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4/28/2025
“Helena This Week” is reported and written By JoVonne Wagner. Send your Helena news and tips to [email protected].
Prickly Pear Park grand-opening celebration set for May 1
East Helena residents this week will, for the first time, be able to access land formerly owned by the American Smelting and Refining Company as the city’s new recreational area, Prickly Pear Park, according to project officials.
The Prickly Pear Land Trust first acquired about 240 acres of the former smelter site in 2011 from the Montana Environmental Trust Group, an organization tasked with administering cleanup work and funding, to redevelop and maintain the area for public use.
With widespread support from the city of East Helena, the East Helena Public School District, the Environmental Protection Agency and METG — along with adequate funding from the smelter’s bankruptcy — Prickly Pear Park’s creation story is one of a kind, Prickly Pear Land Trust Executive Director Mary Hollow told Montana Free Press.
“ This was once the state’s worst Superfund Site, and the reclamation that’s taken place here is, it’s unbelievable,” Hollow said. “It was also extremely successful.”
Hollow said that instead of fencing off the property to address the area with a “pump-and-treat system” that would require perpetual maintenance with taxpayer dollars, the METG removed the land’s contaminated soil, water and sediment, creating workable land.
“So this park is the remedy,” Hollow said. “ Really, Prickly Pear’s role in this was just to keep the land intact.”
The trust received about $3.2 million from the smelter company’s bankruptcy for the redevelopment project. About $1.5 million of that will be used for railroad underpass changes that would promote future park expansion and connectivity to surrounding towns, but Hollow said the budget for the project is expected to increase due to inflation.
ASARCO, the smelting company that operated for a little over a century in East Helena, shut down in 2001 and transferred about 2,000 acres of its property to METG to work on remediation efforts with the EPA.
Through that work, land became available for the East Helena community for new uses, including two new public schools, housing developments, a Town Pump gas station and now a public park.
Hollow said it was important to create this park now because East Helena is projected to grow significantly in the next several years. She said it’s hard to create parklands once infrastructure and housing development begin.
Prickly Pear Park features about a 2-mile ADA-accessible loop, access to Prickly Pear Creek, alternative seasonal trails and wildlife viewing since the habitat has been restored.
Prickly Pear Land Trust will hold the park’s grand opening to the public on Thursday, May 1, from noon to 6 p.m. at the trailhead in East Helena.
“ People will thrive more in the future in this community if they have something like this,” Hollow said.
Public Notice
Levies, laws and local impact: The League of Women Voters of the Helena Area will hold a community discussion regarding public schools, proposed levies and public education laws on Monday, April 28, at 6 p.m. at the Lewis & Clark Library, 120 S. Last Chance Gulch. Rob Watson, executive director of the School Administrators of Montana, and Helena School Superintendent Rex Weltz are scheduled to speak.
5 Things to Know in Helena
City chip-and-seal: In a meeting last week, the city commission approved a bid of about $963,500 for its annual street chip-and-seal project to Helena Sand and Gravel Inc., which was the only bidder. The street maintenance will cover about 13 miles of streets around Helena’s southside.
ADA golf cart: City Finance Director Sheila Danielson requested that the city use about $20,000 of its reserve funds to purchase an ADA-accessible golf cart for the Bill Roberts Golf Course. Danielson told the city commission in a meeting last week that the request came after the city received a complaint about the lack of accommodation. Because the golf course is city-owned and funded, it is required to meet accessibility compliance. With the commission’s support, the city is moving forward with the purchase of the cart.
Transition plan update: City staff will begin implementing a new documentation process for the city’s ADA Transition Plan to ensure more accurate reporting on building, event and park accessibility projects. City Housing Coordinator Anne Pichette updated the city commission last week on the change after she said that some projects were incorrectly marked as complete. The new system will be online and have an accessibility checklist and photo requirements for staff to add. In January, MTFP reported that less than half of the projects in the plan had been addressed.
County addiction intervention update: In a Lewis and Clark County Commission meeting last week, staff reported that the criminal justice center’s behavioral health team administered more than 600 addiction interventions within the last three months using resources through a Department of Public Health and Human Services grant. Criminal Justice Services Director Kellie McBride told the commission that the efforts made possible by the grant had been a success.
“One of the things that we’ve seen that’s unique to our work is that the team advocates for the folks in the detention center,” McBride told the commission. “So when they recognize that there’s somebody that could get into treatment, they do the legwork.”
Prescribed burns: Last Friday, the U.S. Forest Service conducted a prescribed burn of about 250 acres in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest north of Helena near the American Bar area, according to Forest Service public information officer Chiara Cipriano. The burn is a continuation of the Forest Service’s wildfire prevention efforts that have taken place around the Heena area during the last two months. The public can use the Air Now website to check on air quality updates.
