Bozeman City Commissioner Jeff Krauss on the collapse of the Bogart Pavilion, the future of the Bridger Trailer Park, affordable senior housing, the Winco lawsuit, the recent shutdown of Highland and scooters coming to Bozeman.

Listen to Jeff’s comments on the Bogart Pavilion and more topics below.

As much as we’d like to believe that the incident was due to the heavy February snowfall the photos above tell an entirely different story.

Wood that has had no maintenance since 1977 just might fail under any weight. It’s a miracle it hasn’t fallen during a Farmer’s Market in the heat of summer.

Apparently, no one in the past 42 years has checked the pavilion’s structure or felt the need to slap an occasional coat of paint on it.

The nearby bandstand got a makeover but I guess the only attention paid to the pavilion was that it’s a great place to get out of the sun on a hot work day.

It would be so easy to blame this near disaster on climate change. The snow was just too heavy and too much too fast.

After all, a couple of structures at MSU came crashing down too. That should be proof positive that there are not enough curly bulbs in Bozeman light sockets to have averted this calamity.

The city commission has decided to repair the structure so they did what any political body would do — they called in a consultant.

Repairing the structure could run near $600,000 of hard earned tax payer money. How much is a gallon or two of weather resistant paint or varnish?

The only sticking point is what program or service has to suffer to produce over half a million bucks from the budget?

The buck for this failure is on the commission both present and past. But someone down the line has some skin in the game too.

Someone should have been checking on this pavilion from time to time since there are often people under it much of the year.

Thankfully there were no injuries or loss of life when it fell — this time.

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