Hi.

I'd like to call the meeting of November 10th Study Commission to order, please, if we could have roll call.

Yeah.

I can do it if you want.

Okay.

Ms.

Casey.

Ms.

Purdue Dolan.

Mr.

Thielen.

Here.

Mr.

Steppen.

Here.

I am here, obviously.

Mr.

Dunih.

Mr.

Silk.

Um Ms.

Shaw is excused for illness.

Ms.

McCormick.

Okay, thank you.

Can we have our Pledge of Allegiance and Prayer?

Well, might not be for you to look at this tonight and we may decision back there and so there's indeed some Mr.

Even okay.

Welcome everybody.

It's nice to see a lot of people in the in the room with us tonight as we continue down our road of deliberation.

So we're glad to have you.

So as we take public comment tonight, the commission will be listening to your comment.

We won't be engaging back and forth and and asking you questions.

So you'll give your comment and then the next person will come up and give the comment.

There won't be a time for questions from the commission.

Um if we have questions, we'll follow up later.

Um but at this point I would invite anybody with public con comment on any item on the agenda to come forward for that comment, please.

Um J.R.

Richardson, thirteen oh three Caledonia Street.

Uh I just wanted to follow up from some of my comments from the public hearing.

I didn't quite get to wrap everything up.

So uh for those of you that weren't here for the public hearing, I was the last fire coordinator in Butte Silverbowl.

Um and I kind of went through the history of how that came about at the public hearing, but what I wanted to do was I guess encourage the commission on on two things that I didn't get to bring up.

Uh one thing would be, if possible, to review the minutes from the nineteen ninety-five-96 study commission that dealt with this issue.

Um I think those are probably available in the clerk and recorder's office would be my presumption.

Um I I just think that would be very educational as you deliberate this process.

Um my recollection of those was that everyone kind of thought at that time that this put the issue to bed.

Uh it it did away with the fire coordinator position, which I was in at the time, uh assigned all duties to the oversight of the fire department to the paid chief and changed the title to uh director of fire operations, I believe.

And uh kind of I I was under the assumption, I think most that worked here at that time that this kind of was the was the issue.

That's what went on the ballot and it was approved, I think rather substantially to change that language.

So I think those minutes might help you to determine how those how that decision came about to put that language on the ballot.

I'm not sure.

I don't know how extensive the minutes were at that time.

I don't even know who was on the study commission at that time.

But uh that might be helpful for you, I think.

The second thing that I wanted to mention is, and I think uh this is my accounting and budgeting background coming out in me, but just to make you aware of the fire department, the fire fund being a separate taxing jurisdiction from the rest of the funds that are are in Silverball County.

It's a smaller taxing jurisdiction, not significantly smaller, but it is smaller.

And where that plays into the financial picture of things is as the state legislature put a tax cap on taxing jurisdictions years ago, and I believe that is still in effect.

I can't say for sure, but I believe it is still in effect.

So as the fire department approaches or hits that cap, that creates financial problems.

So I I just I I want you know, another uh thing that I should mention is the other funds within Butte Silver Bowl are countywide, except for maybe the road department.

I'm not sure if that's changed or not.

But they have flexibility because they're countywide to shift taxes among the funds when they're levying the taxes each year.

And an example I give you is like the civic center.

If the civic center had a really good year and didn't need as much tax money the subsequent year, those taxes could be diverted to another the parks department or another entity that could use the tax money.

But the fire fund can't do that.

The fire fund exists as itself.

So you have no flexibility within that fund.

So as it approaches its taxation cap, and this is what I'm just trying to make you cognizant of, is it's the language that you put on the ballot has some impact to taxes.

That could affect everybody in this room, whether you're a professional firefighter, a volunteer firefighter, whatever, because if they bump up if expenditures are increased because of what's put on the ballot, or if the tax mix is changed because of what's put on the ballot, that could result in expenditure reductions if those changes are adopted by the voters.

So it's just something to be cognizant of.

I I in talking to the to the chair before the the meeting, it sounds like the fire department might be at their cap or or is very close to it.

So I think you want to be cognizant of that and maybe just talk to the budget office, see where they're at, um, and if they're at the cap or if they're close to the cap, what that might mean in terms of what you folks decide to put on the ballot.

And I I I apologize.

I I thought this would be where I could answer some questions too if you had any, but um, if you need me to come back again, let me know.

I'll come back.

I appreciate what you guys are doing, and I know we all have this community's best interest at heart.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Richardson.

Um Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just want to um ask, do we have agendas?

Someone has asked for agenda for the room.

Do we have any copies of the agenda?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um we don't have those, Shanna or we can get some can thank you, James.

I appreciate you very much.

We'll get some printed, thank you.

Okay, public comment on any item on the agenda.

Um I just have a question that uh I was informed that there were an opportunity on the agenda to speak and answer questions because of the topic that's being discussed.

Is that true or no?

So during public comment, um, so usually we are when we're doing a question and answer, it's when we're having a presentation from all of you in regards to things that are on the agenda.

Um correct.

Let me I guess I can put this to the to the commission in terms of how we would like to proceed.

Our um process is to take public comment with no questions.

Um if there are follow-up questions, let me let me let me confer with the commission for a minute, a minute if we could.

Okay.

Um commissioners, in light of the issue.

How do how would you like to proceed?

I don't necessarily want to have a long back and forth dialogue that we end up not getting to the business that's under agenda.

Um but I am willing to be open if you are given public comment needs.

Nobody wants to say.

Oh, you know I will raise my hand.

Thank you, Raylan.

Um, I think that possibly um, and I totally agree.

I mean, I think we've had these discussions with the fire uh before, but I would love if we could have this under new business and have maybe one representative from paid, one representative from volunteer to just give an overview and maybe a couple questions back and forth if needed for num uh number nine new business.

Thanks.

Other thoughts, Madam Chair, to the extent that we would allow under new business.

I think that would be if any of the commission members here would like to call someone up.

I don't think we should just limit it to one representative from if somebody wanted to hear more from Mr.

Richardson, but he may have left.

I'm not sure.

