The population of Gallatin County, Montana, has grown about

3 percent annually for a number of years, leading Montana

through most of the last decade. Growth brings challenges to

local government, but in this case, the accompanying cultural

change and conflicting viewpoints pose dilemmas unheard of a decade

ago.Traditionally, agricultural production worked in tandem with Montana

State University (MSU) to power Gallatin Countys economy.Although

MSU, which focuses on agriculture and engineering, continues

to be the areas largest employer, farming and ranching are threatened by

the encroachment of major subdivisions and their ever-increasing demand

for land and water.

New residents often have different perspectives than natives concerning

the environment and quality-of-life issues. Moreover, many of

the new residents are interested in influencing policy and are not reticent

in sharing their opinions.To serve a more diverse array of interests,

a broader range of businesses has been established in Bozeman, the

countys largest municipality and county seat. In reaction, clever traditionalists

outside Bozeman have recently coined the somewhat disparaging

term Bozangeles in reference to the city.They lament the

fact that new residents fail to understand that a certain code of the

west still prevails in many parts of the region. Although ethnic diversity

in Gallatin County is changing only gradually, different groups have

distinct attitudes.

Geography plays a role in a county that is nearly 120 miles long and

has a number of distinct commercial and cultural zones as well as five in-corporated municipalities. Socioeconomic status is another

important factor that influences opinion, along

with variations in lifestyle, educational levels, and political

affiliation. Gallatin Countys eighty-three thousand

residents include a diverse mix of wealthy celebrities,

genuine cowboys, ski bums, academics, farmers, cuttingedge

entrepreneurs,working people, and a few indigent

homeless folks.Overall, 40 percent of the areas residents

hold a bachelors degree or higher, and this well-educated

populace tends to be well informed on a variety of

issues.Values are in conflict in Gallatin County, and the

challenge for local government is to devise and implement

mechanisms that allow for vibrant public discourse

without bringing the decision-making process to a

standstill.This article explores several approaches used in

Gallatin County to engage the public in a manner that

efficiently informs the decision-making process.

Setting and Conditions

BorderingYellowstone National Park and boasting

three major ski areas along with abundant wildlife and

virtually unrivaled outdoor recreation, Gallatin County

is an attractive place to live and work as well as to retire.

Technology has also enabled a growing number of new

residents to reside in the county and manage their business

activities remotely. In many cases, these entrepreneurs,

along with retirees that have relocated to the area,

possess financial resources beyond those of most longterm

residents.Consequently, strong demand has pushed

the price of housing to 122 percent of the national average.

Workers are in short supply, and competition

among employers has elevated wages, particularly for

entry-level employees.

Nonetheless, many people, including local government

employees, struggle with the cost of living, particularly

in Bozeman.Local governments are attempting to

respond to increasing citizen demands and the need to

build capacity with limited resources. These challenges

notwithstanding, population growth continues and most

residents stay for the quality of lifewhich is superb in

terms of natural beauty, access to outdoor recreation,

minimal congestion, and low crime rates.

The Trichotomy

If representative democracy was characterized by the

politics-administration dichotomy, then deliberative

democracy, in its many forms,must be a politics-administration-

citizen involvement trichotomy. Those of us

working in local government today understand that dispensing

with citizen involvement would be inconceivable

except in rare instances in which marshal law is invoked.

However, engaging citizens in the deliberative process is

clearly difficult at times and does not necessarily promote

efficiency in decision making. Politicians and administrators

continue to have different perspectives that are further

complicated by divergent public opinions on the same sets

of issues.Undoubtedly,citizens and interest groups have always

had conflicting points of view, but the difference

today is that local government works systematically to engage

people in the deliberative process. Public expectations

are higher as well.The demand for accountability,

sometimes through performance measurement, is growing,

and people become vocal when their local officials

are unresponsive.While the expectation of responsiveness

on the part of elected officials has been the norm in Gallatin

County for many years, demands for staff accountability

have clearly increased.

