Month: December 2020

by William Skink

When members of our enlightened braintrust claim a lack of tools to deal with the housing crisis, like City Council person Gwen Jones recently did, it’s important to understand she is either ignorant or lying.

Even worse than the ignorance/deception of purposely ignoring mechanisms like inclusionary zoning, which I have written about here and here, is the fact that the Mullan area master plan will ensure LUXURY homes will be the types of homes predominantly built on the precious, diminishing land available for development west of town.

But don’t take my word for it, here’s David Gray, an architect, raising the alarm in a recent report from NBC Montana:

Gray said he thinks the proposal lays out a nice community, but character and design are where he has concerns.

“What they’ve added into the zoning requirements is going to add a considerable amount of cost to the people who are trying to build out there,” said Gray.

Isn’t using zoning to ADD COST the OPPOSITE of what our illuminated brian trust claims to be doing with their INTENTIONAL policies? Here’s more:

Gray said when he looked over the plan, he noticed a minimum height requirement for some units to be 14 feet. He also noticed some requirements for windows.

The plan boasts over 6,000 housing units across seven neighborhoods. It says they’re designing buildings that can adapt to future needs. An example in the plan is a rowhouse with 14-foot ceilings that could serve as housing now but become a small business later.

Gray said requiring minimum ceiling heights and windows for design purposes strips away the affordability for residential and commercial spaces.

Developers say they’re offering affordability by design and that more units means the affordable housing problem will be fixed, but Gray isn’t too sure.

“It’s OK if someone wants to put that in because they’re taking the risk, but now you’re saying everyone has to do basically high-end luxury as the bare bones minimum and, in my opinion, that’s not the place of zoning,” said Gray.

If you’re confused about why a community that pays tremendous LIP SERVICE to addressing the affordable housing crisis is allowing policy to be enacted that will produce the OPPOSITE effect, that’s probably because you missed Bob Oaks op-ed all the way back in October, like I did.

To bolster my claim that members of our braintrust, like Gwen Jones and Eran Pehan, are either duplicitous deceivers or ignorant pawns when it comes to the shoulder-shrugging complaint that the meanie state of Montana is tying their hands, here is an excerpt from the op-ed (emphasis is mine):

In January of 2018, “Making Missoula Home: A Path to Attainable Housing,” was presented by the Santé Fe Consultant, Werwath and Associates to the Missoula Community. Largely funded by the Real Estate and Development industries, and colloquially referenced “The Realtors’ Report,” that study informed the base of Missoula’s new housing policy, “A Place to Call Home.” In keeping with The Realtors’ Study, much attention is given to exploring strategies that might increase housing supply, but much less attention is given to potentially powerful regulatory tools.

There were a few voices (like mine) claiming, at the time, that Missoula was stubbornly refusing to learn the lessons Bozeman had already learned by not using inclusionary zoning as one of the tools to tackle this affordability crisis.

Well, it’s 2020, and we’re still having the same damn conversation because our illuminated braintrust are adamant that they know better than the pesky public does, so instead of doing what needs to be done, we get shit like Missoula County HIRING ANOTHER FUCKING HOUSING SPECIALIST:

For the first time ever, Missoula County intends to hire a full-time housing specialist to focus on affordable housing amid a worsening affordable housing crisis.

Meanwhile, the county is also putting out a Request for Proposals for the development of a county-wide affordable housing strategy.

At this point anything these intentional policy makers do is just going to make housing MORE EXPENSIVE. Hiring people grows government and GUESS WHO PAYS? Just like passing bonds for butterfly housing grows debts and GUESS WHO PAYS?

If you’re tired of paying people to deceive you and condescend to you about their brilliant and intentional plans for our little college town, then how about taking some responsibility, Missoula, because YOU ELECTED these people, and until you wake up and remove them from office via the ballot box, don’t expect them to do anything different than what they’ve been doing, year after year.

by William Skink

Yesterday I started publishing my occult conspiracy narrative, ZULA, at Substack.

