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Kalispell City Council revoked the Flathead Warming Center’s conditional use permit on Monday night. In a 6 -3 decision, Councilors Kari Gabriel, Sam Nunnally, Sid Daoud, Jed Fisher, Chad Graham and Mayor Mark Johnson voted in favor of shutting down the low-barrier homeless shelter on North Meridian Road.
The councilors and mayor argued that the shelter failed to uphold its promise of being a good neighbor, contradicting its permit application submitted to City Hall in 2020. Councilors also cited the collapse of talks between shelter leaders and neighbors during a 60-day negotiation period over the summer. “What we were told is going to happen, isn’t happening,” Johnson said before casting his vote. Neighbors of the shelter complained of public defecation and loitering in the area. They also raised safety concerns for nearby residents and businesses. Councilors Ryan Hunter, Jessica Dahlman and Sandy Carlson voted against revoking the Warming Center’s conditional use permit. Dahlman and Hunter argued that the shelter did meet the conditions stipulated in its permit and held to promises made in its application.
The Discrimination Financial Assistance Program was designed to address generations of racial injustice in federal farm policy. “They’re just saying it out loud, now,” Rae Peppers told herself in disbelief. The ad struck the Crow tribal member and former Democratic state legislator as blatant race-baiting, and it arrived as Tribal Chairman Frank White Clay was being pressured to call out Sheehy about a campaign anecdote that had offended many Indigenous Montanans.
Though the ad never identified the aid program, Peppers recognized it. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had set up a booth at Crow Native Days in June. Tribal members with small farm and ranch operations inquired about debt forgiveness. Peppers said she collected USDA literature to learn more about DFAP, short for Discrimination Financial Assistance Program. In the American West, the 228 Montana farmers who qualified for the assistance are second only to California’s 1,059, according to USDA data. Just as the ad said, Montana’s incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester had voted for the program,twice, the second time to fix it.
As he perused 49 ads about Montana’s consequential U.S. Senate race, veteran political consultant Jim Messina was the struck by the absence of local issues. The ads, most of which were produced by political action committees acting independently of either incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester or Republican challenger Tim Sheehy, emphasized national subjects. It was the opposite of the way Messina said he’d campaigned decades earlier for former Montana Sen. Max Baucus.
"Per voter, there’s more money being spent in Montana than any place in the country. None of the ads today, 49 ads — none of the ads were on a local issue,” Messina said. The current CEO of the Messina Group was speaking on the second evening of MTFP’s Free Press Fest at the University of Montana in Missoula. He was joined (via Zoom, after a flight delay) by political consultant Matt Rhoades, co-CEO of CGCN Group, who managed Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012, the same year Messina managed President Barack Obama’s successful reelection bid.
