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SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board continued discussing holding a bond election and rejected an ordinance reinforcing a resolution mandating connections at its Sept. 17 meeting. The Board also received a proposal that would keep the District from having to pay $350,000 in legal bills to defend the District from Don Larson’s lawsuit. In other business the Board approved paying its past due legal bills after negotiations, the Board gave a landowner a letter stating it wouldn’t initiate annexing their property and Director Pat G...
ST IGNATIUS – The Seeley-Swan Blackhawks headed over the mountains to take on the Bulldogs Sept. 18. Ahead of the game the Blackhawks accepted an invitation to participate in a presentation and discussion on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. The Blackhawks and Bulldogs stood together as one team during the presentation. In a letter of gratitude and thanks to Seeley-Swan's coaches and athletes, St. Ignatius' Principal Shawn Hendrickson explained that St. Ignatius has students and staff w...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley-Swan Lady Blackhawks faced two opponents last week starting off in Victor Sept. 10 and then back on the home court Sept. 12 facing Granite. The Lady Blackhawks blew the Victor Pirates out of the water in three sets, 25-19, 25-9 and 25-16. More than a third of their total points against the Pirates came from kills and aces. Bethany Hoag led the way with 8 kills followed by Klaire Kovatch, Kyla Conley and Aspen Conley with 4 each. Sariah Maughan had two kills and led w...
THOMPSON FALLS – The Seeley-Swan Blackhawks traveled to take on the Blue Hawks in Thompson Falls Sept. 11. It was brutal game for the Blackhawks. They were down 22 points by the end of the first quarter and 38 by the half. While the second half wasn’t quite the blowout of the first, they fell 0-52. The Blackhawks struggled to move the ball on the ground or in the air. It wasn’t for lack of trying as they had 32 carries but were only able to average 2.6 yards per carry for a total of 84 yards in the game. The Blackhawks were only able to complet...
SEELEY LAKE – The Blackhawks kicked off to the Victor Pirates Sept. 4 for their opening game of the season. The Pirates' opening drive came to an abrupt end after just a couple plays with a fumble that was recovered by the Blackhawks' Hunter Carpenter. The Blackhawks' offense took over on the 20-yard line. After two unsuccessful runs up the middle, Blackhawks Quarterback Sawyer Shelmerdine went to the air. He sent a lateral pass to Owen Hoag who, with help from Ben Haley blocking, was able to ta...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley-Swan Lady Blackhawks improved their record to 2-1 with a pair of wins last week against the Valley Christian Eagles and the Lincoln Lynx. The Lady Blackhawks traveled to Missoula to take on the Eagles Sept. 3 and defeated them in four sets: 25-23, 25-15, 19-25 and 25-23. The match was a first for the Lady Blackhawks playing without their fans attending due to COVID-19 restrictions. At their home games the number of fans has been limited but not eliminated. Senior A...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley-Swan Lady Blackhawks volleyball team took to the court for the much anticipated season opener against Charlo Aug. 27. The Lady Blackhawks fell to Charlo in the first two sets 17-25 and 16-25 before coming back to take the third set 25-17. The fourth set was hard fought with neither team being able to build much advantage over the other. The Lady Blackhawks had a small lead mid way though but that would soon evaporate and Charlo took the set 20-25 to win the match. K...
SEELEY LAKE – An early morning thunderstorm Aug. 19 was a rude awaking for many in the valley but it proved to be especially rude for the Bertsch family who lives on Boy Scout Road in Seeley Lake. About 15 minutes after a lightning strike shook their house their son received a call from his friend Ben Haley informing them their shop down the road was on fire. Ben and his mom just happened to be driving by around 7:30 a.m. when he spotted what looked like smoke. He kept looking as they drove b...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board had a marathon meeting stretching over four hours on Aug. 20. The board covered many topics ranging from a cash shortfall, potential bond election, mandating hookups, legal bills, water testing results and other regular business. District Manager Jean Curtiss informed the Board that the District has around $34,000 to operate in the coming months after paying this month’s invoices. The first half of this year’s property tax bills are not due until the end of November so the District won’t...
Ryan Craig, the editor and publisher of the Todd County Standard - a weekly newspaper in Elkton, Kentucky, ran a story encouraging farmers to attend a very important meeting on agricultural zoning. The future of farming could be changed at this meeting but the crowd at the meeting was sparse. The next morning at the local greasy spoon, Craig walked up to the table full of farmers and asked why they didn’t come to the meeting. Didn’t they know how important it was? One of the farmers stopped eating his eggs, looked up and said, “We didn’t go bec...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board voted to stick with a market value excluding improvements method for spreading the cost of the annual District operating budget at a Special Board meeting Aug. 3. Then they set the assessments at a hearing Aug. 6. The Board held another special meeting following the hearing, where they voted to continue seeking information regarding a bond election that could change how the District pays for the proposed sewer system. At the Aug. 3 special meeting Manager Jean Curtiss presented the Board w...
Sunday, Aug. 6, marked the 75th anniversary of the United States dropping an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Seeley Lake resident Cheri Thompson shared her father Ivan Odom's account of the aftermath. Odom served in the Air Force as a cargo pilot and flew C-47s during the Pacific Theater in WWII. He joined the Air Force in February, 1943 and received orders to return home in December of 1945. During his time in the Air Force Odom wrote many letters to his parents including one...