Um they should have that ability to do that and call them back up.

I do not believe there should be any back and forth during the public comment.

We've I believe we've had this uh couple times during our agendas, but I think under fire department discussion that if a commissioner wants to call somebody up to ask a question, then maybe that would be the appropriate uh mechanism.

Thank you, Ms.

Casey.

Madam Chair, Mr.

Diddy?

Madam Chair, I agree.

That's kind of the protocol that has been.

Um and there is a specific agenda item number nine, fire department discussion.

So after our discussion, if people are here to come and talk about anything on the agenda, which is now that they can do that, and then if we uh have the idea or want to ask a follow-up question with some specifics, we can do that in new business uh fire fire department discussion.

Remember, we also are going to have a final uh public hearing where it does uh have that opportunity too.

But if anyone from the commission has a question regarding both the career uh department and our volunteers department, we can do that in number nine.

Okay.

Is there any objection to moving that way?

Mr.

Soak.

I don't have any objection, Madam Chair.

Um this is a complicated issue, and I imagine that there's probably going to be more parties that want to come speak, not just tonight, but going forward too.

So I think because of the complexity of the issue that that's great to have dialogue back and forth and to continue to have another workshop type meeting where we continue the conversation instead of limiting it just to one meeting tonight.

So that might allow JR to come back, even though he's probably walking down the stairs right now, or anyone else that comes.

So I would suggest that's that's all sounds good tonight, and then moving forward we also have it again at some point.

Okay.

Um so proceeding, I think that's the right way to go out.

Um intended to have some discussion during the fire department discussion so we can take more questions and discussion from folks as called upon, if that is the will of this commission.

Sounds like we're in agreement with that.

Um go ahead.

Sorry, madam chair.

If you're do you have a uh presentation or a discussion that you would like to talk about on this issue.

Do you have a presentation?

Okay, yeah, yeah.

I'm a little confused now.

We'll do um Ms.

Sergeant, we'll do that during new business in the fire department discussion.

I'll call upon you to come up and present your your piece of information if that works.

Okay.

Okay.

Um because I do believe I remember two weeks ago you had asked about presenting some time as well.

Okay.

All right, excellent.

So any other public comment on an item on the agenda.

I'm gonna be addressing that issue about who can speak when the next set of comments.

All right, Banner of 2601 Grand Avenue.

Public comment on any item on the agenda.

Item number nine, new business.

Fire department discussion.

Here we are again making public comment on items on the agenda before deliberation.

And we the public know the position of the commissioners.

When the Montana Supreme Court has specifically ruled in 2023 and 2024 that the public has the right to participate in the discussions of the decision making process of public bodies on agenda items before the final decision is made, which as I said I will comment on later during public comment on items not on the agenda.

This fire department issue has far reaching ramifications, far beyond just fire supremacy.

This is not an issue of command and control of fire supremacy.

It's not an issue of firefighters' technical ability.

This is an issue of uptown Butte versus the flats, city versus the county, top-down mandatory government versus bottom-up representative democracy.

It's an issue of efficiency and control of fire suppression funds.

The issue of command and control during fire suppression is clearly stated in the Butte Silver Bow Charter that command and control at the fire scene shall be the highest ranking person from the district in which the fire is located present, shall have command and control.

If the major issue is the gap in technical ability of the regular firefighters and the volunteer firefighters, then that is the responsibility of the Butte Silverbow City County government for not providing adequate funding to the volunteer fire departments for training of the volunteer firefighters.

Many of which used the volunteer fire department halls as their neighborhood community centers.

As Tocqueville told us way back in 1835, harmonious neighborhood communities and their institutions and organizations are the fundamental building blocks of American democracy.

They are the fabric that holds us together.

Preserving their gathering places is fundamental to neighborhood community revitalization and sustainability.

Or are the volunteer fire departments to be eliminated and the volunteer fire stations and halls demolished as seems to be the preference of the current regular fire commander and the Butte Silverbow City County government hidden agenda, as demonstrated by the continued degradation of the Butte Volunteer Fire Department's equipment and facilities by the Butte Silverbow government, with this continued withholding of needed funds from the volunteer fire departments, contrary to the Montana Supreme Court willing of 1979, that the state provides exemptions that have allowed volunteer departments in their areas to maintain their autonomy over matters like funding and administration.

Therefore, it would seem that the decision that needs to be made, which may not really be within the jurisdiction of this commission.

41 Attorney General Opinion 80 of 1986.

Should the Butte Silverbow City County government run a more appointed plebiscite type survey by volunteer fire department district asking the public and each volunteer fire district point blank.

Do the residents of this volunteer fire department district want to keep your volunteer fire department stationed and hall properly funded with independent budget authority and funds raised through your volunteer fire department did six own mill levy, or do the residents of this volunteer fire department district, now within the city limits of the city of Butte, as per the 2010 map, which I've given you, want to be incorporated into the Butte City Municipal Fire District, funded by a municipal fire district mill levy, and this volunteer fire district and department terminated in the volunteer fire department station and hall demolished.

Or do the residents of this volunteer fire district want a balanced and blending of the city of Butte Municipal Fire Department and the districts and district funded by the municipal fire department, district mill levy, and a greater silver bow fire department with individual volunteer fire departments, mill levies, as per the 1975 map I gave you, and a mutually agreed upon modus operandon, agreed uh uh agreement between the city and county departments.

We can have this, which we've got now.

We can have this, which the city wants, or we can have this, a blending and balancing.

It's up to you.

Thank you.

Other public comment on items on the agenda.

Hello, I'm Austin Perry.

I live at 823 Plaster Street here in Butte.

Um for the last three years, I've worked here at the Butte Silverville Fire Department.

I've spent the last 10 years as a public servant involved in many different aspects of the fire service, EMS, technical rescue services.

Um I've been involved with career volunteer, part-time hourly, uh, private industrial contractors.

Um I started my career ten years ago in a single volunteer fire station.

That department only employed one fire chief on an office hours only basis.

The department transitioned to a more combination-oriented format that brought new part-time positions.

