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HomeMy WebLinkAbout07-06-26 Public Comment - R. Muldowney - DURD TIFFrom:City of Bozeman, MT To:Bozeman Public Comment Subject:[EXTERNAL]*NEW SUBMISSION* Public Comment Form - City Clerk Date:Monday, July 6, 2026 7:59:01 AM 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. Public Comment Form - City Clerk Submission #:4928967 IP Address:103.251.26.58 Submission Date:07/06/2026 7:58 Survey Time:3 minutes, 49 seconds You have a new online form submission. Note: all answers displaying "*****" are marked as sensitive and must be viewed after your login. Read-Only Content Full Name Robert Muldowney Email bobmuldowney@gmail.com Phone (406) 595-4865 Comments Mike / Alex - hope everyone had a happy and safe 4th of July celebration. would you please distribute the attached to the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager and City Attorney? thank you, bob muldowney If you would like to submit additional documents (.pdf, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .gif, .jpg, .png, .rtf, .txt) along with your comment, you may alternately address comments@bozemanmt.gov directly to ensure receipt of all information. Downtown Urban Renewal District 07.05.26 FINAL.pdf Thank you, City Of Bozeman This is an automated message generated by Granicus. Please do not reply directly to this email. DURD Accountability — Commission Submission — July 2026 Page 1 Downtown Urban Renewal District FY2027 Work Plan Authorization Review A review of TIF expenditure authorization, Commission amendment authority, and fiduciary questions — submitted for the public record by a concerned citizen; Robert Muldowney TO: Mayor Morrison; Deputy Mayor Fischer; Commissioners Madgic, Bode, Sweeney; City Manager Winn; City Attorney Sillivan DATE: July 7, 2026 RE: FY2027 DURD Work Plan and Budget — Expenditure Authorization, Amendment Authority, and Return of Funds I. Purpose and Scope This review cross-references the FY2027 Downtown Urban Renewal District (DURD) Work Plan and Budget — submitted by the Downtown Bozeman Partnership (DBP) and approved by the Commission in May 2026 — against: the authorized expenditure categories in the Finance section of Ordinance 1409 (1995); the cost categories permitted by MCA §7-15-4288; the self-limiting remittance provision embedded in Ordinance 1409’s own Finance section; and the statutory requirements governing who may lawfully administer a tax increment district and direct public TIF funds. The intent is not to question the integrity of any program, but to ask whether each dollar of diverted property tax revenue is deployed in conformity with the governing documents the 1995 Commission enacted, and whether the entity that would be directing those funds under the FY2027 DURD Work Plan is lawfully authorized to do so. II. The Commission Retains Budget Amendment Authority The FY2027 Work Plan was approved through the annual appropriation ordinance — not through the statutory mechanism the MCA requires for committed construction expenditures of this scale. MCA §7-15-4288 authorizes TIF to pay costs “incurred in connection with” an identified urban renewal project — language that presupposes an actual project with a real counterparty, not a budget reservation for an unnamed partnership. MCA §7-15-4251(2) establishes the municipality’s power “to make and execute contracts and other instruments necessary or convenient” to exercising its urban renewal project powers — confirming that contracts, not budget appropriations, are the operative legal mechanism. And MCA §7-5-4302 requires that any municipal contract for construction, repair, or maintenance in excess of $80,000 ‘must be let to the lowest responsible bidder after advertisement for bids’1 — meaning the identity of the PPP partner is not an administrative detail; it is a legally required precondition, established through competitive bid, before any binding commitment of these funds may be made. No competitively bid contract with a named counterparty has been initiated for the $5,000,000 FY2027 Parking PPP appropriation. This matters most for the $5,000,000 Parking PPP line item. The two-tranche budget structure — $5,000,000 in FY2027 and $3,000,000 in FY2028 — is a budget appropriation, not an executed construction contract. Separately, MCA §7-15-4292(2)(b)(i) provides that upon termination of the tax increment provision, a local government may retain only those remaining funds tied to a binding loan commitment, construction contract, or development