The city is in the process of updating its growth policy.

An online survey is now available and the city is hosting in-person workshops this week.

The survey takes about 15-20 minutes and asks residents their opinions and vision for the city’s future for the next 20 years.

The growth policy is a document, required by state law, that is used by local governments to guide decisions about growth, development, policy and capital improvements.

State law requires that local governments review the growth policy every five years and make adjustments if needed.

The city last did a major growth policy update in 2013.

City holding growth policy meetings Aug. 21-22

City Commissioners hired Orion Planning and Design in May with a $371,184 contract to assist with the growth policy process.

The city is hosting community workshops this week:

• Jan. 27 at 5:30 in the Gibson Room at the Civic Center
• Jan. 28 at noon in the Paddock Club at Montana Expo Park
• Jan. 28 at 5:30 p.m. in the Meadowlark Elementary School library
• Jan. 29 at 5:30 p.m. in the East Middle School cafeteria
• Jan. 30 at noon in room B139 at Great Falls College MSU

The city’s growth policy steering committee last met Jan. 9 and Allison Mouch, a partner in Orion, walked the group through the presentation and activity she’ll be doing at the workshops.

She said that the survey and workshops will ask questions to solidify community core values and community planning principles.

Part of the workshops will include brief presentation on information from the existing conditions report that’s been developed as part of the growth policy update process.

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According to that report, Great Falls’ population grew less than two percent between 2010 and 2020.

The 2024 projected population is 60,301, assuming a 0.2 percent decrease, consistent with the population change from 2022 to 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 population estimates.

All seven of the largest Montana cities grew from 2010 to 2020, but Great Falls was the only one to experience population decline between 2022 and 2023, according to the report.

Mouch said that makes their job interesting because the city is showing stable growth with a slight downturn projected, while the state is experiencing growth elsewhere and they’d expect that to trickle to Great Falls at some point.

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Brett Doney, president of the Great Falls Development Alliance said he doesn’t think the annual census data or population projections have any value.

Mouch said that they also look at growth trends, and by those numbers, consider using a low-growth straight line projection, which adds 1,279 to the population; a mid-growth straight line projection, which adds 1,928; or a high-growth straight line projection, which would add, 2,584.

There’s the potential impact of added population from the Air Force’s Sentinel project, she said.

The Air Force said last year that the project includes establishing two workforce hubs, one in Great Falls and one in Lewistown. Each hub will be 50-60 acres with 2,500 to 3,000 residents during peaks for three to five years, according to AFGSC.

The hubs will have their own dining facility, gym, recreation center and be completely contained within a fenced area. Northrop Grumman, the contractor, will provide security, patrol the area and control access, according to Malmstrom.

City starting growth policy update process [2023]

Matt Dillow from Northrop Grumman, said during the January 2024 town hall that the workforce hub in Great Falls will have up to 3,000 workers. They’ll hire some locally, but will bring in others who will live at the hub and don’t tend to bring families, so they don’t anticipate much impact to school districts, Dillow said.

He said the hubs will also have their own basic healthcare clinics.

Last spring, city officials asked the Air Force about housing issues related to the Sentinel project.

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Russell Bartholomew, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center Sentinel acquisition program manager, said that the hubs will house the workers but that the project could bring in about 1,000 secondary and tertiary people who might need housing, but that the existing market should be able to accommodate that.

Brock Cherry, city planning director, said during the Jan. 9 meeting that projections are hard. He said that in 2024, the city only issued 50 building permits for housing. He said it seems like there’s more demand, but there’s currently not very many buildable lots.

Commissioner Rick Tryon, part of the steering committee, asked what they were building into the plan and how they could adjust for different levels of growth.

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Mouch said they could opt to say mid-growth is the more realistic, but if certain other growth realities happen, the plan can detail how that would impact the overall growth policy.

“I don’t think these numbers are aspirational at all,” Doney said.

Mouch said there’s differences in planning for certain growth levels and “we can’t just say we want to grow this much, therefore it is true.”

“Why not,” Doney asked and said that a plan is aspirational.

Doney said that if they create a plan of no growth, city officials will say they can’t accommodate growth if and when it comes, in terms of development and population.

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Mouch said a plan can be aspirational but that has costs associated with it and she things the community will want what’s realistic and affordable, with a focus on how things are paid for.

Doney said that Billings has grown since 1960 at an annual average rate of 0.8 percent and that the city should at least set a goal for that rate of growth.

Tryon said that he thinks the growth policy should be practical and the aspirational plans seem more like what GFDA does.

He said it should be a practical document that reflects what the city’s public infrastructure and funding resources can maintain over a long period of time.

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Doney said that if the growth policy killed a big development, it could take 20 years to get it back.

Mouch said that it might make sense to consider it as encouraging redevelopment within existing infrastructure rather than expanding outward and not emphasize annexation, but looking more strategically at internal growth and redevelopment.

Doney said that if the growth policy says we want infill, high quality development and density because it generates tax revenue without expanding infrastructure costs, then the city should change zoning codes to accommodate and emphasize that.

Cherry said how they explain the data will be important.

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“If we keep expanding without more tax growth, we’ll be in world of hurt,” he said. “If we keep on doing what we’ve been doing, and we don’t do anything different, that’s the destiny.”

The group spent roughly an hour discussing some of the survey questions and maps that will be used at the workshops.

The maps are similar to what was used in the 2013 growth policy process and 2019 downtown microvisioning in asking residents to indicate areas of the city where they want to see certain things.

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Doney said he had a problem with the first time out to the community is having people look at maps rather than asking them what kind of community they want.

“I think we’re asking the wrong questions,” Doney said.

Mouch said that’s part of the workshop format and the online survey.