section where I went in and made the change that we had agreed to last time about um eliminating the the you get elected as mayor and then you serve your first two years as deputy mayor so I it feels like that's really where the process for appointing a vice mayor should live Deanna um it seems to me like this would fall into the same conversation we had about filling vacancies and that if the mayor uh um office became uh vacant uh or uh for any reason that um the uh vacancy would be filled by a special election uh if if the if the vacancy is uh uh less than a year it could be appointed but anything that would be more than a year would go to a special election now you know the other thing is that this is um making uh the big assumption that the mayor um is an elected uh position and we we haven't really talked about that but in any case um uh in this language it uh I would say that uh the vacancy should be filled by a special election I'm trying to follow the order that I thought we set up with the overall plan so that's why I was checking on that but I will speak um specifically from my standpoint um I would like first of all I agree with the uh title and having the um members of the city commission determine each year who their um vice mayor will be I don't see any need to elect a vice mayor because that vice mayor position will have already been elected in the first place um to be on the city commission to be eligible to be selected as a vice mayor I also um I don't think we should assume anything yet before we get down the road to the late March and April um discussions because we've tried to set we've tried to set this up I think in a way that that can allow a flow that can allow us to look at decisions that we're going to recommend today that could change by the time we get down to March and April but that for the topic that we've been asked to study learn about um I would again like to see it in this way under D and I also agree sorry with Barb I do I I would like to see it um follow in the charter uh to be following in the 2.30 uh 2.03 mayor section as a number C to insert it there great um couple thoughts one um I I didn't give a lot of thought to where I put it I have no uh pride in position put it wherever it seems appropriate I think the thrust of this is how do you deal with the fact that you no longer have a deputy mayor and so part one is if you no longer have a deputy mayor you do need somebody to run the meetings because the mayor inevitably does not come to all the meetings come to most of them hopefully uh a lot of them but someone gets sick or whatever um so that was that was that part of it I thought every two years you should pick a different person because otherwise you're picking the vice mayor only when the new mayor has been elected and uh it cuts out half the commission as as the possibility for vice mayor um if you're only doing it every four years um it it just it just ought to flow with two years and things change over time with people um then if the mayor were so if you get to the clause that I think Deanna you're trying to get to if the mayor's gone and the vice mayor is gone the commission can't stop so at a minimum you need somebody to run the meetings in the meantime um I think uh your your point about getting elected is taken and when we have the discussion about filling vacancies we could either change this for that or not um but it but right now my focus when I wrote this was on the mayor dies um pardon me mayor whoever you are the mayor disappears from the whatever it is and then the vice mayor is in as you recall the um one of the things that we got from staff was if the mayor is um leaves um the vice mayor the deputy mayor becomes the mayor but then who's the deputy mayor and this was an attempt to solve that as well um so that's where I'm at with it uh Becky Yeah um I'd like to clarify uh kind of nuts and bolts here when uh and perhaps uh to Barb's point

And this was an attempt to solve that as well.

Um so that's where I'm at with it.

Uh Becky.

Yeah, um I'd like to clarify uh kind of nuts and bolts here when uh and perhaps uh to Barb's point, putting the appointing a vice mayor into 2.03 when we're talking about the mayor, may be more appropriate.

The vice mayor is not filling a vacancy.

The vice mayor is filling when the mayor is sick or on vacation, or just can't come to a meeting, right?

Or to your point, Carson.

Um I can't show up for the taxidermy welcome, right?

And we need a replacement for that moment um, which is different than the mayor evaporates.

Now the vice mayor runs a meeting just until we fill the vacancy, which is a different situation.

So I would like to take this section appointing a vice mayor, put it into 2.03, like Barb recommended, and like Jan said, I'm I'm fine with the language that you used.

I like it that we have if the vice mayor office becomes vacant.

The position shall be filled by vote of the commission at the first commission meeting follows that vacancy.

So now we've covered it.

If there's no mayor and there's no um vice mayor, um, then who's going to run the meeting?

Now we know who's going to run the meeting.

But the filling vacancies is in a different section.

So I'm completely fine with that.

But moving into 2.03.

Um the only other addition I would make is I think your stating that your vision was the vice mayor would serve as vice mayor for two years and then you the the council would elect a new one.

I think there's plainer language to make that more clear.

Um to make it a little more direct.

I should add that I have no pride of language language either.

When you all get to writing it, there's probably a better way to write it.

And then I forgot one thing.

Okay, can I just finish my last thought on the filling the vacancy thing?

Like to to if the vice mayor were to resign their commission seats, then that would be filled, that vacancy would be filled by whatever process we decide to fill that vacancy.

So the the vice mayor office is it is just a they can elect it from themselves, I think.

Good.

And the thing I forgot was public comment.

So um if there is any public comment, what what I think I should do in light of my error, if there's any public comment on this section process to appoint a mayor pro tem, I'll take it now, and then when we're done with this, I'll take it on all the other items um that are that are in front of us.

And I apologize for that.

Should have been the first thing we that we started with.

So is there any public comment on the process to appoint a mayor pro temperature?

Hello, Matsuki Nakamura, postman resident.

I I'll admit I haven't read your full proposal here, but just like some very quick comments from the conversation.

Um I think having someone who's would be filling in as the presiding officer in meeting um seems like uh important thing to establish, but it it's less, especially if you're gonna change the mayor's responsibility to elevate it.

And I think the commission can just decide that maybe even at the beginning of the year, you could do it on an annual basis, just in case the mayor is traveling or sick, there's someone who's knows that the the acting presiding officer for that meeting.

But I think if the mayor is um like has to step down, and then I think that's a different conversation that needs to be discussed as a vacancy.

So I would maybe just differentiate who's in charge of a meeting when the mayor can't be physically there that one meeting versus who acts as mayor when the mayor is no longer able to be mayor.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Um any other public comment.

Caleb, anybody online?

No.

Okay, further comment.

I left you up, Mike.

I'm sorry, you come after me.

That's all right.

Um, so to echo what uh we just heard in comment and Becky's point, I think we're talking about two different processes here.

We're talking about absence versus vacancy.

So an absence, the position is still held, they're just not in attendance.

