It’s been a banner year for Calumet, the company behind the oil refinery in Great Falls. Despite gross profits of over $70 million dollars in 2021, both the GF City Commission and Cascade County Commission continue to give Calumet massive tax breaks.
Property taxes are a key source of funding for our community, including our schools. Earlier this year, the City Commission approved a tax abatement to the tune of $2.77 million. That’s money Calumet doesn’t have to pay into property taxes. This means Calumet continues to enjoy prime river-front property and its increase in employees adds stress to our infrastructure, with almost no return on investment for the rest of us.
With no commitment to hiring locally, how do these tax breaks benefit us? The short answer is: They don’t. Although I fully support Calumet’s transition to more renewable energy, the company is absolutely capable of paying its fair share of property taxes.
As regular Great Falls’ families struggle with rising taxes amid extraordinary inflation, Calumet was given another property tax break, this time by the County Commission. A second gift to this million-dollar business, Calumet will pay only 50% of its property tax value for the next five years.
Highlighting the absurdity of these abatements, Great Falls citizens are currently being asked to pay higher taxes to support a public safety levy. Asking already-struggling families to suck it up and pay more while simultaneously giving the refinery a multimillion-dollar tax break is a hard pill to swallow.
As stress on our roads, schools, and housing market near a breaking point, its time that we all ask: Why the funk aren’t we making Calumet paying its fair share?
Since Covid, drama and controversy in our schools have dominated the news. Calling themselves the “parental rights movement”, angry parents have appeared at local school board meetings demanding they have things their way. Rowdy and abusive, these parents have accused school board members and staff of all kinds of (wildly untrue) things. You can watch a sampling of the vitriol our Great Falls School Board experienced during a special meeting in August 2021 here. Pushing conspiracy theories about masks, the books kids are using, and demanding that history classes teach only things they agree with, these parents repeat talking points directly taken from national far-right organizations.
As school elections approached, they began filing for open seats on school boards across the state. By and large these candidates toned down their far-right rhetoric attempting to present a friendly face to the electorate. So how did they do in the elections? Turns out not very well at all. (A summary of key school elections can be found here: https://montanafreepress.org/2022/05/04/montana-school-election-results/)
What the Funk Happened in our School Board Race?
Well, the Great Falls Public School Board Trustees are in! Drum roll please.
Incumbents Gordon Johnson, and Mark Finnicum retained their 3-year seats. Paige Turoski nabbed the last 3-year slot. And Amie Thompson earned the 1-year slot.
What a rollercoaster ride of an election! Paige Turoski was the only right-wing and GOP-endorsed candidate to win in a race that had 11 candidates vying for four seats. In a climate doused with sheer absurdity, we must celebrate our victories where we can. The elections of Johnson, Finnicum, and Thompson are major wins for our schools, faculty, and kids!
We have faith our trustees will continue to do right by our students and staff. Hopefully Ms. Turoski will gain more awareness when removed from her right wing echo chamber and instead surrounded by reasonable, logical adults. We’re thrilled to see Great Falls voted for more moderate voices on the board. After all, local elections are nonpartisan for a reason.
