Well, our history goes back a long ways.

And I don’t know if it bears bringing to light everything that happened in the last four or five years but [Mayor] Chris Hindoien is not trustworthy, nor is is he a truthful person. But to suffice it to say, I got into an issue with the City where they hadn’t been clearly straightforward on their stuff regarding the trees and the boulevards.

And so he was running for mayor against a guy by the name of Lannen. And when Lannen took over for a gentleman by the name of Conatser, Lannen decided that he was going to be the big man on the block. And where I was having an issue with the trees while I was trying to retain dirt around them so that I could manage them and mow them, he decided to get on his high horse and came and told me that he was just going to tear it out.

I went to the board of adjustments. But in the process he got booted out of his appointed position, and Hindoien ran against him and defeated him pretty soundly. And in that running, Hindoien and I had discussions about these trees, about the wall, about the infringement upon the City’s right of way, which it was clearly there. And I knew that. It wasn’t that I was unaware. I knew that I had built on the right of way, but they were their trees and I was trying to do something to salvage them. And quite honestly, my wall that I had built was one of many infractions in the city that were clearly out of line for infringement upon the right of way of the City. It’s just that in my discussions with him, they had no plan. They wouldn’t let me know what they wanted to do with the trees and told me that it was my responsibility. So I took it.

Lannen wanted to boot the wall and Hindoien ran against him. I went to him as he was running and I said, “I will support you, but I need to know what you want to do with this wall? How do we want to approach this? Where can we go from here? How can we make this work so that we can take care of the city’s aging trees–which they were dead anyway, I should have just cut them down but they wouldn’t even let me do that. They took responsibility of owning the trees, but they did not want the responsibility of managing or maintaining them in a way that cost money. They just put that onto the poor old landowner.

So he told me “that’s a horse that’s out of the barn now.” He said, “I think we need to let that one sit aside and focus on how we proceed from here on.” Which I totally, 100% agreed with. I also told him that really what you should do is you should go to all of the infringing problems in the city, all of the infractions where people have clearly built on your property – on the boulevard, which is erroneous – and issue them encroachment permits. The City would then know that everybody that had an infringement or an encroachment was marked down and on file. So you could go back and see that these people of years passed have infringed on the City’s right of way, but we know about it, and we’ve talked to them and issued them a permit. Which is probably the most legal way to handle that.

Well, in this process, before even Hindoien came on board, I approached the City with two requests for encroachment permits or conditional variances, where you would say, well Bumgarner has this wall built, he built it to maintain our trees, so therefore we will let him leave it there. It’s their right of way so if they decided that they needed access to it for a valid condition then they had the right to come in. I understood that completely, and the encroachment permit allowed them to do this. But until then it allowed me to have the wall there, or driveway, or whatever you wanted. And this was stuff that I covered with him way before Hindoien got elected, and then afterwards I tried to approach him. But he told me that “we’ll work something out.” So I had this impression and basically commitment from him that he was wanting to talk about this.

At that point in time Jen Stutz was the attorney. And she was the City Attorney. So when this all took place I ended going up before the board of adjustments. And evidently, in Choteau, Montana – which maybe is common for every city, I don’t know – nobody can read and nobody understands the English language. In their ordinance it says that if someone is coming to the board to ask for an adjustment or an ordinance change or if you want to build a 12-foot tall fence, well this group is supposed to be the group that looks at that and talks it over and comes up with the best solution. But they also include the person who is making the change.

The ordinance states that you must, first of all, notify every landowner within 450 feet of that particular ordinance change. So that means that you’ve damn near got to notify every landowner or house owner or property owner on every corner across the street. There’s that distance that you have to make sure that everybody in that radius is notified. And I knew this. And when they first sent out the letter to have the first board of adjustments meeting, which I knew at that time because Lannen was still in the hole, that he was gunning that the board of adjustments had already been told what the hell they were going to do. Probably the discussion on it may have lasted five minutes. But I don’t even think it lasted that long because they had already been told what they were going to do. So I got into the meeting and I had a certification notification letter and it didn’t have any of those people. So I let them start talking and yakking away and they were headed for the big one and I could see the ponies coming down the track at a hundred miles an hour.

