Month: March 2024

by Travis Mateer

The idiots running our local government are going to have a BIG money problem soon. Why? Because, after 4 years of getting Federal ARPA handouts, the money is drying up. Here’s some more context from the Missoulian (emphasis mine):

Missoula’s local governments benefited from more than $37 million in direct federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, but its sundown this fall could cause budget declines at the city and county level. 

The city of Missoula could face its worst budget dropoff in several years after the council allocated all ARPA funding by its fiscal year 2024 budget, including almost $1.7 million to offset its general fund last year. In total, the city received $14 million.

While homelessness has worsened over the last 4 years, the money from our Federal government was never intended to be permanent funding for this kind of need, so the decision by our local fiscal-fuckwits to fund first responder programs and homeless services has set up our city for MAJOR money problems. Here’s more from the article:

The city of Missoula spent at least $3.6 million of its remaining ARPA funds last year, funding six budget items that will need to find a new source of revenue starting this summer. 

Those items include the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) program, the Johnson Street warming shelter, a victim witness coordinator position at its attorney’s office, the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) and the Mobile Support Team (MST).

With such dire financial problems on the horizon, how is the Missoula Redevelopment Agency reacting? Are they acknowledging this reality by slowing down their funding of development? HA! Of course not! As our fire department turns to panhandling voters for 7 million dollars, MRA is funding studies and positioning itself to buy 10 acres so some developer can build something that might look like this:

From the link (emphasis mine):

MRA will consider spending $75,000 to complete due diligence on the property before a purchase decision is made. If so, it would represent the latest step in the city’s land-banking strategy to facilitate a range of housing types, prices and other neighborhood amenities.

This is the same part of town where MRA shoveled over $700,000 in 2023 to a fucking bank for their redevelopment plans (emphasis mine):

$23.5 million new bank and mini-plaza is coming to the Midtown area of Missoula using an innovative form of construction, and the project will get a boost from public funding.

On Wednesday the Missoula Redevelopment Agency approved spending $711,083 in Tax Increment Financing to pay for deconstruction of two existing older buildings and improvements to public streets and sidewalks around the new building. The money will also pay for adding street trees and burying an overhead utility line.

When you do the same thing over and over again, but you expect different results, that’s known as INSANITY, and this town is run by fucking crazy people who think they are the sanest, smartest people in the room. Well, I think the evidence shows THEY ARE NOT.

Everything I’ve been warning about for years is now coming true, despite my valiant efforts at raising the alarm, like putting together a 3 hour documentary on the local uprising against Tax Increment Financing that occurred at the end of 2019.

We just need to give our leaders TIME, they’ll say, for their new strategies to come to fruition, like “land banking” and subsidizing the creation of “workforce housing”. Bullshit. Do homeowners get extra time to come up with money to pay their stratospheric property taxes? Will I get extra time if I can’t afford rent next month? No, us lowly citizens don’t get extra time to solve the financial squeeze we are all experiencing, so it’s more than a little galling to be told by our leaders that their great ideas might work SOMEDAY–but, in the the meantime, we need to give them MORE MONEY. How about NO!

Instead of moving toward SANITY, our local government thinks we need to move toward building stupid shit, like a sculpture park. Why? Do “urban campers” need more surface areas to tag their fucking graffiti on?

Don’t worry, idiots like Dave Selvage will say, this sculpture park with be PRIVATELY funded. Oh yeah, Dave? Will it also be privately MAINTAINED?

The city’s Parks and Recreation Department is seeking community input on a proposal to install a privately funded sculpture walk in Silver Park.

“We believe this is a fantastic opportunity to provide accessible art for our community in a fiscally responsible way,” said the department’s systems and services manager David Selvage. “We’re eager to hear residents’ thoughts on enriching Silver Park through sculpture. Community feedback is crucial in determining if there is enough support to advance the proposal for further public discussion and city council consideration.”

I mentioned this stupid fucking project earlier this month when I explored developer entitlement in Missoula, and I made the point that once something is BUILT it must be MAINTAINED. Do our elected leaders lack the cognitive abilities to wrap their feeble minds around this concept?

A great example of building something and NOT planning for its maintenance is the library, which cost Missoula taxpayers a shit-ton of money, money we voted to spend via a 30 million dollar bond, with a cool half million thrown in when the project went over budget.

Well, I attended a library board meeting recently, hoping to pitch my dreams of creating a Lego installation, but instead I walked into what I’m calling the GREAT WATER-COLOR CLASS UPRISING of 2024.

