Missoulian week in review: Local news recap for Sept. 14-20

Here are some of the headlines from this past week in the Missoulian. To read the full stories, click the link on each headline:

Officials in Glacier National Park closed a portion of the Highline Trail on Thursday after a bear injured a hiker early that morning.

According to an announcement from Gina Icenoggle, the park's public information officer, the famed trail is closed from Granite Park Chalet on the north to Haystack Butte on the south — about a 4.9-mile stretch that also provides access to the Grinnell Glacier Overlook out-and-back trail. The trail and bear encounter location are located up the mountain and approximately northeast of the upper switchback (above "The Loop") on the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Icenoggle wrote that a bear inflicted "non-life-threatening injuries" on a 35-year-old man hiking the Highline Trail. The man was among a group of hikers who encountered the bear near Grinnell Glacier Overlook trailhead on the Highline Trail, which is about 0.7 miles southeast on the trail from Granite Park Chalet and sits at about 6,590 feet elevation.

"The species of bear is still under investigation," she wrote. "The closure will remain in place until further notice."

— Joshua Murdock,

Eric Jacobsen doesn't know exactly what he'll do with Holland Lake Lodge if he buys it. So far in the nascent stages of a possible purchase, he maintains that he wants community input to craft a vision for the historic lakeside property in western Montana's Swan Valley.

But details remain murky of what, if anything, might come of the wealthy Montana entrepreneur's bid for taking over the cherished property at Missoula County's far northern end.

At an initial Sept. 3 meeting at Condon Community Center, Jacobsen and business partner Thomas Knowles — husband to Jacobsen's niece — announced their intent to purchase the circa-1946 lodge. Jacobsen scheduled a series of further meetings at the small log-cabin-style community center and library on state Highway 83 to hear community input and, eventually, present a vision for the lodge's future that he said he hopes will be both financially viable and generally acceptable to most locals.

According to a handwritten meeting schedule Jacobsen presented Wednesday night, the first meeting earlier this month was an "intro/meet + greet/Q&A" session. Wednesday's nearly three-hour session, which began at 6 p.m., was aimed at co-creating "the vision."

Jacobsen is set to hold additional meetings Sept. 25 ("draft vision/strategy?"), Oct. 2 ("Don't do/Can't do?"), and Oct. 23 ("draft master development plan?").

— Joshua Murdock,

The Montana Association of Counties (MACo) elected one of Missoula County's commissioners to its leadership team, the first time Missoula has had a voice at the top of the association since the 1980s.

County Commissioner Juanita Vero won the election for second vice president of MACo during the group's annual conference in Missoula on Wednesday. A representative from each Montana county voted.

Because the MACo leadership system cycles its executives into higher positions each year, if Vero stays in office, she will become president of the group in two years.

"Commissioning, it's not political, it's about serving the state and solving problems with solutions with very little resources," Vero said during her campaign speech on Wednesday.

— Griffen Smith,

Missoula County used most of its remaining federal COVID dollars to partially fund the Temporary Safe Outdoor Space for two more years and is currently looking for a way to find a new revenue source for the program.

The Temporary Safe Outdoor Space has 30 hard-sided structures meant to transition homeless people into permanent housing. The project is a collaboration with Missoula County, Hope Rescue Mission and United Way of Missoula.

The contract for 2025 and 2026 totals $740,000 in American Rescue Plan dollars, which were directly given to the county from the federal government in 2021.

"It is such a successful project that it needs to be funded," Commissioner Josh Slotnick said.

The remaining county ARPA dollars will be allocated to projects by the end of December, County Chief Financial Officer Andrew Czorny said on Thursday.

— Griffen Smith,

The Missoula Police Department is asking for the public's help finding the source of apparently homemade metal spikes that have been found embedded in people's tires around town.

The devices appear to have been welded for the purpose of puncturing tires or to "potentially cause harm if stepped on," according to a press release from the police department.

An accompanying photo of the object, labeled "tire killer," shows a four-pointed metal device like a rough throwing star stuck in the tread of a tire.

One of the victims took the vehicle to a local tire shop, where they were told three other customers had come in with the same issue, the press release stated.

A spate of similar incidents was reported last year and appeared to have originated in the area of Pattee Canyon and South Higgins Street, police department spokesperson Whitney Bennett said. Investigators haven't yet narrowed the latest batch of objects to a specific area in town, she said.

