Election 2015: Matter profile in Havre City Council Ward 1 race

After 40 years living in Havre, Ed Matter is running for City Council.

The retired radio station manager is seeking to fill the Ward 1 seat held by Pam Hillery who is retiring. He will face off against engineer Douglas Vance in the local elections.

Matter said he had been mulling a bid for City Council for a long time, but the lure of an open seat, encouragement by Council President Andrew Brekke and a growing interest in the proposed bond measure to repair city streets, prompted him to file just a couple weeks before the deadline.

He added that he wants to bring his conservative point of view and penchant for fiscal prudence to the eight-member board.

Matter was born in 1942 in a family of nine children. He spent his early years on the family's wheat farm in Turner, before his parents decided to start spending part of the year in Havre, so the children could get a better education.

"My parents did something then when you look back, was quite a change in our lives," he said of the move. He recalls how each year in spring and fall the family had to move all their furniture from one home to the other. It was that first year in Havre while attending St. Jude Thaddeus School that he met his future wife, Judy, with whom he would go on to have six children.

Matter graduated from the now-closed Havre Central High before attending a one-year program at the Brown Institute of Broadcasting in Minneapolis He then briefly worked as a radio announcer in Minot, North Dakota. In the early 1960s, Matter enlisted in the U.S. Army where he spent three years, including time stationed in Germany. He then attended the University of Montana's School of Journalism, where he got a degree in radio and television and did some announcing for sporting events while living in Missoula. For a time, he also lived in Great Falls.

In 1975, Matter returned to Havre with his wife and family, where he sold insurance. In 1983, he was part of a group that launched KXEI, a Christian-themed radio network where he worked as the station's manager.

Matter has long immersed himself in the community, serving six years on the Havre school board in the 1980s. He is an elder at the Ark Church, sits on the board of the Hi-Line Pregnancy Resource Center and is an auxiliary board member of the Montana Family Foundation.

Sharing the ballot with Matter this election, will be a proposed $30 million mill levy increase to repair the city's deteriorating streets. The measure will cost $1.5 million a year for 20 years.

Matter, who says he has been to several City Council meetings on the issue, has mixed feelings about the plan.

"It's a huge amount of money," said Matter, who estimated the proposal, if approved, will cost him about an additional $400 in taxes each year. He says that if the city had taken action years ago, Havre's streets would not be in the rough shape they are today and renovations would be cheaper.

"But, that doesn't change the fact that something has to be done now," Matter said.

Many proponents of the mill levy say continuing the long and sometimes contentious process of annexing 14 properties on the land West of Havre could alleviate some of that burden. The city does provide services to those property owners. Critics of the move though, have claimed at various intervals that the way the city has gone about annexation is legally flawed.

Annexation is a sensitive issue, said Matter, because while the city would gain money from the increased tax revenue absorbing these properties would bring in, it would come at the expense of the county that would not be able to collect that revenue. He said he has to learn more about the issue, but that if it is done it should be done cautiously.

Matter expressed great interest in the idea of Havre adopting a city manager form of government. He points to cities such as Great Falls, which has hired a city manager to oversee the regular operation of a municipality while maintaining the position of mayor to preside over ceremonies and chair meetings. In Havre, the mayor is a part-time position. Matter said he is skeptical as to whether the city could afford the change. He did indicate openness to ideas such as joint city-county government, one similar to Butte-Silver Bow, which merged their city and county governments to form one entity. He says however, that he doubts such an arrangement will happen between Havre and Hill County.

To spread the word of his candidacy, Matter has ordered small note pads with both his name and desired office on them. He plans on starting to knock on doors to court votes in the coming weeks.

Voter Information

• Voting will take place by mail ballot only. Ballots will be mailed to registered voters Wednesday.

• Ballots must be returned by Tuesday, Nov. 3. County officials urge people who have not mailed them by Monday, Nov. 2, to deliver them by hand.

• People can register at the Clerk and Recorder’s Office at the Hill County Courthouse in downtown Havre. People can cast their ballot when they register.