This allowed better coverage of our district during peak call volume times while still maintain uh a volunteer-centric staffing model.

This model offered a beneficial opportunity to the volunteer members who were seeking a pathway towards more full-time employment.

Um lost my train of thought here in my notes.

Um, and members who were interested in staying at a volunteer-only level had no pressure to apply for a part-time position, which would require more commitment to duty hours.

Um, I left that department after three and a half years to move closer to Chicagoland, where I focused on EMS for a year before being hired at a fire department who operated completely on a part-time model, no volunteers or full-time members.

I spent two and a half years here as a part-time member and one year as a full-time career member after a consolidation of the two.

Um, during talks of how to fix the issue, um said staffing uh issue was exacerbated by uh fears of a consolidation.

Um long time members did not see a way forward with consolidation and chose to resign before seeing things through.

Um the chief of this department retired at about the same time as the assistant chief.

Uh the trustees seeing an opportunity reached out to a neighborhood, a neighboring department who used a combination model department.

Um they had career and part-time members and the uh to consolidate the two with the one to make a three department, uh three station department.

Um this department would fall under the administration of the slightly larger two station department.

This consolidation came with many service improvements, including increased staffing, standardized and maintained equipment and training programs that led to much improved service response and morale amongst the memberships on both sides now officially one.

Um I see many of the same issues facing the Butte Silverbow Fire Department in regards to volunteer and career relations, our staffing overall, and our derelict fleet of apparatus.

Um of the main issues at the time amongst the membership was station pride conflicts, where the membership of the single station that was being absorbed into a large organization felt that they would no longer be represented, that the history of what their department had achieved would be lost.

Uh, however, in reality, the opportunity to bolster our service is an opportunity to further our story.

Station mascots, individual identity doesn't need to change, but we have to be on the same team with the same playbook.

Things certainly change when consolidations happen.

Uh part of that includes having a defined source of leadership that has the authority to make those changes, uh, which is something currently hamstringing effective change within our community.

Um holding pride in the service we offer should be a byproduct of being in a system that serves its intended purpose to the community.

Um I'm happy to be here in front of you and bring some thoughts on I have on the topic to our of our county fire department and how consolidations and combination fire department models can be a method of improvement within a system uh that changes and has fluctuating needs.

Um it's my hope that through these experiences and my experience here in Silverbow County that I can be of assistance improving our system and work towards providing consistent service to our community while keeping firefighters as safe as can be expected by giving them the tools for success.

Um I have some just contact sheets if you want to get a hold of me for any further questions.

Um I pass those to you.

Otherwise, thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

Public comment on items on the agenda.

Hello, my name is Mike Bern.

Uh, my address is 393 Blacktail Canyon Road.

Um I'm currently looking at the cost of each individual fire apparatus in the county.

I'm looking specifically at the financials of fueling, ensuring, maintaining, and storing each apparatus, and if it's cost effective uh for the county to have a 30-plus uh fire apparatus fleet, uh a fleet that is currently that currently outnumbers the city of Billings.

Um hoping to find and provide sound data to this commission to help determine possible courses of action to mitigate future issues with funding and funding and fixing an aging fire apparatus fleet.

Uh I sort of get a sense that there's a career uh volunteer uh issue going on.

This has nothing to do with that.

It's overall apparatuses.

We have 30 to 40 fire apparatuses in this county, uh, which is more than billings that uh oversees a city of 120,000 plus people.

Um and the issue of us maintaining this, especially at the career department.

Every day I come to work.

We have a frontline engine coming off, and uh, we end up using a back line engine, what's usually 30 years old, the engine five is 30 years old, and or we pull engine three that is a basically a wild land engine to f uh cover it.

Um I know volunteers have some significant issues with their apparatuses as well.

Um trying to figure out where we can possibly trim the flat uh fat, excuse me, uh, to maybe resolve these issues and get some functional equipment for the career and career and volunteer departments.

Uh I have a couple sheets here.

Please uh find me, ask me any questions.

I will try to find out this information and provide you some sound data.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon.

My name is John Sorich, heavy residered 1820 Wilson.

Um I'm just here to talk a little bit about the uh the fire department issues.

I'm not here to say that one's bad and one's good.

I'm not gonna say that there should be any eliminations.

I know I was a volunteer fireman for 15 years.

I was a commissioner for 20 years.

You know, so I was I have been as on the fire advisory committee.

I have probably been as much experienced as many others.

There's a lot of these men behind me that have committed these their lives to this, you know, 30 plus years.

The volunteers are definitely needed.

They're they are they're needed, but again, I think there's an opportunity that the volunteers, this charter was 1977.

There needs to be changes.

I think there's an opportunity to do what's best for the buttes of remote taxpayers.

Thank you, Mr.

Sorridge.

Other comments on agenda items on the agenda.

Hello.

I'm Jerry Ellison.

I reside at 849 Coyote Lane.

I'm approaching the end of my eighth year as a career firefighter in Butte.

Prior to moving to Butte, I spent two years as an EMT in the busy south end of the greater Seattle area and six months as a part time part-time firefighter with the medium-sized fire department.

Sorry.

Uh, with the medium-sized fire department north of Seattle.

I would like to offer my insight into the current state of our local emergency services and how decisions that we make in the future will affect the citizens of our community.

I'm gonna keep this short tonight.

However, I will leave my contact information with you and be happy to discuss at length any of the topic I topics I discuss, if any of you are interested in learning more.

When it comes to solving any kind of problem, I believe that it's important to start by defining what success will look like at the end of the process.

Having a clear end goal provides a roadmap that can guide every decision made in the course of solving the problem.

We have a problem with our fire service here in Butte.

The question is, what will a successful fire service look like?

I believe that a successful fire service is well trained, adequately staffed, and mission focused.

High quality training breeds proficiency and team cohesion, which leads to the efficiency on the fire ground.

Efficiency on the fire ground means that time-sensitive tasks are being completed simultaneously.

This cannot happen unless there are enough firefighters on scene to fill all the necessary roles.

Ultimately, everything that happens leading up to and during a fire incident should be done with one thing in mind protecting the lives and property of our citizens.

