Missoulian week in review: Local news recap for Aug. 3-9 (2024)

Here are some of the headlines from this past week in the Missoulian. To read the full stories, click the link on each headline:

Missoula's city and county governments will receive millions of dollars from nationwide opioid settlements over the next 18 years, but what that money will be spent on has yet to be determined.

The city and county will finalize an agreement next week that creates a local board to work with the state of Montana on allocating the money. Next year, Missoulawill receive $1.2 million, county Chief Administrative Officer Chris Lounsbury said.

Called the joint Opioid Remediation Board, the local group will be made up of Lounsbury, Mayor Andrea Davis, County Commissioner Dave Strohmaier, City Council President Amber Sherrill, Missoula Chief Administrative Office Dale Bickell, and County Chief Financial Officer Andrew Czorny.

The money comes from several national lawsuit settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors. Some of the settlement groups include Albertsons pharmacy and Walmart.

There are only about 1,500 days until the next, next presidential election.

While the political world roils through the most abrupt U.S. presidential campaign in American history this summer, a team at the University of Montana Mansfield Center has its focus on something more intrinsic to the fabric of American society: Repairing our sense of civics.

“We’re playing the long game here,” explains Katie Vaughn, the recently hired director of the Mansfield Center’s Project on American Democracy and Citizenship. “This election season is so unpredictable— just look at the last 10 days. That makes this work much deeper than just one election cycle.”

The 10 days in July Vaughn referred to included an assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Democratic President Joe Biden’s announcement he was ending his re-election bid and Vice President Kamala Harris’ assumption of the Democratic presidential candidacy. But Vaughn aims at something both simpler and deeper than that rush of current events.

A former University of Montana student faces a new charge of bail jumping after he allegedly fled to Canada to escape charges of attempting to rape a woman in downtown Missoula in 2022.

Cole Larson Levine, 25, pleaded not guilty to the new felony charge in Missoula County District Court on Thursday. Levine was arrested in Creston, British Colombia, on his way to Vancouver, according to court documents. He is being held on a $2 million bond, which was set following his alleged attempt to flee the country.

Levine, a New Mexico resident, has already pleaded not guilty to three other felonies: attempted sexual intercourse without consent; attempted kidnapping; and aggravated assault. He also faces one count of misdemeanor destruction of or tampering with a communication device.

Levine was initially arrested following a report of an attempted rape in August of 2022. Two witnesses told police they had been walking downtown when they heard a woman scream for help, and saw a man attacking her in an alley.

Voters will decide whether Missoula County can increase taxes for road and bridge projects after county commissioners voted to place a $1.7 million infrastructure levy on the November ballot.

The county says it needs $4.3 million to keep up with needed road and bridge maintenance.

The levy would cost $6.75 per $100,000 of home value, which would first hit tax bills in fall 2025 (technically fiscal year 2026).

There are several bridges with issues across the county.Maclay Bridge, Boy Scout Bridge, Sunset Hill Bridge, Glacier Creek Bridge and Styler Drive Bridge all need replacement or significant repairs, Public Works Director Shane Stack said.

The Montana Legal Services Association has been awarded a $750,000 grant to provide legal and victim services to survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking throughout a rural swath of the state.

The Survivors Legal Project covers 15 rural Montana counties, primarily in the north-central and northwest parts of the state. Montana Legal Services describes the program as a partnership with eight other organizations that provides “holistic civil legal services and assistance to survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.”

The grant funding comes from a $1.2 trillion federal appropriations package that was signed into law in March.

Monique Voigt, the domestic violence supervising attorney for the organization, said Montana Legal Services has just five attorneys on staff dedicated to helping those survivors navigate the legal system.

“We have a high demand and not a lot of supply, so unfortunately we have to engage in a variation of services to provide as much as we can with what we have,” Voigt said in an interview Thursday.

While the best competitive shooters in the world faced off in Paris at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Missoula's Marcus Klemp was honing his air-pistol prowess here in Missoula.

In four years, he could be among the elite athletes the world watches at the 2028 games in Los Angeles — the first summer games in the U.S. since Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996, and the first in LA since '84.

