Comments accepted through April 26

HELENA – Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks seeks public comments on the department’s recommendations for the 2022 Recreational Trails Program awards.

Public comment on the recommended awards is open through Monday, April 26.

The Recreational Trails Program (RTP) is a federally funded program which provides funding for trail and trail-related projects across the state. The program is administered by FWP and eligible projects include development and rehabilitation work on urban, rural, and backcountry trails; planning and construction of community trails; snowmobile and cross-country ski trail maintenance and grooming operations; and a variety of trail stewardship and safety education programs.

This year, FWP received 48 RTP applications requesting over $2.6 million. For 2022 about $1,525,000 is available for funding and 32 projects are proposed for funding.

A complete list of recommended projects is available online at: https://fwp.mt.gov/aboutfwp/grant-programs/recreational-trails, under the “2022 Grant Application Cycle” tab. All recommended 2022 RTP awards are eligible for a FHWA Categorical Exclusion under NEPA (23 CFR 771.117(c)(23)) and MEPA (ARM 18.2.261(2)(w)).

Public comments on funding the proposed projects are due by 5 p.m. April 26. To comment, email FWPFACB@mt.gov.

Comments by regular mail should be sent to: Adam Brooks, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, PO Box 200701, Helena, MT 59620-0701.

BOZEMAN — A faculty member in Montana State University’s business college has been recognized for her excellence and potential as a scholar.

Brooke Lahneman, visiting assistant professor of management in the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship, was one of four individuals to receive the 2022 Ascendant Scholar Award from the Western Academy of Management. Lahneman received the award March 18 during the association’s annual conference. The West Coast affiliate of the Academy of Management gives the award each year to a handful of early career scholars who have an exemplary record of research, teaching and service — and even greater potential.

"The Ascendant Scholar award recognizes early career scholars with no more than seven years since Ph.D. graduation,” according to materials accompanying the academy’s call for award nominations. “While excellent teaching and service are appreciated, we are primarily seeking to acknowledge ‘ascendent’ international scholars as evidenced by the quality of their published scholarship in top-tier publications. In addition, we seek scholars with an overall research trajectory that looks promising for future continued productive endeavors." 

Lahneman, who came to MSU in 2020, is the first professor from MSU to receive the Ascendant Scholar Award. She researches how organizations can navigate increasingly complex environments in sustainable ways, such as pursuing sustainable business models, and how an organization’s culture and identity shape more sustainable practices. She teaches courses in strategy, management, international business, and sustainability.

“Dr. Lahneman is on pace to be one of the most productive scholars in the Western Academy of Management,” her nominators, including three of her MSU colleagues, wrote. “Her significant contributions to scholarship in sustainability and social entrepreneurship place her with the top scholars in the country in their fifth year after graduate school. Not only has she maintained a productive research stream but she has done so while excelling in the classroom and sustaining meaningful mentoring relationships with many students.”

Among other accomplishments, Lahneman has had five articles published in top-tier peer-reviewed journals, including the Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, and Organization Studies. Also notable are eight conference proceedings, articles, chapters and reviews, as well as another co-authored article published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

“These (publications) speak to the quality of her work, her independence as a researcher and her affinity for collaboration in the research enterprise,” her nominators wrote.

In addition, Lahneman is highly regarded as an excellent and engaging teacher. Over the past four years, she has designed and taught nine courses across three universities, including MSU, the University of Oregon and Simon Fraser University. She has been recognized for excellence in teaching from all three institutions. At MSU, last fall she received the Professor of the Year award from the college’s current Master of Science in Innovation and Management students for her excellence in teaching.

She has a Ph.D. in management, a Master of Business Administration and a bachelor’s degree in economics and foreign affairs.

ENNIS – A full closure of Valley Garden Fishing Access Site and a partial closure of Burnt Tree Hole Fishing Access Site have been lifted. 

These closures were in place due to ice jams and flooding. Conditions have improved, allowing public access to resume at these sites.  

