Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay.

Good morning, all. I will call the Tuesday, September 8th, Board of County Commissioners meeting to order. Chris, will you do roll call, please?

Commissioner Holtz? Here. Commissioner Chilcott?

Here.

Commissioner Burrell?

I'm here. Please join us in the pledge of allegiance. Public comment for those participating via Granicus, you may call 406-375-6513 in order to provide your public comment. And the first thing on our agenda is our fire update. Welcome.

lightning fire on the CB Ranch late Tuesday. I'm sure everybody's aware of that. Did get a assistance request by signature from that for the expenses, including the aircraft and such, I believe. Other than that, we had two structure fires. We had one discarded cigarette that had ignited a A old burn pile. Interestingly enough, sounds like the person just tossed it in there thinking it was going to go out and then we actually had we had one other burn pile person wasn't aware that there was a burn so With that lead in, I think Ken had talked to most of the chiefs, and I think we're recommending lifting of the burn ban effective immediately with the resolution that you have in front of you. Did you have any other comments? No, just surveying the chiefs with the recent moisture and the downgrading of the burn systems in the Forest Service that we're in agreement with lifting the bans.

The chair moved to approve and adopt Resolution 4822, rescinding Resolution 4802, the closure of open burning. Second. Effective immediately.

Thank you. It has been moved and seconded to adopt Resolution 4822, rescinding Resolution 4802, closure of open burning that will... the resolution will open burning immediately. Is there any public comment on that motion? Any further discussion? Question, Greg. Aye. And Jeff. Aye. And I vote aye as well. Motion carries.

We will get that out as quickly as we can. I'm sure there's folks, if they can get the piles to light, that are ready to go. I was going to say, if they can get them to burn right now. We are in the fall burning season now through the end of November, which kicks in the air quality restriction. reevaluate tomorrow, but I'm not really anticipating anything.

So the permit system will be back up and running then?

The permit system will be back up and running within the hour.

Okay.

And we'll get that out to 911 and Sheriff's Office and all of our fire districts as well.

Very good.

That's what we got. Thank you. Thanks, guys.

Welcome.

Hey, good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me in today. Yep, as was mentioned, we did downgrade from high to moderate with all the precip we got. Those amounts of precip varied from one to four inches. It's over higher terrain up on the Bitterroot Crest to the west. So quite a bit of precip. I still remember 2024 and fighting fire on Highway 38 in November, so I'm reluctant to call it a season-ending event, but it's definitely a massive slowing event, so I will say that. We are winding down our last big fire at Nature Grove. We did get all those features in place that we wanted should that come back to life. Again, that seems unlikely, but just in the event, all those are in place and we're moving that heavy equipment off. A little bit of cleanup left with some excavators and some processors, but otherwise it's mainly just polishing up those features that we worked to get in. Nothing's showing on any of our satellite or other platforms for heat as of right now. The rain has really put a hurtin' on all of our fires that we had. Everyone is off of Falls Point. That was out west of Lost Trail. That's in a patrol status, but not showing any heat or movement or anything else. All equipment's off that. All personnel, they're off of that. Nature Grove is the only thing we still have staffed at this point, and again, that's winding down. We'll see what it's going to be a while till we're looking at anything on the prescribed fire front. There's more unsettled weather coming this weekend with chances of precip. So as of right now, we're kind of in a hold and seeing what the need is elsewhere and trying to support that as we wind down on Nature Grove. But that's where we're at. Very good.

Thank you.

Thank you for all the support this year.

Hey, thanks for all the work you guys did and staying on top of everything. Those folks were earning it this year hard.

Your fast reaction was appreciated very much.

I will pass that along. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Well, that's pretty quick and very good fire update in seven minutes.

That's not bad. That's not bad. Do we have any contracts this morning?

No, we do not.

Right.

Any commissioner reports? Looks like, considering the weather, the fair was pretty well attended. Seems like it. Seems to be having fun.

Okay. Open board positions.

Commissioners, the last go-around applications were due August 28th for collaborative Corvallis Cemetery Planning Board, Wright Farm and Ranch, and Valley Veterans. Received no applications for collaborative, the cemetery or planning board. We did receive one for the Wright Farm and Ranch with one open position. And Valley Vets, we did receive one application towards two open positions. The Right to Farm and Branch was a person that applied a round or two ago, but they were not feeling well, so canceled the interview. It was Jolina Boogley. And then the veteran was Brandon Boussard. Would you like me to schedule interviews? Please do.

Okay. Update with human resources.

Denise is here. Denise is here.

I'll pause for a second. Oh, regarding the roundabout or? I don't know. Okay, we're good. Very good. All right. Human resources. Welcome.

Good morning. I have three action forms. The first two are temporary employees who were working with the fleet department.

Okay. Did you get the one from the sheriff's office? Yeah, I apparently did it this weekend.

I just reached out to them, so.

Did I get that wrong?

Did you put 10 or 9? I put both, actually. I see both on there.

I'm lost.

Pick a date. You'll be wishing our month away. Here we go.

I see a 9 and a 10, so I'm not sure.

Somewhere in that neighborhood. Let's see. Too funny. Thank you. And with that, our next item on the agenda is a meeting with the House District 88 candidates, Overstreet and Schrodale, and that is at 11. So we will pause recess until then.

Okay, good afternoon or good morning.

we have a meeting with our House District 88 candidates, Greg Overstreet and Mr. Evan Frodel. I'm sorry. I just had an E here, so I had to guess. Thank you. Come on up to the front, gentlemen, if you would.

And, Mr. Chairman, just for the record, while he is at a candidate in this election, he is also a sitting House member. Thank you, Mr. Joe Kapp. Appreciate it.

We were going to have you guys sit across, and we're going to start off with an arm wrestle match. That's right. That's the Rivalli way. Yeah.

So we just wanted to talk to you guys and visit about the upcoming session and what you might have for us and what we might have for you.

would you like to start jeff i've got a list yeah um so what i've been doing is is every time throughout our meetings and issues that come up i just on my phone i just started a note thing and i it was uh kind of interesting the stuff that came up this year just in 2026 state fund came up in one of our issues. And state fund does not or will not subrogate on work comp claims. So, for example, we had a road department truck rear-ended. There was injury. There was time missed. They will not go after that person's insurance. State fund just as we assume that through our state fund work comp rates by just paying that lost time. And it seems reasonable to me that we would subrogate those medical issues and that lost time back to the insurance company, the driver that rear-ended our truck. Don't know if that's a policy or they just don't go after them, but, I mean, doesn't that seem reasonable? That's our work comp rate that's increasing. We're paying those costs by that person who rear-ended our truck.

Yeah, it seems reasonable. And I don't know, because I don't deal with the state fund, at all how much control the legislature has over the state fund i suspect it's pretty significant because the state fund is the de facto workers comp carrier especially for municipalities but it seems odd it must be i'm going to guess here it costs more for those nasty lawyers to actually do the subrogation claims than they get out of it i've done subrogation for um MMIA for the city of Hamilton. Somebody crashed a vehicle into the library a couple years ago. And MMIA goes after subrogation. There aren't many subrogation cases. Yours sounds like a prime example of one that should be brought. And talk about Attorney's fees for nothing. It turns out the guy who crashed, who would be sued, lives in South Korea. It's kind of hard to serve a subpoena or a summons in South Korea. So that could be it. But you're right. It's your experience rating, which equals your premiums.

Yeah, and I think you hit on the bottom line's frustration, not just by us, but everybody, and that is those attorney's costs, and it's a business model going into all these cases of do we settle and pay the person out even though they're wrong, or do we take it to trial and go through the costs and possibly go down the crapshoot that is the court system if we're going to go to trial over it, and you just bang your head against the wall on all the settlements that go out, even though you know you're right, and it's just cheaper and easier to pay them. Insurance has become a business decision that even though we know we're right, it's going to cost us more to go through the process, so let's just write them a check and get it over with. A whole different topic that we could spend a lot of time on, but that's frustrating. And you kind of alluded to that with the whole, it costs more to go after them than it does just to to eat the costs associated with the work comp claims.

I have that conversation about costs, not workers comp, because I don't do workers comp, with clients probably a couple times a week. Classic example is a guy got ripped off by somebody. I got a $650,000 judgment for him. That seems like a great thing, right? Nope. Next day, there's a filing for bankruptcy. And I told the client that's probably what's going to happen. And so I know we're not trying to get into the judicial system. It is broken. There are not enough lawyers. I know that sounds insane. But I know I can hear my grandpa in the grave saying there are too many lawyers. But statistically, Montana does not have nearly the attorneys per capita. And there's some good in that. But there are a ton in Missoula. And even as close to Missoula as Ravalli is geographically, You'd think we have tons of lawyers. I just had somebody call, somebody you all know, very small estate, and I said, geez, I don't know if there are any lawyers in River Valley who can do it because they all have full plates, which means stuff takes forever, which means prices go up, supply and demand being what it is. And that obviously is not for you guys to solve, but... It's something – I see it a lot. I'll tell you, unrepresented people in family law cases don't do family law. It's a real problem because nobody can afford a lawyer. So they end up doing the case themselves, and the court is very helpful with forms and things like that. So good on them. But people end up making settlements that involve custody of their kids, which is extremely important, and money, which is less important but is a thing. And so you have people walking out of divorces with terrible outcomes that they otherwise wouldn't have had if they could afford a lawyer if there were enough lawyers. So it has a real human impact. And your district court judges would tell you the very same thing. They see it all the time. I'm going to stay married.

Yeah. Which is ideal, but bottom line is the system's broken to begin with. where you can walk into court and basically get screwed because you don't have a good attorney. That's just fundamentally wrong right there. To me, a judge should be able to weigh the facts and be like, OK, here's what we're going to do that's reasonable, not, hey, you've got a $400 an hour attorney. They made some good arguments. That right there just shows the entire system's broken, that somebody can't walk into court. A single mom that doesn't have any money can't walk into court and come out of there okay because she can't afford an attorney.

And that very scenario happens. People will say to me, can I just write a letter to the judge because once the judge sees this, we'll be fine? And I say we're far past the era of letters to the judge. and and and i'll be candid the older people are the more they think that you can just tell the judge stuff and stuff will work out because it was probably true years ago it's too bad is that just judge specific though no no it's it's system-wide um but couldn't a judge i mean it seems like a judge has got a lot of authority to do a lot of things i guess to me if

If I were a judge, I'd have a hard time not sitting there understanding that this person just wrote me a letter and I read it, and I'm going to do the right thing, not necessarily. We're in a little different situation.

Same thing we see, though, on subdivisions.

Exactly. It's ex parte. And there are appeals, and yeah, I think being a district court judge, you want to veer into that topic I'm happy to but I think being a district court judge is the hardest job on the planet by far I cannot understand how people could possibly do that job see all those statutes over there part of its the annotations but the orange part you kind of have to know them all I mean or at least be familiar obviously you can't you read them but still you're you've got limited amounts of time and take custody cases that's the most important thing you can do I mean kids being in a bad place It's a bad problem. And you only have maybe an hour, I'm making that number up, to figure out which of these two people, both of whom have evidence saying the other one is a terrible parent, which one is the actual terrible parent. Maybe they both are, maybe neither. I mean, I don't know how you could do that job. So my hats are off to those district court and their support personnel do a lot of stuff too. So good for them.