So I said, “Well, I’ve got question here.” I said, “Tom, did you notify the Martinsens?” Which, she’s the editor of the paper and she was sitting in the room. And I said, “Did you notify them of this meeting that we were having it?” He said, “Well, no.”

I said, “Did you notify the Clarks?”

He said, “Well, no.”

I said, “Did you notify the Smiths? The Skinners? Did you notify them?”

And he said, “Well, no I didn’t.”

So I said, “We can’t have this meeting. You have not followed through on what the law says you must do. And I’m telling you what, people were shitting their pants. They didn’t know what to do. So finally somebody pulled out the code and read it and confirmed, “Well, yeah. That’s what it says.”

So I said, “Well, I guess see you later.” So I went off and they rescheduled the meeting.

Meeting two comes along, and I get my notification letter. And this time they notified everybody, except Jack and Sidney Clark who are right across the street from me. I mean, they’re not more than fifty feet away. And they didn’t notify them but they notified everybody else. So I let them do their stuff and when they were getting ready to drop the hammer, I said, “Well, did you happen to notify Jack and Sidney Clark?”

“I think so.”

And I said, “Well, do you have a letter to prove it?”

“Oh,” he said, “You know. I didn’t.”

And the city attorney is sitting there by the name of Jen Stutz. She’s sitting there. She turns around and looks at me and says, “Well, can you think of anybody else that we should probably notify?”

And I said, “Well, that’s not my friggin’ job. That’s yours.”

So we went through the process again. And this time they did notify everybody. I checked. In fact, I think he notified clear up in Bynum. I mean, I think half of the town of Choteau to help ensure they weren’t going to miss anybody. And we get to the point where the meeting needs to be scheduled. And they were scheduling it for the first week of August or the last week of July. I can’t remember which. But it was harvest and I was running a combine for a friend of mine up in Inverness. I wasn’t going to be in Choteau. So I sent two letters on two different occasions to both Stutz, who was city attorney at that time, Maples who was City Public Works, and to Lannen because he was still the mayor at that time. The letter stated that I could not make it to the meeting. The ordinance says you’re supposed to notify them if you couldn’t make the meeting. So, I did what I’m supposed to do.

I proceeded to run the combine. And in the process I was told by a good friend of mine that they had had the meeting while I was gone. And I said, “Oh really?” And he said, “Oh yeah. They had the meeting and they denied your permit so you’re going to have to tear your wall out.” And I said, “Really?”

Well the City code states that the defendant – I’m going to call myself the defendant – must be present at the meeting in order for that meeting to take place. Now, I went to school in Belt, Montana and I was a pretty good student. And I understand the English language. And my English teacher told me that words mean what they say and they say what they mean. And the word “present” means that your cheeks are sitting on a chair, period. You must be in attendance. You must be sitting there otherwise you’re not present. Well, I thought right then that this is a lawsuit now. Because if this is how they’re going to handle it then we’re going to hit them with what the law says.

So I went to them and I said, “Well, I’m going to sue you.” So I did. And I filed it in court there. Well, in between there is during the time that Hindoien was running for mayor and Lannen got his ass kicked out. And I had asked him what we were going to do about this because it was going through the court and we were filing responses and playing the legal game. I went to Hindoien and said, “What are we going to do? How is your head on this? If you become mayor, how are you going to respond to this and what can I expect?” I needed to know where we were going to go there so I could begin to prepare my side.

So, he said, “Well, I think the horse is out of the barn. So, I think we’ve just got to let this one go.” He also said that we’ll see how the court adjudicates it so that we can make some kind of a good decision. The law said that I had to be present. So, that was the focus of my argument to Olefson, who was the district judge. And it was pretty clear to me because they broke their law. And I mean, not that me having a wall on their property was right, but it needed to be adjudicated, it needed to be adjusted, it needed to be worked out. There needed to be some discussion – which there was zero – to take care of this.

