Month: November 2024

by Travis Mateer

I am a butthurt, angry, bitter person right now hate-reading local headlines and trying NOT to do what I’m doing right now, which is writing a post for a community I am done making sacrifices for.

It started with this article about some local business dudes who said fuck zoning and are now crying about zoning fucking them. But that’s not the disgusting part. No, the disgusting part is how the Indy replacement calling itself The Pulp is apparently platforming these idiots because, I imagine, they think saunas should be a part of American culture.

Here’s the part, way down in the article, where the “reporter” acknowledges these dudes knew about the zoning restrictions and opened up their business anyway (emphasis mine):

Built in 1930, the building Johnson and Raddue hope will house Montana Sauna Co. was originally a grocery store called the Toole Avenue Food Center, but for years the property, not even two blocks away from neighborhood anchor Draught Works Brewery, has been conspicuously underused. Its mixed-use designation would welcome, say, a daycare or plant nursery, but not any business that offers “personal improvement.” They knew this, they admit, but, determined to open in the fall and short on cash (the rezone application fee typically costs around $5,000 and the process lasts several months), they opted to forge ahead anyway.

Before this part of the story, The Pulp showed its hand by trying to get its readers excited about sauna culture before admitting these guys were too entitled to follow the rules (emphasis mine):

They say Montana Sauna Co. is about bringing “bathing culture,” with its social and health benefits, to Missoula. 

“The U.S. doesn’t have that culture,” Johnson says. “I mean, do you want liquor stores and casinos and pot shops, or do you want a vital community center?”

Actually, Johnson, I want the rules that everyone is supposed to follow to be followed by everyone, otherwise counterproductive things start happening in Double-Standard Town.

The other article I hate-read was like watching an act of fellatio. Was it good for you, Aaron Wilson? Because reading fawning prose of this figurative act of bureaucratic dick-sucking was NOT good for me.

From the link:

This morning, Wilson is sporting fluorescent gloves with matching neon sunglasses. Rolling up his jeans to keep them out of puddles, he shows off socks that feature bright yellow stars.

Wilson, 42, looks like he should be riding to a hip coffee shop, not his office at City Hall.

Wilson is a transportation planning manager with Missoula’s Public Works and Mobility department, the team that dreams up how to make it safer for people to get around the city.

To get to Wilson’s office you first have to pass by the suits and briefcases of accounting and law before heading into the basement, but once you’re there, the entire vibe changes.

Framed art hangs next to cat memes. Coworkers are overheard having a heated discussion about the best practices for keeping a bike clean through winter. Wilson takes off his bike helmet and sits at his computer, surrounded by 14 potted plants.

If James Dobson wants to write smut fantasy pieces about fucking Aaron Wilson, then write smut. If James Dobson wants to write about transportation infrastructure, then write about the infrastructure, not fucking cat memes.

Moving on, Missoula’s leadership is so fucking stupid that they’re going to potentially repeat the authorized camping site dumpster fire they royally fucked up just a few years ago.

Jill Bonny, director of the Poverello Center, told city council on Wednesday that most of the city’s service providers have been collaborating on a “pro forma” document that will estimate the resources and cost for a service provider-run camp.  

“It could be that it’s not possible, it could be that it’s possible in certain ways, we are just continuing to have that conversation,” Bonny said. 

Ward 6 Councilor Kristen Jordan pushed for the city to support an authorized campsite. She has previously called for a campsite to alleviate the impact of camping in parks and other city-owned lands. 

There are not enough shelter beds to accommodate Missoula’s homeless population, Jordan said, adding the city can’t afford to build another shelter. 

“An authorized campsite really is a good solution,” Jordan said. “I am disappointed that it is not a part of the conversation.”

If you want to read actual reporting, this article of mine is worth checking out because I know A LOT about the last authorized camping site, just like I know A LOT about many other homeless issues, like how Jill Bonny should be reflecting on the woman who was picked up outside the Poverello, then beaten to death with a hammer recently.

Homeless people die all the time, like Sean Stevenson, who was beaten INSIDE my former employer’s facility then euthanized by the Sheriff’s Office. If you want a post that features OVER FORTY article on that case, click this link.

It’s good the murderer of the homeless woman confessed immediately because that’s the only kind of murder case our local law enforcement is capable of handling. Murder an 88 year old woman with an antler? Yeah, not so much.

With local media being such consistent shit, Reddit often has perspectives you won’t read anywhere else. Here are some curated comments about dead homeless people, and just in time for the holidays!