As things currently stand, we are often missing some pieces of the puzzle when we respond to fires in Butte.

Sometimes we have a well-trained crew but lack the numbers to accomplish all needed tasks simultaneously.

Other times we have plenty of firefighters but lack the coordination between crews that is necessary to conduct an efficient operation.

Never in my years of experience and research have I encountered an area that runs its fire service the way that we do here in Butte.

What we do have going for us is that we have a group of firefighters, both career and volunteer, who love their community and wish to serve it.

We need to create a clear structure that will allow us to ensure that every fire response in our county will be well staffed and coordinated.

The fact that we have a consolidated city county government, sorry, city county government does not mean that our fire service needs to be structured in a complicated way.

Together, we could all be part of a truly great department.

Thank you for your time.

I also have some handouts for you.

I live at 725 13th Street here in Butte.

I've been uh firefighter with the Buttes over Bow Fire Department for over three and a half years.

Before starting my career, I was a member of the Big Butte Volunteer Fire Department for close to seven years.

The same department I grew up in and around in the department my father served in for over 40 years.

And following in his footsteps is something I take deep pride in because I have served on both sides as a volunteer now career firefighter.

I've had the chance to see how both systems work in the challenges and strengths that come with each.

With my experience in the department, both as volunteer and paid.

I believe it is critical everyone operate under the direction of one director of fire services to ensure mutual collaboration and safety throughout the departments and citizens.

I'd be happy to answer any questions or share more about my experience transitioning from volunteer to career.

Thank you guys for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.

And I got a contact sheet as well.

Thank you.

Other comments on the agenda.

Thank you, Commissioner.

My name is Lee Sullivan.

I reside at 94 Old Court.

And I'm a member of the Butte Silver Bowl Fire Department for nearly nine years now.

I was a part of Racetrack Volunteer Fire Department for almost three years prior to that.

I was also part of A1 Ambulance for many years prior to that, so my service is now at 14 years on the streets of Butte Silver Bow.

The topic I'm going to bring forward today is personal accountability and the fire safe firefighter safety on the fire ground and the ability to hold every member accountable to a shared standard that ensures firefighters, career, and volunteer alike understand what is expected of them during an emergency.

Right now we lack a unified standard that applies to all departments in Butte Silver Bow.

This inconsistency creates serious concerns on the fire ground where confusion and miscommunication can lead to injury or even death.

We need to clearly define standard that every department must follow and maintain a consistent professional level of service.

This can be one of the ways this can be achieved is through a regular joint training that builds trust, improves coordination, and ensures that everyone operates under the same expectations.

Implementing such a standard will create a more streamlined, efficient response for our community.

It will allow the incident commander to assign the right tasks to the right personnel and reduce the likelihood of mistakes during critical operations.

At the end of the day, it's about one thing and it's protecting the lives we serve.

We cannot perform effectively if we're not trained and held to the same standard.

Accountability and consistent training are not optional.

They are essential to building a safer, stronger fire service for the people of Butte Silver Bow.

I also have some contact sheets and would welcome any further contact on this discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other comments, good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the study commission.

My name is Riley Hash.

I reside at 118 Milky Way here in Butte.

I approach you today willing to express my insight on how the future of the fire service in our community may look.

I'd hope that with nearly 13 years of professional first response experience in our community, comprised of non-fire service experience, volunteer fire service experience, and professional fire service experience, then I may bring insights which help you while reviewing our charter, past, present, and future.

Well, I'm willing to share insight on any topic you may inquire about.

Today I offer my willingness to specifically discuss how an ideal fire response plan may look within our community.

Well, we have worked to standardize our fire response plan in Butte Silver Bow throughout recent years.

We still have rooms for improvement.

If in a pro if appropriately addressed, we can ensure that the correct apparatus answer each call for service within our community.

We can also ensure the safety of the general public and responders alike, as well as ensuring that no call within our community goes unanswered.

Ensuring we remain fiscally prudent to the taxpayers of Butte Silverbow should also be paramount in our conversations.

These three main points only represent a mere window into the operation of an efficient fire service in a fire response plan.

I look forward to speaking with each of you at a time of your convenience to further elaborate on these points, as well as any others which you may have questions about.

I'm happy to promote realistic solutions to issues that our fire service faces.

Therefore, helping turn our dysfunctional fire service into something extraordinary.

What we need today is solutions, not a conversation of career versus volunteer.

It is about ensuring the best performance when it matters most.

After all, tragedy could strike anyone at this room at any point in time.

Lastly, thank you for tackling such an important issue for our community.

As a Butte resident born and raised, I cannot express enough how the work you are doing today helped shape the future of not just our fire service, but the mining city as a whole.

Thank you for your time, and I'll leave a couple handouts for you as well.

Thank you.

Other comments on items on the agenda.

You got me now.

Oh, there we go.

Uh I'll start over.

My name's Shane Worley.

My address is 3540, South Dakota in Butte.

Thank you, Madam Chair, honorable study commission members for allowing me to share my thoughts tonight.

A little background on me.

I was born and raised in Butte, graduated from Butte High School in 1989, and I received a Bachelor's of Science degree in environmental engineering from Montana Tech in 1995.

I married a wonderful Butte native, Deanna Fisher, who also graduated from Butte High School in Montana Tech.

She has a bachelor's degree in occupational safety and health with a master's degree in industrial hygiene.

She is the current vice president of operations for REC Silicon.

We have two amazing children.

So I mentioned my family, not to boast, but rather to show that we are a proud Butte family with deep ties to our community and a strong love for Butte.

I know all of you have that love as well.

My family and I could have gone anywhere and been successful.

There was never a question that we'd be raising our family around family in Butte America, which makes this issue all the more personal to me.

So I'm a 23-year veteran of the Butte Silverboat Fire Department, having been hired as a probationary firefighter in July of 2002.

I was promoted to captain in 2013 and have served in my current role of battalion chief, having earned that title in February of 2019.

