Hill County still looking to fill 16 board seats

After a year of difficulty filling positions the Hill County Commission is still trying to find members to fill 16 seats on various boards.

The most dramatic case of intermittently empty board seats this year was on the Great Northern Fair Board, which had three members including then-Board Chair Bobbie Dolphay, then-Vice-Chair Chelby Gooch and Ray Kallenberger resign in March of this year.

These members were replaced, but Lex Keller resigned from the board just after this year’s fair and a shake-up shortly after in August, saw the board lose another two members in Bob Sivertsen and then-Board Chair Josh Heitzenroder, leaving it without a quorum for months.

The commission appointed two new members earlier this month in Kaleb Fisher and Ken Erickson giving the board a quorum, but the board still has three open seats.

Public controversy leads to a removal and a resignation

The removal of Sivertsen came after multiple fairgrounds employees, including fairgrounds secretary Anita Stevenson, accused him of engaging in inappropriate, threatening and dangerous behavior including shooting pigeons and gophers on the fairgrounds, spreading motor oil for mosquito repellent, unhooking, and later cutting, the wires to the air conditioner in a pickup truck used on the fairgrounds, and holding two employees in a stall in a barn on the fairgrounds against their will.

Sivertsen was asked to resign by the commission in the wake of these allegations but he refused to do so, and was shortly after removed in a 2-0 vote. Hill County Commissioner Jake Strissel had been excused from the meeting when the vote took place.

Heitzenroder resigned at the same time after being widely criticized on social media for not doing enough to address Sivertsen’s behavior.

Stevenson said Heitzenroder and other members of the board would brush off complaints made regarding Sivertsen’s behavior and would frequently make excuses for him, preferring to blame Fairgrounds Manager Frank English for whatever was going wrong at the grounds.

In the months without a quorum the remaining board members, Michelle Burchard and Bob Kaul, have held meetings to discuss the goings on at the fairgrounds and talk about future plans, but were unable to vote on anything until this month.

RFD1

The Rural Fire District 1 Board has seen significant turnover as well this year.

The board went through a massive restructuring by the Hill County Commission earlier this year after a conflict with the city of Havre over a fire suppression contract started to come to a head and the commission said the board was dysfunctional.

At a meeting in January, Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean said that the Rural Fire District 1 Board had not responded to the commissions requests for minutes, treasurer’s information and meeting logs and the commission planned to take action to disband the board.

Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson concurred with McLean, saying the board was also holding illegal meetings.

Then-Hill County Attorney Karen Alley said the board could not be disbanded, but the members could be recalled and in the coming months all members of the board had either resigned or been removed.

In March, the Hill County Commission appointed Courtney Tait to the board and by April the board had a new chair in Steve Jamruszka and a new secretary in Susan Tharp.

The conflict between RFD1 and the city lasted for most of the year and resulted in the board eventually acquiescing to the city’s demand that a fire chief, or an equivalent there-of, be appointed to enforce fire codes in the district.

The lack of fire code enforcement had been a major concern of the Havre Fire Department and the city for years, as they provided fire suppression services to RFD1 and were tasked with responding to structure fires in buildings that were not being inspected and weren’t up to code.

After the new incarnation of the board voted 2-1 in September to adopt a new contract requiring the appointment of a fire chief, or something like it, Tait, who voted no, announced his resignation.

He said he believes the appointment of a fire chief is unnecessary and ill advised, calling it a waste of money the district cannot afford.

“I don’t really think I’m gonna be a help to you guys. I think I’m only going to be a hinderance,” he said.

Tharp would depart five weeks later, submitting a letter of resignation chastising the city, county and district for not caring about the people they serve and said her seat would be better-suited to someone willing to play along.

“I no longer feel my position on the board is of any real significance, if it ever was,” she said in the letter, “... I feel that it is best for me to make room for someone who doesn’t mind playing the ‘good ole boys’ one-upmanship game that seems prevalent between the city, county and fire districts with no regard to the constituents that we serve.”

These two seats would be filled so the board still has a quorum, but two empty seats remain.

11 other seats to fill

In addition to RFD1 and the fair board there remain 11 other seats on various county boards that have yet to be filled, including three on the Zoning Board of Adjustments, two on the Council on Aging Advisory Board and City-County Planning Board, as well as one on the Tourism and Business Improvement District Board, the Health Board, the Weed District Board, and the Airport Board.

At the beginning of the year the Hill County Commission put out a call for applications to many of these positions with McLean saying these vacancies were mostly the result of terms ending.

Since then seats have been filled on the Hill County Park Board, the Havre/Hill County Historic Preservation Commission, Tourism and Business Improvement District Committee, Hill County Weed District Board and the Zoning Board of Adjustments, but 16 positions have yet to be filled.