After safety levy and bond fail, city turns focus to addressing crucial needs in Great Falls

GREAT FALLS, Mont. - On February 12, the City of Great Falls held a special meeting for city commissioners which addressed public safety and how to properly address it after the public safety levy and bond didn't pass this past election. 

The meeting highlighted four groups of speakers including members of the city's legal team, the Great Falls Police Department, Great Falls Fire Rescue, and the city's municipal court judges.

All four groups had similar presentations; focusing on data, what's been working, what's broken, what changes they are looking to make or have made, and what their critical needs are. 

The first speaker was city attorney David Dennis and he says right now Great Falls is prosecuting the most cases per prosecutor than any other city in Montana. 

"We're handling roughly twice the number [of cases] for the prosecutor that the city of Billings is," said Dennis. 

He says they have to take a look at changes that include implementing prioritization of offenses, reduce the time spent per case, pursue earlier resolution of cases, identify and dismiss problem cases earlier, and reduce unnecessary court attendance. 

"We have all these cases coming in, and we've got to process all of them. We have limited resources," said Dennis. 

Dennis says adding another prosecutor to their staff would help them, as another judge was added this past election and so they are trying to funnel cases out faster. 

"We don't have the ability to deal with the work that we have now," said Dennis. 

One thing he highlighted was the stress of the job, and while morale isn't broken now, it could be. 

"I can't really emphasize to you enough how difficult it would be for our department to lose one prosecutor or even one of our very experienced support support office people because this is such a well-oiled machine that the loss of a support person would be would be devastating, and the loss of a prosecutor would really throw us into a tailspin," said Dennis. 

Overall, Dennis says their critical needs are another prosecutor, prosecution management software, victim/witness coordinator, and related accommodations, equipment, and training; this would total around $295,000.

The next speaker was GFPD police chief, Jeff Newton; like Dennis, he went over data, what is working well, what is strained, and their critical needs. 

However, Newton also touched on what is trending in Great Falls, saying seizures of Fentanyl are up 148%, there is more gang activity in the younger populations, there has been a 37% increase in calls for SRO's, and overdose/suspected overdose deaths are up by 5% (and that's just on the investigation services bureau side of things). 

"In the levy presentation, I asked for what we need currently, what we probably needed 10-years-ago... if we keep decreasing our resources, that impacts our core functions which mitigates are ability to provide good service to our community members," said Newton. 

They have tried to do what they can to continue to provide service to the community, including seeking grant services where they can, collaborating more with other agencies, and cut down on services they can't do any more. 

Newton also says there isn't an option for GFPD to cut further without a negative effect to their core services. 

"It is what it is. I have to look at staffing, I have to look at what the city expects, our response and our investigations. We have cut and streamlined and squeezed and tightened our belt about as much as we can," said Newton. 

He says their need hasn't changed from what they asked for in the safety levy and bond, which totals out to around $4.6 million. 

The third group to speak was Great Falls Fire Rescue, with fire chief Jeremy Jones addressing the city commission. 

His presentation was laid out the same as GFPD and the city's legal team; Jones says when it comes to what is strained at the department, is they are heavily relying on their mutual aid partners. 

"If it wasn't for MANG and Malmstrom, we'd really be behind the eight ball. People would be having those calls that are not getting answered. But how resilient is that? We're asking them to really pick up our workload. So we're there basically supplementing our workforce," said Jones. 

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Right now, Jones says over 40% of the city is outside industry standards of fire and emergency services response. 

"We're setting ourselves up for failure," said Jones, as they still don't have a training center after it was condemned 3-4 years ago. 

Overall, Jones echo's the comments of Newton, saying what they asked for is the minimum to get to where they need to be and adding that the public safety levy and bond would help but it would not cover future needs. 

Current changes you can see coming out of GFFR is a reduction in delivery of prevention education in schools, changes to city ordinances for false alarms and code violations, no longer responding to code 1 medical calls, implementation of a third party reporting form, cross staffing, and relying on mutual aid partners to backfill the city (specifically MANG and MAFB); those are just a few of the changes Jones mentioned. 

"We're going to pursue not responding to lift assists in facilities that are assisted living in nature or independent living facilities, better staffed homes. I want to be very clear here. If you're in your own home and you own your own home and you need our assistance on the lift, we will. But it'll be the company that's due for that district. We're not going to pull out of district anymore to do those type of calls," said Jones. 

"Unless we get creative and once we find some resources that are available right now, that we haven't looked at, I don't see how we do this," said commissioner Rick Tryon. 

Finally, Steven Bolstad, municipal court judge, addressed the city commission talking about their needs. 

Right now, the municipal court system is adjusting to having a second judge, and while the court is fully staffed, Bolstad says they are stretched thing. 

"We always have more work to do. Somebody said, 'Well, 20 years ago you could have done this with three people.' There's a lot more requirements on us now than there was 20 years ago," said Bolstad.

They have seen a number of mistrials due tot he lack of compliance by those summoned for jury duty; saying there court must have 13 jurors for a case and while 60 community members were called, only 15 showed up. 

"I hold hearings for those that don't show up and there are many different reasons why they don't show up. And the most I can do really is charge them [a fine]," said Bolstad. 

Bolstad says they are averaging about 60 jury trials a week. 

He also mentioned some data he pulled, saying in 2023 the court ordered 8,126 hours of community service, and only 872.75 hours have been completed. 

Additionally, he said there are about 7,000 outstanding warrants at any given time, but due to the lack of law enforcement resources, they haven't been able to keep up. 

"It's disheartening. It's very disheartening," said Bolstad. 

Their current needs are an addtional jury clerk, a court office clerk, a compliance officer, and related accommodations equipment, and training which they have estimated at $232,000

You can watch the full meeting here.

"It takes every department to be able to provide the most effective, safe response component within this community," said Jones. 

After the speakers addressed the commission, city commissioners had a discussion on how to address some of the more critical needs moving forward. 

They have decided they are going to look at putting an advisory committee together made up of city commissioners, members of the public who were both for and against the safety levy and bond, and other community partners. 

This advisory committee will be tasked to find a creative way to fund these needs.