Having served as an officer in the Butte Silverbow Fire Department for the past 13 years, I've been the incident commander on hundreds of incidents throughout our county and have in and have interactions with all of the volunteer fire departments in Butte Silverbow.

Some of these incidents have been positive, some have been negative, but I will say that all have been professional.

I should mention that I also have personal connections to the volunteer fire service in Butte Silverbow.

As my wife's grandfather basically started the Boulevard Volunteer Fire Department and several of her direct family members, who I also consider my own family members and I have great respect for, were and still are integral in its daily operations.

I believe this personal connection to the Volunteer Fire Service, along with my direct involvement as a firefighter, particularly as an incident commander, has helped me to see the fire service in Butte Silverbow through a different light, albeit with the same outcome as others have mentioned.

It's broken.

During my career, I've had the privilege of serving under four different Butte Silverbow directors of fire service.

I started with Chief Bob Armstrong.

I served under Chief Jeff Miller, Chief Brian Doherty, and current Chief Zach Osborne.

I also had the distinct honor of serving as the interim director of fire services for approximately four months upon Chief Miller's retirement prior to Chief Doherty being hired.

Each director, including myself for a brief period, has had a slightly different management style in dealing with the ongoing issues that have plagued the fire service in Butte Silverbow for 50 years.

One thing that has been consistent amongst all the directors, however, has been that none have had a clear understanding of what their powers and duties entail, due to differing language between Butte Silverbow County Charter Charter and Ordnance Language, which says one thing, and state law, which says another.

The differing language provides an almost insurmountable challenge for any director of fire services to effectively lead our organization.

And in my opinion, until this differing language is rectified, the problems of plague our organization will continue.

I do not believe that another administrative position of fire coordinator will fix this issue, but will only add another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to an already challenging organizational structure, both financially and administratively.

This has been tried, and as Mr.

Richardson stated tonight, it was unsuccessful.

I don't think we should go down that road again.

Every organization needs a definitive leader.

That leader must be given the tools to succeed.

Our county charter, section 7.03 subsection F clearly states that the paid fire chief shall be the director of fire services and shall be responsible for the administrative coordination and combination of the paid and volunteer fire departments.

It is my hope that the director of fire services in Butte Silverbow County is one day afforded the ability to effectively run the fire department without the ongoing encumbrances that seem to happen on a daily basis from conflict conflicting language over who is actually in charge of the fire departments in Butte Silverbow County.

If any of you have questions that I can answer, particularly in the area of operations or management, please do not hesitate to call on me tonight or call or email me in the future.

I'd like to thank you for all of your efforts in attempting to put force solutions to an extremely complex issue.

And I also have some handouts on operations and management.

Thank you, Mr.

Worley.

Other comments on items on the agenda.

How are you all doing?

My name is James Olette, uh safety and health coordinator for the city county of Butte Silverbow.

I promise I'll be brief this time.

Um so uh it goes back to 1775, and I'm just kidding.

Uh but uh speaking about taxation without representation, and that's uh kind of a little bit of the problem that we're in here from the administrative side, right?

We have to we have a budget, uh as it was mentioned earlier.

We have a taxing district with nine volunteer stations and two career paid full-time.

So everyone in that everyone in that district in that budget, all that money is pulled together, and then it's distributed among uh each of these uh volunteer fire stations and to our two career, and that obviously has uh a max on how much you can do that.

So what we look at here is the attorney general kind of talks about well, who can get sued?

So when I was in Gallatin County, right?

I was the safety and health coordinator there.

Uh could Gallatin County itself get sued for uh something a rural fire district uh did wrong with PPE not provided, and it was really brought out that the taxing district itself, right?

You're gonna run a go where the money is.

So in uh indemnification of employees, uh, who indemnifies our volunteer fire department employees?

Is that the city county of Butte Silverbow, or is that the trustees?

Is that the chiefs?

These are all very important questions that you guys, I would I hope that we guide we you uh we can um hash through and get to it because there are responsibilities.

I talked about OSHA, you know, respirator protection program, CFR uh 29 CFR 1910-134.

Uh respirators must be fit tested, medically evaluated.

We have to do that, and if we don't do it, who is held responsible?

And right now it's our director of fire services that is held responsibility, responsible if these things do not meet um compliance standards.

I'm not saying this is right or I it's wrong.

I'm asking for you guys to look at the taxing district itself.

There is a difference between Melrose, Walkerville, and that urban tax fund, right?

That's not clear in the charter.

That's not very clear in our ordinances either.

But there is a difference.

Whoever is funding it has to get the say.

So I want us to really kind of look at that taxing district.

There's nine volunteer fire and two career fire departments.

My last point to that is that because there is in looking at Floral Park or looking at home Atherton, uh, if all that money is being paid, does that mean when home Atherton holds a meeting that someone from the West End of Butte gets to go to that meeting in homeatherton, even though it's not in that historic district, they're still contributing to that taxation of it, right?

Everyone in that taxation, there's not individual districts, they're all being pulled together and then separated out.

So does does someone who doesn't live in Floral Park or Home Atherton have the right to go down and say, hey, or or be invited to those meetings.

Uh why is there some neighborhoods in Butte that have fire stations, you know, have five fire stations within two miles radius, and then there's others that uh maybe have a fire station three or four miles from it.

Is that fair if it's all being pulled together in one tax fund?

So we want to make sure that we look at this completely.

Uh we want to make sure too, through this, that we also mentioned the incredible leadership that I think everyone in this community has, both paid in volunteers and especially our our director of fire services.

This is very tough on the administrative branch.

And so please note that the things that you do and recommend have real implications for us, a butte Silverbow employees, for our our paid firemen, and for our volunteers.

So thank you for hearing me again, and I'm here to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Other public comment on items on the agenda.

Okay, second call for public items on the agenda, public comment and items on the agenda.

Okay.

So hearing none, I'm going to move forward to public comment on anything not on the agenda, but within the jurisdiction of the study commission.

I said I'd be back.

For and on behalf of the Great Neighborhood Community Development Corporation and a triad of concerned citizens.

There are seven people involved in a consensual recommendation.