If he goes to LA, he would become an Olympian at the young age of 22 years old. But that would fit a pattern that Klemp, now 18, established earlier this summer when he became not only the U.S. junior men's national champion in air pistol, but also the overall open-class men's national champion.

In the USA Shooting National Championship match for men's air pistol at Fort Moore, Georgia, (formerly Fort Benning) on June 26, Klemp bested not only the best shooters in the U.S. — save for a handful of '24 Olympians prepping for Paris — but he also beat the accomplished air pistol coach who recruited him to Ohio State University.

Klemp grew up in Missoula's Target Range neighborhood and graduated from Big Sky High School this year. He'll attend Ohio State this fall, where he'll study engineering and train and compete in both air pistol and .22-caliber pistol.

“We will not go back,” Trent Taylor, a Missoula physician said on Thursday, standing in front of a 20-foot inflatable contraception device stationed on the Missoula County Courthouse lawn.

The blown-up Intrauterine Device (more commonly known as an IUD), named “Freeda Womb," is on a nationwide tour to spread awareness and information about rights to contraception and reproductive freedom. On Thursday afternoon, it was in Missoula.

“There was a time when people didn't have all these options, the time when birth control wasn't acceptable to people,” Taylor said. “Some politicians that didn't vote to approve the Right to Contraception Act want us to go back to that time, but we will not go back.”

Taylor has been a doctor in Montana for about four years. Patients seek out birth control for a variety of reasons, he said, like preventing pregnancies or to help manage hormonal disorders and symptoms.

Since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, eliminating federal abortion protections, Taylor said he’s seen a spike in general worry and demand for contraception access with patients he sees in Missoula.

After former President Donald Trump endorsed Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy in February, speculation about a potential rally has been swirling around Montana. Now the long-anticipated event is nearly here.

Trump is set to speak to a crowd Friday in Bozeman at Montana State University’s Brick Breeden Fieldhouse. This visit will be the former president’s fifth visit to Montana in recent years, all to campaign against Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. In 2018 as a sitting president, he came to the state four times toback U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale in his unsuccessful bid for the Senate.

It’s unclear how much of a difference those visits made: Tester won that race by 3.5 points, his largest margin yet, butthe2018midtermswere also good for Capitol Hill Democrats.

“Obviously it didn't work … Tester was reelected and Rosendale lost,” said Carroll College political science professor Jeremy Johnson. “The endorsem*nt didn’t carry a lot of additional weight … he could not get Rosendale across the finish line.”

But the rallies, particularly the upcoming one, may also have other important implications.

Fire restrictions were lifted across Missoula, Ravalli and Mineral counties on Wednesday, as well as on both the Bitterroot and Lolo national forests that envelop much of those counties, after precipitation in the area somewhat eased wildfire danger.

Stage-2 fire restrictions, which prohibit campfires in all circ*mstances, as well as other activities like driving off roads, using welding machines or torches, or operating devices with internal-combustion engines, had been in effect since mid-July.

Stage-2 restrictions remained in effect for Granite and Powell counties.

Less prohibitive Stage-1 restrictions, which allow campfires in fire rings at developed recreation sites, were put in place on the Flathead Reservation and across Lake and Sanders counties.

Portions of the Lolo and Bitterroot national forests in those counties were exempt from restrictions.

The Missoula County Commissioners approved a controversial gravel pit expansion near Carlton outside Lolo on Thursday after several public meetings stretching for more than six months.

The approval will allow Western Materials to expand onto 60 acres of residentially zoned land. The current operation is approximately 66 acres and the expansion will likely happen over the next two decades.

Neighboring residents formed a group and have argued that the pit should not exist at all, as the area has historically been zoned residential.While residential zoning would normally restrict a gravel pit, theowners of the operation received a variance to minethe site decades ago.

In late May, a group of local, state and federal officials with stakes in Marshall Mountain Park east of Missoula joined nonprofit leaders to hold a ribbon-cutting that celebrated the park officially coming under joint city and county ownership.

