City Club Missoula

2005-06-24 11:30:00 Governors’ Room at the Florence Building (North Higgens Avenue and West Front Street) Contact: RSVP by June 21 to [email protected] or to Jim Crocker at 728-5279 On Friday, June 24, 2005 City Club…

"This is a big project which we’ve never really done before at this scale. So it is a big, complicated project."

Mission The mission of City Club Missoula is “to inform and inspire citizens on issues vital to the Missoula area Community through public forums that encourage new ideas and a free exchange of thought.” City…

The next City Club Missoula luncheon will be on Friday April 21. The topic of discussion will be the Milltown Dam and water. The venue is yet to be determined. For more information please contact [email protected] Please share this information with other Missoula residents who share an interest in making Missoula a more connected and civic-minded community.

If you have already responded, we thank you. If you have not had a chance to respond, please take this opportunity to do so at [email protected]

It’s an undeniably weighty topic. Which is part of what made it perfect fodder for the monthly meeting of Missoula’s new City Club Missoula.

Fifty years ago, the 160-acre chunk of public land defined by South Avenue, Russell Street and Bancroft Street in Missoula was open fields holding only the town’s airport and its fairgrounds. Today, it’s a potpourri…

There’s an idea taking root in Missoula that may prove helpful toward smoothing out some of those snags. It’s called the City Club Missoula. It’s just in the formative stages, but it’s been conceived with the idea of creating of forum for civil discourse outside of the formal and frequently contentious arena of governmental hearings.

What if, as a citizen, you were invited to a meeting and found yourself, not in an impersonal hearing room but at a conference table where work gets done. Imagine around this table some citizens, some representatives from industry, union people, farmers, environmental groups, and others affected by what happens along the coastline. Imagine the state official who called you together says that, instead of the government creating a plan that only some could live with, it is instead up to you. As a group you’re to hammer out a solution. That’s collaborative governance, and it feels much different from simply "listening to the public."

The next City Club Missoula luncheon is scheduled for Jan. 21. Please plan on attending…and bring a friend.