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PERSPECTIVES

© 2008 The Daily Inter Lake

Feb. 7 — For several evenings strange red and green lights have been seen at high altitudes at Tacoma, Kent and other places along Puget Sound. While a Northern Pacific train was waiting for a drawbridge, the engi-

neer saw a strange object very high in the air and he called the conductor’s attention to it. Tourists who had field glasses declared it to be an airship and said it carried a Japanese flag, and was carrying spies who are studying the coast topography.

— The Inter Lake, 1908

FRONT & CENTER

100 YEARS

AGO

Bush is proud of his fiscal discipline; they’d like to know why Page D1

Braves three-peat in wrestlingThe Daily Inter Lake

BILLINGS — They did it again.And they made it look oh, so

easy.Flathead High School’s wrestlers

repeated as Class AA state champi-ons for a third-straight season on Saturday with another dominating performance.

The Braves left the mats at MetraPark with a state record

410 team points. Billings Skyview was a distant second, 264 1/2, and Great Falls High third, 223 1/2.

WINNING INDIVIDUAL titles for FHS were Tan-ner Beaman at 130, Brian Ham at 135, Tyler Wells at 152, David Lau at 160 and Luke Fischer at 171.

Ham was a state champ last year at 119.

Flathead took a school- and state record-tying 29 wrestlers to this event.

The Braves went 20-0 in dual competi-tion this sea-son and were

perfect in tournament action as well, taking titles in three states

— Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.FHS is No. 1 in the Northwest

State Ranking by Wrestling USA magazine, No. 10 in the nation by Amateur Wrestling News and No. 14 by WIN magazine.

LAST YEAR, Flathead won state with a 347 1/2 point total. It had 18 state placers, nine state final-ists and three state champions. The points along with the number of state placers and state finalists

were state records.In 2004, Flathead won state with

325 points. The 2006 squad had 17 placers.

Flathead has captured state titles five times in the last six sea-sons.

The Braves finished divisional action with 11 individual champi-ons.

For more results from the state wrestling tournament, please see page B1.

Growth slows but

doesn’t stop But while the total number of applications is down, the size of the development projects is keeping the area booming when it comes to the creation of new lots.

Kalispell gave preliminary plat approval to 12 subdivisions in 2007, the same as the previous year. The city experienced a massive spike in the number of lots, however, with 804 lots approved last year com-pared to 322 in 2006. The number of acres proposed for development reached 579, more than triple the acreage of 2006.

“That level of growth is not sus-tainable,” Kalispell Planning Direc-tor Tom Jentz said. “You probably won’t see it repeated in Kalispell.”

Jentz said the creation of new lots is a value to the city because it will put more lots on the market, some-thing Kalispell has been lacking. The cost of development within city limits likely will regulate the explo-sion of new lots in the future.

“In the city, you must put in water, sewer, streets, park space, sidewalks and so on,” Jentz said. “A developer pays a lot more to bring a lot on line in the city, and that reduces speculative construction.”

DENSITIES CONTINUE to remain higher in Kalispell when compared to Whitefish, something

Since 2005, the total number of subdivisions approved for preliminary and final plats has dropped by more than 50 percent in Flathead County and the three municipal areas of Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls.

By MICHAEL RICHESON The Daily Inter Lake

ABOVE: ROB STEINEBACH and Justin Mil-brandt with Milbrandt Building Co. work on floor sheeting on a building on the south side of Kalispell. The pace of growth, as measured by subdivision activity, has slowed somewhat in the Flathead Valley.

Daily Inter Lake file photoSee SLOWS on Page A3

ROCK-A-BYE BABIESFVCC opens childhood center Page C1

KE February 10, 2008 SERVING THE FLATHEAD SINCE 1889 ••• www.dailyinterlake.com $1.50

HUCKABEEOBAMA

Huckabee beats McCain in KansasBy DAVID ESPOAP Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Sen. Barack Obama swept the Lou-isiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washington state Saturday night, slicing into Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s slender delegate lead in their historic race for the Democratic presidential nomi-nation.

The Illinois senator also won caucuses in the Virgin Island, completing his best night of the campaign.

In all, the Democrats scrapped for 161 delegates in the night’s contests.

In initial allocations, Obama had won 31, Clinton nine.

In overall totals in The Associated Press count, Clin-ton had 1,064 delegates to 1,029 for Obama. A total of 2,025 is required to win the nomina-tion at the national convention in Denver.

THE DEMOCRATIC race moved into a new, post-Super Tuesday phase as McCain flunked his first ballot test since becoming the Republi-can nominee-in-waiting. He lost Kansas caucuses to Mike Huckabee, gaining less than 24 percent of the vote.

Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, got nearly 60 percent of the vote a few hours after telling conser-vatives in Washington, “I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them.”

He won all 36 delegates at stake.

Obama sweeps 3 states