The focus that day was on the figures involved in the effort to protect the former ski area — now used for human-powered ski touring and, most notably, for mountain biking — as public lands in perpetuity. They came from the city and county governments, from state and federal land-management agencies, and from organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Five Valleys Land Trust, Friends of Marshall Mountain and Izzy Dog LLC, which at one time owned, acquired or advocated public ownership for various tracts of land that comprise the park.

It was a victory lap of sorts that capped years of work to prevent the former ski area, which closed in 2003, from being shut down to public access forever. Instead, it became a crown jewel of the local governments' open spaces, targeted for further trail development, summer camps and other youth programs — and, someday, greater improvements like possibly a "magic carpet" lift for teaching children to ski and snowboard.

This Saturday, a public party at Marshall Mountain will focus the celebration on the general public who use the park, or might in the future.

Aiming to solidify support among a demographic critical to his reelection bid, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester this week launched a group called “Republicans for Tester.”

The three-term senator is in the midst of one of the most consequential congressional races in the nation that could determine control of the U.S. Senate. Tester is running against Republican Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and past CEO of an aerial firefighting company. Republicans have played a critical role in Tester's previous victories, and he'll need ticket-splitters to win reelection this year. The announcement comes days before former president Donald Trump is set to hold a rally in Bozeman in support of Sheehy.

Republicans for Tester has more than 100 Republicans from around Montana, including some who have been vocal in their concerns about the direction of the GOP in recent years like former governor and past Republican National Committee Chair Marc Racicot,who has been disavowed by the party; former Secretary of State Bob Brown and former state legislator Mallerie Stromswald from Billings.

The privately owned portion of the prime but long-dormant downtown Missoula real estate known as the Riverfront Triangle is for sale for a combined total asking price of $15.2 million for the three separate parcels.

This week, Sterling Commercial Real Estate Advisors of Missoula finally put big signs on the lots downtown at the intersection of Front Street and Orange Street near the Clark Fork River.

The city of Missoula owns the parcel with the uncovered asphalt parking lot closest to Orange Street south of Front, but the three surrounding parcels including one along the river are privately owned by Riverfront Triangle Partners LLC of Missoula.

“It’s been for sale for four years, we never had a sign on it though,” explained Matt Mellot, managing partner and commercial real estate adviser at Sterling. “We had it under contract three different times.”

The deals fell through for various reasons.

Missoula's City Council approved a new scheduling system that will create a public process to see how councilors decide on what they end up debating.

Under council rules, the chair of each committee selects policies that will move on to a public meeting, which is where ideas officially start their path to becoming law.

The chair then polls councilors to see how many are interested in scheduling a given policy for consideration at a public meeting. Each poll needs at least six councilors to express interest for the policy item to move to a meeting agenda, which previously was the first time the public would see it.

Under the new scheduling system approved Wednesday, anytime a city council chair polls the councilors on a potential policy item, that information must be published on the city's website, whether or not the idea meets the threshold for a public hearing.

For the second year in a row, Missoula's Aida Linton traveled to U.S. Cross-Country Mountain Bike National Championships in Pennsylvania. And for the second year, she came back to Montana with not one but two stars-and-stripes jerseys.

The jerseys, earned through victories in both the July 19 cross-country race and the July 21 short-track race, cemented Linton's position as one of the best female junior mountain bikers in the country. The 15-year-old's victories this year were especially significant because they came in longer races in a larger, more competitive category than she raced in last year.

Her 2023 victories at Bear Creek ski resort inMacungie, 43 miles northwest of Philadelphia, were in the Female Junior 13-14 category. That year, racing for Team Stampede, a Missoula-based youth cycling program, she competed against 41 other girls over two laps of a 3.8-mile cross-country course, and against 26 others in a 12-minute short-track race.

After commanding victories in both events last year, Linton was picked up by the Bear National Team, a powerhouse of U.S. youth cycling known for producing professional riders. (She's still coached by Missoulian Emma Swartz, a retired professional cyclist who was one of the U.S.' best cyclocross racers domestically and on the world stage.)

