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HomeMy WebLinkAbout03-16-26 Public Comment - H. Happel - Thoughts on Citizen Advisory BoardsFrom:Henry Happel To:Bozeman Goverment Study Commission Cc:Carson Taylor Subject:[EXTERNAL]Thoughts on Citizen Advisory Boards Date:Monday, March 16, 2026 4:13:49 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. I am writing to offer my views on Bozeman citizen advisory boards. These views are mostly informed by my almost decade of service on the Community Development Board. The comments that follow should be taken in the context of my overall belief that the City is well managed, and that the Commissioners and employees of the City perform their roles in what they believe to be the best interests of the City. Authority of Advisory Boards: First, on a matter expressly before the StudyCommission, I do not think that citizen advisory boards should be empowered to make any final decisions on behalf of the City. This authority should rest solely with the Commissioners who are elected directly by the citizens. Giving advisory boards decision-making powers could politicize appointments to the boards, provideunwarranted political cover to Commissioners, and empower unelected citizens to derail City projects that would have met with City Commission approval. Purpose of Citizen Advisory Boards: It is important to remember that all advisoryboards exist to provide advice to the City Commission. As a result, there is, or at least ought to be, some tension between the advisory boards and City staff. This is a feature, not a bug. In some circumstances, City staff would prefer not to have citizens looking over their shoulders and offering independent advice on matters where staffconsiders itself the experts. The contrary argument, and the one that prevails in having citizen advisory boards at all, is that these boards offer an additional and hopefully informed point of view on various issues of the day and that these points of view are of use to the Commission. City Ordinance 5323: In 2021, the Commission, I think at the behest of then City Manager Jeff Mihelich, passed Ordinance 5323 which imposes a number of restraints on citizen advisory boards. While many of the provisions in Ordinance 5323 are fine,some are not. Overall, the Ordinance weakens the effectiveness of the advisory boards, suggests that Boards should just stay out of the way of City staff, and reflects an unwarranted level of paranoia about board members. Here are the most egregious of these provisions in the order in which they appear in the Ordinance: Subsection 2.3: “The Board should communicate with the Commission only throughapproved minutes, work plans, progress reports, or formal recommendations or resolutions voted on by the board.” Because the Community Development Board does not generally create any meaningful work plans or progress reports, this provision severely limits its ability to effectively communicate its work to the City Commission. Imagine if State Government said to the City that it might only communicate its views on policymatters via City Commission approved minutes or formal recommendations voted on by the Commission. I think the City would consider that a strong indication that the State didn’t really care what the City had to say. The Community Development Board, and other Boards as well, should be permitted to provide written and oral summaries of its proceedings to the City Commission so long as these have received the approval of the Board. Artificial intelligence can substantially assist in preparing drafts of these summaries. (See for example TheBozeman Brief podcast series developed by Mark Egge.) Board members and City Commissioners should be allowed to converse on issues addressed by the Board. Subsection 2.5: “Board Chairs should direct policy related questions to both theCommission Liaison and Staff Liaison.” This provision is ambiguous. Does it refer to policy related questions raised during board meetings, to policy related questions raised elsewhere, or to both? Thepurpose of all the advisory boards is to address policy related questions and provide advice on these as they see fit to the Commission. This Subsection should either be deleted or limited to questions of procedure raised outside of board meetings. The Ordinance needs to acknowledge that Board Chairs are the ones empowered to runall Board meetings under Roberts Rules of Order. Subsection 2.6: “Board Members shall adhere to the “One Body, One Voice” principle in communications to the City Commission on matters under the Board’s purview, ormay become under the purview of the Board.” I think what this Subsection is trying to say, in part, is that after a Board has come to a decision on some matter, no member of the Board may thereafter express anyopinion other than in support of the Board decision either orally or in writing to the Commission or any Commissioners. On this interpretation, the Subsection raises some issues: <!--[if !supportLists]-->1. <!--[endif]-->In would appear that the purpose of thisSubsection is to prevent dissenting Board members from arguing their casebefore the Commission. In my view the Commission could benefit fromhearing dissenting views from board members, certainly if in the form ofwritten public comment. <!--[if !supportLists]-->2. <!--[endif]-->Does this provision violate the freespeech rights of advisory board members? I think so. No other Bozemanresidents are prohibited from commenting to the Commission on a matteraddressed by a citizen advisory board. <!--[if !supportLists]-->3. <!--[endif]-->Would the City be comfortable inhighlighting to individuals contemplating service on an advisory board how their views are constrained by this Subsection of the Ordinance? Even more onerously, this Subsection would appear to be saying that that no Board member may express any opinion to the Commission on any matter that might come before its Board in the future. In other words, if you are interested enough and know enough to serve on a citizen advisory board, you are not to ever provide comments to the Commission on any matter that might in the future be taken up for consideration by your board. This places an unreasonable burden on every board member to guess what might come before its board in the future. It is a serious disincentive for citizens to serve on an advisory board, an unwarranted restraint on the flow of information to City Commissioners, and a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment rights of advisory board members. This Subsection should be deleted. Subsection 3.3.c: “Board Members should be mindful of arguing or debating the merits of staff’s professional judgment; rather, should Board Members disagree with staff’s professional judgment, they should direct such disagreement to the StaffLiaison; in the event that the Staff Liaison is subject to the disagreement, Board Members should direct their concerns to the City Manager.” By definition, if the advisory boards are to have any effect at all on