The loons were singing this morning as I woke to a cup of fresh coffee from the neighborhood roaster. Outside the skyline is beet red as we ready for another blazing hot day on the farm.
It smells like the last gasp of summer, which we fondly nicknamed angry August. The hornets and yellow jackets are screaming mad over the heat and lack of water. The record heat combined with record drought dried our forest to tinderboxes.
Outside the temperature hit high 90s again, as we gear up for fall weather. The tourists that have been lucky enough to visit and drive the Flathead economy for the better are beginning to head home to let their kids go to school.
Fresh plumes of smoke line the skyline as our brave firefighter battle the blazes that are an all too familiar site of western life.
Hopefully Congress quits bickering after their August recess and better funds firefighting and emergency services. Sen. Jon Tester recently released a statement that said, “Because Congress hasn’t acted, the Forest Service is on its way to being nothing but a fire fighting agency, and folks who make a living on our public lands are paying the price.”
Tester successfully advanced much help for firefighters but noted that wildfire costs have consumed 52 percent of the Forest Service’s budget for 2015, compared to just 16 percent two decades ago.
Tester is a model for how to work together to get stuff done. That’s an honorable mindset also held by Whitefish City Council Frank Sweeney. Sweeney is a tenacious study of information and does extremely well representing the people of Whitefish.
In a fast growing resort city of merely 4,000 registered voters and 500,000 annual tourist visitors spending a night, locals are lucky to have a frugal and community-minded city councilor like Frank Sweeney.
Whitefish recently released its preliminary budget, which calls for a modest 3 percent increase. By state law, local taxing jurisdictions must keep real property tax increases extremely low and Whitefish is again on track.
It’s quite amazing that in a municipality with massive amounts of amenities like miles of world-class recreation trails, Broadway-quality theaters, an indoor ice rink, public parks and soccer fields, an Olympic-style aquatic center, and fantastic libraries and schools, that elected officials could accomplish so much while protecting taxpayers.
The successes are a testament to people like Sweeney whom have spent years developing private-public partnerships to help move good projects forward.
In angry August fashion, some appear hopping mad over a proposed new City Hall at the downtown location. The current location is a terrific spot to rebuild a historic but dilapidated public building. The city has spent decades planning for the new space and squirreling urban renewal funds into coffers to one day replace the decrepit public structure.
The time to rebuild City Hall is now; Whitefish deserves a town hall as efficient and great as our people. One needs to only look around town at all the new magnificent structures, some public and some private, to realize a need.
As the squirrels drop pinecones from fir trees onto metal roofs and frenzied birds scurry for ripe berries, angry August will soon be replaced by the ghost of fall as freezing temperatures whack-back the stinging yellow jackets and biting hornets. Hopefully snow and rain will follow to help firefighters who willingly endanger their lives to protect our way of life in the great Northwest.
There are many good people doing great work in the Flathead. As grandma reminds us, be kind to those who do the work that matters.