by Guest Writer | Sep 15, 2024 | City
There is an ongoing debate about whether or not to fully fund our public library, and a wide range of reasons have been proposed as to why the library’s funding should remain as the voters intended. I wanted to speak toward my own primary reason for 1) voting to support the library levy, and 2) why I continue to support fully funding the library.
First, my background. I moved to Great Falls in 2020 to complete my internship for my counseling degree, and currently I am a licensed professional counselor working in outpatient mental health. My wife and I rented for a year and then bought a house north of downtown. We became involved in volunteering and advocating for our unhoused neighbors in Great Falls.
With other like minded individuals, we founded Housed Great Falls, a grassroots nonprofit dedicated toward the long-term goal of building a transitional tiny house community for the unhoused. We soon discovered an immediate need that we could step into to provide warmth and safety that was not getting fully met in our community. It will come as a shock to no one who has lived here for more than a year, that our winters are brutal, but it might shock people to know that many people are still on the street year-round in Great Falls.
The Rescue Mission offers emergency cold weather services on days below freezing, officially opening their doors at 10 PM (though on particularly cold days they have opened earlier). Their restrictions are typically lower for this cold weather emergency service, and “most” unhoused people can receive this service. However, what we had found was that between the times that places like the Library and St. Vincent De Paul Angel Room closed, and when the Mission opened, people were still exposed to dangerous temperatures for periods of time that can still do a world of harm to a body. We organized cold-weather drop-in to fill this gap, hosted at the United Methodist Church and, then this past winter, at First English/Helping Hands; providing a hot meal and a safe, warm location between 5:30-9:30 PM on below freezing nights.
What we found was that, in general, when people were warm, safe, and fed, they were cooperative, polite, and grateful. We had few negative interactions with a demographic that many people find “scary” or “dangerous.” We had perhaps four calls to emergency services over a winter of being open 70 nights. Consider the number of calls that would have been made if people were not there. When people were offered a safe and accepting space to exist, they were not someplace else trespassing, drinking, panhandling, stealing, etc… They, and the community as a whole, were SAFER.
This brings me back to the Library. The Library is a safe, warm, and accepting location. It is not a shelter or warming center, nor should it be, but it is a PUBLIC SPACE that is open to ANYONE who can give basic respect to the others around them. The Library providing this public space for people IS part of our public safety. When people, particularly the unhoused, are at the Library they are by default NOT doing the things that the public complains about them doing.
My general experience, both from working in mental health and volunteering with the unhoused, is that, when people are given respect and dignity, they respond in a positive manner. There are exceptions of course, but this has seemed to be just that, the exception. Our experience running the cold weather drop-in for two winters now showed this; a “rough” and “dangerous” population was calm and respectful, because they were treated how we would want to be treated.
I voted primarily for the Library levy so that they could extend their hours to be open every day of the week, and later each day; in large part so that community members with nowhere else to go would have a safe and warm location to be. But the library benefits so many more people than just the unhoused or downtrodden; though I think there we see the largest impacts. But even if it only impacted them, it still has a positive impact on my life. And I strongly believe that treating people with dignity and respect, and helping them to meet their basic needs, will always be a better long term option than fining, arresting, and jailing them; not to mention being far less expensive.
The idea of public safety based solely on more police is a fantasy, and an Orwellian one at that. Public safety might very well involve police and jails (perhaps in smaller quantities than we have now), but it also involves solving the issues at the root of the problem. Simply hiring more police and building more jails deals with the symptoms, but not the root cause of the problem. While the Library is also not a silver bullet, it does reach closer to the root cause of achieving a more lasting and holistic safety for our community.
–Michael Yegerlehner
by Guest Writer | Sep 14, 2024 | Elections
In November 2023, Republican U.S.Senate candidate Tim Sheehy made disparaging and racist comments about Native Americans. His statements are not only offensive but perpetuate a harmful stereotype that I have encountered throughout my life. Native Americans comprise 6.6% of Montanans, likely higher due to significant undercounting. Now, we have a Senate candidate adding to the discrimination by making such hurtful comments about this minority group.
As an enrolled member of the Chippewa-Cree Tribe of Rocky Boy, I find Sheehy’s remarks inaccurate and deeply hurtful. They reflect a long history of racial stereotypes that justify ongoing discrimination and neglect. His comments ignore the historical context of colonization and forced assimilation that have led to the current struggles faced by many Native Americans. There is no acknowledgment of the generational trauma that these systemic issues have created.