Uh for example, Belgrade, they choose amongst their other six to be the deputy mayor for the year in the absence of the mayor, that person runs the meetings.

Essentially, there's no other function to that role.

Uh there should be some defined process for if neither the the mayor or the vice mayor are in attendance.

Typically, it would just be the by basic Roberts rules.

The clerk would call the meeting to order.

It would be the three elected officials' duty to name a presiding officer for that meeting, and then they start the meeting in in earnest at that point.

So I think just defining that in this process makes sense, and that's all related to absence.

The the vacancy portion, I fully agree needs to be uh a separate discussion, and that's why I agree with Barb that the absence provisions should be in the mayor section, something to the effect of in the case of absence, to make a clear distinction that we're not talking about filling that role, and then the uh filling of vacancies discussion will become okay.

Any other discussion?

Is there a motion then?

I'd like to make a motion to approve the language or the conceptual language that you have provided in addition to the comments that we've heard for Barb and Becky to write this into the draft second for the appointing of vice mayor.

It's been moved and seconded.

Is there any further discussion?

All right.

All those in favor, so indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed.

Motion carries unanimously.

Great.

Okay.

Next item on the agenda is uh public comment on anything else that we might discuss today.

Um on the agenda.

And the idea here is we're talking about filling commissioner vacancies, duties of commissioners, number of commissioners, part and full time, mayor part and full time, um, commissioners part and full time, and is there a way to talk about salary or salary outcome or guidelines?

I'm not sure how far we're gonna get through that, but if you have any comments on any of those items, um, please come to the podium and go for it.

Uh Daniel Cardi, I'm at 213 North Third.

Um like everybody else in the room, my uh thought process is evolving or devolving from week to week.

So um, here's what I'm thinking this week.

Um, Bozeman's current form of government, which is commission manager, is in part largely responsible for the difficulty that our city finds itself in today.

Briefly, this difficulty can be summarized by saying we are paying more and more for less and less quality of life.

That said, I suggest that this study commission uh make some recommendations to change Bozeman's form of government.

I don't necessarily think those changes need to be radical, but I do think they need to be substantive.

So today my suggestions are as follows.

Fill commission vacancies by special election and not by appointment.

Recent experience has taught us that filling vacancies, commission vacancies by appointment is getting much getting us too much group think on the commission.

And I would suggest that if Bozeman elects a mayor and we do go to districts, that filling the mayor's position as a vacancy would also be by special election.

I think we should expand the commission to seven members, with a mayor being one of those elected at large, and six commissioners elected by district.

I say this not to disagree with those other opinions from my north side neighbors, and those opinions I respect tremendously because but because we on the north side desperately need recognition.

And anyone who wants to take a walk through the North Central Development and the other high rises may agree with that.

I think we need term limits for both the commission and mayor.

Those term limits need to be three or four years, a total of six or eight years between those two offices, meaning no individual can serve more than six or eight years between commissioner and mayor.

I think our city manager has too much power, and therefore I think the commission should be allowed to veto a decision by the city manager by a simple majority of vote.

And I don't think it's necessary for commissioners to have job descriptions.

That is all I have on my mind today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comment at this time.

Hello, Natsuki Nakamura Bozeman resident.

Um I'll just make a few comments about the part-time versus full-time discussion.

Um I think the idea of trying to make it full-time is to make it more accessible for a wider range of people.

Um right now, I think the pay, well, it's substantial compared to other cities, but I think Belgrade gets they get about 100 a month to be a Belgrade commissioner.

Um it's quite substantial in comparison to other places.

It's not enough to be your only job.

So I think that puts people in the pressure of having to give up a job potentially if they wanted to participate in a way that's meaningful in the city commission.

Um I like the idea of a citizen um legislature like we have in the Montana State House, but that's completely different when we have, you know, you just have to participate five to six months every two years.

Uh my job currently would allow me to take um pay time off without pay.

If I was to be elected at the State House, I could take those six months, participate in the lesson and um return to my job, but it wouldn't have that same flexibility to participate in the city commission in a substantial way.

Um I think the time it takes to attend all the meetings Tuesdays a four to six hours plus prep time reading public comment.

Um it would be a lot to for someone who's trying to have a have enough money to stay here to also participate meaningful in the commission.

So I think those if if you're trying to make it more accessible, then there would have to be some discussion about making it less work for each commissioner.

And my fear about the ward discussion is that we might have if we expand the commission or we have wards, does it actually reduce the workload per commissioner?

And I don't think it would.

I think each commissioner, even if they're only representing a district, would still have to do research about every decision that they vote on, still consider public comment from everybody, and so it would still take a lot of time, even if you were technically representing fewer people.

I think it would still be a big time commitment.

So I think there's a lot of things that it's hard to make any decision on one of these things when they're all kind of interrelated.

And so maybe the goal would be what do we what's the goal?

Are we trying to make sure that certain neighborhoods feel like they have a particular representation and what why?

You know, what what's the difference between the north side or the south side?

Can we can we articulate that well?

Um, or is the goal to make it more accessible for someone who's not retired or you know comes with different experience to participate, um, then maybe they do need more pay, but maybe then we can't afford more commissioners.

So there's a bit of a those some trade-offs that might be considered, and I think it's hard for to make a decision on any one thing until we decide what's what's the goal that we're trying to reach here.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Fill in commissioner vacancies.

Um again to try and help the discussion.

No pride of words personship or anything like that.

I did um do a section draft section 206 A, B, and C, and I did two versions.

So you can all look at them and um come up with your own ideas or whatever.

Um but I I thought this kind of raised the the two possibilities.

And now we start with Deanna.

Um Are you offering A B and C on vacancies?

Because B is forfeiture of office.

So Yeah, B is just happens to be in between them, in between A and C.

Okay.

Um so uh essentially uh you're suggesting here that vacancies by uh commission or a mayor are filled um by special election if uh there's less if there's more than 12 months remaining in the term.

Is that correct?

Uh what I meant by it was if the election could be held so that the replacement person would be able to serve for a year.

Um and the the reason for that is it it apparently it takes about 90 days to get an election together.

