The quick answer to the title of this post is NO, Missoula’s Jennie Dixon didn’t stop the proposed data center in Bonner. What actually happened is this unelected bureaucrat, who helped craft the special permit for projects like the Bonner data center, used the concept of a “heat island” to frustrate Krambu into going back to the drawing board.
Missoula County’s review of a data center proposed in Bonner has been cancelled for a third time due to the applicant’s delay in providing information required by the county.
The Missoula County Consolidated Land Use Board won’t review a Bonner data center application during its July 1 hearing, because the project developer “is continuing to finalize materials,” according to a Missoula County Voice post issued on Wednesday. Unlike previous rounds of back-and-forth between the county and the developer, the presentation has not been rescheduled.
The Consolidated Land Use Board will determine whether the data center would be compatible with the neighborhood across the highway, which includes an elementary school, and whether various environmental issues could be avoided or mitigated. Those issues include additional traffic, noise, lights or added heat. But first, Missoula County planner Jennie Dixon must ensure the data center proposal passes muster.
As I continued reading the Missoula Current article I discovered that “passing muster” means determining the effectiveness of cooling towers to help with the heat island effect:
Before the May 6 hearing, Dixon wrote a letter on April 17 telling Gordon Dobler, the developer with Idaho-based Dobler Engineering, that the first application was too vague, and the county needed better information by April 28, particularly about equipment on the building’s exterior and the associated noise, lights and hours of operation. She also needed more information about Krambu’s cooling towers, such as how much water they’d require and whether the operation would add to Missoula’s growing heat island.
After receiving Dobler’s second application on April 28, Dixon replied the next day, saying the application had “substantially improved,” particularly the information about the cooling towers. But information on noise and lighting was still missing. And Dixon wasn’t convinced by random photos Dobler included from Krambu’s facility in Washington state that there would be no heat-island effect, especially for neighbors living just across the street. Without this information, Dixon pushed the hearing back to July 1.
I’m sure Jennie Dixon is enjoying her new role as public protector from the evil data center because, normally, bureaucrats do more boring and/or unpopular things, like approve massive gentrifying housing projects inside Targeted Economic Development Districts.
Jennie Dixon, Missoula County planner, said the project falls within the Wye targeted economic development district, which should create opportunities for infrastructure development to serve the Grass Valley Gardens subdivision and the larger Wye area.
In 2020 and 2023, Missoula County implemented two targeted economic development districts around the Wye to allow the collection of tax increment revenue to help pay for needed roads, water, sewer and stormwater infrastructure. As improvements are made in the district and property taxes go up, the difference in tax revenue is collected in a fund for further investment in the district.
Do school districts and burned-out first responders support the gentrification of Targeted Economic Development Districts in Missoula County? No, they do not, and FINALLY some of the detractors are getting much more vocal and threatening to lawyer-up:
Matthew Driessen knows that 15,000 new homes with ZERO of the increased tax revenue going to his school district means a financial time-bomb is being set up by Missoula’s County Commissioners, and this time-bomb is being systematically approved by paid bureaucrats, like Jennie Dixon.
While regular taxpaying citizens in Missoula are getting financially hammered, a woman who recently moved from Idaho to Montana last November finds herself getting a nice spread in the New York Times about her noble fight to stop the Quantica data center in Broadview, Montana.
The headline paired with the picture already had me triggered, but then I read some of the actual content from this NEW YORK TIMES piece, highlighting a Montana transplant who doesn’t even understand the concept of jurisdiction, and it finally started clicking what I think is being set up here.
Should Kassi Solberg be told NO just because she doesn’t understand that CITY councils and COUNTY commissioners are different legal entities? Here’s some more context from the NYT article that I found amusing:
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As a NON-Montanan transplant born in Spokane, I can say with confidence that 26 years does NOT make me a Montanan, but it certainly gives me a little more native credibility than someone who just moved to Montana in November with her “menagerie” of animals.
