For the first time in a long time I actually listened to a speech by President Donald J. Trump last week and I must admit, I was genuinely impressed.

You know, because I always suspected that China was behind the failure of the high school bond measure last fall.

Well, that and the fact that mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt, or at least corruptable, according to the President.

“And hopefully there will be no corrupt mail-in ballots, which, if you watched California and so many other places, mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt. So, you would have no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment, or travel if you’re going away on business or vacation,” Trump surmised.

So of course, the failure of the $84.4 million bond, by a vote of 2,913 against and 1,1334 for, was obviously a Chinese plot to keep their communist thumb on our education system.

It couldn’t have possibly have been that homeowners couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stomach the $500 annual increase in property taxes for an average Columbia Falls home.

Why, if we believe Trump, the entire vote was a sham and we should be remodeling that old school as we speak.

But no.

Now we’ll be asked to vote, once again, by mail (gasp!) for a trimmed $75.9 million bond, which will cost the average Columbia Falls homeowner about $409 a year, if it passes.

(‘Average’ by the way, is a $600,000 house, according to Zillow, at least. The median in Columbia Falls currently is above that a bit.)

The Chinese are wringing their hands, I’m sure of it. This time around the bond could pass because the economy is so much better under Trump.

 You know, with that $4.10 per gallon gas and $4 bag of tater chips, everyone is just chomping at the bit to spend their money on an old school that had a disturbing, baffling and not fully explained, mid-year decline in enrollment last school year.

But maybe the Chinese had something to do with that, too.

-----

There’s been a fair amount of debate on whether chainsaws should be allowed, at least temporarily to clear trails in the wilderness. In the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness the Forest Service allowed outfitters to temporarily use chainsaws for three years on about 542 miles of trails because of severe blowdown. The Forest Service did not adopt the same tactic for the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, which is also experiencing severe blowdown. I oppose the use of chainsaws in wilderness as it’s contrary the very tenets of the Wilderness Act (though the Act does allow for narrow administrative exemptions).

From a practical standpoint, I like using a hand saw. You can actually hear the forest while you work, which is nice.

I struck up a conversation with a former district ranger who noted that there’s been plenty of blowdowns in the past. There was no call for chainsaws.

The real problem isn’t downed trees. The real problem is the Forest Service needs more trail crews. I ran into a trail crew recently in the Bob and they were busting hump. 

But there simply isn’t enough of them. I would have expected the trail I was on to have been cleared a couple of weeks earlier, but there’s only so much country a trail crew can cover.

The Forest Service trail crews were cut to the bone in 2025, and they got some temps back in 2026, but it’s not nearly enough.

It’s classic “create a crisis.” You cut an agency, then add a few employees back, and everyone in power pats themselves on the back.

Organizations like the Backcountry Horsemen of the Flathead, The Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation and North Fork Trail Association all do great work, but they can only do so much.