Appointed and elected officials in Gallatin County

share a common desire to involve the public in the decision-

making process.Although filling vacancies on boards

is at times difficult,Gallatin County has many highly committed

and energized volunteers. Involvement in some

community organizations has declined,but it has been stable

overall, despite the fact that membership probably has

not kept pace with population growth.Other measures of

involvement, such as voter turnout, tend to exceed national

averages, and voters have been supportive, albeit selectively,

of bond initiatives. Perhaps the most notable

exception to voter support for infrastructure development

has been the failure of two jail initiatives.Various theories

try to account for the cause of this failure, but the reasons

include fragmented support and poor communication

with the electorate. In general, social capital is in comparatively

good supply in Gallatin County.However,democracy

is in flux. Thus, the challenge is to facilitate

networks that are capable of both informing decision

making and identifying community resources to augment

increasingly inadequate tax revenues.

For a number of reasons, growth is an issue that elicits

a strong reaction in Gallatin County. Its vast tracts of

National Forest and wilderness areas as well as its borderwithYellowstone National Park make the county an area

of ecological importance.Residents and visitors alike revere

the areas natural attributes, and suburban sprawl is

seen as a growing menace by many people. Gallatin

County leads Montana in tourism, and visitors take advantage

of its recreational opportunities year round.Although

few residents would seek to diminish the quality

of the environment, developers, landowners, and the

countys robust real-estate community do have vested interests

in residential and commercial growth.

Policymakers are confronted with the conundrum of

balancing a traditional approach to land-use planning with

the emerging need to apply contemporary planning techniques

to encourage investment in infrastructure, protect

the environment, and discourage sprawl. In the past, landuse

practices have been relatively free of regulation.Today,

countywide zoning is being contemplated, and achieving

concurrency between residential, commercial, and infrastructure

development is well beyond Gallatin Countys

financial wherewithal. Keeping up with road improvements

driven by increases in average trips per day has been

a tremendous challenge.Overcoming the problems associated

with water and wastewater is a challenge that has yet

to be fully confronted.Meeting this and other infrastructure

demands will certainly require innovative thinking

and strong public support.

Citizen Involvement Techniques

Gallatin County has involved citizens in a variety of

ways for many years.Over time, however, the issues have

become more complex and the public more divided

concerning expected outcomes.Citizen advisory boards

dealing with a diverse range of servicesincluding capital

improvements, open lands, emergency communications

and dispatch, transportation, solid waste, and

land-use planninghave long assisted decision makers.

In addition to these standing boards, ad hoc committees

convene to inform decision making concerning activities

such as the planning and development of a new detention

facility and strategic community planning.The

following subsections detail public participation techniques

used by Gallatin County.

Growth Policy Forums

Gallatin County regularly uses community forums.

In 2007, the county held a series of forums to solicit

opinions concerning growth policy, a process that continues

at this writing. Growth policy is an assortment of

emotionally charged issues in which many people have

vested interests and opinions that diverge along lines that

arent fully predictable.The elements of growth policy

that are most controversial include the assessment of impact

fees, potential implementation of transferable development

rights, density restrictions, rural clustering,

concurrency,fire standards, and environmental impact of

new development.At present,much of the ongoing debate

centers on whether growth should continue to be

managed through the subdivision review process, as it

has in the past, or whether countywide zoning is necessary.

County planners teamed with the county commissioners

to hold eighteen community forums in different

county locations to share information and collect public

input. Also, planners distributed a questionnaire and

recorded public comments.

Although acquiring a better understanding of public

sentiment concerning growth strategies was the motivation

behind the forums, they reaped other benefits.

Bringing both staff members and county commissioners

closer to the public stimulated increased involvement and

prodded residents to comment on an even broader range

of policy issues.The process also encouraged the formation

of networks within the various subregions of Gallatin

County, leading to the subsequent formation of the

community planning groups described below.The forums

were well attended and created opportunities for

the exchange of differing viewpoints in an open and

nonthreatening setting.Moreover, county planners were

able to share technical information regarding options

that otherwise would be difficult to disseminate.