In the adjudications, the judge stupidly said, “Well, you just decided not to come.” I guess he didn’t know that I had written letters, or he ignored them. Well, that just set me off like a friggin’ Roman candle. I thought, you guys have picked a fight with a honey badger here. I’m done with this crap. We’re going to the supreme court. Because the supreme court’s job is to look at the district judge’s decision and see if he followed the law to a tee. Well, when the law says you must be present, and he makes the stupid statement, “Well, you just decided not to come,” when I have two dated letters that were received that said I couldn’t be there and asking to reschedule, I think the supreme court was just going to drill him.

And by this time, Hindoien’s brother had come on as the acting attorney. His little brother came on and he was the acting attorney, so I was actually going through him then when we were going to the supreme court. Well, the supreme court said, “Why do we have to deal with this crap?” So they demanded we go to mediation and get it taken care of. So, I proceeded to wait for that. The mediator was picked by the supreme court and we went through mediation. The guy’s name was Stuart Kellner, he’s an older fella. And he basically was a pretty good mediator. And I told him, I said, “Well Stew, these guys have not followed the law in any respect. They don’t have a master forestry plan. They don’t seem to have any idea how they’re going to deal with these old trees.”

And in this mediation process it was agreed by both parties that we would have the Tree Amigos, a certified arborist, to come up and look at the trees. As soon as that guy showed up on the property he said, “Those trees need to come out of here now. They’re totally diseased. They’re dead and dying. And they are dangerous.” Because those 50-foot pieces hanging over the road are going to come down eventually and they weigh a lot. He said, “They need to come out of here now.” And he told the City that.

So we had that as a recommendation from them. But get this. I’ve been a farmer all my life and I’m also quite in love with the trees. My name Bumgarner actually means “tree farmer” in Swiss German. So I really have an affection and an affinity to trees because they’re such a gift. They do so many things and they’re so beneficial to us that I really want to see every tree I can see living. And Choteau has a lot of dead ones because they have not taken care of their urban forest. So the Tree Amigos came up and said, “Well, Ed, I hate to tell you, but the national arbor society says that you can’t put dirt over roots.” Now, I sat there with my mouth wide open and said, “You’ve got to be friggin’ kidding me. You cannot cover the roots of a tree with dirt? They’re in the dirt. That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

And he said, “I know. But that’s why they’re going to yell at you because they’re going to argue that since you covered up the roots up with dirt, you’ve therefore hurt their trees.”

That’s so much bullshit I can’t even see straight. So I called the mediator and said, “Here’s what I will do. I will tear my wall out and take it completely down. But the City will remove every one of those three trees, including the roots, including the root ball and down into the dirt. I want all of their material gone because I’m going to plant new trees.” And I had been planting trees but the disease was killing them. So I said, “I want them cleared out and cleaned out so I can start out with new trees and keep them healthy.” So he went to them, and they said, “Oh yeah. We’ll do that.”

In the mediation, the determination was that I would take the wall out, they would remove the trees, and I was to landscape it based on the original grade.

So I asked Kellner how the hell I was supposed to go back to the original grade. I’ve put in a house and a driveway. I can’t change that. And Hindoien had come along and told me, “Well, Ed, the court has ruled against you so we’re going to tear your driveway out and put in a sidewalk.”

It’s only because he wanted to prove a point. He got his hand slapped there because the ADA was going to nail it because I am ADA handicapped now because of car wrecks and diabetes and old age and you name it. So I built my house so that it’s completely ADA compliant. It really annoyed me that he was going to tear that out because it was a complete reversal of where his head was six months before.

So, they agreed to take the trees out. I agreed to take the wall out. And I was tasked with restoring the land back to the original grade. And like I say, words say what they mean. So I went to Kellner and said we need to change that because I have no way of knowing what the original grade was and my house has been reconfigured to be flood zone compliant, and it causes the drainage to flow away from the house, which is another building requirement we’re supposed to have. And he said, “Oh Ed, don’t worry. They’re not going to come after you for that.” And I thought, okay Stew, I’m going to take your word.