SEELEY LAKE – At the July 16 Seeley Lake Sewer District Board meeting, Missoula City/County Health Department Environmental Health Specialist II Jim Erven told the Board that if the proposed sewer system were scrapped by the voters in the District, there would be a government response of some kind. “One thing that will not be acceptable is a do nothing option,” said Erven Erven felt the need to make a statement at the Board meeting after the Health Department saw the agenda item considering putting the proposed sewer to a vote of the elect...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board covered a wide range of topics at their July 16 meeting. They signed a resolution recommitting to move the project forward while considered a different method of financing, discussed appealing the denial for attorney’s fees in the lawsuit against the District and reconsidered the annual fee assessment methodology. The District also received an invoice from Beal Law Firm for nearly $15,000 for the lawsuit filed and then withdrawn on behalf of the District against newly elected President Tom Mor...
MISSOULA – District Court Judge Leslie Halligan denied the Seeley Lake Sewer District’s motion for award of attorney’s fees against Don Larson but granted the District its Verified Bill of Costs totaling $510.24. Halligan declined to rule on a motion by the Plaintiffs to disqualify the District’s attorney Jon Beal. Halligan dismissed the lawsuit that was filed by Larson in June of 2018 on May 21, 2020. Approximately a week after the case was dismissed, Beal filed a motion to award attorney’s fees. In the order denying attorney’s fees, Halli...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District held a special meeting June 22 to take action on issues stemming from their attorney resigning from his position as the Board’s business counsel. They also discussed and voted to withdraw a lawsuit initiated by the District and filed on June 12 against newly elected Directors Tom Morris and Jason Gilpin. The meeting started out with a discussion on what was on the agenda and what was not. On the District’s website, information for the meeting listed several actions the Board may take, however, the a...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board held a meeting June 15 where it seated its newly elected Board members, elected new officers, selected the market value approach to spreading assessments to pay for the administrative budget and set a new time for regular meetings. The Board also discussed hiring a new attorney for its regular business. Directors Tom Morris and Jason Gilpin who were elected in May were seated at the meeting. They were not sworn in during the meeting because Morris and Gilpin had already completed their Oath o...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District filed a lawsuit Friday, June 12 against newly elected board directors Thomas Morris and Jason Gilpin seeking to stop the pair from taking any steps that may interrupt the ongoing sewer project. Despite filing the lawsuit three days prior to their June 15 board meeting, there was no notification or discussion of it at the meeting. The 77-page Verified Compliant with 16 pages of attachments was filed by District board attorney Jon Beal and verified by board President Pat Goodover. Goodover’s notarized...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board passed a budget for the 2021 fiscal year at their June 4 special meeting that is a little more than double last year’s budget. They tabled the decision on how to spread the assessment over the landowners. In other business the Board didn’t take action to authorize the project to go to bid because there are still a handful of things that are incomplete. District Manager Jean Curtiss presented the Board with a proposed budget between $224,329 and $283,329. The $59,000 difference was what was b...
MISSOULA – Fourth Judicial District Court Judge Robert L. (Dusty) Deschamps, III denied a Writ of Mandamus that would have forced the Missoula County Elections Administrator (EA) to approve two citizens’ initiative petitions for collection of signatures. Attorney Colleen Dowdall filed the petition for the Writ in January of 2020 on behalf of a pair of landowners in the Seeley Lake Sewer District, Don Larson and Tom Morris. The two citizens’ initiative petitions in question were filed with the EA in 2019 with one filed by SLSD resident Frann...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board discussed a plethora of topics at its May 21 regular meeting including more than doubling the annual District operating budget, project updates, hiring a new attorney, drilling new test wells and performing an income survey. The meeting was recessed in the middle to hold a public hearing on a grant application for Phase 2 of the collection system. As the meeting started President Pat Goodover asked the directors in attendance, including newly elected but not seated directors, their thoughts o...
SEELEY LAKE – The issue of when directors terms end and when to seat newly elected directors reared its head again in a special meeting May 21 that was held ahead of the regular meeting and also spilled into the regular meeting. The special meeting had just one item, litigation strategy, under new business on the agenda. Director Beth Hutchinson questioned how the meeting was scheduled on 48 hours notice explaining that the by-laws require 80 percent of the directors to agree to it. She said she was not asked. District Manager Jean Curtiss expl...
MISSOULA – District Court Judge Leslie Halligan threw out Don Larson’s lawsuit against the Seeley Lake Sewer District on May 21. The order came in response to a motion by the District’s attorney Jon Beal seeking to dismiss the case due to the plaintiffs providing inadequate responses to discovery and missing multiple deadlines. Beal successfully argued that the plaintiffs’ actions or lack thereof were abusive and a bad-faith litigation tactic that prolonged the lawsuit to a severe disadvantage to the District. The District has repeate...
SEELEY LAKE – According to a memo on the Seeley Lake Sewer District website the Board will not seat two newly elected Directors at their May 21 meeting. Instead they will wait until a special meeting June 15. The decision is sure to cause some waves at the May meeting as it goes against the Board’s own by-laws and relies on how the word “new” is interpreted in a section of the Montana Code Annotated (MCA). In a statement to the Pathfinder, Sewer Board President Pat Goodover wrote that when considering what date to seat newly elected Directors T...
We have had a lot of questions and criticism lately regarding our Letters to the Editor section. Readers have questioned why we are willing to “print lies,” “spread hate and discontent” and “further divide the community by printing such garbage.” The answer to this is simple for us - Letters to the editor are a vehicle to exercise freedom of speech. It is a platform we offer to EVERYONE whether we agree with it or not. First and foremost, letters to the editor are run in the opinion section of the paper because they are just that, someone’s t...