agreement entered into before termination.2 Absent such an executed instrument, funds remaining in the special fund at termination are distributed pro rata to all taxing bodies under §7-15-4292(2)(a), reinforcing that an appropriation alone — without a competitively bid, executed contract — does not commit these funds against any future event, whether ordinary reallocation or district termination. MCA §7-6-4031(1) authorizes the governing body to transfer appropriations between items within the same fund; subsection (3) confirms that a public hearing is required only for an overall increase in appropriation authority, not for internal reallocation.3 The Commission retains full authority to redirect, reduce, or return any FY2027 appropriation without a public hearing. A related structural question: the PSA authorizing DBP’s FY2027 administrative role is itself a one-year agreement, yet it embeds a two-tranche budget spanning FY2027 and FY2028 — $5,000,000 and $3,000,000 respectively for the Parking PPP allocation alone. Whether a single one-year contract can properly carry an appropriation for a second fiscal year that has not yet independently passed through its own annual budget process is a question the Commission should resolve before treating the FY2028 tranche as settled. DURD Accountability — Commission Submission — July 2026 Page 2 III. A Self-Limiting Provision That Has Not Been Honored The Finance section of Ordinance 1409 (1995) requires tax increment above an inflation-adjusted $750,000 cap to be returned to Gallatin County, Bozeman School District #7, and the City after year fifteen of TIF payments via interlocal agreement. Ordinance 1628 (2005) amended only the trigger year from year eleven to year fifteen; the cap mechanism itself derives from and remains governed by Ordinance 1409.4 Indexed to CPI from July 1995, the cap stands at approximately $1,500,000 today. Based on the FY2027 projected TIF revenues of approximately $2,970,000, the estimated FY2027 annual excess above the cap is approximately $1,470,000. The 2011 interlocal agreement implements the distribution mechanism for Gallatin County and Bozeman School District #7.5 That agreement was itself approved as Consent Item E.5 of seven unrelated items on the May 2, 2011 Commission agenda, adopted by a single bulk motion without individual discussion — a process this submission does not ask the Commission to revisit, but which bears on the fiduciary oversight the pledge-back received at the time. The unresolved issue is the City’s own share: under Section 2 of that agreement, the City permanently pledges its pro-rata share back to the DURD. The City’s General Fund has received zero benefit from the remittance mechanism for at least four documented surplus years, with foregone revenue totaling approximately $2,395,000 to date. The legal basis for that pledge-back has not been established. The Finance section of Ordinance 1409 is a provision of the enacted URD Plan, adopted by ordinance with public hearing. MCA §7-15-4221(2) provides that an urban renewal plan “may be modified by ordinance,” and subsection (5)(b) requires that any such modification follow a procedure that “must include a public hearing” — not an interlocal agreement, and not a consent agenda. The 2011 interlocal’s pledge-back, which permanently waives the City’s General Fund entitlement under Ordinance 1409, constitutes a modification to the URD Plan Finance section. No ordinance was found in the public record authorizing that waiver; no evidence of a public hearing on a Finance section amendment was found. Although MCA §7-15-4291 does not impose a statewide mandatory remittance obligation, it does not authorize a municipality to override its own enacted ordinance through a consent agenda contract.6 I ask that the Commission receive written legal opinion confirming whether the 2011 pledge-back is enforceable, or whether Ordinance 1409’s Finance section entitlement to the General Fund remains intact. The FY2025 ACFR reports the DURD fund balance at $9,694,474 against an outstanding Series 2020 Refunding Bond of $2,112,000 — a coverage ratio of 4.6×.7 MCA §7-15-4292(1)(b) provides that TIF terminates upon “payment or provision for payment in full” of all outstanding bonds.8 Subject to review of the Series 2020 bond covenants, the conditions for early termination and pro-rata distribution of the remaining fund balance to all three taxing bodies may presently be available. IV. Who May Lawfully Administer the DURD — DBP’s Legal Status and the “Public Body Corporate” Question A threshold question that underlies every other issue in this submission: is the Downtown Bozeman Partnership a type of entity Montana’s Urban Renewal Law authorizes to administer a tax increment district? I raise this as an open question for the Commission’s confirmation, based on the statutory definitions below. DBP’s actual legal structure DBP is a Domestic Limited Liability Company registered under Montana law, confirmed by the Montana Secretary of State’s business registration. The 501(c)(6) designation belongs to the Downtown Bozeman Association (DBA), a separate membership organization of downtown businesses. DBP’s published 2025 Annual Report identifies three separate governing boards operating under its umbrella — a BID Board, a DBA Board, and a URD Board, each composed of downtown property and business owners — all served by a single shared DBP staff. None of these boards was created by Commission resolution under BMC §2.05.1760 or designated as a district board under BMC Article 5, Division 10; they are DBP’s own internal committee structure. What the statute authorizes MCA §7-15-4232 governs the assignment of urban renewal project powers and provides exactly two lawful pathways beyond the Commission itself: (1) assignment to a city department, municipal officer, or “existing public body corporate”; or (2) creation of a new urban renewal agency, which the statute itself designates a “public body corporate.”9 That phrase is a term of art defined by the statute’s own definitions section. MCA §7-15-4206(13) defines “public body” as “the state or any municipality, township, board, commission, district, or other subdivision or public body of the state” — an exclusively governmental list. Every other instance of “public body corporate” in the Montana Code DURD Accountability — Commission Submission — July 2026 Page 3 confirms this meaning: the Montana Facility Finance Authority (MCA §2-15-1815), housing authorities (MCA §7-15- 4402), conservation districts (MCA §76-15-103), and port authorities are each explicitly described as public instrumentalities or governmental subdivisions created by statute. The word “corporate” in this context signifies a governmental entity constituted with legal corporate powers by public statute — mirroring the designation of municipalities themselves as “bodies politic and corporate” under MCA §7-1-4101. It does not extend to a privately organized LLC, however the PSA may have characterized it. DBP is a Domestic Limited Liability Company registered under Montana law. Based on the definitions above, I am not aware of a provision in Title 7, Chapter 15, Parts 42 or 43 that extends “public body corporate” status to a privately organized LLC. Section IX poses this as a formal question for the Commission’s confirmation. V. Line-Item Authorization Analysis — FY2027 Work Plan The Finance section of Ordinance 1409 enumerates each action item and its authorized funding sources, stating TIF “shall be limited to public projects or the public portion of private projects.” Items marked (*) are restricted to the public portion only. Items shown as BID ONLY were explicitly assigned to the Business Improvement District — not TIF — in the Finance section. Independent of the authorization question addressed in Section IV, a detailed line-item authorization analysis cross-referencing each FY2027 Work Plan budget line against the Ordinance 1409 Finance section and MCA §7-15-4288 eligible cost categories will be provided in a separate document. VI. Three Matters Warranting Commission Attention A. DBP’s Administration of TIF Funds — Structural Conflict and No Current Authorization Multiple Commissions have approved successive Professional Services Agreements and annual Work Plans authorizing DBP to administer Downtown URD funds, and DBP has performed that role under what it could reasonably treat as Commission authorization. This pattern is consistent with institutional reliance rather than independent verification: each successive Commission appears to have treated the arrangement as already settled by its predecessors, without evidence in the public record that the underlying statutory authority was examined at any point in that chain. The defect lies one level higher than any single Commission’s action. Ordinance 2144 (August 2023) vested all DURD administrative authority in the City Commission.10 DBP is a Domestic Limited Liability Company — not a 501(c)(6) as it is sometimes described — and does not qualify as a “public body