Article VIII of Bozeman’s proposed 2026 charter, annotated

§8.05(b): Powers

“Unless otherwise required by law, city boards are advisory only. They have no administrative authority unless specifically required by law, or interlocal agreement.”

What it does: It is a ceiling. Whatever a board is asked to do, it advises and nothing more. Fourteen words establish the limit, and they apply to every board the Commission has created or will create. There is no parallel sentence anywhere in §8.04. The charter tells you what a city board is not. It never tells you what the Inter-Neighborhood Council is not.

§8.02: Governmental Structures to Support and Coordinate Engagement

“Neighborhood associations, the Inter-Neighborhood Council and city boards are essential partners in municipal decision-making. The city shall adapt existing governmental structures and establish new governmental structures to oversee, support, coordinate, track, and measure public engagement.”

What it does: “Shall… establish new governmental structures.” Mandatory, unnamed, unbounded, and carrying no cost estimate. “Track, and measure” implies permanent administrative capacity, not a one-time act. In fiscal terms this is arguably a larger and vaguer commitment than the single full-time position in §8.04(c), and unlike that position, nothing about it is quantified. This clause has attracted almost no public attention. It should.

§8.04(b): Recognition of Neighborhood Associations

“The city shall support the creation and maintenance of resident-led neighborhood associations. The city commission shall establish by ordinance minimum recognition requirements for neighborhood associations that support participation, deliberation, and communication between residents and the city. These requirements shall include, but not be limited to:

1. Clear geographic boundaries developed in partnership with the neighborhood and the Inter-Neighborhood Council;
2. Membership of a neighborhood association shall be open to all residents, property owners, business owners, and nonpartisan organizations located within a neighborhood association’s boundary;
3. A majority of a neighborhood’s leadership, as defined by the neighborhood association’s bylaws, shall be residents of the neighborhood and only residents of the neighborhood may serve as the neighborhood association’s Inter-Neighborhood Council representative;
4. Adherence to established by-laws to ensure democratic voting procedures, continuity of governance, and the ability for a neighborhood association’s selected representative to vote as a member of the Inter-Neighborhood Council;
5. A copy of the neighborhood association’s by-laws and all amendments shall be filed with the city;
6. Periodic meetings, including an annual meeting;
7. Demonstrating it has a means of regular, accessible, and two-way communication with all residents in the neighborhood;
8. Capacity to develop and transmit advisory input on neighborhood and citywide issues to the Inter-Neighborhood Council.”

What it does: This is the provision that cuts against the loudest criticism of the INC, and we print it in full for that reason. The Commission, the elected body, sets the entry rules by ordinance, and §8.04(b) is a floor, not a ceiling: “include, but not be limited to.” Item (4) requires bylaws ensuring democratic voting procedures. Item (3) requires resident-majority leadership and restricts the INC seat to a resident. Anyone who tells you INC delegates appoint themselves has not read this subsection. The problem with the Inter-Neighborhood Council is not how its delegates are chosen. It is what the charter obliges the Commission to do once they are.

§8.04(c): City Liaison

“The City shall designate a full-time, fully dedicated staff member to serve as a liaison to the Inter-Neighborhood Council and neighborhood associations. The staff liaison shall support coordination, leadership development, training, communication, and assist in facilitating participatory planning, budgeting, and policy engagement processes.”

Start with what is not new. The 2006 charter already requires this position. Its §4.06(e), also captioned “City Liaison,” already provides that the City shall designate a staff member to serve as liaison to the Inter-Neighborhood Council and neighborhood associations. Same duty, same mandatory “shall,” same verb “designate.” A liaison position exists at the city today because the charter has required one for twenty years. Anyone who tells you the 2026 draft creates a city staffer for the INC is wrong, and we are not going to tell you that.

What it does: The change is three words. Where 2006 requires the city to designate a staff member, §8.04(c) requires it to designate a “full-time, fully dedicated” staff member. That is a real change and it is worth objecting to on its own terms: the doubled phrasing forecloses splitting the role across other duties, so the assignment cannot be reduced or shared when a future council’s priorities differ. There is no qualifier attached: the phrases “subject to appropriation,” “as resources permit,” “when practicable” and “to the extent feasible” appear nowhere in Article VIII. And no other advisory body in Bozeman is guaranteed a dedicated full-time staffer by any instrument, let alone by the charter.