All right, let's, I mean, one thing that costs counties money every year, practically every day, is incarceration. So one, at the beginning, we have incarcerated individuals come in and have mental health problems, have to be seen. We can't get them into Warner Springs. And then when we do get them into Warner Springs, it costs local taxpayers a fortune. And They don't have the beds, they don't have the funding. I mean, there's a litany of reasons why we can't get them in. That's a problem. And it's very expensive for us. And then once they get adjudicated, it's my belief, at least, that once they're found guilty of the crime and sentenced, they become Department of Justice. the state's responsibility. They're no longer ours, but because they don't have beds, they don't have space, they don't have whatever, we end up sitting on them, sometimes for over a year. And the reimbursement rate, the state gets to say, you know, it's like walking into a clothing store and say, I want that sport coat. I know you have this price tag on it, but this one I'm going to pay for it. And I'm the state, so that's what I'm paying for it. And that's what the state does to us on that. And we just, there needs to be some equity and consideration, especially when I see the state ending the last couple of bienniums in the multiple billion dollar surplus range. And then they turn around and they don't fund it. I mean, you've heard all this before from me, Greg, but we're not funding DEQ and DNRC to take care of the water issues that get foisted off on local government or onto our citizens. to determine quantity, quality, availability, et cetera, et cetera, when really it's the state's water and the state's determination. But if we talk about the mental health of our citizens and our inmates, it's very, very expensive. And we're struggling right now with our mental health provider at the West House and what we're going to do with that and how we handle that. And the state was a great partner on that. Was that HB 131 money back in about 2000? I'm gonna say five or seven somewhere in there. And it's been it's been a really good thing for Valley County and our citizens. But we're having a hard time that mental health providers having a hard time and I don't know how we how we sort that out. Nothing I'm sure money won't fix but So.

No, you know all this legal stuff. I don't. I'm just listening.

I don't think money will fix it. And that's the problem, is I think we try and buy our way out of the mental health issues, and we're not solving the fundamental issues of mental health, which, I mean, first and foremost, family structure, and then a lot of times addiction of some sort. Mental health is a black hole that I don't think we can spend our way out of. I think you could pump a million, a billion, into this and it's not going to fix it. I mean, we're, we're putting a bandaid where we're opening West house. We could open 10 more beds over there and we'd probably find a way to fill them up. That's not really solving the issue. That's just finding a place for them to go. You see recidivism. I mean, when you talk about addiction, jail, mental health, you hear like, what were the numbers? We were at 75 or 80% recidivism back into these programs that we have. Um, Yeah, we need help with the cost of it, but I don't know that there's an amount of money you could put on mental health and addiction services that would ever solve the problem because we're not seeing it go down. We spend more every year on mental health, DUI, drug programs, tobacco use programs, and I haven't seen anything that shows me that that's trending downward despite the money that we're putting into it going up.

And I'm no expert, but just my observations as a person who's alive and sees things. I think that a lot of the mental health problems are attributable, not all, but quite a few, to drugs that rewire your brain after prolonged abuse. And then all of the family breakdowns that create trauma and PTSD and all kinds of awfulness And you've got that feeding people into the system. And you mentioned blowing through budget surpluses. I was not enamored with the surplus going away. And I'll leave it at that.

Yeah, but I mean, the problem is you're talking about post issues. Everybody's talking about post issues. You're going to have to use money to fix those things. Because once they're a drug addict, they're a drug addict. You know, I mean, if we could get ahead of it, which I don't even know how to consider that. I mean, that's obviously ideal. But all these things you're talking about are all, they're all post.

I have a great idea. Let's legalize marijuana in Montana.

Yeah, that'll help. There'd be so much money if we did that that all of our problems would be fixed, right?

You county commissioners cash big checks from Helena with all the marijuana money, don't you? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I'm kidding. Yeah, and go Montana takes the boat. that we get 2.45 percent of that and the state takes 0.05 just because it's absurd it's crazy but but as far as as the prison goes and to stay on that just for a minute Number one, we're not getting paid what it costs us to house and care for prisoners in our detention facility when we have state holds or whatever. And let's face it, most of the crimes we're enforcing are state crimes, not local crimes. I mean, that's the way the system's set up, and that's the way it is. But when the state has somebody in there, they don't pay the true cost of that. And that's a weight... but the state gives us the requirements on what we have to have to house these people, but then they won't pay for fulfilling those requirements. I mean, it's frustrating. And then when they're adjudicated and they can't, they don't, can't take them. And I'm, I mean, can't, they just don't space. We ended up sitting on them and it just, it's just not right. You know, I mean, then you'd like to think that,

government would try to do things right and that's just big brother telling a little brother he's going to fold his clothes up or whatever it is a legitimate problem but i mean i was a jailer in the 80s in the county and it was happening even then you know so it's not something that's new to montana but you have a good point it needs to be and that's throwing money at it we got to figure out a way to get the county so they don't have to go broke trying to take care of what the state should be.

And you alluded to something. I think I know what you were talking about. You were classy enough not to say what it was. That's the first. I was going to say, I've never heard classy. It's the tie. It's the tie. If it's what I think it was. But let's hypothetically say that not only does a state not pay adequate rates, they don't even pay published rates. rates they're supposed to pay, if this is what I think you're talking about, and you need to sue the state.

Well, I mean, let's take it away from the jail and take it down to our treasurer's office. We probably 80, maybe 90 percent of the work done down there is the state's work on vehicle registration licensing, right? We have, I don't know, eight Well, I think we had 11 people budgeted. We're talking about you guys did a really nice job. Thank you for the state finally getting a good software program down there that has made it more efficient. And we may actually be able to not fill a vacant position down there. But that's the state's work. The state used to pay for printers, provide paper. printer ink, that sort of thing. A couple years ago, we had a letter from Will. Yeah, we can't afford it this year. We forgot to budget it, so we're just not gonna pay it. We had an agreement. I mean, in place, a signed agreement. And the state just breached it. I don't know, then this year they didn't fund it at all. And so here we're doing, again, state's work. Those license plate fees go to the state. And we have a local option tax that the voters passed years and years and years ago. But that's the money we get out of that. And it helps our budget, no doubt about it. But we're doing all the work. And the state doesn't even pick up the consumables. It's absurd to me. Because they can. They can tell us what we're going to do.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think Evan and I agree on this. First of all, the treasurer's office folks are amazing. It is so much nicer going to that treasurer's office than it is elsewhere. Let me just put it that way. I had a crazy idea, and don't hold me to this because I've withdrawn this crazy idea for reasons that will become apparent. i thought and i talked to the treasurer i said how much money do counties remit to the state for license he i think he said 160 million that's the number that stuck in my head it was a tremendous amount of money I thought, well, why can't the counties keep that? Because it seems to be, I guess, prorated is the word. I mean, you've got little counties having little amounts of money and big counties having big amounts of money. So it's not like you need to come up with a funding formula that's this complicated math thing that nobody can figure out. And then I realized that our surplus went away in the 2025 session. And asking the state to not have $160 million, they would laugh at my face. That doesn't even get out of committee. So that's why I say I withdrew that idea because it'll never happen. But it's an example of how much money you guys net send to the state.

Yeah, even if there was a percentage.

I'll take a percentage, he says. Cover our costs.

Those personnel costs, 15, 10, 4, 20, and went through a lot with that last year in the last session. And it was an improvement in some ways. We'll see. We lost money this year in our projected revenue from property tax because of the 25% new growth loss. But getting actual rate of inflation this year was low inflation there, but better than half the rate of inflation we've been getting. I was going somewhere with that. It's hard that we keep seeing it shift and make it hard because everything we do is we employ people and they go up by a cost of living adjustment, which is based on inflation. dump garbage at the fairgrounds. It goes up whatever they're charging. They don't give us half the rate of the increase everybody else gets. We pay full inflationary on everything, and yet for 26 years, we were getting half the rate of inflation, three-year average rate of inflation. And so we'll see over the long term how it works out, but I sure as hell hope the state legislature and the administration don't look at another way to get in property taxes and take it away from the people who actually have boots on the ground every day. And we're grinding up roads, as you know, and you read in the paper. Why? Because we can't afford to maintain the ones we have. And so every time we see these, oh, property taxes are outrageous and they're too high, I can't argue that. I pay property taxes as well, but at the same time, We have to figure out a way to fund the services. Our citizens, yours, ours, we all share those same citizens, how we provide the services they deserve or expect. I don't know how we do it if you keep cutting from the road department, the police or the sheriff's office, PDs, whomever, keep cutting from them and expect the same level of service. I don't know how we get there.

Well, obviously, property tax is a whole different topic. I'm sure that made your note thing on your phone. But there are non-property tax ways to get monies to county. But as I just said, there's no way it gets past the governor's veto pan. Let me be candid. I mean, keeping the licensing money would be a way, because property taxes are so politically unpopular to raise. I just, well, but it did happen now, didn't it? It was the supposedly unforeseen effect. But the problem is, and we've talked about this, and I'm just going to be blunt, The governor does not love counties. You guys know this. You guys have told me this. I've seen it with my own eyes. So maybe I can diagnose the problem, which is not exactly solving it. But if I could solve this problem, boy, that'd be cool. I can't.

Well, we adjusted the property taxes, right? I mean, we want to be a business-friendly state. Great. That's really good. but so we reduce business tax but it's got to be made up somewhere and so they increase class four tax residential and then they say oh gosh look those counties they're just they're raising your check we don't have the authority to say those things is absurd but they're all over the press and media we can't raise anybody's taxes unless they citizens vote on it there's a couple exceptions I'm sorry. No, it's fine.

just real quick, because we were talking about tax shift, you should sit through one of our meetings where we have to go through the personal property of the manufacturing equipment for businesses that you guys decided was gonna be the county's responsibility to sit through 20 pages of manufacturing equipment, decide what qualifies as manufacturing qualified equipment and not, Probably be a good thing for legislators to sit through when they pass bills like that. Somehow they determined that the county commissioners were going to sit and go line by line through 300 pieces of equipment, decide what qualified as manufacturing equipment, what didn't. And us not even knowing what...

What it is. We have to question them. Okay, this does what?

XJ14830.

Well, and then you get down to this level of, well, the person who sits in front of the XJ340F has to have a chair that's ergonomically correct. So is that industrial equipment for manufacturing or not? Because it makes sense. You can't stand there for 12 hours at this thing. You have to be sitting in a chair.

So is that part of the manufacturing process? And then the broad authority they give us on the county shall give 80, 90, or 100% abatement on it.

So we don't get to determine. We just get to play with three percentages they gave us. So it's like here you get to sit and go through the whole process, and then you can decide whether you're going to abate it at 80%, 90%, or 100%.

And the alternative is if we decide not to do the process, they automatically get the 100%.

And you don't get the money.

And we don't get it.

The hultery amount that it is. Yeah. But the state wants to give rebates and abatements and whatever. Great. We've got a way to take it off your side of the ledger, not ours. And then pat ourselves on the back that we're doing all these great things. Somebody else is paying for it in services.

So we get to take the cut on the end. provide the time and the process of going through it to take the cut. I mean, if that makes sense. Like, here, you get to determine how much you get to have cut. A little bit of a slap in the face, I guess.

Plus the cost of the legal ads and all that stuff.

Yeah, we bear all that cost, too, is that then we got to pay for the legal ads, the notice, and everything else.

And the citizens can say, well, I've got a ranch, or I've got a farm, or I've got this, or I have that. How come I just don't manufacture things?

picking and choosing winners and losers because the other small businesses didn't do it. I mean, it had to be manufacturing specific, but the person down here that's running their printer, trying to make a business or their fire truck or tractor or skid steer or whatever, they, they didn't get a tax break. So flawed, I think picking winners and losers. I hear that a lot. Like, I heard that through the open lands process and picking winners and losers, but for some reason with industry and manufacturing, we're okay doing that. So, um, I do have some more driving on. You brought it up real quick. Commissioner Chilcott did, uh, water. Um, so water clearly in the constitution is the property of the state of Montana. Um, through court litigation, otherwise that shifted, especially through the subdivision process, back to the counties, or there's been an attempt to shift it back to counties to mitigate impacts to groundwater. I think that's really unfair for, especially if the state doesn't clarify that real quick, for us to have to not have control of it. We're not the permitting agency in the Constitution. It's not Ravalli County's water that's flowing through. It's the state's water. But we're responsible. We're the ones that get sued over it when it comes down to appropriations of water, especially through the subdivision process or at least mitigating those impacts. So I think some definite clarification needs to happen through legislation on who's responsible for water, especially through subdivision process. And then next, if we are going to sit up here and try and determine impacts to groundwater through subdivision process, we need to have some information. And I think that information comes through the Bureau of Mines, which I just found out that their funding has been static since the funding of the Bureau of Mines. There's no inflationary factor on there. so they're doing more with less every year. The state needs to fund the Bureau of Mines to continue their groundwater monitoring. I think the nice thing about the Bureau of Mines They don't have an agenda. I mean, they're just out there collecting data. So it's not a hired gun hydrologist, which we hear from some of those opposed to developments that have, well, of course, your hydrologist you hired to do your study for your development is going to come back with there's available water. I think if the Bureau of Mines says this aquifer is static, there hasn't been an impact in this aquifer, I think then that helps everybody make a good decision that maybe there is available water in this area and Same as if we see a downward trend in the aquifer to the point that they say, you know, there's not that much water available over here. I think it adds some predictability for us and developers who go in and say, I want to punch in a 20 lot subdivision over here. Well, probably not a good idea with the aquifer impacts doing what they're doing. That shouldn't be us funding that. That should be the state funding Bureau of Mines. Absolutely. They need more field techs. They need more hydrologists. They need people who can crunch that data. They need the software to crunch the data.

