When they met in Missoula’s Mammyth Bakery over 30 years ago, neither Michael or Victoria Howell thought they’d spend their lives running a community newspaper.

But in 1985 they started the Stevensville Star, which they later renamed the Bitterroot Star. When they started the paper, the couple was new to the newspaper business, but they saw a need in the community.

“At the time, the Bitterroot didn’t have a weekly newspaper,” Michael Howell said.

The philosophy of the newspaper, then and now, has remained the same, Victoria Howell said.

“Be the best at providing local news.”

Now the Bitterroot Star is undergoing arguably the biggest change it has faced in the last 23 years. The newspaper is opening a branch office in Hamilton, delivering papers free to Hamilton and Stevensville town residents, and offering free newspapers in stands from Missoula to Darby.

The story of how the Howells came to start the Bitterroot Star begins in 1983 in Missoula.

At the time Michael was studying for his master’s degree in philosophy. Victoria was working at the bakery. She had moved to Missoula from Hamilton. He had come from Texas by way of Pennsylvania State University.

After Michael earned his degree, he and Victoria decided to travel. They bought an old bus and headed south. They toured through New Mexico, Texas and Arizona, even spending some time in Mexico.

Along the way, Michael took jobs as a carpenter to earn traveling expenses. After more than a year on the road, the couple headed back to Big Sky country. Along the way they picked up a hitchhiker who would change their lives forever.

His name was Harry Van Horn and he was a newspaperman.

“He had been in newspapers all his life,” Victoria said. “He could do it all, but he was very good in sales.”

Van Horn inquired about the Howells’ plans in Montana. Neither Michael nor Victoria knew exactly what they were going to do to make a living. Van Horn suggested starting a newspaper.

“He knew how to start a newspaper from scratch – nothing – without a cent in your pocket,” Michael said.

The threesome headed up to the Flathead Valley and pulled into St. Ignatius, a community without a newspaper.

Michael and Van Horn went to local businesses and asked them to advertise in the new St. Ignatius Enquirer. The deal was that businesses could advertise for free in the first issue to see if they wanted to pay for advertising in subsequent issues.

Several businesses agreed to advertise, Michael said. Then he and Van Horn drove to Arlee and obtained a picture of the high school’s graduating class.

With this photo in hand, they went to local Arlee businesses and asked them if they would like to buy an advertisement in the new paper congratulating the graduating seniors. They sold seven $10 ads in Arlee, Michael said.

Then they went looking for an independent publisher who would publish the first issue of the paper on credit. Their luck continued. They found a willing publisher in Dean Neitz from Anaconda. Neitz published several papers on his press, and is still the printer for the Bitterroot Star today.

“Harry convinced him that if he printed our first paper without a payment, we would pay him after that,” Michael said.

The Howells and Van Horn took the $70 they got from advertisers in Arlee to Missoula and in pawnshops found a camera for $25 and a Royal typewriter. Then they bought office supply materials to make ads and set headlines.

Then it was back to St. Ignatius to report stories and write the paper. The St. Ignatius Enquirer was a hit, Michael said.

“The people loved it.”

But they couldn’t expand the business outside of St. Ignatius because the area was already inundated with newspapers and the advertising base was just too small.

So the three of them headed back to Missoula to begin work on a newspaper devoted to seniors. It was while selling ads for a senior newspaper in the Bitterroot that the Howells discovered Stevensville didn’t have a local paper. Stevensville business owners asked if the Howells would consider starting a local paper.

In 1985, the Star was born.

“In a relatively short time, it became one of the largest weeklies in the state,” Michael said.

The Bitterroot Star was first published out of their bus, he said. They developed photos in the bathroom of the local ice cream shop.

Over the years, the newspaper and the Howells have won many awards for journalism from the Montana Newspaper Association, Victoria said.

Neither of the Howells had formal newspaper training. What they’ve learned over the years, they learned on the job and from Van Horn, who isn’t a part of the operation any longer.

“What he really knew and believed is a newspaper is the heart and soul of a community,” Victoria said. “Every town needs a hometown newspaper.”

The Bitterroot Star embodies this ideal, she said.

Their news philosophy is that the paper must reflect the community, Michael said.

“You don’t make the news,” he said. “You provide the community with a mirror of itself, and a voice for the citizens.”

