Hill County Commission works to replace members of Rural Fire District 1 board

The Hill County Commission held a Rural Fire District 1 meeting Wednesday morning in which it discussed replacing members of the elected board that oversees the district, a ring around Havre for which the Havre Fire Department provides fire protection.

The three remaining board members, Kelly Jones, Allen LaBuda and Bob Jacobson, did not attend the meeting. 

The meeting was held to figure out what the commission can do with a board it said is is not operating and upholding the standards of an elected board.

The board cannot be disbanded, the members will have to be recalled, said Hill County Attorney Karen Alley. For members to be recalled a petition for recall has to be signed by qualified electors in the district. A new board member would then be appointed to the open position until the position is up for re-election. 

Two board members, Dan Lassle and Jeff Holsapple, had resigned by the time of the meeting. 

The commissioners can now appoint two new board members because of the two open seats. With the one active board member, Kelly Jones, and the two appointments from the commission there will be enough active board members to have a quorum and hold meetings to vote on the issues the commission members said the board has not been actively working on, the commissioners said. 

Commissioner Mark Peterson said that the board has been holding private meetings and not reporting minutes and do not advertise the meetings. 

“That is just an expectation that needs to be communicated to them, that these are public meetings. That they are just held doesn’t mean that they are not qualified board members,” said Alley.

The commissioner’s office is in search of the board’s bylaws to look further into this issue. 

Another issue brought up in the meeting was that the board has not been doing its part in fire prevention and this is why the City of Havre has cancelled it’s contract with the Rural Fire District 1. 

Havre officials said the contract did not specify who was responsible to ensure fire codes were being followed and canceled the existing contract, cancelation effective the end of June, so a new contract with that specification could be negotiated.

“They do have duties and they have duties in state law that they are not doing. They have property, they have meetings, they have all this stuff that they are supposed to be doing. We have a contract specifically for suppression, not protection, not as far as inspections, investigations. There’s a whole lot more that a fire chief is in charge of,” Havre Mayor Tim Solomon said at the meeting Wednesday.

Another issue impacts the local bus transportation system. Opportunity Link has been leasing property from Rural Fire District 1 for North Central Montana Transit to use to house its buses and hold meetings and applied for a grant to buy new buses and buy that property, Commissioner Diane McLean said Jan. 20. Rural District 1 entered an agreement with Opportunity Link to buy the building, however, over the past year Rural 1 has not responded to Opportunity Links’ requests to uphold the agreement and the deadline passed on the grant use. 

The lease between the board and Opportunity Link expires Feb. 28 and the commissioners have not seen any action from the board to resolve this issue. 

By the conclusion of the meeting, the commission set a goal to appoint two new board members to the board to have three active board members to start resolving the issues at hand. 

The group also discussed doing board trainings for all city and county boards. They will be discussing this in the near future.

The commissioner’s office will be posting the open board seats this week to obtain a pool of candidates to appoint two people to the open board seats.