The Bozeman City Commission met on April 14, 2026, for a regular meeting that included updates on city projects, a special presentation on municipal court operations, and a lengthy work session on traffic safety. The meeting began with approval of the consent agenda, followed by public comments on a range of topics, and concluded with appointments and a commitment to further discuss traffic safety funding and strategies.
Welcome to our April fourteenth City Commission meeting. Um we have a exciting agenda this afternoon, this evening. Um a reminder that all of our city commission meetings are open to the public. If you have a disability that requires assistance, we do ask that you you connect with our Deputy City Deputy City Clerk, Alex Newby, and we can get you situated. All of those instructions are available on our agenda and on our Commission website. Um as we start this meeting, I would like to let's start with a pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence or mindfulness. The first thing we do is see if there are any changes to the agenda. City manager. Mayor, there is one or Deputy Mayor, there's one uh change to the agenda uh with your concurrence. I would like to move uh action item or only action item of the night to directly after the consent agenda and before public comment to accommodate a uh unexpected staff members uh conflict tonight. Uh it would be very helpful if we could do that for him. We're happy to do that. So action item J, the resolution to create a special improvement lighting district will now move in front of item H public comment on non-agenda items. Next we uh need to authorize the absence of our our leader, uh Mayor Morrison and uh Commissioner Bowden. Yes, I can do that. Um I move to authorize the absence of Mayor Morrison. Second. Mr. Newby, would you poll us? Commissioner Bodie. Aye. Commissioner Magic. Uh Commissioner Sweeney. Aye. Deputy Mayor Fisher. Aye. He is excused. Next, we have FYIs. Any FYIs from the Commission? Commissioner Bo Commissioner Sweeney's excuse me. Thank you, uh, Deputy Mayor. So um I did just want to let everyone know, since we have a full room, the Lakota group is in town this week doing engagement on our neighborhood conservation overlay district. And you can engage with them tomorrow at the business improvement district meeting at noon. Um you can also engage with them tomorrow evening at the historic preservation advisory board meeting at 6 p.m. And um check out lots of information about the neighborhood conservation overlay on our Engage Bozeman webpage. Thank you, Commissioner Sweeney, Commissioner Buddy. Yes, I've got a couple of public um FYIs here. First, I just want to note that the sustainability board met last week and give you a quick summary here. Um we talked about the forest management plan and got a presentation um from our forestry department and had some really good conversations um, also including folks from Branch Out Bozeman and all of the work that they've been doing to plant trees all around town. So um we had a great discussion about that, a lot of public comments in support of trees and how we're kind of thinking about trees in both public places and private places. Um then we had I think what is possibly the first ever ranked choice vote of a um advisory board where our board members voted on the best poster design for um a fourth grade class submission for the Beyond Plastics poster, which will remind folks who walk into grocery stores to bring their own back. And we um, you know, we we followed Robert's rules. Don't worry, we did make a formal vote at the end. But based on the ranked choice vote, um, the Monfortin fourth grade class won the poster contest. So that was just very cool. Um engagement opportunity at the Sustainability Board. And then this past week, the deputy mayor and I went on a walk in Cooper Park with some Cooper Park neighbors. It wasn't a formal neighborhood association event, but there were maybe 15 or more folks there. We walked down seventh between Koch and Babcock and received a lot of feedback from from those neighbors. And I'm just wondering um if we might be able to incorporate some of the feedback that they provided into the neighborhood conservation overlay district guideline updates.