The Mysteries of Stimson….

June 6, 2007 in Economy & Business, Environment, Missoula

by jhwygirl

Prequel: Matthew Koehler, of the Wild West Institute, presents a maddeningly insane picture of Lee Newspapers in a comment to my previous post on Stimson Lumber. As I read it I just wanted to jump and scream.

He and I take two different roads and come to an agreement on at least one thing – that something ain’t right – and the Missoulian and Lee Newspapers are clearing the path and dragging the buggy for Stimson. With knee boots on.

While both of us feel the Missoulian’s coverage is lacking, Matt Koehler is upset with the failure to discuss the cyclical nature of the timber industry, foreign competition and slumping markets – and instead paint a picture that not-so-silently points to environmentalists. Stimson is now blaming the lack of logs, and the Missoulian is obligingly regurgitating that corporate lie on the front pages of its newspaper.

I, on the other hand, thought the Missoulian was incompetent by failing to ask a few ‘who what why when where’ questions after interviewing Stimson. It illustrated a lacking of a better-that-basic knowledge of the subject. Either that, or it was intentional, I thought.

And with Matt’s emails, I’m beginning to think it was intentional. This is where I wanted to jump and scream:

Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 11:37:38 -0600
From: “John Vanstrydonck”
To: “Matthew Koehler”

Fact is, the owners say that they are closing the plant for a lack of supply of raw materials. The other economic factors may have weighed on their decision. The difficulty getting raw materials at competitive prices would tend to make it particularly difficult for a manufacturer when a competitive market puts pressure on margins.

The owners cite lack of supply of raw materials was the reason they decided to close the mill. I believe that we quoted them accurately. It may not fit your world view, but it is the reason they stated and it seems reasonable.

“Seems reasonable.”

Last week, the Missoulian did a three-day series on the reasons behind the recent lay-offs at Stimson Lumber (1, 2, 3), which repeated more than once that the problem was the lack of logs. I almost wonder who wrote it, given the above email above is from Vanstrydonck, Missoulian Publisher.

One of the things that were driving me nuts was the repeated ascertainment by Stimson that they didn’t have any logs. There wasn’t any timber. Backus (Vanstrydonck?) does do a little ditty about the forest service timber sales, and how they’ve been outbid – he even subtly points that the disparity by the winning bid and Stimson’s was pretty wide.

But is the USFS the only source of timber? I mean, I stand at that mill and I am surrounded by forested land. There’s 100’s times more of land like that all around. How can Stimson say it doesn’t have any logs? Who owns all that timbered land?

Federal, State, Private and Stimson. But the stories don’t even mention any of those other sources for timber. And it doesn’t even bother to point out that Stimson owns forested land – but he does say, in explaining Stimsons options once the 1 billion board feet promised by Champion dried up: “Stimson had to look for timber on the open market.”

A search of the property information system over on the State website (you can search by owner and county) comes up with a whole bunch of Stimson owned land. Lewis & Clark County, Powell, Missoula, Mineral, Granite…did I miss any? Seems like a whole bunch of land – all in forest area.

And what about the State and Private as sources? Is Stimson sitting around waiting for someone to come knocking on their door? What do they do to pull private sales? What about the State? There’s a forestry office just down the road. Are they even trying?

The Missoulian’s series resigns itself too willingly to the closure of the mill – loosing the journalist’s mission of informing the public to the lure of a spoon-fed corporate message that “boo hoo, there ain’t no logs” is the problem. Why bother with the details, right?

They don’t dare delve. Don’t want to perhaps find out that closing the mill might be motivated by other factors – by a corporate need to send a message at the cost of jobs, and by a desire to ensure that the big guys maintain their fat checks.Don’t get me started on the painting of a utopic picture of opportunity out of a heavy equipment job on a EPA clean-up site. How many EPA sites do we have to have to sustain Stimson’s inevitable closing to maintain that ‘opportunity’?

 

Congratulations Ravalli County Democrats!

June 6, 2007 in Ravalli County, Zoning and Planning

by jhwygirl 

Darn good news out of Ravalli County this morning, folks. Darn good.

Ravalli County elected two new Democrats and one Independent (and throwing out one Republican) yesterday night in a special election held to fulfill the need to meet the citizen-initiated changes to the Board of County Commissioners (which changed the number from 3 members to 5).

Howard Lyons lost just-won-in-November seat to Carlotta Grandstaff (an Independent), while Jim Rokosh (Democrat) beat Dave Hurtt’s full-of-bull (he ran under a No Bull motto) campaign.

Kathleen Driscoll (Democrat) beat Carolyn Weisbecker also. Kathleen lost in a November try, but was successful last night.

This is great news for pro-zoning people down in Ravalli County. Also part of last November’s election was a county-wide zoning referendum, which had won. This election came down to the issue of whether that county-wide referendum was going to result in real zoning, or pseudo-regulations, without teeth, that would have catered to the rape-and-pillage developers of the valley.

You can read about it here.