Well, the son of a bitch lied to me. Because after I got through landscaping it, I got this letter from old Hindoien saying, “You didn’t put it back to the original grade so we’re going to take you to court. You’re not compliant with the law. And you didn’t comply with the mediation agreement.” So, I called Mr. Kellner up and said, “Guess what? I’m getting sued by these guys. So, I’m done with you. I’ll never have you back.”

So, I took them back to court again and the little brother was involved with that. And then he ended up getting booted because somebody complained that nepotism was going on and he was the City’s Criminal and Civil Attorney because Stutz had stepped down by this time. And there was a conflict of interest. I was going to take it clear to the court and have him recused and start all the way over again. But they must have gotten wind of that, because he was a conflict of interest. They proceeded to go to a firm in Shelby and retained them for representation. We started the process with the fact that they told me I didn’t take it back to the original grade. So, I went to the City with a letter and said, “When you asked me to go back to the original grade, you have to tell me what the original grade was.”

Their response back to me was, “Well, we don’t know that.”

And I said, “Then why in God’s name are we fighting over this?” Because I already have an established driveway and it’s really quite attractive. The point was, do we want our city to look attractive or not?

So, I responded a second time saying, “If you want me to put it back to the original grade, at this time, we need to know what the original grade was?” And they admitted that they didn’t really know what the original grade was. And by this time we were in court and these were responses going back and forth. The judge is watching all of this, and we happened to change judges while this was going on.

I filed a writ of mandamus. It went to the judge saying that these guys are suing me for not putting this back to the original grade and I have asked twice now for the original grade, and it has not come about. We’re not getting it. There was a decision made that we had in the court list of things that you have to do. There’s a time when you can actually try to apply for mediation. Well, I sure as hell wasn’t going to go back to Kellner. So I checked with a company out of Great Falls, and they said they represent Cities in the state of Montana and couldn’t take it because it would be a conflict of interest. But they gave me the name of a gentleman by the name of Glenn Tremper, who had a great reputation. So, I kind of felt comfortable with him.

Now, let’s stop right there so I can tell you that Hindoien is an insurance salesman.

So, we head into mediation and this dumbass wants me, Ed Bumgarner, who is a citizen of Choteau, Montana and does not get a check from the City, to buy a $2 million dollar indemnity policy to cover the City of Choteau in case somebody falls on my driveway and gets hurt on their right of way. And I looked at that I thought, “I don’t think that happens.” So I told Glenn I wasn’t going to decide on it right away. And he was making the usual end run about how he wanted me to pay for all their legal fees because I was wrong and didn’t put it back. And guess what? The day that we started mediation, guess what magically appeared on the horizon? It was the original grade, they said. It really wasn’t the original grade. It was a grade taken from a corner of the property that had not been disturbed, and from an original grade stake which was pretty close to the sidewalk, which I guess you could say was it. But it was probably sixteen feet from the home. And the one where it hadn’t been disturbed was at the corner of an old garage I had which was nowhere near what I had redone. That magically appears and then suddenly here’s the original grade. And I told Tremper that I asked for this twelve months ago. I said, “Tell Hindoien to hang it up because we’re not going that direction.”

So, then he wanted me to buy this indemnity policy. And I told Glenn that I wanted to go home and spend the following day talking with insurance companies about what I can and can’t do regarding his request. I said, “Something stinks about this that I just don’t like. And I’m not going to do anything until I research it.”

So I did. I went to three different big insurance companies. They all looked at me with crossed eyes and said, “You can’t do that. We’ve never heard of that. I don’t think that’s possible.”

So then I got to thinking the code covers this. And by golly don’t you know? There it is. I opened up the Montana Code Annotated and went to the whole six section. It says that the only one who can buy an indemnity policy is an employee of the municipality. Well, Hindoien could buy it. I couldn’t though because I wasn’t an employee. So went back to Glenn and said I think I can end all of this. I told him I wanted an encroachment permit, which I had asked for five-and-a-half years ago, and then we can work this out as we need, to deal with the trees. Well now we’re done with the trees. It’s gone and cleaned up. I haven’t encroached on the City other than I put some trees out. I don’t think they’re going to argue with that. But my driveway comes from my garage to the street, as does every damn driveway in Choteau, Montana. Every one of the driveways in Choteau, Montana comes out and crosses the City right of way to access the street. That’s the only way you can get your car out there.

