City Club Missoula

Roger Millar, a certified planner and engineer, talked about preserving quality of life in Missoula in the face of growth. His talk drew a crowd, with some 120 people attending the forum sponsored by City Club Missoula.

Millar will discuss three areas where his work in Missoula is focused: code revision, housing challenges and city-county cooperation in the urbanizing area. He’ll talk about the toolbox of ideas tried by other Western towns in situations similar to Missoula’s.

The new director of the Missoula City-County Office of Planning and Grants will take a look at the challenge of dealing with Missoula’s growth at the next City Club Missoula luncheon.

"Missoula is a unique place, but we can learn from the successes and failures of other unique places," says Millar. "Quality of life is of paramount importance to the people who live here and the people who are considering moving here."

“I think we can fill potholes and grow poplars at our wastewater treatment plant that drink nitrogen and breathe CO2,” Engen explained. “I think we can write tickets for drivers running red lights while designing a green building for our police department.

"Many mayors of small and large cities across the United States, concerned with the slow pace of change at the federal level, have come to the conclusion that climate change is a local issue with global consequences and have committed themselves to making a difference at home and around the world," Engen said recently.

As mayor of the City of Missoula, a community with a rock-solid conservation ethic, John Engen is working with organizations and individuals in and out of government to chip away at global warming through education, organization and practical change.

Details of such talks emerged during and after Friday’s City Club Missoula forum, a monthly luncheon that investigates topics of interest to Missoula residents.

Development along Rock Creek will be the topic of the next City Club Missoula

In the past five years, 33 of Montana’s 56 counties have seen population drops. Fritz recalled how 19th-century historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared the U.S. frontier closed because it had reached a threshold of two people for every square mile.