Guest Column, Bozeman Daily chronicle, September 16th 2025

Over the last two years I’ve gotten to know Alison Sweeney as a tireless champion of Bozeman’s neighborhoods. I’m thrilled she’s running for a seat on the City Commission.

We need her voice on the City Commission!

When the city released a new Unified Development Code that threatened to up-zone her own neighborhood, thereby opening the floodgates to redevelopment of working-class homes into luxury condos, Alison got to work. She became one of the lead cofounders of the Better Bozeman Coalition with the mission “to preserve the unique character of Bozeman’s neighborhoods while working with the city on housing affordability, availability, and natural resource sustainability.”

Since then, I’ve watched Alison enthusiastically support neighborhood preservation efforts across the city, including the following.

The University Neighborhood’s effort to define and sensibly regulate new and relocating fraternities and sororities to prevent further conflict between residents and Greek life. Though fraternities and sororities are a vibrant part of MSU, they do not belong in single family homes.

The Northeast Neighborhood’s effort to prevent a crushing luxury development from receiving $3.6 million in TIF assistance that would further gentrify the funky, scrappy, artist enclave of the beloved NEHMU area. When former members of the urban renewal board voiced their opposition, Alison was there to join and support them.

The Midtown Neighborhood’s battle against the Guthrie and their effort to save the integrity of the Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District (NCOD). Alison was there, researching, writing, and helping to organize residents across the city to support this post-war neighborhood in their quest for sensible infill.

The Valley Unit and other west side subdivisions efforts to ensure that a beloved agricultural ditch, riparian area, and mature forest were not bulldozed to make the Fowler Avenue Connection a five-lane freeway through neighborhoods. Alison made us all aware of the efforts of the Friends of Fowler and provided concrete ways to support their advocacy.

The Bon Ton and Centennial Park Neighborhood’s resident-led rezoning proposals that required hundreds of volunteer hours by the people who live in these neighborhoods to educate their neighbors, collect signatures from a majority of residents, and draft documents asking the city for context sensitive zoning designations in the UDC update. Alison helped these neighborhoods research the growth policy and other city documents to support their proposals.

Alison has also worked to elevate the voices and suggestions of both professional and community-led conservation groups seeking better environmental regulations in the city code.

Alison doesn’t just fight against bad policy, she suggests alternative solutions that better meet our goals as a community. The resources page of the Better Bozeman Coalition website is full of suggestions, backed up by research and data.

As the lead author of the Better Bozeman Coalition Neighborhood Friendly UDC report, Alison used her skills to compile recommendations from diverse groups of resident research teams. In that document she helped develop and organize recommendations for better regulations in the areas of zone edge transitions, allowed mass and scale, historic preservation, solar access, and a deconstruction ordinance.

Alison is the only candidate for the city commission this November who has shown up consistently for neighborhoods across this city.

She listens. She does the work to understand. She advocates tirelessly for preserving what makes Bozeman special while meeting the needs for growth and affordable housing.

She has my vote for City Commission in November, and I hope yours too.

Larry Johnsonis co-founder of the Better Bozeman Coalition.

Letter to the Editor, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, October 18, 2025

I urge Bozeman residents to ask themselves who among the City Commission candidates has gone above and beyond this election cycle — i.e., over several years — to help all residents participate in the city’s decision-making on projects and policies that affect Bozeman.

The answer is, hands down, Alison Sweeney.

Alison Sweeney has a long-standing track record for encouraging all neighbors to get involved. Over the years, she has provided citizens with relevant links matching up city code and state legislation with city projects.

This is how we make sure our city government is honoring their commitments. She has notified us with important deadlines and meetings.

When the City Commission has said “their hands were tied,” Alison brought in speakers who offered solutions. She co-founded the Better Bozeman Coalition (BBC), which advocates for Bozeman’s social, ethical, historical and environmental goals.

She is not backed by special interests. She does all of this on her own time, between work and family, because she cares for Bozeman.

After retiring from the National Park Service as a historic preservation and environmental specialist/planner, I turned my attention to learning about how to best advocate for Bozeman’s historic and natural environment. Boy, I found a lot going on! It was daunting.

Fortunately, I met Alison Sweeney, a true steward. Her weekly BBC notifications provide me with the resources I need to participate as an informed resident.

In particular, I admire her commitment to solving Bozeman’s housing crisis in a way that doesn’t demolish our town and is compatible with our historic and natural environment. I can vouch for the fact that she is a competent historic preservation steward.

Bozeman needs a commissioner likes Alison Sweeney, who has a long-standing track record of advocating for public participation to help Bozeman grow without devouring what we have.

Zehra Osman, Bozeman resident

Guest Collumn, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, September 9, 2025

Any Bozemanite who pays attention knows about the Unified Development Code (UDC) Update and the predictable charade that it has become. The intent of the UDC is “to protect the public health, safety and general welfare ...”

Back in 2022, “Building Our Future Together” was mixed messaging at best, and residents like me were scared.