Reference, public comment on any item not on the agenda.

And the subject is public comments on any item on the agenda.

As stated, the Montana Supreme Court clearly ruled in 2023 and 2024 that the public has the right to participate in the discussions of the decision making process of public bodies on agenda items before a final decision is made.

The outlined recommended procedure I found for public comments on items on the agenda, meetings of public bodies is the comments should be made during the discussion period prior to the final vote.

That if a member of the public request to make a comment on an item on the agenda, they must be recognized.

Not a vote is necessary.

And I know you don't want to listen to me.

Most people are still not able to get off work in time to make the comment period time of your meeting.

Who still believes in the 1950s form of ground up democracy form of government?

If I had been allowed to speak during deliberations before the vote on your last meeting, I would have probably rose to a point of order.

You did not follow your published agenda items procedure.

I would probably have said you never really discussed mayor elected or appointed.

Nor should the commission commissioners be full time or part time.

And should they be paid or only voluntary?

This was one comment relative there was one comment relative to the name of mayor, but there was no discussion.

I would have probably said that of the 500 people I talked to, 89% probably would not want a top-down mayoral approach, but would prefer a from the bottom up public go to elected at large city council, city chair, that would move consensual neighborhood incentives and projects forward instead of leaving two $50,000 neighborhood project studies on the shelf for 10 years.

If the people are going to pay for a high price city-county council chair, in addition to a city county manager, I would believe that the people would want to elect that person in an at large election.

As to the number of commissioners, I would probably have said, as I said in my previous comments, there should be six commissioners, at least at the beginning of the transition period.

Also, as to should the commissioners be full-time or part-time, and should they have be paid?

I would have said they should be full-time and have additional stipulated responsibilities to justify that additional pay.

So please see my previous comments at previous man meetings to see what those additional responsibilities might be that should be included in the charter.

As to commissioners being elected by district or at large, if the commissioners are to be responsible for neighborhood improvement, I believe that the people would prefer someone elected by district that lives in the district, who has a vested interest in the neighborhood, and would want to elect that person by district.

Thank you.

Any other comment on items not on the agenda but within the jurisdiction of the study commission.

Thank you again.

My name is John Sorich, 1820 Wilson.

I could have probably commented.

I would like to comment just a little bit on the uh uh current commissioners, how many we have, I could have probably commented under uh what's on the agenda.

You know, so I just want to give you my two cents worth.

I was a commissioner for 15 years.

I think we got too many commissioners.

I think 12 is way too many.

I think we could go up to five elected commissioners and one uh elected chief executive.

I believe there still has to be a strong separation between uh executive and legislative and judicial branch.

I'm afraid if you get them too intertwined, it's gonna really confuse muddy the waters.

But that's just my two cents.

Thank you, Mr.

Sorich.

Other comments on items not on the agenda but within our jurisdiction.

Ladies and gentlemen of the commission, just an apology for me while I was up here, I forgot to turn another correspondence, so I'll give to the secretary.

This is a correspondence from Director of Fire Services, Zach Osborne that he would just like distribute it out to you from this morning's conversation.

Thank you for that.

Any other comments on items not on the agenda but within the jurisdiction of the study commission?

Okay, so hearing none, I would like to move forward to approval of the minutes of the meeting held November 3rd, 2025.

Ms.

Dolan?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um with regard to the letter from Chief Osborne.

If it's not long, I think it should be read into the record for folks on YouTube to know what his position is and what that entails.

I don't know.

Is it about fire service?

I mean, obviously about fire service, but is it about our conversation tonight?

And if it is, it really should be read into the record.

Thank you.

What's the length on that um letter?

Okay.

Go ahead.

Can you guys hear me okay?

Okay.

Uh November 10th, 2025.

Hello, Butte Silver Bow Study Commission.

Thank you for taking the time tonight to discuss what I believe is one of the most important topics in our community.

The Butte Silverbow Fire Department.

Please excuse my absence from tonight's meeting as I am recovering from an illness.

My absence in no way reflects the importance I place on this meeting.

Since 1977, our community has faced the same challenge.

How our fire department is structured and how it operates.

After all these years, we're still asking the same basic questions.

Are we one combined department made of made up of career and volunteer firefighters?

Or are we separate with a city-run career department with multiple individual volunteer districts governed by local trustees and state law?

Our charter and ordinances seem to say one thing while state law and local trustees say another.

For nearly five decades, there's been no clear answer.

Numerous attempts have been made to clarify this confusion, yet no lasting solution has been found.

During the 1996 study commission review, language is added to our charter defining the role of the director of fire services and outlining administrative coordination between the career and volunteer departments.

Unfortunately, this change did not resolve the underlying issue.

Since then, multiple letters from lawyers, a failed consolidation plan, attorney general reviews, a fire study, and even a vetoed house bill have only deepened the confusion and frustration surrounding our fire service.

Now with this study commission, we have another opportunity to finally bring clarity and direction to this issue.

And that matters because this isn't just about structure or paperwork, it's about emergency response.

It's about life safety, it's about the people we serve.

We shouldn't be afraid to bring tough issues to the table.

Real progress starts with honest conversation even when it's uncomfortable.

Our community deserves that honesty.

The people of Butte Silver Bow deserve clarity, accountability, and a fire service that works together.

Imagine what we could achieve if we did come together.

If every firefighter volunteer and career, every trustee, and every local official worked as one team with a shared mission.

We could be the strongest, most efficient fire service this community has ever seen.

As our community grows and changes, our fire department must be ready to adapt and grow with it.

Change can be challenging, but it's also necessary if we want to keep improving the service safety and protection we provide to our citizens.

I respectfully urge the study commission to give this matter the careful attention and action it deserves.

Clarifying the structure, authority, and responsibilities of our fire service is long overdue and essential to ensuring the Butte Silver Bow can provide efficient, coordinated and reliable emergency response to all residents.

Um sincerely, Zach Osborne, Director of Fire Services.

Thank you, Ms.

Adams.

Um before we move forward to the approval of the note or the meeting minutes from last week, because this seems to be germane and regarding um how our communication with the council is handled.

