No recycling center yet

An application for a grant to build a recycling center at the new landfill will not be submitted after all. "Our idea of a recycling facility in partnership with the city and the county failed," said Candi Zion, the chairperson of Recycle Hi-Line. The recycling group asked for support from government bodies in Hill, Blaine and Chouteau counties to submit a Montana Department of Environmental Quality energy efficiency and conservation block grant. Only governments can apply for the funding, and the recycling group planned to partner with those bodies in the Unified Disposal Board area in the hopes of receiving stimulus funds for a facility. City Council during its meeting Tuesday evening approved a resolution giving its support to a grant that would look at several possibilities, including energy retrofits at City Hall and the city shop instead. Another avenue for the $100,000 available to the city is to install air diffusers instead of propellor blades in the aeration basin at the waste water treatment plant, Public Works Director Dave Peterson said. The diffusers are less expensive to operate, he said, but expensive to install. Additional money would have to be used to complete the project, for which he gave a tentative estimate at $300,000 to $700,000. "And we are in support of the city and the county in pursuit of that grant," Zion said. Other governments in the UDB service area also chose to propose energy retrofits of buildings in their grant applications. Currently, no large, public, central recycling facility exists in the UDB's service area. Materials can be taken to one of several locations in the area including the Havre Day Activity Center and Pacific Steel and Recycling. "The goal is to have a recycling center," Zion said, regardless of if that's now or later. "We're not sure what it's going to look like," she added. "If there's funding that Comes down for a facility, we're going to go for it. We're going to push for it." In the meantime, Zion said she hopes to work on the education side of the recycling effort. The group will find out in the next month or so if it has received an education grant that would provide money to develop an awareness and education program, as well as money to purchase desk-side recycling bins, said Tom Tucker, a member of the recycling group who wrote the grant. The recycling group would take the education program to organizations, including government entities and businesses, in the tri-county area, he said. "So big on the education side and try to help the existing places like Havre Day Activity Center and Pacific Steel and Recycling," he said. "Hopefully we'll get this recycling education grant that we've applied for," Zion said. "If we get that grant, then we can start the education process, because it's very apparent to us that we have to have a lot of education on the Hi-Line about the benefits of recycling and the how to of recycling before we get too far." Also during City Council's meeting: • Representatives from Hamilton Consulting Group presented council members with an audit report of the past fiscal year. Nothing was out of order, and there were no significant findings. • Public Works Department employees' and police department employees' contracts were approved. The contracts included a 2 percent pay raise and the provision for a wage survey, which should be completed in June or July. • Mayor Tim Solomon announced the following 2010 committee appointments: — Labor Relations: Bob Kaul, Cal Long, Andrew Brekke and Allen "Woody" Woodwick, — Finance: Woodwick, Gerry Veis, Brekke and Pam Hillery, — Street & Sidewalk: Long, Woodwick, Hillery and Janet Trethewey, — Water & Sewer: Veis, Brekke, Trethewey, Bob Kaftan, — Ordinance: Brekke, Trethewey, Hillery and Long, — Fire & Police: Hillery, Kaftan, Kaul and Veis, — Parks & Recreation: Kaftan, Woodwick, Long and Kaul, — Safety: Kaul and Trethewey. • Gerry Grabofsky was appointed to a one-year term on the airport board. Bob Breum was appointed to a twoyear term on the same board. • Wendy Gerky was appointed to a three-year term on the soil conservation district board. • Keith Doll was appointed to the Havre/Hill County Historic Preservation Commission for a two-year term.