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Alison Sweeney (Bozeman City Commission At-large, Montana, candidate 2025)

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Alison Sweeney

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Candidate, Bozeman City Commission At-large

Elections and appointments
Last election

November 4, 2025

Education

High school

Bozeman High School

Associate

University of Montana, Missoula College of Technology, 2011

Personal
Profession
Artist
Contact

Alison Sweeney ran for election for Bozeman City Commission At-large in Montana. She was on the ballot in the general election on November 4, 2025.[source]

Sweeney completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.

[1]

Biography

Alison Sweeney provided the following biographical information via Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey on October 4, 2025:

  • Birth date: January 28, 1981
  • High school: Bozeman High
  • Associate: College of Technology, University of Montana, Missoula, 2011
  • Gender: Female
  • Profession: Artist
  • Incumbent officeholder: No
  • Campaign slogan: A leader that listens
  • Campaign website
  • Campaign endorsements
  • Campaign Instagram

Elections

General election

General election for Bozeman City Commission At-large (2 seats)

The following candidates ran in the general election for Bozeman City Commission At-large on November 4, 2025.

Candidate
Eli Anselmi (Nonpartisan)
Roger Blank (Nonpartisan)
Image of Emma Bode
Emma Bode (Nonpartisan) Candidate Connection
Trevor Nameniuk (Nonpartisan) Candidate Connection
Alison Sweeney (Nonpartisan) Candidate Connection
Emily Talago (Nonpartisan) Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Election results

Endorsements

To view Sweeney's endorsements as published by their campaign, click here. Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Sweeney in this election.

Campaign themes

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

Alison Sweeney completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Sweeney's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

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Lifelong Bozemanite running for City Commission because we've got problems to fix and we need a leader that listens to the people who live here.
  • City government needs to take direction from the people who live here, so if elected, I intend to elevate the voice of residents and neighborhoods by empowering advisory boards, strengthening the neighborhoods program, giving the inter-neighborhood council a bigger role in policy making, and bringing back urban renewal boards that include residents of the urban renewal districts in order to oversee the responsible expenditure of public dollars to benefit existing residents.
  • As rampant growth has strained our public services to the breaking point, we need to have a community conversation about how to fully fund our police, fire, schools, and infrastructure. As quality of life has suffered, property taxes have risen. The growth is not paying for itself, and it's time for a new strategy! I've attended both the Citizen's Police Academy and the Citizen's Fire Academy to learn how to support our public safety providers.
  • Our Growth Policy needs resident input! In 2020 the City of Bozeman released a Community Plan based on the input of a mere 120 individuals many of whom are part of the organization itself. This document is the overarching plan that guides policy creation and regulation in our City. It's a very pro-density document, with little acknowledgment of our neighborhoods and cultural and natural resources. The future land use map illustrated in this document defines a growth boundary of 70 square miles, which is more than 3 times the current size of Bozeman. So while our leaders promote density as the answer to sprawl we suffer the ill affects fo both. I intend to update the Growth Policy, with actual residents weighing in this time!
Zoning and the development code, public participation from residents and neighborhood associations, municipal funding mechanisms, and historic preservation of architectural, landscape, and cultural heritage as a means of managing change and growth.
Policy at the municipal level is the closest to the people, and it's a powerful way to have an impact on real quality of life.
Abigail Adams for her intelligence, independence, and sound advice. Alice Paul for her uncompromising dedication to a cause even when forces within the ranks tried to stifle her efficacy. Ida B. Wells for documenting lynchings in an effort to make sure it didn't go unnoticed. Pretty Shield for her powerful medicine, dedication to helping her people, and efforts to preserve their culture.
Honesty, and a willingness to engage with residents in an effort to take their direction in policy creation.
Fiscal responsibility, while striving to maintain the high quality of life enjoyed by our residents, but above all, an elected decision maker must take direction from residents. Too often we've seen our elected officials excluding, dismissing, or even lecturing from the dais, our passionate, intelligent and engaged community volunteers who bring forth workable solutions. We are so fortunate to have a community full of people clamoring to participate, yet they are sidelined when their asks don't match the top down policy mandates of the few in power.
I hope to be able to change the culture at the top levels of our municipality from an entity that currently pursues policy in spite of residents opposition to one that takes it's direction from the people. This will mean strengthening the mechanisms by which people participate in local government. If I could achieve some manner of progress on this front I would be grateful.
When I was 12 I was accepted into the Youth Alive program run by HRDC to give kids from economically precarious households a paying job that centered around learning. I worked at the Museum of the Rockies in this program until I was 18. We researched exhibits and then created presentations interpreting them to visitors. We also got to clean dinosaur bones, and in the summer I was lucky enough to be chosen to actually work on dinosaur digs! During the school year we worked both days on the weekends, and summer was 40 hours a week. It kept us out of trouble, fostered a love of learning, and brought another source of income into our households. For me this was a tremendously formative character-defining experience.
The Journeyer by Gary Jennings. I love history and travel and it is an epic on both fronts. It's one of those captivating books you just can't put down!
Not necessarily, no, but they need to have done their homework. I dislike politics, but neighborhood advocacy is an important stepping stone to municipal office.
Again, neighborhood advocacy and some knowledge about how local government functions and is funded.
Former City Manager Ron Brey, Former County Commissioner Jane Jelinski, Former Mayor Steve Kirchhoff. Still working on endorsements from organizations, they haven't announced them yet.
Running a successful, profitable, fulfilling business as an artist.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

See also


External links

Footnotes