Month: February 2020

by William Skink

Our elected leaders and their skewed priorities require constant scrutiny because they have proven incapable of moderating their use of public TIF money for things that really have no public benefit whatsoever.

Case in point can be found in today’s Missoulian where the Missoula Redevelopment Agency is recommending $25,000 dollars in TIF money be paid to an out-of-state consulting firm to tell our enlightened leaders what they should already know, which is the old library site should be solely dedicated to housing.

Here’s a maddening excerpt from the Lee rag:

The Missoula Redevelopment Agency is recommending that the agency’s board approve using up to $25,000 in Tax Increment Financing funds from the Front Street Urban Renewal District as a match for a possible grant from the Montana Department of Commerce to hire consulting firm Dover, Kohl & Partners to create a “preferred development scenario” for the library block.

That Florida-based firm was also hired to help create the new Missoula Downtown Master Plan.

“This block presents the opportunity to meet a number of needs in the community and that area of downtown, and this planning effort will sift through those needs to determine priorities and which ones can be best met at that location,” wrote MRA director Ellen Buchanan in a memo to the board.

Buchanan said in exchange for $50,000, the consulting firm would identify multiple development scenarios followed by public presentations and an open house workshop to narrow down the vision for the block.

After my blind rage subsided from reading this, I started wondering. A Florida consulting firm? Didn’t our new Development Services Director, Josh Martin, spend some time in Florida? I wonder if Martin has had any experience with this consulting firm.

A few minutes of searching on the Google and I found a very concerning report in The Post and Courier, a paper in Charleston, that raises some serious questions about Josh Martin and the consulting firm Dover and Kohl. Here is a lengthy excerpt from the article, titled Charleston approves West Ashley master plan contract, but some doubt process. From the link:

A few weeks after Charleston City Council rejected a consultant’s $500,000 contract to lead a West Ashley revitalization plan for West Ashley, enough changed their minds Tuesday to approve it.

But City Councilman Keith Waring raised questions about whether Mayoral Advisor Josh Martin acted properly in communicating and negotiating with the winning firm.

His comments came after Mayor John Tecklenburg raised his voice in a passionate defense of Martin, a former city planning director, whose public and private experience Tecklenburg said made Martin uniquely qualified to negotiate the deal.
…
On Dec. 20, City Council voted 9-4 to reject a $498,800 contract, but the city has since renegotiated with Dover Kohl of Coral Gables, Fla., and got the price down slightly to $493,000. Dover Kohl planned Mount Pleasant’s I’On neighborhood and worked on other local projects, such as the recent Rethink Folly Road plan.

Tecklenburg said the city’s $443,000 would come from its planning department budget. Dover Kohl will work closely with the West Ashley Revitalization Commission and all others interested in shaping the city’s blueprint for improving its largest suburb, home to 44 percent of the city population.

Councilman Bill Moody, who represents parts of West Ashley and James Island, said he still was concerned about the price tag and the process that led to the proposed contract. He thanked the foundation for its contribution, but added, “I don’t care whose money we’re wasting. If we’re wasting it, we shouldn’t have been doing it.”

Waring, who appeared to join with Moody as the only votes against the contract, questioned why the West Ashley Revitalization Commission wasn’t more involved.

“Why did we pass a law to empower this committee and we don’t utilize their skills? I think that’s a travesty,” he said. “I think that’s an omission that can be corrected.”

Waring also questioned whether Martin properly communicated with Dover Kohl, though he offered no proof of wrongdoing. “When Dover Kohl amended their presentation to include the affordable housing piece, it was not part of their presentation to the selection commission,” he said. “How does that happen?”

So, to recap, the Missoula Redevelopment Agency wants to give $25,000 in public TIF money to an out-of-state consulting firm with ties to the new Development Director the city just hired to help spread the gospel of New Urbanism, and in the previous community Martin came from there are concerns about his work with the same consulting firm Missoula is now going to throw public money at.

Is this really the best consulting firm and is Josh Martin really the best person to be telling Missoula how to deploy its limited resources?

I’m beginning to wonder if our elected leaders have cognitive problems. We have a housing crisis, in part from a lack of housing stock, so why is there any question about what the priority for this piece of land should be?

But no, instead of doing something that makes sense, Engen’s cronies at MRA want to spend a big chunk of public money—more than what many workers make IN AN ENTIRE YEAR—on a Florida-based consulting firm to tell them what they should damn well know already.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Our poor elected leaders who feel so threatened and scared that the pesky public is getting uppity about this shit need to step back and seriously reflect on how these TIF handouts look to a community that is getting squeezed on multiple financial fronts.

