The Bozeman City Commission met on April 28, 2026, for a regular meeting that included a work session on the City Manager’s work plan and commission priorities. The evening began with the Pledge of Allegiance and updates from commissioners, followed by consent items, extensive public comment on a range of issues, and a deep dive into the city’s strategic priorities. Key topics included interim zoning, social housing, public safety funding, and upcoming ballot measures.
Non-Agenda Items:
Work Session Comments:
Interim Zoning and NCOD Update: During commissioner FYI, all five commissioners gave their positions on the request for an interim zoning ordinance (IZO) for the NCOD:
Work Plan and Priorities Refinement: The commission held a lengthy work session to finalize the joint city manager work plan. Key areas addressed:
Language and Structural Edits:
Meeting adjourned.
Good evening, everyone, as we call this April twenty eighth, twenty twenty six Boltzmann City Commission meeting to order. Follow along and engage in the meeting today. Um if you're in the in the room, you're already here, check. If you're wanting to attend virtually or online, you can dial in uh ver via the phone number that's on any of our agendas. You can join us remotely from our uh city videos page. And you can just watch um live via cable channel 190. Um all of those have an uh different ways in which you can engage. Some of them have the opportunity to provide remote public comment. That's only coming through our city video page. Um if anyone submitted written public comment before noon today, we have all gotten those. Um they were socialized throughout the commission and and the related staff for public comments that came in before noon today. Um so just as a reminder for anyone trying to submit public comment comments at Bozeman.net. Um, if they come in before noon, we will get them and we will be able to consider them for this meeting. Um without further ado, we will move on to our Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence. Moving on, do we have any changes to our agenda this evening? Good evening, Mayor. There are no changes tonight. Excellent. Now moving on to FYI. Are there any commission FYI this evening? I have one. Sure. Commissioner Magic. Um I am doing a walk with the commissioner tomorrow. Uh Commissioner Sweeney is gonna join me on this one. It's gonna be a walk of Bozeman Creek, at least that part of the creek we can actually see. Uh we're gonna start here at City Hall in the parking lot at 515 and go approximately let's see, past Bogard to the lineier park. There's a place where the creek kind of crosses the bridge. This is gonna be dog friendly, and we're also gonna pick up trash. Sounds like a great time. Thank you. Yeah, Deputy Mayor. Um I just want to speak briefly. We have been uh we have received a uh a letter from the inner neighborhood council asking us to consider an interim zoning ordinance or uh pause uh on on larger developments within the um COD, the neighborhood conservation overlay district. Uh the historic preservation board has voted to ask us to take up this matter. Commissioner Sweeney, you've been asking us as well from your spot here. Um I just wanted to speak briefly, if I could, to that request, um, just to explain some of my the reasoning. And and I I see that I have a responsibility as deputy mayor and a member of this commission to ensure that our um our public processes and votes have integrity, that our city government and our uh commission are predictable, and that our vision and policies work citywide. Everything hinges off those. And I have given honest consideration to uh two of these requests for interim zoning ordinance and concluded that that request doesn't meet that threshold on several points. The first one is that we already made this decision through a legitimate process. We spent four years um rewriting the development code with extensive public input. The process was explicitly included discussions about downtown scale and neighborhood concerns and protections. And the result was a new code that reflects those concerns and that we just adopted. And to me, government has to be predictable or it stops working. My responsibility, and I would argue our responsibility as a commission is not to respond to every request, but it's to provide stability and predictability. And if we pause projects just immediately after adopting a new code, we undermine that trust in the system, not just for developers, but for residents, for city staff, and for anyone trying to invest in this community. We have a process underway. I'd like, and I feel strongly that we need to let it work. We knew when we adopted the code that the NCOD was in was uh guidelines were unfinished.