T IMES
February 28, 2020
BAKER, MONTANA
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See Page 9 American Legion • Baker, MT • Sunday, March 15, 2020
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Baker approves SID #36 by narrow margin Hosted by American Legion Post #35 and American Legion Auxiliary
By Brad Mosher
bmosher@countrymedia.net
A controversial plan to create a Special Improvement District for improving the streets of Baker was approved Wednesday evening at Baker High School by a narrow 3-2 margin. It was the second night in a row the City Council was discussing the creation of Special Improvement District #36. The meeting Tuesday night had drawn an overflow crowd in the council chamber, forcing the meeting to be moved to the school the following night. The council approved the creation of the district, with Mayor JoDee Pratt, Steve Zachmann and Brittany Hoversland voting to pass. Pat Ehret and Tracey Goerndt voted no to the resolution. According to Kevin Dukart, the city’s clerk/ treasurer, passage will allow the proposed project to be put out for bid in several weeks. At the same time, the city may contact Fallon County officials in an effort to bring down the assessments within the newly created Special Assessment District #36. “There have been some instances where the Fallon County commissioners have given to city funds to spend on projects. It is my guess there will be some discussion between the city officials and county officials on whether
they will be able to help with this project to reduce the burden on the property owners,” Dukart explained. “That’s my understanding. That was part of the discussion (Wednesday at the school). That’s a decision left to the county commission.” “The mayor and/or city elected officials will probably approach them officially and go through that with them,” Dukart explained. Previously, the county has been involved in several local projects with city, he added. “The previous ones, to my recollection, were mostly water and sewer projects that the city completed and the county had given funds to help defray some of the costs of those projects. “When we were redoing our sewer lines, the county paid about $2 million, I believe, and that project ran about $3.8 million. That was some years ago, about 2012. I don’t have the exact figures on that. It was a rather substantial amount they had given us,” he said. “Most of the sewer lines in the city of Baker were completed during that project,” he added. In addition, the county also provided approximately $1.75 million we put into our capital projects. We had a fund for that and from that fund, we drilled a new water well. The reason we had to drill that well was be-
cause of the anticipation of the TransCanada pipeline coming. We are going to provide them water, so we felt we needed another well just to provide that volume of water to the pipeline,” Dukart explained. In addition, part of the funding was used to repair the water lines after the tornado hit Baker in June 2016, he added. “The street repairs were paid for by a FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) grant, but the water lines, they (FEMA) wouldn’t pay for that.” Those were the main projects in the last eight years that the county has helped the city, Dukart added. The new Special Improvement District #36 is primarily for maintenance, according to Dukart. “There will be some new construction but not very much in the city. “It will not be a reconstruction by any means. It is mostly where they put down the oil and the chips,” he said. “Some areas of town will be getting a little bit more maintenance than other areas because of the condition of the streets. There will be some hot mix going into some of the really bad areas.” There will be several areas where concrete will be used, he said. “Down by Cenex, where those trucks tore that street up, and down by
the post office where we have ground water underneath. Those two areas, it will probably use concrete when this thing is approved and it is completed.” Where the concrete will be used, the water pipes will be replaced before the concrete is applied, according to Dukart. One of the reasons for the short timeline to get the Special Improvement District approved was to meet the time frame for it to start this summer, Dukart said. “In order to get some competitive bids, we had to get the bids out now or else we are going to lose. People are going to get their jobs lined up. Hopefully, we are going to get some competitive bids on this project, the earlier we get this project out.” “The property owners have gotten an assessment of 28.4 cents per square foot. There is an interest factor in there if we have to borrow funds. We still have to be approved for a loan to go ahead with the project. “The taxpayers are well aware of what the potential costs could be, but that depends on the final project cost,” he said. “If the county is going to financially assist, it will go down.” City crews will be doing some minor patching on some streets to help prepare for them to be sealed and chipped, Dukart added.
Postal service returns to Ismay Staff Report
Postal service returned to Ismay in early February after the townspeople agreed to have a temporary facility constructed inside the town community center. The temporary facility will be completely installed before the end of the week, a United States Postal Service spokesman said Monday. The U.S. Postal Service has installed what is described as turnstile boxes for customer’s mail, along with four parcel boxes, according to James Boxrud, a communications specialist with the Dakotas-District of the federal agency based in Sioux Falls. “We were waiting on the locks for the parcel boxes,” he said Monday, adding
that they would be put in this week. “They got the boxes in for the parcel boxes but they didn’t have the special locks that we use. Those came in and so they are supposed to put them in Tuesday (Feb. 25). So the parcel lockers should be ready by the end of this week.” According to Boxrud, the Ismay post office handles about 15 customers and everyone should already have their keys for their post office boxes. The community will be using the temporary postal location until a new building is constructed in Ismay, Boxrud explained. “We’ll be flexible if there is some kind of delay in building and we’ll revisit it. The new building will have new
boxes. We won’t use those turnstiles. There will be new boxes built into the wall, but they will not be the same boxes (in the community center),” he said. The community center location will remain open until the new building is finished and the post office there is fully operational, he added. In addition, the Ismay postmistress has a brief morning schedule in the community on weekdays, from 9:30 a.m. until 11 a.m. The door to the center and post office is locked at 3 p.m. on weekdays. On Saturdays, the postmistress will be in Ismay just to drop the mail off and is gone. For people expecting bigger packages, they would need to be at the post office location when the postmistress is there to be able to pick them up.