They need the software and the hardware to do the job. They've got a lot of data that's there already that they don't have the ability to process.

I guess if there's any, we've talked generally about a bunch of things. What I would like to hear is like a commitment that either I'll help sponsor, carry, or at least support a bill.

I would sponsor, carry that bill all day long, every day. Me too.

To do this, because this to me is one of the biggest issues, I think. You guys are going to face, I mean, you'll probably fight over which bathroom who gets to use for at least the first half, but maybe after that first half.

Montana Supreme Court decides all of those decisions.

Okay, well, once we get past that fight, at least maybe we can focus on the water side of it and fund Bureau of Mines. They need funding, they need predictable funding, and they need some sort of employee, because my understanding, again, what I was told is They were funded, and they've basically been static, which is why they're losing ground on their information. Because that GWIC program is an amazing resource to be able to go on and see all these historical water levels and aquifers and make some determinations on what's happening in those aquifers.

I think something like that's going to be possible this next session because the water issues we have here are not just here. They're in Cascade County. They're in Helena. They're all over the state. So there's a lot of people gonna have an eye on this.

Which is the frustration that ever since the Broadwater decision, right, the states abdicated their role. We used to get the predetermination letters from DNRC. Probably, yeah. And rather than ponying up some money and helping in the litigation, not us, those commissioners approved this subdivision. That's on them. How the hell do you pull that out?

Without data, because the Bureau of Mines doesn't have any money.

Yeah, and I mean, pretty chicken shit on their part. And if we don't get the state to step up and assume some responsibility on the water of the state of Montana, it's not our water. And it's not ours to map. It's not ours to allocate data. That's the state's role and they haven't done it in four years.

And why it's really important now is we were actually working with the Bureau. Rob's back there. Rob did a great job of drafting up like a monitoring plan for Valley County. We're working with the Bureau to try and hopefully this will be kind of a statewide model for other counties to use. But basically as we get development come in, we look at that aquifer and see, do we have a good monitoring well in this area? If we do, then maybe some sort of mitigation back to the program itself. If we do need data in that aquifer, dedicate one of those wells in that development to a Bureau of Mines monitoring well put in the monitoring device they need, make sure they've got access in perpetuity to monitor that, and that'll start that kind of historical monitoring in that aquifer. But what the Bureau's told us is we have capacity in Ravalli County for a handful or more monitoring wells, and then we're gonna be tapped. And I think we could use quite a few more than that handful here. So that's why this monitoring program doesn't work unless the Bureau gets some funding.

And it would sure as heck help the state assume their responsibility at some point. They can't advocate it forever. Well, maybe they can. I don't know. But they shouldn't advocate it forever.

I think we're talking about, for the Bureau of Mines and Wayne. By the way, he has some very well thought out thoughts on water. So I want him to talk more. But it's not a lot of money we're talking about. And we were at the forum at the Elks Club, and I made a water law joke that nobody laughed at, so I'll do it again and see if you guys give me some courtesy laughs. But on the question of money for the Bureau of Mines, I said, yeah, I would support an appropriation for that. I said, get it? Water law appropriation? Nobody laughed. See? I got some courtesy laughs. Thank you.

Speaking of water, and this is the topic of the valley, of course, is Sheep Creek Mine. And, you know, the FAST 41, I think a lot of people thought FAST stood for quick rather than fix America's surface transportation. But it was a streamlined process, no doubt about it. And now they're trying to use a categorical exclusion rather than going through a full environmental impact statement. And This is, it's a tough position. For me, I've always advocated for multiple use of public lands, logging, mining, grazing, you name it, I want them to be productive, but when they're at the headwaters and they're, a company that we've been dealing with, I think they change names. They change CEOs. Things keep changing. no confidence level there. They don't show up until after the meeting or just before a scheduled meeting. They don't follow through on anything. And, you know, we can rattle our sabers and we can have citizens write letters and we can write letters and we can reach out to folks, but it would sure be nice to think that the state has our back in protecting our primary resource in this valley is water. And if we don't have legislative support on that, it's going to be noticed.

And I don't know how, what you can do, but... Yeah, I would encourage you to write a letter to the Forest Service while the comment period is open, and that's till the 14th. I already got mine in. Good. And the thing that is... critical for me as someone whose whole life has been involved in agriculture and irrigation is the key to agriculture in this valley. And our forefathers built this canal system, the Daly Ditches, the Corvallis Canal, the BRID, that all take water from the Bitterroot River. And to potentially turn that water into an unusable resource and squander What our forefathers did that could not be duplicated today would be impossible. You'd die in court of old age before it ever got settled. You couldn't do it. So it's a wonderful program that is in place now that distributes this water from the Bitterroot River all up and down the valley and keeps our valley what it is, green and beautiful. And without it, we are a desert. And to potentially pollute that resource and render that infrastructure basically unusable or unrelevant, irrelevant, would be a tragedy.

Again, I think we're both 100% agree. Every meeting we've been together, it's come up and we both agree, sheep creek is not a good idea.

And I'd add to that, it's very easy decision-making-wise. I have not run into anybody in House District 88 that said, you know what's a great idea? Sheep creek mine. And I've said this, and I said it on the floor, and I think I made people mad. It was a different topic that doesn't matter, but I said, Our job title is representative, and we're here in the House of Representatives. What's our job? Hint, it's a verb. It's to represent people. And when it's that close, I mean, I'm not going to go around, even if I thought the mind were a great idea, which I do not. It's not my job to educate 11,000 people. That's so patronizing to even use the word educate. It's not my job to tell people, well, here's a quick fact sheet. Did you know this? You play the hand you're dealt. You take constituents as they are with what they think because you represent them. And it's a no-brainer.

So, you know, it's just something if and when someday a company comes in that inspires some faith and they can do the work. before it starts in the environmental side and making sure that the safeguards are in place and they have the resources, financial resources available to have a response to something that happens that they weren't anticipating. But that's not happening right now. We need broader, louder, better stationary support. So while we're talking about water, and this is way above even state legislature, but we have 17 dams on the west side of the valley. And some knucklehead in Washington DC drew the wilderness boundary in 1964 And the definition of wilderness is wild and scenic, no man-made infrastructure. Those dams are all man-made. And they drew the wilderness boundary in front of all those dams. Some of them are 150 years old. Yeah. They need maintenance. It's a public health incentive to say nothing of critical infrastructure to the valley and our irrigators and our late season flows for those who want to provide in-stream flow for the fish. It's all critical. And I've been rattling, and as you know, I'm retiring at the end of the year. I want somebody else to rattle the saver that we need the boundary moved around those dams. And as it takes congressional action and presidential support, But those dams should not be behind the wilderness boundary. They just shouldn't. And if somebody wanted to write a resolution from the state of Montana to Congress, that would be really nice if it came from the state of Montana.

Go ahead, if you have any questions.

Sounds like I could support something like that.

Yeah. I don't want to be the doomsayer, but state resolutions on extraordinarily local issues will never happen. It'll never get out of committee. But, thank you, depending on who wins the congressional race, I might be able to whisper in an ear and would be happy to be a piece of cake. But it depends on who wins. They've been whispered in already. Okay. Well, re-whispered. But I don't guarantee anything because Washington, D.C. is a snake pit of badness.

It's a windmill I've been charging for a long time and unsuccessfully, but I just want to keep it out there and alive. And someday somebody's going to say, huh, that doesn't make any sense.

After a dam breaches and destroys stuff.

Sorry about my coughing. I'm taking a medication that makes it occur. I'm just glad the side effect wasn't anal bleeding.

Me too. Cleaning those chairs is expensive.

The state makes you do it, yeah. Staying on water real quick, and I don't know if this probably isn't a state, it might be local regs, but one of the things that we've run into, and it's actually gone through the core system as well and caused this issue, was ditch infrastructure on groundwater monitoring and what's happening with irrigation water for short term while property is being monitored. So at least three times now we've run into an instance where water's been shut off because it's been historically groundwater monitored. It's got high groundwater flooding across the surface. the irrigator is either the developer and shuts the water off. Or in one case, we actually were told that the irrigator was paid by the property that the ditch flowed through for that year's water. Basically paid to shut their water off so it would dry that property up so it would then pass groundwater monitoring. Then once the monitoring passed, the water's turned back on and water's allowed to flow through there. In some cases, the water's turned off for many years, developed, then the property changes hands, and the person then wants their water because there's a water right still shown with the property, never formally abandoned. That's starting to be an issue. Where we've got septic approval in an area, the septic installer goes out to install the septic system and says, this pasture's underwater. I can't put a septic system here. Well, what changed? We go out there and see, well, now the ditches are all running full again. Shut off for one year, dry the property up, groundwater monitor, turn the ditches back on, and now they're underwater. Could potentially be a state issue. Could be a local regulation, sanitation regulation, but I know it's going to be hard because the push has been And I'm sure we'll transition that into like family transfers, but the state under. under what they're calling an attempt for affordable housing, you know, is basically kind of open the floodgates through this. We need to develop to create affordable housing, so family transfers and exempt, well, let's make it more allowances for this process, including what's turned into a free-for-all for family transfers right now. Put us in a pretty significant, I would say, liability and position of lose-lose for us to try and judge this evasion that is in law. Including in the law, it says that family transfers can happen in zoning districts and violate zoning district laws up to five-acre minimums. Citizens got together and created a zoning district that says we want 20-acre parcels here, 10-acre parcels. My understanding in the law is it says you can do five-acre lots in there. So I'm in it. I don't know what you guys think about that or how much discussion you know or have about the family transfer process, but it seems like every session we come out, including the bill that came out that allows them in platycephal revisions and it just... Septic issue's a problem.

We know that, was it Sealy had a huge issue with it?

With what? Sealy. With septics. With septics.

The septics getting flooded out during high waters. I mean, that's a pollution issue that we don't need here at all. But, yeah, the legal side of it, that's something you might know more about. I don't know.

I don't know. I thought it was interesting that people have a contract with all their neighbors and they create a zoning district. And then the state legislature and it's... Infinite wisdom you were about to say. God-given infinite wisdom. No better. And you can go ahead and breach that contract with your neighbors. It just... You just shake your head sometimes. How the hell does that pass the smell test? I don't get it. In the name of affordable housing? And let's face it, the subdivision review process is onerous in the state of Montana. It's very onerous. And so people are looking, rather than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to comply with the subdivision review process dictated by not only Title 76, but also by local regulation. Or they can do a family transfer for, I don't know, $20,000 or less. $5,000. Go out and meet the criteria in statute. But then they say, oh, but you can set up the evasion criteria. Or you shall set up the evasion criteria. Yeah. We force them to do it because of our subdivision regs, then they do it, and then we start saying, oh, shucks, we're going to consider this or we're going to consider that. It's a tough spot to be in, and I don't know where to do it, but where the taxpayers get hurt is with subdivision, we have to mitigate impacts. And so road impacts being a big one, law enforcement, those are impacts we can actually put a dollar figure to. But when you have these people doing, we've done more lots through exemption than we have through subdivision. And so those road impacts are realized but never compensated. And so the increased, Road impacts, oh, did I mention we're grinding up roads? I mean, that's all part of it. Now, that's a small part of it, but not having, and I don't know how you get around arbitrary and capricious, but if there was some formula that said you do an exemption, lot creation through an exemption, there's some basic, fees that you pay to mitigate your impacts. I don't know how you get around arbitrariness with that.

