Commerce Unveils One-Stop Planning Platform
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Association gave each state $1 million to identify assets and economic resources and to develop plans to benefit their economies. As the country recovered from the pandemic, the EDA distributed these grant funds to incentivize communities to grow.
Mary Craigle, Montana Department of Commerce’s Research and Information Services bureau chief, said Montana decided to do something a little different with the grant funds. While most states used the money to create some kind of community development plan or conduct growth studies, Montana chose to build a platform where community planners, businesses and economic developers across the state could find the resources to create their own plans.
“RIS could have done a growth study on eastern Montana or built a plan about how we thought eastern Montana is going to grow; we believe it’s better to put information in the hands of local people to decide for themselves. Communities know better than the state what they should do for their citizens,” Craigle said. While some states have similar resources, only Montana used the funds to build a state-wide platform to gather all the information in one place.
Montana is a mix of tiny towns and large urban areas. Cities like Missoula, Kalispell and Bozeman have departments with expert planners and professional GIS staff; most towns and counties in Montana lack that staffing capacity. In small towns, the same person doing the planning or community economic outlook may also be the mayor who drives the school bus. The same is true for small businesses who rarely have staff formally trained in business planning. RIS envisioned a way for planners, economic developers and businesses across Montana to have the necessary resources to create solid plans.
Under Title 76, Chapter 25, MCA, every city with a population exceeding 5,000 in a county with a population exceeding 70,000 is required to adopt a comprehensive land use plan that forecasts how population increase will equate to housing needs and how the community plans to meet those projections. Before Commerce’s platform was launched, smaller communities without planning departments didn’t have a one-stop resource to get the information they needed. They had to find it or go without it, which meant their plans might lack important information that could influence planning decisions.
Launched earlier this year, the Community Planning Platform is the result of years of data compilation, research and gathering feedback. The initial platform is a partnership between RIS and Commerce’s Community Technical Assistance Program. CTAP provides training and technical assistance to local governments, as well as guidance and feedback on planning documents. They’ve contributed sample plans, training videos and policy manuals to the CPP. Commerce is also working with other state agencies that have the data and the experts CPP needs: the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the Department of Environmental Quality, the Montana State Library and the Department of Labor and Industry.
In order to ensure community input, the Commerce team conducted a statewide survey of 116 planners, economic developers and elected officials which formed the basis for what to include in the platform. The survey was followed by 40 in-depth interviews. Once the data was analyzed, RIS and CTAP looked at what these communities needed. They developed an outline to add data models, links to external resources and best-practice guidance documents. The CPP is a living site and will continue to grow and evolve as communities across the state use and contribute to it.
“Right now, the CPP includes comprehensive resources like economic, housing and demographic trends. It doesn’t yet have some of the requested resources such as a statewide zoning map, water resources maps and data, projected school-age population or public safety requirements. Those are additional pieces we are working to add,” Craigle said.
RIS and CTAP staff have met with the Montana League of Cities and Towns, and soon they’ll be touring the state to meet with stakeholders that were part of the initial feedback discussions for the CPP. They are excited to present the CPP and work with communities statewide to make the site as useful as possible.
Craigle credited Chief Economist Ben Gill, GIS Specialist Dave Ritts and Program Specialist Dani Arps with getting the CPP up and running within six months of the research and planning being done. She also voiced her appreciation for Montana’s Chief Data Officer Adam Carpenter, who works for the Department of Administration. “I’ve been in state government for 30 years, and it’s been my dream to do this,” Craigle said. “I could never get it done because we never had the right person at the state level to get it done. Adam is the first guy that ever really got it. We successfully moved the first pieces of this, building out a data lake, in about four months because of Adam.”
Craigle added, “The CPP is a work in progress, and it always will be. The plan is for it to always be part of Commerce but grown across state agencies and ultimately built upon by local governments and stakeholders, including the ability to upload, trade and layer information. We hope to grow the CPP together with communities and businesses. We’re not here to tell them how to plan; we’re here to help them plan.”
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