City planning infrastructure fund with utility increase; potential new development position
The city is planning to launch the pilot phase of its proposed strategic capital investment reserve, or SCIR, program.
It’s a funding mechanism established when it increased utility rates by about 27 percent last summer with the goal of expanding utility infrastructure and “support strategic development that aligns with adopted community plans,” according to the city.
Staff are planning to revisit the pilot program during a March work session and vote to formally adopt the program in April.
Staff said they intend to award the initial SCIR funds at the first commission meeting in July with the second round of awards in January 2027.
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The concept grew out of a city discussion on infrastructure needs last spring and an April 24, 2025 memo from City Manager Greg Doyon, as did the idea of a new staff position to oversee the SCIR, if approved and funded by commissioners.
During a Jan. 20 work session, Chris Gaub, public works director, said developers must submit applications for city commission review.
“Our heads hurt,” Gaub said, of staff attempting to foresee all needs and potential issues for the program.
The fund will start with $6 million in dedicated funding, $2 million annually from each utility: water, sewer and stormwater.
That’s about the amount of additional revenue city staff estimated would be generated by the utility increase approved by commissioners in June.
Any funding left in the SCIR each year would rollover to the next fiscal year, Melissa Kinzler, city finance director, told commissioners in January.
Mark Juras, a development review coordinator in public works, said that “this is a pilot” designed to explore, learn and test the program.
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“This is not a perfect program,” but was intended to be a yearlong pilot with regular reviews and adjustments as necessary.
Juras said the commission would make the decisions on whether to award any SCIR funding requests.
Under the pilot, developers may apply for up to $1.75 million per project, per utility, and the SCIR funding has to be awarded before a developer solicits bids since they must follow city purchasing policies. The pilot includes a small project reserve of up to $250,000 per project on a first come, first served basis.
The funds won’t be paid out until the infrastructure is built and accepted by the city, Juras said. Prior or concurrent land use approvals must also be in place.
Private utilities are not eligible for SCIR funds.
Staff said that they’re recommending that the city can apply for SCIR funding since the city has the ability to design infrastructure for large areas that multiple developers are looking at, such as the east side and Thaniel area regional stormwater ponds.
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Mayor Cory Reeves said in January that he’d read through the pilot program and “I think it’s very well done.”
Commissioner Rick Tryon said in January that he was “amazed” the program had moved this quickly and “this is really, really well done.”
Commissioner Joe McKenney said that he had questions and would strongly suggest another work session on the program.
Commissioner Casey Schreiner asked who was scoring the SCIR funding application so there wasn’t conflict of interest when they come before the commission and whether there was a way to make sure the city isn’t taking up the entire fund for the next decade.
Last summer, commissioners approved utility rates that averaged 27 percent across water, sewer and stormwater, after staff had initially proposed a 10 percent increase per utility during an April work session.
Doyon, the city manager, said during that work session that the city wasn’t well positioned for growth or future development because of limited infrastructure capacity and funding.
During their April 1 meeting, commissioners were scheduled to set a public hearing on the proposed utility rates for May 6, but opted to pull that item from the agenda.
Reeves said during that meeting that they’d had a good discussion but said they have significant capital needs and potential future development that required further discussion.
He said they’d probably need a special meeting to keep that process moving.
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Other commissioners nodded or said that was fine but offered no further comment on the delay.
No special meeting was held, nor were the water, sewer or stormwater rate proposals further discussed in public meetings until June 3, 2025.
During the May 6 meeting, the action to set the public hearing for June 3 was on the consent agenda and no commissioner commented on the utility rates. There was no public comment.
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Staff presented their earlier recommendation of 10 percent increases as Option A on June 3.
“Alternatively, Option B includes an average 27 percent increase to support capital investment in public infrastructure to facilitate economic development, while making Great Falls’ infrastructure more resilient, more competitive and more responsive to opportunities,” staff wrote in their agenda report.
Commissioners approved Option B.
Staff wrote in their agenda report for the June 3 meeting that the 27 percent rate increase would generate about $6 million of additional revenue for water, sewer and storm drain toward expansion of public infrastructure.
At the time, the city set aside about $150,000 in water, $100,000 in sewer and $200,000 in storm drain funds annually for “unscheduled development,” according to public works staff in their June agenda report.
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“When the city is approached by private developers, they often seek assistance to extending public infrastructure to the project and to offset their cost for installing new water, sewer, storm drain utilities. Aside from TIF, the city does not have funds beyond the unscheduled development funds, which are minimal, to facilitate new development in Great Falls,” staff wrote in their June 3 agenda report. “The rates under Option B include a specific amount to be set aside in a capital improvements fund for use by the City Commission on a case by case, like TIF projects, to be publicly approved by application for new public infrastructure.”