One further point of precision, in fairness: the verb is “designate,” not “hire,” “create a position” or “appropriate funds for.” The charter compels a full-time dedicated assignment; it does not by its own terms compel a new hire or name a funding source. What it does compel is that the full-time, fully dedicated character of the assignment passes beyond the reach of any future commission. See permanence, below. The city manager objected at the June 18, 2026 public hearing that the requirement “requires a full time staff member which has budgetary considerations.” The requirement survived.

§8.04(d) and (d)(1): Inter-Neighborhood Council

“There is hereby established an Inter-Neighborhood Council to be composed of representatives selected by each recognized neighborhood association.

1) Purpose and Role. The Inter-Neighborhood Council shall provide a forum for neighborhood associations to gather, deliberate, share information, and develop recommendations to the city commission and city manager on neighborhood and city-wide issues;”

What it does: Establishes the body and states its purpose. This language substantially carries forward the 2006 charter’s §4.06(d) and is not a change. We quote it because everything that follows hangs off it, and because “develop recommendations to the city commission and city manager” is the trigger for the response duty six clauses later. Fifteen neighborhood associations are recognized today, so the INC has fifteen seats.

§8.04(d)(2)

“Representatives to the Inter-Neighborhood Council selected by their Neighborhood Association are not bound by, but are expected to observe the City and State Code of Ethics in the performance of their obligations;”

What it does: “Not bound by” is the operative phrase and it is doing real work. Every other board member in Bozeman is bound: BMC 2.03.470 defines the covered agencies as the commission and all other boards and offices of the city “without exception,” and covers officials “whether elected or appointed, whether paid or unpaid.” BMC 2.03.480 then requires that, on appointment and annually after, “each employee, official and member of every board or committee shall verify” compliance. “Expected to observe” carries no certification, no enforcement mechanism, and no removal provision for a representative who does not.

Why this is a loosening, not the status quo: current code calls the INC “an advisory board to the city commission” (BMC 2.05.1210.A). Read against 2.03.470’s “without exception,” there is a real argument that INC delegates are already officials bound by the ethics code and its annual certification. The code even requires INC bylaws to contain a conflict-of-interest provision (BMC 2.05.1210.F.6). That question is genuinely arguable today. §8.04(d)(2) answers it, and answers it in favour of exemption, and because a charter provision outranks an ordinance, that answer would govern. The study commission reached this wording after going back and forth on exactly this question through the summer of 2026, settling on it at its August 6 meeting.

§9.01(b): Board of Ethics

“The city commission shall appropriate sufficient funds to the city manager to provide annual training and education of city officials, city boards, the Inter-Neighborhood Council, and employees, regarding the state and city ethics codes. City officials, board members, and employees shall take an oath to uphold the state and city ethics codes.”

What it does: This is the charter’s only express appropriation mandate: its only “shall appropriate.” Three provisions of the draft bear on the Inter-Neighborhood Council and the ethics codes, and we set them out flatly so you can draw your own conclusion. One: §9.01(b), first sentence quoted above, requires the Commission to appropriate funds for annual ethics training and names the Inter-Neighborhood Council among the recipients, listed separately from “city boards.” Two: §9.01(b), second sentence, requires an oath to uphold those codes from “City officials, board members, and employees” and does not name the Inter-Neighborhood Council, which the sentence before it had just named. Three: §8.04(d)(2) provides that INC representatives “are not bound by” the City and State Code of Ethics. Those are the three texts. They are quoted in full on this page.

In fairness: the training appropriation covers city officials, city boards and employees on identical terms. It is not an INC-specific perk and we do not present it as one. The observation is about the combination of the three provisions, not about the appropriation on its own.

§8.04(d)(7)

“The City shall consult the Inter-Neighborhood Council during the formative stages of citywide planning efforts, policy initiatives, and budget discussions that affect neighborhood associations;”

What it does: “Formative stages” is the phrase that matters. A formative stage is before a proposal reaches a public hearing, before the rest of the city is in a position to comment on it at all. This is a seat at the table earlier than the table is open to anyone else, and there is no equivalent anywhere in §8.05 for any other board. The obligation is unqualified: the study commission debated “when practicable” at length on June 4, 2026 and voted to take the flexibility language out.

Two real ambiguities we are not going to paper over. First, the subject is “The City,” not “the city commission”: the adjacent clause (d)(8) names the commission and the city manager explicitly, and this one does not. Whether the consultation duty binds the elected body or only the administration is not settled by the text. Second, the reach of “that affect neighborhood associations” is genuinely unclear: it may qualify only “budget discussions” or all three listed items, and “affect” is undefined. Read narrowly it is a modest obligation. Read to mean policy affecting the neighborhoods rather than the associations as organisations, very little citywide policy falls outside it. Neither “formative stages” nor the deadline is defined anywhere in the charter.

