HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – As part of a 56 county tour, Republican U.S. Senator Steve Daines stopped in Havre on Tuesday afternoon to discuss a variety of issues with local officials.
This was not a campaign event, but rather a chance for Daines to hear about issues impacting the local community in Hill County.
Below is a summary of the pressing issues each official expressed to Daines:
Paul Tuss, Executive Director of Bear Paw Development
Tuss mentioned two issues he believes are impacting the Hi-Line.
The first was Amtrak. Tuss said he is concerned that Amtrak cutting service to three days a week on the Empire Builder Line starting on October 1st could hamper the local economy.
Daines said he believes the Amtrak cuts are a step towards possible elimination of the line, and he is working with the rest of Montana’s congressional delegation to try and increase funding and restore daily service.
“We’ve gotta have daily service here on the Hi-Line,” Daines said. “I don’t think they fully understand how critical that is. On the east coast, you’ve got a lot of options. The airport and so forth. It’s a long ways to Great Falls if you want to try to get good air service. And essential air is not going to be sufficient here in eastern Montana and we need to have the railroad as well.”
Tuss also expressed concern about the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision to cut 2020 Census counting efforts off at the end of September, a month earlier than the traditional end date. Tuss said that this could cost local communities from receiving federal funds and may prevent Montana from obtaining a second U.S. House seat.
Daines said he was “puzzled” by the decision from the Department of Commerce.
“We need the additional time. Frankly, it’s puzzling to me, Paul, why that wouldn’t just be something immediately, with COVID-19 going on, that we’d have an extension…What’s wrong with another month or two for the sake of setting policy for 10 years?”
Mike Wendland, Hill County Commissioner
Wendland said one of his main concerns is needing to get the St. Mary Canal and Conveyance Works System back up and running as soon as possible to get Milk River flows back to more adequate levels.
Daines told Wendland he has viewed Drop structures 2 and 5, which are currently being fixed, and says it is looking like the current repairs should be done in time where irrigators don’t lose another season.
Kim Larson, Hill County Health Director
Larson says most of what her Department has been working on is COVID-19 related. She says the County has done a good job keeping the virus in check, but the recent spike this week is cause for concern as schools begin to reopen.
Larson says she has three nurses working pretty much full-time on contact tracing, which has detracted from some of the Department’s regular services such as family planning, which they are doing by appointment only.
Larson added that she has been getting numerous complaints about the mask directive, some of which have not been kind. This is part of the reason they have closed their doors to the public and moved to appointment only.
As flu season nears, Larson says she may need to higher temporary workers to help with those services because of the amount of time and effort they’ve had to put into COVID-19 efforts.
Daines said he is hopeful a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready in the near future and is, “cautiously optimistic,” that millions of doses of a vaccine could be ready in the final quarter of 2020.
Jason Barkus, Assistant Chief of Police for the Havre Police Department
Barkus said recruitment and retainment has been difficult recently, and is worried that if qualified immunity ends for officers, that could be further hampered.
“We don’t need any more disinsentives to attract and also retain men and women who choose to risk their lives for us everyday,” Daines said.
Other issues Barkus says they are facing are rising insurance costs, an increase in domestic violence during the pandemic, and an uptick in methamphetamine and heroin use locally. Barkus says many recent violent crimes have been tied to meth use.
Greg Kegel, Chancellor of Montana State University-Northern
Kegel expressed difficulty in getting people from outside the area to come to MSU-Northern, as about 67 percent of enrollment is Montana residents.
Kegel says that his most critical job right now is preserving both safety and the quality of the college experience.
He says this is difficult right now as they have no COVID-19 testing for students, and that many students are worried about going back to school.
Kegel says if they are able to do surveillance testing of students, it could quell a lot of the anxiety of the student body.
“We need to figure out how to test,” Kegel said. “That rapid testing, the ability to test and get a response back quickly, so then we can do our job of moving people around, quarantining, distancing. All of those types of things we need to do, we can’t do. We’re shooting in the dark.”
“We’ve got some research capabilities on our campus,” Kegel added. “We also have the machine that they use for the test. We don’t have the expertise, but we certainly have that part of the capabilities.”
Julea Robbins, Executive Director of the Havre-Area Chamber of Commerce
Robbins says this has been a very trying time for the Chamber. Some businesses are “doing great,” but many are struggling.
The businesses hurting the most are retail and tourism-reliant stores.
“A lot of them are kind of on that edge of not being able to stay open anymore. On the Hi-Line, it’s always been hard for our business owners…It’s hard. Longer shipping times, you’re competing with everywhere else, and we’re far away from everything. And this pandemic has made it five times worse for businesses. It’s hard to get merchandise in, it’s hard to keep employees, it’s hard to get employees, as everyone has already said, and that’s something we’ve been hearing a lot. They are just scared. Really, really, really, scared.”
Robbins says that hotels have bared much of the brunt of the suffering.
“We’ve seen for Hill County all-around, a 30 percent drop-off of tourism season for the hotels…For certain hotels, that has been more than 50 percent. So there’s some that are struggling a lot that do rely on conferences coming in, on sporting events that may or may not happen. Those are booked out a year in advance most times. So when they are pulling out last minute, that pulls a lot of their money away. If we lose our hotels, we’re out. That’s a big, big, big concern.”
Robbins added that she believes misinformation that has spread has made it difficult for businesses to enforce some directives. Many don’t want to tell people to wear masks because they don’t want to scare customers away, even if they are concerned about safety.
