Who the Inter-Neighborhood Council actually speaks for: the numbers.

The finding

A third of the city lives inside an association

17,652 of Bozeman’s 53,293 residents, 33 percent, lived in 2020 on a census block inside one of the city’s 15 recognized neighborhood associations. The other 35,641 people, two-thirds of Bozeman, lived on a block inside none of them.

Inside an association

17,652Residents, 2020 census blocks, all 15 currently recognized associations. Equal to 33.1% of Bozeman’s official 2020 population of 53,293.

Inside none of them

35,64166.9% of the city. On an alternative city boundary this reads 36,324 of 53,850, or 67.5%. See the methodology.

Recognized associations

15Active as of September 17, 2026, per the City of Bozeman’s own roster and its GIS boundary layer. Two further association polygons are flagged inactive and are excluded.

Associations that overlap

0All 105 pairs of the 15 polygons were tested. None overlaps another by more than one square metre, so the per-association figures below can simply be added.

Every association, counted

2020 decennial census population by association, largest first. The share column is against Bozeman’s official 2020 census count of 53,293. Subtotals and the total are arithmetic on this table and can be checked line by line.

On the namesThe city’s website and its GIS layer use slightly different names for the same 15 bodies. The table uses the GIS names. One pairing is not obvious from the names alone: the association the city’s website lists as Marwyn-Lindley is the polygon the GIS layer calls Lindley Park Association. That match was made on geometry, not on the name: the polygon spans the Cypress Avenue to Highland Boulevard corridor the website gives for Marwyn-Lindley.

Where they are

Twelve east of 19th, three west

Bozeman in 2020 was split almost evenly by North and South 19th Avenue: 28,099 residents east, 25,751 west. The associations are not split evenly at all. Twelve of the fifteen lie east of 19th, and they hold 76 percent of all association residents.

Not one association straddles 19th Avenue. The three western associations are Kirk Park, Valley Unit and Valley West and The Lakes. Kirk Park is the only one that touches the street at all: 19th is its eastern boundary, which matches the city’s own description of it: “to N. 19th (west side of the street).” The nearest eastern association, Jandt, begins 368 metres east of the centreline.

An east-side Bozeman resident was three times as likely to live inside a neighborhood association as a west-side resident. On the west side of 19th, 84 percent of residents lived inside no association at all.

Why this table totals 17,526, not 17,652This table counts only blocks inside the current city-limits polygon. A further 126 association residents live on blocks whose representative point falls just outside those limits; they are in the per-association table above and not in this one. 17,526 plus 126 is 17,652. Neither figure is the “right” one: they answer slightly different questions, and both are printed here so the difference is visible rather than buried.

Where the growth has gone

The 2020 count is now six years old, and the direction of travel is measurable. Montana Department of Revenue property records show 6,111 housing units completed inside Bozeman city limits from 2020 through 2025.

The associations hold 33 percent of Bozeman’s 2020 population and captured 12 percent of the housing built since. Sixty-nine percent of that construction went west, the side where only 16 percent of residents are inside an association. A 2020 snapshot therefore understates the gap rather than overstating it. Apportioning population growth in proportion to where units were built puts present-day coverage at roughly 31 percent. That is an estimate, and it is labelled as one.

The contrary reading, reportedAmerican Community Survey block-group estimates for 2020–2024 show east-side block groups gaining more population than west-side ones (+1,214 against +232), which points the other way. That layer’s own significance field marks nearly all of those changes as falling inside the survey’s margin of error; block groups are coarse relative to association boundaries; and a 2020–2024 five-year estimate is centred around 2022, so it is largely blind to construction completed in 2023 through 2025. We weight the assessor record of 6,111 actual units more heavily, and note the disagreement rather than omitting it.

Participation

What a strong response looks like

Living inside an association’s boundary is not the same as taking part in it. On the one occasion the record gives a number, the number is small.

At the study commission’s meeting of June 4, 2026, Mayor Joey Morrison, speaking explicitly in his personal capacity, argued against expanding the Inter-Neighborhood Council’s authority to compel commission action. He cited an October poll on the Unified Development Code in which the highest response rate any single neighborhood association managed was 53 residents out of 3,600. He added that he had lived in three neighborhood associations without ever being polled or canvassed.

One qualification, statedA working summary of that meeting glosses the figure as “under one half of one percent.” That gloss does not follow from 53 and 3,600, which come to about 1.5 percent. We print the arithmetic rather than the gloss, and we would rather flag the discrepancy than quietly use the lower number.

The record

What the INC has actually sent the Commission

The Inter-Neighborhood Council’s own archive of minutes and agendas runs to 199 documents. Within the minutes that survive, the body transmitted ten formal positions to the City Commission or another body. Five concerned land use or a development project.

Two further proposals appear in the record without a recorded outcome: a letter supporting the Centennial Park neighborhood’s rezoning request (May 8, 2025, land use) and a charter-language recommendation (December 2025, not land use). Counting both, the ratio is 6 of 12, still half.