City policies, theymust from time to time, and to one degree or another, question and oppose policies proposed by City staff. This provision is thus at odds with the fundamental purposes of the Boards and should be deleted. Subsection 3.3.g: “A Board Member must not attempt to pressure or influence discussions, recommendations, workloads, schedules, or department priorities absent approval of the City Manager and only then upon an action of the majority of the City Commission.” A more accurate way to say this would be that no individual Board Member should ever attempt to influence in any way what any City department does. As chairman of the Community Development Board I violated this prohibition in meetings with headsof the Community Development Department by suggesting that Board Minutes could rely heavily on the videos of the meetings, by arguing that Board agendas should be made available in the middle of the week prior to meetings, by offering my opinion (solicited by the Department) on candidates to provide consulting services to the City,and by occasionally suggesting revisions to Board agendas. All of this seemed unobjectionable. I’m fairly certain City employees do not need the protection, if any, offered by this Subsection. They can always just say no. This Subsection too, should be deleted. Subsection 3.3.h.iii: “Board members may direct questions regarding the factual basis for an item or a question soliciting staff expertise to the City employee presenting the item; questions other than those directly related to the factual basis of an agenda itemshould be directed to the Staff Liaison who may request assistance of other city employees in answering the question.” This Subsection attempts to limit the freedom of Board members to ask pertinent policy questions of City employees and as such undermines the fundamental goal of all the boards to provide policy advice to the City Commission. It has no place in these rules and should be deleted. Subsection 3.3.i.ii: “…Board Member attendance at public meetings called by Staff orCity Manager should not occur unless requested by the City Manager.” Having restricted Board members speech rights in Subsection 2.3, this proviso seeks to limit, in a way not applicable to any other Bozeman residents, the right of Boardmembers to attend public meetings. This Subsection should be an embarrassment to the City inasmuch as it rather clearly violates the freedom of assembly rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Would the City be comfortable in highlighting to individuals contemplating service on an advisory boardhow their Constitutional rights are constrained by the mere fact of serving on an advisory board? My personal view is that this would dampen the enthusiasm of more than a few candidates. Fortunately, perhaps, my experience on the Community Development Board suggests that of the above highlighted Ordinance provisions, only the first was carefully followed. The rest were at least to some extent ignored by the Commission and Staff liaisons, by City staff generally, by board members, and by me.Unfortunately, there are other provisions in the Ordinance that I’ve not highlighted that also privilege City staff over board members and/or exhibit some level of paranoia about the good will of board members. Reading the above provisions made my think that Mr. Mihelich perhaps had unfortunate encounters with some unruly Colorado advisory board members in a former job. Instead of attempting to itemize and prohibit bad behavior (which is mission impossible anyway since there are innumerable ways the unruly can bedisruptive or rude), the potential problem of a poorly behaving citizen advisory board member should be dealt with by a simple ordinance provision explicitly stating that the City Commission may remove any board member from office at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all. Other Procedural Impediments: There are other ways in which City staff can shape the advice coming from citizen advisory boards. One is to seek answers to easier questions and ignore the harder ones. For example, the Community Developmentboard historically has been required by State law to pass on changes in zoning. In theory there are two questions involved: 1. Is the proposed zoning change legal? 2. Is the proposed zoning change the best policy outcome for the City as a whole? An affirmative answer to the first question is a necessary but not sufficient answer to thesecond. The materials provided by City staff to the Board addressed the first issue at length and the second issue typically not at all. However, it is just such policy issues that advisory boards should be debating. (I need to add that in connection with the consideration last year of the new Unified Development Code, probably the most important undertaking by the Board in the last five years, City staff did an admirable job providing information to and engaging meaningfully with the Board on policy issues.) A second way in which City government sometimes reduces the effectiveness of any opinions coming out of the Community Development board is to only present it with decisions when any opinion contrary to City government’s proposal is too late. This often results from inadvertence. As far as I can tell, City staff goes a good job ofsoliciting advice from the City Commission on major policy matters early and often, but this at times has been less so with the Community Development Board. (Here again, however, in connection with the consideration of the Unified Development Code, it would be quite unfair to characterize the City’s engagement of theCommunity Development Board as being untimely.) Conclusion: In my optimistic view, citizen advisory boards will be most effective when three criteria are met: <!--[if !supportLists]-->1. <!--[endif]-->Boards are populated with engaged,knowledgeable, and pragmatic citizens offering differing points of view. To achieve this will probably require that the City Commission actively solicits atleast some citizens with these attributes to sit on some boards. <!--[if !supportLists]-->2. <!--[endif]-->City staff and Board members deal with oneanother always on a professional basis. Each side recognizes and respects the obligations and the time and other constraints of the other. City staffunderstands that the boards exist in part to question both existing policies and policies under development by the City. Politely asking hard questions andexpecting answers is not interpreted as anything other than board members performing their proper function. Board members recognize the work pressuresof City staff and the additional work and after-hours obligations advisory boards impose on staff. <!--[if !supportLists]-->3. <!--[endif]-->Boards have substantial freedom to communicate their views to the City Commission in a variety of public ways. Board members are allowed like any other citizens to lobby the City Commission in writing on any matters so long as they make it clear that theyare speaking only for themselves.