Category: Great Falls

Editors note – The following is the text of comments made during public comment at the 2/15/22 Great Falls City Commission meeting by a local citizen who lives in the same neighborhood as the First United Methodist Church.

“I’m a lifelong resident of Great Falls, MT. I grew up attending its schools, I graduated from Great Falls High, and I became a public school teacher myself. I’m also an ordained minister in my church. Two years ago, my wife and I bought our first house. It is a very modest home and we love it, but unfortunately for us it is located near the First United Methodist Church downtown.

The Methodist Church Homeless Encampment, for those of you who don’t have to live near it, is a living nightmare—especially after dark.

You will often find addicts there sleeping off drugs or alcohol, but also people shooting up, passing around bottles of booze, fighting, and screaming at the tops of their lungs at all hours of the night. My neighbors and I have called the police on the Encampment many times.

I’ve yet to witness a single arrest, or even heard of one being made. Because of this, the Methodist Encampment is a zone where disturbing the peace, public intoxication, and drug use have been essentially legalized. Thus, the encampment continues to attract many addicts and the mentally unstable.

We knew we weren’t moving into a wealthy neighborhood, but we had no idea we’d be living near an open-air homeless encampment. As residents of the neighborhood, we were never consulted about Reverend Wakeley’s decision to do this. None of us were ever asked by the church if this encampment was okay.

When we initially expressed our concerns about the encampment going unmonitored, we were informed that Reverend Wakeley expected us to act as his church’s surveillance crew, and to call him personally any time we witnessed illegal activity taking place. That way he could assess whether or not to trespass anyone off the property. So not only were we never asked about the encampment, the task of monitoring it got outsourced to us while the Reverend and the members of his congregation retired to their safe, quiet neighborhoods at night.

For the past year we have been forced to live with the consequences of the encampment, which means vagrants and drug addicts wandering up and down our streets at all hours of the day and night, often trespassing through our back yards, and stealing our property for drug money.

My wife and I chose to live in Great Falls because we thought it would be a safe place to raise our future children. After what we’ve been through dealing with men drunkenly stumbling to and from the Encampment, I would be concerned even letting a child play in my back yard. 

As part of my calling as an ordained minister, I’ve spent much of my life working with the homeless and in addiction recovery. I spent two years volunteering my time at churches, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and drug detox programs in some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in New York City (the South Bronx and Harlem, among others). I also spent several years as the head teacher of a federal juvenile detention and drug rehabilitation facility, working with incarcerated youths who had committed federal crimes—many of them from Montana, and many of them drug-related.

I have nothing but love for the homeless and for those afflicted by the evils of drugs and addiction. But I firmly believe that the Methodist church’s current approach does far more harm than help.

This church and others like it are run by compassionate people who do not lack empathy, but who do lack life experience and a firm grasp on the reality of the situation for people like me who actually have to live in this neighborhood.

People may ask “What would Jesus do in this situation?” I can tell you: Jesus would heal these people of their pain, their mental health problems, and their addictions. And He still will, and is waiting with open arms to do so. But the so-called “progressive” view, that people have a right to sleep on the sidewalk, is not only legally devoid of any merit but is inhumane, indecent and dangerous. It is also immoral and deeply un-Christian.

Ask yourself why the church doesn’t open its doors to these people, instead encouraging them to sleep on concrete in sub-zero weather. I think the answer is obvious.

These people need help. The best thing we can do for them is hold them accountable and point them to the MANY mental health, housing, and addiction recovery resources available, NOT enable their destructive behavior by giving them a consequence-free zone that makes it easier for them to keep using.

This encampment solves nothing, helps no one, and exacerbates problems we already face. Such a disaster would never be allowed to operate in Fox Farm or Prospect Heights. It should not be allowed in our neighborhood just because our incomes are lower.

I urge Reverend Wakeley or the city to please shut it down and start treating our brothers and sisters like human beings, not exploiting their anguish and suffering as some kind of marketing campaign for their personal projects.  

Sincerely, Giordano Lahaderne”

During the public comment portion of last night’s Great Falls City Commission meeting quite a few local residents got up and expressed their opinions on the “homeless encampment” at the First United Methodist Church.

You can view the video of the meeting here. Public comment begins at about 7 minutes 30 seconds into the meeting.

There are differing points of view on the nature and scope of the problem and both sides were represented in public comments.

On one side we have those who live and work in the area of the FUMC and who strongly believe that the church is enabling and encouraging a health and safety problem, creating an unnecessary hotspot for drug use, alcoholism, and crime.

On the other hand are those who feel that the church is only trying to fulfill it’s mission to the less fortunate because no one else will do so.

As I sat and listened to those in the second category I couldn’t help but think that I was being preached at and reproved for being an uncaring, mean person if I didn’t wholeheartedly agree with their brand of “compassion”.

