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Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Strip Malls

I want desert. Mmmm tasty.

I went to the counsel meeting, An agent spoke for the developer. My letter of support was mentioned by an advocate of sticking to original plan. The Counsel more or less didn't grasp the importance and just approved the changes. A commisoner brought up that it was a gas station prior to being an empty lot so more or less any improvement is welcome.

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# posted by Max : 7/06/2005 09:00:00 PM 0 comments

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Mini-Golf 3: The Revenge

Keeley is working into things slowly. Her computer skills are a bit light but she seems to learn and retain well. I've spent most of my time working with her. A lot of problems with my processes have cropped up so that's eating time.

The proposal for the west park golf course site fell through. Actually a bit on purpose. We sent a letter of support for the alternate project to the land sales committee. The other project involves 1.5 Million to develop and office building. If they can get that project then that’s the way they should go. We were tentatively offered some unbuildable land over by the pit as a consolation prize. It may not be the way to go considering it's a superfund site (meaning no digging and thus no buildings).

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# posted by Max : 6/02/2005 01:57:00 PM 0 comments

Mini-Golf 2

Keeley's computer is only now up and running. The electrical in that area along with phone and the actual counter still needs work but I’m going to move her there when she gets back from lunch today.

Mini-golf course presentation went quite well. Afterwards we ended up at the M&M with Commissioners Sorich, Walker, Dunlap, Bury, and Sheehe (more or less a 1/3 of the council). We didn't talk about the course with the lot of them but did make some new friends and discussed our vision for Butte as well as our projects.

Sheehe had a good idea for the course. Put it under a headframe (he was thinking the Original). We are perusing that idea with some folks up at teh courthouse about a diffrent headframe. Looks great.


This is what a headframe looks like.

In the mean time check out the MiniPut2 game

Caught up with Bartender Girl. She is to call me tomorrow for a lunch date. We shall see.

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# posted by Max : 6/02/2005 01:41:00 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Mini-Golf

A quick Butte Civics lesion. There are three towns in Silver Bow County: Butte-bustling city of 35,000, Walkerville-I'd call it Butte's Springtown, and Rocker-a truck stop and a ganky full-nude strip-bar. So since Butte is the only real city in the county in 1977 (A great vintage for babies) the city and county governments merged. The upshot of witch is that while a city has a city council and a mayor, Butte-Silver Bow has a Council of Commissioners and a Chief Executive.

Now a quick Butte Econ Lesson: B-SB is like Flint Michigan in that it was a one-industry town (mining) and then the industry left (prices of metals fell). And like Flint, a some of the Butte citizens choose to stay, and many other chose to leave. Two other employers came in, the Montana Power Company and Touch America (telecommunications not a crazy band of perverts). Well they both went under. Needless to say the economy has had some serious suckage. The upshot of which is BSB has a lot of property that was lost to back-taxes.

More Civics: They used to sell the property at a big tax sale. But bad people took advantage by buying historic buildings on-the-cheap and then gutting them for timbers and brick (largely to ship to the west coast or north east). They would then not pay the taxes leaving BSB with the same property but in far worse condition. The new strategy is to issue Developer's Packets. Which is like a tax auction except that your plans are the more the focus than your bid. Plus you must get reasonably along in your project before you get the deed. (though if they take it back they have to reimburse you for your improvements).

Why was all that important? I am making a presentation to the Council of Commissioners regarding a developer's packet tonight. Its for a small piece of vacant land two blocks east of us. We want to through in a bid just incase no one else does. But we cant just “buy” it so we propose to cram an 18 hole historic Butte and Mining themed miniature golf course.

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# posted by Max : 6/01/2005 04:32:00 PM 0 comments

Montana Bloggers:

This great list was stolen from A History of Montana by Kodak.
Welcome to MikeAbleXray. You look like you could use a drink.