Quote:
Originally Posted by hopscotch11
This was the point I was trying to make. The people mentioned were not newcomers. I am not trying to attack anyone, just trying to understand why newcomers are treated that way. There is not much to do there. The nearest Walmart is 80 miles away. The nearest mall is 120 miles away. The parks that are there are for very young children. When grocery shopping, you have to hang onto your cart or it will roll away due to the unlevel floors. You are not allowed to take your cart to your car due to insurance, so the employee takes the groceries to the car for you and then you feel as if you need to tip them. The clothing store needs trendy clothes that the kids like to wear. If there was a good buyer for the store, it could actually make some money.
I am not personally attacking anyone so please don't take it that way.
Also, what about the housing costs? Am I the only one that feels that they are way way way to high?
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Okay, now you made me smile and laugh! I love your grocery cart line! It is so true. How my husband & I wish that the grocery store could be improved especially the floors & currently the prices. The deal with the carts has been that way for over 15 or 20 years, it was started as a nice customer service, something that a small town grocery store would do. You are never required to tip them, I think that would come as a shock to some of them to be honest. I will agree that the clothing store could use some work. It was supposed to be a store where you could get the basics, like socks, pants, shirts, basic underwear, tights for girls etc. A lot of community members spent a lot of time working to get something here and it is better then not having anything. They do have a board of directors that is always looking for help including people to be on the board and they still have shares for sale.
When it comes to the housing prices, a lot of people who are close to retiring saw that there were a lot of new people coming in that didn't want to live in trailers so they decided that they could try to sell theirs for some $. Some of the people who have come in from outside came in with more money to spend on housing and priced some of the people that had been living here for a while out of the market. So it comes from both sides, new and old. A lot of people wanting to buy and not a lot to chose from= higher prices and then add in people jumping on the selling band wagon, not good for prices. Some of them have been improved better than others and some are exactly the same as when they were built. We lived in the town houses for many years before we bought a house and we looked at a lot of houses and had only put a bid in on one before we got a tip to look at the house we bought. It never hit the market, and we were thankful that we bought it when we did for what we did. I think that the prices are too inflated for the quality of houses. I would say to give it a while and the prices will come down here. I would also suggest to buy an empty lot and put a nice modular on it with a nice size garage. You could do that and spend about the same and it would be new.
On to where this attitude that you are feeling may have come from. It probably started 3 years ago when the plant, mine, school, & clinic started hiring more frequently. There were several mine & plant positions open and a lot of very qualified locals who had been living here for quite a while or who had come back to live here because they wanted to live here applied for them. They were passed over because a mine in WA had closed and our mine & plant choose to hire a lot of these people, and now many of them have left. The school hired a person, he accepted a contract, two weeks before the school year started he decided that he couldn't find a house to buy and so he dumped his contract. The clinic hired a person to manage one area in the clinic and he stayed just about a year. He took a job that two others had wanted and were qualified to do that liked living here and wanted to work and live here. Now the physical therapist is leaving, from what I here, it comes on the tails of having his education paid for by the clinic. Some of it probably comes from the comments from newcomers that have been overheard by people that live here the way things are done here are wrong and we live in houses that are junk and we don't have a mall so we don't know how to buy the trendiest things or it is impossible to shop without one. Nobody likes being told that the way they live is wrong and that their house is garbage and that we don't have this and we don't have that. So I guess that maybe some of this attitude comes from being burned by some new people. Now to be honest, over 95% of the population of Colstrip are transplants from other areas. I am one. I still think that it is priceless to be able to hear my daughter say "it's Chad in the garbage truck" when she hear's the garbage truck go by, or to know everyone who lives on my street, even if I don't talk to them on a daily basis. My best friend doesn't live here. I have many people that I know and trust that do live here. I don't talk to them everyday, or go out of my way to say hi if I see them on the other side of the grocery store, but I know each of the checkers names there and can talk to any of them and I don't have to worry if my kids stand a ways away from me when I am checking out. The free membership to the Parks department that has some pretty decent equipment and a great pool and golf course in the summer, is priceless. Yeah, we don't have much for shopping, I do the majority of ours online. We don't have much for night life except for pool or darts at the Super Stop and occasionally a live band. We do have a lot of very good people in my opinion new and old that are a joy to be around and that all contribute to make Colstrip what it is. I know firsthand of 4 very good guys that are all single and not gay. I guess that I am very defensive of anyone insulting the people that I know and have experienced exactly the opposite reaction from of them being very friendly, including the gals at both banks, new & old, the cashiers at the grocery store, new & old, the people at the clothing store, the teachers that I worked around, the people at the clinic, the people at the mine and both power plants.
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12-30-2007, 07:24 PM
Opinion
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