Missoula County Commissioners
134 episodes listed below
County government, translated into everyday Missoula life.
The Agenda makes county government feel less remote by slowing down the machinery behind budgets, bills, taxes, courts, and crisis response. Its conversations favor plain explanations, local examples, and the practical question of what a policy means for county residents.
PRESS PLAY
The Agenda is a patient guide to Missoula County government and the civic choices behind it. Its center of gravity is practical explanation. Commissioners and guests take subjects that can feel remote, procedural, or acronym-heavy and slow them down until the listener can follow the path from policy language to daily life. A legislative session is not treated as background noise. It becomes a working system of bills, delegation contact, committee hearings, lobbyists, messaging, and county staff time. Taxes receive the same careful treatment. Property tax collections, motor vehicle transactions, land records, reappraisal cycles, vehicle taxes, and budget pressure are explained as connected parts of county work rather than as isolated complaints. The criminal legal system is another recurring lane. Episodes examine Calibrate, pretrial diversion, mandated and voluntary supervision, jail population reduction, and the difference between low-risk and higher-risk defendants. The show is especially useful when it describes services at the point where public systems meet people in crisis. The Temporary Safe Outdoor Space is framed through storage, stability, case management, basic life skills, and the difficult move from survival mode into housing. The Mobile Support Team is described as a fourth response resource for mental health-related and other gray-area calls that are not simply criminal, medical, or fire scenes. These conversations can be sober. They are rarely theatrical. Small jokes and personal reflections appear, but the show usually returns to the public-service question underneath. Who pays for this? What happens next? Which office handles it? What choices does a resident have? That steady rhythm gives The Agenda its value. It makes county government legible without pretending it is simple.
Made for: The show is for county residents, local-government watchers, civic volunteers, and policy-minded listeners who want clear explanations of how county decisions affect services, budgets, justice, housing, and crisis response.
What sets it apart: Its strength is translation: commissioners and guests turn technical public-sector language into concrete Missoula examples. The show stays close to offices, programs, costs, and procedures rather than drifting into national political theater.
The Missoula County commissioners host the "The Agenda" podcast, which aims to help county residents better understand how local government works and how it affects their lives. In each episode, the commissioners sit down with fellow staff, elected officials and community partners to discuss public sector projects and trending topics.The Communications Division at Missoula County produces "The Agenda" with support from Missoula Community Access Television (MCAT). If you have something you’d like to add to the conversation, email [email protected].
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · August 2026
County commissioners bring in the staff who administer taxes, zoning, and pretrial justice to explain how Missoula County government runs.
The Agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners puts commissioners in a room with the staff who run the county, and lets the conversation get into the mechanics rather than stay at the headline level.
You want your property-tax bill translated by people who actually have to balance it.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A pre-Thanksgiving conversation frames gratitude as a practical discipline for local public service.
Gratitude is treated here less as a seasonal slogan than as a civic habit. Commissioner Juanita Vero, Josh Slotnick, and Dave Strohmaier start a couple of days before Thanksgiving with Wendell Berry's "The Sorrel Filly," then carry its attention to small things into the daily…
Tyler Garnett gives Missoula County residents a clear guide to reappraisal rules, tax bills, and local budgeting.
This single episode makes property taxes easier to follow by placing them inside the county-government machinery that collects and spends them.
A useful local guide to Missoula pretrial release, support programs, and what the data can and cannot yet show.
Missoula County's pretrial work gets a clear, practical look through the question of who may be released before trial and what local support is available once that happens.
Missoula County's planning reorganization frames a practical discussion of development, resource protection, and public uses.
Missoula County's land use and planning work sits at the center of this conversation, with the new Office of Lands and Communities giving it a clear institutional frame.
A clear look at property taxes, local services, and the state-county tension that shapes both.
This discussion makes local government funding feel concrete: who pays, how property taxes connect to local government, and why a property tax freeze can miss the larger question of how to fund essential services.
Missoula County Commissioners Josh Slotnik and Winnie DeViro talk with climate program manager Swain Newman and planner Patrick Swart about the county's draft data center study, posted October 21 at Missoula County Voice.com.
Ty Robinson, re-entry navigator at Missoula's Watershed Navigation Center, describes a "warm handoff" in which the state hospital arranges a Zoom interview before a client arrives, and he says about 12 or 13 handoffs have been completed.
