According to a tweet from Lee’s Holly Michels, unemployment in Montana has (predictably) skyrocketed, with 41,000 new claims filed in just Sunday and Monday of this week: Of course, this trend will only continue. People are hurting right now, here and everywhere else. Other Montana communities, like Bozeman and Belgrade, have opted to compassionately cancel…
Author: Philip M. Faccenda
School Board Candidate Q&A: Bill Bronson
I recently emailed all of the School Board candidates and asked them the following question: Q: In this time of crisis when residents are out of work, are you in favor of acting as Bozeman and Belgrade did by cancelling, or rescheduling the levy for a later time? E-City Beat will publish each of the…
Will Businesses Reject Great Falls If We Don’t Pass The School Levy?
In a recent letter to the editor, Gerry Jennings urged support for the upcoming school levy. After making a suspect claim about class sizes, Jennings regurgitated an even more questionable argument about public education and its relationship to economic development. “My four children received the best education the state had to offer during the ‘70s…
Pedal To The Medal
Is it time for the Great Falls Public School District to take their foot off the levy pedal and apply the brakes? It is apparent that the school district’s overpaid administrators and the local rubber-stamp school board are heading full speed ahead with guns blazing to take another $1.75 Million from the taxpayer’s pockets on…
Back In Business
If you’re tried to reach us in the past few days, you probably noticed that our website had a few glitches. For that, I apologize. We have been in the process of upgrading to a managed hosting service. Simply put, E-City Beat now receives too much traffic to operate any other way. In March, this…
GFPS Shell Game
Is the GFPS District really short of cash, or are their cries just a sleight of hand? If, as Mark Finnicum, a school board member who also serves on the board’s budget committee said, the $1.75M upcoming levy isn’t to add new programs or staff but “is maintaining what we already have” is true… …why…
School Tax
The Great Falls Public School District would like you to believe that the impact of the proposed $1.75M operational levy would result in a very small increase to your property taxes, $16.27 on a home valued at $100,000 and $32.54 on a home valued at $200,000. The fact is that the impact of the levy…
GFPS Levy Is 100% Not For ‘The Kids’
No, we are not talking about the graduation rate at the District’s two high schools, not even close. And we are not talking about the District budgeting acumen either. What we are talking about is how much of the proposed $1.3M operational levy will be going for raises for staff and administrative positions and increases…
Lying Is The New Norm
Although, lying has been around forever, it is now becoming a common practice by propagandists and pundits wanting to promote individual, or collective agendas. Straight-out lying has been destigmatized if it advances a certain propaganda that leads to what might be considered a worthy, or important goal. Whether the goal, or objective pursued is objectively…
Will The Great Falls Tribune Be Fair?
If you paid any attention to the recent Great Falls City election, you know that three things are true: a positive, pro-growth, pro-transparency agenda reigned over all, that name ID and incumbency forgave serial malfeasance, and that screeching, far-left nobodies were tossed into the electoral trash heap. What is one to make, then, of last-place…