Sign up for the free Great Falls This Week newsletter and stay in the loop on Great Falls city government, public school meetings, business news and upcoming entertainment and events. Sign up 7/20/2026 One of the goals of Great Falls This Week is to help people be informed and connected to what’s happening around Great Falls — from local government to community events and everything in between. To help us improve this newsletter, we’d love to hear from you. We created a short survey about what you find useful, what topics you care most about and what you’d like to see more often. Your feedback is appreciated and will directly shape future editions of Great Falls This Week. SHAPE THIS NEWSLETTER Tribal preference has roots in treaty obligations The Great Falls City Commission will consider Tuesday final approval for the annexation and development plans of an 18.4-acre housing development by the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana. The project, called the Good Medicine development, aims to have 115 housing units, including apartments, duplexes and single-family homes. The neighborhood would tie into the existing Valley View neighborhood, including an extension of Valley View Drive out to Stuckey Road. The Good Medicine housing development is expected to extend Valley View Drive beyond this dead end and into the new neighborhood. Credit: Matt Hudson/MTFP While community stakeholders like the Great Falls Development Alliance support the project as a step toward alleviating the city’s housing shortage, neighbors have pushed back against the additional activity the project could bring to this quiet part of town. One factor that has led to pushback is a preference to sell and lease to tribal residents in the new homes. During a city planning board hearing in May, Valley View resident Donny Gerhart characterized the provision as a project that “discriminates against all other races besides Native American tribal members.” A flyer urging opponents to speak at the upcoming meeting says, boldly, that the development serves “Native Americans ONLY.” The Good Medicine housing project is funded through a federal program known as the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act (NAHASDA) of 1996. It’s administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and provides various grants and subsidies for Indigenous housing. A schematic of the Good Medicine housing project. Credit: Little Shell Tribe and the city of Great Falls The preference toward tribal members for housing is required under the act, according to Terra Branson-Thomas, a senior policy advisor with the firm Clause Law and a consultant on the Good Medicine project. It’s not a preference toward any tribal member, but rather it is intended to give preference to tribal members who meet the income criteria for affordable housing. “The income requirements are the same across the state of Montana, whether you’re applying for tribal housing or other public housing assistance,” Branson-Thomas said. “It’s just that tribes are required to give that preference.” This housing assistance, coupled with an Indigenous preference through NAHASDA, has roots in treaties between the United States government and tribal nations. While most of these treaties date back to the 19th century, they included guarantees of stable housing and are very much relevant in Indigenous communities today, according to Jody Cahoon Perez, former executive director of the Salish and Kootenai Housing Authority. “It’s not enough, but the NAHASDA is one way for the federal government to be good to their word,” Cahoon Perez told Montana Free Press last week. “And if anybody understood the history of the genocide that happened against Native Americans on the land that they called the United States, they would be grateful for the people who gave up everything — their way of life, their culture, their identity — so that the Euro-Americans could settle on their homelands.” Cahoon Perez said that the tribal member preference allowed in NAHASDA was necessary due to a history of treatment by the U.S. government that put Indigenous people at a disadvantage in reaching higher rates of secure housing. The housing authority she directed, the largest on the Flathead Indian Reservation, managed properties that all had tribal-member preference in addition to affordability factors. David Heisterkamp, a Colorado-based attorney who has represented tribal housing authorities in cases related to NAHASDA, told MTFP that the U.S. government views this preference as a political categorization, not a racial one. “This preference is tied to your citizenship status with your tribe, so that’s an important distinction,” Heisterkamp said. The U.S. Supreme Court set a precedent in support of this preference in 1974, he added. That case, Morton v. Mancari, considered the legality of tribal preference in employment but has since been applied to housing preferences under NAHASDA, Heisterkamp said. “The Indian preference does not constitute invidious racial discrimination in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, but is reasonable and rationally designed to further Indian self-government,” the court wrote. Furthermore, NAHASDA exempts tribes from the Fair Housing Act, a Civil Rights-era law that prevents housing discrimination based on a person’s race, religion, sex and other identifiers. The roots of this exemption lie in tribal sovereignty and the treaties that established unique relationships between tribal nations and the United States. “Indian tribes pre-exist the U.S. Constitution,” Hesiterkamp said. The city commission will consider final approval Tuesday of a planned unit development and the annexation of the Little