So you mentioned that, and I was familiar with this, but not terribly familiar with it, that counties have the authority to create their own criteria for evasion. Is that correct?

The state provided us no criteria for evasion.

but we do have the ability to create. So the weird dynamic is we have the ability to create criteria to decide evasion, but we cannot specifically in statute impose conditions. So you can have criteria of whether we think it's evasion or not, but you can't put any conditions to evasion. to help them get through the process of that. And so evasion is kind of weird. Evasion criteria, trying to determine are they evading subdivision? Well, I think you could almost answer yes. Every person using a family transfer is evading the subdivision process. I would say avoiding when we've had that discussion is avoidance versus evasion. It's kind of like we've used the example of taxes. You're trying to avoid taxes by using the loopholes. You're not evading or evading taxes.

But if through your criteria, you Determined, and let's say it's undeniable that somebody was evading. Like they sent an email to all their kids saying, you'll own this for a year, and then you quit claiming it back to me, and I'm going to sell it for development. Something bulletproof. Can you guys deny the family transfer? Or, I mean, what does proving evasion get you, right? What is the result?

Well, there's a statute that says the exclusive remedy is $10,000 per lot.

But then there's another non-exclusive remedy in there that says you can aggregate the land back.

So there's a conflict in statute right now. We're wrestling with that now because right now, it says it in statute, the exclusive remedy for evasion is $10,000 per lot.

But that would assume... Or 10%.

Or 10%, whichever is greater. So... That would assume that you've already approved them and didn't catch evasion on the front end. Or does that mean, well, we said that we found there was evasion so they can go ahead with the development or the family transfers, but they just pay us $10,000 a lot? So that's weird. Yeah, this really needs looks. Somebody needs to take this on and scrub this family transfer process and bulletproof it a little bit, because right now it's a really strange process. We can't put any conditions on there. We can develop evasion criteria, but the exclusive remedy for evasion is $10,000 per lot. So does that mean... I as a developer.

But I think it's actually $10,000 per lot or 10%, whichever is higher, I think is the way.

Of the family transfer value, not the eventual subdivision value, which would be higher.

Again, so vague that how do you determine?

There are criteria as far as it has to be a family member of the first degree or something like that.

Spouse, child, parent.

So it's, it's the civil penalty of $10,000 or an amount equal to 10% of the sales price. If the division has been sold to a third party, whichever is greater.

So you're supposed to track five years from now. Correct.

So what happens if you do the initial transfer for $5 to a, you know, quick claim to somebody in a transfer, and then you have to track multiple sales then to get around that first transfer. So you can see how, essentially, if you went in to do a 10 lot, if you had six kids or seven kids and it was going to cost you $600,000 to do a development to punch in the roads and everything, why not just give it to six kids? Admit, just walk into the meeting and say, I am evading subdivision. Here's $60,000, and you sell them the first time for $20 a lot to family members, and then from that point you own them and you move on with the development. So it puts us in an interesting situation. What the hell were you doing last night? I know.

I can't even believe it.

1,200 bills. Well, we did get a great affidavit.

Yeah.

Huh? Yeah. The legislature directed the Attorney General come up with an affidavit for the exemption and it was it can be improved upon.

It's an affidavit that says if you're doing a family transfer that I promise I'm not evading the subdivision criteria. You have to sign it.

So it sounds like a remedy that actually is a remedy is what you guys want you're not suggesting and maybe you are correct me that family transfers in general are a terrible idea because i can tell you the housing affordability push loves family transfers in general but when it comes down to the details is that what you guys are saying well it's it's the details one is it's like i say i think one of the driving facts behind is the cost associated with going

really, really high. That's forcing people to explore their options. I don't blame anybody for doing it.

Both sides need to be looked at, really.

They have to hold the land for two years. The gifted parcel has to be held for two years. That's in statute. We can't add to that. We used to have a three-year holding period. After that, then it's whatever they want to do. I get that. I'm not I mean, a lot of people don't like it. I think it was never intended that I transfer to my child, and then they become of age and go to college, or they get married and have a family, and it gives them the ability to have an asset they can sell, liquidate, and put a down payment on the house. I like that part of it. Other people hate it. No, if you're going to do a family transfer, they've got to build a house on there and live there. forever.

And I don't believe this isn't solving the afford. I mean, so are we talking about a money making process? Are we talking about solving affordable housing? Because if you take a 10-acre piece, and you divide it into five pieces, you hold it for two years, and then you sell it for max profit, you didn't do anything to help affordable housing. So that's just talk over there if that's what you're really going for. Now, if it truly is for I want to break a piece off and I want mom and dad or my son or my daughter to be able to live here and build a house, if that's what the intention was, then nobody should have an issue with saying this needs to be held for, 10 years in your family, or if you sell it, I mean, I think what would deter this whole, let's fly in, do a family transfer. The other thing that's crazy is you can do this in every County in the state. And I've been told personally by somebody who's in the engineering business, that our goal is to do this in 56 counties. I want a family transfer development in 56 counties before this gets done. So this isn't, this isn't something that's just happening here. there's people actually understand I go in find a good deal on a piece of property, whack it up, hold on to it for a couple years, sell it, go to the next one. Because with the process of you get to you can sell the remainder piece immediately. So you could buy a piece of property, whack it into a bunch of parcels, sell that initial piece for a good chunk of what the actual development costs would be on that property building the road or whatever. It's a pretty good deal. Really? if you went around every county.

My position is it's being abused at this point. We've created more lots in Valley County via family transfer than we have subdivision review. A percentage of those have definitely been evasion. There's no doubt about it. Then when it gets abused enough, what will happen is the legislature or the The groundswell of the opposition to development is going to force that to be taken away. We used to have occasional sales where a rancher, if he needed to pay taxes or buy a piece of equipment that used to be $10,000 and turned into a $100,000 piece of equipment, could sell a portion of his property occasionally. for whatever reason, be it equipment, business, medical, and it was fine. It got abused to death and went away. And the same thing in my prediction is the family transfer will, and that will be a shame for those who really want to do family transfer legitimately.

So what in your guys' mind would you consider an evasion?

Like, like anywhere but the family, you know, I mean, so what about, what about if you give it?

So we already have, we have that established in law that you can give to a qualified family member, that being a spouse or, which if you just take a look at that, that's kind of a weird thing. Like I'm going to, I've got a piece of land. My wife and I own our house together. I'm going to break it in half and give it to my wife. Um, that, that could be divorce planning or that could be a scheme to develop our property. But, um, so that, that, that dynamic right there is kind of weird that a husband and wife own a piece of property. You can break it in half and then you can each own a separate parcel on your property. Um, So you can give it to a son, a daughter, uh, the qualified family members. But then the next step is if though, if you give it to a qualified family member and then they turn around and they're on the market. So you take these property, mom, dad, son, daughter, son, son, you got six lots, put in a road down the middle, put a cul-de-sac at the end of it, hold it for two years, and then you sell it as a, sunset estates or whatever you want to call it, is that evasion? I mean, the kids get the benefit. They got the piece of property. They held it for two years. They then sold it, and they pay for whatever piece of property somewhere else. Is that evasion?

And you financed it by selling the remainder lot.

To build the road, yeah. To answer your question. Even if you didn't sell the remainder lot, if you held it all.

Yeah, you could hold it all. You could sell it, whatever. The bottom line is the two-year time frame starts on October 1st. You hold it for exactly two years. On October 2nd, two years later, a realtor's got them listed, sunset acres, development ready to go, the banner goes up. Is that an evasion?

In my mind, and I've never thought about this before, but in my mind, it would center on whether there was a plan. And it could be a winky-winky plan, because those count as plans. It doesn't have to be as clear as the email that says, let's evade. I don't know how that factors in, how easy or hard that is to prove, but a plan.

A winky-winky would be tough to prove if they do it right. Exactly. I don't know.

I think that if you focused on the remedies for proving it – not evading your question. See what I did there? I'm full of hilarious puns that nobody laughs at. I don't know what. The remedy for evasion would be important because then people, like land developers, would say, well, if you guys get caught, here's what it's going to be.

Well, the exclusive remedy is laid out in law. I know, but I'm saying change that exclusive remedy.

But see, the problem is, how do you guys find out about it five years later?

Well, and we wouldn't. I mean, because the statute says two years already. Yeah. The statute says two years. And so after the two years, I think we have put our blinders on. They've held it for the required period.

Yeah, you go back on the develop. They go through and sell all six of these lots. And then what do you do? You're going back to the developer and saying, you owe us now $10,000.

An LLC that no longer exists. Here's a crazy idea, and I probably shouldn't spitball on a recorded thing, and that is what if you had a statement on a deed? This did not go through subdivision approval. I don't know what that gets you. It would – I don't know.

But that you could almost consider a condition of approval, and therefore you couldn't do it. Yeah, you're right. So you can see where the legislature basically just cut our legs. They've been like, here you go. You can take the liability of approving these things, but you can't condition them, and you have to develop criteria that includes this form that the attorney general made up that says we promise we're not evading. It's just a weird dynamic for us to sit and judge these things.

I keep going back. Is that really the problem, or is the problem the subdivision review process itself? Is there a way that it can be streamlined, made clear? I always assume maybe the engineering firms had really good lobbyists when these were developed because they're – They're making, we had one subdivision they spent, I can't remember, hundreds of thousands of dollars on a four lot subdivision. So is there a way to just not make it so attractive if you go through the right process? But again, for county specifically, ours is just the loss of ways to mitigate the impact to taxpayers that the existing taxpayers have to pick up the newly created impacts from development.

What if you applied, and I'll call them impact fees. I know nobody likes that phrase, but that's what they are. If impact fees applied to family transfers.

A minimal. Right. Some bare-bones stuff, so you're not going through wildlife and wildlife, like all the criteria and subdivision, but you just do some bare-bones stuff like, yeah, some minor mitigation on family transfers. Roads.

Roads, water. Right. Emergency services.

That would solve the problem, I guess, for the county, and it would allow people to do this for the whole of Fort Millie.

Neighbors would still hate it. They always will. They hate subdivisions. Neighbors still hate it, but it's one of those things that – We force people into considering there are other options with the cost of going through.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens in court with the language in there that you can basically, a bunch of citizens get together, and this was allowed in statute, to zone their property and say, we want... 10-acre lots, we want this, we want this. And somebody buys one of those lots and utilizes that wording in the family transfer exemptions and say, I'm going to create two fives here because I can per statute. I mean, how is that right? How is that right? Those neighbors got together. I bought my piece of property knowing I'm only going to have one 10-acre lot in my view shed. And then all of a sudden, well...

legislature said i can take this 10 now and whack it into two fives and give it to my wife and give it to my worst wife probably yeah um a question for somebody who's familiar with the mako legislative agenda is there a division of interest among different size counties on this or is this you can see where i'm going with this because if half of the counties want this and half don't It's not going to happen.

Jeff's actually the chairman of the land use committee.

He's wearing a tie. I just assumed he was in charge. Fair assumption. Is there a split among counties?

We haven't talked about it a ton. I think everybody's...

I think eastern Montana probably doesn't feel the pressure.

It's just development pressures are different.

I think There are some of the low population states would kill to have the subdivision or family transfer. Somebody move in there and enhance their tax base, frankly. But they still have to feel the same impacts when somebody builds on that road and bring the greater out another time of year or whatever it is. Those are real.

And the big counties probably aren't seeing it, especially around somewhere they're really growing and developing because they're probably needing to go through subdivision to get sanitation and water. Connection to water, yeah. So here, everything we do here is septic and exempt well. That's just how we – I think we do have the highest concentration of exempt wells here in Ravalli County. We do. That's – That's how we're growing, and that's why it's such a problem here. And I'm sure there's some other counties in similar situations. But, you know, Missoula, the way they're growing, I'm sure most of their dwelling units are connected to city sewer and water. as they move out there. Hamilton, we're growing a little bit out this way, but we can't grow to the west because we've got the Bitterroot River, and we've got some weird dynamics going southeast, so it's really kind of northeast is where we can grow out that way. We were having a hard time getting sewer and water out that direction.

