Council pushes annexation

Members of Havre City Council favor aggressively pursuing annexation of areas west of the city.

One after another, council members said Monday night they thought the area west of the city should be annexed soon.

The three members of the Study Commission reviewing the city's form of government interviewed the council members Monday. When commission chair Dave Brewer asked about the annexation, eyes lit up.

"Council should aggressively pursue annexation," said council member Allen "Woody" Woodwick, as others nodded in agreement.

"I don't see how people can be receiving city services and not be part of the city," council member Terry Lilletvedt said.

"The city has to grow," she said.

"I'm a little bit miffed it has taken so long," said council member Pam Hillery.

The city has annexed some land into the city, but the area west of the city had many large commercial properties that would provide more tax revenue.

Most of these businesses have water and sewer services from the city, but they don't pay full city taxes.

Businesses west of the city have hired attorneys and sued to halt the annexation.

An agreement was reached in which the west side businesses agreed to halt their objections, but that deal has apparently fallen apart.

Council member Andrew Brekke, who has been the point man on the annexation issue, said he didn't believe annexation opponents have lived up to their part of the deal.

Previous councils have not been vigorous enough in supporting annexation, said Brekke, who has been involved in annexation efforts for nearly eight years.

Opponents have apparently told city officials they feel the city has not lived up to its part of the deal, but attorneys opposing annexation have not returned call from reporters requesting confirmation of that, and Havre Mayor Tim Solomon has been reluctant to provide any details of the talks.

The next step in the annexation process is 14 properties west of the city, including Holiday Village Mall.

Once that is accomplished, some city officials hope to go further west and annex Kmart and Walmart.

Study commission members have talked to many other city department heads and have asked other city officials about annexation. Most said they didn't think annexation would affect their departments very much.

For instance, the fire department already provides service to the area under contracts.

But Police Chief Gabe Matosich said the increased workload from serving the outlying areas would be a burden on his department.

Handling shoplifting cases from the shopping areas would be a problem, he said.

Employee theft cases are very time-consuming, and officers would have to spend a lot of time dealing with those cases, he said, meaning patrols in the city would be lessened.