Shell property into the city. The meeting, which begins at 7 p.m., will include a public hearing. Glad You Asked New development is certainly a hot topic in Great Falls, and a reader recently asked about Admiral Beverage’s new building in the city’s eastside AgriTech industrial park. The reader was curious about what had changed at the company and why it needed a large warehouse. Zach Mendenhall, general manager for Admiral Beverage in Great Falls, said the Wyoming-based beverage supplier has seen growth across its 11-state coverage area. And that company-wide growth allowed for investments in Great Falls to consolidate operations. “We’ll be able to be a bit more efficient,” Mendenhall told MTFP. “We’re operating on like five different warehouses right now, so we’ll be able to condense into one.” Credit: Matt Hudson/MTFP There hasn’t been a sharp increase in production at Admiral’s Great Falls locations, Mendenhall said, but each location was running out of space. The new 120,000-square-foot building at the AgriTech Park will bring operations under one roof, and the company hopes to begin there by mid-September. “We appreciate the community’s support,” Mendenhall said. “Being a family-owned business, that’s what our owner has strived for.” Fact Check Senate District 10 candidate Margaret Mitchell, a Democrat, made multiple posts to Facebook last week linking Trump administration cuts to U.S. Housing and Urban Development and residents losing screen doors in the Chowen Springs neighborhood in central Great Falls. “DOGE cut $10.7 billion from HUD. How does that affect Great Falls?” Mitchell wrote in her post. “In Chowen Springs it means they are losing their screen doors, despite residents complaining.” MTFP reported on the screen door issue back in 2024, prior to the second Trump administration and DOGE. The removals arose from decisions by the Great Falls Housing Authority to reduce recurring maintenance costs for broken screen doors. MTFP was also unable to find a reference to the $10.7 billion in DOGE cuts to HUD, though the president’s 2027 proposed budget includes cuts of that amount to the department. Mitchell didn’t return a request for comment Friday. 5 Things to Know in Great Falls The Drumlummon Institute and the Montana Historical Society raised more than $60,000 to reissue Nicholas Vrooman’s book, “The Whole Country was. . . ‘One Robe’: The Little Shell Tribe’s America,” which is considered a definitive work on the tribe’s history. Vrooman died in 2019. A celebration of the reprint, including a gift of 500 copies to the tribe, will take place July 21 at the Little Shell Ceremonial Center, 1301 Stuckey Road. The event is from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The Scheels Aim High Big Sky recreation center is expected to get another $400,000 subsidy from the city’s general fund, according to a proposed 2027 budget. The facility has operated at a deficit, and the Park and Recreation Department has been reviewing operations to cover expenses through user fees and rentals. The center’s fund deficit will be nearly eliminated, however, thanks to $640,000 in proceeds from the sale of the old downtown rec center building. The budget proposal is preliminary and will get final city commission consideration in August. Read about the Aim High Big Sky’s history here. Many Rivers Whole Health announced Julie Prigmore as its new CEO. Prigmore previously worked as a bureau chief at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services and led the Cascade County Service Line at Many Rivers. “I’ve spent nearly a decade with this organization, and we have a strong foundation. I know firsthand the strength and talent of our dedicated teams, and we have a clear opportunity to accelerate growth within the behavioral health field,” Prigmore’s press release statement said in part. The Montana State Fair begins July 24 at the Montana ExpoPark. The annual event is back with rodeo, musical performances and vendors. Headlining musical acts include Third Eye Blind, Kansas and Ian Munsick. The Little Shell Tribe is hosting an indian relay event on July 25 in place of the canceled horse racing. The county fair website has more details, schedules and ticket information. NorthWestern Energy will draw down the mighty Missouri River from July 31 through mid-September as part of its Black Eagle Dam improvement project. The drawdown allows crews to work on the upstream side of the dam. The drawdown will close the river to public access from Broadwater Bay to the dam, including at West Bank Park. The Broadwater Bay boat launch will remain open for upstream use. A NorthWestern spokesperson pointed to this previous Great Falls Tribune story for more information on river drawdowns. Public Notice The Great Falls City Commission will hold public hearings and consider approval of budgets on multiple special districts during its meeting Tuesday, July 21. Those districts include the Business Improvement District, the Tourism Business Improvement District and the Downtown Urban Renewal District. The Business Improvement District and the Tourism Business Improvement District don’t raise money through property taxes but rather through special assessments and fees on certain properties (for the BID) and from hotel stays (TBID).  The Downtown Urban Renewal District is funded by tax increment financing, which is captured as property values grow within the district. The amendments proposed for the Urban Renewal Plan that guides the district include adopting the city’s new parking plan and aligning with the new 2045 city growth plan. The city commission meets at 7 p.m. at the Civic Center, and the agenda is here. 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