So, I wanted an encroachment permit saying that if they’re worried about somebody getting hurt on my driveway, because it is at an angle, then I want to agree to an encroachment permit; that if they need to get usage of that piece of property, they have the right to do so. And I told Glenn, “You tell Hindoien that what he’s trying to ask me to do is fraud to the N^th degree. And if he pushes that, I will bring that up in court, because I will not settle this thing until he completely withdraws that.”

So, he went to Hindoien and came back after about two hours and said, “I think you have intimidated him.”

I said, “I hope I scared the living shit out of him.” Because what he tried to make me do was a fraudulent move. He has been untruthful, untrustworthy, and really inept at his job.

This thing with the sheriff’s department, he got it in his head that he was going to make a big name for himself. And he told the sheriff’s department when they approached him in September of 2023 – that’s two years ago – they came to him and they said we have this contract with you which is a renewable contract. Every year it just automatically renews. The county commissioner, the sheriff, and Hindoien all got together to talk about where to go from here. This is getting to the point where the sheriff is spending way more money than he’s being paid for services rendered. We have to meet our expenses. The County can’t do this at a loss. They have to meet their expenses. Well, Hindoien basically just basically put his middle up the bridge of his nose and pushed his glasses back and walked out of the store. And he would not talk to him anymore. They tried to make more amends about where we’re going to go with this. Nothing.

So, it went clear into May. And by this time the sheriff’s department had made the plan known to the City – via Emails, talking to him on the phone, sending him letters – that if you do not want to renegotiate this contract, the contract will expire on the first of September. But please, let’s get together.

Well, in one of the meetings, one of the councilmen came up with these bogus figures that were absolutely wrong, did not make any sense, and misled the public on how the sheriff’s department really is funded and why they really wouldn’t need any more money, which was completely erroneous. The sheriff tried to respond and he wasn’t getting much help from the newspaper and Hindoien refused to make any kinds of amends.

Well, then Hindoien said that he was going to get the attorney general’s opinion on this code called 4101. He said on 4101, which says that every town must have law enforcement either in the form of a police department or other source. Well, the wording is a little bit funky but this goes back to 1907 or some damn time. They basically said that Cities have to have a police force, in which case they need a chief. But if they have neither, they should have law enforcement supplied by another source. So he wants to get an AG opinion. But an AG opinion is exactly that. It’s an opinion. It’s not the law. The law says you must have law enforcement.

But, as they approached this deadline, they hadn’t made any kind of agreement at all. In fact, the City threw out a figure of $75,000 figuring that it would get us to the end of the year when it’s only about two or three months worth of expenses.

So, there was no attempt on Hindoien’s part to make it work. He kept throwing monkey wrenches into the works. The whole point of the matter is even if you’re at that point, you’ve got to come to the table. You can’t just assume that if you ignore it long enough it’ll go away.

So, we get to September First and the County had said then, “Your contract is now expired.”

Our paper took that and said that the big bad sheriff canceled the contract and now we didn’t have any law enforcement. Van Setten worked all the time from the time that he talked to him, he kept trying to reach out and kept getting rebuffed by Hindoien. Because Hindoien got it in his head that he was going to make a big name for himself and maybe go down to Helena and maybe get appointed to something at the state level. He wants a state job. That’s what he’s gunning for.

We started smelling this a long time ago. So, then I went to the sheriff and to the County and asked what the hell happened. Well, he had pissed off the county commissioners so bad that they never wanted to meet with him again.

So, when the Teton County law enforcement contract was canceled I was incensed that the City now has violated the law. So, if you go right to it, 4101 says that the City must have law enforcement. Well, what their argument would be is that the County takes care of everything within its borders. That’s correct, but it’s not specifically designed for Choteau. But, that’s what that law says. Back to being present. Back to you must have this done in ten days. The words mean what they say. You’ll never convince me otherwise.