Which brings us back to the earlier discussion on Bureau of Mines. If we had good data, that would help too. When you talk about an exempt well, Dan has large, large parcels of land. I have a tiny, tiny parcel of land. I can get an exempt well on my one-acre parcel, and Dan can get an exempt well on his 160-acre parcel.

And there may be plenty of water in the aquifers, but we don't know that.

Right. And, I mean, when you talk about the exempt, well, it would seem like surface real estate would have some bearing on subsurface exemption. right i mean it just doesn't make sense to me that that the guy that has 20 acres and the guy that has one acre have the same 10 acres same right yeah the subsurface depends on what's underneath there right i mean just because you own a piece of property doesn't mean i get gold if we had data on it to show that you're 160 you could you could put

So then the question is, is what if the data shows that you don't have that under your property? We can't condition anything. So you could go in and punch exempt. You could go through your family transfer. Above the big ditch, on the east side, aquifers have been going dry. We know that our wells have been going dry. And you could go up and do an eight-lot family transfer, drill eight exempt wells, and put more straws into that aquifer. Right now, even if the Bureau of Mines said...

But you couldn't, right? I mean, you couldn't now. You can only put one exempt well in.

Not when there's eight lots.

No, no. One for each lot. One for each lot, or a combined appropriation of 10 acre feet.

Well, okay, yeah. which is a hell of a lot of water, you could do, you could do 15.

Combined appropriation. Right. So yeah, you could drill as many as you wanted. They just, the combined appropriation can't be. So that's why we're limited to about, on a major subdivision, what's the number? 20-ish lots based on the average residential household with minimal irrigation. So you could do up to a 20 lot family transfer if you had that much family. do that development on the east side, punching all those exempt wells, and the commissioners and the bureau could be screaming, there is no water up there. There is no available water. And you punch in the wells anyway to see what you can find and start sucking up whatever water you could. That's theoretically what could happen. I guess we could say that's our exclusive remedy is $10,000 for those lots. And we could fine them $10,000, but that's all we could do if we thought that was evasion. But maybe it's not evasion. Maybe they truly just chop it up and everybody wants to build a house and the whole family wants to live up there but there's no water so we have no ability to condition and say no this isn't a good spot for 10 family transfer lots there's no water up here well we want to do it anyway we're willing to roll the dice or we'll haul water in or whatever we need to do to We'll suck whatever water we can out of the ground.

Which is funny. When you get to Eastern Montana, there's a lot of people that have cisterns and they tote water. I mean, in greater buildings. Yeah.

My in-laws. I was Great Falls. Every week. And my daughter, too. Yeah. It's not uncommon.

So what's on your agenda for this session? Should you be elected? All about water.

So that's really my biggest campaign issue is water and getting more information. which I don't think we have enough of. So yeah, and that's statewide. Over Cascade County, where I was living when I was a kid, high school, they lost the Greenfield Water District, ran out of water during their second cutting of alfalfa. They ran out. So that's the money crop. and the crop they had to feed their cattle. I mean, so this water issue is not just here. It's different, but it's not just here. We have infrastructure problems failing across the state, and water access and aquifers we're having trouble with. So, yeah, my biggest thing is water.

My biggest thing is... fixing 231, the property tax thing, it did not pan out as it was represented. I don't know what the solution is. I'll be honest with you. If I came in here and said, oh, I've got all the answers, that would be not true. It's not really my agenda, but I think a huge item is going to be data centers And much like the sheep creek mine, data centers are 1,000% unpopular among people I've talked to. So because it's unpopular with them, I'm not going to try to help data centers be cited here just because constituents don't want it. But I think there's going to be a ton of fights over everything from outright bans, which makes me uncomfortable, but I think it's what the constituents want. to requiring a vote, a countywide vote to approve one. There's already stuff about, I'm told, about data centers not having an impact on electrical rates. I don't know the details of that. There's the water issue. I've heard divergent things that a data center, I'm told by their lobbyists, uses the same amount of water as a golf course or a hospital or something like that. I have no idea if that's true. But I think data centers will be a big thing. But to answer your question about stuff I care about, and it's odd, I do a lot of random bills on little topics, but what I focus my energy on is the Judiciary Committee. there's a pretty good chance I'll be on the Judiciary Committee. So if I am on the Judiciary Committee, there are three lawyers in the Republican caucus in the House and the Senate. And so there's a need for some legal eyes on a lot of things that run through judiciary. And that's where I focus my attention instead of running up bill numbers for myself. I mean, some people do that and that's great and that's their role and they're good at it. Others are subject matter experts and that's really needed. You mentioned water. I mean, I'm going to ask people that deal with water all the time. Um, so yeah, uh, a lot of judiciary stuff that I don't know about yet because hasn't happened. I mean, I haven't seen it and, um, But yeah, property tax reform of some kind. Again, all I know is what was promised didn't turn out. The reductions were not nearly what people thought for first-time residential homeowner folks. Some of the impacts on non-one-home residential things are a little disturbing. And There's no surplus to buffer any of these things.

That's going to be an interesting conversation, I think, at one point. So you left out local government committee. You were a good guy on local government. Now you're just talking about judiciary.

But my focus of bills is that. Oh, no, I hope to be on local government. And I've given the cell phone number to Commissioner Burroughs that you once burned up when I was on local government, but I appreciate that. I want to acknowledge that. I mean, you're retiring, so it's time to say things like this. You put a lot of time and energy into answering my questions on local government, and you respected the fact that there's about five minutes of lead time because I Honestly, with all the bills we have, you get a manila envelope or a manila folder with each bill, and you open it up, and you're confronted with some really difficult public policy question. And there's not a practical way to say, oh, next Tuesday there's going to be a bill on family transfers. And so you responded really quickly, and we've talked, and you're going to respond. So – yeah local government and then the other committee I was on education hope not to be but you know you were in the Navy you kind of duties other duties as a sign right I mean you know you're you're part of a team and whatever it is it is but yeah I love I love local government because I'm a municipal lawyer so and that's another thing that would probably put me on local government and It's the speaker's call.

So, yeah. So the second home property tax has been an issue that's been raised, I think, to all of us a number of times. We have a lot of local folks that have generational cabins up to West Fork or all over, not necessarily in the same county, but... They've had this in their family. Their family always goes up in the summer or whenever they enjoy their time in the cabin. And the taxes went up pretty extraordinarily on those second homes. And I think the intent of the legislature was to hit the non-resident... out-of-state folks who have these second, third homes up around Montana. I don't know how to fix that, but I know that's been a problem where people say, this county's been our family for three generations. We have to sell it now because we can't afford taxes on it.

That was the intent, and let's just say what it was. It was supposed to be a tax on Californians. That was the intent. When I say that it didn't pan out like it was promised, that's one of the things I'm talking about.

Unintended consequences.

Exactly. And we're still dealing with just general price increases of property. It's not like it used to be. It might even be falling a small amount. I'm not sure. But that's pretty localized. There are plenty of parcels that are still going up in value, and then that, of course – affects that um trying to i don't know fund the state that's an exaggeration trying to largely fund the state by property tax um is problematic for these reasons no way on a sales tax i'm not hinting at anything sales tax is like sheep creek mine and data centers heck no is the sentiment of house district 88 but um it's it's problematic i i i don't know and Whatever great thoughts an individual legislator comes up with, not that I have any, there's just this big machine that churns out property tax legislation. And you get to hear about it. I don't – I would violate decorum if I named names. But you know what I'm talking about. And you get – and this happened with House Bill 231. You get this – technically 24 hours in advance so you can read all whatever 150 pages and um but i wasn't involved in the conversation about it and so i don't know how you solve that either but it is it is difficult i mean a great idea is just the start of legislation And I said to the speaker one time, and he laughed, so I hope you guys laugh, because it's really why I do this legislature thing. I just like to have an audience to tell jokes to. But I said, Mr. Speaker, not every good idea needs to be a bill, and not every bill needs to be a law. And he was thankful that I understood that. But that just illustrates the the filter from a good idea to a law. So I don't know what I can do. I can carry out the concerns of the district that they're not getting the tax relief they thought they were gonna get, and that applies to the majority of people, the single resident folks. And then there are some real, there's some businesses that are in the extremely high property tax, numbers that employ a lot of people that are really concerned. And that probably should be addressed, too.

TODD BANDUCCI- At least your comment to the speaker was not every good idea needs to be a bill, and not every bill needs to be a good idea. I thought that was what was coming. I was like, well, that sounds like you nailed the legislature. TODD BANDUCCI- Oh, my goodness.

That's a better story. I need to amend my story. Yeah.

Well, you know. not that long ago, Kamala Harris came out with an idea when she was running for president to start taxing unrealized gains in the stock market, right? People lost their minds.

I thought it was... That would have been a disaster.

But then you start to think about what has Montana done? You bought a house in 1965 and you paid $12,000 for it and now you're being taxed on a... $750,000 home that, you know, and even worse for those young families that bought a house in 2017 or 18 when they were, you know, 185,000 or 200,000, whatever they were. And then boom, COVID hits. Yellowstone impacts and that house is now worth $450,000. Well, their budget didn't go up commensurately and their taxes went up. And so we've been taxing unrealized gains in housing forever. I always wonder why, and I'm not a tax expert. I play one sometimes at the legislature, but I'm not. And

Now that's Commissioner Borough's job.

Yeah, but I mean, an inflationary factor on that might be, because we got half the rate of inflation, right, on our revenue off property tax. And yet housing, home costs doubled in a lot of cases between 2019 and 2025. Well, our revenue sure as hell didn't double.

And housing costs doubled, and the employees you have to hire have to live in houses that doubled. And you have to pay them with much less than the housing prices went up.

Something's going to give. It has to. It's not sustainable seeing that, and that's where we're headed right now.

It's where we are.

Yeah. Yeah. It breaks a little bit more each time. It can't continue to slowly fail. That's why you hear about collapse. It can't fail slow. At some point, it's got to just break and collapse. It seems like that's where we're going.

The only thing that kept Ravalla County's nose above water from 1999 to present was our new growth. That came on top of our 15, 10, 4, 20. That's what kept us. And we've done two reduction in forces in that same time period. But that kept us at least able to band-aid things and keep up. And we lose 25% of that that kept our nose above water. But now we're getting full rate of inflation. So it'll take a couple of years to sort that out and see how it works.

And I was talking about even bigger, not the breaking point being residents. And the counties were in a bad way. And we're at that point that you hear Greg mentioned it, unpaving roads, grinding them up. But more concerning than that are all the people that come in and talk to you about they're going to have to make a choice. Property taxes or food or gas or daycare, something's going to give. It has to give because it's just, I mean, I look at what my tax has done and everybody else's. I bet there's a handful of people, there's probably a lot that their property taxes as much as their original mortgage probably was on their property. That's a pretty damn scary thought to think about. that your rent to the government is as much as your mortgage was to buy your property.

Go ahead.

No, I was just going to say, I think as a commissioner, if the state came to us and said, look, we're not asking you to cover, because that's what's been happening. They've been trying to whittle away at counties and say, you need to reduce your spending, your bloated property taxes, why we're seeing this happen. If the state came and said, look, We're willing to reach into our pockets. We're going to make cuts here. We're going to cut our expenditures, and we want you to come along for the ride. I think we'd be willing to entertain that, but that hasn't been what's happened. It's like we want to remain whole, but let's go pick over here at the small piece of the overall tax budget that's at counties. We all know where the property tax goes. It goes to the schools. There's a piece over here that's left for the county. We don't talk about the schools. We talk about this bloated 30% over here that the counties are spending to maintain roads and fund public safety. It's just, it's misplaced when they're... It's dishonest.