And so conceptually what I was thinking one option, and and I'm not sure which option I support, but one option would be okay, um someone gets elected three months later, they um I keep doing this, they drop over dead, okay.

And now if the commission appointed somebody within 30 days, which is the way the current law is, there would be someone appointed that would go for a year and eight months as an appointed position.

And that actually has happened.

There have been people in the recent that that served, I think someone served two full years as an appointment.

So on the other hand, if someone were to drop dead with six months left, and it takes three months to get an election together.

Um, why are we doing that?

Because there'll be campaigning in an election and it's all going on in any case.

So the my thought was if you can have that person elected and they would serve a year, so January to January, then you would do the election.

If not, um you would do the appointment, you would have an appointment.

And you know, there's no magic in any of those numbers, other than that apparently it's 85 days from when the commission would inform the election office that they had to do a special election to when they could get it together.

Am I right on that, Mike?

Mike nods and said yes for the record.

Okay, so it's the floor is yours.

Okay, so if there were um if there were uh 12 months remaining in the term, um it would take three months to get a uh special election uh accomplished, and then they would have a remainder of nine months.

They would serve for nine months, understanding that there would be an election in November.

So in seven months you would have another election right because the term goes Yeah, because the term goes through January.

I'm not so sure that that is worded that clearly in the uh neither am I what I'm hoping is we agree on uh a concept and then the writers do a better job.

Uh well, I think I think if there's a year remaining that it should be a special election.

Okay, Jan.

At this point, I I'm not supporting this um amendment proposal.

I'm concerned again because it takes at least 90 days to have the mechanics of a special election.

Um that has its own um impact in terms of how um elections take up a lot of time energy and are important.

I believe in elections, believe me.

Um I'm concerned about the number of voters, as I said these things last time, um, especially if we look at a ward uh system and how many voters are going to actually be in a special election, which is we had a chance to look at the uh history, recent history of the special elections that Mike provided for us from the Galton County elections office.

Very few voters are even in the special elections when they're at large.

Um so that makes it for me a numbers issue in a lot of different ways.

The timing, the voters, the cost at 100,000 per election.

I would rather pay that money for living wages for the community service that people provide when they would be a part of a uh city government system like this when they would run for election.

And I think there are alternatives when we talk about the second proposal that I'd like to share that I've done some research on out other cities outside of this.

And if this were to move forward, I could only support it, maybe if it were tethered to existing elections that would come up in time to meet the goal, so that there would be some level of voter turnout that could justify the time, money, and energy, and not just be a single standalone election every time we had to fill a vacancy.

Thank you.

So I'm very torn about all of this.

I think conceptually, if you could connect the city election to a school board election, that's May, which is less than a year.

So if you're thinking of a year as a standard, you would end up with May only in circumstances where people died or left their position very close to when they got elected.

Although that's not totally true because it's a four-year term.

So, and then there's the primaries in June.

And again, connecting to them would work, but it would be you'd have a little bit of space in there where do you want to work with a commission that is down one member or not?

And in past history, I'm told that when, and this is a little bit hearsay, so I'm not sure I got it totally right, but when Al Stiff died, um the commission could not agree on a replacement, and I think they went for like a year without uh any replacement, and just the four of them, and they finally appointed someone after the November election, and they appointed the person that got elected.

Um here's what what I'm hearing in all of this.

First of all, uh I'm hearing a discontent from some of the populace with the decisions that were made about the city commission as to who should be the replacement.

And I'm I'm a little troubled by that because you elect people to the city commission, and you expect them to do to do their job.

And part of their job, it seems to me, is making laws and acting for the greater good of everyone, the common good is the way I like to express it.

And I don't think necessarily that the appointments that have been made have been group thing.

I just reject that idea.

And secondly, I I take the statistic that everyone that got appointed later got elected as being a um support for what the commission did.

Um, because I don't I don't see particularly in a city like ours that the incumbency is some great advantage that somehow gets people elected.

We think of incumbency in Congress as being a great advantage because they get to mail out stuff to their supporters that it's all paid for, and you will find when elections coming up, you'll get your um, there's a term of art for it, I can't remember what it is.

The whatever the uh your congressman wants to send out to talk to you about all the great things that the congressman has done.

Uh that to me is the advantage of incumbency.

Um we live in a small enough town that um city that uh I don't think it's that great great an advantage.

So there's efficiency, the most efficient being city commission appoints.

Um the second point though is the 30 days which we've been using is way too short a time period.

Someone dies or resigns suddenly, you have a meeting, you have 30 days, you have to set up what the process is, people have to decide that they want to apply for the position, there's a commission meeting, and the public is pretty much left out of it in terms of giving any public input or anything because it's all last minute, which is why the 60-day idea comes into play, um, because 60 days at least gives more time for the public to weigh in and for people to make a reasonable decision about whether they're doing doing it.

That the commission gets to appoint someone and they're there for two full years, and that's a long period of time, seems to me for an unelected person.

So the one year idea, um, as awkwardly as it's worded, was meant to sort of say, all right, what's the time period that it's okay to have an appointment versus um something else?

And I at this moment in time I could go either way on this one.

Um because I do think that carried within the desire for a special election is a distrust of the people that have been duly elected by the populace for which there is a solution, and that is you don't re-elect them.

And the same is true for the the person that serves a year, a year and a half, or whatever it is, they don't necessarily get re-elected.

Um so that's that's where I'm at with it.

And we want to go, Mike and then Becky and then Barb.

Mike.

So I'm gonna start with some logistics just to echo on um what has been said, reached out to the elections administrators.

So by statute, a election cannot occur less than 85 days from the resolution calling for the election.

So in practical sense, that's over a 90-day process.

So if a sitting commissioner today resigned their seat effective today, we would not be able to get a resolution calling that election together until at earliest Tuesday next week, the next meeting that happens.

They would then have 85 days from then to have a special election.

If Gallatin County elections would allow us to do a special election.

So they prefer that special elections attach themselves to either a school board election, a June primary, they do not want special elections attached to the federal presidential elections due to the complexity.

Having worked as an election official, the line was there until four in the morning last election.

So there are some other logistical aspects of working with the elections officials.

So saying that an 85-day window, that's a bare minimum.

