A busy year of local government

Amid the usual handling of grants, management of budgets and approval of various smaller projects the Hill County Commission and Havre City Council both had a busy year in 2020, and not just due to the world-wide crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Both county and city have dealt with many issues this year, making progress in some, addressing controversy in others.

Ambulance district

An issue that came to attention in May was a request from Havre for the county to increase its share of funding for the city fire department to provide ambulance service in the county outside of city limits or the city would end that service.

County voters ended up passing a levy to increase county funding of the service in November, approving the levy with 66 percent in favor and 34 percent opposed.

The levy applies to everyone in the county outside the city limits and Havre Mayor Tim Solomon said it will make up for the shortfall the service has been experiencing, and would allow the service to continue to respond to calls in the county, with six mills going to the Havre service and two to the Rudyard Rural Ambulance Service.

City of Havre Finance and City Clerk Doug Kaercher said the city has was subsidizing the service because the county was paying for about 5 percent but out-of-city calls account for 28 percent of Havre ambulance calls.

Solomon said this is an issue he’s tried to bring to the county numerous times over the years via letters to the Hill County Commission, which he said had been ignored.

This year’s letter, sent in February, said if the county didn’t respond the city would have to discontinue responding to calls outside the city limits in June because the service was facing a shortfall and the city couldn’t afford to continue subsidizing it.

“We decided we needed to put a deadline on it so they would at least talk to us,” Solomon said.

The county did not respond to the February letter until the end of May, the day after the Havre Daily News contacted the commission for comment on the issue.

In meetings with the city, the commission originally proposed creating a county-wide ambulance district that would have put the service in the hands of a board instead of the city, which Solomon and Kaercher said would be a longer-term solution to the problem.

The district would have involved a county-wide levy of between 15 and 17 mills and would have eliminated the subsidy being paid by the city as well as most of the mills city taxpayers provided to the service at the time.

Peterson said after a meeting with people in Rudyard about the idea of a county-wide district he felt there was pushback against the idea and the commission shifted course to the current plan of a simple and lower levy.

Solomon said the city was not against the levy proposal, as it solves the budget shortfall, which was the primary goal of the conversations with the commission, although the county-wide district was his preferred solution.

Havre passes city charter

Another proposal passed in the November election was changing the form of Havre’s government to a charter form, something that has been considered several times in the past but always failed.

In Montana, a municipal government may acquire self-government powers only with the approval of a majority of the municipal electors voting on the question.

A self-governing community can enact more proposals than a general government community, basically able to take actions as long as they are not prohibited by state law, while a general government community can only take action that is established under state law.

Previous proposals to pass a charter form included hiring a city manager to run the day-to-day operations, and that was left out of this year’s proposal. The charter proposal including hiring a city manager failed in the 2016 election.

Under what voters approved this year, the city will remain in its mayor-city council form without a manager, but now will have greater flexibility in what actions it can take.

Deer in the city

The city also is taking steps to address a growing problem in Havre — deer coming in to the city limits on a regular basis.

In an August Ordinance Committee meeting where Solomon requested the city pass an ordinance banning feeding deer inside city limits, council member Andrew Brekke said he has had to slow down on Fifth Avenue while deer crossed street — he added that at least they were using the crosswalk.

Brekke, an insurance agent, said he has had to process claims for people who hit deer in the city.

Solomon said feeding wildlife like deer is illegal statewide, but he wanted it in city ordinance as part of an effort to educate people about the problems that come with feeding deer in the city, as well as making it easier to enforce.

He said Fish, Wildlife and Parks estimated that at least three herds of deer are coming into the city.

People feeding deer or having low-hanging bird or squirrel feeders is part of what is drawing them into town, Solomon said, and the city needs to educate people to prevent that.

The ordinance passed on first reading in the December Havre City Council meeting and if passed on a second reading will be enacted.

Addressing problems at the courthouse

In addition to the work of the county the commission has also needed to deal with issues a bit closer to home regarding the Hill County Courthouse, most notably installing a new chiller and trying to repair the courthouse elevator, which has been out of commission for several months.

The chiller, which would have regulated the temperature in the building in the hottest months of the year was originally meant to be installed back in June, but the pandemic slowed the project down considerably as parts needed for the installation faced significant shipping delays.

While the commission lamented the fact that the chiller couldn’t have been installed before summer, its installation was still celebrated.

The commission has also been working through delays with repairing the courthouse elevator, which has been out of service since late August and necessitated that the commission set up a voting station in the Timmons Room to provide handicap access for residents of Hill County.

Repair of the elevator has also been delayed by a shipping mistake which saw a generator sent to them instead of a motor, which is what the county needs.

Mail-in ballots

In addition to numerous discussions about the pandemic’s effect on the local community and having to make operational changes in the Hill County Courthouse to account for the situation, some controversy arose over mail-in voting in the 2020 election.

Gov. Steve Bullock issued directives allowing mail-in ballots in both the primary and general election this year, which was common across the country, to allow people to avoid going to polls and potentially being exposed to the virus that causes COVID-19. People were still allowed to vote at a poll if they desired.

