Transient Ordinances Public Comment from Tanaia WiseAimee Brunckhorst
From: Tanaia Wise <vtw5856@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2023 1:02 PM
To: Kalispell Meetings Public Comment
Subject: EXTERNAL Transient Ordinances Public Comment for 1/23/23
Hello,
I am a local resident of Kalispell MT and though I am unable to attend tonight's city council meeting, I would like to share
my public opinion about the transient issue arising in the Flathead.
I am a small business owner and manager of another small business in town. At our location for the business that I
manage, we have had several dangerous and destructive encounters with the homeless population. They have camped
behind our building, used our property to form shelters, caused fires, and created disturbances in our business.
With mostly female employees that leave their job late at night, we have had to call the police many times for escorts
out. We have also had people belligerently sit directly in front of our door and delay our opening, as our employees
could not enter the building. At other times they have gone to every door of our building yanking on it to try and get in.
We are having to spend more time and money on keeping our location and customers safe. This is a direction correlation
with the influx of the transient population into our city.
We have had the growing transient population leave needles, other drug paraphernalia, and lots of garbage on our
property. Leaving us to incur the monetary and time cost to cleanup.
We have also had several very disturbing and aggressive encounters in our business during operating hours that have
affected our customers greatly. It seems that the encounters with dangerous people of this population are growing and
our employees are becoming ever more aware and concerned. The local police department has been our saving grace.
They take these calls very seriously and have brought us great amounts of safety and protection. We are very grateful
for them.
That being said, we would like to see a better approach by our city officials to take this problem seriously. We believe in
loving all people but not without wisdom. These poor people are homeless, addicted, and mentally ill. They need serious
help and until they choose to seek that, we feel that they need to be removed from private and public property where it
affects others. We are fine to coexist with them, they are humans just like you and me. But, their choices to trash
property, steal, cause public disturbances, and create dangerous drug and alcohol induced scenes is absolutely
unacceptable. No other person is allowed to act this way. Just because they are currently homeless does not give them a
pass to destroy our community. There are countless options for these people to seek help and get jobs. Yet, they refuse.
They are choosing to cast themselves out and it is unwise and unfair to allow this issue to persist in our community.
Please take this seriously and make steps to clean up our streets before it is too late. We have a beautiful town and
beautiful valley. It is our job to steward it well and keep it safe for our kids and neighbors. I plead with you, that you
would do your part in this.
Thank you,
Tanaia Wise
406-871-7958