Time to design those '57' plates
by John Q. MurrayLet's face it. Missoula County is never again going to represent its rural areas, rural values, or rural residents. Missoula has gone meterosexual.
Okay, that's not actually a word.
But in the wake of the last three fire board elections--more about those later--I realized that absolutely nothing has changed since October 2005, when former state Sen. Dale Mahlum chaired a public hearing in Frenchtown on behalf of Missoula County's local government commission.
Every 10 years, the Montana constitution says, a local government can ask citizens to tweak its form and structure. In 2005 Sen. Mahlum heard from area residents that they were not represented by Missoula County. The tax dollars they paid in were not being fairly distributed back to the area. There were no parks. The roads weren't maintained or improved or snowplowed. Knapweed was everywhere and out of control.
Harlan Ockler said residents felt like outcasts or foreigners. Heck, one of the county commissioners couldn't even find Frenchtown--she got lost on the way to a meeting.
“We have to separate the city and the county somehow,” suggested Stella Van Loh. “I’m not sure how you do that but I believe it has to be separated."
Stan Lucier said, “As far as I’m concerned, you can build a fence around Missoula. I don’t think they should be let out into the county.”
Other residents told horror stories about arbitrary inspections and inconsistent enforcement of county regulations. They said the initials "OPG"--Office of Planning and Grants--with a small shudder, the way Harry Potter's fellow students at Hogwarts said the name "Voldemort."
Sen. Mahlum's commission heard requests for guaranteed representation from the county's unincorporated areas. The idea was to bump up the number to five or seven and create separate districts, so that at least one commissioner would come from outside the city of Missoula. Perhaps there would be one commissioner representing Potomac, Lolo, and the Ninemile.
No such luck. The local government commission did not recommend commissioner districts. Since that meeting in October, 2005, the gray amoeba that is Missoula has only gotten bigger, and is preparing for its next move west.
Even with a new commissioner elected to replace Barbara Evans this fall, the city will continue to dominate county government.
For rural residents, nothing has changed.
Despite long-standing interest from local residents, Missoula County still has not organized a community council for Petty Creek or Frenchtown. An advisory committee only, it would be toothless. All it would do is offer recommendations to the county commissioners, who would be free to ignore them, as they have done in the past with other community councils.
The county's half-hearted attempt at organizing a Frenchtown council failed because the county didn't bother to talk with the folks in Evaro before they drew up the map. The county designated Evaro as its own planning region, separate from Frenchtown, so you figure they'd take that into account when designing the community council. They did not, and action on a Frenchtown community council has been again postponed.
That is slightly better than being ignored completely, which is how Petty Creek residents get treated. While they are currently part of Missoula County, they are in the Alberton school district, and sometimes their notices fall through the cracks. Just a few years back, Petty Creek voters were turned away from the polls because Missoula failed to update the voting records of Petty Creek residents.
Which brings us to the last three Frenchtown Fire elections.
Sometimes it is difficult to analyze elections, because the relative strength of the political party can help or hurt candidates. But the local fire district elections are non-partisan, and the candidates themselves obliged in 2008 by making their positions utterly black and white.
Two candidates represented the interests of urban Missoula: More fees and taxes, more spending, more government employees, more paperwork, more government regulations.
Two candidates represented the values of rural Montana. Let's not automatically increase these fees and taxes until we take a good long hard look at them. Let's see exactly where all the money is going and use better accounting methods before we decide whether we need more spending. Let's not create patronage jobs where employees are beholden to a local boss. Let's not offer across-the-board raises but look at individual merit raises based on specific goals for each job. And let's stop meddling with regulations that are already handled by other agencies.
In other words, if political scientists had designed a laboratory experiment to see where area residents stood, they couldn't have done any better than the last election. It was a landslide. Rural Montana triumphed. No taxation without representation!
Word from the courthouse this week was that the empire was incensed over its defeat at the hands of the rebel scum, and they were already starting to threaten retaliation.
That's why I advocate striking while the iron is hot. It's not enough to continually muster the troops in defensive actions, warding off the Missoulistas' aggressive maneuvers. It is time for rural residents to declare independence. It's time to secede and form a new county, just as Sanders County and Mineral County did before us.
A Clark Fork County, stretching from the Wye and Highway 93 West to include the Nine Mile drainage and the Petty Creek drainage, would cover about 350,000 acres or about 543 square miles. The current population of roughly 8,000 people would put Montana's 57th county right between Mineral and Sanders counties, demographically as well as geographically.
The southern border would be along the ridge separating Petty Creek from the Graves Creek drainage. We'll leave that forest land above Highway 12 for the folks in Lolo to claim when they create their own county.
County seat? I suspect it would be wherever a generous citizen donates the land for the courthouse and the public safety facility.
Such a move would put Smurfit-Stone into a county that appreciated its presence and advocated for it at every possible opportunity.
Dale Mahlum would make a heck of a county commissioner.
Yes, there is a long, long way to go and a lot of studies to conduct. But the way I figure, if people wanted to live in the city, they would have moved to the city. We moved to rural Montana because we like doing things for ourselves.
So let's roll up our sleeves, figure out the details, and engage in self-government, the good old-fashioned American--and rural Montanan--way.
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See also:
Roads, weeds, poor rural representation top Frenchtown's complaints to county (Oct. 10, 2005)
http://www.clarkforkchronicle.com/article.php?story=2005101609111025