And to the point of how long a term somebody could serve in an appointed position.

If you if you look at the close of applicant uh applications for an election, the there's recently been a change in the statutes that if somebody, if there is not a preferred write-in candidate, where somebody declares as a preferred write-in, which is the last deadline for an election.

They don't have to put that slot on there.

So functionally, the election, the options to get on an election close in August.

So if somebody resigned from their commission seat right after that deadline, they would have that entire rest of that year, and then the two years until the next election.

So no matter how long the term is available.

So if you have a, for instance, you have a city commissioner that's recently elected, sworn in in January, and then in May resigns.

So you can get the next municipal election.

That's what the appointment will be to.

So you're you're looking at threading a needle through other needles.

It's not just as simple as calling the election and we're gonna do it.

We don't we don't run our own elections, we run solely through the county elections.

So the logistics of running a special election, all cost matters aside, is a difficult one to line up in any regular semblance.

Um it's gonna take work with the county elections to see when that would happen.

I'm not saying that it can't happen, it just adds a layer of complexity that you can't define beyond something as general as early as possible.

Because if the county won't let you run an election, you don't run the election until they okay it.

So you might end up with a longer window, or you might be stuck in this, you know, there's 12 months left on the term, but by the time we get it called, now you're only gonna get nine months, eight months until the next end of that year, there's an election before that, you're already into candidate filing for that next election.

So the logistical side of everything adds exponential difficulty.

And I just want to say that for me, that is far more of a consideration than the financial.

If a special election is attached to a school board, a primary, something else, those costs are gonna be split.

If the if the if there's a countywide ballot question for a mill levy or anything like that, though those costs will be will be split.

So maximally, what we saw last November, only city of Bozeman election that that's running at the top of what our costs are.

So that just gives you a kind of an idea as more ballots to go out as population grows, those will increase, but if it's attached to anything else.

Um then the uh the other the other side on the on the vacancy is to Carson's point, when those happen is largely a matter of chance.

People move, people resign, people pass away.

There's a number of reasons for those vacancies, and they're usually not conveniently timed.

So that's just something to think about.

As for the days, similarly, the logistics are a nightmare for the 30 days.

So if somebody resigned today, effective today, we have 30 days from today to make that happen.

We would you know start the process.

Thankfully, we have a pretty good system for doing that.

We've received, I remember one of the recent ones, we had 20 applicants for appointment.

Um, we routinely had hundreds of public comments in support of their preferred candidates.

Um, so I think we've made a 30-day compressed process work in an efficient way.

60 days would be much better.

And if you're taking 90 days, you're reaching out to that special election time.

And so the considerations become logistically attached to that as opposed to increasing engagement in an appointment process.

So I personally think if you go with an appointment process, 60 days would be preferable.

And if you go through a special election process, you're gonna have to be aware that it's going to need general language as early as possible.

You cannot prescribe the next election because the county might not allow that.

So those are just my longer than anticipated thoughts.

Sorry.

All right, there we go.

Um, Mike, that was extremely helpful because I was really curious as to all of the logistics.

Like we can say, you know, we want to do ABC, but can we do A B or C and can it be done on a timeline?

And so that that was that you you fulfilled a lot of my questions.

When I think about this, I think about um Carson saying that we elected people to make decisions, and this is one of the decisions they need to make.

Um I also think about the fact that 30 days does not provide enough ability for any kind of public comment.

I find it difficult to to think about what it would take to call out to the community, say, hey, anybody want to be a commissioner?

And then making uh a very um clear decision to be able to put their name in the hat and say, Yeah, pick me.

Um and then holding an election.

Um and when I think about the five people who have been appointed and that they've all been elected.

Um I you know, we we've heard a little bit about how, well, that's because they were the incumbent and everyone had a love fest.

Well, incumbency is not always a great thing, right?

Bad decisions could have been made.

Maybe they didn't perform well, and now we all got to kind of try them out, right?

And so now I can see that I don't like you, and I don't wanna I don't want to vote for you, but all five have gotten elected.

So that kind of tells me that in in a way this is working.

Uming that there is a general municipal election every two years, and the chances the chances of somebody resigning a month into their term or passing away, um so small.

You know, it's most likely I'm guessing gonna be more like we've seen, which is much longer.

And so then how much work are we are we going into?

We've had um public comment all over the map.

Um, and there's one that really stood out to me.

And I wanna I'm gonna read this person.

It says though voter approval is important, the cost, time, complexity, and other demands at running elections spontaneously seems over the top and unnecessary.

We don't fill vacancies with snap elections for any other office in Montana.

I don't see how this is necessary here.

And I I hadn't thought about the fact that we don't fill vacancies with elections just oh well let's have an election um for other offices in Montana.

And so I I'm wondering if we're creating all this complexity just for complexity's sake.

And while it may sound like a good idea, when we really look at the uh the logistics, it just doesn't make sense.

So with that, I'm much more in favor of the 60 days.

I think 30 days is crazy to be able to make an appointment.

Again, you got to get people to raise their hand, and then there's no time for public um input.

And I think that if we did 60, we could also say, and there must be a public hearing with the candidates or a public forum with the candidates.

Um so that would be another opportunity.

So if our goal is to increase public input into Jan's point, special Olympic uh special elections, people don't always show up to vote.

So if we want public input, let's go 60 days and possibly require a public hearing.

That's all I got.

Great.

Barbara.

Yeah, I this is uh I've been really struggling with this.

I mean, I I definitely I hear the interest with the public um around special elections and having served as an election official.

I I was had a whole lot of questions about the logistics.

So thank you, Mike, because that really helped answer all of those questions.

I also um Googled the timing of our last two vacancies, and one occurred November first, 2023, and then the next one was six months later in May of 2024, and the timing of that is very complicated in terms of trying to piggyback on primary elections and meet these deadlines.

Um I'm I'm concerned that it's not as easy as we may wish um to to have it be by special election.

Um I also want to test my understanding of the process, the appointment process too, because there's another piece of it that we haven't talked about, and and I may have made it up, but my understanding is you appoint somebody to serve until the next municipal general election.

So they don't get to serve the full term in the case of somebody steps down three months into the job.