This year, in the Female Junior 15-16 races, Linton faced off against 58 other riders over three laps of a 3.9-mile cross-country course. Her competitors included reigning 15-16 National Champion Zanna Logar. And she bested 37 riders in a 20-minute short-track event.

Here's a quick guide to some of arts events around Missoula this week, including readings, acoustic shows and even artists in residence at the Western Montana Fair.

Missoula's community cinema is screening "Cuckoo," a new European release, along with Michel Gondry's classic sci-fi relationship drama.

—Charlotte Macorn, for the Missoulian

In Missoula, the median-earning household needs to spend 62% of their pre-tax income to make the mortgage payment on a median-priced house, even with a 20% down payment.

That is an astronomical amount that leaves many people with no way to buy a home and start accumulating the wealth they’ll need later on in life, according to Patrick Barkey, the director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana.

“You look at 30-somethings today and compare the housing wealth they own to what 30-somethings in the 1980s had, they have 40% less wealth,” Barkey told a crowd in Missoula last week as part of the bureau’s statewide mid-year economic update series.

Barkey was citing research from Harvard University when he presented those statistics.

“Typically, 30-somethings don’t have a lot of wealth yet,” Barkey said. “Nonetheless, it’s an indicator of what lies in the future. It’s harder to grow that wealth.”

A former Missoula doctor facing mounting sexual assault charges is back in Montana after being at an out-of-state treatment facility since the case was first brought against him, according to prosecutors and court filings.

Tyler J. Hurst, 40, is facing eight charges in Missoula County District Court, six of which are felonies. Prosecutors added an additional felony sexual intercourse without consent charge on July 25. Hurst has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.

Missoula Deputy County Attorney Brielle Lande confirmed on Tuesday Hurst is in Ravalli County, though he's on GPS monitoring and under strict guidelines as to where he can travel. Lande said Hurst returned to Missoula last week and was compliant with checking in to Missoula's Pretrial Services department.

The women who have reported to law enforcement share similar accusations and experiences with Hurst, according to court documents. A common theme among their reports is that they sought medical care— all at the Community Medical Center’s emergency department in Missoula— often with abdominal pain. They were seen by Hurst, who allegedly assaulted them while in private emergency department rooms.

There is such a thing as the study of birds. Ornithology isn’t always at the forefront of those wanting to study biology, but the topic has one thing that most of the other branches don’t.

“Most folks are familiar with birds,” University of Montana Ecology Lab Avian Biologist Rebekkah LaBlue said. “They exist on all seven continents. And whether we consciously realize it or not, most people see a bird every day.”

This summer, the bird banders hailing from a wide range of places themselves landed in Montana doing research work for the UM Bird Ecology Lab (UMBEL). The organization specializes in bird monitoring and public education efforts by using different songbird banding stations spread out over the area.

Bird banding involves catching birds and placing a unique bracelet with a number on their leg to track their movement and life history. During the peak breeding season, UMBEL typically catches between 50 and 100 birds each week. This high level of activity is due to an increase in the number of young birds.

A 15-year-old boy from Washington state was found drownedafter he disappeared while swimmingin Seeley Lake, according to the Missoula County Sheriff's Office.

The boy's body was found at about 8 p.m., sheriff's office spokesperson Jeannette Smith said.

The 911 dispatch center got a call about the missing swimmer at about 5:15 p.m., according to a press release from Smith.

Seeley-Swan Search and Rescue and the Missoula County Search and Rescue were also involved in the response, according to the post.

Missoula's proposed 2025 budget would increase property taxes by roughly 16%, but a majority of that— around 11%— comes from a voter-approved fire levy that passed in June.

Mayor Andrea Davis presented her first budget as the city's top executive Monday night, which would increase city property taxes by $307 per $450,000 in home value.

In total, the city's preliminary budget increased from $203 million in 2024 to $217 million in 2025, mostly from expansion of the city's fire department, police department wage increases and more funding for urban camping programs.Missoula's budgetincreased taxes by 9.71% in 2024.