Despite efforts to depict TIF activists as dangerous agitators, the scrutiny by people like me will continue because the malfeasance involved with how our leaders have been managing public money is becoming too obvious for the narrative manipulators to effectively spin.

I think it’s time to seriously look at how to stop our elected leaders from using TIF through a public process, like a citizen initiative, then we need to demand a full audit of the Missoula Redevelopment Agency.

This malfeasance has got to stop.

by William Skink

Please consider donating to Brandon Bryant’s go fund me page.

Local officials who claimed concern and a hope Bryant could be connected to support services were, as usual, disingenuous with their rhetoric.

Be better than them by donating what you can. Thank you.

by William Skink

The Billings Gazette is losing an editor. Let me restructure that.

The Billings Gazette has decided it doesn’t need a thing called an “editor” doing in-house editing type things. That can be done by a guy in Butte. Here’s the article from the restructured newsroom of the Billings Gazette:

Editor Darrell Ehrlick and Editorial Page Editor Pat Bellinghausen will be leaving The Gazette.The positions of editor and editorial page editor were eliminated in Billings.

At the same time, Lee Enterprises announced that David McCumber, editor and general manager of The Montana Standard in Butte, will assume the role of regional editor, adding Billings to his oversight of news operations in Butte and Helena.

At what point do we declare the ravaged cadaver of print media dead by a thousands cuts?

The problem is of course much larger than what’s happening to print media. Corporate consolidation of traditional media platforms has been a decades-in-the-making, slow motion crisis enabled by both political parties and put over the edge by the internet.

Locally I feel the absence of the Missoula Independent every Thursday when no new edition hits the stands. I still clearly recall how Lee Enterprises and their newly minted hatchet man, Matt Gibson, locked out employees on September 11th, 2018. And I mean that literally. People showed up to work and the doors were locked.

There has got to be a better model for the essential role of holding power to account while also providing local communities relevant information about what is happening where they live. The share-holder focused, advertisement dependent media platforms of yesterday cannot survive in today’s media landscape.

One would then think to look at non-profit options, but a cursory scanning of wikipedia quickly exposes the problems there:

Non-profit journalism (abbreviated as NPJ, also known as a not-for-profit journalism or think tank journalism) is the practice of journalism as a non-profit organization instead of a for-profit business. NPJ groups are able to operate and serve the public good without the concern of debt, dividends and the need to make a profit. Just like all non-profit organizations, NPJ outfits depend on private donations and or foundation grants to pay for operational expenses.

The recent emergence of non-profit journalism may lead some to believe that this is a new trend in a struggling industry. However, journalism non-profits have been operating since the beginning of the newspaper age. In 1846, five New York newspapers united to share incoming reports from the Mexican–American War. That experiment in journalism became the Associated Press, which to this day is still a non-profit cooperative.

The problem is obvious: money. If you’re not going to chase advertising dollars, then you will be dependent on other sources of funding. NPR gets money from things like the Ford Foundation, while new upstarts, like The Intercept, are essentially billionaire-funded pet projects masquerading as anti-establishment journalism.

So where does a blogger/citizen journalist like myself fit in to all this? I’d like to be a part of the solution in providing my perspective on both local developments and other areas of personal interest, but the reality is I am a part of the problem.

Why?

I don’t get any financial compensation for what I write. That puts negative pressure on free lance writers who are trying to earn a living. Also, I haven’t paid WordPress to upgrade my little blog, so readers have to deal with advertisements. I guess I could panhandle readers for donations to pay for the upgrade, so my blogging isn’t enabling WordPress to sell you shit you don’t need, but that’s not the route I want to take.

When my job status changes in the next few months, and I finally have the time to fully invest in whatever the next step turns out to be, I may have an ask or two, and something more substantial to offer in return. Stay tuned…

by William Skink

I continue to be amazed that no charges have been filed against Johnny Lee Perry for his hands-on role in the death of Sean Stevenson. I found this AP piece from January 6th. Here’s an excerpt:

A 29-year-old man was initially arrested on suspicion of felony aggravated assault, but was subsequently released without charges while police investigate a claim of self-defense, the Missoulian reported.

“We’re going to continue working with law enforcement to make sure we understand everything that happened, and once we do, we’re going to make a decision on whether or not the individual needs to be tried,” said Chief Deputy Missoula County Attorney Matt Jennings.

