MATR Newsletter – November 28, 2022
The state with the best education wins!

Highway header board at the bottom of McDonald’s Pass.

Visiting in-laws?

Slow down and get there late.

Come Home Montana

• Montana Career Opportunities – Installation Technicians and Sales Representatives – Missoula Valley Internet Co-op

  Do you want to help grow Missoula’s first and only community-powered internet provider? We small but growing organization with a rapidly expanding community network striving to meet the ever growing…

• Tip of the Spear Podcast – Missoula County But A Moment in Time: Reflecting on Gratitude

  This week, Commissioners Vero, Slotnick and Strohmaier immersed themselves in the spirit of the holiday season by talking about gratitude. They share some of their favorite adages and how they stay grounded through the pressure of productivity.

Eventgroove

• Try to Please All and You Will Please None: How Segmenting Your List Can Increase Online Engagement and Charitable Giving

  Have you ever used these communication strategies with your nonprofit community members?

City of Bozeman Economic Development

• Bozeman sets 2023 legislative priorities, identifying four as the focus

  “The state chose to put six more items on the list of powers denied to self-governing local governments like the city of Bozeman. We want flexibility there. We want to be able to govern people,” says Veselik.

• Bozeman planning for groundwater wells to boost water supply

  But first, the city will have to do extensive testing and planning to get a permit from the state to pump any groundwater.

Great Falls Development Authority

• GFDA’s Top 10

  Here is our Top 15 for this week celebrating work and successes to grow and strengthen the Great Falls regional economy — Montana’s Golden Triangle. And, sharing business resources and skill-building opportunities to empower your success.

• Economic challenges and goals similar for Lethbridge and Great Falls, Montana

  Trevor Lewington with Economic Development Lethbridge was the only Canadian speaker at this year’s Montana Economic Developers Association Conference in Great Falls. Lewington said it was a chance to share, listen and learn.

Montana Bioscience Cluster Initiative

• Montana Bioscience Alliance Fall 2022 Newsletter

  The Montana Bioscience Alliance serves as a hub for Montana’s biotechnology companies,
  entrepreneurs, laboratories, hospitals, clinics and universities to commercialize, grow and sustain
  globally competitive bioscience companies — ultimately to create high-quality jobs and economic
  opportunity in Montana.

Montana Business

• Frontier Airlines cuts the cord on customer service by phone

  “OK. As a reminder, we offer several ways to reach us, which can be found on the customer support page at flyfrontier.com. Have a great day.”

  Then it hangs up.

• Missoula, Montana’s onX – Backcountry apps target winter recreationists with loads of features

  Montana has its own homegrown app developer of outdoor maps in onX. In a recent online presentation, the company’s Joe Risi and Charlie von Avis highlighted the capabilities of their app for backcountry snow recreationists.

• Missoula, Montana’s onX and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers- It’s Public Land. But the Public Can’t Reach It.

  The app is called OnX. Its basic functionality is simple: OnX shows you where you are in real time, using a blue dot exactly the same as the one on Google Maps. The difference is that OnX is designed to show where you are in a forest, on a mountain or in a canyon. It has been around since 2009 and is popular with hunters and outdoor enthusiasts.

• ‘Quiet quitting’ poses a cybersecurity risk that calls for a shift in workplace culture 

  Considering that 82% of data breaches last year involved the human element or human error, security leaders can’t afford to overlook the risks presented by quiet quitting, particularly amid the Great Resignation, where employees expect greater work-life balance.

• Hi-Country Snack Foods is truly Made in Montana

  Since 1976 Hi-Country snacks could be found in the backpacks of hunters and hikers all over the country. But recently the company, located on HWY-200, has shifted its focus to making their products using more Montana-born, raised and produced beef.

Housing

• Wall Street Suddenly Buying Fewer Single-Family Homes

  Rising interest rates are having a major effect in the housing market—including on the large institutional investors who spent much of the past couple of years buying up single-family homes.

• Europe’s Cities Are Getting More Crowded—That’s a Good Thing

  After decades of slowly creeping outward with the creation of new suburban commuter belts, Europe’s cities are growing denser once more—and providing a potential boon for the environment and our well-being in the process. American cities, take note.

• Montana Governor’s Housing Task Force – 11/30 – Online

  Public input on the recommendations is an important part of developing the final report. As has been the case at all task force meetings, there will be an opportunity for public comment at the November 30 meeting.