Giving someone a lethal dose of drugs is a great way to kill someone and get away with it in Missoula. I’ve been hearing about “hot shots” for years, so I think this has been an effective way for organized criminal networks to keep a firm grip on the homeless drug addict market. Another good way to kill someone and get away with it in Montana is to put their body in the river. Just ask the mother of Rebekah Barsotti about her daughter’s case, which has been a great catalyst for the demise of my former life.

For those new to the state of Montana, we’ve got the additional distinction of being the state where Taylor Sheridan got America all excited over YELLOWSTONE. The Missoulian tries to cover this story, like with Seaborn’s recent piece, but NO ONE has the goods on this Hollywood production like I do, as you can clearly see in this post which, again, has LOTS of links to explore.

While Seaborn gives a beneficial platform to a shit legislator like Danny Tenenbaum, I expose how this legislative asshole snuck into a church a few years ago to secretly film the Christians inside and their dastardly scheming.

Funny how Danny never got in trouble for that incident, despite my filing a police report. If he had, he might not be around to champion his work on Gianforte’s housing task-force, where he served with the legislator currently displaying my mugshot at the Senior Center.

Here’s Danny’s quote form the Yellowstone article:

Danny Tenenbaum, a former state lawmaker and a current member of the taskforce, said he believes the suite of broad recommendations that emerged from the group will help incentivize the construction of more housing in every community in Montana that needs more homes.

Exactly how much housing will be needed statewide, however, is difficult to pinpoint in the Aterio data.

I’ll probably kick out a few more posts before the end of the year, but my writing priority now is focused on legal briefs and parenting plans, because instead of being an unpaid citizen journalist, I’m shifting to being an unpaid, pro se lawyer for myself, since the legal community in Montana are a bunch of fucking pussies.

If you’d like to help me out, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is the way to do it. And if you want to help the homeless, just give them whatever they want. I heard from a downtown business owner that he called 911 for an old lady who was being yelled at for not giving a homeless man money for pizza. The man then spit in the face of the business owner, and 40 minutes later, the cops finally arrived and did nothing.

That’s because Montana is a failed state.

Thanks for reading.

by Travis Mateer

Before I had an ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend, I had a comfortable, conventional life.

One day in that conventional life, my wife and I hosted a potluck. The most dangerous woman in Montana was there, and so was a friend of a friend, someone I felt a shared mission with to expose local corruption.

That dangerous woman, Jane Rectenwald, is dead now, and so is my former life. The house where my kids still live is now contested terrain because I’ve learned some women are so terrified of accountability, they will do anything to avoid it, even if it means violating legally binding terms of a parenting plan.

When people know your core traumas, they have a key to destroying you from the inside out, so be VERY careful who you share your inner hurts with.

When I took my family’s payoff under extreme emotional duress, I tried finding a lawyer to defend me from the civil yoke placed upon me by a substitute judge who, despite knowing my petitioner, denied my objection of bias and gave her a legal flame-thrower to use against me, which she immediately used, innocent bystanders be damned.

I don’t have the resources for a private sector lawyer anymore, and the small degree of comfort I do have, in the form of a place to sleep that’s not a box-truck, is a gesture meant to look like a kindness, but really is just another form of control by people who really don’t want me to continue looking into our collective Missoula backyard, even IF there are bodies concealed where oblivious bystanders stroll.

The political set-up a week before Thanksgiving is becoming clear to me, but that’s because I never invested my cognitive abilities to either political cult, like so many did.

We have a poopy-pants president signing-off on missile strikes from Ukraine INTO Russia, and we have sheep-dipped media plants, like Tucker, messaging World War III, pretending to be opposition media. The goddamn thing is a sham. What’s being set-up is hot-war cover for the economic reset everyone in the know knows is coming. This means goodbye Bretton-Woods and hello digital currency paving the way to our technocratic prison.

Can this little blog continue without help? I don’t know, I’m looking at new legal threats from the punk who fucked around and found out, a business plan renewal I can’t afford, and the expiration of an adjacent website that hosted my documentary. I’m doing what I can, but the kick from the people closest to me is just too much, and something has to give. If that means this whole fucking blog has to go, then so be it. I’ve come to terms with the fact that LOTS of toxic baggage in my life has to go.

Thanks for the support over the years, I’ve appreciated it. There’s still $1,400 to go on my meager little fundraiser, which hasn’t seen a donation in 2 months, so if you’d like to help me out, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) has been a good option since I started it last spring, doing an impressive amount of “urban camping” cleaning.