— Sam Wilson,

Montana's rematch for the western congressional district between incumbent GOP U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke and Democratic challenger Monica Tranel is playing out in communities where housing affordability and availability has looked and felt like a crisis for longtime residents.

It's an issue that transcends partisanship, but there's still some room for disagreement on whether Congress and the federal government have the ability to drive solutions on a problem that's so largely steered by market forces for building materials, local zoning regulations and state tax policy.

The western district covers communities like Bozeman, Missoula and the Flathead Valley, where local governments are scrambling against the headlines of rising home prices and shrinking rental availabilities . Rural communities have not been spared, either. Granite County saw the highest spike in median residential value in the state last year at 67%.

The Montana State News Bureau put five questions to the Zinke and Tranel campaigns about housing, asking them to weigh in on the housing plans put forth by this year's presidential candidates and for specific policies they would support if elected in November.

The also asked about short-term rentals. Tranel's campaign has tried to weaponize that issue against Zinke, who owns several, but declined for this story to comment on her past stock ownership with Airbnb. Democratic operatives, meanwhile, recently dug up permitting records indicating Zinke's family is operating two of their short-term rentals without the proper permitting.

— Seaborn Larson,

When Leslie Van Stavern Millar was growing up, her family moved around with her father's job as an oil company executive, including time living in Iran and Libya. After Muammar Gaddafi rose to power in the latter in 1969, they returned to the U.S. While leaving, Millar, then a college student, had packed some of her artworks. Security personnel at the airport smashed them.

"Unconsciously, that has always sort of been in the background with me — like you could lose this, this could happen," she said.

While an extreme outlier, the memory lingers with her as an example of the importance of our rights under a democracy and freedom of expression, the subject of a group art exhibition she's curated along with some accompanying talks.

"We the People" includes 28 artists, mostly from Montana, including nationally exhibiting creators like Monte Dolack, Beth Lo and more. Millar owns the Brunswick Building, a historic hotel on Railroad Street that she's rented out as artist studios since she bought it in the 1990s. (The previous owners had rented its spaces to artists as well, and she carried on the tradition.) The building also has a gallery that she takes advantage of to display works annually by the Pattee Canyon Ladies Salon, a long-running figure drawing group of which she is a member.

— Cory Walsh,

Missoula's community cinema is screening "Purple Rain," Tim Burton's new throwback reunion and a Jason Schwartzman indie.

— Charlotte Macorn, for the Missoulian

Here's a quick guide to some upcoming arts and cultural events happening around Missoula in the week ahead.

— Cory Walsh,

To date, there are no former Montana Grizzlies in the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

There aren't any Griz in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. No, there are no UM alumni in the MLB Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and there are certainly no alums in the NHL Hall of Fame in Toronto, Ontario.

Hello, Whiting, Indiana, home of the Mascot Hall of Fame (which physically closed Sept. 14, and will be an online-only entity going forward). Monte the Grizzly Bear, the darling of Montana fans, was announced as a member of the 2024 class this summer, and he will be recognized at the Griz home game Saturday against Western Carolina.

The road to becoming the lone FCS hall of famer was one of trial and error, a developing persona and an outstretching brand that became synonymous with the state of Montana.

— Carson Cashion,

Missoula police responded to Hellgate High School on Wednesday to what a department official called a "non-credible threat" of a potential school shooting posted to social media.

The threat appeared to be linked to a series of other threats being circulated around the country, Missoula Police Department spokesperson Whitney Bennett stated in a press release Wednesday.

"The threat indicates a school shooting may occur following an evacuation triggered by a fire alarm," Whitney wrote. "Based on our investigation and information gathered, we do not believe this threat to be credible."

The school continued to operate as usual on Wednesday, the press release continued, but multiple police officers were sent to the school "out of an abundance of caution."

Asked whether police had identified any suspects behind the threat, Bennett said investigators don't believe the person who made the threat is local.

— Sam Wilson,

Missoula's Fire Department will have a large financial "cushion" to expand its infrastructure after the federal government awarded the city a $7 million grant , which comes on top of an additional $7 million dollars from a voter-approved levy.

The federal SAFER grant will provide $7 million over three years to pay for 26 new firefighters, as opposed to the original 20 provided by the levy.