corporate” under MCA §7-15-4206(13) or any other provision of Montana’s Urban Renewal Law. MCA §7-15-4288(7) authorizes TIF for “administrative costs associated with the management of the urban renewal area.” Read together with MCA §§7- 15-4232 and 7-15-4233, which define who may lawfully administer an urban renewal area, that cost category flows to the Commission, an authorized municipal department, or a formally constituted urban renewal agency — not a private LLC.11 Ordinance 1409’s Finance section is explicit: TIF funds will not be used for the direct and exclusive benefit of private property. Paying DBP’s $270,600 management fee to cover staff compensation and organizational overhead of a private LLC is squarely within that restriction. A private LLC is not within the statutory list in MCA §7-15-4232, meaning the Commission itself lacks the power to confer URD administrative authority on DBP, regardless of how many successive agreements have approved that arrangement. The result is that the URD has been treated, in practice, as if it were a program of a private entity rather than a public trust administered by the Commission — not because any Commission or DBP acted in bad faith, but because the authority being passed down through each successive PSA was never the Commission’s to give in the first place. The structural conflict is equally material: DBP simultaneously recommends TIF grant awards and represents — through its DBA member organization — the downtown businesses that receive them. Its shared staff serves the DBA, BID, and URD concurrently, with no documented cost allocation methodology in the public record separating staff time, overhead, or administrative expense among the three funding streams — membership dues, special assessments, and public tax increment. Because DBP is not a “public body corporate” under MCA §7-15-4232, no contract — however well drafted — can lawfully confer Downtown URD administrative authority on DBP. That defect can only be cured by the Commission administering Downtown URD funds directly, or assigning that role to a municipal department, officer, or properly constituted public body corporate, as provided in MCA §7-15-4232. Setting aside the URD authorization question, DBP’s administration of BID and DBA funds is not itself in dispute — those are membership and assessment dollars, not public tax increment, and MCA §7-15-4232 does not govern them. But the same structural conflict identified above still applies there: DBP’s shared staff recommends grants to the same downtown businesses that fund and help govern DBP through the BID and DBA. Addressing that conflict — regardless of how the URD question is resolved — would require a documented methodology for allocating shared staff costs across all three funding streams, and a grant-approval process independent of DBP itself. DURD Accountability — Commission Submission — July 2026 Page 4 B. The $5 Million Parking PPP Allocation “Additional Parking Spaces” is TIF-authorized in Ordinance 1409 — physical parking supply with a 1995 economic- vitality nexus.12 The FY2027 Work Plan re-characterizes this as capital accumulation toward an unnamed private partnership: $5,000,000 in FY2027 and $3,000,000 in FY2028. No counterparty has been named, no parking study completed, and no MCA §7-15-4288 authorization analysis appears in the public record. Accumulating $8,000,000 for an unnamed private deal is categorically different from providing parking spaces. The two-tranche budget structure does not constitute a binding contract and does not trigger the MCA §7-15- 4292(2)(b)(i) shelter. The Commission retains full authority to redirect this $5,000,000. Given the fund balance’s 4.6× coverage of the outstanding bond, the Commission should weigh whether retiring the bond and triggering district termination — with distribution of the remaining balance proportionally to the General Fund, Gallatin County, and School District #7 — better serves the public interest than committing those funds to an unspecified private deal. C. Additional Work Plan Line Items The FY2027 Work Plan contains additional line items — including a bundled infrastructure grant combining streetscape, fiber optic, and fire safety components, and two undesignated planning allocations — that raise authorization questions similar to those above under the Ordinance 1409 Finance section and MCA §7-15-4288. Consistent with Section V, a detailed line-item review of these items will be provided to the Commission in a separate follow-up