The story of the water-color class is too long for this post, but what I learned while listening to their concerns is that a man responsible for MAINTAINING the building is being asked to focus on his job instead of moonlighting with the water-color ladies because the library is struggling mightily to maintain their $30 million dollar facility, like having to pay a private cleaning company $80,000 dollars to do cleaning in addition to the two janitors the maintenance guy oversees.

To alleviate my own frustrations over this insanity, I write poems, and I have some hilarious ones ready to go, like the poem I wrote for the Chaplain of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, Lowell Hochhalter, which I read yesterday at Imagination Brewery. If you want to see me read hilarious poems, I’m planning a fundraising event for Monday, April 8th, near my former employer, so stay tuned for more details.

And, as always, thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

On Saturday I watched a half-dozen fights inside the Adam’s Center after a buddy roped me in to attending with him. The violent spectacle reminded me of the nickname our police department had for the Authorized Camping Site before it closed: THUNDERDOME! Isn’t that funny?

After filing yesterday’s butthurt report on myself, I put on my best dystopian outfit, dusted off my rollerblades, and proceeded to roll around downtown with my new method of fundraising.

What you are looking at is an old plastic Missoulian mailbox screwed to an antique rifle. How am I using this contraption? It’s simple, I just roll around town, striking up conversations about local media, then I panhandle my marks for money. I’m happy to report I made ONE WHOLE DOLLAR yesterday, which is almost like a full gallon of gas, or half a cup of coffee. Who needs an online gofundme account when THIS method is proving to be so lucrative?

My THUNDERDOME moment came when I crossed paths with a homeless busker with a guitar. He looked me up and down, then jokingly asked if we needed to battle. Could there be an opportunity here? Like Bumfights? I mean, it didn’t seem to work out too terribly bad for Rufus.

From the link:

Former “Bumfights” star, Rufus Hannah, has since retired from a life of homelessness and alcoholism to become a property manager, activist, and author.

“Bumfights” first aired on the Internet in 2002, a product of Indecline Films—a less than reputable indie filmmaking company that became notorious for exploiting homeless subjects to yield their views. In exchange for their antics, the makers of Bumfights would provide Hannah and the other stars with booze, smokes and change. It wasn’t long before other filmmakers all over the world were attempting to replicate the formula, resulting in multiple civil lawsuits. Despite the emergence of a bum-fight video trend, Hannah remained the king.

The trigger for filing a butthurt report on myself over the weekend is the emerging homeless trash removal movement some locals think Ryan Tollefson has started by stirring shit up along West Broadway. Being an expert in the art of pissing people off myself, I’m impressed with how Ryan has managed to upset both law enforcement AND those living marginally in this area of Missoula, as evidenced by Ryan’s claim that some homeless person assaulted him with a lock and chain. How THUNDERDOME is that?

An anonymous comment provides some more context on Ryan’s mission to stir shit up, including a “FI” designation that I find fascinating. Here’s the comment:

While Ryan Tollefson calls 911 to escalate the trash scandal he’s stoked, I’m putting my transit truck on the Craigslist radar for local assistance, which is the first step in a more formal plan I’m cooking up to address the trashy consequences of “urban camping”. Will local media shift away from mis-reporting on my actions when they’re not studiously ignoring me? After the performance I’m planning for April 8th, I think it will be increasingly difficult to ignore what I’m up to, so stay tuned.

If you want to be a part of the REAL solution to what’s happening in our public spaces, it’s as easy as clicking this link and providing me with some monetary resources to do my shit. I guarantee you’ll get maximum BANG for your buck when you support MY trash removal efforts.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Ok, class, by a show of hands: how many of you can say you’ve spent a DECADE working on the niche issue of homeless encampments in Missoula, Montana? Anyone? No?

Since I don’t see any hands, let me take y’all on a quick trip down memory lane: it was a strange and distant time known as 2014; a time when I smiled like I meant it, and the town smiled back. Sure, there was that murder at Reserve Street I assisted the Sheriff’s Office with, but for the most part I was feeling pretty optimistic about the working relationships I had established with the Health Department, the Clark Fork Coalition, and other groups motivated to see change occur in THAT part of Missoula (Reserve Street area).

Here is an excerpt from the 2014 Missoulian article written by the “reporter” who spiked a story at his rag last spring about my meth shack clean-up, then pulled this shit on me. There are no boxes to check on the BUTTHURT REPORT for this kind of absurdity.

