Top tourism grant selection is troubling
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Editor,
Montana’s office of tourism does a lot of good things.
Tourism has consistently grown, benefitting Montana, which captures a 4 percent “bed tax” to promote tourism. Next time you suffer from cabin fever, go to visitmt.com for an appealing look at the exciting places in our beautiful state. Or take a close look at your Montana highway map for culturally enriching places of interest. The bed tax also funds annual Tourism Infrastructure Investment Program grants that the nonprofit tourism sector may apply for. The 2011 pool of available money was $530,000 and winners were recently announced.
This year’s first-place selection troubled me. The Pine Butte Guest Ranch in Choteau was top scorer and was granted $75,000 for a wastewater system. With all due respect to the Gleason family, (the original ranch operators) it is now controlled by The Nature Conservancy as a nonprofit dude ranch with published rates of $2,200 per week per person. (Add $150 for single occupancy.) If the rigors of dude ranch living tucker you out, “you can relax by the pool,” according to their website. Readers may recall that in December of 2010, Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss donated $35 million to The Nature Conservancy to help purchase Plum Creek land near the Blackfoot. According to its 2011 audit, TNC has net assets of 4.894 billion (with a “b”) including global equities, international equities and hedge funds.
As a supporter of our local museums, I was troubled that this year’s local modest grant requests, which were specific and clearly qualified for grant consideration, were displaced by a project sponsored by a self-proclaimed “global conservation organization.” Preserving Flathead Lake’s 1926 Paul Bunyan logging tugboat, which Miracle of America’s Joanne Mangels tells me is disintegrating before our eyes, seems like the perfect recipient for a grant whose stated goal is: “preserving existing tourism and recreation attractions, historical sites and artifacts.”
My hope is that next year’s TIIP applicants are recognized for the Montana values they demonstrate: resourcefulness, hard work and dedication to enriching the public with the preservation of Montanan’s remarkable past. I hardly consider The Nature Conservancy to practice Montana-style resourcefulness, with its published 2011 global personnel budget exceeding $271 million.
I’m not knocking the tourism benefit Pine Butte Guest Ranch brings to Montana. I’m just delighted they apparently can fill it with visitors with deep pockets, folks that may hobnob with Mr. Wyss. At $366 a night, no doubt someone else cleans the manure from guests’ boots first.
Carmine Mowbray
Senate District 6
Polson
