If you missed Great Falls Tribune editor Grady Higgins’ piece from a couple of weeks ago, chances are you might not have known that the Trib recently added a “Government Watchdog reporter,” Nicole Girten, to its ranks. And if you didn’t take the time to scroll through the many, many things (7,400+) Girten has liked…
Did the City’s Indoor Recreation Center and Aquatic Facility consultant selection process violate the Federal Procurement rules? In June of last year, the City hired a local architectural/geotechnical engineering team, without advertising so all interested local firms could compete for the Department of Defense $10M grant pre-application project. After the award, the City Manager said,…
What’s a 50 meter pool that is 25 meters short? If you answered, “very short-sighted”, you’d be correct, but that’s what you are going to get with the new Indoor recreation Center and Aquatics Facility. Why is a 50M pool an important feature of an Indoor Aquatics Center? According to a Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA)…
HISTORY JUST KEEPS REPEATING ITSELF After Mantle and Maris hit back-to-back home runs in 1961, Yogi Berra said “It’s déjà vu all over again”. That quote could have been the inspiration for the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, which was about a real -time entrapment in the time loop. In Groundhog Falls we are caught in…
As they say, location is hugely important in real estate. Process is equally important in a fair and competitive selection of an architectural firm to design a $20.2 municipal project financed by the taxpayers. In the case of the Indoor Recreation and Aquatics Facility both the location and the process have been fatally flawed. In…
If it wasn’t enough for the Great Falls Public School District to deforest the Great Falls High School original campus by cutting down 80 mature and environmentally beneficial city trees without a permit, now they want to do the same thing to a neighborhood icon, Kranz Park. Donated to the City of Great Falls by…
What is the purpose of an elected city commission? As representatives of the citizens how should commissioners direct the affairs of government? Should they simply be an affirmative “rubber stamp” for staff policy and actions, or should they play a larger role in the decision-making process? Some would say that we hire professionals to run…
It doesn’t matter how big a hurry you are in, it pays to obey traffic signals. As we all know, not following traffic laws can negatively impact your safety and your wallet. Most traffic laws are based upon good old common sense. Speeding, distracted driving and observing the conditions of the road are some primary…
As I suggested in a previous article, by all measure the new Indoor Recreation and Aquatics Facility should be developed at Lions Park. Lions Park is centrally located, has suitable soils conditions, affords access to hotels and restaurants, is a six-minute drive from MAFB and is of sufficient size while still leaving ample buffers for…
If you are asking why the site selection for the new proposed Indoor Recreation and Aquatics Facility looks like a train wreck waiting to happen, you are not alone. If you have been a resident of Great Falls for even a few years, you probably are aware of the soils issues on the east end…