Star expands circulation, opens second office

Everyone at the Bitterroot Star newspaper wants to extend a warm welcome to the new readers in the Hamilton and Stevensville city limits who may be receiving the newspaper for the first time, as it is now being delivered at no charge to the doorstep of every residence and business within the limits of those two municipalities. The newspaper will also now be available in news stands up and down the valley at no charge from Darby to Missoula. This has upped the number of papers we print each week to 10,000.

Along with expanding its circulation, the Bitterroot Star is expanding in a number of other ways as well. We have expanded our news reporting to include the services of reporter Greg Lemon and have been awarded a Montana Newspaper Association grant to be used in the employment of a University of Montana journalism student. We have expanded our advertising sales staff by adding the services of Steve Green. We have expanded our circulation crew to include Patti Heiland to manage the municipal distribution in Hamilton and Beth Schurman to manage the Stevensville distribution.

Current subscribers within the city limits of these two municipalities, rather than receive two papers each week, may choose to transfer the remainder of their subscription to a person of their choice living anywhere else in the county outside these two towns by contacting the Bitterroot Star office in Hamilton, at 164 S. Third St., 375-7945 or come by our Stevensville office at 215 Main St. or call 777-3928.

As soon as we get settled into our Hamilton branch office you will all be invited to a grand opening. A Grand Re-Opening is also planned at the Stevensville office as soon as the current remodeling work is completed. They won’t be held on the same day so please feel free to attend both!

The Bitterroot Star is a home grown, locally owned publication established in 1985. The newspaper has grown in every way since its humble beginnings, just as the whole Bitterroot Valley has grown in every way over the last 22 years as well. Through it all, the Bitterroot Star has been dedicated to providing the valley with the best, most accurate local news possible. But beyond that, we have also done our best to nourish and sustain the sense of community that makes the Bitterroot Valley the special place that it is.

Now in our 22nd year, we recognize more than ever the vital role that a newspaper serves within a community. It is more than a source of information about the community, it is more than a reflection of the community and a mirror of the people, it is, in a way, the very heart and soul of a community. It is an invaluable public forum. It provides every person with the chance to have their say in the ongoing public conversation that in many ways will determine our destiny here. It is a marketplace for products and services and a free market for ideas and opinions. By being a private enterprise the newspaper remains free of undue influence from the government and may serve to hold elected officials and government agencies responsible to the public. In this way a free and independently owned press plays very a special role in the foundation of our democratic institutions and in the everyday functioning of a free people.

We hope to provide you all with this kind of service for years to come and are fully appreciative of the opportunity.

Darby pushes back against countywide zoning

By Greg Lemon

The message was clear: Darby wants out.

“We the people of the Darby Montana school district demand that we not be included in a Ravalli County zoning district. That all efforts to include the Darby school district CEASE AND DESIST immediately.”

Those were the words on a sign that greeted people last Thursday morning at the the shop at Bitterroot Rock Products and Ready Mix, just north of Darby.

More than 100 people showed up to the meeting to express their frustration with the countywide zoning process. A rough straw poll at the meeting showed that nearly all were against zoning, a handful was undecided and one was for it.

Ron Porter spoke about the sentiments of Darby area residents.

“There’s a word here that’s set us all abuzz and that word’s zoning,” Porter said. “We’re afraid of it.”

The fear comes from the county government deciding how people can use their land, he said. If this zoning goes through, the results will be dire.

“In the end, it will be a deed party,” Porter said. “They’ll take your deed and write down what you can do with your land forever.”

Porter described the rally as a grassroots movement against zoning that is gaining momentum, he said.

Ravalli County is in the process of countywide zoning. The goal is to have some sort of baseline zoning in place by November. But what zoning will look like is really up to county residents, said Ravalli County commissioner Greg Chilcott.

“We’re not going to shove it down your throat,” Chilcott said. “This is a grassroots efforts, a grassroots process. You define it.”

He told the crowd he understood their concerns, but also wanted to ensure them there wouldn’t be a “deed party.”

“I don’t envision anything like that, but I understand the concern,” Chilcott said.

He said he knows that zoning is a scary process because it means change, but he hopes the fear can be addressed by communication with the county through the zoning process.

“I know government isn’t exactly a four-letter word but a lot of people see it that way,” he said. “(Zoning) doesn’t have to be a four-headed monster.”

Chilcott then turned to Ravalli County planning department director, Karen Hughes, who explained to the crowd the process her department is going through.

