Great Falls

GF City Commission Issues Next Week: Slaughterhouse, Design Review Board, Maclean Animal Center

ECB Staff on February 28, 2020

Editors note: E-City Beat has requested and received permission to copy and paste Great Falls City Commissioner Rick Tryon’s reports from his public commissioner’s Facebook page, ‘Rick Tryon for a Greater Great Falls’.

“COMMISSIONER TRYON’S GREAT FALLS CITY COMMISSION REPORT FOR 3/3/2020

As a way to partially fulfill my personal commitment to working for transparent and responsive City government I’ll be posting brief weekly previews and recaps of Great Falls City Commission work sessions and regular meetings.

The idea is to highlight a few of the upcoming City Commission meeting topics that would be especially relevant and interesting to local citizens and to encourage your feedback, ideas and input, through the comments section here and by your personal attendance at the meetings if possible.

You can find the full agenda and agenda packets for the upcoming meeting, as well as minutes for previous meetings, here – https://greatfallsmt.net/meetings

WORK SESSION – Tuesday March 3, 5:30 PM Gibson Room, Civic Center
Items of particular public interest:

1.) Community Risk Reduction Plan – Steve Hester.

2.) Animal Shelter Request for Proposal Review – Chuck Anderson.ALERT – This item is the beginning step in the process for a possible official city commission consideration to ALLOW THE CITY TO UTILIZE THE SERVICES OF THE MACLEAN ANIMAL ADOPTION CENTER.

REGULAR MEETING – Tuesday March 3, 7:00 PM Commission Chambers
Items of particular public interest:

ORDINANCES / RESOLUTIONS
1.) Resolution 10334, Requesting a Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) Environmental Impact Study for the proposed Madison Food Park Slaughterhouse Proposal. Action: Adopt or deny Res. 10334. (Presented by Commissioner Moe)

2.) Resolution 10335, Requesting that Cascade County require a Comprehensive and Cumulative Study of the impacts on the City of the entire package of the Madison Food Park Proposals.Action: Adopt or deny Res. 10335. (Presented by Commissioner Moe)

3.) Resolution 10336, Dissolving the City of Great Falls Design Review Board and assigning the functions outlined in Title 17, Chapter 28 to Planning and Community Development Staff. Action: Adopt or deny Res. 10336. (Presented by Greg Doyon)

View the whole agenda and detailed agenda items information here:
https://mccmeetings.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/greatfls-pubu/MEET-Agenda-57e59291db684b3e8d65d92ccf909e55.pdf

This is your city government and these issues affect you and your family. YOU’RE THE BOSS.”

Great Falls Police Department Seeks Missing Teen

ECB Staff on February 20, 2020

From the GFPD Facebook page at approximately 3:30 PM Thursday afternoon, 2/20/20:

“MISSING TEEN! Please help Detective Cunningham make contact with Selena Lea Ream.

Selena was last seen on 2/14/2020 at approximately 12AM. It is believed Selena may be in Great Falls, Billings, or Kalispell, and we are concerned for her safety. It is unknown what Selena was wearing when last seen.

SELENA LEA REAM
– 17 YOA
– White Female
– 5‘7″ Tall
– 180 Lbs
– Brown Hair
– Green eyes

Call Detective Cunningham at 406.455.8561, or leave a private message here, if you have any information regarding Selena’s whereabouts.”

