'We have a problem here!'

Community safety and bridge repairs were topmost in the minds of over 50 people who gathered for the January Seeley Lake Community Council meeting. Participants expressed confusion about continued safety concerns and a bridge repair timeline.

At the November community council meeting, Seeley Lake community member Michelle Dunn introduced discussion on community safety concerns, including animal control, community decay, drug activity and the presence of registered sexual offenders, especially in the neighborhood around the elementary school. Issues raised about community decay in general required more information and for this reason Missoula County commissioners and sheriff's office representatives were invited to the January meeting to follow up on Dunn's concerns.

"How do we find solutions for these issues before someone gets hurt?" Dunn asked.

According to a Missoula County ordinance "community decay" means, "public nuisance created by allowing rubble, debris, junk, refuse, discarded, ruined, wrecked or dismantled vehicles or mobile homes to accumulate on property adjacent to public roadways resulting in conditions that are injurious to health, indecent, offensive to the senses, or obstruct the free use of property so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property."

"What might seem like, esthetically, a big old mess may not be any criminal violation or code violation, and even when it comes to junk vehicles," Missoula County Commissioner Dave Strohmaier said. "There are pretty strict guidelines by state of Montana law that we are dictated to follow that might not allow us to go out there with a wrecker and haul some vehicle away. Even though it looks junky, it does not meet the strict definition of what a junk vehicle is. It's really on a case-by-case basis."

Missoula Health Department Director of Environmental Health Shannon Therriault joined the council meeting by Zoom to discuss the topic of community decay.

"Even when something looks junky, it might not qualify as community decay. Even when a car looks kind of banged up, if it has a license that's current, it's not a junk vehicle," Therriault said. "We have worked with several property owners to clean up parcels in Seeley. But those are hard ones to get resolution on for sure," adding that it takes a lot of camaraderie to work with landowners.

An idea presented by Strohmaier and Tom Browder, community council chairman, during the meeting was to follow up with another meeting in Seeley Lake with Therriault to go over the community decay concerns. In addition, a special working group will be formed with community members led by Garry Swain and Jeannette Smith of the community council. Twelve people signed up for the working group to discuss possible solutions to public safety concerns and will be looking at Neighborhood Watch programs.

"The best path forward I would see is to have some of you who are here in the room, who know your community best, come together," Strohmaier said. "Let's pull together a task force of some sort (and) bring in the experts that we need to bring some creative solutions."

Missoula County Sheriff Bob Parcell, who lives in the Swan Valley and works in Seeley Lake, attempted to address public safety concerns by suggesting people call 911. Two participants expressed dismay with 911 as they have repeatedly been put on hold for up to seven minutes and felt that their reports were not attended to.

"I'm not surprised that people occasionally get put on hold with 911," Strohmeier told the Pathfinder. "In a county the size of Missoula County, dispatchers have to triage incoming calls to address issues of most immediate importance."

Strohmaier said people can report 911 concerns to Missoula County's Office of Emergency Management.

Missoula County Public Works Director Shane Stack discussed the progress on bridge projects in the area. Although the county did not get the RAISE grant it applied for, which would have provided funding for various county bridges, like Boy Scout Road and Sunset Hill Road Bridges, they are continuing to fine tune their grant application writing and hope a grant comes through soon for which they will be competitive.

The decaying bridges in the Greenough and Seeley-Swan area are the top priority for funds in the county, along with a bridge by Clinton and one near Arlee. Stack explained that the bridge budget of $1 million each year is overwhelmed when the Boy Scout Bridge project alone is estimated between $13 to $14 million.

Besides grants, Stack suggested that funding through legislation is another route. He encouraged people to write to state and national representatives for funding for local bridge projects.

"These bridges are used by everyone passing through," Stack said. "There's no reason why federal funds can't be used to maintain them."

Browder said a sample letter to representatives would be posted on the Seeley Lake Neighborhood Watch 2.75 Facebook group.

"There are 126 bridges in Missoula County and to maintain each one every 75 years would take a yearly budget of $4 million," Stack said. "Using grants and federal earmarking of funds is the mechanism we have to meet these needs."

Strohmaier said Missoula County was successful in getting about $5 million in a community wildfire defense grant, which will be used for providing resources to private property owners to address wildfire fuel mitigation on private land.

The Pathfinder has covered a few animal control cases in the past year, and loose dogs are constantly brought up on local social media outlets. Participants at this meeting suggested that a local animal control officer would be both a help and provide a local job.

"I call animal control and they tell me to catch the dog," Dunn said. "That's not my job. That's not what we pay taxes for."

The Missoula City-County Animal Shelter recently expanded. It is a joint Missoula County and city of Missoula facility with shared staff. Ideally there are five animal control officers, yet the shelter has been getting by with only four as they have been trying to fill that fifth position since 2022.

"This is a complaint driven system," Strohmaier said. "We don't have animal control officers roaming around Missoula County looking for violations. That would require more staff and might be considered an overreach of government."

Missoula City-County Animal Control is part of the Environmental Health Division of Missoula Public Health.

Parcell said the sheriff's office's first job is to be the safety officers for the schools. They also assist with animal control when called. He said the office has a kennel for stray dogs behind the Missoula County Sheriff's Office in Seeley Lake.

"We have a problem here. I know that it's at a higher level to fix, but this is our town, and these are our children," Dunn said.