While the first few pages are public, meaning anyone can see it, the idea is to get people to pay a modest, monthly subscription fee for subsequent content. I set the fee for ZULA at $5 bucks, or $50 dollars for a full year.

If you’re interested in reading an occult conspiracy work-in-progress, follow the prompt below:

I started writing ZULA over four years ago as a work of thinly veiled fiction, and around March of this year, it morphed into my pandemic diary.

ZULA is of course short for Missoula, and the story incorporates my past Missoula, a future Missoula, and my present (the diary).

Subscribing to ZULA is one way you can support the work I am doing here. Another way is by going to my about page and making a one time or reoccurring donation.

Why donate, you might be asking yourself, when I’m already getting these great blog posts for free?

Making a holiday donation not only supports the free content you can still expect at least five days a week, it will also support the podcast I am currently working on.

I am recording interviews RIGHT NOW and, at this early stage, I’m willing to talk to just about anyone. If you’re interested, I would LOVE to talk to you, so drop me a line at willskink at yahoo dot com, or contact me via Skype:

https://join.skype.com/invite/w4omvaPt5nKk

I am going to hold “open hours” on Wednesdays from 10am-12pm, so if you want to give me a call, that would be the time to do it.

Thank you for supporting what I am doing here in whatever way you can. It is greatly appreciated.

by William Skink

Homelessness is going down in Missoula. For years that is what we were being told. Even as recently as May of 2020, the numbers from the annual point in time survey continued to show a decline in the number of people experiencing homelessness:

Preliminary numbers from the annual Point-in-Time study show Missoula’s homeless numbers went down this year. Now, experts wonder what the pandemic means for next year.

In Missoula’s district, which includes Missoula, Mineral and Ravalli counties, 354 people were marked as homeless. That’s down from the peak in 2015 at 538 but up from our low point in 2005 at 245.

This annual counting of homeless people every January is a HUD requirement. Also, it’s a fucking joke, as I’ve written about previously.

Now that the pandemic has popped off the PR lid from reality, things that we were being told were getting better–like homelessness and violent crime–can now receive new rounds of hand-wringing from our enlightened braintrust, like the Department of Everything director Eran Pehan, who claims we are more prepared than ever to help the homeless.

Pehan is correct, Missoula is MORE PREPARED than ever, thanks in large part to Covid money. Now we have the main emergency shelter on Broadway, and a new overflow shelter in a warehouse, and an outdoor encampment, and a “congregate” motel, and, finally, a family shelter finishing up its build.

That’s a lot of infrastructure for a problem that was supposedly improving year after year.

The latest locale for triaging homelessness will be getting some public comment via Zoom this Wednesday. I’ll be tuning to hear what frustrated members of the community will be asking, after public input was put on the back-burner by our illuminated braintrust because COVID EMERGENCY!

One of the pieces of information I will be listening for is the connection this outdoor encampment has with Blue Line Development. Here is a comment a buddy sent me from Facebook by a Casey Smith:

As a reminder, I wrote about a conflict of interest involving Blue Line Development and Ellen Buchanan, the director of the Missoula Redevelopment Agency, so I agree with Casey, more questions should be asked.

And if the media that won’t return my phone calls (but will happily use a picture of me to sell their corporate rag) won’t ask the questions that it’s their FUCKING JOB to ask, then I guess this reluctant citizen journalist will have to do their job for them.

Stay tuned…

by William Skink

I have in my hands a book that you now have access to, if you choose, but I’m not sure that you should. You aren’t ready for this book. And if you read a book like this before you’re ready, you’ll drop it before it even begins.

I got the book, along with around 200 other people, as a part of the author’s fundraising campaign, and through the author’s gracious openness, we became a part of the book. 

