Park board raises Beaver Creek fees, plans on weed fight

In a two-hour meeting in the Hill County Courthouse Monday, the Hill County Park Board raised some fees on Beaver Creek Park, shot down another fee and tabled two others, and heard from the Hill County Weed District supervisor about additional funds and plans to fight noxious weeds on the park.

Weed District Supervisor Terry Turner said that with all of the problems it caused, the East Fork Fire that burned 21,896 acres in the Bear Paw Mountains in August and September, including 1,240 acres on the park, creates a good opportunity for weed control. With foliage and some brush burned off, the weeds are more accessible, he said.

“The fire was a bad thing, but it’s going to be a good thing for weed control,” he said.

Turner said the state Department of Agriculture approved a grant from its Noxious Weed Trust Fund for $31,151 to help fight weeds in the burned area, which hopefully will keep them from spreading through the burned area. With the open area from the burn, it also will help kill more of the weeds that have been invading the park, including the major problem of houndstongue that has been spreading through the park and onto private land and some new problems that have arisen, such as orange hawkweed.

He said if nothing is done to control the weeds once the growing season starts, with the moisture seen this year they will explode.

The grant, which provides a 50 percent cost share to private landowners and the county to fight noxious weeds in the area burned, is renewable for up to four years.

Turner said that since voters also approved a 4 mill levy increase for the weed district he also will be able to put some full-time work into spraying weeds on the park.

The weed district had been operating on the same budget it had since 1975.

Turner said he will have a crew and truck on the park 10 hours a day, four days a week, starting on the south end of the park and working north, to spray the noxious weeds there through the entire summer.

He said he can’t say how thankful he is that the county taxpayers approved the mill increase so his department can seriously fight the weeds in the park.

“We didn’t have the money before,” he said.

He also said he wants to continue to have spray days, working with landowners and volunteers to spray the weeds on selected days.

Before Turner’s presentation, the board went over, with lengthy discussion, its Finance and Planning Committee’s recommendation on increasing fees and had an update on its proposed changes to cabin lease agreements.

Beaver Creek Park Secretary Aubrey Williams said that after the board approved a revised version of the proposed lease agreement, available for review at the park website at http://bcpark.org under “Current Happenings,” “Update on Proposed Cabin Lease Changes,” the Hill County Commission approved the changes on first reading March 26 and will have a second reading and vote April 9. If approved then, the new lease will become legally binding May 9, she said.

Board Member Renelle Braaten asked if revisions could be made in that process.

Board Chair Steve Mariani said that if changed at this point, the proposal would have to go back through the public comment process.

On the Finance Committee fee change proposals, the board passed a proposal to set the base rate for cabin leases at $400 with a 3 percent increase every two years, and approved eliminating out-of-area higher rates for park permits and increasing the year-long permit from $50 to $55 and the Golden Pass permit from $30 to $35. Day-use permits were kept at $10.

After a lengthy discussion, the board also approved revising its grazing fees, now set at $12 per animal-unit per month, to be based on the state rate set each fall by the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, based on cattle prices, plus a $3 fee that board agreed would go into a weed-control fund.

With the state rate now set at $11.03, the rate for next year will be $14.03, a $2 increase from the current rate but an actual decrease of $1 AUM to the park general budget, with the $3 earmarked to weed control.

After another lengthy discussion on a proposal to raise haying rates also based on state rates, which would have amounted to a 33 percent increase to the hayers, the board split on the vote for that increase, effectively killing it.

Ranchers Bill Bradbury and Larry Kinsella, who also is a member of the board, said the increase would make it hard to justify taking the hay from the park. When asked, Kinsella said it would be enough for him to pass up on haying on the park.

Park user Lou Hagener said that, with the relatively low amount of revenue raised by haying, problems including loss of fertility and the spreading of weeds might justify canceling haying on the park.

The board tabled proposals to set a flat rate of $75 for reserved campsites regardless of place of residence — now, people from outside of Hill, Blaine, Chouteau and Liberty counties are charged a higher rate, which park Superintendent Chad Edgar said makes the process complicated and raises very little extra revenue, much like the system that had been used for park permits — and to keep the fees on the Beaver Lodge at Camp Kiwanis flat this year.

Some discussion was held that the larger reserved campsites should have higher fees than the smaller sites.

Mariani suggested that those proposals and the haying fees should be reviewed by the Finance and Planning Committee again.

In other news, Edgar said that with the snow, park use has been low and evaluation of the damage of the East Fork Fire and discussions of logging the damaged trees has been set back.

The board approved Edger’s request to increase the wages of his employees of the park after he said he gave up last year after advertising for two positions for several months with only one applicant — who had found another job by the time Edgar called him for an interview. The rates will go from a starting wage of $8.65 to $10 an hour.

Edgar said that with the travel required to get to work and the physical, sometimes demanding labor on the park, people are not interested in working at $8.65 an hour when they can walk out their door and get a job in town paying more.

The board also voted, with Renelle Braaten the only vote in favor, to kill a proposal advocated by Braaten to create a Natural Resources Committee.

Several board members said they believed too many committees were being created, when the issues covered could be addressed by the board itself.