To conclude this post, which might be my last (at least, for awhile), I’d like to use my poetic skills, honed at the University of Montana, to introduce you to a very skilled bird. What is the Killdeer skilled at? Injury feigning, a technique of pretending to have an injured wing in order to protect precious eggs. Here’s the poem:

I knew I was amazing 
I knew I was THE MAN 
when she communicated how 
she was my biggest fan 

writers need an audience for 
attention whores are we—
see the twinkling lights 
of the sirens just for me? 

she cared and she cared deeply 
she hung on every word 
nesting her exquisite pain 
like a weird little Killdeer bird 

but I don’t care about the eggs 
she’s afraid I’ll find 
I don’t climb cobweb stairs 
dragging wings behind 

I heard demand was growing 
I had important dates, for 
judges and attorneys did
nibble up her bait 

I cannot wait for Thursday 
my friends will be impressed 
she got the whole damn system 
to follow me with ZEST!

writer whores and settled scores 
are funny things, for court 
she knew it in her bones—
her killing time was short!

but shorter is my patience 
though legal hells are long 
now dash along the rocks, strange bird 
so I can sing my song!

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

While posting will continue to range from light to non-existent here at Zoom Chron, I wanted to check in for a quick update about being entangled in defending my rights on so many fronts, it’s a challenge just making it through each day.

I had to remind someone close to me recently that it’s not PLAYING the victim card when you are, in fact, the victim of something. 

Let’s say you’re absorbing a now multi-year lawfare assault from a person who must rely on perjury, defamation, and other possibly illegal tactics to stop the range of local coverage you’ve been providing, at great financial and personal costs, to your local community. A community you served in the non-profit sector for a solid decade, it should be noted. 

Is that enough to warrant ACTUAL victim status?

Nothing is more important to me than my kids, which makes no longer living under the same roof with them more painful to me than words can describe. While MY words may no longer carry the same weight with the person I shared 25 years with, the words agreed to in a divorce settlement DO have the weight of a binding legal agreement. Since I do understand what TAKING CARE means, I will just say my rights as a father WILL BE fought for, and vigorously. 

The people who pull the levers of this world DO NOT care and, I would argue, actually hate the majority of humans who walk upon the earth they brazenly influence. Some of them even go out into the woods to have a little ritual called the CREMATION of care. Look it up if you give a shit.

Rebekah Barsotti’s body was cremated without care for the potential evidence it contained, or the wishes of her mother, Angela. Does anyone care about that? If the media isn’t directing them to care about it then no, most won’t waste the energy to give a shit about the corpses who used to be people, corpses with names like Rebekah and Joey and Johnny and Sean.

I care about seeing my kids and doing what I can to make the local landscape they are increasingly becoming autonomous participants in as safe as possible. My own safety was impacted long ago because I demonstrated a certain carelessness at protecting the influencers in this town from the things I knew were done with the trust and money of a well-intentioned community behind them. Unfortunately that old adage of good intentions actually PAVING the road to hell seems all too accurate.

There are court documents that now exist where I articulate my concern, before a judge, that the director of the United Way is directly involved in the criminal charges I am facing. I also continue to wonder why a State Senator by the name Ellie has my mugshot posted on the wall at the Senior Center, especially as attention gets temporarily paid to the use of mugshots, and the sudden decision by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office to STOP publishing them–a move that has NOTHING to do with anyone in a position of authority making money from the Missoula Mugs Facebook page, right, Jeanette?

I’m sure Jeannette is right and this screenshots sent to me by a concerned Zoom Chron reader aren’t significant:

If I had the time, energy, or monetary resources, I would look closer at this, but I don’t, and will continue focusing on what’s important me right now.

If you would like to help me with the monetary thing, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is the way to do it, or you can reach out to me about a potential gathering I’d like to host later this month.

Thank you for reading, and for understanding why the material to read will be light for awhile longer.

by Travis Mateer

I think you can learn a lot about this Missoula community by examining the response to Eva Prather, who is officially dead. Particularly interesting is the rampant speculation that Eva’s husband, David, was somehow nefariously involved in her death.

Ammi, a good friend of Eva’s, wrote an article for The Pulp, titled The slow unraveling of Eva Masin’s mind. As you can tell from the title, Ammi doesn’t think David killed his wife, she thinks Eva slowly got more unstable until the night she walked out on her family.

Thanks to the quality of investigators in Montana, here’s what I think is going to happen: BOTH scenarios will be true to the people who think they know what goes on this world, and without any conclusive information coming from the “investigators”, that will be it. Life goes on.

