Page 30 - Flathead Beacon // 7.23.14

30 | JULY 23, 2014 OPINION
LETTERS
GLACIER PARK, INC. A GREAT STEWARD
An open letter to the residences of West Glacier,
You should feel privileged and excited that a company the size of Glacier Park, Inc. has purchased the assets of the Lundgren family in West Glacier.
G.P.I. has owned and operated the facilities in East Glacier Park for the better part of 50 years. It owns 500-plus acres of mostly undeveloped land, part of which is a nine-hole golf course. Its property was subdivided in the ‘60s, making it easy to develop with no problem of existing subdivision laws. It has developed NONE.
The sale of the West Glacier property could have been to a money hungry developer. G.P.I. is owned by Viad Corp., a public company with a market cap of $466 million. I don’t think it is interested in pillaging 200 acres in and around West Glacier.
When Xanterra was awarded the contract, East Glacier Park and Glacier County lost the Red Buses and hundreds of employees. I find it interesting that G.P.I. licensed the buses in Glacier County and paid in excess of $7,000 per year, but now that Xanterra is operating the fleet, it has government plates and no revenue goes to Flathead or Glacier County.
It would be interesting to know why G.P.I. lost the contract and who else bid on the contract. I would think it is public information.
Just my thoughts, as I have a vested interest as a life-long resident of East Glacier Park, a business owner, and Glacier County commissioner.
Glacier Park Inc. is a great steward for Glacier National Park and the surrounding
FLATHEADBEACON.COM
TOP 10 ONLINE STORIES
FLATHEADBEACON.COM
Washington Wildfires Send Smoke to the Flathead
Days After Woman Dies, Two More Water Rescues in Glacier Park
The Face of Environmental Activism
Montana Federal- Lands Policy Turns Political
Browning Boy Dies, Backed Over by Pickup Truck
Green Named New Whitefish Basketball Coach Following Downey Resignation
The Fate of Federal Lands in Montana
One of the Best Behind the Wheel
A Labor of Love – and Exactitude
Depleted Highway Trust Fund Could Have Big Impacts on Montana’s Roads
1942, our family, which included three daughters, moved to California. My dad found work at Lockheed Aircraft Company building planes during WWll. He worked for Lockheed until he retired in the 1970s.
I am forever grateful that my mother came here as a scared 15-year-old, never having been on a ship before, and without a family member to support or guide her.
Since 1922, when my mother arrived, immigration laws have varied and changed and they need changing now. It is imperative that Congress finds a humanitarian way to accept foreigners who are seeking what my mother sought: to be with family and to live a better way of life, an opportunity for education, health and a decent living. By the way, my mother learned English and became a citizen because she was given the opportunity and education to do so.
Unless this crisis is fixed, I don’t see how we can claim that America is
send our budget deep into the red. Montana was just named the most fiscally responsible state in the country; and jeopardizing our future prosperity in order to satisfy a narrow interest group that would prefer to see strip malls and condos along ridgelines and streams just
doesn’t make sense.
This is the not the outdoor legacy we
want to pass on to our kids and grandkids. We want them to experience landing their first trout, floating the Madison River and horseback riding in the Crazy Mountains.
In order to ensure that we maintain our Montana way of life, let’s work together to keep our public lands public.
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester Gov. Steve Bullock
JURISDICTIONONTRIBALLAND
The U.S. Supreme Court, in Clairmont v. U.S. (1912), declared: “Our conclusion must be that the right of way had been completely withdrawn from the reservation by the surrender of the Indian title and that in accordance with the repeated rulings of this court, it was not Indian Country.”
Once reservation land (held in trust for an Indian tribe) is removed from trust status, by tribal members or the trustee, and the tribe or individual tribal member is compensated for it, it is no longer part of Indian Country or part of a reservation. It “comes under the jurisdiction of the then territory, and later under that of the state.”