I'm just gonna address that right now, please.

Um so when we get uh emails in, I've asked those to be added as an amendment or an addendum to our notes for the um the meeting notes of that week.

So any emails that have come in as public comment from the week before will be added to meeting notes.

I'm gonna expect that our commissioners have read all of those, and if the public should so choose, they can go look at those um meeting notes and read them there.

I I don't want to read into the record every email that we get to through correspondence.

Um, of course, I can listen to other opinions about that, and we can certainly deliberate on it, but I think the as the if the information is there and it's available, people can go look for that information.

Um this week we received a an email from Bill Fitzpatrick from Volunteer Fire Services and another from Ed Fisher from Fire Services, Volunteer Fire Services as well from Boulevard.

And so both of those will be added to this week's um meeting minutes in terms of public comment.

Um and both of those were received and addressed to the entire commission, so everybody should I think have those except I take that back.

Boulevards bounced and came back to me, so I'll make sure that they get forward that gets forwarded to you in addition to it being in our meeting minutes.

Any questions or concerns about that procedure?

Okay.

So moving on, can we have the approval of minutes of the meeting held November 3rd, 2025, please?

Madam Chair, I move to approve the minutes of November 3rd, 2025.

Okay, Mr.

Denehy makes a motion to approve.

Ms.

McCormick.

Madam Chair, I make a motion.

I second Mr.

D's motion.

Okay, and seconded by Ms.

McCormick.

Any discussion on the minutes.

Um hearing none, could I have a vote to approve?

All those in favor?

Any opposed?

Okay.

Motion carries, thank you.

Um moving on.

That we already addressed our correspondence and study commission update in regards to emails that have come in.

Any other correspondence, uh, Ms.

Adams that you are aware of?

Okay.

In terms of an update, um, our ex officio member is still Annie Boyd, who will be sworn in uh officially by our clerk and recorder, and then um Ms.

Adams is serving as our our secretary, if you will, um helping us with our um meeting minutes and our agenda setting and then um coordinating all of the the uh working groups that we have going on.

So Mr.

Denahee.

Ma'am chair uh the issue about not having the agenda present that that should have been um forwarded to Annie.

Uh that was my fault, not yours, you know.

Um that should have been forward to Annie.

Annie would make those minutes and the agendas for people who are at our meeting.

So I'm bad my bad on that one.

Um we should uh so the procedure will be once Shannon does her minutes and agendas, we will give them to Annie, and Annie will have them printed and ready for the meeting.

I apologize for that.

Thank you, Mr.

Denehy.

Any other discussion on correspondence or study commission update?

Okay.

So moving on to our unfinished business, if the city county manager working group could give their update, and I guess that flows right into the mayor election appointment, number of commissioners, working group update.

Madam Chair.

Uh the city county are working group for both the city county manager, the mayor election and appointment, number of commissioners, and our chief or our county city county manager have been drafted.

Lori uh took on her responsibility, the city county manager, Mary took for her responsibility, the council commissioners changes, and I took the mayor responsibility.

We have not made any decision, any decision that has not come to this commission first.

Those decisions and changes will be discussed, debated, changed, as the study commission is recommended or how they recommend it.

Those changes after we vote on them will be part of the public record and will be part of the public hearing that will happen sometime later this winter.

So we have not did anything other than working in a work group to provide a work product that will be reviewed by the study commission, commented on, debated on, changed again regarding what the study commission wants to do, and will be forwarded to the public for their comments.

After their comments are given to us, we will bring it back to the study commission for those changes if we deem appropriate.

So that's what the process is.

We are doing this as a working group because not to do it in a working group, giving the number of strong issues that still have to become before us would be almost impossible to do in a meeting of this size with each individual.

We gotta get something on paper.

And once it's on paper, we'll have that debate.

We will have the final product for our decision in the working group by the end of this week.

Because of their technical expertise, told me to sit out on this one, and they will put it all together.

And it will be given to the study commission for review and changes if and when needed.

I would imagine there will be several changes.

We have discussed full-time mayor.

We have discussed full-time commissioners.

We have discussed city county managers.

We have discussed those things and what the commission will look like under our guise, under our review.

That still has to be approved by you and then forwarded back out to the public.

So we are doing that due diligence now.

And I appreciate my colleagues on the working group for spending time, diligent time for reviewing those issues and comments that were given to us by public input and by the interviews of our public staff and elected officials.

So that's where we're at at this time.

Also, those a lot of the information that we are gathered, gathering in our work group are from other charters in Montana.

So we're trying to get all of those together.

Putting them in the group that we feel comfortable that you could look at, and if we need to change, so be it.

We will change it.

Thank you.

Ms.

Casey do other of you have anything to add to the report.

I think Ms.

Casey had asked you to maybe walk through the evaluation criteria.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I think Dan stated what we're doing very well.

One of the things that we did to start with, and I think we kind of discussed this a little bit, or I mentioned it last week was the MSU local government center within our training materials supplied some evaluation criteria that they had suggested we look at that criteria should help us determine whether or not we should be looking at a change to our form of government.

So what we did, the working group put all the comments we took what Shanna has summarized on the surveys, uh the department head comments that we received, the elected officials, and this commission's comments when we were discussing it, and tried to put those in each uh criteria.

Now, some of those comments could fit fit in several of the criteria.

They could be in a different criteria.

We can move them around, we can add them.

Our working group thought it would be redundant to add the same comment into a different criteria, because really what we're using the criteria to do is determine whether we should be looking at a change of form of government.

Now, what this working group did is we just we looked at those comments specifically about city manager, city county manager, about the number of commissioners and that so you're not gonna see the comments that were made on neighborhood councils or the fire department because certainly those comments could go under the section of effective how effective is your local government or the accessibility of your local government.

So kind of the thought would be that as we form these working uh groups, this is a living document that those groups can add on to this and add those specific comments into this document as they work through, considering that there would probably be other members on different working groups.

So, Madam Chair, I did uh send you our final version of that.

Uh that's a synopsis that has all of the latest comments that we were supplied the summary of our public outreach that Shauna uh put together.