The commission’s utility rate hike approved last summer, followed an April staff presentation about the city’s inability to keep up with growth and improvements to its utility systems.
In an April 24 memo to commissioners, City Manager Greg Doyon wrote: “The purpose of this memorandum is to outline the challenges and opportunities associated with economic development and infrastructure investment in the City of Great Falls. It highlights persistent barriers to growth, analyzes the tools currently available to support
new development, and proposes actionable recommendations for commission consideration. Central to this discussion is the need to clarify the city’s role in facilitating development, the funding mechanisms that can support infrastructure, and the expectations of both the development community and the public.”
In his memo, Doyon recommended that the city explore additional funding options, “as well as public infrastructure investment to include a utility rate increase for infrastructure expansion; establish a strategic development officer position to lead front-end development discussions; finalize updated special improvement district policy; and
“adopt/endorse clear development process guidance for staff and developers to improve consistency and negotiation transparency with private developers/investors.”
“This document is intended to initiate a broader conversation — with the commission and the public — about how the City of Great Falls positions itself for sustainable growth in the face of increasing demand and limited financial capacity,” Doyon wrote in his memo.
Doyon’s memo was not included in the agenda packets in May or June related to the utility rate increase, nor was it included in Doyon’s weekly packets for April or May.
Doyon sent the memo to The Electric on May 13, 2025 in response to an earlier article on the utility rate increase proposal.
The Electric asked why the memo wasn’t included in the agenda packets or publicly released to facilitate public discussion.
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Doyon was out of the office for the following two weeks and on May 29 responded:
“Good question. I sent the memo and waited for commission feedback – feedback was very light – mostly about the new position funded with TIF dollars. I wasn’t sure if they agreed with the summary, background, rationale. I think it was a lot to digest. I anticipated that the [city commission] may have wanted a work session to follow-up on it
and they haven’t requested one yet. Now that I am back, I’m wading through my emails and see if they’ve provided any additional feedback or how they’d like to proceed.”
The recommended new position wasn’t discussed publicly during the June 3 meeting on utilities and development, nor was the SID policy or other aspects of Doyon’s memo, outside increase utility fees.
According to a description currently posted to the city website, the SCIR fund “is administered by the strategic development officer” in coordination with city planning, public works and finance departments.
At this time, the city does not have a strategic development officer.
Asked about the position, Doyon told The Electric on Feb. 28 that there is no one in the role nor has anyone been hired.
He said he believes the commission supports the concept of the position, but there’s been ongoing discussion about how to fund it and he anticipates further discussion during the upcoming budget cycle.
Asked why the city website states the new SCIR program will be administered by a position that doesn’t currently exist, Doyon said the website is wrong and if that position is created, it will provide the oversight, but for now it’s a team in planning and public works.
The position was also discussed during the Jan. 28 commission retreat.
Commissioner Rick Tryon said they should define what the strategic development officer is and if they can hire for it.
Mayor Cory Reeves said the thought the position would help with economic development and coordinate with the city and the Great Falls Development Alliance.
Commissioner Joe McKenney said he had some questions and would like a work session on how the city would fund the position.
He said during the retreat that there’d been talk of using some tax increment financing, or TIF, funds, which concerned him as the Legislature is watching TIF spending.
Doyon said that the general fund wouldn’t be able to support the position that was conceptually considered because of “misalignment” of roles between the city and GFDA.
Each entity has different processes and the city is often not brought in early enough to GFDA’s efforts, Doyon said, but he doesn’t want a city staffer in the position of negotiating with developers who want the city to contribute something.
Most developers, he said, expect the city to put money into projects and he wants someone in the discussions that would be advocating for the taxpayer.
Depending on how it’s funded, Doyon said the position could be in the upcoming fiscal year’s budget, which begins July 1, but he would prefer that commissioners endorse the position somehow.
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Commissioner Casey Schreiner said that for the purposes of the priority setting exercise at the January retreat, the others had told him not to put specific employee positions as a goal.
Commissioner Joe McKenney said that adding one or two police officers wouldn’t change much, but the strategic development officer position would.
Commissioner Shannon Wilson asked if creating the position was worth losing two neighborhood pools, as city officials have been discussing potential cuts in programs that aren’t self-sustaining.
Schreiner asked if they should first clarify the city’s role in economic development more clearly, since conflict between the two entities may continue even with the creation of a strategic development officer position.