§8.04(d)(8)

“The city commission and city manager shall provide timely responses to recommendations submitted by the Inter-Neighborhood Council, including an explanation of how such input was considered and the reasons for divergence;”

What it does: This is the strongest provision in the article, and it is unusually solid for three reasons. It names the elected body: “the city commission and city manager,” not the vaguer “the City” used one clause earlier. It is “shall” with no qualifier. And the duty is specifically to explain divergence. The clause exists precisely to govern the case where the Commission does not take the INC’s advice.

Why it is a power and not a courtesy: anyone may send the Commission a recommendation. No one else in Bozeman can compel an answer to one. There is no cap on how many recommendations the INC may submit and no limit on their subject matter: (d)(1) contemplates recommendations on “neighborhood and city-wide issues.” Compelling the elected body to place a matter on its own record and justify itself is agenda-setting, and it otherwise takes a majority of sitting commissioners. Note the limit, though: the duty runs only to recommendations from the INC. An individual neighborhood association that writes to the Commission directly is not covered.

§8.04(d)(9)

“The staff liaison shall work with the Inter-Neighborhood Council to expand the neighborhood program city-wide and develop boundaries to include more residents in a Neighborhood Association.”

What it does: It makes growth a charter obligation of the full-time employee created by §8.04(c). Read with that subsection, the charter requires the city to pay someone full-time to enlarge the body the charter requires the city to consult and answer. There is no ceiling on the number of associations (an earlier draft cap of twenty was removed after public objection), no minimum association size, and no tie-breaker in §8.04(b)(1) if the city and the INC disagree about where a boundary goes.

The honest version: more residents inside neighborhood associations is a reasonable goal, and if the program actually reached the whole city the representativeness objection would weaken considerably. Today, association boundaries cover about a third of Bozeman’s residents, 17,652 of 53,293 by the 2020 census (methodology). The objection is not that expansion is bad. It is that the consult-and-answer duties take effect on the day the charter does, at whatever coverage exists then, and the expansion is an aspiration with no deadline attached.

§10.01: Proposal for Amendment

“Amendments to this charter may be framed and proposed: 1) In the manner provided by state law, or 2) By ordinance of the commission containing the full text of the proposed amendment, or 3) By report of a study commission created pursuant to state law, or 4) By the voters of the city…”

What it does: Four routes to propose a change. Note route 2: the City Commission can propose a charter amendment by ordinance, with no study commission and no petition drive. Montana law provides the same at MCA 7-3-103(2)(b). This is the mechanism behind our central point: declining this package does not kill the reforms in it, because any one of them can be proposed on its own. The good parts of the draft are listed here. What §10.01 governs is proposal. When an election may actually be held is a question of state law, and we take it up below.

§10.02 and §10.03: Election and Adoption of Amendment

“Upon delivery to the election authorities of the report of a charter commission or delivery by the city clerk of an adopted ordinance or a petition finally determined sufficient, proposing an amendment pursuant to Section 10.01, or as otherwise provided by state law, the election authorities shall submit the proposed amendment to the voters of the city at an election, pursuant to state law.

If a majority of those voting upon a proposed charter amendment vote in favor of it, the amendment shall become effective at the time fixed in the amendment or, if no time is therein fixed, 30 days after its adoption by the voters.”

What it does: Every route in §10.01 ends at the same place. However an amendment is proposed, it goes to the voters, and it takes effect only on a majority of those voting. There is no route that ends anywhere else. Note also the closing phrase of §10.02: the election authorities submit the amendment to the voters “pursuant to state law.” The charter does not set its own election calendar and does not override the limits state law places on when such an election may be held.

MCA 7-3-155(1): Three-year moratorium

“Unless the constitution requires otherwise, an election on the question of changing the form of local government, charter, or consolidation plan may not be conducted again for 3 years.”

What it does, and what nobody can tell you yet: The November 3, 2026 vote is an election on the question of changing Bozeman’s charter, so this provision is triggered by it. What is genuinely unsettled is how far the bar reaches. Does it prevent only a repeat of the same whole-charter, up-or-down question, or does it also catch a later, narrower amendment question put up by commission ordinance? The statute does not say. We found no Montana Attorney General opinion and no case law construing it either way. Anyone who gives you a confident answer, in either direction, is guessing.