Fire Chief Gordy Hughes said Wednesday that with the addition of the federal grant, the fire department should be able to use levy money to build a second maintenance facility and a permanent home for the city's Mobile Support Team.

"What that grant does not provide is the (personal protective equipment) for those firefighters, but what it does provide is some cushion in our levy to address what we went through earlier in the budget process in terms of items not budgeted for," Hughes said.

The city was awarded the grant after it approved its 2025 fiscal year budget , which includes the $7 million from the levy for the fire department to build a sixth fire station. Voters approved the fire levy in May.

— Griffen Smith,

Montana's housing affordability crisis is making national headlines lately, with a critical U.S. Senate race putting even more of a spotlight on an issue that was already top-of-mind for everyone living here.

The Treasure State's problem can be summed up with a simple comparison.

From 2018 to 2023, the median home sales price in Montana rose from $266,473 to $505,419, according to the Montana Association of Realtors. That's an eye-popping 89.6% increase. In that same time frame, U.S. Census Bureau data shows the median household income in Montana rose from $55,328 to $70,804 , a relatively paltry 27.9% increase.

Wage increases in Montana are not even close to keeping up with housing price gains.

Recently, the National Association of Realtors came out with a report that listed Montana as the least affordable state in the entire country, based on its Affordability Distribution Curve, which measures "housing affordability at different income levels for all active (houses for sale) on the market."

So, based on incomes in Montana compared with the prices of homes for sale, the Association found that Montana is less affordable for homebuyers than even California and Idaho, the two other least affordable states.

— David Erickson,

Americans have been sour on the economy for the past few years, particularly since inflation peaked at a 40-year-high in summer 2022. Republican candidates have sought to emphasize inflation as a reason to oust Democrats who were in office during this time.

Tim Sheehy — a Republican challenging Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., in one of the nation's most closely watched Senate races — sought to blame his opponent for inflation in an Aug. 21 X post.

"Two-Faced 'Inflation Reduction Act' increased inflation and drove prices sky high!" the post said.

But the year-over-year inflation rate has declined by more than two-thirds since the bill passed. Although economists say the law is not a significant reason for the decline, the inflation rate's decline after its passage shows it didn't cause prices to skyrocket, either.

— Louis Jacobson, Politifact

Federal housing dollars flowing into the city of Missoula helped roughly 700 residents through several assistance programs in the last year, with most of the money spent in a private-public partnership.

The city's grant office presented its annual federal housing spending review Monday night, showcasing how $950,000 in federal dollars were spent to help limit the blow of increasing housing prices in the Missoula valley.

The money comes from two programs: $397,000 from the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program and $555,000 from the HOME Investment Partnerships Program.

Both programs are allocated through the Office of Housing and Urban Development. The funding is often paired with private and city-generated money for local projects.

"It is really the determination of our community partners and our HUD funding that makes a difference for the city of Missoula," said Tracy Pohndorf, the city's grants program manager.

— Griffen Smith,

The U.S. Forest Service officials have received a 60-day notice from the environmental litigation group EarthJustice, outlining an intent to sue over amendments to the Bitterroot National Forest's forest plan.

The notice was issued on behalf of Montana conservation groups Friends of the Bitterroot, Friends of Clearwater, Native Ecosystems Council and WildEarth Guardians, who claim that the Forest Service's 2023 amendment to the Bitterroot Forest Plan violates the Endangered Species Act.

"The U.S. Forest Service is in violation of the ESA, 16 U.S.C. § 1536(a)(2), for arbitrarily relying on the FWS's legally deficient July 8, 2021 Biological Opinion on impacts to grizzly bears from Amendment 40 to the 1987 Land Management Plan for the Bitterroot National Forest," the letter of intent states.

The groups accuse the Forest Service of not sufficiently consulting with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before amending Bitterroot Forest Plans and suggest that these modifications, specifically modifications to the Bitterroot National Forest 1987 open roadway restrictions, will negatively impact local grizzly bear and bull trout populations.

— Jackson Kimball,

The three statewide constitutional initiatives that Montanans will encounter on November's ballot are largely being bankrolled by out-of-state organizations, according to public fundraising numbers.