It is dishonest. Another one, the wild card that you mentioned is the school spending, but the wild card on top of that wild card is that the Supreme Court, with the stroke of a pen, can say, State of Montana, you're not fully funding education. The new figure in our infinite wisdom, because there are seven of us with law degrees, so we clearly know how much money a statewide school system needs to have. The schools are gonna be funded at X per student based on this formula. I do complex litigation. I have never seen anything more complex in my life than the school funding formula. They had people come in and explain it to us And I still have no idea what it is. Anyway, so that is a wild card in all of this. And if I could dream – and I can't really, but I'll go ahead and say it. I like the idea of the three legs of the stool where you had property taxes that were moderate – income tax and natural resource taxes, severance taxes on timber. It sure would be cool to have a timber industry. Severance taxes on coal, which go into a coal trust fund. I get that. But other, that's why I say I can dream because we've talked about a lot of things that the legislature can't control and a single legislator can't do. You want to talk about an even bigger thing that no single person could do, and that is have a natural resource economy. But that would be great if we had three legs to the stool again, but no one has articulated a way to make that happen. I just talked about how I don't support that mine, and I don't support data centers.

In theory, those were natural resource things that would have— The 1872 Mining Act precludes them paying us anything.

Oh, really? Yes.

Okay. I just assumed. Okay. Interesting. I mean, back in the day, they were trying to settle the West, so let's get miners out there, open it up, and it's still on the books. Oh. So guess how much you're going to pay to extract gallium out of the upper bitters?

By the way, I told their lobbyists, I said, isn't there a lot of gallium in Wyoming?

And then look at the costs associated with a simple categorical exclusion for a service project where we could potentially generate if we could get in there and harvest trees. But analysis, objection, litigation, more consultation due to possibly a grizzly bear wandering through the sapphires through a project area. By the time you get done with it, you spend so much time and effort the mills have closed down, you might be able to haul it somewhere for some pulpwood. But most practically is you just cut it and you put it in big piles and you burn it up there to reduce the... I mean, that's really where we're getting to. Pretty soon that'll be the remedy for fuels mitigation is if it hasn't already burned, then you just got to pull all the stuff out and put it in piles and light it on fire up on the mountain. If you can't afford to haul it and fuel prices at... five and change whatever we're at now is going to make that even more impractical. So we're not in a good way.

Um, Tim, she had the, his bill to fix our forest actor, I think is what it was called, but to help fund through grants and low interest loans, some infrastructure logging mills. Um, haven't seen much happen yet, but, um, Maybe the state could partner with the feds and promote that. It would be really nice to have that 25% coming in off of the Bitterroot National Forest that we used to receive.

I think a lot of the problem with the logging is you can't get it to scale and make it profitable at this point. That's going to be tough.

Well, we got some mills around that would reduce those haul costs, which are killing a lot of projects.

Lost a lot of mills recently, too.

If we could get some mills opened up and reduce those hauling costs. Have you been to Home Depot lately and bought a 2x4?

Get it twisted by the time you get it home?

And it's Canadian? Best man at my wedding was a logger. I remember what good, functioning, prosperous logging communities look like. I saw it with my own eyes. And now they don't exist, number one. And from the 90s until about a few years ago, they declined in a lot of very terrible social and economic ways. And that's why I say it's a dream because I don't know how you make it happen. But it is... I don't know that it's achievable, but it is a solution. Mills, I mean, we have great rodeo grounds at Darby, but I understand those used to be. It was all sawmill. The sawmill, yeah. So, love rodeo grounds, but, I mean, it used to be a big deal. Loggers used to make a lot of money. They deserve it, Lisa.

One of the biggest reasons that this has occurred is because the environmentalists that object to these things have no skin in the game due to the Equal Access to Justice Act. So the taxpayers are paying the legal fees to sue ourselves. It's insane.

That's a federal thing, and it's not as big of a problem at the state level, but I think there's going to be a state-level version on that bill. That'll probably come through Judiciary Committee. That's not the problem. The problem is the federal one you're talking about.

Yeah, the federal one is what we're talking about. But that's, you know, the equal access to justice task is funding those organizations that continuously sue to stop these projects.

So real quick, staying on natural resources, but a little different direction. There's a couple of things that hopefully you'll maybe see. I don't know if you'll want to carry them. We have more non-resident harvest of mule deer bucks in the eastern part of the state than we do from residents. Hmm. A lot of people don't know that. And the first time I heard that was the department was given a presentation and I heard that and I was like, come again, you have to repeat that. So region seven for a while has had more mule deer harvest by non-residents, but region six caught up with them. So now region six instead, which is most of Eastern Montana has a higher level of mule deer buck harvest by non-residents and by residents.

And is that based on access?

No, that's based on the fact that personally what I think is I think residents, we have ample opportunity to get tags. And so if we go to eastern Montana and you don't see that buck that you want to shoot, you probably eat your tag or you go hunt somewhere else. I think non-residents have a very high success rate of filling tags. If you draw it and you pay... eight or $900. I don't know what a deer tag costs exactly for them. Then they're going to fill that tag with something. The first little guy that walks through is like, I'm going to go.

And they have guides cause they have the money in some cases.

But I think a lot of, a lot of those impacts were do it yourself first. Like they come over and set up hunting camp and there's a party type situation where there's five or six people with a tag and they go hunt an area. I mean, I've seen it cause I hunt over there. Um, I think that's got to change because I think it violates statute where it says that the policy of the states to protect and preserve game primarily for the citizens of the state. I think it's hard to sell that we're in compliance with that statute when we hear that regions have higher harvest by non-resident than residents. I agree with you 100%. And then you look at the status of the mule deer population where we have a lot of hunting districts that are down 30 to 40% mule deer population wise. The problem is there's such a push to generate, again, goes back to revenue. Non-residents pay a pretty significant portion of the department's budget and that's a significant cut on revenues there. So do we keep selling wildlife to non-residents or do we try and preserve them primarily for citizens. It may be a budget reduction reducing the number of tags. The other thing we do is we couple elk and deer to non-residents and that probably should change because you can't manage a species when Non-resident applies for a combo tag. You automatically get an elk and a deer license. Here you go, combo. They can give up or orphan that deer tag, but it makes it really hard. Not a lot of other states manage that way, and I don't know why we do, where we've got this combination opportunity. You draw for a combination. If you're going to come to Montana, you get an elk tag, get a deer tag too, and go find a deer somewhere.

doesn't make a lot of sense if to manage that way i think you need to take each one and manage on sustainable numbers based on what your populations are doing so um can i ask you a question about this um i i agree with evan that residents harvesting game is important and it's i mean people expect that i mean it's part of the way of life of montana i mean it's it just is and um But a question for you, if you don't mind. There's always this divide, and I saw it last session, on game issues. Folks that think the legislature should be very active in coming up with standards. There were bills to set actual quotas. That's pretty specific. And then the other side of the coin is the Fish and Wildlife Commission, on which you sit, I believe. should have the, I'll call it, nobody said this, but the sort of the scientific power to come up with numbers. And I don't know. What do you think is a good balance on that?

Well, I mean, to me, we can spend a lot more time digging into the science and doing all that. But the problem is there's a whole bunch of legislative sideboards and stopgaps. For example, we just found one the other day when we were talking about it. Hunting District 250, Painted Rocks, the sheep have been annihilated down there. Basically, we think most of it's due to predation by mountain lions. So I thought, well, heck, that's a perfect spot. It's a hard area to hunt. There's not a lot of lion hunters that can go down there. You've got to be somebody who wants to get after mountain lions with hounds to go get it. There's not very many of those folks, so what we said is, it's really hard to get there there's not a lot of people that want to hunt there and we've got a depredation issue why don't we issue a second mountain lion tag to somebody who's willing to go there at least till we see our bighorn sheep rebound well we start digging through statute and the legislature and their infinite wisdom decided a mountain lion license is a special license and you can only issue one of those licenses and

Like by itself, like where you have to go out just for mountain lion, which is never going to happen. They sneak up on you when you're drinking beer and hunting camp. Yeah.

And so that's just one of those things that I think, for some reason, they limited the number, and that needs changed through statute to say, no, if you have an ungulate, and I think all we're looking for is if the commission determines that there's an area that needs... more aggressive predator management, they can do that. We don't want to just set it, and the lion hunters don't want it, and the commission doesn't, to say the entire state you can issue two mountain lion tags, because I think we would have some lion impacts across the state. But if you can pick spots, you know, maybe the breaks has an area where mule deer are getting hammered by lions, issue two lion tags in that area. But it would be nice to have an allowance for the commission to say if they designate an area as an ungulate area of concern, you can pull some more levers maybe issue two black bear tags there if that's the problem or two lion tags or whatever the predator flexibility to create special hunts yeah to control predators is the part i like yeah nobody likes predators yeah well some people do some people well yeah i was

I'd be happy to work on that, so let me know. I don't claim to be a fish and wildlife expert, but what you've articulated is just common sense.

I think legislators need to know that. That's pretty jaw-dropping. I wouldn't have guessed there was anywhere in the state that non-residents actually harvest more than residents. Because when you look at the tag allocation, it's like 8 to 1 residents to non-residents. So how the heck are residents harvesting more deer when you have that sort of skew in tags? That just shows that their success rate is way up, and it's probably guides and outfitters. I think it's more. We're shooting Bambis and stuff. I think that's one is that they're less selective on their harvest. Montanans harvest food. For their families. We always have. The next is that I think their hunter days in the field per tag is more. If you're going to come to Montana for that tag, you're going to spend 10 solid days of hunting, whereas a Montanan may say, I'm going to go out Saturday and Sunday with everyone else. Those non-residents are spending more.

Montanans literally harvest the meat. And in this day and age, that's really important. I know I'm eating plenty of elk and stuff. And I don't hunt anymore. So my son-in-law, he goes out every chance he can get. And it's not just for the sport of it. It's for harvesting meat.

Very good. Hey, didn't expect it to go for an hour and 50 minutes, but thank you guys for your patience. Oh, our pleasure.

Thanks for having us. I think this is terrific that you guys do this.

This is the first of a new chapter in how we're doing it. We used to invite all the candidates, fill the room, and it was not good.

Then you have one lawyer that can speak to everything.

Oh, no. No. Your expectations are too high.

We did send out, I think, some notices earlier or some invitations to some of these land use meetings that we had talked, like especially the family transfer meetings. I really think if you guys could make one of those meetings. I think we've got one coming up that has to do with public comment on a family transfer and talking a lot of this stuff.

Okay.

I think if you could make one of those, or if nothing else, at least listen in through Granicus online just to hear some of the discussions.

I learned a lot just speaking just today from you guys.

You should send out a deputy with an invitation to come, and I bet your participation rate would go way higher.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. Thank you. The opportunities for public comment on subdivision exemptions with the exception of yesterday being a holiday, will be on Mondays at 1 p.m. here in this room, just if you want to put it on your calendar. So you will still get an email, but...

And they get canceled once in a while, so call to check. Well, what I wanted to invite them to is like a specific one. So we have the 1031 on next Monday.

Yeah, next Monday at 1030.

Like there was a neighbor's filed a complaint against a family transfer issue. And so we're going to be discussing with neighbors and citizens about a family transfer next door that they're saying is, I guess they're making a claim it's evasion. And so I think hearing that conversation of us hearing their concerns, but then our legislative, our statutory sideboards that we have to kind of maneuver, I think would be beneficial to hear that. Yeah, OK, cool.

Yeah, that's good.

That's 10.30 next Monday.

Would you like to recess for a few minutes?

We will recess for a few minutes, yes.

OK, we will reconvene with a discussion and a possible decision Park Board finances and funding requests for the Big Corral Park development. Gary, welcome.

My name's Gary Lees. And I will eat the mic. Thank you, Gary. We had a approval to bring it for you to provide up to $25,000 for development of the well. and infrastructure at Kurtz 192 Kurtz Lane, Big Corral Park. This probably would be beneficial to the proposed ice skate rink as a possibility to fill it and all instead of wondering how we're going to get all the fire trucks in and everything. I've got a couple of last year's bids that run anywhere from $16,000 to $27,000 at that time. I've got requests out to update those. They didn't get back to me, so that's where we're at. We currently... Janet, just give me that paper and then I put it away, I guess. We currently have right at $91,700 in our cash in lieu fund, which this would come from and which is earmarked by 76-3-621 to be used for development. And that's where we're at with that.

And you said 50% of that, $91,000 for development?

No. Right now, we just got three or four cash and loos in this summer, and our 96 fund is at 91.7, but that's come from 50% of the cash in lieu over the years.