They don't get to serve the full term.

And then am I right that when they run in that next municipal election, they are running to finish the term.

So they they're not running technically as an incumbent, they're running for the second two years in that situation where somebody steps down right after they take the job.

So am I understanding that way?

So yeah, to Carson's point.

Okay.

So when that has happened recently, we had the one two-year term and two commissioners with a four-year term as options that somebody could choose when they register as a candidate.

Whether you've been appointed or not, you can choose whatever.

Whichever one.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

Um like Becky, at the moment, I'm I I mean, I definitely hear the public's um upset with the way the last couple of vacancy fillings have turned out and the perception that it has resulted in groupthink and and people appointing people that would vote with them.

Um so I am interested in in addition to expanding beyond the 30 days.

I am also interested in thinking about are there other things that we could put in the charter around filling vacancies that would ensure more public participation and and you know, requiring a forum, a candidate forum or an applicant forum is a good idea, I think.

Um I'm just not I just think I understand the intention and the desire behind the special election idea.

I just think there's a lot of unintended consequences, and we're gonna we're gonna have a really hard time making that work with the county and timing and all of that.

So we've done public comment, we've gone around general discussion.

A number of things.

Um first of all, the the the most a legitimate form of public input is an election.

And uh reducing it to public comment or or an open forum or some of the uh things that were suggested, uh, does not uh take the place of an election.

The other thing is that we can't sit here and be armchair social psychologists.

Incomecy uh value is a fact, and we can't dismiss it because we're a small city or you don't think it has any impact.

It does have impact.

And um uh and we have seen that every appointed uh commissioner has been elected.

And uh I think if that were examined, there would be quite a uh uh a good statement to be made about uh incumbency.

Um the cost, let's be real, if we do go to wards, and I think that uh there's a good uh you know, we need to examine that uh uh in this context, um, the cost of an election would be about 20,000.

Uh would be greatly less than um an entire uh um citywide election where their votes are sent to every residency, a resident.

So that hundred thousand uh which incidentally represents a very small percentage of the city budget, like one or two percent.

So it's not like a major expense, um, although every every expense uh is is important to examine carefully.

But when it comes to elections, a hundred thousand dollars uh if we did remain at large, uh would not be too much.

Likely we will be looking at wards where it would be much less.

Um the reaction uh has not been all over the place.

If you tally the public comments that came in in this regard, there were 20 uh that spoke to uh the desire for special elections, and one or two um one being the one that uh Becky uh read to us.

There is widespread public desire to see vacancies filled by special elections.

Now, I respect the experience that Mike has in and the information that he gave us, but I would still like the time to actually examine all of that and determine is it really that difficult to have a special election?

And I'm not willing to just say it's too hard, we can't do it.

And I think that would be irresponsible decision making to not really examine that more carefully.

And I would not discount the seriousness of people who would respond to the need to step up to run for a vacant office.

People are serious about their city government.

We've seen that.

And that's why we're here.

That's why we were elected to do this.

People do care and they are serious.

And so I don't think that that is a consideration to remove the possibility of elections because someone that they wouldn't be taken seriously.

In any case, I I believe that we have a great deal more study to do on this, and I think that ignoring the public input that we've had on it to date would render our work rather what uh done in a vacuum.

So further discussion.

Jen.

Jen.

All right, thank you.

I think we we probably can benefit from some more information.

I actually have even a stronger feel about the impact of having special elections that cannot be again mostly added to whatever might be available within the limitations of whatever might be available.

I'm thinking about the candidates who are basically running if they're not running for a full seat to fill a vacancy in the first place.

They're spending most of their nine months to a year first running to get elected, and then they've got to run again to stay elected.

And is that the best use of their time on a city commission?

I agree about whether we can honestly understand anybody and their motivation, their capacity, their resources, all of those things.

But I think there's practicalities that I hadn't fully considered, even in my concerns that I'm raising.

I also investigating some of the other cities.

I I referenced two things.

One is a number of places have job descriptions for city commissioners, and I would like to find a way to amend the city charter that require their become job descriptions written, not for the city charter itself, but to actually have a sense of people knowing what's involved in being a city commissioner.

They still can run.

So they have wards, they've got seven or eight wards, they have a primary in May, and if people don't win right uh outright, but there's two people that don't get 50% of the vote, they move on to the um election in November.

I think we need to look at that impact if we have some large, huge, wonderful group of people that all want to be in wards, and we have some level of words.

Um, what does that mean for special elections and any number of people that may be not able to fulfill what they um what they had hoped to?

And then last but not least was mentioned before, and that's why I want to speak to it earlier, is the fact that many of these same communities publish the applications of the people applying for the special um uh vacancy so that everybody really has a voter guide to have, and I don't think we've done that before in terms of what the city has included with their own process.

And I don't think we've done that before in terms of what the city has included with their own process.

So I'd like to find out more about that.

Mike might say that's not true, so I I don't want to misspeak.

And then many places have a candidate forum, and we could easily partner with uh League of Women Voters and others who have that reputation to create a candidate forum or forums in those 60 days, but with people having time to develop um their knowledge of the job, understanding from a job description, uh, what they can do to meet that job description, we can compare and contrast, we can provide that information to the electeds, and I'd like to stand by that.

Thank you.

Great.

Becky.

Yeah, thank you.

I just want to add a couple more things.

Um is I just want to be clear that when I talked about the raising hands, um, it's not that they wouldn't be taken seriously, it's just that it's a big deal.

It takes a while for people to make that strong decision to say, I want to be a uh city commissioner.

So if someone leaves suddenly, uh either tragedy or because they stepped away, um, to be able to ask people, hey, do you want to be a city commissioner?

It's like that takes time to think about, and so I think it adds to the time of the process.

I also think that um uh for me a hundred thousand dollars or more is a lot of money.

To me, that's a lot of money.

Um, and um and I I just want to just clarify too that while we did get email public comment, we've gotten survey public comment, we've had public hearings, we've had um conversations out in the community, so the number of emails coming in is not just our only public comment.

So I just wanted to kind of clarify where I was coming with that as well.