submission. VII. How the City’s General Fund Share Can Be Recovered The 2011 interlocal already implements the annual remittance mechanism for Gallatin County and Bozeman School District #7. The unresolved question is the City’s own share. As detailed in Section III, the pledge-back in Section 2 of the 2011 interlocal may not constitute a legally valid modification of Ordinance 1409’s Finance section absent an ordinance amendment per MCA §7-15-4221(2). If that analysis is confirmed, the City’s General Fund entitlement under Ordinance 1409 may remain intact. Separately, and regardless of how that analysis resolves, MCA §7-15-4291 gives the City independent, freestanding authority — not contingent on correcting or superseding the 2011 interlocal — to enter a new voluntary remittance agreement returning any portion of the annual tax increment not currently required for authorized costs to the General Fund, without requiring district termination.13 Alternatively, upon termination under §7-15-4292(2)(a), the terminal distribution mechanism is broader: all amounts in the DURD fund after satisfying binding pre-termination obligations are distributed to all three taxing bodies proportionally. With a fund balance of $9,694,474 and an outstanding bond of $2,112,000, post-retirement distribution could return approximately $7.6 million across the General Fund, Gallatin County, and School District #7. A mid-year budget amendment reducing unauthorized line items requires no public hearing. The fiscal year is not over, and no binding pre-termination contract currently precludes action. VIII. The Broader Context — Six URDs and Future Levy Requests The Downtown URD is one of six active TIF districts in Bozeman. Each diverts property tax increment from the General Fund while the General Fund bears the full cost of police, fire, and emergency services. The Bozeman Police Department operates at approximately 1.27 sworn officers per 1,000 residents, below the FBI average of 1.65 and the DOJ community policing guideline of 2.0. The November 2024 public safety levy failed. The Montana Legislature itself recognized a version of this problem: effective April 6, 2017, MCA §7-15-4286(2)(c) was amended to exclude new voter-approved mill levies from the tax increment calculation for urban renewal districts created on or after that date — but the change was not made retroactive, leaving the four districts created before April 6, 2017 (Downtown, Northeast, Midtown, South Bozeman Technology) subject to the older rule under which new voted levies remain captured by TIF. Voters were not told that a portion of any new levy on those four districts would be captured by TIF under MCA §7-15-4286 and diverted from public safety services.14 Any future mill levy request should include full disclosure of the TIF-capture mechanism and a plan for addressing the structural General Fund shortfall across all six active URDs. DURD Accountability — Commission Submission — July 2026 Page 5 IX. Questions for Commission Consideration The following questions are entered into the public record as an exercise of civic accountability, grounded entirely in the public record. 1. No ordinance was found in the public record that amends the Finance section of Ordinance 1409 to authorize the City’s permanent pledge-back under the 2011 interlocal agreement. Has the Commission received a written legal opinion confirming that an interlocal agreement can accomplish what MCA §7-15-4221(2) requires an ordinance to perform — and if so, will that opinion be made public? 2. The $5,000,000 Parking PPP line item names no counterparty, no project, and no location. What specific MCA §7- 15-4288 category authorizes this appropriation, and is there anything that prevents the Commission from redirecting it — through a mid-year budget amendment — to early bond retirement, which would trigger pro-rata distribution of the remaining balance to all three taxing bodies? 3. With a fund balance 4.6× the outstanding bond, has the Commission evaluated MCA §7-15-4291 as a mechanism to enter a new interlocal agreement returning the City’s annual share of excess increment — currently pledged back to the DURD — to the General Fund, without requiring full district termination? 