What’s it cost to heat UM’s new athletic bubble?

by Arren Kimbel-Sannit

Last fall, the University of Montana opened its new $10.2 million Grizzly Indoor Practice Facility, a vaguely space-age, heated building with an inflatable, domed roof primarily intended for use during the winter months. 

The university stressed that construction of the facility was privately funded, and estimated ongoing operating expenditures of about $550,000 a year and rental income of $580,000 a year. With the facility’s first school year of operation now in the rearview mirror, we figured it was a good time to check in on the bubble’s finances. 

First thing’s first: UM doesn’t yet have a “complete picture” of the facility’s costs and revenues because it hasn’t been operating for a full year, according to Dave Kuntz, a university spokesperson. But he said the winter months — when the facility sees the most rental activity — were enough to cover its expenses for the first academic year.

The university, he said, made roughly $40,000 a month from November through February in rental income. (While the facility is the official cold-weather training ground of the football team and other university athletics, it’s also used for intramural and club athletics and by various sports organizations around Missoula). 

That revenue helps offset some eye-popping heating costs. In February alone, the utility bill — almost all natural gas-powered heating, Kuntz said — came to $22,078. The monthly bill plummeted to the low thousands by springtime. 

The facility’s other main operational expense is labor, Kuntz said, but its employees are paid in the same way other university staff is — in other words, not out of the facility’s rental income, though that money could be used for “any larger-scale maintenance that could be needed when we have to bring in additional staffing,” he added.

In terms of future plans and expenditures, Kuntz said UM is considering installing air conditioning and additional insulation in the practice space, making it suitable for practice during wildfire season. (A lower-order consequence of our new climate reality, we suppose.)

Either way, he said, “We expect the revenues from renting the facility will cover the energy and labor costs. 

“Any additional revenue will likely go to support the maintenance of other athletic facilities on campus.”

SCOTUS finally kills Montana’s parental consent law that never was 

A Montana law requiring minors to seek parental consent for an abortion has long been blocked by the state courts. Now, a new order from the U.S. Supreme Court suggests the law will remain obsolete. 

On Thursday, the nation’s high court announced that it would not consider the state of Montana’s appeal of a 2024 state Supreme Court ruling that struck down the 2013 parental consent law, foreclosing its final chance for revival. 

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote Thursday that although the state requested the court weigh in on the central questions of parental rights and individual autonomy, the specifics of the appeal made this case a poor vehicle for doing so. 

The two justices — both conservatives — noted, however, that the denial of the appeal should not be “read by interested parties or other courts as a rejection of the argument that the petition asks us to decide.” 

The litigation around the parental consent law has charted a long and rocky path to the present, one that illustrates the many political changes the state has undergone in the more than 10 years since the Montana Legislature adopted it. (For one, Montana’s governor at the time was Democrat Steve Bullock, who allowed the bill to become law without his signature.)

Planned Parenthood of Montana simultaneously challenged the law and a 2012 ballot petition to require those under 16 seeking an abortion to notify their parents, arguing they violated the broad privacy protection in the state Constitution — the same provision undergirding the court order that had generally protected abortion access in Montana since 1999. The consent law was blocked before it could take effect, a supposedly temporary injunction agreed to by the state’s top lawyer, then-Attorney General Tim Fox. (Fox, now considered a comparatively moderate Republican, is nonetheless no pro-choice warrior). 

Since then, a variety of state courts have issued intermediary orders as the case has bounced around between judges. Along the way, a new political order took hold in Montana — in 2020, voters elected Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte and hardline GOP Attorney General Austin Knudsen, reigniting the effort to restrict abortion in the state. Knudsen began agitating for the case to move, arguing that the 2013 court and Fox could not have anticipated that the injunction would last this long without a ruling on the case’s constitutional questions. 

In 2023, a state district court judge ruled the law was unconstitutional, denying the state’s argument that the law fell within the established constitutional rights of parents over their minor children. The next year, the state Supreme Court affirmed that decision. 

“A minor’s right to dignity, autonomy, and the right to choose are embedded in the liberties found in the Montana Constitution,” Justice Laurie McKinnon wrote then for the court. “Because a minor’s right to control her reproductive decisions is among the most fundamental of the rights she possesses, and because the State has failed to demonstrate a real and significant relationship between the statutory classification and the ends asserted, we hold that the Consent Act violates the Constitution of the State of Montana.”

Knudsen’s office appealed that ruling early this year.

“SCOTUS should hear the case and reverse the radical Montana Supreme Court’s bad decision allowing minors to receive abortions without parental consent. A child’s right to privacy does not supersede a parent’s fundamental right to direct the care and upbringing of their child,” Knudsen said in a statement at the time. “Until we get clarity from the Supreme Court, the health and safety of young Montanans seeking abortions is at risk.”

But the high court declined to hear the appeal. As Alito and Thomas indicated, this doesn’t indicate the court’s position on the constitutional questions essential to the case. It’s also worth noting that the court only accepts about 3 percent of the appeals — technically called petitions for writ of certiorari, or a “cert petition” — it receives, 6 percent if you only count petitions from attorneys (as opposed to self-represented litigants), and 20 percent for petitions from state attorneys general.

The ledger #️⃣

31,000

Estimated number of Montanans who would lose their Medicaid coverage “because of new work reporting requirements and changes in eligibility and enrollment processes” imposed by President Donald Trump’s expansive tax-cut and policy bill, which cleared its final legislative hurdle Thursday, according to a Montana Healthcare Foundation analysis. The bill would also reduce federal Medicaid cost-sharing with states, potentially reducing Medicaid funding in Montana by more than $5 billion over ten years, according to the foundation.

Montana’s federal delegation, all Republicans, satisfied that the bill’s public lands sale provisions have been removed, all voted for the legislation. 

"Montanans asked for change last November, and today we delivered,” Congressman Ryan Zinke told the Lee newspapers State News Bureau in a press statement. “This is a win for hardworking Montanans and a win for the country. The bill puts Americans first, delivers real tax relief, secures the border, and protects our public lands from being sold off to the highest bidder.”

The week ahead 🗓️

• On July 7 at 12:00 p.m., the Missoula Redevelopment Agency will discuss the $100 million hotel project in the Riverfront Triangle Urban Renewal District that the city and Whitefish developer Averill Hospitality announced last week. The MRA will not (yet) be hearing a request to authorize tax-increment financing for the project, but rather is being asked to endorse the underlying sale and development agreements.

Find a list of all upcoming city meetings here and county meetings here.

The feed 🗞️

‘Our doors would have to close’: Trump’s proposed cuts threaten tribal colleges (Montana Free Press)

'It looks like a lawn': Algae blooms along the Clark Fork (Missoulian)

SKHA breaks ground on new 12‑unit transitional supportive housing in Ronan (Char-Koosta News)

Missoula City Council deliberates use of 'algorithmic software' in housing (NBC Montana)

Montana wildfire risk climbs ahead of July Fourth weekend (Flathead Beacon)

Firework sellers hold prices steady as tariffs skyrocket (Montana Public Radio)

ICE roils Helena as it plans to remove father, husband (Daily Montanan)

U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy lists private peninsula on Flathead Lake for $10.25 million (Flathead Beacon)

Sorting truth from fiction in the Idaho shooting case (Range Media)