2/18 City Commission Meeting: Golf & Garbage Fees, Climate Change Task Force

ECB Staff on February 17, 2020

“COMMISSIONER TRYON’S GREAT FALLS CITY COMMISSION REPORT FOR 2/18/20

You can find the full agenda and agenda packets for the upcoming meeting, as well as minutes for previous meetings, here – https://greatfallsmt.net/meetings

REGULAR MEETING – Tuesday February 18, 7:00 PM Commission Chambers

Here are a few items of particular public interest:

PUBLIC HEARINGS

VOTE ON RAISING GARBAGE COLLECTION FEES – Resolution 10324, Establishing Residential and Commercial Sanitation Service CollectionRates Effective March 1, 2020. Action: Conduct a public hearing and adopt or deny Res. 10324. Presented by Jim Rearden and Melissa Kinzler)

VOTE ON RAISING GOLF FEES – Resolution 10329, Establishing Golf Fees for Eagle Falls Golf Club and Anaconda Hills Golf Course. Action: Conduct a public hearing and adopt or deny Res. 10329. (Presented by Steve Herrig)

ORDINANCES / RESOLUTIONS

VOTE ON APPOINTING A CITY TASK FORCE AND HIRING SOMEONE FOR A YEAR TO DEVELOP PROPOSALS AS TO HOW THE CITY CAN MITIGATE THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND BECOME MORE “CLIMATE RESILIENT” THROUGH ENERGY USE POLICY – Resolution 10333, A Resolution of the City of Great Falls regarding the adoption of an Energy Response Task Force. Action: Adopt or deny Res. 10333. (Presented by Commissioner Moe and Citizen’s for Clean Energy

View the whole agenda and detailed agenda items information here detailed agenda items information here https://mccmeetings.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/…/MEET-Pack…

This is your city government and these issues affect you and your family. YOU’RE THE BOSS.”

Hate-Filled Creepy Comments

ECB Staff on February 13, 2020

We have in the past featured ‘Angry Reader Comments’, but in yesterday’s piece by Phil Faccenda on this blog, the comment section contained some truly bizarre comments that go beyond angry.

Here is an example of one such comment:

“You have the thinnest, greyest, unhealthiest looking skin I have ever seen…”?

This isn’t just juvenile, it’s seething with hatred and downright creepy.

Who says stuff like that? Well, by reading the comment thread on the post, and we suggest you read the piece and the thread, it’s pretty obvious that the anonymous creepy poster is someone with detailed knowledge of the incident referred to in the piece.

No need to make too many guesses as to who that could be, is there?

Stay tuned.

Great Falls Police Seek Help Identifying Potential GFPS Bomb Threat Suspect

ECB Staff on February 11, 2020

Here’s the notification on the GFPD Social media post from earlier today.

“BOMB THREAT PERSON OF INTEREST – Yesterday (2/10/20) a note was placed on a door at Whittier Elementary School. The note, containing a bomb threat directed at multiple Great Falls’ schools, prompted a city-wide shut down of all Great Falls Public Schools, and most private schools.

While law enforcement officers from multiple agencies worked to inspect and clear every school in Great Falls, a simultaneous in-depth investigation was taking place.

During the investigation detectives discovered surveillance video that yielded a person of interest. We have reason to believe this person frequents the downtown area and we are asking for your help identifying him. The photos are of decent quality and show a very identifiable jacket we hope someone recognizes.

If you have any information that may assist investigators in identifying this person or the person responsible for the threat, please call 406.455.8547, log on to www.P3Tips.com, or leave a private message here. Tipsters may remain anonymous.

PERSON OF INTEREST
– Light skinned male
– 5’7” to 5’9” tall
– Thin to medium build
– Dark eyebrows
– May have light or sparse facial hair
– Smokes cigarettes
– Wearing dark pants, dark beanie, and bright blue hoodie style jacket with wide white stripes down each arm and a white ¾ length zipper on the front.”

Tryon Raises Refugee Resettlement Letter At Commission Meeting

ECB Staff on February 6, 2020

At Tuesday nights Great Falls City Commission meeting, Commissioner Rick Tryon brought up the “kerfuffle” surrounding the issue of Mayor Bob Kelly signing on as Mayor of Great Falls to a letter to the President expressing support for refugee resettlement in “our communities” and the Mayors apology and explanation.

Below is the video transcript from the exchange. You can view the meeting video on the city website. The portion of the exchange starts at about 1:04:25

Commissioner Tryon: “Your honor, just two quick things.

