Havre Public Works director retiring

Havre Mayor Doug Kaercher announced during the monthly meeting of the Havre City Council Monday evening the retirement of Havre Public Works Director Dave Peterson, who has worked for the city for 34 years.

Peterson will leave the department at the end of this month and his successor Trevor Mork, will be sworn in at the next meeting, Kaercher said.

He said the city is grateful for Peterson's decades of service and they wish him well as he retires.

"We wish we could tell you you can't," he said prompting laughs from the city council.

Peterson said he believes Mork will do an excellent job, having witnessed his passion for Havre and its history as they've worked together at the department.

The council also unanimously approved an easement necessary to allow the North Central Montana Regional Water System to connect to Havre Monday evening.

During the meeting Council member Lindsey Ratliff said she wanted to provide an update about concerns brought up at last month's meeting about the city not doing enough to address surface contamination recently found at the Havre Fire Department.

Last year, in response to concerns, the city commissioned some testing of areas of the fire and police departments for asbestos and heavy metals.

The results found that while there was no evidence of air contamination, there was significant surface contamination in the building, with levels of heavy metals and asbestos many times higher than what is considered safe.

The report noted that the areas with the worst readings were areas rarely frequented by department staff with its author, industrial hygienist Keith Cron, saying the readings were certainly concerning but not catastrophic.

Since then the city has been working on an abatement plan for the building but most of the work can't be done until the weather breaks.

At last month's meeting, during a discussion of the Downtown Master Plan, a tentative guide for the city to revitalize the downtown area, council member Josh Miller, who was not at this month's meeting, brought up the issue as the reason for not supporting the plan, saying the city had bigger issues at that time.

Ratliff said she, in her capacity as the chair of the council's Labor Relations Committee, get in touch with the president of the department's union to hear from them about their concerns directly.

She said she was told that the people at the department appreciate the issue being brought attention and the city telling them how to file worker's compensation claims if they feel their health has been affected, but they understand that the next steps of the process can't really be undertaken until the weather breaks, so for now they're just waiting on that.