On Oct. 22, about 30 people gathered at a meeting focused on the future of Seeley Lake.
Inside the Seeley-Swan High School cafeteria, close to 30 people gathered and raised their hands for various ice breaker questions before a meeting began. How many people in the room have lived in Seeley Lake for more than 20 years? Maybe a third of the hands went up. How many people were born and raised in Seeley? No hands. How many are retired? Business owners? Have kids in the school system?
Who is worried about the future of Seeley Lake? Every hand in the room went up.
"Great, that's why we're here," Sharon Teague, secretary of the Seeley Lake Community Council and asker of the ice breaker questions, said.
The Seeley Lake Community Council hosted this meeting on Oct. 22 to discuss the results of a survey, to which 148 people responded. The survey's purpose was to get feedback from those who live in Seeley on topics ranging from community pride (results showed a 97% positive sentiment regarding pride but only a 29% positive sentiment on Seeley Lake's future) to projects they hope to see implemented (a word map depicted "housing," "sewer" and "more" as options mentioned frequently).
"Every single thing tied back to the sewer," Racene Friede, president of Western Montana's Glacier Country, said.
The meeting was also a follow up to one held in January by Western Montana's Glacier Country, an organization focused on the economic and social well-being in tourism-oriented communities. Friede said a big takeaway from that meeting was that people wanted to keep the momentum going, and the community council decided to run with it.
Two weeks ago, Western Montana's Glacier Country received a grant from the Department of Commerce. Friede, who grew up in Ovando, said the money - a total of $250,000 - will be put into three different projects: creating a recreate responsibly website, a good neighbor website (which is meant to help inform those new to Montana about what it means to live in rural areas) and a community empowerment program, of which Seeley Lake is the pilot. Friede said the hope is Seeley's process through the program can serve as a template for other communities dealing with the pressures of change in rural, and in many cases recreation-based, economies.
"Everything that Seeley's talking about, I've had the same conversation in Cut Bank, the same conversation in Libby," Friede said.
At the Tuesday night meeting at the high school, Friede and representatives from the Montana Action Project, which through the community empowerment program will provide support to the Seeley Lake Community Council, facilitated a discussion of the survey results and broke attendees up into groups to specifically discuss question three: what initiatives or projects would you like to see that would make you proud of your community? Options for discussion were broken into four categories - infrastructure, environment/nature-based/recreation opportunities, economic development/revitalization and social campaigns/endeavors.
Facilitators rotated large pieces of paper between each group for people to place stars on ideas they like, sticky notes with suggestions for changes on things they didn't and markers to write in options that weren't listed. Participants engaged thoughtfully, frequently going over time limits given. There seemed to be a fairly straightforward consensus that a sewer was needed. People brought up ideas of incorporation or secession, the need for more lodging options and concerns over drug-use.
What kills projects is a breakdown in communication, Friede said after participants gathered post group discussion. Let's face it, she said, in all small towns there's 10 people who serve on all the boards, "And how many people are seeing a decrease in the number of volunteers that are willing to step up and engage with you?" she asked, another commonality between the communities she's had discussions with in western Montana.
With funding from the Department of Commerce and support from the Montana Action Project, the idea of the community empowerment program is to provide resources, maybe in the form of grant writing or shaping grants to be competitive for application, to get projects off the ground. The funding, which is intended to help the process of a project, but not necessarily the project itself, Friede said, runs out in 2026.
"We just want to be a resource and help you do it," Friede said. "That's what we're bringing to the table, is to help this process move forward."
If interested in getting involved, the next Seeley Lake Community Council meeitng will be on Nov. 12 at 6 p.m. at The Barn.
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