County Commission Update

Hi Folks,

Last week at our regular meeting, we open bids for a couple of projects in the Whitehall area. We received ten bids, which ranged from $360,000 to just under $32,000 for the Blowout Project on Pipestone Creek. We will probably award that bid to the lowest bidder at today’s meeting. We received nine bids for the Sugar Beet Row Sewer Project. These bids were fairly close, with the low bid of $216,825 being about $32,000 over the Engineers Estimate. There were also higher than anticipated costs for Bond Counsel and engineering services due to all of the delays in getting the project implemented. I’ve had several discussions with folks from Rural Development, DNRC, Bond Counsel, and engineers for the past several days. Both Rural Development and DNRC have agreed to provide additional grant funds. Great West Engineering has decided to cut their additional costs in half, and the Bond Council is going to get much less than what the actual charges could have been. Jefferson County will provide an additional $9,775.00 so the project can move forward. I want to thank everyone involved for their willingness to do what was necessary to make this happen.

We approved Resolution 04-2017 to continue the Predator Control Fee on a permanent basis. This is a $.50 per head fee placed on cattle. Without the fee, when we have a predator issue the Wildlife Service will come in and try to trap the animals on the ground. With the fee, they will bring aircraft in to collar or kill the predator.

We also agreed to give Montana Tunnels another chance to make payments on their delinquent taxes. We have done a couple of other agreements with them, with little success. This time we gave them an incentive by offering to consider waiving some of the penalty and interest if they made at least six timely payments. Our feeling is that if they don’t get the mine up and running, we will probably never see any of the taxes. If we can help them reopen the mine, it will put people back to work and they should be able to pay the back taxes and keep the new taxes current.

Thomas Jefferson; “When we must wait for Washington to tell us when to sow and when to reap, we shall soon want bread.”