Um and while we you know may want to dig into more uh details around this idea of uh of a special election and what would be the logistics behind it, and what would be the cost behind it, and how often it would it be a benefit to us.

I'm wondering if for now we want to um say let's write in the 60 days with the public forum for the for the candidates uh and at least get that moving because of course we are moving on to more decisions at our next meeting.

Thank you.

Mike?

So Barb, then me sort of um Jan's point, we do publish the statement of interest and qualifications when we've done the appointments.

Um I believe we gave people uh two weeks to get those in, and then we had a uh at the public meeting where the appointment was going to be made, each individual also had an opportunity to state the reasons for why they wanted to be in the uh considerations.

So that just in the process of how we've done those.

Bob, then me.

Um so our next meeting on February 18th is supposed to be at a continued learning session around best practices around who the executive leader is of the city.

Um, and then beginning discussion around that topic with our preliminary decision date, March 5th.

So I'm wondering if we couldn't add a little bit of learning time around this and ask someone from the elections office to come talk with us, and maybe between now and then we refine the language on the two alternatives so that we can continue comparing and digging in and try to come up with a little bit of sort of clearer language around both and add in some of these things on the appointment process and make that a piece of the the agenda on the 18th, so we can move forward with our other discussion items tonight.

Okay.

Uh I want to say a couple things and and then we can decide.

Um, uh I recognize when I when I made my comments about incumbency.

Obviously, if someone gets appointed to the commission, and the the advantage they get is their name is in the news, they have name recognition.

I'm not denying that.

Um it we do live in a smaller city, so it's not the same as a complete unknown who gets to mail to all their constituents all the time.

That I like to make is that if we're doing a uh this is unfair to it, but a flash election.

It's not the same as doing a special election is not the same as doing a regular election.

The regular city commission elections, you file in June.

You can start earlier than that, um, and you're going June, July, August, September, October, walking the neighborhoods, talking to people.

I don't know if they do that anymore, but certainly we did when we were doing it.

That's total, it's a different kind of election than one which occurs in 90 days from when you're doing it.

And sure, you could extend it.

We could make it 120 days, but the longer you extend that, the longer there is no one in that position, and also the closer you are to doing what you would otherwise do if you uh just waited for the general election.

So I'm willing to um finish this discussion in the in our next meeting, but um I I'm also willing to hear a motion if someone wants to make it and vote on it uh unless there's more to be said.

Um we probably in the next 15 minutes can get through the next item.

Um but we're not gonna get any further than that, and that's probably just as well because the other items uh intersect with with even more with what we're doing around um wards and districts when we get to numbers and values and amount of time spent and all of that.

So um someone want to make a motion either way.

I move that we uh table these until our next uh meeting, and that would be the discussion on uh filling vacancies and um special elections.

Is there a second for that motion?

All right, hearing no second Barb.

Hearing no second, is there another the motion fails for lack of a second?

I mean, I I think we can make some time to have this conversation, so I'll I'll second Deanna's um motion.

I'm sorry, you seconded the motion.

I will second Deanna's motion.

It's been moved and seconded.

Is there a discussion before we vote on it?

I just like to be clear.

Yes, I have one thing.

Go ahead, Jan.

I just want to be clear if the motion will contain who's going to make sure that research is done, and we have something um, you know uh strong strong information uh that will cover it for the next meeting.

I will personally not be able to be at the next meeting, but I can try to get uh the names of the cities over to Carson that he could bring the names of what the names of the cities that are using this enlargement of the appointment process.

I could contact uh Eric Severite or or Jasmine and see if they could attend the meeting.

I think that's a fine suggestion that we um and they could probably put some material together for us to uh study before that meeting.

Okay.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor of the motion to table, so indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed to the I'm I'm in favor of it.

Um with the I because I I couldn't get my mute off fast enough, but I am in favor of it and bringing in Eric Semmer with that.

All right.

Uh I'm abstaining.

Thanks.

And I have not voted yet.

I'll vote in favor of it.

The motion carries four to zero with one abstention.

Okay.

Should we try to talk about the next meeting or should we try to work on duties of the commissioners?

And Becky, do you want to jump in on that?

Because maybe it may be a short discussion.

So, you know, in looking at um uh at the uh duties of the commissioners, I have learned from Mike that there is no job description right now for the commissioners.

And um, nor should we necessarily write one because, like Dan says, those duties may change, be um uh the the MCA may change and require the commissioners to do different things.

So, you know, in looking at um uh at the uh duties of the commissioners, I have learned from Mike that there is no job description right now for the commissioners, and um nor should we necessarily write one because like Dan says those duties may change the um uh the the MCA may change and require the commissioners to do different things, um, and so instead that we um put in there under section 2.01 general powers and duties that Barb and I um bring together some language to say that the that the um the city shall adopt a uh a job description for the city commissioners with clear duties and they must uh review this and adopt and either appoint or or adopt a new one every five years with review every five years or every three years.

So the the city um makes their own job description for commissioners and review it every three or five years.

Um according to the rotation, we would go with Jan.

Jan?

Yeah, Jan, go ahead.

I was gonna say I had written down that same thing as a motion to make, but I I'm wondering then procedurally, is this become a recommendation directly to the city, or will it have any language that we want to put into the charter?

Okay.

We could put it into the charter, um, or we could make it a recommendation.

So either um if you want to make that clear.

I'd like to have it in the charter that the city shall be responsible for developing a job description and following the adoption of a 2026 charter approval within 90 days, and that the um review of these job descriptions for all of the reasons that have been stated would be every five years for changes needed or changes if needed.

Okay, so I'm next in the rotation.

Yeah, Carson, you're next.

I I like this idea.

I don't think that we should put a job description in the charter, but I do think that it would be valuable for people who are running to have an idea what's expected of them, and people who get elected to have an idea what's expected to them.

A little anecdotal evidence.

One year, one election was happening, and a whole bunch of people filed.

There was a meeting.

No, thank you.

I haven't there was a meeting, and um at the end of it, two of the candidates dropped out because they had no idea what what they had signed up for, and I think it it would just be better to do that.

Um I think that much should go into the charter, including the transition language of 90 days.

