Bitterroot Star - August 25, 2021

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Climate group donates Hepa filters to seniors Low-income seniors at the Burnt Fork Manor in Stevensville recently benefited from the gift of ten HEPA filters from the Bitterroot Climate Action Group (BCAG). BCAG, whose mission includes mitigating some of the effects of climate change while supporting local people, recently conducted a fundraiser and was able to budget $1,500 for the effort. BCAG teamed with the District IX Human Resource Council and director Jim Morton to provide the filters to people who have respiratory health challenges. BCAG treasurer, John Schneeberger, said that BCAG sees this as a start of a campaign to provide relief from the wildfire smoke, a problem that is forecast to increase due to rapid climate change. In June, University of Montana John Schneeberger, BCAG (right) handing off one of 10 new HEPA filters to Jim Morton, Executive Director of the local Human Resource Council. Fire Ecologist Philip Higuera stated in a report to the National Academy of Sciences that “Rocky Mountain subalpine forests are now burning more than at any point in the past 2,000 years.” “This is not about the distant future,” Schneeberger said. “The Forest Service has confirmed that the Montana fire season is now 78 days longer that it was in the 1970s. I was on a fire crew in Wallace, Idaho in 1978 and was surprised that they would lay off the entire seasonal crew on September 1st. That was considered the end of the major fire season back then. Bitterrooters know all too well that September is an active month for fire now.” BCAG plans to follow this donation with other actions to benefit the community by planning for, and improving, the local response to climate change.

Citizen Crews challenges council to limit Stevi mayor’s authority by Victoria Howell The Stevensville Town Council spent a portion of its August 12th meeting listening to former mayor Jim Crews tell them that they were operating under an illegal emergency declaration. The result was that the council will hold a Committee of the Whole meeting to discuss the issue and decide how to proceed. Since losing to Brandon Dewey in a mayoral election in 2017, Crews appears to have spent a considerable amount of time researching and filing complaints alleging that the current mayor is not following the laws regarding his legal authority as mayor. According to Mayor Dewey, Crews

filed nearly 30 complaints in six months, so many that it prompted the Town to develop a special online portal for citizen complaints so that Town staff could more easily manage them. In this case, Crews maintains that the mayor and council have been operating under an emergency declaration that should have been terminated some time ago. Dewey had declared a disaster emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 31, 2020. The declaration was retroactive from March 12, 2020, the date that then-Governor Steve Bullock declared a State of Emergency. Although current Governor Greg Gianforte

lifted the State of Emergency on June 30, 2021, the declaration by Mayor Dewey has never been rescinded. The declaration states, among other things, that the mayor is authorized to “enter into agreements and contracts and make purchases and expenditures without adhering to state and local procurement requirements, including those in Titles 7 and 18, MCA and to the town’s purchasing policy. This authorization is limited only to agreements, contracts, purchases, and expenditures reasonably necessary to implement the Declaration and to no other agreements, contracts, purchases, or expenditures.” See STEVI, page 2

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

Covid cases on the rise in Ravalli County The Ravalli County Public Health Department is seeing the expected secondary spike with daily increase in reported positive cases, according to a press release sent out on Friday afternoon. Twenty-five cases were reported Thursday to Ravalli County Public Health with an additional 35 cases as of 4 p.m. on Friday. For daily active case counts residents can go to the Montana DPHHS website at https://montana.maps.arcgis.com/apps/ MapSeries/index.html?appid=7c34f341253643949 1adcc2103421d4b. According to the release, the Public Health Department continues to trace confirmed positive cases in an effort to identify contacts. With the increase of cases, delays will occur in contact calls. Public Health advises to stay home if you are sick or know you have been exposed to someone who is sick. Handwashing, physical distancing and masking is still the best practice to keep individuals healthy, according to the department. “Vaccine is our best chance for reaching community immunity and decreasing individual severity of illness. Vaccination is highly recommended and widely available,” stated the release. For vaccine locations visit vaccinefinder.org. “Ravalli County Public Health thanks our community health care workers for their continued hard work supporting, caring for, and treating our residents,” the release concluded.

Hamilton School District grapples with mask policy by Nathan Boddy The Hamilton School Board met on Tuesday, August 17th for what they certainly knew would be a long evening. Topic number one for the trustees was the re-opening plan for the school district, specifically, whether or not masks would be required. Superintendent Tom Korst provided the trustees with a proposed action plan, bulleted into nearly a dozen categories of security measures for controlling the spread of the COVID-19 virus within schools. The first, and nearly only measure discussed by the public at Tuesday’s hearing, was “universal and correct wearing of masks.” See SCHOOL, page 5

Sign on the door of Hamilton High School. Photo by Nathan Boddy.

Enjoy the Ravalli County Fair & Rockin’ RC Rodeo! SEPT. st th 1 -4 Hamilton, MT • 406-363-3411

• Ned Ledoux - Tues., August 31st • The Ninja Experience! upply of • Walk through over 10,000 exhibits! Limited s arnival uy C • The World’s Funniest Photo Booth Pre-B asses! P • Impersonator Mike Walker arly! Get them e


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