Does Mr. Sheehy believe that substance use problems are unique to Native Americans? Does he recognize that these issues are linked to systemic inequalities that contribute to health disparities? His statements suggest a troubling lack of understanding of these fundamental issues. Substance use problems are not confined by race or ethnicity; they are public health concerns that affect people universally. Mr. Sheehy’s comments reflect a profound ignorance of the systemic factors exacerbating these problems.
Instead of disparagingly labeling Native Americans as “drunk Indians at 8:00 am,” Mr. Sheehy should find out what many of us are doing at that time. He can find me training for the New York City Marathon or working.
Mr. Sheehy must take responsibility for his words. Public figures must recognize the impact of their statements and understand that their words have real power. I urge Mr. Sheehy to educate himself about historical trauma and Native cultures. Such knowledge would enrich his perspective and contribute to a more respectful and informed discourse.
-Barbara Bessette
by Guest Writer | Aug 13, 2024 | Guest Articles
By Jim Edwards
We’re past the time to “debate” climate change, it’s real – and it’s a problem. We need Congress focused on bi-partisan solutions for addressing it.
We need to be solving it so we can live in a stable climate and not enduring the climate-driven extreme weather events – wildfires, droughts, heatwaves, and the resulting low flows and warming water temps in our rivers and reservoirs. 2023 was the hottest year since records have been kept and 2024 is likely to beat it. Besides rising global temperatures, we’re seeing all sorts of other negative impacts, like more frequent and extreme droughts, floods, and severe, dangerous storms.
However, since the “debate” seems to keep cropping up, I’d like to remind my fellow Montanans that there is overwhelming consensus within the scientific community on these fundamental points regarding human-induced climate change:
- Earth’s global average temperature is increasing;
- Due to our burning of fossil fuels, human emissions of greenhouse gasses, especially carbon dioxide (CO2), are the main cause of the warming;
- International, independently derived research results ALL pointing towards the same finding provide a high degree of confidence that climate scientists are on the right track. The scientific community continues to add new findings and knows that many details about climate interactions aren’t fully understood and require significant, additional, continued research.
Climate defines the range in temperature and precipitation patterns making up our weather. Since the 1800s, the climate has warmed. Since World War II, the dominant contributor has been the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil and natural gas. All contain carbon. When burned, they emit potent gases, mostly CO2, into the atmosphere. These emissions act like a down blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and thus raising temperatures, and creating droughts. As more water evaporates into the atmosphere, it provides fuel for storms and more intense rainfall.
Nearly 100 percent of climate scientists are now convinced, based on the evidence, that human-caused global warming is happening. Still, the general public perceives there is significant “debate” among scientists – why?
A campaign of obfuscation regarding climate change science has been underway since the late 1980s, funded in large part by the fossil fuels industry (quite similar to what the tobacco industry did 30 years earlier regarding the correlation of tobacco use and cancer prevalence).
In the early 1990s, the Western Fuels Association (with funding from Exxon and others), conducted a massive PR campaign to “reposition global warming as a theory (not fact)”, using dissenting scientists (industry funded), to create the impression of ongoing scientific debate.
My brother spent 40 years as an engineer working in the coal side of ExxonMobil (Exxon is now 100% divested of its coal portfolio). He’s helped educate me to the fact that for the first 30 years of his career, Exxon was invested in climate change denial; within the past 15 years, Exxon has pivoted and is now fully on board with the Paris Climate Agreement.
Scientists do not disagree about whether climate change is human-caused. There are only a very few, and even fewer with scientific backgrounds relevant to climate science, who promote “debate”. Many individuals who pose as “experts” in media sources are not scientists at all, or else have no real background in actual climate science.
People from all walks of life and all political stripes care about climate change and want to see the problem fixed as soon as possible.
To leave a healthy, stable world for future generations, we need to act now, get creative, and work energetically together. For solutions, please see https://citizensclimatelobby.org/
Jim Edwards
Member of the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL)
Jim founded Mountain West Benefits (MWB) consultancy in 2003. MWB provided health insurance advisory services and was Montana’s largest benefit consultancy firm, advising large employer, association and union sponsored plans covering over 35,000 individuals.
