A standing-room only crowd listened last week as the Flathead County Commission voted to cement the Agency on Aging as a government program and approve funding for a new building. The commissioners took a long and complicated path getting to this point. Too long. And too complicated.
Regardless of your view on the future AOA, the recent forum was further evidence that the commission struggles communicating with the public and each other and insists on doing things the hard way even when it doesn’t need to.
When Commissioner Pam Holmquist arrived at last week’s meeting, she questioned why it was necessary at all and said she hadn’t yet received information on the resolutions that would be proposed at the hearing. To which fellow Commissioner Cal Scott said, “We certainly should be, as commissioners, able to think on our feet.”
Our third county commissioner, Gary Krueger, then made the motion that Flathead County would maintain AOA and halt further discussion of other options, such as privatization. It passed unanimously. Another motion to move forward with a new building also passed unanimously. Those decisions are sound; it’s how the commission reached them that makes less sense. After all, Holmquist said commission had already agreed to move forward on the building project.
In recent months, divisions have appeared to emerge among our three Republican commissioners and it’s unclear what’s driving them. The AOA is just the latest example.
Last year, the commissioners surprised Flathead seniors when it decided in a 2-1 vote with Scott dissenting that it would not pursue a Community Development Block Grant worth $450,000 to help fund a new AOA building. Just a few months prior to that vote, the commission had given the green light to the application process. But it changed its mind with little explanation. Now, changing directions again, it has voted to build a new AOA building anyway.
In another strange vote earlier this year, the commission stalled potential slope mitigation on project on Whitefish Stage Road after it terminated a grant process. Residents who live on the road were surprised and upset. Here’s why:
Following a landslide in 2010, where some homeowners lost more than half of their backyards, residents began a four-year effort to secure a $400,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In January of this year the commission authorized a search for engineering qualifications for the project, with which the county’s Office of Emergency Services had been involved since the beginning. Despite that, in March, citing liability concerns, the commissioners halted the process.
More recently, it appeared the Flathead County Commission was united behind a budget when it unanimously passed a preliminary version. But in August, during final approval, Holmquist dissented, saying she was uncomfortable with the county’s future capital improvement projects. She has maintained that vote had nothing to do with AOA.
Commissioners can and should change their respective minds on issues after giving them more study, but it’s more specific explanations that are lacking. And isn’t it strange for a commission to host a meeting where one of the commissioners doesn’t have all the information as to what they may be voting on?
I wish I had some insider information on the relationships among are current commissioners, one of whom (Scott) will be replaced by the winner of the upcoming election between Republican Phil Mitchell and Democrat Stacey Schnebel. I don’t. I do know it was more than a decade ago that AOA moved into what was supposed to be its temporary location on Kelly Road. And deciding its eventual fate took several years too long.