4. Before any future mill levy request for public safety funding, will the Commission commit to disclosing to voters the amount by which TIF capture under MCA §7-15-4286 would reduce the net revenue benefit of that levy — and to presenting a plan for addressing the structural General Fund shortfall created by TIF diversion across all six active URDs? 5. Section IV raises whether the Downtown Bozeman Partnership — a Domestic Limited Liability Company — satisfies the definition of “public body corporate” under MCA §7-15-4206(13), the category MCA §7-15-4232(1) requires for delegation of urban renewal administrative authority. Has the Commission received a written legal analysis confirming DBP’s eligibility under this definition, and if so, will that analysis be made available to the public? 6. The FY2027 Work Plan does not specify the mechanism by which DBP would receive or hold the $5,000,000 Parking PPP appropriation, or other work-plan line items, once appropriated. Does the Commission intend to: (a) transfer funds directly to DBP’s private LLC accounts, which raises custodial-control questions under MCA §7-15- 4286(2)(a)’s requirement that tax increment be paid into “a special fund held by the treasurer of the local government”; (b) appropriate the funds into a City-held sub-account earmarked for the work plan — itself an internal transfer of appropriated authority governed by MCA §7-6-4031(1), which authorizes the governing body or a designated official to transfer appropriations between items within the same fund via the budget resolution — which would still require each item to independently satisfy MCA §7-15-4288’s eligible-cost categories; or (c) hold the funds in the existing restricted TIF special fund until a named counterparty and a competitively bid contract exist for each item, consistent with MCA §7-5-4302. I ask that the Commission clarify which mechanism applies before any further disbursement is contemplated. 7. The staff memorandum recommending Commission authorization of the FY2027 PSA was authored by DBP’s own Executive Director and stated “Unresolved Issues: None,” notwithstanding public comment raising statutory concerns at that same meeting. Is it standard and appropriate procedure for the contracting party’s own representative to author the recommending memorandum on its own agreement, and if not, does this raise a procedural concern the Commission should address going forward? 8. Section V notes that Ordinance 1409’s Finance section enumerates specific TIF-eligible expenditure categories for the Downtown URD. The detailed line-item review referenced in Sections V and VI.C will identify whether any specific FY2027 Work Plan items fall outside those enumerated categories. If that review identifies such items, does MCA §7- 15-4221(2)’s requirement that an urban renewal plan “may be modified only by ordinance” after public hearing mean the Commission must adopt a superseding or amending ordinance before those items may proceed, rather than approving them through the annual work-plan and budget process alone? These questions are entered into the public record in the spirit of civic accountability. The Commission has the legal authority and the time available to address each of them fully before any further commitment of Downtown URD funds. I appreciate the Commission’s attention to these matters and welcome the opportunity to discuss them further. 1 MCA §7-5-4302: any municipal contract for construction, repair, or maintenance in excess of $80,000 must be let to the lowest responsible bidder after advertisement for bids. A parking PPP of $5,000,000–$8,000,000 is a construction contract at sixty to one hundred times that threshold. MCA §7-15-4251(2) confirms that contracts, not appropriations, are the operative mechanism for exercising urban renewal project powers. DURD Accountability — Commission Submission — July 2026 Page 6 2 MCA §7-15-4292(2)(b)(i): upon termination of the tax increment provision, a local government may retain remaining special-fund amounts only where those funds relate to a ‘binding loan commitment, construction contract, or development agreement for an approved urban renewal project’ entered into before termination. This provision governs disposition of funds at termination; it does not itself impose a pre-termination contracting requirement, but its structure confirms that a mere budget appropriation — absent an executed instrument — does not commit TIF funds against subsequent reallocation or distribution under §7-15-4292(2)(a). 