Havre City Council disscusses cold, vacant properties

Havre City Council heard Monday about what Havre Public Works has been dealing with as far as the recent cold temperature, with some new daily records set for lows.

Council member Caleb Hutchins asked Public Works Director Dave Peterson how the city was dealing with the cold snap, which has caused a number of water main breaks over the past month.

Peterson said his department has not experienced many breaks since last week, although a break Monday inside the Havre Eagles Manor did a lot of damage inside the building.

He added that it will be expensive for the manor to hire contractors to repair the water lines.

He said forecasted temperatures going up a bit won’t improve the situation.

“We’ll see in the next 10 days. It doesn’t show anything significant as far as changes, I mean, we’ll be above zero, but I don’t know, that doesn’t really do anything for us,” he said.

He added that the breaks have taken a toll on the budget for line maintenance.

Peterson said about four to four-and-a-half feet of frost is under the roadways. This is drastically different from the frost that can be found in people’s yards, he said, with the snow coverage insulating the ground reducing the frost to approximately a little over a foot deep.

Hutchins also brought up a proposed vacant property registration ordinance. He said the Ordinance Committee met directly after last meeting to discuss the vacant property registry.

“We had some really good discussions and some interesting comments from property owners in town that had some opinions on that,” Hutchins said. “We did not take any action at that time.”

He told the council that he will be gone on a personal vacation for the next few weeks but would like to schedule a second Ordinance Committee meeting to work on the language of the document based on some of the comments made.

He added that the meeting will most likely be at the end of this month or in early April.

Council President Terry Lilletvedt said she had sent some comments and recommendations on the vacant property registration and wants to attend the next ordinance committee.

Wipfli LLP audit and accounting practice manager Anthony Gerharz discussed the city’s audit report during the meeting.

“Overall, this district is doing well,” Gerharz said.

He added that they adopted new accounting standard which made the report longer and did create a $2 million adjustment. He said that this adjustment was purely in accounting with no fines attached to the audit, only needing the numbers to match.

City Council approved the Audit Report for the Fiscal Year 2018.

The council approved the Hill County Clerk and Recorder’s request to conduct the 2019 city elections by mail-in ballots.

Financial Director and City Clerk Doug Kaercher encouraged the city council to approve this due to a $2,500 in savings to the city in each election conducted.

Hutchins said the request states that they will need to change the ballot layout.

Kaercher said the cost for that would be charged to the city, but added that the change will also save the city money because election judges will be able to use a machine to count the ballots rather than hand counting each vote.

“That is a cost that is passing on to us, but we probably will see a little bit of savings because it saves on the election judges,” he said.

Council also approved a state of Montana agreement for a grant from Montana Historical Society to fund Havre-Hill County Historic Preservation Commision.

Mayor Tim Solomon said that the council previously approved the application for this grant, which would award $5,500 a year to the preservation commission, and needed to approve awarding the grant.