And that is the 50% number? Yeah.

Thank you. We can use that for development, but we can't use it for maintenance.

So you're going to put in an exempt well? Is that the plan then?

You what?

Put in an exempt well?

Yes, 35 gallon minute. The well was drilled in 2010. Do you want some specs on it?

No. I mean, I thought there was already a well out there. And you're drilling a second well?

No, no. This is to finish that well. That well was drilled, but there's no pump or pressure tank or any of that infrastructure to make the well serviceable.

OK. We're just putting a well in it and wanting to inactivate it.

And you said it's going to be $25,000.

Well, I got two quotes from a year ago. One of them's right at 16 something, and the other one is right at 27.

Did that include bringing the electricity to the well from the existing meter on the high bay?

I believe it does. And one of the things we're looking at is bringing that infrastructure in for the future development Maybe we can partner with the Hamilton Downtown Association while they're bringing some infrastructure for chillers for the ice skating rink. We can get that all done at one time. The panels and the electrical, that would be something that we do now for down the road, but rather than do it later.

Dig one trench.

Yep.

get it done so that it's serviceable for the well and for the ice crate facility? Yes. In one project? Yep. As far as the electrical goes?

Yep.

So last we had talked or last I had heard or saw was you were going to take the old... Highway 93.

Highway 93.

No. What was that little building for, like 4-H had some stuff? Is that where you're going to do this maintenance shed or whatever? You're going to put a pressure tank in there and make that the utility room?

Well, it's part of what we're looking at. I don't know expressly what the downtown association... lease says whether they have all of that if that's something we have to consider or whether we can put a we were talking about possibly putting a pressure tank in the casing but it won't let us get 35 gallon a minute so we talked of bringing the pump house and the control over into that, where the 4H rental was.

How far is it from the welder there?

40 feet.

So I mean that would be a six foot or at least five foot deep trench over the water line that would come up and power run from somewhere else.

And we probably will drill a hole in the bottom of the 4-H building to access but we can go in probably get back without too much trouble where we excavate on the outside to bring the electric in that panel as well.

We'll need to put a panel in there.

No power in that building right now?

Yes, there is, but it's out of the main building. And which is 110. Yeah, it's all.

Just a small 110 light.

Yeah. We would terminate that and put it all in one.

OK. And the park board's declared this to be a priority for this expenditure, the number one priority.

It's in our high class. Won't say it's the first priority, but it's one that would be very complementary to the master plan and helping us move forward with that.

Was there an old well pump in Stevensville that...

There were three of them.

Three of them, and none of those work?

No. And they... If you were going to put in a system, there are three control panels, I believe, at least two that are for putting in... an irrigation program. Yeah, there were three of them, and I know we salvaged two of them, but the pumps weren't worth much. One of them was totally—and I kind of suspected that the one that was straight out on the hill above the by the stoplight that sanded in once before. So when they got it out, it didn't work. They're only three-quarter. They're very small pumps.

So the 25,000 includes this panel and power to the building or not?

It includes what, Jeff?

What I thought I heard is we want to develop the well, get water into the building with a pressure tank, and then we want like a main power with, it sounds like maybe a panel out there with a little higher amperage out to the building. Is that what you're saying? Does $25,000 do all that or is there more expenses coming?

Well, we hope it does that. We're kind of partnering with the Hamilton Downtown Association with doing a lot of that.

So I hate to budget on a hope. I would be more comfortable if we knew what we wanted and what we were going to do. So $25,000 gets us what? A pressure tank and a well? pump put in?

Well, I probably should say that the current electric that we have out there is a 200 amp. And with the ice skating rink and everything, that will be upgraded to, I believe, a 600

for $25,000 included in that, or is this a different expenditure? I think Kyle might have some clarifications.

I'm happy to just weigh in on where we're at on that, because that's sort of what I'm at in my head too about that question.

Could you come to a mic, Kyle? Could you go to the mic up there, Kyle? If you push the button, a red light should come on. There you go.

uh kyle barber member of the park board also i'm sitting on the hamilton downtown foundations ice rink committee and kind of taking the lead on some of their infrastructure related tasks so i can speak to sort of how these two things fit together um i think i'm right there with you in terms of like exactly what does 25 000 buy to me it's buying into a big portion of the phase one that's outlined in the plan the first things would be electrical and and the well, which go hand in hand, but are kind of two separate things. And so we've had DJs out there a little over a week ago. Um, I was supposed to have a bid by now. I just called him today. I expect to have it soon for the electrical upgrade, which part of it is, is an overbuild for the future of the park. Um, part of it is what is needed by Hamilton downtown foundation. And so that, that portion that's needed by the downtown foundation for the ice rink, they've already committed to paying for that. So some portion of the bid we're about to get from DJs will be covered by Hamilton downtown foundation. I think if you take the valley irrigation bid, which is pretty close to what we're talking about, and it's a year old now, but that was $16,200. That plus the $9,000 addition at the $25,000 plus HDF money should get to the full electrical and well that we're talking about.

So $25,000 gets us...

with hdf's contribution gets us this full build out of well with the additional power for chillers and everything we're talking about exactly yeah it'll be enough for chillers and then for some of the downstream buildings that are potentially envisioned like garages and gazebos as well as some additional amperage for things like hookups for events or food trucks that kind of stuff

So the partnership between the park board and the downtown association or foundation, those put together will be enough to make the project work?

Yeah, if they're not, I think we'll be all revisiting exactly what we can get done. I mean, that should collectively be in the low to mid $30,000 of available funds for these two projects, which should be adequate, I would think.

So the foundation's asking the park board to fund the majority of the improvements to accommodate their skating rink?

And I don't want to speak for them because I'm on the ice rink committee doing this, but I can't speak for the foundation. What I can say is that they've committed to the electrical, which is what they need. Um, the water is something that they were prepared to figure out through other means. If need be, this will greatly enhance the implementation and the maintenance of it, but it's not absolutely necessary.

It sounds pretty necessary to call as far. I mean, having to call the fire district, can you run a truck out this weekend at warmed up? We need some more water. It, I mean, I think it's, I, it seems like the foundation and the ice skate is looking for the park board to fund the majority. And if park board's up for that, that's their discussion. I'm not, but it just seems like like the foundation's coming in a little light on this, in my opinion.

So the foundation budgeted for what they needed to get it done this year and for the next three years, and that doesn't include this, and this wasn't a request of the foundation at all. This was Park Board pursuing the well. This wasn't the foundation saying, hey, we want this. It is nice, though.

That was partly guided by the Park Board wanting... to do a one-shot deal where we don't end up digging a trench, finding it inadequate, and digging another one, which is way more expensive than double dip. So to do it all in one project makes sense.

It should get us to pay for it. Where is the, I guess we've got a bid for 16-1, and maybe there's been some cost increase. That was a year ago. Okay. Hopefully, if we talk to Valley and beg and plead, they'll honor it pretty close. I mean, I doubt most of this has gone up in a year significantly to where we hit $25,000. How do we get from $16,200 to $25,000? Where's the rest of it?

DJs.

Yeah, it was Eagle, and they didn't have as much detail. But it included electrical. This includes electrical? No, DJ's did, just for what would be necessary for the well. So how much is DJ's just for the well? Or not DJ's. I'm sorry, that's Eagle.

If you look at the valley irrigation bill, part of that is backhoe and whatnot, as far as that. So was DJ's... DJ's... bid was including tobacco too, so we may be double dipping there as far as the tobacco use goes. We're going to take one trench one time.

So that's why I'm asking, how do we get to that?

We were out there with DJs the other day, but we haven't got their final bid yet, so we don't know for sure.

I think it's adequate.

And I accidentally inserted DJs into your question, which was, where did you get to 27? And that's Eagle's bid, which was just three line items. It was electrical and pump. And then the third one was a different line item altogether that didn't relate to the 27. So they just put like 5,000.

How much was their electrical line item?

Five.

Which one?

5,000. 5,000. So that puts us at 21.

But that was just bringing in enough for like 30 amp service. I think it wasn't what we're talking about.

Yeah, but downtown's covering the rest, right?

Well, no, because downtown doesn't need the full 600 amp service. That's the future proofing of the park.

How much is downtown foundations putting towards the project?

We're waiting to get the bid from DJs. Yeah.

So, I mean, I guess I'm... well i guess it depends on when we looked at the whole business model of it a lot of this seems to be kind of geared towards dice rink for now and it seems like they're not maybe i guess without knowing how much it's going to cost to have their portion of a increased service i guess i don't know what we're talking about right now i don't know if that 600 amp service is $20,000 to get over there, or what that cost is?

And I don't either, and I wish I had that for you. I think looking at the individual pieces of it would be the ideal at this point, for sure. I think with a $25,000 request, what we can do is a handful of those things fairly confidently, and we'll need to get bids and make those determinations. It's more of, I think the ask is an up-to amount for these things. not to exceed.

I've seen a lot of these projects do this, and what happens is we start, and then it's like, we really need $30,000, not $25,000 to get to where we want to go, and it seems like this could be a prime example of that. We're not quite sure. We have some other phases, but... Since we've already got the hole open, let's just spend another $5,000. While DJ's is here, let's put up a new LED light pole because it's never going to be cheaper than now. I really see this ask turning into more than $25,000 at some point. Maybe it won't because we'll just cut out the rest of the stuff, but this seems like the writing on the wall for a lot of things I've seen where it starts off here and we end up over here because of for another five grand, we'll just throw this in and do this, and this makes a lot of sense to do. While you're at it. While you're at it.

When I proposed this to the park board, I said up to 25,000, which I said today, and I looked at it at that time as hopefully we would not need 25, but we wouldn't be short and have to come back and say, what you're saying happened.

I hope you lean on the downtown foundation a little bit if there are any overages to make sure they're covered i guess it seems to me like just covering their proportionate share of the electrical probably isn't enough like it seems like maybe a proportionate share of this a little bit too because i agree with greg if their plan was to call the fire department every time they need water it's not oh that's that's just the initial freezing after that there's not a lot of water needed and yeah that's the initial freeze is what that would be

And that's why I think it's important to note that the irrigation improvement is not something that the foundation even pursued with the county. It is a nice to have, and it's something that they want to support, and they're supporting other aspects of park improvement through this, but it's not the thing that they were seeking at this point. It is a really nice to have, and it will make it a much easier thing to manage.

So with all that, you're still comfortable and still will spend 25 grand park board funds on this. I trust you guys. I'm just telling you my concerns.

feel confident it's going to be a much improved space that's ready to to handle what's being asked of it with these things and that between the downtown foundation and the parks board contribution that we can get to that with a reasonable package we just don't have the numbers right now but i feel confident with that so sorry one more time the 25 grand will get the well

and the power for the well but we have another bill coming along with this for the 600 amp improvement which is all include i mean that that will address the wells needs and more but yes yeah but that doesn't include the 600 amp service is going to be a lot more than five thousand dollars to get over there yes right yep i think we if we want the shebang this is going to get us so 25 grand is going to get us the well developed and enough power to get the well running if we want the the shebang the 600 amp service out there with a sub panel and 50 amp breakers for food truck whatever else we want that's another bill coming on top of the 25 that is not my that's not the way that i've looked at it in that 25 000 if you take the valley irrigation at 16 to a little bit of overage maybe for another year but

And then you take that and then there's still 9,000 for electrical. We don't have bids. I don't think that the well bid alone would be $9,000. And so that buys us a good portion of that electrical upgrade. And that's where Hamilton downtown basically comes in for the remainder. And so I think we get the fully upgraded electrical service and well for that number is the way I'm looking at it. Assuming this valley bid holds.

Okay. If that's the case, I'm comfortable with that. I thought we were talking about another request at some point to get the whole shebang.

I mean, if DJ's comes in at like a $30,000 electrical upgrade, then maybe we'll be looking at something different there.

But yeah, but you know, that that's, we don't know what that 600 is at this point, or at least I haven't seen figures with it.

That's where I guess if we can't get the whole shebang, it'd be nice to have another conversation. Cause what I'd hate to have is, well, we've got 25 grand and we've got a little bit from the foundation. So let's do two-thirds of what we really need out there and get it done, and then we come back at some point in the future.