Regional Business News

• Tesla’s Found a Way Around Direct Sales Bans by Putting Dealerships on Tribal Lands
  The dealerships and service centers will employ Native Americans from the area as part of an agreement.
• Cutting-edge tech made this tiny country a major exporter of food

  The Netherlands has used advances in vertical farming, seed technology and robotics to become a global model

21st Century Education Initiative – “You Should Care…”

• Since 2002, the National Archery in Schools Program has taught more than 18 million kids about archery, including in Montana’s Flathead Valley

  NASP includes students in grades four through 12 with the aim to improve educational performance by learning focus, self-control, discipline, patience and the life lessons required to be successful in the classroom and in life.

• Central High students in Billings, Montana aim to strengthen workforce and community through new healthcare club

  “Students can begin to see themselves in this career field, begin to learn skills for success in healthcare, begin to network with colleges and healthcare institutions, develop resume and research skills jobs and become leaders in our community,” Central Anatomy and Krista Cunningham, physiology teacher and club advisor. “Basically, students get a springboard to help them get started in healthcare careers.”

• Tonight!!! – Forums for Missoula superintendent search set for Monday – 11/28 – 5:30PM – Sentinel High School & Seeley-Swan High School

  Due to the tight timeline of the search, the forums will be the only opportunity for community feedback outside of board meetings.

• Wild Sustenance: Innovative Course Introduces UM Students to Hunting – “This was the coolest and most practical class I have ever taken,” Hanson said, “and my freezer is the proof.”

  “Almost all of us who are hunters learned from relatives and friends. We had opportunities,” said course instructor Joshua Millspaugh, UM’s Boone and Crockett Professor of Wildlife Conservation. “There is such an impediment to those who didn’t have that opportunity. The students that are here say, ‘I’ve always been interested in learning more, but I don’t know where to start.’

Government News & Events

• Anchorage Eliminates Parking Requirements Citywide

  Anchorage is the latest city to enact sweeping parking reforms, in another blow to the car-centric status quo of planning.

Transportation

• State Of Colorado Launches First EV Education Campaign

  The EV CO website provides information about the benefits of driving electric vehicles, financial incentives, and EV prices. For example, one of the benefits referenced on the site is that: “In Colorado, at an average of $0.13 per kilowatt hour at home, you can save between 66% and 75% to “fill up” at home compared to the price of gasoline.” Another is that some studies have found EVs cost 40% less to maintain. There are many other EV-related facts on the site as well

• Roundabouts are (slowly!) eating the suburbs

  Why add a roundabout, you might ask. Because roundabouts offer impressive safety gains. In general, a roundabout will drive down fatal crashes by 90 percent and cut all car-crash injuries by at least 75 percent, even while accommodating a higher volume of cars.

• Cities and Automobile Dependence: What Have We Learned?

  Urban planning and transport policies adopted in innumerable cities worldwide have moved to reduce automobile dependence, though academic and policy debate continues. The future is likely to continue this debate, especially over autonomous cars where there will remain a fundamental need to keep cities on a path of reduced automobile dependence by ensuring that hard-won principles of reurbanization of corridors, integrated with new transit alternatives and walkability at precincts/stations, are given the highest priority.

• Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ beta is now available to everyone in the U.S.

  Full-Self Driving is a set of features that, ideally, brings Tesla cars very close to autonomous driving, with the driver entering a destination into the navigation system, and the car driving there on its own, though the driver has to be ready to take over at all times.

Energy and Climate Change

• Climate change is on pace to radically alter life on Earth. What to know.

  Temperatures on our planet have fluctuated based on natural processes many times in the past, but experts say this extraordinary run of warming is different.

• Dandelion Energy Ready To Expand Ground Source Heat Pumps

  The tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act has given the entire heat pump industry a shot of adrenaline.

TED and TEDX Talks

• Today’s TED Talk – Whose land are you on? What to know about the Indigenous Land Back movement

  Land thrives in Indigenous hands, and there are real, tangible ways you can help return what was stolen by colonizers from tribes across North America. Indigenous scholar Lindsey Schneider addresses the ill-gotten legacy of settler colonialism with an introduction to the Land Back movement: the push to return stewardship of the Earth to its rightful guardians and restore balance to ecosystems for generations to come.

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