In mid-August the Hill County Commission voted down a resolution to allow for mail-in ballots in the 2020 general election at a weekly business meeting, with Hill County Commissioners Diane McLean and Mark Peterson voting no and Hill County Commissioner Mike Wendland voting yes.

The decision would be reversed in an unorthodox meeting a week later with Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson changing his vote.

Peterson said during that second meeting that he believed, based on the responses he had over the week, that a strong majority of residents of Hill County do not want a mail-in ballot, which was his reasoning for his first vote.

But after considering information provided to him by the Hill County Clerk and Recorder’s Office he changed his mind about the matter, he said.

McLean, who voted against mail ballots both times, argued that voter fraud was a serious concern.

Hill County Clerk and Recorder Sue Armstrong said there was no evidence to suggest that Hill County was vulnerable to significant fraud, and that the safeguards her office had put in place for the election were robust and effective.

Opponents warned of setting a precedent and confusing voters, as well as the chance of fraud.

Supporters of mail-in voting, including Armstrong and other local election officials, said trying to run normal election while keeping the community safe from an outbreak of COVID-19 would be chaotic if not impossible.

Armstrong and others said mail-in ballots boosted turnout and efficiency during this year’s primary, and reduced the confusion that would have resulted from a poll election during a pandemic.

The second meeting, before the reversal which took place a few hours later, drew a crowd of county residents all but one of whom supported mail-in ballots as a safe alternative to a poll election.

The commission closed the meeting at noon without making a decision, but reopened the meeting a couple hours later to make a vote.

While Wendland agreed with reversing the decision and approving mail ballots, he raised concerns that the manner in which the meeting was held was unusual and skirts the boundaries of good practice.

Employee insurance

The commission faced major opposition on a budgetary line item decision that would have increased the amounts paid for health insurance by county employee who also insured a spouse, children or family, was similarly controversial.

The proposal would have had employees paying an increased amount for their insurance and the county paying less in an effort to reduce the taxes of the larger community.

A document provided by the Hill County Clerk and Recorder’s Office showed a taxpayer who owns a home with a market value of $200,000 would only see savings of $7.09 per year, which many argued could not justify the degree to which employee shares were raised.

The changes, which were discussed at a Hill County Commission business meeting the previous week, were criticized by county employees including Hill County Public Health Director Kim Larson who said she’s heard fellow employees tell her that the proposed increase could cause them to quit, with their costs rising dramatically. Larson said many employees said that effectively destroyed much of the appeal of working for the county, with affordable health care plan being a major draw.

Larson also criticized the way the commission handled informing her and her fellow employees about the proposal, which she heard about the Tuesday before the commissioners were going to vote on it that Thursday.

McLean said the way they handled informing the county employees was imperfect and they would take responsibility for that failure on their part, though she said the miscommunication was not born of ill-will.

During the meeting where the proposed changes were voted down McLean said she’d been bombarded with anonymous and vitriolic social media posts and had been personally attacked over the issue, wrongfully accused of being negligent in her duties.

She said the proposed changes were made with good intentions and the response to them, at least over social media, was entirely unreasonable.

Hill County Commissioner Mike Wendland said the other commissioners had seen similar vitriol directed at the commission as a whole.

He and Peterson said many of the responses they got were difficult to hear as well.

Lift stations and levee progress

In 2020, the Hill County Commission saw progress on two major projects.

The commission announced last week that the county has been awarded a Community Development Block Grant to upgrade the wastewater system in North Havre’s RSID 21.

Earlier in the year the commission had discussed the need to improve the lift station, which is more than 50 years old — most of the machinery and equipment’s life expectancy is half of that.

McLean said the grant is a significant boon to the county, given how expensive replacing this equipment is.

Wendland said receipt of this grant was a pleasant surprise, and the commission was sure that Hill County was out of the running for it.

McLean said the county has also applied for a Treasure Statement Endowment Program grant to help with the project, but they won’t know if they got it until Legislature makes a decision.

The commission has spent a great deal of time in the past years looking for ways to fund upgrades to lift stations in North Havre and have had successes getting some of them up to date.

Lift Station 21 is not in danger of causing environmental or health risks at the moment but the commission wanted to get ahead of what would eventually be a problem.

This $260,500 grant will be a significant help in getting Lift Station 21 in order for the years to come.

The commission also saw major progress on the Havre-Milk River Levee’s improvement project.

In August, the commission met with representatives from Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and Great Western Engineering to discuss progress on the project, including federal approval of the improvement plan proposed for the levee.

The levee, which was completed in 1957, was designed to prevent destructive flooding that often devastated the area.

However, after inspections in 2014 and 2015, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the levee did not meet their standards. Problems with the levee include structures being built too close or against the levee and trees growing on it.

If the levee isn’t certified by the Corps, people determined to be in a floodplain may be required to buy flood insurance, a significant financial hit for many in the community.

During the meeting Peterson said the county’s System-Wide Improvement Framework has been approved by the Corps and they have been instructed to begin implementation immediately.

This approval has effectively delayed the downgrade and has bought time for the county to make the necessary improvements to prevent residents from needing to buy flood insurance.