Really? A U.S. Supreme Court decision that says our non-tribal, fee patent land is no longer Indian Country? Interesting, wouldn’t you say? Nearly 83 percent of the population on the Flathead Indian Reservation is non-tribal and nearly 50 percent of the land within the historical, external boundary is non- trust land (i.e., patent fee or fee simple); so what’s the question concerning water rights or property rights? It’s already been decided by the US Supreme Court and the US Congress to be out of trust, out of Indian Country status and out of the Reservation.
Gee, I guess that makes my 5 acres, held in fee-simple deed (without encumbrances or restrictions), with property taxes paid to the state of Montana through the Lake County Tax office since March of 1959, non-trust, non-federal, non-tribal, non Indian Country, non Reservation property. It’s state based, private property, no longer under the Tribal government control or jurisdiction. I guess that means the CSKT should be receiving no funds, no revenues, no grants, no income whatsoever from my 5 acres. This reservation is diminished by my 5 acres, how about yours? Has the CSKT received any funds from the state or the Feds that may actually belong to you, the owners of the land? Might be worth investigating; I could use a windfall about now to fight for my property rights and the water rights appurtenant to it.
Michael Gale Ronan
exceptional.
Margie A. Gignac Kalispell
LETTERS
Tell us what you think. To submit a letter, please e-mail your submission
to [email protected]. Please keep your letter to 300 words or less. The Flathead Beacon reserves the right to edit letters for length, clarity and
to prevent libel. Letters must include the writer’s first and last name, phone number and address for verification purposes. Only the name and hometown of the writer will be printed. To mail a letter, please send to 17 Main Street, Kalispell, MT 59901.
Fax letters to (406) 257-9231.
CORRECTIONS
If a Beacon story includes a factual error, please tell us about it. Call Kellyn Brown at 257-9220; or e-mail to [email protected]; or fax to 257-9231.
FLATHEADBEACON.COM
For daily news, local community pages, video, multimedia, story archives and lively online conversation, visit our Web site at flatheadbeacon.com.
area.
Tony Sitzmann East Glacier Park
KEEPING PUBLIC LANDS PUBLIC
Montana’s public lands define our way of life.
It’s a father teaching his daughter how to fly fish. It’s a mother and her son climbing a peak in the Bitterroots.
It’s those memorable moments – and our very birthright as Montanans – that are at risk if those who seek to transfer the management of federal lands to states are allowed to succeed.
While “allowing states to manage the lands within their borders” may sound like an appealing idea, the real goal is a threat to our outdoor heritage.
Montanans who believe in responsible governing and management of our state understand that the costs of managing an additional 30 million acres will leave the state with only one option: selling off our public lands to the highest bidder in order to afford to manage what’s left.
Imagine how many acres would be locked up if we were forced to sell the lands to wealthy out-of-state interests? Fences and “No Trespassing” signs would spring up overnight, barring access to anglers, hunters, mountain bikers, backpackers and hikers.
Currently, more than 2,000 employees manage federal lands in the Montana region, at the cost of $200 million every year. Add to that the cost of fighting forest fires, which in recent years has totaled hundreds of millions of dollars, and the loss of $50 million every year to local communities in the form of Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) and Secure Rural Schools (SRS) funding, and you can plainly see the added financial burden Montana would face.
While our state’s budget is in strong fiscal shape, we do not have the resources to take over management of these lands. Doing so would be cost-prohibitive, raise the tax burden on Montana families and
A HUMANITARIAN FIX TO THE IM- MIGRATION CRISIS
Even if you are a fourth or fifth generation Montanan, chances are your ancestor came from somewhere else to settle here. And his/her reason for doing so could be to start a new life in a new land, or to escape some type of discrimination, persecution or forced conscription.
My mother immigrated to the United States from Roseny, Hungary, along with a female guardian, when she was 15 years old. Her mother, my grandmother, was already a citizen of the United States, along with my step-grandfather. My mother spoke little English, but she did well for herself as a seamstress, working for May Company in Ohio. In those days, department stores did clothing alterations in ladies and menswear for their customers. She went on to marry my father, a utility company worker. In