Doyon asked the group what if GFDA were to adopt a strategic plan that doesn’t align with the city’s.
Schreiner, who resigned from the GFDA board after being elected to the commission, said GFDA is a private entity that the city views as almost a peer entity, almost governmental, “and they’re just not.”
GFDA can recruit businesses, but the city has to follow its own rules, Schreiner said.
Commissioner Rick Tryon said he saw the strategic development officer position as positive.
“We talk about how Great Falls hasn’t grown for 40 years, so how effective is GFDA, if we haven’t grown or developed,” Tryon said is a question he’s often asked by local residents.
Doyon said the original idea was that the position would coordinate with GFDA, but based on the discussion at the retreat, maybe it could be expanded to take calls from developers and make contacts.
During a Sept. 2, 2025 work session, Doyon reviewed his April development memo with commissioners.
He joked that Reeves had said it hurt his head to read it and thought the community was owed more discussion on the memo.
It started with an afternoon chat with Brock Cherry, city planning director, during which they had an “epiphany that we’re banging our heads against the wall” on development in some ways, Doyon said.
For his tenure at the city, Doyon, who was appointed in 2008, said he wanted to address the questions, challenges and concerns he’d seen, but it was just an initial conversation to gauge interest and a basic summary of economic tools available to the city.
Doyon said in September that the city is overly reliant on the military, agricultural and medical fields for economic impact.
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He said his goal has always been to support the military here but also diversify the local economy. There were some successes with industry and agriculture in Malteurop, ADF and Helena Chemical, but the population has been pretty stagnant, though he contends the area was undercounted during the last census.
Great Falls has some disadvantages, he said, such as not having an east-west interstate and socioeconomics don’t support some of the businesses locals want, such as Costco, which have population requirements.
Former commissioners had called Men’s Warehouse asking them to locate in Great Falls, but the city doesn’t fit their model, he said.
“But I also think Great Falls is Montana’s best kept secret,” and once the city is discovered, it will be hard to put the brakes on it, Doyon said in September.
He said some businesses have built outside the city limits in Cascade County because they didn’t want to connect to city infrastructure or pay city taxes.
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Much of local development has been driven by local investors, he said, but they lack capital for major growth and developers also lack capital for infrastructure.
Dynamics between the city and GFDA changed as GFDA took on the role of developer for the AgriTech Park on the east end of town. The city stopped being a cash investor in GFDA several years ago, but has supported in other ways such as an ARPA allocation, he said.
Doyon said the city lacks someone at the tip of the spear to guide the development process and avoid confusion.
The city often gets scapegoated, he said, for things that don’t work as locals want national chains but the community doesn’t always fit their criteria and the public doesn’t know the whole story.
The public is frustrated by taxes and the new utility rate increases, he said, but those were things the city needs to have resources to make changes for development.
During the September work session, Reeves said they’d talked about a strategic development officer and asked where they’d gotten with that.
“Nowhere,” Doyon said, as the position would need commission support and funding.
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Reeves said that he thinks they’re a pro-development commission, so they’d likely support whatever staff brought them.
“I think you guys just need to bring stuff to the table,” Reeves said.
Tryon asked Cherry, city planning director, if under the Strong Towns concept, development can be a liability if it doesn’t pay for itself.
Cherry said yes, though something may sound good for GFDA or the airport or jobs, they aren’t a fiduciary for the city and aren’t checking other boxes of how to pay for that development long-term, such as infrastructure and utilities.
“We’re not doing any math,” Cherry said.
Tryon said, “we need to do something very different. We’ve been having the same conversation for 20 years.”
Doyon said he thought the strategic development officer position, if created, would be housed in his office and be a unique role working on development since the city can’t sign nondisclosure agreements.
Doyon said in September that staff had a plan on the new SCIR, but there’d been a reduction in water usage since the rates were increased last summer, “so it remains to be seen how long it would take for that capital fund to be available.”
Discussing the SCIR concept in September, he said the “city is very risk adverse,” but was trying to be creative where it can be to benefit the community.
The utility increase was unpopular, but would fund the SCIR program and help drive development the community wants.
Doyon said that a refrain he often hears is “what we’re doing currently is not necessarily working.”
Reeves said in September that he wanted the commission to give direction on hiring a strategic development officer.
There was no strong opposition from commissioners at the time, but McKenney said he wanted to know more about it and how they’d fund it. At the time, he suggested that Doyon bring a detailed proposal for the position to commissioners for consideration.
Doyon said he was asking if commissioners were okay with staff exploring the idea.