You know there was a bit of a kerfuffle last week on an issue concerning a letter that Mayor Kelly signed, concerning refugees resettlement here in Great Falls and I’m sure you heard a lot about, I know I did, people asking questions and so I, and I appreciate you stepping up and and doing an explanation and apologizing in a clear way I thought and it was very good and I appreciate that.

But the question has arisen and I would like to raise this, is that I wonder if, if we could find a way that we clarify or establish a policy that clearly sets forth where or in what circumstances a member of this and future city commissions can appropriately use their official title to endorse a cause or sign on to a public document or event if it has not been publicly vetted and voted on by the City Commission.

This is primarily for the benefit of the public so they can be assured that they are not being represented without their input or knowledge but also for the benefit of the members of the City Commission, both future present, to avoid any misunderstanding or inadvertent crossing of the line between public policy of the city and a private political or other position on an issue or issues.

And I’m just wondering how we can best, I’m looking for guidance on how we can best accomplish that I did look through the Charter and some of the ethics code and I didn’t see anything that was that gave clear guidance and I’m wondering if we might be able to find a way to address that.”

Mayor Kelly: “So if I can respond to that – we have a training with Dan Clark from the local government center and he is designed to teach us about specifically those things and trust me when I tell you I reached out to him for some advice for him to study this and to come to will help walk us through kind of the decision-making process we need to do that going forward.

So that’ll be on the 28th during the Commission meeting that we have which is open to the public and I look forward to having that discussion then.”

So stay tuned, Great Falls.

Are Refugee Resettlement & Climate Change Great Falls Issues?

Rick Tryon on January 30, 2020

Great Falls Mayor Bob Kelly deserves kudos for stepping up and apologizing to the public for signing an online letter, as Mayor of Great Falls, to President Trump asking for refugees to be relocated to “our communities”. I appreciate his willingness to take responsibility for his actions.

More importantly, the citizens of Great Falls deserve major congratulations and kudos here.

According to E-City Beat, which was the first to break the story, they got a tip from an alert local reader about the letter posted on welcomingrefugees2020.org, did the research, asked the questions, and then wrote and posted the story, which went viral.

But it was, and is, the citizens of Great Falls that made their voices heard and pressed the issue so that the Mayor was compelled to reconsider his actions in signing the letter and to apologize, admitting that it was not appropriate.

I’ve been involved in and have observed several controversial local issues over the years but I have never seen such rapid, voluminous and passionate public response to a single local issue. Ever. My own phone, email and social media page were buzzing.

This kind of public response is good, very good. Our local public officials, and that includes yours truly, need more public scrutiny, not less. More demands for accountability and transparency, not fewer.

Continue paying attention and being engaged in our city/county governments, Great Falls. We need citizen magnifying glasses, not blindfolds or endless rah-rah-rah media stories.

Our Great Falls public officials should be focused like a laser beam on local bread and butter issues, not caviar and chardonnay politically correct or ideological national issues.

For instance, at a recent Great Falls City Commission visioning session to lay out potential priorities for the coming year, a few of my colleagues on the commission identified “responding to climate change” as one of our top-three priorities.

I’ll be asking many questions and challenging notions like the one that claims that “climate change/resiliency” should be our focus here.

We have urgent issues that MUST be addressed first – like local crime, lack of economic opportunity, and the need for more transparent and responsive city government.

Stay tuned, stay engaged, and stay salty, Great Falls.

Great Falls Top Employers And Taxpayers

Rick Tryon on December 9, 2019

As I was going through the 2020 Annual Adopted Budget for the City of Great Falls recently, I thought that E-City Beat readers and local citizens in general would find the following statistics of interest.

On page 45 of the Budget in Brief is this chart listing past and current major employers in Great Falls.

And on page 46 we find the principal local taxpayers, past and present.

There are a number of interesting things folks could learn and conclude from these two charts. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments section.

