County Commission Update

Hi Folks,

At our regular meeting last week, we discussed a proposal from an air ambulance service to provide coverage for Jefferson County residents for about $49,000 per year. They had presented this to us a few weeks ago, but we wanted to do more research before we made a decision. Tuesday, we decided not to participate.

A couple of reasons I decided against it were that there will be some type of legislation introduced during the 2017 Legislature regarding air ambulance service.

The biggest reason was that if we contracted with this company and someone was injured that the service out of Butte was dispatched to, they wouldn’t be covered.

Hopefully, at some point we could have some coverage that would cover everyone in the county, no matter who picked them up.

We had a discussion with a landowner about a locked gate on Rocky Road, south of Boulder. We agreed to put together another payment agreement with Montana Tunnels for their back taxes. We signed an MOU with the Montana Woolgrowers and Montana Stockgrowers for predator control. We appointed four people to the Board of Adjustments.

Wednesday evening we met with the Whitehall Town Council to work on a final agreement for the sewage hookup for Sugar Beet Row. The Town’s main concern is that if the system is hooked up this fall, the town won’t actually receive any money until December of 2016 or early January 2017. During the discussion several landowners from Sugar Beet Row agreed to try to come up with money to start making payments early. The Town said they would make a decision at a special meeting on August 23rd.

FYI: The late Antonin Scalia, “A Constitution is not meant to facilitate change. It is meant to impede change, to make it difficult to change.”