I'm hoping to prevent that.

Okay, and I would too. So if we can't get the whole shebang, we'll be back here having another conversation.

Yes.

I'd move to approve up to $25,000 for the well and the power improvements as discussed. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve the $25,000 request for the well and the power project as discussed. Is there any public comment on that motion? Any further discussion?

Hamilton Downtown Foundation is going to be a participant in this, what's over 25, presumably, to some degree.

That's the case, yes. Call for the question, Jeff. Aye. And Greg. Aye. And I vote aye as well. Motion carries. Thank you.

aye thank you thank you again I want to hear that loud and clear you're getting to be too short I counted it up and I was gonna answer that for you so and with that we will recess until 2 p.m.

for discussion and possible decision on Highway 93 and Bell Crossing.

All right, good afternoon. We will reconvene for a discussion and possible decision on Highway 93 and Bell Crossing.

We have Mr. Fred Thomas with us and Kendall Hankins. Please come to the table and turn the microphone on. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Dan, we're ready when you are, sir.

All right, go ahead with us.

I got to admire you guys' position. I, in a previous life, sat in one of those seats and you get hit from all angles all the time. So I'm new to Montana. My wife and I moved here in April from Indiana. I serve at the cooperative. I was hired, started back around the 27th of April as their new general manager. So Fred and our board have talked about the intersection at Bell Crossing in 93. And having only lived here just a few short months, I've had to, pleasure of trying to cross the highway because we live on the east side and if you've done that during business hours or any hours past about 7 p.m you can probably recognize the challenge it's difficult i understand that there's a speed zone north and south of there that's 55 mile an hour and it's just a flashing light however we've got some pretty big equipment first off that we need to get out into the traffic lanes of traffic and there's been some discussion around a roundabout i understand the county was opposed to that and I would be in support of that previous to commissioner I was in law enforcement as well so I've had plenty of time on the road worked plenty of accidents and stuff like this and almost been in one myself up there just since I've moved here we're asking for support first off for potentially putting in some sort of traffic control namely a stoplight just so that Motorists are safer. Our members are traveling in and out of there. That area of development is growing. Some other businesses, including ours, are there. I think if anybody has traveled that vicinity in the last week, just with the busyness of the fair, you would recognize there's an opportunity for somebody to get hurt or seriously, or killed even worse. We'd ask for your support in petitioning Montana Department of Transportation to potentially put a stoplight in there. so that everybody can safely commute to and from our facilities and just general commute, period. It's 70 north and south of there. It does drop down to 55. That has helped, I think. People do kind of slow down.

That's a relatively new trend. addition, when did they change that to 55? I don't think it's even been a year.

Two years ago. Has it been a year? Has it been a year? Yeah.

And people are still driving 70 in the 55.

It's not practical to put an officer there 24-7 to run traffic. That's just not how it works. Nobody has the resources for that. Like I said, I've been there. But people do tend to stop at stoplights, but not all the time. But they do a little bit more respect than just a flashing light.

We've had... this discussion and we've met with DOT, we've had open houses, we've opposed the roundabout the whole way. Their own computer generated modeling showed that a semi pulling two trailers took up both lanes and still. So nothing about it looked good and then They just pull up to 10th and went home and put the speed reduction zone in there. And their motto is, well, the lower speeds round around about. We have lower impact collisions. A stoplight has high impact collisions. I mean, that's what we heard all the time from them. but once they put the speed zone in there, the discussion stopped and they just haven't been back. We share, I believe, at least we historically shared your position that we want a traffic light in there.

That's awesome. I think it helps to be on the record in a partnership, especially with our commitment to the Valley, 85 years plus being here. Our members are number one important thing for existing and One of our board members, two of them actually, was in a serious accident there just because of the traffic situation. So we would welcome any support you could have in our petition to the MDT and possibly continuing the discussion on this project. Fred obviously has a little bit more history in the Valley than I do.

I think he was only about five when you guys started.

Probably. Most of all, we did want to say thank you for the support thus far. It makes it more challenging. In the letter, it calls out our substation is kind of on that northeast corner, and you just don't pick those up and move those real easily. So the roundabout would certainly tear up some real estate problems where a stoplight, it's kind of aerial.

They were suggesting that we would have to do eminent domain to fit the roundabout in there. And we declined entertaining that thought. Adam, do you remember things differently or not? No.

Initially, it sounds like represented there was a willing partner on the roundabout in REC, and that sounds like it never really was true. So that's why initially if we're like, well, because I think the data that DOT did show showed that roundabouts do, they don't. lessen the frequency but they lessen the severity and they had quite a bit of data and i went up to their office and looked at some roundabouts that did show that that was the case you you change from head-on or rear-end collisions or significant t-bones to more glancing type wrecks has to fit your community i mean you can't just throw something in and i think we've got a precedent for stoplights in the valley county i think commuting public the users of 93 there are used to those especially if you put those those early indicators for the stoplight changing i think it fits our community and so i don't know why they're so resistant to especially when they had, it sounded like they had federal funding or some funding for a roundabout, and then when that didn't work out, they said, well, we don't have funding for a stoplight, even though it sounded like it was four times less for a signal than a roundabout. I'm all in on a signal. I don't know why we can't get a signal there. The concerning thing about a speed reduction zone is it's similar, I would say, to Skalkahoe, where You have a tragic accident. You get enforcement there for a period of time. That enforcement starts to wean. And rightfully so. I mean, we don't have the staff to park somebody there the entire time. And so it's tragedy that forces your hand into one of these either improvements or enforcement. And that seems to be the way it goes. Because the big concern with an artificial speed reduction is Because that's not the speed limit that's conducive to travel that stretch. As soon as you get out of Victor, 70 feels natural. It's basically an interstate there. You've got four lanes, wide shoulders, open views, and so it's conducive to 70 miles an hour through there. and so it's going to be hard to to regulate the public to an artificial 55 mile an hour speed limit so then what's going to happen is your staff your trailers are going to have an end of traveling public sitting on east side highway you're going to have an expectation that people are coming at them at 55 miles an hour and when you're doing 75 that time differential is significant enough that somebody's going to be like, oh, I have time to make this intersection because they're supposed to be traveling 55 and they pull out and they're on you like that. And then we get another catastrophic wreck there. I don't even think it's a Band-Aid, the 55-mile-an-hour reduction. I think it's an enhancement of the dangerous situation that's out there because people are not traveling 55 anymore. I mean, Chilcott's guilty of it. He goes through that intersection at 75 every day. I come off Bell Crossing so easily.

We've made ourselves very clear, and we've been pretty straightforward and direct about it. So they know where we stand. Maybe somebody that has at least a finger on the purse strings would maybe make them more receptive. Fred would know about that.

If I could add just to the little bit before. Please do, Fred. I think you're right on that. And we can work on the legislative delegation, too. No trouble there. It's a really good idea. So just a little bit to add to what Kendall has laid out here. So a little history and a little how did we get to the speed limit. So Kendall's predecessor, Mark, he's worked on this issue with the Highway Department and probably copied you on letters of correspondence for, I mean, I'm saying at least 10 years. I'm not sure how long, but probably ever since the the electric co-op located where we are now and my role is I serve on the board and so I that's why I'm here with Kendall so as we all know it's dangerous my observation is that the speed limit is significantly better than it used to be though that's my observation because you people used to 99% of the people came through at 70 plus. Now it's probably 10, 15%, my observation. So it's better.

But it's not better. For somebody who uses it twice a day, every day, is you expect that... speed and then here comes that 10 or 15 percenters you call them doing 75 and the rest blown by that traffic and you can't see it if you're turning across those lanes of traffic how fast they're going especially if you've got a 55 in the right lane and the 75s outside of them

And so I don't disagree with you that that's an inherent danger, but having a significant chunk of the public driving 55 is just significantly better than it was. So we need to focus on getting people down to that level or getting to the stop sign, whatever, however we get the stoplight, however we get to the next phase here is what we need to do because that does exist there. And I'm guilty of... You turn off Bell, typically, and I come south, headed to Victor Hamilton, and I got to think and remember that it's 55, because like you said, it's wide open interstate. So that danger is prevalent. Now, that study... I know there's roundabout studies, and then there's the study they did on that site. And I would take that study they did on that site and shred it. It is a CRAP. It's like they just had, well, we're going to get to this result, and there's nothing in between starting the report and getting to that result of a roundabout. It's very, very complicated. thin, let's just put it, let's use the word thin in getting the reasoning to get there. Okay, so sitting on, being on our board to, involved in this, I contacted Senator Ellsworth and back two years ago, whenever it was, and told him what we wanted to do, at least get to the speed zones arrangement that we did get to. He worked with the director of the transportation, and they went through from this insistence that they would do a roundabout, where were the millions of cashers coming from that? I have no idea, but it was certainly a bad prioritization of money. But getting from that to the speed zone to see how it worked. So that's how we got to where we're at, was that Senator Ellsworth worked through this with him, and they got to the speed zone. So I'm very grateful that he did that for us and all. So the options are, you know, I think we'd be okay with options of whatever the stop, you know, stop light, stop sign there. Stop light, of course, not a sign. enhanced speed reductions in the sense that, like at Lolo, at the old school zone, there's those posts that have the jumping speed zone at you that aren't needed there anymore because there's no school there anymore. And I'd suggested to the department a few months ago that they take those down there and bring them down into this zone. Because if you come out of Bell and turn south, You just don't think of 55 because there's no sign there. It's north of you there. And so if you had those spread around, people would pay more attention, especially me. So in that whole discussion, the roundabout was set aside and not done. And what they had told me specifically at the Stevensville School meeting with the Department of Transportation, never seen anything like that where the Department of Transportation came out and tried to push a roundabout or anything down the public's throat like those meetings were. And they specifically said, a very talented member of the higher leadership there, that we are gonna, because I asked them, I said, well, you don't even have this design And they said, well, no, we're going to design it this fall and we're going to build it next spring, which means it would be in place now. So that never happened, thank God. And we knew that wouldn't happen as well. And we're not going to design that. And as Kendall's brought out that, the trend, the trend. The electrical substation is on the northeast corner there. That pushes this whole roundabout over to the west, et cetera. We've talked about that. It's a numbskull idea, and it shouldn't happen. So one of our further concerns is that as we move along, and Kendall addressed this in this nice letter he did, is that There's going to be more traffic developed at this site. It's not just because of growth in the valley, but we do have that industrial park right there. One business is located in it. I think there's three more parcels. So there's three more, and we don't control. If somebody buys it to put in X, we don't know how much traffic they'll develop, but it'll be more. And like Kendall said, We've got big trucks that come in and out of there, and they need to be safe, and the public needs to be safe on regular 93 with our trucks as well. So we would like you to... We can work with the legislative delegation too, but we would like you to do another letter, and I hope you've done these, but to the Department of Transportation. Include our letter, because we're trying to make sure that that roundabout doesn't serve, that issue doesn't surface again, because it's just going to make a mess there. It's going to make what's there worse, and it can be fixed without that. We pledge to work with the delegation. We'll invite them over and et cetera, but we'd like you guys to communicate with the Department of Transportation. You are the big cats in the county speaking for that, and I know that they have the legislative, the purse string over there, but they don't deal with specifics like this in legislation. which has been gone away. That's gone by the wayside for quite a while. So that's our request. We've got commissioners.

Thank you, Fred.

The DOT has not rescheduled their canceled September 1st. They have not rescheduled that.

They have not rescheduled that, so... I would imagine, yeah.

I'll move to approve a letter to MDOT supporting the traffic light at Bell Crossing.

Second. It's been moved and seconded to approve a letter to Montana DOT regarding a traffic light at Bell Crossing. Is there any public comment on that motion? Any further discussion? Question, Jim? Aye. Greg? Aye. And I vote aye as well. Motion carries. We will draft a letter. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you very much. Pleasure. Thank you very much.

I certainly appreciate that.

St. Greg's District, right? Nope.

It's in mine, I think. The line is so squiggly, it's hard to tell. That's true. And with that, is there any public comment on items not otherwise on our agenda? Move to adjourn. Second. We are adjourned.