This week is fun for me. I’m wrapping up the book I’ve been writing since July, which touches on some of the hell I’ve been going through, like transitioning from one woman who thinks a technical reading of the divorce settlement will insulate her from the actions she has taken behind my back, to the “other woman” who thinks perjury will protect her from her own actions, which helped take a weak marriage and utterly destroy it.

It was pathetically easy for her to do this because I was the worse kind of man, the kind of man known as a NICE GUY. Nice guys are the biggest liars because they ultimately lie to themselves about what they want from life, therefore they lie to everyone else around them. Now, I’m what’s known as THE ASSHOLE, the kind of man who no longer regards the feelings of weak people as worthy of consideration. If you have feelings about what I’ve written about, and what I’ve exposed regarding the power dynamics in this town, here’s my suggestion: FUCK YOUR FEELINGS.

I’m at the oxygen mask point of my own personal plane crash, realizing I have to take care of myself first if I’m to do anything effective during our chaotic descent, and trust me when I say, regardless of the election outcome, WE ARE STILL FALLING!

I wrote about how the Rebekah Barsotti case contributed to the failure of my marriage last October, but I have never explained explicitly how the woman who knew my family through our church gleaned information about me from those closest to me before making her moves. Could I have acted differently? Of course, I made my choices, and those choices were huge mistakes, but the price has gotten so absurd, no one who actually knows me thinks I’m getting what I deserve.

If Missoula needs a scapegoat for why people can repeatedly die under mysterious circumstances in this state with no serious fucks given by those in position of influence and authority, then I’m your man. I’ll be the asshole who says publicly, under my real name, what I see happening because I don’t just sit on some barstool complaining about it anymore, or grovel before Council begging them to vote differently.

But, for right now, the frequency of my biting commentary has to cease, and not because of any actual cease and desist orders. I was happy to hear a judge tell the attorney for the woman trying to destroy me that it doesn’t matter if her file on me and what I write weighs over 5 pounds, there is still something called the FIRST AMENDMENT in this country, and that’s what I’ve been using to show my readers how ugly our mountain paradise has gotten.

Thanks for all the support, it’s gotten me farther than those running this town thought possible, and there is still SO MUCH FUN exposing to be done, but if I don’t take a break, a break is going to take me.

Money can still be sent to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), and there might be stuff here and there that pops up, but not at the frequency I dedicated myself to maintaining when I left the non-profit sector to pursue a different life for myself as a writer. That’s why I always say…

THANK YOU FOR READING!

by Travis Mateer

It’s amazing to me when I read local media reports about Tax Increment Financing how stupid our unelected leaders think you are. Are you that stupid, Missoula? Or can you spot the insane bullshit in a quote like this one. I’ll even add some emphasis to help you out:

The Missoula Redevelopment Agency is sending more than $5.3 million in Tax Increment Financing as a remittance to local taxing jurisdictions. The money will be split up between the city, the county, the state, the Missoula Urban Transportation District (which runs the fare-free Mountain Line bus system) and local school districts.

The funding comes from a few of the city’s Urban Renewal Districts, where the property tax revenue from new development (since the time each district was formed) is controlled by the MRA rather than going through the city’s general fund.

The mayor and the Missoula City Council, when they approved a budget for fiscal year 2025, requested a one-time transfer from the MRA to the city general fund of $877,702 for public safety, including helping the police and fire departments. Then, the city also requested a remittance from the MRA of $1,363,500 to cover a revenue shortfall.

Starving the general fund of tax revenue so that developers and banks like Stockman’s can get handouts from Ellen Buchanan and company is THE EXACT REASON why Missoula has a budget shortfall in the first place. This isn’t a fucking mystery, like a whodunit movie, it’s the REPEATED reality I’ve been writing about for years, like this article from 2018 where I said this (emphasis mine):

Another problem Missoula has with funding essential services is the proliferation of Urban Renewal Districts and the use of Tax Increment Financing. Redirecting taxable value into URDs has been effective in developing blighted parts of Missoula, but with all this growth in URDs, the general fund is being starved.

While MRA became quite comfortable throwing big chunks of money around to help needy developers, like the Lambros clan, the only way to ensure these pockets of development can get essential services, like police, is to raise property taxes to get more money into the general fund.

Later in the Missoulian article, Ellen has the audacity to talk about how NOT sustainable this “one time” remittance is. God how I fucking despise these people! (emphasis mine):

Buchanan and members of the board expressed frustration that the money can’t be used as its intended, to incentivize development or build workforce housing. But, they noted, they’re glad that Tax Increment Financing exists in Missoula as a tool to help cover city budget shortfalls and help other jurisdictions. 

