On April 20, the filing period opened for Great Falls Mayoral and City Commission candidates. Despite an otherwise quiet municipal electoral landscape, we were recently alerted to the online presence of one Commission candidate, Tyson Habein. You can follow his campaign on Facebook here. While he doesn’t seem to possess particularly high name ID, Habein’s could make for an interesting candidacy. He’s…
On May 15, 2017, I had the opportunity to sit down with City Manager, Greg Doyon, City Attorney, Sara Sexe, and City Planning Director, Craig Raymond, to discuss City Commissioner Tracy Houck’s involvement in the allocation of CDBG funds to the Paris Gibson Square where she serves as the Executive Director. Some takeaways: The March…
Have you noticed that when it comes to Community Block Grant funding and voting, the Great Falls City Commission abounds with apparent conflicts of interest, or with situations with the appearance of conflicts? We’ve already seen an article in E-City Beat about Commissioner Houck and the appearance of a huge conflict of interest involving Paris…
Two weeks from today, Montana voters will choose a new Congressional representative. From the looks of things here in River City, our local school district — that’s right, Great Falls Public Schools — is putting its fingers on the scale for Democrat Rob Quist. In clear violations of the law, someone has placed Quist’s campaign…
As more details emerge about conflicts of interest surrounding the City and CDBG funds, the more it has become increasingly clear that staff, and City Attorney Sara Sexe in particular, have done an admirable job of sorting out a messy situation. As Gregg Smith noted, Paris Gibson Square, as an organization, has every right to raise questions about an alleged conflict on the CDC in…
One of my biggest concerns about the SJW craziness on college campuses is the current trend to conflate speech, even offensive speech, with violence. Mahler Mali does a great job describing this trend and its sources in this piece. He argues that the humanities, and especially the English majors, lack academic rigor and instead spend…
I have to admit that when I read Phil’s piece about City Commissioner, Tracy Houck and CDBG funding, I was a little lost. I struggled through it a few times, and really never knew what happened other than the Community Development Council (“CDC”), which allocates CDBG funding, originally voted to recommend to the City Commission…
Montana’s special election to replace Ryan Zinke has made national headlines, including this amusing piece from Breitbart yesterday. Enjoy the juxtaposition; on one hand, the analytical, nuts-and-bolts Greg Gianforte, and on the other, well, Rob Quist: The Republican nominee answered a question about climate change and the Clean Power Plan saying, “Everyone believes that the climate is changing.”…
noun co·nun·drum Our City Commission seems to be faced with a difficult decision, or as Commissioner Bill Bronson says, “it’s a conundrum.” Here’s the issue; to vote for a zone change which would allow a four story motel, approximately 50 feet high, close to the 10th Ave S/Fox Farm intersection, or to vote against it in…
If you skipped last week’s City Commission meeting (like the Great Falls Tribune did), then you missed a real doozy. Unreported by local media, City Commissioner Fred Burow unloaded on the proposed Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding process at the April 18 meeting: “I have a lot of heartburn with this… I think the whole process should…