Community Planning Process

Beyond Gallatin Countys five incorporated municipalities

lie a number of smaller communities, some

heavily impacted by growth. Lacking in organizational

infrastructure, these areas need assistance in meeting

emerging growth challenges.To this end, county planners,

in response to requests for assistance,have instituted

citizen-driven community planning in three county locations.

The process involves three basic components

collecting and analyzing information, engaging the public,

and preparing implementation plans to support intelligent

growth:

The information component involves the creation

of a demographic profile, public facility inventory,

land-use inventory, and landscape/environmental

inventory. Although the level of public participation varies, it

has been high for the most part, and citizens are

committed to seeing the process through.The

county encourages and augments direct citizen involvement

by disseminating information through

press releases, flyers, expert presenters, and phone

trees to notify people of upcoming meetings.

The implementation phase is expected to culminate

in the formation of a neighborhood plan that

distills the information collected during the preliminary

stages in the context of good community

planning.The neighborhood plan will form the

basis for planning policies, possibly including customized

subdivision regulations, development standards,

or community-based zoning.

Recently, members of the agricultural community

involved in community planning have expressed an interest

in participating in planning sessions that focus exclusively

on farm and ranch concerns. Although the

opportunity to explore agricultural issues in greater

depth is welcome, the inherent danger is that such splinter

groups will diverge completely from their suburban

community neighbors. Mindful of this potential for the

creation of competing agendas, planners will attempt to

maintain some degree of ongoing integration between

the groups and identify points of commonality.

Open Lands Program

In 1997, the county set up a citizen task force to

consider the feasibility of establishing an open lands program.

The resulting program was expected to provide a

means for members of the agricultural community to

permanently preserve tracts of land as a means of providing

open space in the GallatinValley in perpetuity.Although

certain quarters initially resisted the program, the

idea gained traction and the program began buying easements

in 2000.The program purchased easements for a

fraction of the assessed value of the parcel, and public access

is generally possible and farming and ranching activities

continue as well.Development on the property is

severely restricted, however.To date,more than five hundred

thousand acres have been protected through

twenty-two easements.The value of these properties exceeds

$100 million, although the easements were purchased

for approximately $11 million. In many cases, the

program obtained improved access to important recreational

areas while protecting riparian areas and conserving

wildlife migration corridors.

Although the county commissioners must give final

approval for easement purchases, the process is almost entirely

citizen-driven. (The first conservation easement in

Gallatin County was created on ranch property owned by

the family of one of Gallatin Countys current commissioners,

before his election to office.) The county provides

support through the open lands coordinator and

the assistant to the county administrator.The original task

force evolved into an Open Lands Board, which works

closely with the Gallatin Valley Land Trust and other

community organizations. Volunteer board members

closely scrutinize every proposed easement and generally

participate in tours of proposed properties with the coordinator.

Property value is assessed and board members

evaluate the property in terms of its inherent value as an

added piece of Gallatin Countys open lands legacy.

Capital Improvement Program Committee

Established in 1998, the Capital Improvement Program

Committee (CIPC) fulfills a crucial role in advising

the county commission, county administrator, and

projects administrator.The CIPC focuses its efforts on

the maintenance, remodeling, and construction of Gallatin

County facilities. In practice, the senior staff has ongoing

dialogue with the committee,which usually meets

semimonthly. CIPC members are appointed by the

county commissioners and selected from the community

at large.Representatives from the real-estate and finance

communities are teamed with elected and appointed officials

from Gallatin County to consider both urgent facilities

needs and those submitted in conformance with the

budget cycle. Gallatin County manages approximately

twenty buildings in eight major locations, and their physical

condition varies considerably.