Barbara So I'm I'm hearkening back to what we learned from our finance director early on about putting date certain and timeline certain into the charter, which is supposed to endure for many many years.

So I'm a little reluctant to be that prescriptive in the charter.

I I would rather see us develop a very clear recommendation that would go in our final report about developing a job description and clear expectations for what the role of a city commissioner is that expands on what is in the charter.

Um but every other city has it the way we have it in the charter that I've been looking at, are basically the same.

And so I'm I'm just not sure that charter is the place to get prescriptive about this because it will be fluid over time and whatever crises or trends of the day will change things.

So that's that's where I'm at on this one right now.

Do you think Carson, you skipped Mike.

Oh, I forgot Mike, I'm sorry.

Deanna and then to Mike.

Um I I think that um if we were to simply leave it to the I I have kind of mixed feelings about this because um if you leave it to the commissioners to write their own job description, um to me that's a lot of latitude in uh in any case, um I think it should be in the charter that it be done through a resolution, uh that the uh commissioners write a resolution, and that can uh have you know, then it's not really prescriptive in the charter, uh and it can be changed.

Mike, yeah, so I would recommend not pursuing a job description within the charter.

Um I'm not even sure that drafting a quote unquote job description is a good idea.

Um, so the first thing the charter says is that all powers vested in the city or all powers of the city are vested in the city commission.

So essentially, whatever the state allows the city of Bozeman to do, whatever the city commission has not delegated to staff, or whatever the state prevents the city from doing, is the job description of the the city commission.

So had you written a job description two years ago, you would have to rewrite it after the passing of the Montana Land Use Planning Act.

Subdivision and land use drastically changed in in Montana.

Property taxes have drastically changed.

Every legislative session, something changes, a new power is denied, a new requirement is mandated.

So I don't think it's a good idea to define a job description.

Furthermore, the city commission already adopted their norms and expectations in 2019.

If those between the rules of procedure that are in the municipal code and the 2019 norms and expectations resolution, if there was something not working, they would be the first ones who would want to change that.

It's been my experience having operated solely under the period of time that has that norms and expectations, that maybe the people filing for office don't understand.

But once you get on the commission, it's very clear what is expected of you.

Staff, especially Greg Sullivan, city uh city manager Chuck Wynne are doing a ton of work with our newly elected commissioner Alison Sweeney.

So she's come on, she's meeting with directors, she's taking plants of or tours of facilities.

Like there is a robust onboarding process to create the education that somebody will need in that place because it's in everybody's best interest for city commissioners to be set up for success.

I don't think it needs to be prescribed.

I I do think that if you think those norms or the rules of procedure need some fix, a recommendation in the final report would be the way to address those specifically, but the commission has that power and authority already.

So uh my response to that would be and I don't know what expectations are when I was on um before I was on the commission, I was on the citizen advisory board.

Our liaisons that our uh commissioner liaison never attended.

We were left with the staff.

The staff person um was uh jokingly referred to as Dr.

No.

Any idea that we had good, bad, or indifferent, no, that's not a good idea, and this is why.

We had no access to the commission in a way that we could throw ideas around and and see where it went.

So in my mind, a job description would be that commissioners are expected to go to the advisory board meetings that they are otherwise assigned to, and which is a whole process.

Second, we never had any um protocol for what you do if you're the commission liaison to a advisory commission.

Some people thought um advisory boards I should go listen.

It's primarily a listening thing, see what they're thinking, bring that information to the commission and interpret for that group the commission and and sort of what it's doing.

Other people saw this as this is my opportunity to get my agenda through through my assignment, and um were very directive and all of that.

And I always felt like it would be helpful to at least have a set of norms uh around that.

Um, maybe I don't maybe I misunderstood what's in the norms, but I don't think that level of detail is in there.

Um I'm happy to recommend it.

So the city commission adopted those norms and expectations for themselves and their board members with the high performing boards resolution.

So in addition, they in 2019 they adopted norms and expectations for themselves in 2021 as part of the consolidation process, they adopted a similar modeled resolution for norms, duties, and expectations for the commission liaisons, staff liaisons, board members, presiding officers, it's all in that resolution as well.

So if again, if if they think it's not working, which it's been a topic of discussion of is the current board structure working, they have the opportunity in their priority setting to say, hey, let's take a look at that.

That's something that staff's been doing in the city manager's work plan already.

But the commission has the resolution that it says what their expectations are, and if they don't understand it, they can change that.

So that leaves Can I get an opportunity to share my thoughts?

Sure.

I haven't had a turn yet.

Um thank you.

Um I I'm thinking a lot about uh Deanna who's who said that the job of a commissioner is very important.

We elect people, it's a big deal.

Um I have been on a lot of boards, I'm uh on boards now.

Um I ran a board with an as a nonprofit.

I've never had a board member not have a job description.

Um and sometimes, you know, Mike, I hear what you're saying.

If the city commission thought it was important, we'd have one.

Um, and yet Carson, as a former city commissioner, is saying that it was super unclear and that there are people who were gonna run, but then they didn't really know what the heck they'd have to be doing as a city commissioner.

How much you know what what really does it entail?

Um I have a really hard time th thinking why what would be the harm of having a job description for this very important position.

And I am absolutely not saying we should put the job description in the charter.

What I'm what I suggest is that we would say something to the effect of the city of Bozeman must have a commissioner job description and then review it at least every five years.

Meaning, to your point, Mike, okay, the UDC just came in, jobs the the job has changed.

Great.

You guys have every ability to pull it back up and make changes, but then everybody knows what the job description is.

And also when you talk about, I think about um Dan talking about how you know the the legislative nature of the commission is not to go in and tell the guy how to plow the roads.

And so what is the legislative job of the commissioner?

When it's in one document and we can share it around, we can all see it, the public can see it, then clarity is golden.

And so um to Barb's point, I I wouldn't want to put the 90 days into the charter, I would put that into the transition plan.

So transition plan could say that the commissioner job description must be adopted no later than April 1, which is 90 days 2027, and that could be the transition plan.

But um, that's what I would suggest.

So uh um I lost my thought.

Shoot.

Oh, to me, it also had to do with justifying the salary, because when people don't know what commissioners do and what they're being paid to do, it's very hard to um to justify more money.