County commissioners interview the chief administrative officer about the 2025 legislative session and how the county's legislative team works.
Commissioners Juanita Vero, Josh Slotnick, and Dave Strohmaier discuss gratitude, civic service, and the pressure to prioritize production over intention.
Tyler Garnett, Missoula County's clerk and treasurer, explains how property taxes are collected twice yearly and how bills differ for residents inside and outside Missoula city limits.
The Agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners examines Missoula’s criminal legal system through Commissioner Dave Strohmaier’s conversation with Safety and Justice Challenge coordinator Chelsea Whitman.
Juanita Vero, Josh Slotnick, Chris Lounsbury, and Andrew Czorny explain how Missoula County builds its FY 23 budget from spring financial balancing through summer department requests and public feedback.
Red Lodge funded bear-resistant garbage cans with a "penny a drink" beverage tax after grizzlies met people in the alleys.
Chet Crowser walks through a county office reshuffle.
Missoula County Commissioners Dave Strohmaier and Josh Slotnick talk with air quality specialist Sarah Coefield and Climate Action Program Manager Caroline Bean during Wildfire Smoke Preparedness Week (July 9-16).
Max Rebholz says homeowners are surprised he focuses on the deck and vents, not the Ponderosa pine ten feet away.
Public historian Leif Fredrickson explains how the COVID-19 Documentation Project, funded through the CARES Act and housed at the University of Montana archives, is collecting documents and about 20 oral histories on Missoula's pandemic.
Property taxes sit at the center of this one.
Adriane Beck explains why the Clark Fork now leaves its banks at lower and lower gauge heights since 2018.
Missoula city houseless initiative specialist Emily Armstrong and county shelter project coordinator Casey Gannon explain Operation Shelter, the Office of Emergency Management–led effort that produced an Authorized Camping Site and an expanded Temporary Safe Outdoor Space (TSOS).
Allison Franz, Missoula County's communications manager, introduces missoulacountyvoice.com, an engagement platform with a pothole-reporting map and a "Mythbusters" feature for rumors.
Consultants recommended spending $3 to $4 million a year on pavement; the county was spending about $600,000.
Laurie Francis says U.S. health investments are "misdirected": money goes to imaging and surgeries instead of social care.
Commissioners Dave Strohmaier and Josh Slotnick recap the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., where about 2,000 attendees heard President Biden describe his own county-level experience.
"Purchasing decisions should reflect the values of Missoula County" is the principle that informs the other four, says Dave Wall.
Student IDs and Costco cards now need backup documentation like a bank statement, utility bill, paycheck or car registration at the polls.
Commissioners Josh Slotnick, Dave Strohmaier and Juanita Vero respond to the charge that they care "more about golf than housing" by describing Larchmont as public land that needs a broad public process before any sale.
Shayla Beaumont describes watching a man in a suit try to put a visibly scared 14-year-old's apartment and Wi-Fi under his name.
Missoula County Commissioners Dave Strohmaier and Juanita Vero host Captain David Conway and YWCA Pathways manager Lyndayle Mattis to discuss human trafficking in Missoula County.
"Our job is not to cover ourselves and make sure we don't make a mistake. Our job is to attempt to address these things."
Planner Jennie Dixon and Sustainability Program Manager Diana Maneta tell Commissioners Josh Slotnick and Juanita Vero that cannabis zoning is needed ahead of Montana's January 1, 2022 conversion from medical to recreational use.
Justice Court judges Landee Holloway and Alex Beal explain to commissioners Josh Slotnick and Dave Strohmaier that their court hears misdemeanors countywide, handles initial appearances for felonies, and decides civil disputes up to $15,000.
Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst describes running a 46-employee office, up 10 positions since she took over in 2014, that handles both felony prosecution and civil representation of the county.
Matt Lautzenheiser, executive director of the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, says the site's internment camp opened in 1941, before the U.S.
You only have 30 days to file an AB26, and paying your taxes 'under protest' does almost nothing.
Adriane Beck, director of Missoula County's Office of Emergency Management, explains that the office runs the 9-1-1 center around the clock and also the Disaster and Emergency Services division, which is mandated by the Montana constitution.