Missoula City Council: There’s UFDA to Consider

By Robert Struckman, 11-10-08

	Caption: Roger Millar, director of Missoula's Office of Planning and Grants. Photo by Alexia Beckerling.

Here’s Missoula Office of Planning and Grants director Roger Millar’s short take on the city’s zoning book: It’s a 36-year-old update of an 80-year-old original, and most changes made to it over the decades have been preventive measures taken after some tragic or lame occurrence.

“Something terrible happens, and the city council directs staff to write codes so it can’t happen again,” Millar said. “We have all sorts of ways to say, ‘No,’ rather than an ordinance to facilitate what the community wants.”

Part of the effort on reworking the zoning involves an amendment to the urban area’s growth plan, the Urban Fringe Development Area Project, known as UFDA. On Monday night the city council will hold a public meeting at 7 p.m. on UFDA at its chambers at 140 W. Pine St. 

You may have heard Millar talking about UFDA at various public meetings around town, or seen him carrying big rolled-up maps to and from those meetings. He always seems to be packing those map-tubes.

The point is Millar hasn’t been scarce. He and his staff have practically canvassed the whole town in an effort to figure out how locals would like to see Missoula grow, and they’ve pulled it all together into a comprehensive document. The new zoning document will jive with the growth plan—including UFDA.

If this is making you yawn, don’t worry. That’s normal. Still, this is important stuff. With a solid plan and well-crafted zoning regulations, the city could get away from piecemeal approval of individual developments and begin making decisions based on information and forethought.

“When the council considers annexation and zoning or an infrastructure investment, they can just look at the map to see the context,” Millar said. “Its organized and rational, as opposed to subdivision after subdivision coming in out of the fog.”

The idea isn’t to decide beforehand whether a particular piece of land will be developed but to add information to the debates.

“We’re going to be proactive, get out ahead of this stuff,” he said. “This is a good first step.”

On another note, you might be wondering how the housing slowdown will affect Missoula’s zoning and growth. The answer: not much.

“We’re planning for the swell, not the chop. Missoula has grown at about 2 percent a year since 1950. That’s the swell of the waves,” Millar said. “The market is the chop as waves go by.”

An earlier version of this story confused Missoula’s urban fringe plan with the reworking of the city’s zoning document.