The Guthrie letter, in the body’s own minutes

The abstention pattern recurs. On October 9, 2025 a motion asking the Commission to delay its vote on the Unified Development Code update failed with 5 in favor and 6 abstaining. Not one delegate voted against it. The same meeting carried the NCOD letter 6 in favor, 5 abstaining.

The wider record, in proportion

Transmitted positions are the sharpest measure because they are a small and checkable universe. Two broader counts, from the same corpus, point in a more moderate direction and belong here too:

Those rows are not in conflict; they answer different questions. The INC discusses development constantly, formally acts on it rarely, and when it does speak outward to the Commission, development is about half of what it says. Much of the 76 percent is the body being briefed on code progress by a city liaison, which is not the same as the body pursuing it. Of the 77 substantive actions, 30 are the INC’s own internal governance and 19 concern recognizing neighborhood associations. Roughly three-quarters of its non-land-use work is administering itself and the association system.

In fairness, and specificallyThe January 2017 accessory-dwelling-unit letter is detailed, technical, proactive policy work produced by a working group rather than in reaction to any one project. Anyone told the INC only ever reacts should be shown that document. And the 13 land-use actions are episodic rather than steady: they fall into about seven distinct episodes in fourteen years, and in eight of the twelve years with surviving minutes the INC took no land-use action at all.

Methodology

How these numbers were produced

Everything above can be rebuilt from public data. This section says exactly how, and where it is weak.

Population

Block-level population is variable P1_001N from table P1 of the 2020 decennial census, PL 94-171 redistricting file, pulled from the Census API for state 30, county 031: 4,874 blocks, county total 118,960. Blocks were joined to TIGER 2020 tabblock20 geometry on GEOID20; all 4,874 matched. Bozeman’s official 2020 census count is 53,293.

Boundaries

Neighborhood association boundaries come from the City of Bozeman’s public GIS layer 28, “Neighborhood Boundaries”, fetched September 17, 2026. The layer returns 17 polygons; the status field is named ACTIVE and carries the values ACTIVE and INACTIVE. The two inactive polygons are excluded throughout: South East Neighborhood Association (289 residents) and Flanders Creek Neighborhood Association (879 residents). Fifteen active associations were analysed, which matches both the city’s Neighborhood Associations page and its Inter-Neighborhood Council page. City limits come from the city’s own limits layer, six features dissolved into one polygon.

Assignment

Each census block was reduced to its representative point and assigned to an association polygon by a spatial join on the within predicate. All distance, area and overlap work was done in EPSG:26912 (UTM zone 12N, NAD83). Overlap between associations was tested pairwise across all 105 combinations of the 15 polygons; no pair overlaps by more than one square metre, so no de-duplication was required and the per-association figures sum directly to the total.

East and west of 19th

19th Avenue is not straight: across the relevant band it runs from about −111.0619 to −111.0667, bending west north of Oak Street. Rather than use a single meridian, the centreline was built as a function of latitude from 491 sampled vertices of the city’s own ROADNAME='19TH' street segments between latitudes 45.63 and 45.73, and every boundary vertex of every association polygon was compared against the centreline at that vertex’s latitude. A polygon counts as east only if every vertex is east, and west only if every vertex is west. Using a single fixed meridian would have introduced up to about 350 metres of error. That is not enough to move any of the twelve eastern associations, but it is enough to make the Kirk Park call unreliable, and Kirk Park is the one that matters.

Known limitations, stated plainly

1. The population data is from 2020 and is now six years old. Bozeman has grown substantially since. The housing-completion figures in the geography section are the best available correction, and they widen the gap rather than narrowing it; but the headline 33 percent is a 2020 number and should be read as one.
2. Whole-block assignment can misallocate a split block. A census block that straddles an association boundary is counted entirely on one side, wherever its representative point falls. This is the standard approach, and with 1,233 populated blocks against 2,644 acres of association area the effect is small and unbiased in direction, but it is not zero.
3. The vintages do not match. Association polygons and the city-limits layer are current as of 2026; the population is 2020. Areas annexed since 2020 carry their 2020 population, which is usually near zero. This is also why two city totals appear on this page: 53,293 is the official 2020 census count for Bozeman, while 53,850 is the sum of whole blocks assigned to the 2026 city-limits polygon. The 557-person difference is the expected consequence of a current boundary against a 2020 count, and both denominators are shown wherever they are used.
4. Association boundaries change. Under BMC 2.05.1130 the INC votes monthly on recognition applications, so the roster can change at any monthly meeting. Every figure here is as of September 17, 2026, and that date should travel with the number.
5. The ACTIVE flag is the only thing separating 15 associations from 17. It agrees with both city web pages, which is two independent confirmations, but no last-edited date is published for that layer. Anyone who queries the layer without filtering on ACTIVE will get 17 polygons and a 13–4 split rather than 15 and 12–3.
6. The INC document record has real gaps. The action counts cover 2013 to 2026, not all time. Of 199 archived documents, 30 produced no extractable text, including 11 minutes documents: all of 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2012, plus two 2013 meetings and one in 2014. 2009 has no documents at all, and 2020 and 2021 have agendas only. Eighty-two meetings have usable minutes. Two further INC actions are attested only in the bylaws text and are excluded from the counts; neither is land use.
7. Two of the thirteen land-use actions are judgment calls: a June 2024 vote to call a special meeting about a development project, and a September 2019 vote to form a parking working group. Excluding both gives 11 of 75 rather than 13 of 77. That is why this page says “about 17 percent” and “roughly one in six” rather than a decimal.