So, it was about that time I started thinking that this guy needs to go away. So, I proceeded to dig into the best way to do this. We could have done what’s called a mandamus, where we would have a writ to the judge saying that the City of Choteau refuses to negotiate on a law contract that they are violating because of state code 4101. And the judge would have then looked at the City, that being the council and the mayor. Why? Because that’s what a mandamus does. He looks at them and says, “They asked for this, so why aren’t you doing it?” It would’ve really put the screws to them.

But then I got to thinking that our best bet was just to get rid of this guy. Because he had so bamboozled the other four councilmen who were just going along with the ride and they didn’t want to make any waves. Something was going on in that they did not want to stand up to him. And had I been on the council, I probably would have made an ass of myself because I would’ve stood up to him and said, “The emperor ain’t got any clothes on. I’m not blind. I can see where this is going.”

So, I began to work on a petition to recall. And to recall an elected official, I mean the requirements of the law to do that are almost mind boggling. But I slogged through them and I had to redo it about five times, but I finally got it figured out, got everything where it’s supposed to be. You have to make your complaint in less than 200 words. You have to have the top an inch and a half down from the top of the paper. You have to have this. You have to have that. You have to have this warning or that statement in there. And you have to know exactly how many people will make your petition legally valid. I mean you have to dot every “i” and cross every “t” and then cross your fingers. Because, when it goes to his attorneys, which it will, they will go through that with a fine-toothed comb to find one little, itty-bitty thing, and then the thing would be thrown out. So, there was a lot of work that went into that. But I honestly really loved it. It was fun because I was understanding the law and figuring out how it worked. I wonder sometimes if instead of being a farmer I should have been a lawyer.

But, I finally got the thing done. And on Friday, the paper wanted a copy of it because they’d gotten wind of it. And what was happening is that I had gotten it printed up and it had been approved by the county attorney, so it was good to go. As far as we knew, everything on it was where it was supposed to be and how it was supposed to be and we were golden.

So, it began to be distributed to different people to begin to start collecting signatures. We really hadn’t gotten rolling yet. Well, the paper got a hold of it. And the paper then called Hindoien and told him there was a recall petition that was being circulated. And that’s when he came in and gave his resignation the next Tuesday at the council meeting and said he’s going to step down.

He really screwed up royal on how he handled firemen’s personal information. He sent the unredacted personal information, whether it was bank account numbers, social security numbers, birth dates or whatever they had on file with the City that is absolutely personal and is protected. Hindoien sent it all to the Choteau Acantha to Melody Martinsen on an unsecured Email. And you cannot do that. That is a felony.

Ten firefighters definitely quit, and they were mostly leadership. Ten of them quit because of internal things, and that’s why the secretary of the group gave the names to Hindoien to tell him that these ten men have stepped down from the fire department and are no longer employees of the City of Choteau, which should have been an internal affair which should have stayed with Hindoien. But, why he would send her the names of all the firemen and all of their information that had to have been redacted. I mean, you can’t send this stuff over an Email. You just can’t. There’s a lot of people up there scratching their heads wondering why he did that. It’s beyond me. But there are a whole lot of firemen who are really pissed.

I don’t think [Hindoien] cares about Choteau. He says he does. I don’t think he does. I was lied to. He misrepresented himself and his office. The whole issue of trying to get me to do something fraudulently I think is something that needs to be known. I think he feels like he really got shit on here and that were just a bunch of bad asses and he’s going to go do something different. I am absolutely convinced he’s going to do something in Helena. I know he’s been buttering up to our senator and that he wants to play with some new legislation which really clarifies, to the tee, this 4101 business.

I think that him going to Helena, he’s gunning for a bigger position. What it is I don’t know. But I know that the [Montana] League [of Cities and Towns] knows all about him. The police chiefs know all about him. The Montana Sheriff’s and Peace Officers Association knows all about him. Lou Jones, who is our representative, knows all about him.

This guy is a problem. He’s got a storied history that I hope will precede him now because having him in the state government would be just a nightmare.