City of Havre honored for safety record

Havre City Council member Bob Kaul told the council Monday that the safety record of city employees nearly earned the city a major award this year.

Kaul said the city received a letter from Gov. Brian Schweitzer that the city came in second in the 2010 Governor's Safety and Health Awards Program.

"That's still awful good," Kaul said.

He added, "If you see any of our guys out there working, tell them good job, because they're the ones who did it." Kaul said state officials came in to review the city and its workers and programs after the city applied for the award program.

The winner of the award in Havre's category has not yet been announced, Kaul said.

Mayor Tim Solomon agreed that taking second in the state deserves some congratulations to the people involved.

"We want to thank the committee and the department heads for a g r e a t j o b , " Solomon said.

"We did come in second statewide, and that's something excellent." I n o t h e r bus ines s, the council unanimously approved c l o s i n g 7 t h Avenue between 4 t h a n d 5 t h streets on Sept. 12 for the St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church Parish's annual picnic.

Kaul said the city representatives recently attended a meeting regarding the brownfield program being administered by Bear Paw Development Corp. The entities involved in the Bear Paw Development region, including Havre, Hill and Blaine counties and Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation have been well-represented at the meeting and are advancing several possible brownField locations, he said. The Fort Belknap Indian Reservation has its own brownfield program.

Bear Paw received a $400,000 grant through the federal Environmental Protect ion Agency's Brownfield Program to assess potentially contaminated sites.

The purpose of the assessment program is to identify what sites have been contaminated, which then can be cleaned up and used for commercial purposes. It also will identify sites which are believed to be contaminated when they actually are not.

Actual or perceived contamination often leads to property sitting idle, and the Brownfield Program works to bring those properties back into operation.

The next step would be to apply for grants to help clean up contaminated sites.

"We're moving forward and have have picked out a number of sites that they are looking at to see if they need to be rebuilt, restructured, whatever, so the land can be put back to use," Kaul said.

He said the group is holding a conference call in the middle of August where the group will hear more about the sites picked and the progress in assessing them.

Council member Gerry Veis said a request from a Havre resident has come in to set a Sewer and Water Committee meeting.

He tentatively set the meeting for Thursday at 5:30 p.m. pending checking with the resident who requested the meeting.