Ravalli County is experiencing a lot of growth, Hughes said. The growth has demonstrated how cumbersome the current subdivision process is.

“That’s been a very painful process,” she said.

In the November 2006 election, citizens passed an initiative instituting emergency zoning, which forced the county to address zoning, Hughes said.

“One of the tools communities use when they’re facing change is zoning,” she said. But at this point, the zoning proposal is just a draft and the final regulations will rely heavily on community input. “It really depends on what people want for their community.”

Jan Wisniewski, Darby community planning committee member, stepped forward and said the focus of the meeting wasn’t to talk about how Darby can be engaged in the process. The community wants out of the countywide zoning process.

“I guess that’s what we’ll talk about,” Wisniewski said.

He has hundreds of signatures of people who don’t want zoning. Those signatures represent about 50,000 acres of land, Wisniewski said.

“No, no, no Darby doesn’t want it,” he said.

Hughes again encouraged people to submit comments, come to meetings and generally be involved in the process.

“This is a process to make zoning what it should be,” she said.

But the resounding opinion of the majority of people at the meeting was they didn’t want to be part of the process, they simply didn’t want zoning at all.

“We’re all smart enough to know that we don’t want zoning to get its foot in the door,” Wisniewski said. “We pretty much don’t want it and that’s pretty much what this discussion is going to be about.”

But people need to understand that even if Darby doesn’t want zoning, there is still a process in place, said Ravalli County commissioner Kathleen Driscoll. She assured people that she and the other commissioners were listening and would take the community’s feelings to heart.

And if people don’t like zoning, then the commissioners need to know what they don’t like about it, said Ravalli County commissioner Jim Rokosch.

“What is it about the way you see zoning that you fear?” Rokosch asked. “What is it you don’t like?”

Jim Canton, from the Stevensville CPC, spoke up.

“We don’t want anymore government,” Canton said. “The people have spoken.”

Jerry Ehmann explained why he doesn’t want zoning. Ehmann owns a ranch south of Sula. A few years ago he started a rock quarry on his land to help generate more income. He knows he won’t be able to ranch forever, and though he doesn’t plan on selling out, he would like to be able to sell a chunk of land in order to generate some income.

“We don’t want to ruin it,” Ehmann said. “We don’t’ want to tear it up. We don’t want to bust it up into little pieces.”

The best opportunity to protest zoning will be after the commissioners have made a decision on what it will be, Chilcott said.

Then citizens in each school district will have 30 days to file an official protest, Hughes said.

Right now, the county doesn’t know what the final zoning regulations will be, Chilcott said. But the commissioners will listen to the citizens in each district.

After the meeting, both Chilcott and Rokosch said they heard the complaints at the meeting loud and clear.

“We gave the citizens the opportunity to consider and contemplate and work on a zoning process and give us their feedback and the feedback we heard today is ‘We don’t want zoning’,” Chilcott said.

Rokosch, again, expressed his desire for the citizens in Darby opposed to zoning to make their concerns more specific.

“I think that the folks that gathered there definitely have some strong feelings about zoning,” Rokosch said. “But I ask them to really get to the substance of what they don’t want zoning to be. What are the specifics of their concerns and fears about the detrimental aspects of zoning as they see it? I hope they do that for us.”

Both commissioners think zoning is a good idea. Chilcott would like to see the baseline zoning be a minimal first step.

“I think minimally intrusive zoning is a good idea,” he said. “We, as government in general, can exceed the boundaries of our citizens in regulations. And I think our citizens have those concerns.”

But Rokosch resists the idea that zoning can’t be tailored on a district-by-district level. As the zoning process moves forward, it will be important to understand communities like Florence in the northern part of the county have different pressures and concerns than Darby.

“We can craft a zoning that will work for people from the north end to the south end of the valley,” he said.

Zoning has been coming for years, Chilcott said. Even without the voter initiative passed in 2006, zoning would be inevitable. The process now is for the county commissioners to engage citizens in helping design how zoning will be implemented, he said. The draft zoning regulations released last fall are just that – drafts. It was important for the commissioners to give the community something to start with and not just a blank sheet of paper.

“We gave them a lump of clay and we wanted them to come out with their vision of beauty,” Chilcott said. The only goal for the commissioners was to ensure the final zoning complies with Montana law. “Other than that the canvas was intended to be blank.”