Yep, that’s me, doing my thing. And in different capacities I have KEPT ON doing my thing, even though it seems to bother more and more people.

Well, I’m human to, and it’s just a little bothersome–though, frankly, also kind of fascinating at this point–to listen to the Reserve Street Facebook Group suddenly champion Ryan Tollefson after he shared his harrowing story of moving trash from the river, up an embankment, and to the sidewalk for city staff to deal with.

Butthurt? After a year of begging for $5,000 and getting less than half that? Uh, yeah, and it’s ESPECIAL LY galling when I consider that national media might be coming to interview Ryan Tollefson.

Here’s a sneak preview of the kind of coverage someone who DOES NOT LIVE HERE might be extracting from Missoula:

What kind of caring do I have about this attention coming to Missoula? It’s conditional, and based on my declining bank account and steadily increasing levels of butthurtedness. Also, if Ginny Burton speaks to ANYONE in law enforcement, I’ll be watching closely to see if and how Ginny gets Connie Walker’d.

If Ryan Tollefson has, as one Facebook Zoom viewer put it, STARTED A MOVEMENT, my question, as a cynical journalist with more than a little experience, is this: are we talking about a BOWEL movement? Because, seriously, if THIS is what it takes to set people off, after everything I’ve been doing for YEARS to raise the alarm, well, I’m not sure why to say.

Maybe this?

Ok, is this tiring “report” done yet? Almost. Before I wrap up, I should say something a little more substantive about Tollefson’s interview on Friday, because what Ryan is stirring up is objectively fascinating. The detail I’ll be asking Ryan about, if I get the chance, will be whether or not the guy who hit him on the head with a chain/lock looks like this:

Ryan also gave more details about how unhelpful his conversations with city “compliance” officers have been, while describing his escalating interactions with law enforcement–or, I should say, SOME members of law enforcement. The description Ryan gave of the police officer threatening to take him to jail before ticketing him included the OTHER officer telling his colleague not to do it. Isn’t that interesting?

Have I finally gotten this out of my system? I think so, which is good, because it’s 7am and I haven’t gone to sleep yet. I had a late night hand-writing the plan to start fixing all this, so stay tuned, because in my own mind I’m kind of a big deal around here.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

If you need help moving within the Missoula area, I just posted a Craigslist ad offering assistance (compensation is negotiable).

Until I find the expertise and monetary resources to transform my truck into a mobile library, the vehicle pictured above is ready to transport YOUR belongings to whatever $5,000 a month closet you’ve found to rent in Missoula.

Now, here are some important DISCLOSURES before you consider contacting me for moving assistance.

DISCLOSURE 1: I have pooped in a bucket inside this truck on several occasions as I traveled around America, so if the idea of having your sofa in the same space where I have number 2’d disturbs you, then my services are probably not for you.

DISCLSOURE 2: my mouth has absolutely NO filter, so be prepared for a full range of conversational possibilities as I carefully remove, load, and unload the items requiring assistance.

DISCLSOURE 3: I’m a single man with a lonely heart and impressive poetry skills, so it doesn’t take much attention to get that stupid chest-muscle all a-flutter. Luckily, a recent brush with beauty led me to give my heart a stern lecture, which I turned into this little ditty:

https://vimeo.com/924126779?share=copy

With those disclosures out of the way, how about benefits? Are there any unique benefits to getting assistance from me with your local moving needs? I’d say yes, there ARE some benefits, and here are a few:

BENEFIT 1: I have lived in Missoula for 23 years, so I know a thing or two about this town, which could be beneficial for newcomers unaware of certain dynamics.

BENEFIT 2: I have assisted in complicated hoarding situations during my time working at our local homeless shelter, so I guarantee that no matter how messy your situation is, I HAVE SEEN WORSE.

BENEFIT 3: I am a physically fit male with 44 months free of alcohol and 5 weeks free of obvious sugar products, not to mention I’ve been told I look like Nick Kroll.

The final benefit is the fact that by allowing me to help YOU (for a price) you are helping ME fund the most interesting local journalism you will find ANYWHERE in America, and I’m not just making that bold claim without anything to back it up. I’ve got a manuscript, growing interest in the work I’m doing, and a storm of synchronicities that point to this all going back to a collection of tales humanity can’t get away from, and that’s the strategic selection of narratives found in the Bible.

