Looking Back: City engineer to pay $140 per month in rent
Lanny Thorsteinson and other members of the Whitefish Volunteer Fire Department washed the bleachers at Memorial Field for baseball's spring training in 1985. (Hugh Conklin photo)
A look back at past Pilot articles by Julie Engler
50 Years Ago
April 17, 1975
Local teachers voted to accept a general 12% salary increase for the next year, as offered by the school board. Several details remain to be remained to be worked out in the final agreement, which capped several weeks of negotiating. The total amount of the raise is some. $118,000, or 12% more than the total of last year's teacher salaries. District 44 board chairman Sherman Johnson said the agreement was the result of “good negotiations. There was no real hassle. The teachers asked for a realistic figure.”
40 Years Ago
April 18, 1985
A plan to remodel a house at water ratepayer expense for the city engineer to live in was revealed to Whitefish City Council. At the urging of Mayor Jim Putnam, the city engineer, Sid Fredrickson, admitted he had authorized about $750 in repairs to a house the city owns near the city's reservoir. Another $800 he had planned for interior painting, will not be spent, he said. Under questioning on the expenses, Fredrickson also admitted he had planned on moving into the house and would pay a monthly rent of $140.
30 Years Ago
April 13, 1995
A bill that would allow a local resort tax to be put on the November ballot cleared the Montana Senate and would be in the hands of Governor Mark Racicot. The Senate passed House Bill 524 in a 27-23 vote and passed it back to the Montana House of Representatives. The House was expected to have voted on two minor amendments to the bill. The future looks bright for the bill, according to Whitefish Mayor Jimmy Welsh, who said if Racicot approved the bill, a 3% resort tax would go before Whitefish voters in November. A majority of votes would enact the local tax.
20 Years Ago
April 14, 2005
Thanks to the work of Jill Evans, the late Kay Beller and a host of historical society volunteers, some 4,900 photos from the early days of Whitefish were cataloged and prepared for a book. There were photos of Central Avenue, both with and without stumps stuck in the mud, of buildings that have come and gone, like the Cadillac Hotel, and buildings that have stuck it out. One photo showed Blackfoot chief Two Guns White Calf and several other Blackfoot tribesmen walking down the sidewalk.
10 Years Ago
April 15, 2015
The Whitefish Chamber of Commerce’s Citizen of the Year award went to a group of citizens who began a quest several years ago to turn a “rock pile” into a garden and succeeded. The award went to the Whitefish Lions Club for their work creating the Farm to School garden, located between Whitefish High School and Muldown Elementary. “This is our legacy program – we want kids learning better health and nutrition,” said Greg Schaffer, president of the Club.