Since they asked the community for input, the commissioners have to listen what citizens say.

“We need to respect the process that we initiated,” Chilcott said. “We gave each CPC some autonomy to run with their vision.”

Part of the challenge will be to take the recommendations from each school district and mold a seamless zoning ordinance.

“If one district selects different density designations than another district, how do you blend those together? It can be done,” he said.

As far as excluding Darby from zoning, that will have consequences, Rokosch said.

“I think the need to look at this countywide makes a lot of sense,” Rokosch said. “If we only zone part of the county it will create undo pressure on Darby if it’s unzoned. We end up creating an undo development pressure on Darby because they would be the district that has no rules except those already in place.”

Zoning can give the landowners and the county predictability, said Chilcott.

“So if you’re going to buy real estate you can have an idea of what’s going to be across the street or across the fence from you,” said Chilcott. “High density, low density, low-income housing, high-end housing, you name it, zoning gives you an idea of what you’re going to have for a neighbor.”

Zoning will also allow the county to plan for infrastructure needs, Chilcott said.

But any way you slice it, having the government telling people what they can and can’t do with their property is unacceptable, said Porter in an interview a few days after the Darby meeting.

Porter sees the zoning process not as a grassroots effort, but a top-down process. The county doesn’t seem to want to get information out to people about the zoning process, but would rather have a handful of people in each community design what people can do with their land, he said.

If people want zoning, grassroots options are available, Porter said, referring to voluntary zoning districts. The countywide zoning process is simply the county government telling people what to do.

Porter doesn’t trust the county government. In fact, many people he’s spoken with feel the same way. They see zoning as a trap, which will reduce their ability to do what they want with their land and lower their property values. The county’s unwillingness to widely disseminate information about zoning simply reinforces the mistrust.

“It’s a bit like when you set out a live trap for a skunk or a snare trap for a coyote – Hey, you don’t want to tell him it’s there before he steps in it, do ya?” Porter said.

Along with the lack of information, Porter thinks the process is going too fast.

“Why are (they) coming along and stuffing this down our throats when we don’t want it?” he asked. The core problem seems to be the county’s inability to deal with subdivisions, he said. If that’s the problem, then the county needs to address subdivisions, not unfairly regulate other people throughout the county. He doesn’t want to see big subdivisions built near Darby, but the community is too far from Missoula to be the focus of major subdivisions, Porter said. He doesn’t buy the argument that zoning will protect property values in Darby. But it doesn’t seem like the county really wants to hear what the people in Darby have to say, he said.

“They’re coming to ask us, I assume, do we want zoning,” Porter said. “We’ve said no, isn’t that part of the process? You asked us, we told you. Now if you don’t have some way to deal with that, that’s your problem, not our problem.”

Still, the process is underway and people need to keep involved and telling the commissioners what they want to see happen in their communities, Rokosch said. The commissioners are listening.

“This process is about recognizing (Darby’s) concerns as valid,” he said. “They’re being addressed and this is a work in process.”

The county is currently working to get information out to county citizens. The plan is to mail out information to all residents in the coming weeks, said Hughes.

Ravalli County receives grant to help with citizen outreach

By Greg Lemon

Ravalli County has received a grant to fund mailings to inform citizens about the countywide zoning process.

The $3,000 grant is through the Public Policy Research Institute at the University of Montana, which received the grant from the Brainerd Foundation, said Karen Hughes, director of the Ravalli County planning department.

The Brainerd Foundation has also provided the county with $100,000 for the countywide zoning project and is slated to provide another $100,000 in the next few months.

The $3,000 grant will provide each of the seven community planning committees with about $425 for public outreach, Hughes said.

The CPCs were formed in each school district to help advise the county during the zoning process.

The money can be spent on mailings or other methods of engaging the public in each of the school districts the CPCs represent, she said.

Beyond the grant, the county planning department is going to spend about $20,000 on at least two countywide mailings to provide citizens with information about the zoning project, Hughes said.

“We’ve talked about a need to have a very broad-based mailing at least once, hopefully twice – maybe more, to make sure people are connected and know that this project is out there, get the basics about it and are invited to attend,” she said.

The first mailing should come out toward the end of March when the county knows the date of the April zoning workshop.

“That’s the first point in which we have both new draft zoning regulations and new drafts of the zoning maps,” Hughes said.