I’m sorry to say that most, though not all, of the rhetoric coming from the “preachers” came across as smug, self-righteous, morally superior grandstanding offering no actual solutions, only finger pointing.

Accusing the City of Great Falls and the city commission of hard heartedness and failure when it comes to addressing local issues of poverty, addiction, and homelessness is absurd and, quite frankly, ignorant.

There are two problems in this situation – first, the larger, long-term issue of homelessness and it’s causes; and second, the immediate concern of a serious crime and safety issue in the neighborhood and community.

Why is it that some folks only want to acknowledge and demand that others deal with the first problem, while they themselves ignore the second?

There are two things that the City has the capacity and authority to do in relation to these two problems:

Number one is to enforce our public nuisance ordinances to protect the law abiding citizens, residents, and businesses adversely affected by the situation occurring on the FUMC property. The mission of the church doesn’t supersede or negate the rights of taxpayers to enjoy a safe, clean environment in which to live and work.

Number two, the City can, does, and will continue to administer federally distributed funding (CDBG, HOMES, ARPA etc.) to local organizations that routinely address a variety of social/community problems.

I support both of the above solutions and will continue to do so.

Instead of virtue signaling, crowing about their own “compassion”, and issuing vague platitudes about how “someone should do something about homelessness”, if the folks who spoke last night would come to the City with a solid plan and specific applications for funds they would find a willingness and readiness to help.

Local Business Owners and Philanthropists Tom and Mary Jane Heisler Give $250,000 to Launch New Scholarship Endowment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jan. 24, 2022

Great Falls Central Catholic High School announces that alumnus Tom Heisler (’61) and his wife, Mary Jane, have donated $250,000 to the Catholic Foundation of Eastern Montana to launch the new Tom and Mary Jane Heisler Family Scholarship Endowment.

Heisler graduated in 1961 from Great Falls Central Catholic High School. He met his future wife, Mary Jane, while a student there, and several of his siblings attended Central as well. Tom and Mary Jane have owned several different businesses in Great Falls over the last 52 years and attribute much of their success to the education and support they received as students at Central. Even though, as Tom says, he was “not the best-behaved kid in school,” his teachers and coaches didn’t just tolerate him; they cared about him, took an active interest in him, and looked out for his future.

The Heislers invite others—especially those who had the good fortune of attending Central—to join them in supporting this endowment. The goal is to enable students whose families would otherwise be unable to afford the tuition to secure an excellent Catholic education for their high schoolers. Tom notes that “a Catholic education is one of the most thoughtful things you can do for young people.”

For more information, please contact Wes Ross, Advancement Director for Great Falls Central Catholic High School, at wross@greatfallscentral.org or (406) 216-3344 ext. 104.

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The Catholic Foundation of Eastern Montana is an independent board-governed nonprofit which manages the 125+ permanent endowments that benefit Catholic parishes, schools, ministries, and other entities in Eastern Montana. For more information about the Foundation, contact Judy Held at 406-315-1765 or visit www.catholicfoundationmt.org.

Yesterday I received some photos from a local resident showing handbills posted in Great Falls promoting a ‘White Lives Matter’ agenda.

I’ve included the pictures in this piece.

I was troubled by the pictures. Just as I was troubled by some of the incendiary and hateful messages at the ‘Defund The Police/BLM’ rallies in Great Falls in 2020 with signs that read ‘Fuck the Police’ and ‘ACAB’ (All Cops Are Bad), referring to our own Great Falls police officers.

Even though the message on the handbills is controversial and divisive, as it’s obviously intended to be, it is protected speech so that is not what bothered me the most.

At first blush my concern was that someone in my community, OUR community, would take the time and effort to so thoroughly stir up such division and racial animus.

But then I saw an article in the Helena Independent Record reporting that the White Lives Matter group staged a rally in Helena on Saturday as part of a statewide ‘Day of Action’ and that the participants ‘…drove in from other parts of the state‘ and that out-of-state groups have been ‘…hosting WLM rallies and engaging in WLM flyer distributions across the nation since 2015.’

So it appears fairly certain that this is not a homegrown Great Falls effort.

That makes sense to me, because I know my hometown and the people here. We are a good and decent community filled with kind and loving folks who treat each other with respect.

Sure, there are dark corners and hateful ideologies on the far fringes of both sides of the political/cultural spectrum here, but the overwhelming majority of our Great Falls family wants nothing more than to live and let live, lend a helping hand whenever possible, and raise our kids in a safe environment.

So my message to any out-of-towners coming here to whip up trouble, regardless of political ideology: We don’t want or need you here. Stay away.

By the way, the handbills have been reported to the police – not because of the message but because plastering handbills without permission is defacement of someone else’s property.