I'll call to order the Bozeman City Study Commission meeting of May 20th, 2026, and ask all who are capable to please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

It will be followed by a moment of silence, for which you may be seated if you would like.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

To the public for which it stands, one nation.

Indivisible.

Liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is changes to the agenda.

Are there any changes?

I didn't think any.

Next item is public comment on anything within the jurisdiction of the study commission.

Please limit your comments to three minutes or less.

Please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments.

There will be time before each item on unfinished business and new business.

If you want to save your comments to make them more close in time to when we might be discussing them, but if you want to make comments now, you can do it.

You just can't have two bites of the apple.

Okay.

I see someone is ready to give public comment.

The floor is yours, sir.

Yes, hi.

Um my name is Brian Close.

I'm a former study commissioner and my principal residence, and this is what this is about.

My principal residence is at 1140 Cherry Drive.

Um back when we drafted this charter, there was a problem with landlords voting from their rental addresses, even though they did not live in town.

And um it was uh getting to be a problem.

So when we were looking at the word for defining an elector under section 2.02 for who's an elector for voting for the city commission, we put in the phrase principal residence, which is more exclusive exclusive than the constitutional definition that has currently been substituted for that.

I've litigated this issue in the sense I had a I had a couple cases before the commissioner of political practices, and the problem with Montana law, and this included a case that wasn't mine from people who are voting both in Wyoming and Park County.

Um Park County, Montana, is that there really isn't a good definition of residency.

So I would encourage you to go back to the original charter language of principal residents.

If it's unconstitutional, we still have the constitution to fall back on, and it may discourage some fairly bad conduct.

Uh finally, just want to mention as a citizen and as a as a study commissioner, I supported seven study commissioners back in 2006.

That's why you have that hokey vote language that you were deleting from the charter to increase the commission.

I encourage you to increase the commission.

There's just too much discount's too big for five people to represent it.

Uh to increase the commission to seven.

Uh and I can stay a little bit if you have questions, but I do have uh other duties.

Um so those are those are my concerns and recommendations.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brian.

Are there any questions of Brian in case?

Okay.

Fair enough.

Is there any other public comment at this time?

I saw three people wave, but I assume they didn't want to give public comment.

They were waving goodbye to Brian.

Is there any other public comment at this time?

Thank you.

Hi there, uh Mark Camp and I am a Bogar Park uh resident.

I'm also the president in grep for Bogert Park Neighborhood Association.

I speak for myself though.

I did submit written public comment in response to some comments that came in about allowing the commission to have full discretion as to the creation and uh uh basically striking the neighborhood associations and ink from the uh from the charter.

So uh as you would see in that comment, I'm pretty opposed to that.

Um I just want to remind uh this body that the city commission has all three branches of traditional government powers.

Some of them are limited, but they have executive uh judicial judicial and legislative powers.

And I ask if you have a body with that much power, and you don't put something like the neighborhood associations into the charter, and you leave it up to a body with that much power, um, to decide whether or not they want that.

Um the body, neighborhood associations don't even have that much power, uh, which I think is just amazing that they would want to strike it, but that's kind of a sign of where we're at.

Uh, and again, I would just encourage you to consider that uh with reference to those comments about striking it entirely.

Also, I I did pick out, I think it was 8.02 as probably being kind of superfluous um in the charter.

And if you look at my comments, you'll see that I think you could just move some of that language into other sections to sections shorter.

I think short and sweet is always better.