The broad-based mailing seems to be the best approach at informing the entire county, she said.

“People have said: ‘I don’t read the newspaper. I don’t listen to the radio. I don’t watch TV’,” Hughes said.

The second mailing will come out sometime in June, she said. Each mailing will give citizens ways to provide public comment on the draft regulations and maps, as well as deadlines for comments and the schedule of upcoming meetings.

The mailings will be a good start to getting the public engaged, Ravalli County commissioner Greg Chilcott said.

In hindsight, the mailings should have come out sooner, he said. But the county wanted people to have something to comment on before they were sent a mailing.

“Earlier we didn’t know what we had to share with them, except we were going to start in the process,” Chilcott said.

And, quite honestly, commissioners thought it wouldn’t be a problem getting people involved, he said. But now they’re hearing that many people don’t know what’s going on or how to get involved.

“It’s been such a hot button issue for years and we thought that citizens would be concerned and participate early in the process,” Chilcott said. “But we found that without that direct contact from the county we had fewer citizens than we thought.”

Planning Department may crash due to overload

By Michael Howell

Ravalli County Planning Director Karen Hughes told the County Commissioners last week that her department could crash from an overload of work if something is not done soon to alleviate things. She said that she was looking to the commissioners for some direction as to how to handle the crunch. She said that priorities needed to be reviewed because not everything could get done.

Hughes told the commissioners that the department is currently under pressure to review 40 active subdivision applications within the short time frame set by state law. At the same time her staff is working overtime on a plethora of issues concerned with the countywide zoning process which is set to be accomplished by November.

“We are having difficulty functioning,” said Hughes, “My staff is at their wits end.”

Hughes said that the commissioners’ lengthy review of each subdivision was also slowing up the works. She asked them not to try changing or altering the subdivision review process on the fly as they have at each of those meetings. She argued for accepting the current review process as enacted by the planning staff and to speed up the commission’s process of approval.

She also told the commissioners that they could either push back the timeline for completing the countywide zoning process, or subdivision reviews could be expedited by the commissioners, or staff time could be cut for the countywide zoning project.

Commissioner Carlotta Grandstaff indicated that none of those options looked like a good choice.

Commissioner Jim Rokosch said that he was seeking information, primarily about roads, that he thought was essential to making a good decision, such as the number of past fatalities on the roads under consideration. He said that the commission needed added information of that sort and also needed to consider what impacts along those lines would be acceptable.

Grandstaff defended the commissioners’ lengthy examination of the subdivisions and said they were not going to be rubber stamping any applications. She also suggested that the commission might consider filing a lawsuit against the state over its subdivision review deadlines.

“It doesn’t sound like you think we are doing our job,” said Hughes. She stated that the commissioners should be able to trust their planning staff and their current available legal counsel, but don’t seem to. She abruptly left the meeting shortly after making those remarks.

Discussion continued until the commissioners decided to close the meeting for a personnel matter. They would not name the personnel involved nor any issues that would be discussed. Commissioner Greg Chilcott, who briefly left the room, said that the employee in question had not waived her right to privacy and a closed meeting would be held. The closed meeting was held and no minutes were taken. No action followed the closed meeting.

Mountain snowpack better than average

February mountain precipitation was 109 percent of average. Water year precipitation is 105 percent of average. West of the Continental Divide, the Columbia River Basin February mountain precipitation was 113 percent of average. East of the Continental Divide, the Missouri River Basin was 105 percent of average; the St. Mary River Basin was 126 percent of average; and the Yellowstone River Basin was 101 percent of average.

"Even though March 1 snowpack is near average overall, water users and water managers need to pay particular attention to local basins affecting their water supplies," said Roy Kaiser, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) water supply specialist. "There are several localized areas where snowpack and streamflow forecasts are below average."

On March 1, seasonal snowpack accumulation statewide should be about 80 percent, with about 85 percent in the Columbia River Basin and about 75 percent in the Missouri River Basin. There are normally about four to six weeks remaining until the seasonal snowpack peak is reached. Statewide mountain snow water content was 107 percent of average and 123 of last year at this time. West of the Continental Divide, snowpack was 109 percent of average and 122 percent of last year. East of the Continental Divide, snowpack was 103 percent of average and 122 percent of last year.

The Bitterroot River Basin is 115 percent of average and 135 percent of last year.

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