Local group raising funds to conduct poll on public safety in Great Falls
A group of locals is continuing their effort to educate the community about long-term public safety funding challenges and the potential need for a levy.
The Electric City Citizens for Public Safety committee initially formed in 2023 to support the city’s public safety levy and bond on that year’s ballot.
The levy and bond failed.
The vote on the levy was 5,620 in favor and 9,095 opposed.
The vote on the bond was 6,726 in favor and 7,925 opposed.
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City Commissioner Joe McKenney has continued working on the education campaign and is a founding member of the committee but said his involvement is as a private citizen.
During the commission’s Jan. 28 retreat, McKenney updated his fellow commissioners on the committee’s efforts and shared a flyer that will be circulated to solicit funds toward conducting a “public survey to determine what aspects of public safety are important to the community.”
During the retreat, McKenney said the group had contracted with a polling firm, with an estimated cost of $25,000, and were just waiting on fundraising.
The flyer states the group has “contracted with a research company with a history of polling for successful initiatives in Montana,” with an estimated cost of $30,000 to $40,000.
McKenney told The Electric last week that the estimated cost for polling is roughly $25,000 to $35,000 and that the committee was about one-third of the way toward that goal.
“Our Great Falls community has been very supportive of this effort and we hope to begin polling soon,” McKenney said in a Feb. 17 email to The Electric.
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The committee’s most recent financial filing with the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices shows it has $4,252.32 in the bank.
McKenney said that the city’s public safety advisory committee’s recommendations from 2024 included “increased community engagement, including conducting polling and encouraging the formation of independent citizen advocacy groups to support public safety education and funding discussions.”
The committee’s recommendations were similar to those of a city public safety task force that met in 2021.
McKenney told the other four commissioners during their Jan. 28 retreat that the poll would allow them to “get an appetite” for what the community wants, such as public safety staffing increases that were discussed during the levy campaign.
He said the committee was community support from the ground up, which was missing in the 2023 levy effort.
Commissioner Casey Schreiner asked if they could commit to adding staff to enforce the new fireworks rules.
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Mayor Cory Reeves said he agreed with staffing for that enforcement, but asked where they’d come up with the funding. He said adding one officer doesn’t necessarily make an impact.
City Manager Greg Doyon said it was hard to predict since factors change and what might sound like a good idea at their January retreat, but would get public pushback if they said in July that they were closing neighborhood pools to fund that staffing.
Schreiner suggested that some city departments might be able to share administrative people and in the age of artificial intelligence, might be able to make some changes.
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Reeves said that “when it comes down to it, we’re gonna have to make tough decisions, like sacrificing some quality of life things for public safety,” but that one or two police officers won’t fix the issues.
That would be “barely putting a Band-Aid on it,” he said.
Reeves said twice during the retreat that the city was using mills redirected from the Great Falls Public Library to fund shortfalls in the city prosecutors office.
Doyon corrected that commissioners had used those funds toward the debt service on the new fire training center.
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He said the city lacked in the city attorney’s office, which was far behind other communities for the number of civil attorneys.
He said they were trying to prioritize needs and would also need to hire another prosecutor since commissioners appointed Cassidy Blomberg to the municipal judge seat in January and the court added another bailiff.
During a Sept. 17, 2024 work session, staff and commissioners discussed whether to conduct a public safety poll
After the levy failed, some had suggested a poll to determine the community’s sentiment on public safety and the city released a request for proposals for polling that summer, receiving four bids that were valid through Sept. 19, 2024.
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Staff and the commission had essentially said earlier this year that they’d wait for recommendations from the public safety advisory committee but there has been a “lot of confusion” as to what a poll is and its intent, Doyon said during that September 2024 work session.
They want statistically valid sampling and a selected contractor would have worked with the city to come up with questions to get a clear picture on what the community’s perceptions were of public safety to see if they’d consider a future levy.
The library and schools foundation have done similar polling to prepare for their levies, he said.
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Doyon said in September 2024 that his recommendation was to wait, but that Reeves wanted further discussion during the work session.
He’d like to see the poll conducted eventually and would prefer to see it done through a grassroots organization rather than the city.
Doyon said in 2024 that he thought they were at least two years out before pursuing another levy so it was too early to do a poll as opinions and circumstances would change.
“I think people would be pretty upset if the city embarked on this” right now, Doyon said in 2024.
McKenney said that having the city pay for polling would leave a bad taste for the voters as did the 2023 public education campaign in which the commission approved up to $150,000 to the Wendt Agency.
He disagreed with Doyon on the timing and said they needed do the polling sooner.
“We’ll know when we’re going to do a levy. We know the need is out there,” he said in 2024 and the poll would help with messaging if they decide to make another levy ask.
Tryon said he wasn’t willing to proceed with a poll or public safety levy “until this commission has demonstrated it’s willing to use all the general fund sources available to it to fund public safety.”
He said in 2024 that he also wasn’t in favor of using city funds for a poll and he was opposed to contracting Wendt for the education campaign.
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Commissioner Shannon Wilson said she supported a community group stepping up to fund the poll.
She said if the business community wants to grow Great Falls, they should step up.
Reeves said in 2024 that he wanted to see a grassroots effort to fund the poll but didn’t want to wait and would like to do the poll in the summer of 2025 and send another public safety levy to the ballot in the spring of 2026.
If the city polled in 2025, that would give them about a year to raise funds and get people involved, he said.
“If we’re told no again, we’re told no again,” Reeves said.
