Vibrant Futures foe named to board

During the Havre City Council meeting Monday night, the council covered a variety of terrain quickly.

At the very end of the meeting, Mayor Tim Solomon said that the regional planning group Vibrant Futures needed a representative from the city to join and participate. Council member Rick Dow volunteered.

Vibrant Futures was started recently using a three-year $1.5 million grant from the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to Opportunity Link Inc. to form a group of area city, county and tribal governments from across north-central Montana.

The goal of the group is to look at common needs among neighboring communities and find the best solution for everybody.

Dow objected to the city joining the group out of fear of the "central planning" federal government oversight that he anticipated would be invited to town and impossible to remove. He was told at the time, mostly by Deborah Kottel, Vibrant Futures coordinator and former Democratic state representative from Great Falls, that no member of the consortium was required to take any money or do anything they don't want to.

But if the city decides it does want to do something, Vibrant Futures will help them do it, and maybe check on wether neighbors could benefit as well.

Now Dow will be the city's representative to the consortium.

In other business, the council approved a recent agreement reached with a union of dispatchers at the police department. Both Solomon and Havre Police Chief Kirk Fitch said the agreement was a basic codifying of policies about wages, shifts and schedules.