Major responsibilities of the CIPC include analyzing

facilities condition inventory reports, reviewing the capital

improvement requests submitted annually by department

heads, considering urgent demands for major

facility repairs, convening ad hoc committees to investigate

the feasibility of major projects, and making funding

recommendations to the county commissioners. In

all of these activities, the project manager,finance officer,

and county administrator work closely with the CIPC,

and the office manager for the county commissioners

supports the committees efforts.The CIPC prioritizes and proposes project funding.

Ultimate approval for major requests resides with the

county commission.The CIPC has worked to fine-tune

the process of reviewing annual requests from departments,

and these requests are prescreened by the space

committee using a defined set of criteria.When the requests

reach the CIPC, they are accompanied by staff

input that includes evaluations concerning the seriousness

of the problem to be addressed, availability of extrabudgetary

resources, information on the number of

people affected, health and safety issues mitigated, and so

forth.The program developed a standard application, and

departments are expected to provide a reasonable

amount of information about the project, including a

rough estimate of project cost.

The CIPC is considered highly effective by the staff

and county commissioners. Since streamlining the application

and review process, the CIPC has managed to perform

its annual review work objectively and expediently.

Moreover, it is able to depoliticize the process in a manner

appreciated by all stakeholders.The county commissioners

have not always followed CIPC recommendations,

most notably concerning the choice of a site for a new

detention center.Although this disagreement created some

tension, a belief in the efficacy of the process remains,

along with a commitment to continued engagement.

Evaluating Citizen Involvement

The process of democratic local governance in Gallatin

County features meaningful citizen participation.

Local officials value structured approaches that engage

citizens because they believe that citizen input and

sometimes citizen-driven initiatives are viable from a

public policy perspective. Suggesting that ulterior motives

such as a desire to overcome opposition or placate

vocal criticshave never been considered as beneficial

outcomes of participation would be disingenuous. In

most cases, however, more noble objectives prevail.

Good intentions and early successes notwithstanding,

Gallatin County has not yet explored the full array

of citizen engagement strategies that could benefit the

public and local government. For example, performance

management and pay-for-performance systems can be

tied to citizen involvement. Involving the public provides

opportunities to align citizen expectations with organizational

goals that drive the creation of individual

performance standards tied to pay for performance. Although

the county has implemented a pay-forperformance

system, it is still working to promote better

understanding and acceptance of the system among

employees, and attempting to link the system with citizen

expectations would be premature at this time.

The county needs to train key staff members to

serve as mediators with standing committees and in less

formal situations.As stated previously,many of the issues

that bring staff members and citizens together are contentious.

Building consensus concerning land use and

environmental planning, for example, is a vexing challenge,

and staff members do a commendable job of facilitating

the exchange of information. However, consensus

that leads to a clear plan of action that acknowledges

divergent opinions is often elusive.The willingness

of standing committees to engage in strategic

planning approaches such as environmental scanning has

been scarcely tested in Gallatin County. Early resistance

has arisen to more systematic efforts to clearly link citizen

expectations with the goals of the committees that

influence political decisions and administrative actions.

Utilizing open processes would likely produce a more

balanced set of goals in which the perspectives of all

stakeholders were recognized. In some cases, the goals

produced by certain groups are vague, poorly objectified,

or so numerous as to be unmanageable.

Growth in Gallatin County has strained local government

resources, and additional staff resources are

needed to sustain effective citizen engagement in the

governance process. Managing community planning forums

requires about one-third of a full-time equivalent,

and staffing the planning board is much more labor intensive,

although the load is distributed among several

staff members.The quality of the relationships between

the county commission and various advisory boards

continues to evolve as well. Establishing clear expectations

and better communication may help to improve

the quality of citizen deliberation, but this will require

considerable, sustained effort.

Conclusion

Both the authenticity and effectiveness of citizen engagement

will improve in Gallatin County in the future.

With the encouragement of local government,communities

of interest will continue to interact, creating new

networks that draw upon their commitment to addressing

specific growth management issues for cohesion and

strength.This road is destined to be full of twists and

bumps, but it is navigable, at least in four-wheel drive.