So, if you want to get moving with me, that’s the pitch. Or, if you just want to give me some money for all the free content I provide on a nearly daily basis, here’s the link to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF).

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Is the fun I’m having criminal? Since I’m not engaging in dangerous behavior, like obstructing sidewalks with trash, I don’t think the simple act of going around town armed with my FOUR DOLLAR hard copy of the Missoulian could be construed as criminal, unless the cop who asked me why I was speaking so loudly is somehow triggered by decibel levels.

Was I amplified with my megaphone? No, I had just come from chatting with the guys fixing the retaining wall, explaining to them the missing component of lawcucks when it comes to allowing those without conventional homes to destroy infrastructure, and I wanted to let the CITY police know that GAY BIKER has some LifeGuard Group explaining to do. I don’t think they were very amused.

After telling the cops to let Detective Baker know that the emergence of the truth can’t be stopped, I continued my tour with some anti-abortion ladies protesting outside the Blue Mountain Clinic. Were they receptive? Yes, they were, and I was VERY specific about some local churches propping up Lowell Hochhalter and providing target-rich environments for predators.

Next I went to Youth Homes and showed them the Missoulian article. I also described my involvement (and disappointment) regarding how the Joey Thompson case was handled. Almost no one I spoke with had seen the Missoulian article because, I’m gathering, not that many people read our local newspaper anymore. Good thing I invested my limited funds in hard copies!

The business where a former Mayoral candidate works was my next step, and by then I was FULLY caffeinated and on a roll. Since this business is next to the homeless shelter where I used to work, I decided to take a quick stroll by the facility and THIS graffiti got my attention:

Who might have the expertise to decode this? No, that’s not the right question. Expertise doesn’t mean a thing if there’s no corresponding inclination to ACT on one’s knowledge. Right, Detective Baker?

Until this post I didn’t know Baker was a past president of the Montana Violent Crime Investigators Association. Hmmm, I wonder, could I join the cool kids club if I have one of their special challenge coins?

Maybe if I was in the club I would better understand the role of Todd Keith Spence, the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office favorite non-compliant sex offender. I was asking around about Todd yesterday, which was one reason I was speaking SO DAMN LOUDLY to law enforcement–I wanted the people watching our interaction, standing on bum island, to HEAR what I was saying, because I told law enforcement that I was hoping to chat with good ‘ol Todd.

I’m a little worried Todd is going to get murdered before I can talk to him, since my most recent information on Todd is that he spent over 3 weeks in the hospital after getting a “hot-shot”, which is street slang for a lethal dose of injectable drugs.

This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve interacted with someone who ended up dead. Thanks to the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, the man who allegedly put Sean Stevenson into a coma was taken out in the woods before I could get anymore insight from him about what REALLY happened on January 3rd, 2020, inside the Poverello Center.

Here’s the man who put together the plan that resulted in Perry’s death. Is he describing how big his fear was before Johnny was shot in the back?

And here’s the man who did the shooting. I’ll note that I’m using the word “man” here loosely.

The Coroner’s Inquest that cleared Justin White, Sean Evans, and the rest of our BRAVE Missoula County Sheriff badges happened on April 28th, 2022. Before going back into the courtroom that day to see for myself how Johnny was taken out, I was getting a woke burrito when I saw Bryan Von Rocket Scientist, a former City Council person, who I spoke with in a rather abrupt manner, including dropping two hard-“R” N-bombs on him, an act I’ve been told would be inadvisable to turn into a stand-up comedy routine.

Although I haven’t achieved a level of funniness that would allow me to do my comedy bit without risking lethal consequences, I am continuing to use the rhyming skills I acquired at the University of Montana to do some truly astounding and disturbing things with language, like writing not ONE but THREE poems about pooping across America, in a bucket.

Would you like to hear my astounding and disturbing poetry? I’m working on securing a venue for the day of the eclipse, which is April 8th, so stay tuned because this would also be a FUNdraiser for my journalism AND the possible side-gig of PAID trash removal. More on that later.

I don’t have a stand up routine using the word a white man like myself should never consider using, but I do have a poem, and it’s going to be kept TIGHTLY under wraps until the time is right to read it.

If you appreciate the fruits of my MUTHA FUKIN methodology, then please consider supporting Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). I guarantee you that without my Gonzo approach to journalism, this Missoulian article about the LifeGuard Group would never have been written.

Thanks for reading, and have a GREAT weekend!