Great Falls Population Falls

Rick Tryon on November 25, 2019

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In a November 24, 2019 piece by Andy Kiersz in Business Insider, Great Falls is listed right in the middle of the pack of the 20 Western state towns that folks are “leaving in droves”.

From the article:

“Using data from the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates program, we found the metropolitan areas located in the Western states with the most negative net migration between 2010 and 2018, adjusted by the size of the 2010 metro area population.

Net migration measures the number of people who moved into the metro area from some other part of the US or another country, minus the number of people who left the metro area over that period. That means the cities on our list saw many more people move out since 2010 than move in.”

And specifically concerning the Great Falls metro area:

“10. Great Falls, Montana, had a net population loss from migration of 2,252 between 2010 and 2018 — 2.8% of the metro’s 2010 population of 81,327.”

This is consistent with the data as well as the anecdotal evidence we’ve been seeing and experiencing here in Great Falls for a number of years now.

This should be another wake-up call for all of us.

We Great Fallsians live in an awesome and amazing place and it should be unacceptable to all of us that we have the reputation for being ‘Ghetto Falls’, ‘G Funk’ or the poverty capital of Montana.

The exodus from our city, of mostly younger folks I suspect, is made all the more troubling by the fact that all of the other major towns/cities in Montana are enjoying some measure of growth and development. People are moving to Helena, Bozeman, Missoula, Kalispell, Billings, and even Butte at the same time they’re leaving Great Falls.

We’re not going to reverse this disturbing trend by closing our eyes, covering our ears and singing “lala lala, I can’t hear you”. Continued denial will only make things worse.

We’re going to have to come together, form a common vision, and agree to work together to CHANGE the status quo. Doing the same things we’ve been doing for the past 30 years is no longer an option.

We need new ideas and innovations and a commitment to making Great Falls the most business friendly, jobs friendly, family friendly community in Montana. We can do it. We have to do it.

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Great Falls, Great Teachers, A Great Challenge

Rick Tryon on August 27, 2019

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A piece in E-City Beat last week got me thinking about our local teachers. Most of our Great Falls teachers are really good, honest, hard-working folks who just want to make a difference in the lives of kids and our community.

Unfortunately sometimes our teachers don’t get enough thanks for what they do for kids, some of which have irresponsible parents who regard school as free daycare or worse – teachers as surrogate parents.

So with school starting this week, let me take this opportunity to say ‘THANK YOU!’ to all of the awesome teachers in our public and private school systems here.

I was raised in Great Falls, raised my own two daughters here, started helping to raise my grand-kids here and will happily credit the Great Falls public school system and our awesome teachers for the job they do in helping to educate our children. Both of my daughters’ success in life is in large part due to the quality public education they received here.

The E-City Beat piece from last week mentioned that teachers and District employees, especially the Administration on the hill, need to do a better job at public relations if they want to pass local school levies, and I agree.

But the far more troubling issue facing public schools funding in Great Falls is illustrated in the following data contained in a US Census Bureau interim report released in February of this year. In an 8-year span between 2010 and 2018:

Gallatin County (Bozeman/Belgrade) population increased 22,363 = 25% growth.
Flathead County (Kalispell) population increased 11,179 = 12.3% growth.
Missoula County population increased 9495 = 8.7% growth.
Lewis & Clark County (Helena) population increased 5305 = 8.4% growth.
Yellowstone County (Billings) population increased 12,155 = 8.2% growth.
Silver Bow County (Butte) population increased 784 = 2.3% growth.
Cascade County (Great Falls) population increased 320 = 0.4% growth.

If we don’t turn this around then all the positive PR in the world won’t make a difference because we won’t have the tax base to continue our local legacy of quality public education.

Like it or not, ready or not, we are competing with other state and regional cities for resources, taxpayers, and the kind of growth necessary to prosper and fund things like public education in the 21st-century.

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