Ennis Fishing Access Site is still closed. It has been inundated with ice jams and flooding for several weeks. Maintenance staff at Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks will reopen the site as soon as possible after repairs are completed.  

Floating on the Madison River between Burnt Tree Hole and Valley Garden fishing access sites, as well as in other areas, could still be hazardous because of unpredictable and rapidly changing conditions.

On Thursday, April 7th, at 7pm at the Emerson, the Bozeman Doc Series is excited to present the Montana premiere of the new documentary, Day After..., from award-winning Bangladeshi filmmaker Kamar Ahmad Simon.

The Rocket is a century-old paddle steamer with regular sailings from the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, transporting passengers to various destinations along the river. This double-decker vessel has clearly seen better days, but it’s still a popular means of transport for passengers from all walks of life. Days onboard are filled with a little bit of everything: there is singing and dancing, eating and drinking, praying and vlogging, debating and arguing, tears and laughter. Along the way, this deeply immersive film captures it all, revealing a fascinating portrait of contemporary Bangladesh. Rich and poor, young and old, East and West - all make appearances in this kaleidoscopic film brimming with universal everyday concerns, stark contrasts, and deep wisdom.

Day After... world premiered at last fall's prestigious IDFA festival in Amsterdam and had its North American premiere at the First Look Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City on March 19th.

"Unassuming but irresistibly immersive…Don’t be fooled by the bland title: this intelligently-observed chronicle of a vintage paddle-steamer’s chaotic two-day journey from capital Dhaka to provincial Khulna ranks among the year’s most accomplished and memorable non-fiction enterprises." Screen Daily

“Delightful...Simon documents the journey with both geographical and sociopolitical fascination, drinking in the scenery while wryly observing the tangle of classes, castes, and character types on deck. The loose, entertaining result is equal parts leisurely travelogue, observational social study, and droll real-life comedy of errors, and premiered in competition at IDFA to an enthusiastic audience reception.” Variety

See a short clip from the film here.

Masks are now optional in the theater. Tickets are available at the door or before the show online at www.bozemandocseries.org, where you can also buy Season Passes and 7-film punch cards, learn more about the series, and view trailers for upcoming films. The series will continue every other Thursday through May.

The stock market has been on a wild ride during 2022, and there are a lot of factors impacting it, from the ongoing effects of the pandemic, to supply chain issues and now instability in Ukraine. It’s difficult to stomach the ups and downs for a lot of investors, and as a result, they’re looking for new opportunities and approaches to investment.

The healthcare sector offers investment opportunities for individuals, particularly with new innovations always on the horizon.

So what should you know about investing in healthcare?

Is Now a Good Time For Healthcare Investments?

In The United States, as healthcare costs continue to rise, systems are due for a restricting. An estimated one-third of working Americans say their health-related costs went up just in 2021. The population of people over the age of 65 is set to go beyond one million by 2030, and analysts expect spending on healthcare will continue to outpace the expansion of the gross domestic product (GDP).

Currently, the U.S. spends more than 17% of its GDP on the costs of healthcare.

Healthcare makes up around 13% of the S&P 500, and you might want more exposure right now.

Some experts expect that since healthcare in America is among the most expensive in the world, changes resulting from the pandemic could create a shift to digital health and telemedicine, opening up opportunities for private and public investment.

Healthcare is also considered a defensive industry. The returns tend to be consistent as a result and unrelated to the overall stock market, so you might like that from a diversification standpoint.

Healthcare stocks are seeing more growth than the economy, not only because of the aging population but also technological advances in the industry.

Particular trends in the industry include the aging population, people with chronic diseases living longer, and personalized medicine.

What often happens when there’s overall volatility in the market and among investors is that they turn to something like healthcare. The names in healthcare are needed whether the economy is strong or weak, and there can be durability during volatile times.

In the past few decades, the risk-adjusted returns for health care have been among the strongest in any sector.

