A philosopher once said that we are really three quite different people; the one we see as our self, the one others see, and the one we really are. All very different and the first two are merely reflections. The recent discourse concerning the Q & A session between representatives of the Great Falls Public Schools and…
Sarah Dettmer, the Great Falls Tribune’s education reporter, seems to have it out for Elsie Arntzen. Yesterday, Dettmer published a heavily self-referential, self-congratulatory article to explain away some of the blowback from her hit job on the freshly-elected Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction, Republican Elsie Arntzen. Dettmer writes: Then, Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Tammy Lacey stood up to…
After our reporting (and thanks to our tipsters!), KRTV ran a story about Brett Doney’s gloomy review of the Great Falls job market. Apparently, the state of Montana disagrees with Doney: But the Montana Department of Labor says the GFDA report is inconsistent with state numbers. Chief Economist Barbara Wagner says there were roughly 300 jobs…
After waging the only unsuccessful state-wide campaign among Montana Republicans, former gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte seems to have the inside track on his party’s nomination for the upcoming special election for the U.S. House. After weeks of contrived “Will he or won’t be?” speculation (was there ever any doubt?), Gianforte is now officially in the mix. With all due…
A number of people, including the target of the piece, Tammy Lacey, took issue with the fact that a contributor to this blog posted anonymously about Tammy Lacey in a piece about her comments toward the OPI Superintendent, Elsie Arntzen. In short: Get over it. Here’s something from the first iteration of Electric City Weblog…
We should be at the Defcon 1 level of concern after hearing Brett Doney’s comments about our local economy. His analysis in this instance is very disturbing but not surprising. Not surprising to me because I’ve been watching what I call the ‘Glass Half Empty/Half Full Switcheroo” for a long time in this town. Here’s how it…
Showboating. Grandstanding. Those are the only words that readily come to mind to describe Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Tammy Lacey’s tirade against the recently elected, Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction, Elsie Arntzen. According to the Tribune, Lacey “asked the superintendent whether she had plans to publicly fund preschool for the less fortunate children in the state, unlike Arntzen’s own…
As we reported a couple of days ago, and as the Tribune reported yesterday, the GFDA is recommending that: …Cascade County commissioners place a three-mill economic development levy before county voters this spring during a special election to generate $450,000 a year that can be used to create more jobs. It won’t be a large one: A…
Phil Faccenda made reference to it in his very good piece yesterday, and we have received a number of tips about it recently… but we’re still grappling with some of the comments made by Great Falls’ economic development chief, Brett Doney, at the Jan. 3 City Commission meeting. Most glaringly, Doney said that Great Falls lost “707 net jobs” in…
There are some interesting items in today’s GFDA Quarterly Investor Letter, and perhaps none more so than priority #2: 2) Put a 3-mill economic development levy before Cascade County voters on the special election ballot to replace Ryan Zinke. Passage of this small levy would generate about $450,000 a year to make Great Falls and Cascade County more competitive in…