Kathy Davis stands in Lake Tamarack, or what nearby residents have started referring to the big pothole as. Davis joked that she was going to send this photo out to her nieces and nephews as an Easter card.
The potholes in front of Seeley Lake's Post Office have been the ire of many residents. Earlier this month, they were graded and filled in with some gravel by an unknown source.
Sometime between April 12 and 13, the potholes off Highway 83 that a driver had to navigate before entering the Seeley Lake Post Office parking lot were filled in.
According to a Letter to the Editor the Pathfinder received, published in the April 18 paper, the "minefield of deep holes" was "neatly filled in and graded." The writer of the letter learned that a Post Office employee had left work on Friday April 12 and came to work the next day to see the holes filled in, and didn't know who had taken on the task.
These potholes in front of the Post Office have been the ire of many Seeley Lake residents. Shane Stack, chief public works officer for Missoula County, said he received many calls and emails from residents about the driveway leading into the Post Office.
The thing about that driveway, however, is that it is not managed by Missoula County, or by the state Department of Transportation. The Post Office leases the property it sits on from a private landowner and is responsible for the parking lot, according to Stack who spoke to an employee at the Post Office about the situation. The driveway, though, is a gray area.
Stack said the Letter to the Editor in the Pathfinder prompted him to write a letter to the Post Office property owner, asking that they take care of the issue. The letter was sent to the owners on April 23.
According to Montana Cadastral, which contains information on land ownership across the state, the Post Office property is owned by APIF Montana LLC. The address listed for the company is in Alameda, California and a mailing address is located in Mount Airy, Maryland.
It's not uncommon for Post Offices to be owned by private, out-of-state owners. In fact, real estate companies exist for that exact function, like the Postal Realty Trust - which owns 13 properties in Montana according to its website - or Postal Heritage Properties, both based in New York.
An article from Trepp - a software company geared toward banking and finance - from 2019 said leases for Post Offices were typically for five years and required the Post Offices to pay for utilities, maintenance and property taxes. Property owners paid for insurance and costs associated with building upkeep and collected rent from Post Offices.
Montana's Department of Transportation takes care of Highway 83, as it's a state highway, and gives the Post Office a right-of-way to the approach, or driveway, with a permit, which places the responsibility of driveway maintenance on the property owner.
According to MDT, the Post Office driveway is the responsibility of the owners of the Post Office property.
Stack said if the county owns a road that accesses a state highway, the county will maintain the road and any related approaches, including portions that might be in the state's right-of-way.
Another area in Seeley Lake that residents have pointed out as a problem is the corner of Redwood and Tamarack Roads, which some residents have referred to as Lake Tamarack.
Kathy Davis, a Seeley Lake resident, lives near the intersection and said the pothole there is about a foot deep in some places. It hasn't created any problems, she said, but she'd hate to drive through it.
"It's been there for a month or so," Davis said in mid-March.
In this case, Redwood and Tamarack are county roads, and Stack said residents can drop a pin on Missoula County's map to designate roads that need repairs, add a comment on the Missoula County Voice website or give his office a call at 406-258-4818. Response times vary, Stack said, and depend on the location of the pothole and what crews would be responding to the notification and their workload.
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