Make Your Voice Heard: City of Great Falls Growth Policy

You may recall that over the last couple years, the City of Great Falls has been looking for the input of the public, from both residents and non-residents, to create a new growth policy for the city.

What's a growth policy for?

The idea is that the policy born from the responses would guide city officials in making decisions regarding the potential future growth of the city for years to come.

Well, the policy has been drafted and made available to the public, and city officials are now after public comment on the draft.

There is an event scheduled where the public can address officials directly.  The forum is January 15th from 5:30pm until 7:30pm at the Civic Center's Gibson Room.  More forums may be announced at a later date if it becomes necessary.

Comments can also be submitted online here.  For this draft of the policy, the City will accept comments until the end of February.

The current goal is for the final version of the growth policy to be voted on and hopefully adopted at a City Commission meeting later this year.

What's in the current draft of the policy?

First off, I want to set expectations.  The growth policy is not a wishlist, so it's not things like "We want an Olive Garden / Red Lobster" or "Get rid of the parking meters downtown".

One of the first (and biggest) sections is an overview of Great Falls as it is right now.  Infrastructure (roads, utilities, etc.), zoning, environment, demographics, housing, education and employment.

After that, it gets into potential changes, such as rezoning and redevelopment.  In the current form, there are only a few specific examples of what changes might look like.

The current draft looks at the Machinery Row area, Central Avenue West, and the lots surrounding Great Falls College-MSU, complete with examples from similar projects from across the state and artist's renderings.  That doesn't mean that's what's going to happen if the policy is approved, it's just examples of what could be done.

I seriously encourage everyone to take a look and make your voices heard!