The three initiatives are backed by two groups: Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights (MSRR) is the organization behind the push to enshrine the explicit right to pre-viability abortion in the state's Constitution. Montanans for Election Reform is backing two separate but related initiatives. One would amend the state's elections to be in an open primary format and the other would mandate majority rule.

Both groups are raking in millions from national organizations — including those who do not have to disclose their donors — and spending those millions pushing their initiatives.

— Victoria Eavis and Carly Graf, Montana State News Bureau

The Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce has announced it will hire a new president/CEO to replace Mark Losh, who departed the organization a few weeks ago. Neither the Chamber nor Losh gave a specific reason for why he left the Chamber's top leadership role after nine months on the job.

The Chamber's largest event of the year, its 134th annual banquet, is coming up next month.

When Losh left, Chamber board chair John Brauer said the board had not yet made a final decision about the hiring process, but that seems to have been cleared up recently.

In an email sent on Sept. 9, the Chamber said it was indeed seeking applicants for the role.

"Our President/CEO will be the guiding force behind the Chamber's vision to serve as a primary catalyst for creating a cooperative and prosperous community," the email said. The job posting closed on Sept. 13.

— David Erickson,

There are still a couple weeks left to take advantage of the cool fall weather, get some exercise and see the variety of agriculture operations in the Missoula area.

The sixth annual Bike to Barns tour, hosted by the nonprofit Community Food and Agriculture Coalition in Missoula, is running until Sept. 30.

Participants can take a mapped-out bike adventure tour to 14 local farm stops, meet local producers, eat and purchase food and win prizes.

This year's event features a free lunch and scavenger hunt.

"Bike to Barns has become an annual tradition for many Missoulians, families and friend groups," said Jennifer Zaso-Hitchcock, the nonprofit's communications and development director. "It's the perfect introduction to learning more about local agriculture in our community while having a lot of fun."

The goal of the event is to raise awareness about the importance of local food systems.

— David Erickson,

A group of neighbors in Carlton have sued Missoula County over a gravel pit expansion inside a residentially zoned neighborhood, alleging that commissioners disregarded zoning and the public right to know for decades.

The lawsuit, filed in Missoula County District Court this month, comes after county commissioners granted a gravel pit expansion to allow Western Materials to mine up to 150 acres of gravel in the north edge of the Bitterroot Valley.

The gravel pit has existed for decades within an old zoning district that overlays the Carlton neighborhood.

That same district does not allow for gravel pit operations, but a landowner in the neighborhood slowly expanded a mining operation for decades, including securing a non-conforming use title from the county in the early 2000s.

The commissioners said in August that they approved the gravel pit because the site has been in operation for decades and that gravel was an essential material for construction projects across the Missoula Valley.

The approval also required mitigations like a wildlife corridor to ease the impact of the mine onto neighboring residents.

— Griffen Smith,

After peppery exchanges in recent weeks about the prospect of meeting in a debate, incumbent Gov. Greg Gianforte and Democratic challenger Ryan Busse are set to square off in mid-October for one forum.

Both men agreed to a debate hosted by NonStop Local, a network of ABC-FOX stations, to be held Oct. 16. It will be hosted by anchor Bradley Warren and longtime political reporter Mike Dennison, who retired in 2022 after decades in journalism and provides analysis on a weekly program with Warren.

Gianforte declined to participate in two debates that traditionally feature the candidates seeking to occupy the governor's office — one hosted by the Montana Television Network and the other put on by Montana Television Network, Montana PBS, Lee Newspapers, Yellowstone Public Radio and Montana Public Radio. Busse accepted both of those invitations.

Paul Bergen, executive news director for NonStop Local, confirmed the debate Monday. More details on the format and broadcast plans were not available.

— Holly Michels,

A Missoula jury returned a split verdict on Friday night in the trial of a former University of Montana law school student charged with attempted rape and other crimes.

Cole Larson Levine, 25, who has maintained his innocence since being charged in Missoula County District Court with three felony charges related to a report of a downtown sexual assault in August 2022, was found not guilty of attempted sexual intercourse without consent but guilty on four other charges.

The jury found Levine guilty of aggravated assault and destruction or tampering with a communication device, plus bail jumping after he bonded out of jail and was subsequently arrested in Canada. He had also been charged with attempted kidnapping but was found guilty on a lesser offense of unlawful restraint.

Levine's sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 22.

— Sam Wilson,