Daily Digest
Ty's Take When the budget's this tight and the teachers still get raises, somebody's making hard choices about what matters most. The city council knows what every parent in Billings knows—you don't keep good schools by nickel-and-diming the people in the
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Sue Ray taught forty-five years at Chief Charlo and nobody had to wonder why—that's the kind of tenure you don't rack up unless you actually show up for kids, day in and day out, through all the changes a half-century brings
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The rails that built this place are mostly history now, which tells you something about how fast a region can remake itself when the economics shift. We've gone from empire to adaptation—coal giving way to refining and healthcare, the old transportation networks replaced
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Every now and then a judge uses language plain enough that it cuts through all the noise, and that happened this week when the bench essentially told Mineral County that their sheriff and deputies didn't have a case worth pursuing. Those kinds of rulings—
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The Special Olympics athletes running their hearts out at MetraPark this week remind you why a town like Billings matters—we're big enough to host something that draws families from across the state, small enough that neighbors still show up to cheer. Meanwhile, out
Daily Digest
Ty's Take There's something worth noticing in how a third-grade class in Helena turned a fairy tale inside out—Gold E. Locks walked free, the three bears' case fell apart, and a bunch of eight-year-olds learned that the law isn't about who we
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Property taxes are climbing again in Billings, and if you haven't looked at your assessment lately, you're about to get a reminder that living in Montana's largest city doesn't come cheap anymore. The conversation around those numbers matters
Daily Digest
Ty's Take When a hospital team has to improvise to save two lives at once—a mother and her newborn both fighting in the ICU—you get a reminder of what keeps this city running underneath all the talk about energy markets and downtown development. Montana Tech'
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Two colleges sending graduates out into the world the same week, a couple of major intersections getting hard looks from accident investigators, and a couple thousand women running through downtown on a Saturday morning—that's May in Billings, when the season finally turns and
Daily Digest
Ty's Take When a water system at a major hotel can't keep guests safe from Legionnaires', when fuel costs start cutting into regional air service, and when a long-running conservation project loses its grazing permits all in the same news cycle, you're looking
Daily Digest
Ty's Take A thin news day in early May usually means the community's attention is split between spring work and the machinery of an election season, but today's headlines carry weight anyway—a teenager dead in a motorcycle crash, a woman killed near Big
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Every spring in a town like this, you get a particular kind of story—the kid who worked hard, stayed focused, and now gets to walk across that stage knowing they earned it. Micah Falls is that story, the kind that reminds you why you stick