Bozeman in 5 minutes. Every Mon/Wed/Fri morning.
We read the four-hour commission meetings, the county agendas, and the school-board packets so you don't have to. Then we tell you, with jokes:
One-tap unsubscribe, no spam ever. Reply to any issue — we read everything.
The latest issue
Morning. We are going to flirt with 81 today, which in mid-October feels less like a gift than a setup, given the rain and snow idling offshore for the weekend. Your ballot lands in the mailbox today too, so we open with the three statewide questions riding along with it, then the congressional race that swung through town Thursday. After that, a mine strike settled, a research milestone up at MSU, and the valley's last warm afternoon before the scraper comes back out. Coffee's on.
Gallatin County mails absentee ballots to voters Friday, and Election Day is Nov. 3. Below the local charter question we covered earlier this week sit three statewide measures, and every Montana voter gets the same three.
Here they are, with no thumb on the scale. I-194 would bar corporations, unions, and nonprofits from spending in state elections. It is backed by a group called The Montana Plan, led by former political-practices commissioner Jeff Mangan, with former Sen. Jon Tester and former Govs. Steve Bullock and Marc Racicot signed on. Americans for Prosperity and the Montana Chamber of Commerce oppose it, the chamber's president warning it would "silence the Montana business community."
CI-132 would write nonpartisan judicial elections into the constitution, keeping party labels off the ballot for judges. Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts is for it; the Montana Republican Party is against, arguing candidates should be free to name a party. CI-133 would set firm, timely rules for how citizen initiatives get reviewed, which supporters say has grown too slow and costly for ordinary Montanans to use, while critics counter that review timelines vary for reasons no court controls.
That is the full slate. Read the text before you fill in a bubble, and get the ballot back by Nov. 3.
Montana's 1st House District, the western seat that includes Bozeman, is a contest between Republican Aaron Flint, an Army veteran and radio host from Kalispell, and Democrat Sam Forstag, a wildland firefighter and union leader from Missoula. The two met Thursday (Oct. 8) for a half-hour debate hosted by the Montana Television Network.
On the valley's loudest issue, affordability, Flint leaned on trades education, mining, and manufacturing as the way to bring costs down, while Forstag tied housing to healthcare and said progress runs through working across the aisle. Each accused the other of being too cozy with data-center developers, an industry now drawing fights across Montana and, as it happens, the subject of a lawsuit a few hundred miles east (see below). Ballots are due back Nov. 3.
The month-long strike at Sibanye-Stillwater is settled. United Steelworkers Local 11-0001 ratified a new three-year contract this week, ending a walkout that began Sept. 3 for about 420 workers at the Stillwater Mine and the Columbus metallurgical complex in south-central Montana. The fight was over health benefits and pay incentives at a company squeezed by a long slump in palladium prices.
Montana State quietly crossed a milestone. The university says its annual research spending grew 7% to top $300 million for the first time, a reminder that one of the valley's biggest economic engines runs on grant money.
The data-center fight the candidates sparred over is already in court. Yellowstone County commissioners sued to block a citizen initiative that would require two-thirds voter approval for new data centers, a measure aimed at a hyperscale Quantica project near Billings. The county argues it collides with the state's 2025 Right to Compute Act; if it survives, voters weigh in next spring.
MSU's wild dogs are getting a global read. A new paper from ecology professor Scott Creel's lab drew international attention this week for finding that African wild dogs roam far enough to recolonize country where they had vanished. Proof that the best fieldwork out of Bozeman isn't always about Bozeman.
Eighty-one and sunny today, and then Montana remembers what month it is. Rain arrives Saturday and turns to snow Sunday, with a high around 35 and a low near 28, and Columbus Day Monday doesn't let up either. Eighty-one Friday and snow Sunday is the valley's way of telling you to keep every jacket you own.
The Bozeman Art Museum opens Foundations of Vision: Architecture & Imagination in Bozeman with a free reception, 5 to 7 p.m. A show about how the town got built, on the last soft evening before the weather turns.
Saturday (Oct. 10): Heart of the Valley throws open its doors for a free open house, noon to 3 p.m., out on Cameron Bridge Road. Come for the adoptable dogs, stay because you drove all the way out there.
Saturday (Oct. 10): Cat/Griz hockey at Gallatin Ice, 7:30 p.m., $20 and up. The rivalry on skates, indoors, which is exactly where you want to be once the rain starts.
Sunday (Oct. 11): Tinworks celebrates its new Mill Building with "Chisel & Razor: Act II", a free opening from 3 to 6 p.m.
Sunday (Oct. 11): Reggae mainstays Steel Pulse play The ELM, 7 p.m., $49 to $82. The weekend's splurge, and a warm one for a cold night.
The Gallatin is running about 335 cfs near Gallatin Gateway, low and clear, which has the fish stacked in the deeper holes. The River's Edge reports dry-droppers, indicators, and streamers all moving fish, with blue-winged olives still coming off on gray afternoons. Fish it Friday, because by Sunday the boat ramp comes with a side of sleet.
The city's street-closure map lists the N. 27th Avenue reconstruction, the two-lane connector Knife River has been building since May, as scheduled to wrap up this month. If your drive has spent the summer dodging that work, the end is close, though the city shifts these dates when weather or utilities get in the way.