Local schools have threat assessments to protect students By Brad Mosher bmosher@countrymedia.net
Daines visits with Montana Teacher of the Year Senator Daines met with Montana’s 2020 Teacher of the Year, Linda Rost. Linda lives in Baker, MT and teaches several different science classes at Baker High School. She earned a master’s degree in science education from Montana State University in 2018 and is currently working towards her Ph.D through Texas Tech. Daines, who earned his degree in chemical engineering from Montana State University, and Linda discussed the importance of STEM education in the classroom and some unique projects Linda’s students are working on! Linda is also one of four nation-wide finalists in the running for the National Teacher of the Year award!
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Threats made against students or schools can happen, even among the small rural schools in Montana and North Dakota. In October 2018, the small town of Libby experienced a threat which brought in police, and even the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation. A student had found a note threatening that there was to be a shooting on the campus. Another note was found the next day. Law enforcement investigators determined that the students were not in danger on both occasions. Killdeer is a small town north of Dickinson in western North Dakota, but it recently was hit when a phone call claimed that some one had brought a gun onto the campus at the beginning of the school day. That prompted a quick response from the administration and local law enforcement. Although that incident was also determined to be a false alarm, it happened on the same day there was a school shooting at Saugus High School in California. There is a plan for analyzing threats on local school campuses, evaluating their seriousness and what the response needs to be by the administration, according to local superintendents. “We have something called the Emergency Safety Procedure Manual,” Plevna school superintendent Nick Schumacher said. “We rely on teacher’s judgement to determine the legitimacy and severity of comments,” he said. “We also have several electronic protocols in place through social media and what is coming very soon through our web filtering system that would identify threats electronically.” Comments by students that are of a threatening nature need to be evaluated as to their legitimacy and severity of the comment, the superintendent explained. When it comes to threats involving firearms, it is taken at the utmost severity. “We will investigate as law enforcement is on their way. If the threat comes to us prior to the school day, we would let law enforcement know immediately and before the kid could get to school,” he said. “We have what is called a directed response, depending on how appropriate it is to involve others. It may include the classroom teacher. It may include others like myself, the guidance counselor, depending
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on the directed response to the threat or the comment made (by the student),” the superintendent explained. “Everyone has a copy of the Emergency Safety Procedure Manual. That is part of our directed response should anything need to happen. Our first step is to communicate what needs to happen,” he said. The district has a variety of responses available to what the situation may be, ranging from locking down the school to evacuation. “We have many different lines of communication to reach out to our families here,” the superintendent said. The school reviews its procedure annually in Montana. “The state tells us the frequency of the review and its parameters, the number of drills,” Schumacher said. Being a rural school has some challenges, he said. “Transportation times and response times are limiting given our rural area here,” he added. Still, the recent arrest of a man on the Baker School grounds shows it can happen in Fallon County, the superintendent said. Baker makes changes The arrest of a man in the recreation center locker room area recently on campus prompted a review of security procedures at Baker, according to Superintendent Aaron Skogen. “Our safety procedures and protocols as well as the controls that we have inside the building are being evaluated,” he said Monday. “We update those on a need basis. That is one thing we are doing now - analyzing our current practices for our fire drills and lock down drills. We schedule those throughout the year with our staff so we make sure that we are prepared.” The incident prompted making some changes immediately. “The regular review of our procedures is based on a continuous review to see what changes and updates need to be made. That review of our procedures wasn’t based upon the incident, but on regular protocols,” the superintendent said. So far, the changes to increase security on the campus have worked, he added. “We work very closely with law enforcement or any emergencies that we have,” Skogen explained. The first part in the response is determining the seriousness of the threat, he said. “We rely on multiple staff, depending upon the situation, as to which faculty member should be involved, like the school counselor or if it is an issue that can be handled with immediate action or response.”
For up-to-the-minute news visit falloncountyextra.com We want to hear from you: See how to contact us on Page 2 Vol. 104 No. 09
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