And and so it would help us, I think, to think about is it a part-time position, which I think it is, Commissioner is.

Um, but I also am struck, and I just wanted to say this before we end, the position of mayor has been a full-time position since I've been the the mayor.

I don't know of a single mayor after that to didn't think that they were doing at least 40 hours plus of work every week.

Um, and so when we get to that discussion, um I'd like people to think about that when they say the mayor should get a stipend, it's not a full-time position.

You can say it's a full-time position and they shouldn't get paid for it, but but it is a full-time position, and it has been for at least 10 years, and there's no reason to think it will be less unless we change somehow um that level of involvement.

So, where do we want to go with this?

It's we're running up against the clock.

Do we want to put this discussion as well over?

Um have some or does someone want to make a motion?

I'll make a motion.

I'll make a motion that we add one line that the city of Bozeman must have a commissioner job description and then review it every five years or more.

Second.

In section 2.01.

Thank you.

And then with that, is there a transition piece that the transition plan would include the transition plan would include that that the commissioner job description must be adopted no later than April 1, 2027?

Further discussion.

Where would this job description live?

I think the job description would live in the same place the norms live.

Not in the as a resolution.

As a resolution.

It should probably say that in the motion.

Well, I'm hoping they'll say it in the writing.

Or in the right.

Yeah.

Any other discussion?

Mike, is resolution the right.

Is that what it would be called if it was passed?

Something that's passed by the commission.

I'm actually asking for a clue.

Is it a resolution?

Yeah, it is.

Or is it an ordinance or a policy or this would be the type of thing we would do by resolution?

Okay.

Did you hear that, Becky?

Yep.

Further discussion.

Hearing seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, so indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Motion carries unanimously.

All right.

We're gonna when we get to the next meeting, we are going to pick up the um commissioner vacancy.

Hopefully, we'll have someone from the election office here to help us think it through a little bit more.

Um, and then um we'll begin a basic discussion of the number of commissioners.

Uh some of that in my mind is very dependent on the later discussion of ward and districts.

But but I think I think we can benefit from a little bit.

The same with the pay discussion, but also leave some time for initial thoughts and on whether we're going to we're gonna remain a commission.

Commission manager manager system or a mayor commission system, and what it might look like that's different than now, or whether it would stay the same.

Can I add one yes?

One question is are is there any further education around that topic that people need?

Are there questions that somebody needs to get answered?

Or do we feel like tonight from Dan was enough to start having the conversation?

Good question.

Comments, Jen?

I was going to say, I think if we all maybe go back again to the Lansing study, they do try to uh ferret that out between those three uh different types of systems.

And then if there's any way to ask Dan to have materials in advance to us, I really really would love.

I I'm sorry, if if whoever is talking to Dan could please have the materials in the agenda in advance.

It's it's very hard to read and follow and think um without all the vast materials that he hands out in paper.

And I also, without Mike's uh prowess to get things on the screen, people in the audience really have no way of participating.

I think his next presentation would be coming in March, and he's asked for more time so that he can do just that, and hopefully um we will be able to get that scheduled and done.

He's not scheduled to come back on in February.

Um so I I would see the possibility of some motions on the um vacancies, the number of commissioners, um, mayor part-time, full-time, that sort of stuff, or not.

We may decide not to.

We may decide to defer that, and then um really sort of a general discussion of the main topic that then gave us the info about, but not motions on that.

The motions on that would come on March 5th.

Does that work for everybody?

Yes.

All right, is there any public comment to end the meeting?

Hello, Natsuki Nakamura.

I forgot to do my disclosures earlier.

I'm a member of the economic vitality board and a member of the Better Boseman Coalition, but speaking as an individual.

Um, I was just gonna make a few comments about the vacancy.

I I don't want to make it too personal, but just some specifics about what we see in the recent vacancy appointments to kind of maybe put a little more specifics about why there was some anxiety in the community.

While it's rare, we've seen them happen for a variety of reasons for conduct, health, and for someone moving away.

So it could happen again.

For Commissioner Pomeroy, she was unable to participate as a commissioner for I think nearly five months before she actually officially stepped down.

So there was a time where the commission was functioning with four people on the commission, and that was you know not ideal to not have her voice, but it was still functional.

Um then when she did officially step down, the appointment was in place for nearly two years from December 2023 until the election in 2025.

So just under two years that that appointment was filled in her spot.

So I think some of the things I wanted to note was that as a participant in the audience, it felt like the criteria that was being considered was different for different appointments and was could be conceived as arbitrary.

So sometimes some of the commissioners cited that this person has participated in an advisory board, and that was of a good reason to appoint them.

Um they might have cited that there was a lot of public comment in someone's favor, but ignoring that there was also public comment for other people that were not being considered.

Um then in some cases parts of their identity were were considered as reasons to appoint someone, so that the fact that they were a renter or that they were in the queer community was cited as a reason to justify the appointing with a similar identity, but again, for a commission promo, things like her immigrant status or her small business perspective were not cited as reasons to replace her appointments.

So some of those criteria felt very arbitrary to be used in one appointment, but not in another.

Um I think the process also varied from the recent appointments we've seen.

Um, one of them they used uh each commissioner gave their top three, and there was consensus given of the one name that came across in the top three in all the commissioners in a different one.

They only did top two, and they chose the highest ranking out of those those rankings.

And so the process was very different from one to the next, and I think the appointment might have been different if it was a similar process.

So I think if there are requirements that are being considered, like they have to have served on an advisory board previously, um, or something like that.

If that if that's an important criteria, maybe make it explicit so that it's feels fair and people know that when they put their name in or not.

Um and then the process would be, yeah, if there's gonna be some forum or some other way that people can hear from these um candidates, um, just making it more consistent will feel like it's less arbitrary based on who's who's running that particular meeting of the appointment.

Um, and then I would be supportive if there is over a year left in the term that you can keep that seat vacant until it can be elected in the next election.

So I would be supportive of if it's a long time, though it's it's okay to keep it vacant for a while and let people decide and the voters decide.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Is there any online is there anything else tonight?

Then this meeting is adjourned at 7 34.