Healthcare securities are riskier than something like bonds, but they can provide you with a hedge if other parts of the market take a turn for the worse.

Types of Stocks to Invest in Healthcare

While you might see the advantages of investing in stocks, how do you get started?

When you invest in this sector, you’re actually investing in a range of industries. For example, some are service-oriented while others are manufacturing or production-related.

Subsectors of health include pharmaceuticals, biotech, medical equipment, sales and distribution, and insurance, as well as healthcare facilities.

Each subsector is like its own mini sector, with differences in volatility and performance that may not follow one another.

Pharmaceutical companies manufacture and sell both prescription and over-the-counter drugs. These companies also do research and development to create new drugs. Generic drug manufacturers are an important part of this subsector too. These companies make drugs that are similar to brand names but are cheaper. They make them after the patents for the brand names expire.

The biotech subsector focuses on research and development for the creation of therapies and new drugs, but they usually focus on just one or two breakthroughs.

Medical equipment stocks can provide long-term growth because consumption keeps going up. As an investor, you want to think about patents, government approval, and market demand if you’re evaluating individual medical equipment stocks.

Sales and distribution can include retailers and pharmacies that offer healthcare products, as well as wholesalers.

Investing in managed healthcare refers to insurance companies. For example, the major insurance companies you could invest in include UnitedHealth Group, Anthem, Aetna, Humana, and Cigna.

How to Invest in Healthcare

Right now, a recommendation for some investors from experts is to plan to invest anywhere from 5-10% of your portfolio in health care. You don’t want to go beyond that because it’s putting you at a higher level of sector risk within your portfolio.

There are health care mutual funds and ETFs that some people find are an easy, low-cost way to get exposure to the sector.

For example, there's the iShares Global Health Care ETF and the Vanguard Health Care Index Fund ETF.

Investing in a sector can be challenging, and picking individual stocks is as well. If you’d like to rebalance your portfolio and you’re interested in more healthcare exposure, it might be a good idea to talk to a financial professional.

The GCSO Public Safety Academy affords Gallatin County citizens an opportunity to experience law enforcement from the inside.  For eight weeks, one night a week, you can learn from the best in law enforcement, crisis intervention, and search and rescue.  The Academy will lead you through making traffic stops, field sobriety maneuvers, crime scene management, and evidence collection.  You will be able to ride along with a GCSO Deputy, talk to a 9-1-1 dispatcher, and tour the Detention Center.  You can try on the body armor worn by the Special Response Team, learn how undercover detectives track drug deals and watch a K9 stop a bad guy. This is a great introduction to how public safety works in your community!

The ninth GCSO Public Safety Academy is scheduled for April 6 through May 24, 2022. The Academy is held every Wednesday evening from 6-9 pm. The Academy is free and open to any Gallatin County resident 18 years and older.  For more information, or to register, contact Erin Metzger by phone at 582-2066 or by e-mail at erin.metzger@gallatin.mt.gov.  Please contact Erin by Tuesday, March 29th to register.

If you are interested in participating and contributing an article to Bozeman Magazine about the experience please contact Angie Ripple at angie @ bozemanmagazine dot com

Being financially healthy is a crucial component of our mental health. When we feel financially stable, we’re less likely to feel stressed in the moment or about our future, but what does financial wellness look like? It involves putting aside money for retirement and savings.

How to Improve Your Financial Wellness This Year

The road to financial wellness must be taken in several steps, usually in order. In this article, we’ll give you some tips on how to reduce overall spending to improve your nest egg.

1. Improve Your Financial Education
The single best thing you can do for your financial wellness is to take a course about how to manage your finances. 65% of Americans have no idea how much they spent last month, which can lead to impulse spending, overspending on necessities (groceries), and missed bills.

Although it isn’t possible for everyone, you can bring down your debts slowly by paying close attention to your finances. Reducing your student loans by $100 each month is better than $50, no matter how insignificant it may seem. You need to budget to meet your financial goals.