In 2012 Jim and his partner, Richard Miltenberger, founded the Montana Health Co-op (now Mountain Health Co-op). Jim sold MWB to the Leavitt Group in 2015 and retired in 2017. Jim and his wife Sheila have four ordinary adult children and three brilliant grandchildren.
by Guest Writer | Jul 13, 2024 | Uncategorized
By Mary Moe
It’s tempting to say nothing. With so much anger and nonsense everywhere, I keep telling myself, turn the other cheek. This, too, will pass. But eight years in, it hasn’t passed. It’s worsening. So as we celebrate the 248th birthday of our shared inheritance, a warning.
That fatal moment is upon us, Americans. If we don’t meet it calmly, rationally, and unwaveringly, the whole experiment fails.
When thousands of American citizens storm the nation’s Capitol under a president’s orchestration, at his behest, and without his interference … when they wave Confederate flags while they pummel those who defend ours … when they erect a gallows to hang the vice president and the president tweets, “He probably deserves it” … I’m plumb out of cheeks to turn — top and bottom.
But our institutions stood, right? Wrong. Every American on any side of any aisle should have risen up on Jan. 6, 2021, and every day after it to say what happened that day was inexcusable. Inexcusable. Instead, the Senate shirked its impeachment duty. And with depressingly few exceptions, Republicans — throughout this nation and throughout Montana — spent the next 3 1/2 years perpetuating the big lie and kowtowing to the Big Liar. They should know by now what virtually everyone in Trump’s White House learned the hard way: When you sell your soul to Donald Trump, there’s no buy-back clause in the contract.
But the cancer on the body politic that was the Trump presidency had metastasized. In Montana, we elected a governor who assaulted a reporter and lied about it, an attorney general now facing 41 ethical violations, a secretary of state who spent millions of taxpayer dollars in court to keep likely Democrats from voting, a state auditor who lied about his residency to get a cheaper hunting license, and a state school superintendent who … well, ‘nuff said. All in thrall to Trump.
We’ve spent the last two legislative sessions enacting a carpet-bagged agenda attacking libraries, schools, the court, local governments, and the autonomy of women and other marginalized groups while Montanans’ taxes sky-rocketed, health insurance evaporated, climate issues intensified, and housing escalated from problem to crisis.
The hate Trump legitimized is everywhere. The nonsensical theories that fuel it defy any rational discussion. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court that Trump packed — the Court the framers designed as a bulwark against partisanship — has become a political action committee.
https://missoulian.com/opinion/column/mary-sheehy-moe-donald-trump-election-2024/article_433b5a3e-37b6-11ef-b7f9-3bf02d7708cc.html
by Guest Writer | Jun 22, 2024 | City
After the previous safety levy for the City of Great Falls failed in the last election by a wide margin, 9,095 no to 5,620 yes, the city went back to the drawing board, beginning by appointing another advisory group to study the issue. We decided to put out a few thoughts as this advisory begins its work.
Don’t waste a lot of money on polling and/or promotion- People in the city are already talking about commissioning a poll to find out what people think. Truth is people have just been hit with large property tax increases. We don’t need polling and messaging to tell us passing any kind of property tax increase will not be popular. Make clear what is being proposed and trust people to make their own conclusions.
Quit Playing Politics with an “Advisory Committee”- It is hard to figure out the logic for the appointments made for this committee. Apparently there was no application process for citizens who might have been interested in participating. And no process for deciding what qualifications the City wanted for members. Worse yet, it appears that political consideration rather than knowledge of related issues was a major driver. The members of the committee are: Sandra Guynn, Mike Parcel, Wendy McKamey, Jeni Dodd, George Nikolakakos, Aaron Weissman, Tony Rosales, Thad Reiste, Joe McKenney and Shannon Wilson.
Separate Fire and EMT funding from Police and Crime- Fire and emergency medical services are fundamentally different from policing. Wrapping them together in a levy forces voters to take or leave the whole thing. Very few people have a negative view of the services provided by fire and emergency personnel. Like it or not the same can not be said of police.
Make Clear Economic Arguments to Justify Increased Taxes- Rick Tryon’s crime task force back in 2021 didn’t do anybody any favors. It ended up producing a laundry list of expensive items which many citizens did not understand or support. To the extent the city wants to put an increase in the budgets of the police and local courts, it should emphasize things that save money like jail diversion programs, drug treatment and use of un-armed personnel wherever possible. In the area of fire protection, people should understand that their home and business insurance rates are directly ties to the safety rating of the local fire department.