In 2023, the City of Bozeman paused the UDC Update to do a better job of engaging its residents. This hiatus represented a spark of hope for ecological- and community-minded residents like me. Maybe the pro-development view of the UDC Update was not a done deal after all.

When UDC re-engagement efforts resumed in 2024, there was no shortage of ways to provide input. Residents like me wrote letters, gave public testimony, took part in surveys, community chats, focus groups and work sessions, and submitted sound recommendations.

Residents like me let the city powers-that-be know, in no uncertain terms, what is important to us. Yet, here we are more than three years later and the health, safety and general welfare of our neighborhoods and shared natural resources are as vulnerable as ever.

On July 14, 2025, I testified at the City Commission special (UDC) meeting, “It all feels like a supreme waste of time and effort. We’ve gone backward or in circles, depending on how you look at it, but not forward in a way that we, as a city, can be proud. Where those in power truly listen to and make decisions based on what their tax-paying constituents want and have shown to be reasonable and for the greater good. We have shown you what we want through countless hours of attendance, research, writing, organizing, leading, talking, walking. It all feels futile. And I’m exhausted.”

I’d had enough of what felt like a bait-and-switch and the seemingly endless volley of “providing direction” between the City Commission and Community Development staff. In the days that followed, many people, some of whom I had never met, reached out to me, echoing this common sentiment, “Your last public comment is still reverberating in my heart and mind because it so captured what we are all feeling.“

It is clear that I am not alone in being dissatisfied with the status quo. Residents like me are not OK with the irresponsible intensification (density, mass, and scale) occurring in Bozeman or the greenwashing that comes with it.

For this reason, I am voting for change this election cycle.

Luckily, we have three strong candidates who embody shared ecological and community-centric values and who can work well together.

For City Commission, I have had the great fortune to serve and collaborate with Alison Sweeney and Emily Talago on the Inter-Neighborhood Council and neighborhood-focus projects. These two strong women inspire me with their intellect, eloquence, and tenacity.

For mayor, I’ve celebrated John Meyer’s fearless efforts and successes using his legal prowess for the greater good. I’ve also witnessed him in action as a dad bringing his children to public meetings, balancing things important to him — something to which residents and moms like me easily relate.

If you’re pleased with the direction Bozeman is going these days, stick with the inner circle and status quo. If you think we can do better, join me and vote for Meyer, Sweeney, and Talago.

The combined passion and commitment of these three candidates gives me hope — a rare commodity at all levels of government these days.

Angie Kociolekhas called Bozeman home for 30 years and is a strong advocate for this community. She is former Chair of Bozeman’s Urban Parks & Forestry Advisory Board, a current representative on the Inter-Neighborhood Council, and co-founder of the Bozeman Tree Coalition.

Letter to the Editor, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, October 15, 2025

There is a chasm between conviction and convenience.

Conviction is the quiet endurance of principle when the winds turn cold — the refusal to barter one’s integrity for access or applause. Convenience, by contrast, is the art of self-preservation — of bending belief to suit the season.

In 2020, Emma Bode signed a letter accusing the Bozeman’s City Commission of “facilitating a deeply undemocratic process that upheld white-supremacist hegemony.” Four years later, she climbed the very scaffold she once decried — rising by the same means she had denounced as instruments of white-supremacist power. Thus ended not her struggle against tyranny, but her campaign for a more comfortable chair within it.

That is not evolution. It is the slow corrosion of principle under the heat of ambition.

Bode also wrote that “what keeps communities safe from crime is not their investment in police but their investments in programs that attack the underlying cause.” It reflects a shallow understanding of civilization — reducing human frailty to funding formulas and forgetting that disorder is as much a part of the human story as virtue.

Safety is not an abstraction or a social theory; it is a moral covenant sustained by those willing to stand between order and chaos. Their service is not the opposite of compassion — it is its most exacting form.

To dismiss that work is to misunderstand the very nature of community, which endures only because some among us accept the burdens that others cannot.

Bozeman deserves leaders guided by principle, not radicalism disguised as reform. True progress demands balance and respect — for everyone — and the courage to hold fast to what’s right even when it cuts against the grain of one’s political tribe.

This election, reject double-speak and reward integrity.

Vote for Emily Talago and Alison Sweeney for City Commission — leaders who will put Bozeman’s people above national politics.

Noah ten Broek, Bozeman resident

Letter to the Editor, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, October 16th, 2025

This November we have the opportunity to vote for the status quo in our city or for new leadership. We will be able to choose two commissioners and a mayor.

If you like how the city is changing and have no problem with another five-story, luxury apartment complex next door to you and in every neighborhood in the city, then vote for Emma Bode.

Bode’s record since her appointment to the commission in 2024 follows in a long line of city leadership from Taylor to Andrus to Cunningham, that has paid lip service to affordability while consistently approving high-end, portfolio-piece density that is wildly unattainable to working people and viscerally opposed by neighbors.

Bode voted to approve the Bozeman Yards development against strong local opposition, while also giving the developer $3.6 million in tax increment financing (tax forgiveness). This was in exchange for two non-luxury units that are hardly affordable for most residents.

