HomeMy WebLinkAbout12-18-25 Public Comment - N. Nakamura - Regarding the Govt study Employee SurveyFrom:Natsuki Nakamura
To:Bozeman Goverment Study Commission
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Regarding the Govt study Employee Survey
Date:Thursday, December 18, 2025 7:38:14 PM
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Dear Bozeman Study Commission,
Thank you for allowing me to provide oral comment today. I am also sending some of my
comments in writing with more detail and also since two of the study commissioners were notable to attend today.
Regarding the employee survey from the study commission, I think there is a lot of value in
trying to get the perspectives from folks who work for the City. I also appreciate the extraefforts made to the survey to make sure identities are protected so that employees feel
comfortable participating.
Since there are many City employees who do not live in Bozeman (so might not even be theones to vote on elected officials), I find the questions regarding districts irrelevant (I would
suggest removing them, honestly, to focus the survey more on insights from having worked atthe City). If there are employees who feel strongly about districts, their opinion may have
already been captured if they took the first survey, but I don't think a change like havingdistricts or not has as much impact on the day-to-day operations for City employees as
something like changing to a mayor-executive structure. More importantly, though, I think thequestions about choosing between commission-manager vs mayor-executive model can be
framed in a more productive way.
I think the important piece surveying City employees would hope to pull out (without gettinginto personalities!) is how much do employees feel their day-to-day operations or department
priorities are impacted based on who the mayor or commissioners are? How much are theyimpacted when there is turnover in a city manager? Having a stronger or executive mayor (vs
a city manager) could mean the mayor has the ability to appoint new heads of departments,which could potentially be more unstable for city employees or shift priorities with a new
administration.
For example, when I lived in Anchorage (with an executive mayor), funding for particulardepartments could vary based on who the mayor was, and how things were discussed or
prioritized/de-prioritized (especially on some issues that could be more touchy, such as publichealth during COVID, DEI initiatives, or sustainability). There were sometimes incidents
where longtime employees left the city or changed departments because their director whothey had good relations with was replaced by a different director by the executive mayor.
Thank you for expressing interest in adding a question about how much a city employee
interacts with advisory boards or neighborhood associations. (I have seen various employeesfrom community development or parks present to boards, but I'm guessing there are many
employees that rarely interact with any of the boards or INC).
Regarding adding more elected positions (eg. city attorney, clerk, etc), it would be interesting
to hear from employees (again, without getting into personalities!) if they see benefit fromhaving some of these roles elected (maybe even specifically ask which roles), or perhaps their
day-to-day would be negatively impacted by a potential loss of institutional knowledge and alearning curve each election cycle in some of these roles.
I think getting more explicit with some of the potential pros and cons from changes will help
residents think through what structural changes we should advocate for in this study.
Thank you for your consideration, and for all your time digging into this. Natsuki Nakamura