Rural fire district discusses agreement with Havre

After meeting Tuesday morning, Rural Fire District 1 is continuing the process of updating a fire suppression agreement with the city of Havre.

“I’m doing some legwork on that. I have reviewed more regulations than ever thought I wanted to and I’m not done yet. At this point, I have met with Mayor Tim Solomon and we exchanged some information, questions, comments and concerns. He gave me some documents. I do have more information that I am going to request. I’ll do that via a letter from the board to him,” chair Steve Jamruszka said to people attending the meeting.

Solomon was also in attendance at Tuesday’s meeting.

Havre Fire Department provides fire suppression in the district, a ring around the Havre city limits, but Havre has requested a new agreement be drafted, specifically to determine who enforces fire code requirements in the district.

Havre has canceled the existing agreement effective June 30 and a new agreement has to be in place by then.

Jamruszka said he expects to have the letter completed and mailed this week. He added that the discussion he had with Solomon didn’t substantially change anything in the termination letter.

Jamruszka confirmed at the meeting that as it stands right now, the suppression agreement is going to be terminated in 45 days.

“I brought up to Steve that maybe you need to have some special meetings to move forward. There’s probably some latitude to that if we see a substantial move forward on who’s going to and how it’s going to be enforced as far as some of the fire codes out in that area,” Solomon told the people at the meeting.

“The contract with the suppression, we don’t have problems with that part, except for who’s going to enforce, because that’s been the problem. No one’s enforcing fire code out in that area now and they’re building new facilities that don’t meet any fire codes. We’re not interested in suppression if we don’t know who’s going to enforce the fire code. We’re looking for who’s going to step up and do that at the county level,” Solomon said.

Solomon said the city has been trying to get the issue resolved for several years.

Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson told Jamruszka at the board’s April 22 meeting it was his understanding that the city wants the dsitrict to place more fire code restrictions on new construction in their area and to perform building inspections on new and existing buildings.

Jamruszka responded at the time by saying he needed to know what the current agreement is and what modifications are being requested before those modifications can be made.

Solomon said Monday that the termination deadline for the agreement is June 30.

The board will revisit this issue at additional meetings.

Jamruszka said Monday that the transaction for the purchase of the bus barn by North Central Montana Transit was successful.

The transit system has been using the facility for some time and had negotiated its purchase from the fire district.

The fire district also set new by-laws which the Hill County commissioners will review for final adoption.