Last week, a couple of rather pointed letters to the editor appeared in local newspapers in response to Commissioner Gary Hall's missive that appeared in the April 24 edition of the Hungry Horse News. The full text of Hall's letter is available here. Hall is in favor of paving the North Fork Road as far as the Camas Creek entrance to Glacier Park. He also announced a couple of meetings related to this issue. The first is on May 21st. It was originally scheduled to be held in the conference room at Freedom Bank, but has since been moved to the North Valley Hospital Community Center, which is a couple of blocks north of Smith's in Columbia Falls. The second meeting is the "reveal" of the short-term North Fork Road dust study conducted last summer and paid for by the NFRCHS. It will be held in the County Commissioner's meeting room on June 9th.
Both letters take a jaundiced view of spending big money on a section of the North Fork Road when the need is so much greater elsewhere. The full text of the letters follows...
This letter from Don Sullivan, titled "Hall needs to explain view on paving of North Fork Road," appeared in the Daily Inter Lake on May 13, 2008.
Just when you thought you'd heard it all comes County Commissioner Gary Hall's comments on road dust and paving that appeared in a recent issue of the Hungry Horse News. No doubt valley residents who live on unpaved roads would have been upset—if not outraged—had they read them.
After the furor over the problems of road dust on unpaved roads in the valley and the county's announced plan to treat all unpaved county roads equally, Hall writes—ostensibly in response to a letter from Columbia Falls banker Joe Francini—"I am completely in favor of paving the North Fork (Road) as far as Camas Creek." Now where, some might ask, does the North Fork Road go? To Polebridge, year-round population of 10, or maybe 12.
Mr. Hall, who is running for re-election as commissioner, goes on to say, "Currently, I am working closely with the North Fork Road Coalition for Health and Safety to bring all government parties to the table." He says he is planning a meeting for May 21 at the Columbia Falls bank owned by Mr. Francini and hopes to "come away from that meeting with a solid plan for dust mitigation or paving of the North Fork Road."
Hall says a report on road dust studies conducted last summer will be given and his comments infer that he is concerned about the health, safety and welfare of county citizens.
The thousands of valley taxpayers who live on unpaved roads, eat dust day in and day out to get to work and take the kids to school, may wonder why Hall is more concerned about the health and safety of the hundred or so folks who live up the North Fork than he is about them and their kids. They may question why they should pay for paving a road that out-of-staters use a few times each summer to get to their million dollar vacation homes. They may wonder why this meeting Hall is having is in a bank in Columbia Falls and not a public venue in Kalispell or Whitefish—and why they weren't invited.
They may wonder if that county road dust plan the commissioners announced in January is all bunk, considering that the cost of paving one mile of the North Fork Road costs the same as treating 50 miles of unpaved roads with dust palliative. They may also wonder why Commissioner Hall is conducting the meeting instead of the county's Road Advisory Committee. All good questions, and Mr. Hall needs to answer them.
Like Hall's tactics or not, you've got to give him credit for chutzpah (I once lived in New York.) In this election year, he's not afraid of giving the appearance that he's practicing cronyism or favoritism. A former Columbia Falls mayor, Mr. Hall writes, "I believe that Columbia Falls can benefit as the Gateway to Glacier." No doubt banker Joe Francini and other Columbia Falls business owners would be real happy to have valley taxpayers create a smooth ribbon of asphalt up the North Fork to speed development and line their pockets.
I, on the other hand, believe that the announced county dust abatement plan should go forward, that any talk of paving roads should be out in the open for full public disclosure, input and oversight, and that decisions on spending taxpayer dollars for paving county roads should be based on priorities reflecting the number of taxpayers using those roads, the amount of traffic they carry and the county revenue contributed by taxpayers living on them. That's only fair. And if done fairly, the North Fork Road would surely be one of the last roads paved, not the first.
Finally, I hope all readers will take note of Mr. Hall's words in the Hungry Horse News when they step into the voting booth this June.
The following letter from Bill Breen ran in last week's Flathead Beacon and Hungry Horse News.
Flathead County Commissioner Gary Hall recently wrote to the Hungry Horse News in which he promotes paving the North Fork road as far as Camas Creek.
Who does Mr. Hall think he is serving? Certainly not the taxpayers of Flathead County.
Commissioner Hall would be hard pressed to gain sympathy for this proposal from the many citizens (including myself) who live on heavily traveled unpaved roads in other parts of the county. Those who live on Jensen Road, McMannamy Draw, Lost Creek Drive, Mountain Meadow and many others find it outrageous that taxpayers would pay for paving a road to the wilderness of the North Fork while heavily traveled roads go unpaved. Roads with hundreds of more people living nearby and driving daily.
These roads generate clouds of polluted particulates into our atmosphere and are extremely harmful to human respiratory systems, particularly children, the elderly, and those who do strenuous outdoor work.
The road dust problem in Flathead County unfortunately might be with us for some time. Both federal and local dollars for paving are scarce. But there are some steps to mitigate this serious problem.
* Follow up on a proposal from the county Road Advisory Committee to use a different type of gravel that holds dust to the surface of the road.
* Require developers rather than taxpayers to pay for sub-division access roads in addition to interior roads.
* Stop approving sub-divisions before adequate road infrastructure is in place.
* Fix the much abused Family Transfer loopholes that allow developers to bypass county review.
* Enforce speed limits.
Solutions like this is what Commissioner Hall should advocate -- not wasting tax dollars on expensive boondoggles that serve very few people.