On The Record
Last Wednesday, the League of Women Voters of the Helena Area held a public forum at the Lewis & Clark Library for the six Helena School Board of Trustees candidates. League member and former Helena Mayor Jim Smith asked the candidates about their personal experience and priorities and how they would address district concerns. MTFP is highlighting each candidate’s response to a question about their reason for running. The speakers’ answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity. Residents can watch the full forum on the Helena Civic Television website.
Q: Why are you running?
Hanna Warhank: I am a parent of two children, a 4-year-old who’s not yet in the district, and then a third-grader who is attending school here in the district. And I am running because I’m very passionate about public schools and the school board. I started attending all of the school board meetings about two years ago.
I’ve seen firsthand what great things that the Helena Public Schools can do. I also think that the Helena School District needs to work on transparency and communication with the public. I think oftentimes they’re listening to the same voices over and over again, and I think there needs to be more people involved and more community members involved in hearing different voices. I also am an attorney, and I have a degree in accounting, so I would like to bring an innovative approach to budget issues that the district has been seeing lately.
Kay Satre: I served for three years, and I learned so much during that period of time. I learned, first of all, what a complex system Helena Public Schools is. I learned about the amazing and hardening work that goes on throughout the district as our kids get taught and cared for in all the corners of the district, in really heartening ways.
And then I’ve also learned a lot about the challenges that we’re facing. I would like to sort of take all that learning and apply it to another term. I’d like to keep on working on the things, both challenges and opportunities, that are happening in the district.
John Klein III: My wife works in the school district, my son’s gonna be a Helena Middle Schooler in the fall, so I feel like I have a personal stake in the process and the school district’s success. I’m running to make sure that all students have a great education from elementary to middle school to high school. I wanna make sure that all of our kids get to go through all the steps of their education, get to high school. We need to focus on Helena High School and rebuilding it, making sure that the city has at least two operating [high] schools.
Carrie Jones: I graduated from MSU with a degree in horticulture, Russian, German and computer science, and this is why I’m a massage therapist now. I’ve been a business owner for 20 years, and I have a third-grader and a 2-year-old who’s not yet in the system.
I am running for the school board because I feel that our community needs a little more connection out into other places. It’s been really sad to see how siloed our community looks. I would like to spend some time doing some data crunching and staying out in the weeds because I’m proud to admit that I like spreadsheets. I do look forward to getting an opportunity to work with our school board at our district.
Siobhan Hathhorn: I have been in education for 27 years. I’m running because I have pretty much the same priorities that we started with. We’re still working on them. First is academic excellence, and one great thing about being a trustee is you get to see the kids that come out the other end, the seniors, and all the awards and all the great things that we do.
Facilities is also on the table, has been for a long time. We still have a lot of old schools. And finally, in times of shortage of teachers, it’s very important that we can provide teachers [with] what they need so we can recruit and retain the best teachers possible, because as we all know, it is teachers where the rubber hits the road, and that’s where the education begins.
Jenny Murnane-Butcher: I’m so excited to apply my experience and expertise and service to my community as a trustee. As a teacher of five years, I taught through the COVID-19 pandemic and after. I know the challenges that our students and teachers are facing, and that’s exactly why my first priority is student and teacher well-being. I firmly believe that when we value our teachers and put our students’ basic needs first, academic success follows.
My other priorities as trustee will center around financial sustainability and infrastructure needs. I believe right now that the only responsible choice on behalf of Helena’s taxpayers is making smart and sometimes difficult decisions and investments now to prevent even more challenges in the future.
From Lewis and Clark Public Health
Lewis and Clark Public Health officials announced last week that a new website portal showing measles surveillance data is now publicly available. Earlier this month, Gallatin County reported five confirmed measles cases, the state’s first since 1990.
Lewis and Clark Public Health officials say that while they are closely monitoring Gallatin County’s cases, they have created their own data portal to better inform the community.
“Our hope is that by creating a central location for this data, we can all work better together, make more informed decisions and more effectively address the key challenges facing our communities,” Lewis and Clark Public Health Epidemiologist Valerie Stacey wrote in a press release. “And right now, our immediate challenge is defeating this measles outbreak.”
The public can access the Lewis and Clark Public Health’s full press release here.
Might Be Fun
Trail run volunteers: Prickly Pear Land Trust is seeking volunteers for its 50k, 25k and 12k Don’t Fence Me In Trail Runs on Saturday, May 10. Those interested in helping must be at least 16 years old and attend a safety orientation. To register or for more information, visit the land trust’s website.
