SEELEY-SWAN VALLEY — There has been a growing movement amongst residents in the rural northeastern part of Missoula County, with them looking to secede and form County No. 57. They say they wish for this to have a more lean and responsive local government.
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“I truly believe that in our three biggest counties in Montana, the government has gotten too large and it's very hard to represent diverse counties such as the three largest ones. And I think that if we're able to do this, maybe this is something that those communities could look at,” said Ted Morgan, a resident of the Swan Valley and one of the main organizers of the secession movement.
Morgan says that his group is looking to organize four and a half rural communities — Condon, Seeley Lake, Potomac, Greenough and parts of Bonner — to form a new county government.
He says that a more localized county government would be better able to focus on the communities’ needs.
“I think that when you look at the two different forms of government, you have an urban government and you have rural governments. And I think that they are running two different, complete ways, you know. When you take a look at areas like Ponderay, Toole, Phillips, even Powell County. When you look at the number of departments and what those rural areas spend on compared to more urban, you know, centric areas, such as Missoula and Gallatin and those types of areas, there's a big difference. And we're really studying that and seeing what kind of value we bring to those urban areas compared to what we're seeing currently and what we could see potentially under our own government,” said Morgan.
Morgan is also on the community council and was part of the creation of the Swan Valley Neighborhood Plan.
The plan outlined how his community wished to be managed in the coming decades, although the plan itself has no legal teeth.
He says that while the plan is positive movement towards addressing the communities’ needs, a government made up solely of those communities could better serve the area.
“I think that obviously planning's an important part of a community, but there's a lot more than community planning that creates a community. And I don't think that the overarching authority being with a county seat and people who are an hour and a half away could truly represent and create the opportunity for the areas here. I mean, we're looking at creating 32 full-time jobs here. That is huge. That's a replacement for Pyramid [Mountain] Lumber,” said Morgan.
For Missoula County, Chris Lounsbury, chief administrative officer, says that with the secession would have to come a determination of the amount of services residents would like to see.
But he also says that the county's conversations with residents in the secession area have been productive and helpful - a point echoed by Morgan.
“It's not us or them, because collectively, when you look at all of the counties across the state or all of the municipalities or the state of Montana, it's all us at the end of the day, right? And we just need to think about what are the services we want, how do we want those to be delivered? And that's the piece that gets you to the answer, but it shouldn't be an us versus them approach,” said Lounsbury.
Overall, there has been some decent movement amongst the community as more community events are being held and they continue to meet with local Missoula government officials. From here, they're looking to start fundraising and putting up signs for the secession.