She voted twice to approve the Guthrie, a four-story building currently located within the boundaries of the Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District. In addition, Bode voted to remove the enforce-ability of the NCOD that has been in use since 1991 to safeguard the character of our neighborhoods and ensure that growth happens with care and context.

Out of the 91 units in the Guthrie, a percentage will be "affordable" for $1,700/month for a one person household making $91,000/year.

If you think that $1,700 a month for one person is affordable, or you just love a bespoke, luxury condo and want to see more of them, vote for Emma Bode. If you want leaders who listen respectfully and then actually respond to residents, all while truly working to make our city livable, vote for Alison Sweeney and Emily Talago.

Juliet Osman, Bozeman resident, mom, artist, neighbor

Letter to the Editor, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, July 17th, 2025

In the upcoming election for City Commission, we have a candidate to vote for who embodies the change that so many of us, including the 5,800 people who signed the WARD petition, are yearning for where the needs of existing residents and neighborhoods are prioritized over endless, and often reckless, growth and development.

While you may not have heard of Alison Sweeney, she has been advocating tirelessly for several years now for the many people in Bozeman who feel deprioritized and unheard by a City Commission that routinely elevates the financial interests of developers and investors over our quality of life.

Alison not only has called out the questionable policies and decisions by the City Commission and practices of city staff, but has also worked with unyielding tenacity to research, identify, and offer pragmatic localized alternative solutions that balance growth, development, and the need for affordable housing with the quality of life of existing residents.

The work she has done leading the Better Bozeman Coalition illustrates that she has the ability to formulate housing policy at a high level to prioritize and incorporate the needs of existing neighborhoods while avoiding relying on what the developers and their paid lobbyists claim without evidence is good for us, yet in reality is good for their profits.

Furthermore, Alison joined Bozeman Police Department’s Citizen Academy to better understand how the police department operates and approaches crime and reckless driving in a growing city, another top issue related to the high-density housing chaos unfairly imposed on us.

Lastly, Alison states unequivocally on her campaign website that she will not accept donations from developers or outside groups with obscure, concealed funding streams, which shows who, if elected, she will work for.

For real change that prioritizes us over endless development, vote for Alison Sweeney.

Ken Silvestri, Bozeman resident

Guest Column, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, October 22, 2025

I am writing to encourage voters to choose candidates for City Commission who will work to improve the health of the Bozeman community as a whole.

Today more than ever we need elected representatives to heal the split between the commission and residents, some of whom do not feel listened to or valued by the commission.

The candidates most able to bring a healthier, more positive relationship to our community are Emily Talago and Alison Sweeney for Commission, and John Meyer for mayor.

These three leaders have courage to stand up to the industries that take economic advantage of our community. These candidates reflect the values that residents have expressed to the Commission time and time again.

These values include sustainability in use of resources, neighborhood quality, and appropriately scaled developments that complement rather than destroy our community’s history and identity. All three of these candidates have stood up for residents whose neighborhoods have been negatively impacted by inappropriate developments that the current commission has approved.

And all three of them have suggested viable alternatives to the current over-scaled development patterns favored by the city and building industry.

Most of the Bozeman residents I know are thoughtful about growth and about the affordability crisis. We care about the character of our community and we support infill in single family neighborhoods and multi-story buildings along transportation corridors and near commercial nodes.

Along with Talago, Sweeney and Meyer, we think there is a better way forward, but it depends on courage and the ability to stand for community values.

As a physician I have spent much time understanding the nature of “planetary health” — which is a term indicating an appropriate human relationship to the planet that sustains our very existence. Positive planetary health requires us human beings to seek better, more sustainable arrangements of our affairs than those operating currently in our economic activities and use of resources.

Concerns for planetary health should support our every move; these concerns should underlie our patterns of growth and development. In fact, all of our activities — our social, cultural, economic, and political undertakings — should be conducted with utmost regard to their impacts on the health of the planet.

The time to achieve proper planetary health is past due. We need communities, right now, to be based on sustainable practices. This kind of thinking should be a part of every candidate’s platform.

That is why Talago, Sweeney and Meyer stand out from the rest of the field. While the other candidates are people of goodwill and earnest intentions, Talago, Sweeney and Meyer have the strength and leadership to defend planetary health from the industry that often brushes aside this core value in the pursuit of its own interests.

John Meyer is the executive director of Cottonwood Environmental, a nonprofit law firm devoted to preserving wilderness values and sustainable practices. His day job is protecting, supporting and improving planetary health.

Alison Sweeney is a founder of the Better Bozeman Coalition, a group formed in response to current commission development practices and that has proposed literally dozens of viable, planet-healthy development policy options since its inception.

Finally, Emily Talago possesses the tools and skills to support conservation of land for agricultural use and soil health. She is a fourth-generation horticulturist who also has in-depth knowledge of how to enact policies that support these core values.

The need for better leadership has never been greater. Please vote for Emily Talago, Alison Sweeney, and John Meyer for a new commission that takes residents’ concerns and planetary health seriously.

Colette Kirchhoff is a resident of Bozeman. She has practiced family medicine in Bozeman for 29 years.