I think Buchanan knows where she can shove her frustration, since I’ve been exposing her never-ending tenure of gentrification peddling for years, but what about the rest of Missoula? Are you going to just let these assholes blame the STATE every fucking year because the STATE hasn’t giving these tax addicts more taxes to play with?

If you’re not disgusted by what we, as a community, have allowed Ellen Buchanan and company to do to this town, then here’s more from that propaganda piece about how HEALTHY the Urban Renewal Districts are because they’re getting ALL THAT MONEY that should be going to the general fund to pay police and first responders.

Buchanan said all the districts are healthy because there’s been significant growth in taxable values.

“Staff recognizes that the budget issues facing the taxing jurisdictions in Missoula are not unique and are a product of a property tax system that simply cannot meet the needs of Montana communities,” Buchanan told the board. “This is a statewide issue that cannot be fixed at the local level and TIF remittances are a band aid at best and one that is not sustainable. A major concern that is and will continue to be a problem is our housing shortage, both locally and across the state. We expressed this concern when we were addressing the TIF remittance last year and our concerns have been proven to be accurate.”

Would Missoula’s general fund be able to meet our community needs if TENS OF MILLIONS weren’t redirected to Ellen and Company? I don’t know, that’s not the reality here. No, the reality is our LYING local officials say things like ONE-TIME TRANSFER when it’s clear that LAST YEAR there was a “one-time transfer” of TIF remittance to cover a similar budget shortfall CREATED by the Urban Renewal Districts.

Yeah, fuck MRA, and fuck ANYONE who continues enabling this charade, a charade I’ve essentially wrecked my own life exposing because those closest to me thought I should just shut up years ago instead of taking what I know about our local cabal and EXPOSING THESE FUCKERS.

At some point, without more help from this community, the cost for me will be too high, and this blog will stop producing content. If it wasn’t for a VERY GENEROUS donation from a retired fire fighter yesterday, I wouldn’t be able to make my vehicle payment for a vehicle I’ll need to sell anyway, so THANK YOU to those who see value in what I’ve tried to do here.

The use of Tax Increment Financing is proliferating across the state of Montana after legislative idiots during the last legislative session gave our figurative crackhead (Ellen Buchanan) a nicer crack pipe to smoke crack with, called WORKFORCE HOUSING. Now struggling municipalities across Montana will try helping out those poor developers, like Cole Bergquist, who STILL DREAM of condos where once a shitty newspaper was produced (emphasis mine):

“Despite the challenges, this remains an incredible project,” Bergquist said. “I am moving forward with new partners, and WagsCap, LLC will be removed. I have retained legal counsel to ensure that this transition proceeds appropriately.”

Bergquist said he looks forward to working with the authorities and investors to resolve any issues. 

“This project is a central focus in my life,” he said. “I think about it and work on it all day, and then I go home and dream about it at night. I am fully committed to finishing this project in a way that adds to Missoula’s value and complements all that the city has to offer.”

The irony here is that Cole’s blighted property has now required MULTIPLE police responses, including a large one a few weeks ago, and those responses COST MONEY, in the form of the tax money that goes to pay the salaries of our cops. That’s why it’s so goddamn funny when a “public information officer” confirms it would cost me $26 dollars to SHOW MISSOULA how many times police have responded to 500 Higgins, and why.

Missoula exists in a culture of corruption that’s become so ubiquitous, barely anyone notices unless it bites them in the face, like when your family member gets euthanized by the Sheriff’s Office. Even then, the levers of narrative control are so well developed, a state-sanctioned execution could even be set up to further a coverup, including a coroner’s inquest absolving law enforcement of any shred of accountability, and nothing will be done about.

I’m an aberration. Not many people would willingly compromise social relationships and a career trajectory in order to ask difficult questions and NOT STOP because the answers are so obviously bullshit.

All it would take is ONE PICTURE–the picture of Sean Stevenson’s bruised corpse–to PROVE that those involved in an official, investigative capacity are LIARS, and therefore complicit in covering up what REALLY happened to Sean inside the homeless shelter where I used to work on January 3rd, 2020.

If this blog stops, or pauses, that doesn’t mean my writing will, so when I say stay tuned, adjust your timeframe, because the material I have yet to publish will tell some VERY interesting stories about what I’ve had to deal with over the last few years.

To those who have continued to support me through this dark time in my life, THANK YOU. I truly couldn’t have gotten this far without those who have quietly done what they can, in the background, because they know I’m not bullshitting when I say Montana is a failed state, something wholly the responsibility of Montana Republicans now.

If you would like to show your appreciation for my work in the form of digital dollars, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is the way to do it.

Thanks for reading!