This kind of slow deliberation while the perp remains free from custody was not extended to Brandon Bryant. To highlight the absurdity of these two cases, here’s a poetic juxtaposition:

use your hands
to extinguish life
then claim defense
in the Treasure State
and if the dead man
has no home?
County Attorney shrugs
charges? nope

BUT…

use your words
to threaten life
of elected officials
in the Treasure State
and if their TIF scheme
might be exposed?
felony charges
in lockdown clothes

SO…

use your brain
to question life
who has worth
in the Treasure State?
and if the answer
confounds your mind
the hands walk free
while the word does time

by William Skink

No matter how badly our elected officials may desire a return to the normalcy of doing the city’s business with little scrutiny from an informed public that is not going to happen, not when Brandon Bryant is facing felony charges for threatening public officials.

This confusing and deeply disturbing story is being covered closely by Dawg Majik at the blog connected to the Outer Limits Radio Show.

On February 7th the post titled Missoula Officials Distort Facts To Suppress TIF Activism described what had happened up to that point with Brandon Bryant, the alleged threats, and the decision to ban Bryant from city property. The post features a lengthy apology from Bryant, who had already been contacted by law enforcement about the ban. From the link:

Brandon posted a statement apologizing for creating anxiety, admitting his statements were hyperbolic, assuring our elected officials he means them no harm, and setting the record straight about who he actually feels angry with. I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t Missoula’s bureaucracy.

Furthermore, the police report to the Council indicates that law enforcement “Don’t believe he’s an immediate threat to any council safety,” further stating that Bryant “admitted to posting these videos to ‘incite a response’“.

The Missoula Police Department acknowledge that efforts are being made, hand-in-hand with law enforcement, to arrive at a peaceful resolution to this situation.

On the same day of the blog post (which included a portion of a mysterious dossier that Bryant received suggesting some ethically dubious real estate deals benefiting Mayor Engen) charges were formally filed by the County Attorney’s Office. Coincidence?

After charges were filed Bryant was arrested on February 11th. With this oh so dangerous and threatening disabled Veteran locked in a cage, public officials, like Vice President of City Council, Gwen Jones, expressed hope Bryant would receive help. This excerpt is from a Missoulian article published on February 13th:

Thursday, Missoula City Council Vice President Gwen Jones said she hopes Bryant “gets the resources and help that he needs” and that the council can “return to normal city government dynamic.”

“It would be irresponsible to not take something like this seriously,” Jones said.

In a new post from Outer Limits, titled Brandon Bryant Is A Political Prisoner, more context is provided about what’s been happening since felony charges were filed against Bryant. I strongly encourage readers to read the whole post.

Here’s an excerpt about what the mysterious dossier could mean if the documents prove to be real:

The documents in question, if their providence was genuine, could imperil the careers and future of not just the Mayor and his colleagues, but also the developers and businesses he allegedly received kickbacks from. In short, the stakes were raised and local elites were not comfortable. So it seems they capitalized on the only alternative in their grasp: striking back at the individuals that seem to pose the most direct threat to Missoula’s power monopoly.

Despite public statements by the Council that “efforts are being made” to connect Bryant with services, no member of the Council ever appealed to any veteran’s organization to directly seek those services.

In fact, when contacted directly the day after her public statement that efforts were being made, Council Vice President Gwen Jones disavowed her involvement or responsibility with facilitating that connection. She said it wasn’t her responsibility and she was not involved, instructing interested parties to speak to MPD officer Ethan Smith who was in charge of Bryant’s case.

But it was officer Smith who called Bryant to tell him a warrant had been issued for his arrest on the morning of 11 February 2020, instructing him to turn himself in by 2:00 PM, and warning him that if he didn’t surrender himself to the police that he would be tracked down and captured.

Far from the promised connection with services, Bryant’s incarceration actually isolates him from the necessary resources he enjoyed access to while free in his community. As a disabled veteran, Bryant’s service dog constitutes an essential part of his treatment for PTSD.

Locked in Missoula County Detention Facility, Bryant’s health and well-being are heavily compromised. The decision to jail him was made despite his cooperation with all Police orders. His incarceration also comes despite Bryant’s public apology for his previous remarks, re-avowing that he never possessed ANY intention of committing ANY act of violence against ANY City Council member, or ANY human being AT ALL.

Read both posts at The Outer Limits blog here

After pondering this dire situation over the weekend I’m left wondering how far the TIF addicts will go to protect their supply of public money. Will they destroy Brandon Bryant’s life to keep the gravy train chugging along? Will they ignore potential evidence of unethical real estate deals benefiting Mayor Engen? What will they do to protect their status quo and shut up the pesky public from asking questions about what’s being done with their money?