Correction: the 28 percent figure

A lower coverage figure has circulated in the study commission’s own proceedings. At the meeting of April 24, 2026, study commissioner Barb Cestero said:

That figure is superseded by the analysis on this page, and the correction runs against our own argument. Thirty-three percent is a larger share of the city than 28 percent, and we print the larger number because it is the one the data supports.

The lower figure could not be reproduced from the 2020 census and the current 15-association roster under any reading tried. Several obvious alternative methods move further away rather than closer: counting households instead of residents gives 35 percent; including the two inactive associations gives 35 percent; counting land area instead of people gives 18 percent. Holding the 2020 association population of 17,652 constant, reaching 28 percent requires a citywide denominator near 63,000, which Bozeman has not reached. The most recent published estimate, the ACS 2020–2024 five-year figure, is 56,114, and that average is itself centred around 2022. What cannot be ruled out from public data is whether the 28 percent figure counts residents inside boundaries at all, as opposed to dues-paying members, registered households, or an older roster of associations. Those are bookkeeping questions for whoever produced it.

Sources

• U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Decennial Census, PL 94-171 redistricting file, table P1, variable P1_001N; TIGER/Line 2020 tabblock20 block geometry.
• City of Bozeman GIS, COB_Base_Layers MapServer, layer 28: Neighborhood Boundaries, and the Street_Names layer for 19th Avenue centrelines.
• City of Bozeman, Neighborhood Associations and InterNeighborhood Council pages, retrieved September 17, 2026.
• Montana Department of Revenue property records, year_built 2020–2025, for housing completions; American Community Survey 2020–2024 five-year block-group estimates for the contrary reading.
• Bozeman Inter-Neighborhood Council minutes and agenda packets, 199 documents from the city’s Laserfiche archive, 2007–2026.
• Bozeman Local Government Study Commission meeting records, April through August 2026.
• Bozeman Municipal Code, Chapter 2, Article 5, the Neighborhood Recognition Ordinance.

CorrectionsIf any figure on this page is wrong, we want to know and we will change it. Every number here is traceable to a named public source, and the method is described so it can be re-run. How to send a correction →

Read this carefully

What this does and does not show

Numbers get quoted out of the page they came from. These are the boundaries of the claim.

What it does not show

• It does not show that neighborhood association members are bad actors, or that they misrepresent themselves. Associations are open to every resident, property owner, business owner and nonpartisan organization inside their boundary, and dues cannot be required: “Membership fees shall be voluntary and shall not bar any resident from neighborhood association membership or voting privileges” (BMC 2.05.1170). The people who show up to them are doing unpaid civic work.
• It does not show anything about how delegates are chosen. Each association selects its Inter-Neighborhood Council representative under bylaws that must ensure democratic voting procedures (proposed charter §8.04(b)(4); BMC 2.05.1190.E), and only residents of the neighborhood may hold the seat (§8.04(b)(3)). Representativeness and selection method are different questions, and this page is about the first one.
• It does not show the INC can veto, block, delay or force reconsideration of anything. It cannot. The proposed charter contains no such power, and §8.04(d)(8) expressly contemplates the Commission diverging from the INC’s recommendations.
• It does not show the Inter-Neighborhood Council is new. The INC and the recognition system both date to the 2006 charter and the 2007 Neighborhood Recognition Ordinance. What Article VIII would add is charter-level status: a consultation duty, a written-response duty, and a full-time dedicated city staffer, none of which any other city board has.
• It does not show that association residents are unrepresentative of their own neighbourhoods. Nothing here measures that, and we make no claim about it.

What it does show

• Coverage. The body Article VIII names covers 33 percent of Bozeman’s 2020 population. Two-thirds of the city lives outside every association boundary and has no delegate on it.
• Geographic concentration. Twelve of the fifteen associations are east of 19th Avenue. On the west side, 84 percent of residents live inside no association, and 69 percent of the housing built since 2020 has gone there.
• The shape of the objection. A voluntary body covering a third of the city, concentrated on one side of it, would gain standing procedural power over a City Commission accountable to all of it. That is a structural argument about who has to be consulted, not a judgment about the people doing the consulting.

The narrow pointNeighborhood associations are a reasonable way for neighbours to organise. The objection is not to their existence, their members, or how they pick their delegates. It is that the charter is the wrong instrument for handing any one of them standing power over the body every Bozeman voter elects, and that once it is in the charter, only another citywide vote can take it out.