2. Switch to Public Health Insurance
Health insurance is a major cost that will eat into your savings every month, but you still need it. Consider switching to a public health plan to reduce your administrative costs and co-pay.

When you compare private and public health insurance, you’ll notice that public healthcare is less expensive. However, public health insurance providers have strict eligibility requirements, meaning people who aren’t US citizens or have pre-existing conditions won’t qualify.

However, if you can manage to get on a public plan, you can save thousands of dollars per year, depending on the nature of your coverage. Keep in mind the paperwork is pretty expensive.

3. Lower Your Monthly Student Loan Payments
There are only two ways to successfully pay down your student loans: make more money or reduce your payments. We recommend reducing your payments until you make enough to pay more than the minimum per month. This will give you one less bill payment to worry about.

You can lower your student loan payments by applying for repayment plans. For example, an extended payment plan allows you to repay your loan over a period of 25 years. Enrolling in automatic payments will afford you an 0.25% interest discount and overall peace of mind.

4. Pay Yourself First With Automatic Payments
It can be hard to set up a savings account and stick with monthly payments. Between expenses and bills, you may feel like you have to go without when you pay into your rainy day fund. The trick is to take money right off the top, so you won’t see it before it’s transferred out.

Start by transferring money you would have spent on lunches or coffees over a two-week period. As your savings account grows, consider putting some of this money towards retirement accounts, a home, an emergency fund, investments, childcare, college, and much more.

5. Consider an Annuity Instead of a 401(k)
It’s understandable why young people don’t want to invest in a 401(k). Not only will that money be unavailable to them for several years, but they may die before they can even use it.

Fortunately, we’re living longer and longer. The average life expectancy in the United States is 79 years, but many health seniors could live well past 80. Is a 401(k) a good idea? Maybe not. It depends on how much you invest, your tax bracket vs. the withdrawal, and how long you live.

Instead of a typical retirement plan, consider an annuity. An annuity is guaranteed lifetime income paid out through equal intervals, like a pension or insurance payment.

On March 21, 2022, at 1:53 pm, Gallatin County 911 received a call for an injured snowmobiler in the McAtee Basin area, south of Big Sky. The caller found the victim unresponsive and immediately started lifesaving efforts. The caller was unable to resuscitate the victim and ultimately had to leave the area for cell service to call for help.

Gallatin County Sheriff Search and Rescue volunteers from the Big Sky Section and the Heli Team responded and recovered the victim with a helicopter due to the difficult terrain. A Gallatin County Deputy Coroner responded for the investigation.  The victim’s name has not been released at this time.

Sheriff Dan Springer would like to pass on his condolences to the family and friends during this difficult time.

BOZEMAN — Montana State University, the American Indian Council at MSU and the MSU Bookstore have partnered to launch a collection of apparel featuring the AIC Club logo. The logo includes a bobcat, a blue and gold Native pattern and a feather.

The collection will feature short-sleeved and long-sleeved T-shirts, crew neck and hooded sweatshirts, a face covering and headwear. The merchandise will be available for purchase at the MSU Bookstore. Proceeds from the sales of the products will support the American Indian Council and its programs.

“We are excited about our collaboration with the MSU Bookstore to create AIC merchandise that will help support our students and appeal to alumni and the community,” said Lisa Perry, director of American Indian/Alaska Native Student Success and co-adviser to the American Indian Council.

The American Indian Council supports American Indian students in their adjustment to college life so they can be successful at the college level and beyond. Through the implementation of cultural heritage, the club fosters knowledge, integrity, tradition and achievement.

One of the oldest student organizations at MSU, the American Indian Council hosts the annual spring powwow, nurtures community, raises awareness and uses its platform to highlight current issues such as missing and murdered Indigenous people and Every Child Matters, an initiative that addresses the missing and murdered Indigenous people epidemic across the United States. 

Products may be purchased at the MSU Bookstore or at msubookstore.org/AIC.