Not only did we read about our impact on the author (in footnotes and a special introduction just for us) we were actually a big part of the catalyst that saw the author engage in a last minute rearrangement of the chapters (the maps) before sending the manuscript to the printers

Maybe none of this interests you. Why should it? Why should some fanboy writing about his exclusive access to a book he hasn’t even shared the title of yet, by an author who similarly goes without name, be of any interest to you?

Well, let me ask you a question: have you ever seen a movie, read a book, or been impacted by a product of our popular culture that inspired you to want to, in some way, make something similar yourself? Something infused with the magic that touched you and, in some critical yet intangible way, helped form who you are?

This writer has, and so has the author of the book. 

The author of the book fortuitously failed at achieving his dreams of film success. Not only that, he did so while his brother succeeded miserably and destroyed himself.

The author ran away from the poisoned origin of his rearing (near the crown and the wolf and rise of Labor) and would have become just another piece of discarded debris left in monstrous piles by the soulless dream machine we call Hollywood if he hadn’t decided to return to his damaged body, throw away his blood coins, and take on the humble garments of thrift to understand just what the fuck was operating like a mind virus inside him that caused him to shoot his star out in self-destructive cycles of reenactment.

And he wrote a book about it, called 16 Maps of Hell. 

If you think you might be ready to explore the maps, it is now available to those outside the tribe the author is a member of; a tribe trying to heal itself from the forces that feed on our attention.

But you might not be ready, so let this be your warning: this book is not for everyone.

P.S. I will be writing more about 16 Maps in the weeks ahead.

by William Skink

I’ve gotten in the habit of taking walks around downtown Missoula and it’s a ghost town. That’s why last month saw the launch of a campaign to revive Missoula’s bars and restaurants.

In the reporting of that particular effort by local businesses to survive restrictions that don’t seem to be having the desired effect on the Covid plague, the owner of Clyde Coffee went on the record as being AGAINST the relaxing of restrictions.

More recently, Missoula’s Sultan of Sound, Nick Checota (a music promoter, venue owner and restauranteur) declared the total collapse of his business model and a hundred million dollar financial apocalypse as being imminent without immediate Congressional assistance. From the first link:

Undoubtedly you missed going to a concert, or two, with friends this year. But Missoula’s leading promoter worries without a financial lifeline, the country’s entire live music industry will crumble in a matter of weeks.

And Nick Checota said it’s more than just local promoters and venues that could vanish, but the entire supporting structure.

“The industry as a whole is in almost catastrophic state right now and without some support, coming within the next 6-to-8 weeks. You’re going to see venues collapse all over the United States,” said Checota

I’m not contesting the situation is a dire one for promoters like Nick Checota, but the pain is strategic, especially for an industry like live music.

The first clue about what’s in store for humans who want to do human things together, like enjoying a musical performance together, is what Ticketmaster announced last month it was preparing to rollout:

Monday’s news that pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s early results on a new COVID-19 vaccine showed a 90% efficacy rate on an initial clinical trial have given concert professionals hope that the business can start mounting a return in 2021. As part of that preparation, Ticketmaster has been working on a framework for post-pandemic fan safety that uses smart phones to verify fans’ vaccination status or whether they’ve tested negative for the coronavirus within a 24 to 72 hour window.

Many details of the plan, which is still in development phase, will rely on three separate components — the Ticketmaster digital ticket app, third party health information companies like CLEAR Health Pass or IBM’s Digital Health Pass and testing and vaccine distribution providers like Labcorp and the CVS Minute Clinic.

I have already accepted concerts as one of the many things I probably won’t be allowed to do without consenting to a Pfizer poke, and I’m certainly not inclined to dine in one of these contraptions:

Being able to go to concerts is really important to lots of people, and will be an effective way to coerce their consent to taking a vaccine and all the enhanced tracking and surveillance that comes with it, so GREAT idea GREAT resetters!

When I was buying a CD last week at Earcandy, the hope expressed by the store owner that the vaccine would get things back to normal was discouraging. But like so many, he’s just desperate to not be snuffed out in this grand experiment our betters have chosen for us.