Legitimacy of county commission meeting questioned

During a “commissioner staff meeting” Monday, the Hill County Commission discussed a number of issues, including board appointment applications and employee health insurance, issues that in the past would have been discussed in a regular business meeting, causing one commissioner to call for the meeting’s name to be changed to avoid misleading the public.

During the meeting the commission went over various applicants to the county’s boards and the status of said boards, including the Great Northern Fair Board which has three positions that should have been up for reappointment in January of last year, those of Kaleb Fisher, Casey Tilleman and Ken Erickson.

After the meeting Hill County Commissioner Jake Strissel said that was an error on the part of the commission which did not have an administrative assistant at the time to help keep track of the matter.

“Not going to lie, we let that one slip through the cracks,” Strissel said.

There was also a great deal of apparent confusion over the makeup and appointment procedures for the board that governs the Hill County Council on Aging.

Hill County Commissioner Sheri Williams said only one commissioner is supposed to be on that board but Hill County Commission Chair Mark Peterson said that is not the case.

Williams said the matter had been explained to them just earlier that day, but Peterson said until he hears otherwise they will proceed with board appointments as he understands them.

After the meeting Strissel said this confusion is a result of the county moving from being under the Area 10 Agency on Aging, to being under the Area 3 Agency on Aging, which has different rules.

The commission also discussed a recent 18 percent increase in health insurance premiums for Hill County employees, and agreed that the county can and should absorb that increase, and keep the structure of the plans largely the same, though no vote on the matter was taken.

The matter of employee health insurance has been a controversial one more than once in the past few years and was typically discussed primarily in the commission’s regular business meetings, or in special meetings on that subject specifically.

The commissioners also discussed their standards for meeting minutes and debated how to insure the county’s vehicles.

After nearly an hour of discussion Williams said these kinds of meetings, where commissioners discuss issues but do not take votes, are not unusual in other counties, but are generally called “commission working group meetings,” or something along those lines, which is a much more accurate descriptor.

When she was at the convention of the Montana Association of Counties recently she brought that up to others who agreed that the term “staff meeting” was misleading, and she asked that the name be changed so employees and the public are not confused.

Hill County resident Sue Armstrong, the county’s former clerk and recorder, said the issues discussed at this meeting are ones that would have normally been discussed at business meetings in the recent past and she questioned why they aren’t having these discussions there.

Peterson said these discussions would only make the business meetings longer and these discussions don’t need to be had during those meetings, as none of the issues will have votes made on them.

“It isn’t a perfect world, where everything is done perfectly every time, and we need time to discuss items and we were not doing that,” he said.

Peterson then pivoted the conversation to improving the security system in the clerk and recorder’s office, but Williams and Armstrong brought the subject of the meeting’s name back to discussion. Armstrong asked if employees of the county were made aware that this is the kind of thing being discussed at these staff meetings.

Hill County Commissioner Jake Strissel said these meetings have been announced but they haven’t made an effort to specifically explain the nature of the meetings to employees.

Peterson said employees are welcome at these meetings before attempting to pivot the conversation again to courthouse security systems.

Williams pointed out that the security system issue wasn’t on the agenda for the meeting in the first place, and raised concerns about them not sticking to their agenda.

Peterson cut Williams off midsentence saying “meeting adjourned,” before Strissel pointed out that the public was not given a chance to speak.

Before it was adjourned, one attendee to the meeting, Montana State University Hill County Extension Agent Kati Purkett, said she would highly recommend that the commission bring in a mediator for meetings like this in the future.

Purkett said she has been to a number of these meetings at this point and they often border on being hostile to the point of being counterproductive.

Before the meeting ended Williams said she also spoke with people at the MACo convention who said that they really should be asking for public comment at the beginning and end of these meetings as well as during motions, as some counties have been sued for not providing the public sufficient chance to comment on items of business.

After the meeting Peterson said these “staff meetings” have been going on for about a month, and said that every time he tries to do anything he gets people arguing that he isn’t doing it right.

He also said that he wishes the public would take more of an interest in these proceedings.

This morning Peterson said he will continue to call these meetings staff meetings.