3 MCA §7-6-4031(1): the final budget resolution may authorize the governing body or a designated official to transfer appropriations between items within the same fund. Subsection (3): a public hearing is required only for an overall increase in appropriation authority, not for internal reallocation within a fund. 4 Ordinance 1409 (Nov. 1995), Finance section: cap of $750,000 indexed to CPI from July 1995. Ordinance 1628 (Mar. 2005) amended the trigger year from year eleven to year fifteen; the cap mechanism and return-to-taxing-bodies obligation originate in and remain governed by Ordinance 1409. Inflation-adjusted cap approximately $1,500,000 at current CPI. FY2027 projected TIF revenue: $2,699,900 (COB Interlocal Share) + $72,400 (State Entitlement) + $166,200 (Interest) = ~$2,938,500. 5 Interlocal Agreement, City of Bozeman / Gallatin County / Bozeman School District #7 (Laserfiche ID 44679). Section 2: the City pledges its entire pro-rata Remaining Funds share permanently back to the Downtown TIF. Gallatin County and School District #7 receive their respective shares. Approved as Consent Item E.5 of the May 2, 2011 City Commission agenda, alongside six unrelated items, by a single motion approving Consent Items E.1-7. 6 MCA §7-15-4221(2): ‘An urban renewal plan may be modified by ordinance.’ Subsection (5)(b): the modification procedure ‘must include a public hearing.’ The City’s pledge-back of its surplus share constitutes a modification to Ordinance 1409’s Finance section distribution mechanism. No ordinance amending the Finance section has been found in the public record. Cumulative City excess above cap in documented surplus fiscal years (FY2021, FY2023, FY2024, FY2025): approximately $2,395,000; FY2025 alone: approximately $1,068,000. 7 FY2025 ACFR (Eide Bailly LLP, Dec. 15, 2025): DURD fund balance $9,694,474; Series 2020 Refunding Bond $2,112,000 at 2.44%; annual TIF revenue $2,967,130; debt service $335,292. Coverage ratio: 4.59×. 8 MCA §7-15-4292(1)(b): TIF terminates upon the later of the 15th year or ‘payment or provision for payment in full’ of all bonded obligations. Series 2020 bond covenant review required before asserting dissolution is presently available. 9 MCA §7-15-4232(1): urban renewal project powers may be assigned to ‘a department or other officers of the municipality or to any existing public body corporate.’ 10 Ordinance 2144 (Aug. 1, 2023), §7: amended BMC §2.06.1300 to vest DURD administration in the City Commission. Ordinance 1409 Finance section: Organization/Administration = BID, City General Fund, Planning Grants — TIF not listed. The 1995 ‘organization’ referenced the public IDB Board. DBP did not exist in 1995. 11 MCA §7-15-4288(7): ‘administrative costs associated with the management of the urban renewal area.’ MCA §7-15-4232 establishes who may administer the urban renewal area: the Commission directly, or through delegation to a city department, municipal officer, or public body corporate (governmental entity). MCA §7-15-4233 enumerates the powers of the authorized urban renewal agency or department. Together, these provisions limit the administrative cost authorization in §7-15-4288(7) to the Commission, authorized municipal entities, and a properly constituted urban renewal agency — not a private LLC. 12 Ordinance 1409 Finance section: ‘Additional Parking Spaces: TIF’ listed; ‘Better Parking Management: BID’ — TIF not listed. FY2027 Work Plan: $5M FY27 + $3M FY28 described as funding ‘a future Public-Private Partnership (PPP) to expand parking supply.’ No counterparty, study, or location named. 13 MCA §7-15-4291 (effective July 1, 2026): a local government may enter into an agreement to remit any portion of the annual tax increment not currently required for authorized costs or pledged bond payments, with remittance proportional to each taxing jurisdiction’s share of the total mills levied — a category that includes the City’s own mills under MCA §7-15-4286(1)-(2). MCA §7- 15-4292(2)(a): upon termination, remaining fund balance distributed to taxing bodies in proportion to their property tax revenue from the district. 14 MCA §7-15-4286(2)(b): for urban renewal areas created before April 6, 2017, only university system mills are excluded from the tax increment calculation — new voter-approved levies are not excluded and therefore remain captured by TIF. Subsection (2)(c), applicable to districts created April 6, 2017 through June 30, 2022, explicitly excludes both university system mills and ‘a new mill levy approved by voters … after the adoption of a tax increment provision.’ The four districts created before April 6, 2017 (Downtown 1995, Northeast 2005, Midtown 2006, South Bozeman Technology 2012) do not receive this exclusion. This mechanism was not disclosed to voters before the November 2024 public safety levy.