Editorial: Great intent, but no notification

I would like to take time to commend Whitehall Town Officials for hosting the recent public meeting about the uranium levels in the water. I feel this was an important step to let the community know about what the problem is, and the steps being taken to remedy the problem.

This is should be an important issue for each and every resident of the Town of Whitehall, and the public forum was an outstanding way to share information about some of the work being done with the DEQ and NCI Engineering.

I do however question the timing and advertising for the meeting that took place Monday, February 27, 2017.

At no point in time was the Whitehall Ledger contacted by fax, email, or phone call about the meeting.

I found out about the meeting because I happened to randomly see a post online that mentioned it.

The person who made the online post stated they had not seen anything about the meeting in the Whitehall Ledger. A person later commented they had read about the meeting in the Montana Standard.

It came as a total shock that this meeting was taking place, and that it was advertised in the Butte paper, not the Ledger.

When contacted, the Town told the Ledger the date of meeting was decided after our deadline and they had to announce it in the Standard.

The issue of uranium in the water is not new, and the Ledger has had several articles written by Melissa Jenkins that mention the steps the Town has been taking. I have to wonder why the meeting had to take place on Monday. If it was conducted at an earlier or later date, the Ledger would have not only run a front page story about the meeting taking place, but also given the Town a free advertisement in the paper. I like many others in the area watched a piece on the television news about the Town of Whitehall and their water issue. I’m not quite sure it gave all the information about what the Town has being doing to try and fix the problem, and probably scared some people. Was the rushed meeting a reaction to the news story, I’m not sure, but I think it could have taken place at a time that gave residents a little more heads up. Had it been on the front page of the paper, I’m sure the crowd would have been much bigger.

Not only do I believe more WHITEHALL people would see it in the Ledger than the Standard, it’s just bad business in a small town to do business with another paper when there is one a two-minute walk from Town Hall. I would have been more than willing to work with the Town on extending our deadline, putting something on our website, or anything else I could have done to advertise this meeting, but I was never given the chance. It was also conducted the same night as an already planned Love INC event, and that was not fair to the event organizers.

The biggest concern about this issue is that the Town of Whitehall decided they would have a community meeting and didn’t bother to tell us. This isn’t the first time this has happened. The day prior to Thanksgiving, the Whitehall Council decided to have a special executive session. The Whitehall Ledger was also not notified of this meeting. Had Jefferson County Commissioner Leonard Wortman not sent an email to me personally about the meeting, I would have never known.

I’m sure many residents know that Town and School Board meetings are streamed live by TeleSystem Services. This is a great thing they do, but nobody was able to watch the meeting Monday because they were not notified either.

Every month, I receive agendas and notifications of any special meeting from various boards and task forces. The Jefferson County Commissioners, Whitehall School Board, and numerous others. They will also send a notification of any special meeting. This does not happen with the Town of Whitehall.

I’ve seen the Town of Whitehall hang agendas at the bank or post office, but this isn’t the main way to let people know about a meeting, it’s what you do if you want to find your missing pet or sell some firewood. In a Town the size of Whitehall, the local paper should be one of the first notifications about any sort of town forum or meeting. I can’t imagine the grief that would come if we missed something like this, but you can’t cover what you don’t know about. I’ve had phone calls and emails asking why we didn’t have any info about the meeting. Nobody told us.

I hope in the future we are given more consideration about being notified about meetings. I know the knee jerk reaction at Town Hall will be to be mad at this editorial. Honestly there is no reason to be. We just want to know a meeting is going to happen.

JHS