Also, as the New York Times pointed out, local jurisdictions in rural Montana are finding it hard to find this thing called MONEY, so when a big company comes offering to help with infrastructure needs, it’s no surprise that Kassi SOLBERG is getting a chilly reception at her “city” council.
Yesterday I wrote about a Democrat “friend of the children” and his curious background with a private global intelligence firm, and later this week I’ll be writing about Missoula’s white George Floyd, killed two years ago by local law enforcement in a vacant field where the Midtown Commons will be getting built. But, unlike Kassi Solberg, I’ve learned the hard way how you definitely CAN be stopped from seeking justice in a righteous cause
While money deficits suck for local taxing jurisdictions, it’s the INFORMATION DEFICIT that I find most threatening to this Big Sky state where my kids are growing up, and here’s why: the data center, for Montana statewide politics in 2027, is going to be the new ZOOEY ZEPHYR. Please allow me to explain before you get fully triggered like Kassi Solberg’s New York Times spread triggers me.
I believe allowable cultural pressure-release valves, like George Floyd’s weaponized death in 2020, and gender designations for bathrooms at the Montana state legislature in 2023, function as a form of narrative control by taking up all the oxygen in the room, so to speak. In 2023, in Helena, that meant opposition to Tax Increment Financing wasn’t allowed much life-giving attention from local media, and it showed when it came time to vote.
Turns out, getting politicians and the public to fight a culture war means the bipartisan consensus of fucking you deep in the tax hole goes largely unmolested, which seems destined to happen again thanks to the NEW WARRIORS against the EVIL DATA CENTER.
I would really like to be wrong about this.
The NYT article that triggered me arrived in my in-box from The Pulp, a local news publication that gets to be invited to City Club functions, funded by developers like the WGM group, a favorite recipient of Tax Increment Financing and good for a quote when it comes to one of their “planned neighborhood” projects subsidized by public tax increment dollars:
Comments from agencies and the public submitted ahead of the meeting voiced some concerns about the project’s impact on water supply, infrastructure, traffic, agricultural land and the Frenchtown School District.
The developer has been in contact with the Frenchtown School District, and the project master plan includes the potential to dedicate land to the district for a new school building, said Jamie Erbacher of WGM Group, representing the developer.
The land was historically used for grazing, is not irrigated and produces about one cutting of hay per year, Erbacher said. As part of the long-term plan, the developer is working with the Community Food and Agriculture Coalition and other groups to regenerate the soil and develop the permaculture farm included in later phases, she said.
This article came from the Montana Free Press, a Helena-based media outlet that is also invited to this month’s City Club media event, where John Adams will more than likely face ZERO critical questions about why his media company omitted the aggressive actions of Zooey Zephyr’s supporters at the peak of the Zephyr Show in 2023.
For being outspoken, critical, and opinionated on subjects that are heavily controlled and sometimes used to manipulate who can speak, who will be listened to, and what can be said, I’ve seen how all this manipulation functions from an uncomfortably close vantage point, and what I see with the narrative control around EVIL DATA CENTERS has my hackles up.
For more context on what I’ve written up to this point from my unique vantage point, including being the ONLY news source to write about the former Stimson lumber mill’s discharge permit being given up years ago by the site’s manager, Mike, here’s a list:
“Putting The Proposed Krambu Data Center For Bonner Into Context” (March 23rd, 2026)
“Step 1 For Stopping Data Centers: Become Less Retarded” (April 14th, 2026)
“Step 2 For Stopping Data Centers: Identify Retarded Stakeholders” (April 15th, 2026)
“Do Data Center Drama Queens Understand What’s Actually Happening?” (May 20th, 2026)
“AMERICA UPSIDE DOWN, Part IV: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Data Center” (April 30th, 2026)
Yes, I’ve written a lot so far on this subject, and will write more as evidenced by the fact I put out 25 articles this past month, while The Pulp, with business sponsors and everything, only managed to publish 9.
Thanks for reading!