Davis also said the city has made significant cost-saving steps, including switching workers' compensation providers, but she said that has not been enough to catch up with inflation and city spending.

"This is no news to anybody, I inherited a pretty challenging budget structure, a budget deficit quite frankly," Davis said. "I knew that coming into office, and it has been an area of focus that I intend to work on."

Missoula city crews will begin to pick up debris from trees on residential property damaged by last week's storm.

Crews from the Public Works and Mobility Department plan to work neighborhood by neighborhood, starting in the Rattlesnake on Tuesday, Aug. 6, according to a press release.

"Because the volume of tree debris differs among neighborhoods, it is not possible to estimate how long each area will take," the release said. "The entire operation will take about four to six weeks."

Residents can checkmissoula.co/stormon Fridays to see where crews will be the following week.

—Missoulian Staff

Like many Missoulians, Anthony Andres had seen one too many rent hikes.

So he and his partner moved out of their place this year, he said, and started living in the Johnson Street shelter, saving up money while he works as a cook in a local restaurant.

During that time, the 45-year-old missed scheduled hearings for a pair of municipal court cases accusing him of misdemeanor theft. Warrants for his arrest were issued, one in April and another in June.

“Once I lost my place, I didn’t have access to court,” Andres said, adding that he didn’t have any other mailing address to get notifications on warrants or upcoming court dates.

Andres was one of a half-dozen people to get their warrants dropped or their cases moved forward in Missoula’s municipal “shelter court” last month. Now two years into the program’s existence, the experimental once-per-month court sessions have served about 200Missoulians for whom housing and food insecurity often loom larger in their lives than a misdemeanor court case.

“We were aware, both anecdotally and academically, that failure-to-appear rates aren’t driven by voluntary decision-making,” Municipal Court Judge Jacob Coolidge said. “People aren’t choosing to avoid court. A lot of times it’s barriers to get to court.”

Montana and 20 other states last week filed their arguments in a federal court in Washington, D.C., supporting Congress' potential ban of TikTok.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who spearheaded Montana's own would-be TikTok banlast year, and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, both Republicans, headlined the brief, which was co-signed by 19 other GOP-led states.

Together with Congress, the states argue TikTok could be used as a surveillance tool against Americans by China, the specter of which has grown more haunting to officials at all levels of government. TikTok and its users who are challenging the ban, meanwhile, have asserted the ban would violate the First Amendment.

Last month the U.S. Justice Department contended in court filings that TikTok's users would be free to pivot to different social media sites. Further, U.S. attorneys said the company's proposed security measures, like isolating U.S. user data, would not persuade the government from following through on banning the company unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divests ownership.

The states last week also asked the D.C. court, to the extent it might consider cases outside its own district, to disregard the federal injunction that put the brakes on Montana's own TikTok ban.

In mathematics, a “three-body problem” is the virtually incalculable gravitational relationship of three planets orbiting and pulling on each other.

Grizzly bears face a similar quandary as a collection of court battles drag their legal status in different directions. And like the science-fiction novel and TV series of the same name, grizzlies’ three-body problem has potential to upend the world as they’ve known it for the past 50 years.

Last Friday, a federal district judge in Missoula heard accusations that the U.S. Wildlife Service was killing grizzlies for the benefit of farmers and ranchers without explaining how that might affect overall grizzly recovery. That’s just one of several developments spinning around the continental United States’ largest land predator.

Another lawsuit accuses Idaho wildlife managers of improperly allowing black-bear baiting in grizzly habitat, which could get grizzlies accidentally killed and/or habituated to human food (which often also leads to them getting killed). The states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have sued or threatened to sue FWS for failing to delist grizzlies and turn them over to state wildlife managers.

All those cases presume the grizzly bear remains a federally protected animal under the Endangered Species Act. On July 26, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Regional Director Matt Hogan announced his agency was not going to hit an anticipated July 30 deadline for an Endangered Species Act status review of grizzly bears. Instead, FWS intends to issue “the proposed rule revising or removing the entire ESA listing of grizzly bears in the lower-48 states” by Jan. 31, 2025.