In today’s “Questions I Shouldn’t Have To Ponder” I’m faced with a truly strange situation. After E-city Beat’s bizarre, ill-researched, and oddly sexualized attack on school board candidate Russ Herring, I’m sitting here considering when (if ever) it is appropriate to discuss a political candidate’s penis. Before last week, I’d have easily said “Never. This couldn’t possibly be relevant to a local election.” Yet, after E-city Beat clearly spent significant time staring a Herring’s, well, package, it seems the conversation is at hand. Let’s start with a relevant example. If E-City Beat downloaded a picture of me in a bikini I had shared on my personal Facebook page, we would all regard this as creepy. If they went further and then PUBLISHED that picture, claiming it made me an unfit candidate, we would all recognize that behavior for what it is- sexual harassment. The writer, Phil Fascenda, claims this picture is ill-befitting a candidate for school board. It seems Fascenda’s tune has changed since E-city Beat contributor and city commissioner, Rick Tryon’s inappropriate Facebook posts were discussed in a city commission meeting. Flash back to the City Commission meetings during the Non-Discrimination Ordinance conversations. Members of the commission were presented with a print-out of Rick’s transphobic “joke” he had shared on his page. Rick quickly retorted that this was on his personal facebook page, was merely a joke, and shouldn’t even be brought up. So, if its Rick’s personal page, Fascenda seems to think it is of no consequence, even when it is directly relevant to the question at hand. And now E-City Beat is scouring the personal pages of candidates they don’t like and attempting to find problematic posts. Here’s the thing though- a guy in his shorts (be they boxer or swimwear) is NOT problematic. Its not even inherently sexual. In fact, its only weird because Fascenda and E-City Beat tried to make it weird, claiming that Herring had an erection. Now, 99.9% of the time, it really isn’t okay to make fun of anyone’s penis size. But let’s be clear. Herring in no way has an erection in the photo and its pretty hilarious to try and claim that he does. The fact that the author tries to claim this, well, he’s basically telling on himself here. My takeaway from this desperate attempt at a smear campaign is that the folks at E -City Beat have, well, itty bitty…arguments. As we know, E-City Beat writer and everyone’s least favorite commissioner, Rick Tryon loves to talk about himself in the third person and use various nicknames which surely have never been uttered by anyone but himself. Of course, Tryon is silent about the hypocrisy of this attack by his pal at E-city Beat. I can’t help but assume that if we published anything from his personal face book page Tryon would be outraged. And it makes me wonder if Rick thinks a candidate’s penis size should be a topic of conversation in a political campaign. Although E City Beat likely can’t be held liable for what is clearly a libelous attack, I wonder what responsibility they hold for the slew of utterly false remarks made by readers in the comment section of E-City Beat about Herring as a result of their post?
The Great Falls Public Schools (GFPS) are holding a school trustee election on May 3rd and it is shaping up to be a bigoted, partisan mess.
Historically, the Great Falls Public School Board elections have had non-partisan candidates with a strong public education background. That’s not the case this year. It seems the last few years of polarizing politics have infected the Great Falls’ school board race. We now have a slate of far-right, partisan candidates who have stepped forward to run. And they are campaigning hard.
What the Funk is Happening With the School Board Election?
The local right-wing attacks on school boards are part of a nationwide, conservative movement to take over local government. Historically, political parties have made an effort to limit endorsements in non-partisan races like school boards, judicial systems, and city government. Ignoring this precedent, Cascade County GOP is pushing heavily for their preferred candidates in all of these areas. In the Great Falls School Board election, a crop of far-right school board candidates have been endorsed by the Cascade County Republicans PAC. The PAC is an ultra-conservative break-off group of Republicans so extreme that moderate Cascade County Republicans have distanced themselves from the group [The PAC also likes to do campaign finance violations from time to time…]
WTF 406 did a little research into the positions of the GOP-endorsed candidates:
The right-wing candidates are led by out-spoken homophobe, Brian Cayko. Brian wants people to pronounce his name correctly so badly that he boosted Facebook ads, stressing that his name is pronounced “psycho.” Yes, he really did. Aside from his questionable priorities regarding campaign messaging, Brian has been openly vocal about his anti-LGBTQ sentiments. He has commented online that LGBTQ-friendly schools promote “destructive physical and mental health. Most importantly that is immoral in the eyes of God.” Brian submitted a lengthy, bigoted rant against LGBTQ+ community members as he urged our city commission to vote against a proposed non-discrimination ordinance. With that hate-filled perspective, how is Brian going to support our LGBTQ+ students and staff?
Paige Turoski previously ran for the Great Falls City Commission and she thinks taxation is theft. It’ll be interesting to see how Paige thinks our schools are funded.
Scott Jablonski thinks masks are unconstitutional. Rodney Meyers wants to insert partisan politics so badly into a non-partisan race, that he sought the endorsement of Republican Lieutenant Governor Juras.
These ultra-conservative candidates would jeopardize the ability of the school board to function and serve our children well. It’s not surprising that the Great Falls Education Association (GFEA) didn’t endorse any of the candidates on the GOP slate. Our teachers’ union knows what works best to support our students as we strive to recover from the impacts of the pandemic. The GFEA endorsed the three incumbent candidates (Mark Finnicum, Gordon Johnson, and Nathan Reiff), along with Russell Herring for the additional one-year term. Let’s keep partisan politics away from our kids and out of our schools.