Missoula County could place a $1.8-million mill levy on the November general election ballot to supplement its infrastructure money, which would raise taxes outside of the county's general 2025 budget.

The 5-mill levy, if approved by the commissioners at their Thursday meeting at 2 p.m., would focus on repaving county-maintained roads and providing local match funds for repairing aging bridges.

Missoula County's Public Works Department estimates in the long term it will need $165 million to replace all of the aging bridges across the county, much of which comes from property taxes.

Currently, the county has a $7.6-million budget for infrastructure needs, which comes from property taxes, state gas taxes and other state and federal funds.

Glacier National Park officials suspect a body they found over the weekend is that of a man who fell into Avalanche Creek in July.

At about 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, a park visitor alerted rangers to a body they saw in Avalanche Creek below the gorge, according to a news release from Glacier National Park. Rangers pulled the body from the water.

Officials suspect the body recovered on Saturday is that of Siddhant Vitthal Patil, a 26-year-old man from India who fell into Avalanche Creek, a popular destination in the park northeast of Lake MacDonald, and drowned on July 6. Rangers have been searching for his body since.

The Flathead County coroner is working to officially confirm the identity through DNA and dental records, the news release stated. Clothing and gear Patil was wearing (according to his friends) were also found on Saturday.

Debuting a new rodeo arena and garden space for guests to explore, the Western Montana Fair is rolling into town and ready to go.

The fair kicks off on Tuesday, running for six days instead of five this year at the Missoula County Fairgrounds. In addition to well-loved traditions like carnival rides and live music, the fair is unveiling its new arena space for rodeo-goers, as well as the Rocky Mountain Gardens for the first time.

“You’re much closer to the action,” Billie Brown, fair events and operations manager, said of the Clouse Bauer Arena, which will house this year's Missoula Stampede Rodeo.

With a 2,500-person capacity, Brown said the reimagined arena offers much more generous spacing between rows, which means there’s no blocked view if someone stands up. It’s a much more intimate space that allows for more conversation, according to Brown. There are also uncovered bleachers on the east and west ends that seat 300 and 600, respectively.

Construction took about seven months. A ribbon-cutting and grand opening for the new space is scheduled for Tuesday. The old grandstands were built in 1954. Missoula Concrete Construction, a local business owned by the Bauer family, donated $750,000 of pre-cast concrete for the new grandstands. The new arena honors their longtime employee Dale Clouse.

Kendra McKlosky won't tell you her favorite fishing spots. But she can tell you how she worked for more than a decade to negotiate fishing access for others.

McKlosky is a fifth-generation Montanan from the Jefferson Valley, near the Tobacco Root Mountains south of Whitehall, the town where she attended high school. She grew up immersed in ranching — a primary driver of the almost entirely agrarian region.

"I definitely did a lot of ranch work, grew up around horses and that sort of lifestyle," she said in a July 31 interview. "Being outdoors is just part of what makes me tick."

Now in its sixth year, Soft Landing Missoula's popular United We Eat culinary program, which gives refugees and immigrants a commercial kitchen to share their recipes with the community, has a new headquarters.

The nonprofit initiative is now located inside the Burns St. Community Center at 1500 Burns St. in Missoula's Westside neighborhood. It's a collaboration with the North Missoula Community Development Corporation.

On Tuesday last week, Wasan, who moved to Missoula with her family from Iraq in 2016, was busy with United We Eat's staff and other volunteers preparing around 150 meals for the Thursday pickup. The week's menu features quzi, which is roasted halal lamb with carrots, potatoes, onions and basmati rice mixed with almonds and raisins.

"It's one of the national dishes of Iraq," Wasan explained (she prefers to go by only her first name).

She was also making a vegetarian option, which was falafel balls, eggplant fries, Thai basil, pickled mango sauce and lemon-tahini sauce served with flatbread. Customers could also order green hummus, a salad and zarda, a traditional Iraqi rice pudding flavored with saffron, rosewater and cardamom.

Wasan was one of the original chefs who started making food for United We Eat when it started in 2019.

"I like people just to know our culture," she explained.