So a lot of it's repeat or comment, same comments that you've may have read, it's just put in the chart form.

So, madam chair, I supplied that to you and not to the other members of the commission as yet.

I certainly can.

My thought was that we kind of have our agenda set for the next few weeks, but when you're ready, then we would put it back on the agenda.

But however you want to do that, we're open to other thoughts uh from the commission.

Ms.

Dolan.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, first off, I would love to see that, even though if it's if it's in a draft form, if you could send that to everybody, that would be great.

But my biggest concern is um with MSU's evaluation criteria criteria form that they sent us to use, and just for the audience here tonight and for you too, uh the principles are legitimacy, legitimacy and voice, direction, performance, accountability, and fairness.

But under fairness, they MSU extension local government center says equity under fairness.

And equity they say the definition is all citizens have opportunities to improve or maintain their well-being.

But that's not equity.

That's equality.

And equity is allowing disadvantaged folks a head start if it's think of a a race of a foot race at East Middle School track.

Those that have a tick up or disadvantaged they get a 10 yard advantage and everybody else gets at the finite at the at the start and then they do the whistle or or start a race that's equity.

So big humongous difference between equity and equality and I would hope that Butte Silverbow leans into equality because that's for all and I think they tried to do that but said it was equity which it's not so I just wanted to make that clarification I think a lot of people make that mistake but it's worth mentioning and so I just wanted to mention that tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Dolan.

I I think that we're probably on the equal opportunity for comment and participation and making sure that everybody's involved I think that's our working definition does that resonate with the group that's been working so far Ms.

Casey and Madam Chair and I apologize because you don't have not everybody has the the chart but that what you see there was the beginning of what they said to look at but their evaluation criteria really got down to representation accessibility consensus orientation mission and strategic vision responsiveness accountability effectiveness and efficiency role clarity and formalized procedure transparency.

There is the equity and then community engagement and so madam chair I will share this on OneDrive and then I don't know if there's a better way to get it out.

I can email it to everyone but and then I don't know does Annie print it or for those folks that want hard copies.

I think we can ask hard copies to be printed I did forward it to the body on Friday so it has been forwarded in email to to everyone and then we can add it to our notes for tonight's agenda and I think it's I think it should be understood that it's a living document it's being edited we're contributing to it it's not this is its final version and then certainly I think when we're ready to come back to this issue as a body reviewing the work that the working group is doing when you're ready to present it I think then we can kind of walk through editing if that is okay with the group in terms of that process.

So just to clarify the process will be this work group will finish their work on the documents that are providing us then recommended charter changes the valuation criteria sheet then we will come back as a whole body to review that and make a vote on what's going forward or how we're moving forward into the report and um possible language for a ballot initiative.

And then as Mr Deneh so eloquently stated there's still more process after that so we're not done any other discussion on that working group's update I you know I just um encourage everybody to make sure that you get involved in looking at those materials and kind of doing your own research too because that this group has been working very hard to pull together everything from the charters that they've been looking at as well as the salary surveys etc so we have good understanding when we come back together as well so just I guess that's me being a professor telling you to do your homework so all right so moving on our next item on unfinished business is our November 26th that will be Cindy Ben and I will be on party line together our op-ed has been published correct Mr.

Steppen I think I I uh visited that's correct.

Okay.

All right, and I'm sure if there's something that comes up as you're reading it, you can email her too.

But it did look um like it we're almost there to getting that one out.

Okay, so moving into new business um with our fire department discussion.

I realize we have folks that want to come and give us a little bit of a discussion about um how you would like to see this move forward.

And I I want to be careful to to put some boundaries on us.

I want us to be working towards solution making, um, not rehashing issues.

I think we have a very good understanding of the problems.

I I've heard a couple of suggestions for solutions, but I'd like to hear solution making.

Like what does the charter need to say in order to set the structure up for everybody in the room to do well with with the uh relationship and with um you know providing fire service.

And then I Ms.

Kahn had given us the former study commission's um notes and their um reports in if you got the commissioners if you got that packet that had the big piece of pink paper on the front, it was binder clipped, it's in that packet if you're needing to refer to that.

And we do have the 9596 study commission's um charter changes before us that we can look at.

And basically what they did in 96 is they took out a lot of detailed language, they struck it out, and they left us with the the charter language that's less detailed that you are operating under now.

Um and looking at that process and that procedure, it fits with what we were educated by um MSU Law Center to do to make sure that the charter is broad enough and wide enough that the jurisdiction can operate as as it see fits the in order, in other words, the um council of commissioners and the fire districts and your fire boards, uh the fire advisory board is is are the bodies that are doing the legislative work, if you will.

Um and then it looks like things that were in the charter prior are now in ordinance.

I have both of those open here.

So there is a definition of what the fire district is in terms of its taxing district and what the boundaries of it are, um, and who is not in that tax taxing district.

Uh that is now in our our municipal code.

Um so that might be something for us to think about in terms of uh possible unintended consequences if we were to change things back or forward.

Um looking at the charter itself, um the levy it says in the the um council of commissioners shall establish by ordinance a district for fire protection services, excluding the area within the town of Walkerville.

Within this district, there shall be that uniform tax levy.

So again, they kept that piece of the language in, moved the specific description of that um tax levy district into ordinance.

Um then any ordinance changing boundaries of existing fire serv districts or reallocating fire fighting equipment shall require an affirmative vote by two-thirds of the whole number of council commissioners.

Um that was retained from the last charter to this one from 96 to this one, I guess.

So looking forward at this conversation, I would I'd like to open up the discussion and then I know Ms.

Sergeant, you have a comment that you would like to make particular to this discussion.

Would you like to come forward and do that at this point?

Ms.

Casey.

Thank you, madam chair.

Before we leave, what you had had described and went through.

I know I've asked before, and we don't have apparently an accurate map of the fire districts, but that what is in the ordinance and in charter is a meets and bounds description of the taxing jurisdiction, and that should be mapped.

And I was would like to request that we at least at a minimum get that map.

Um it's difficult to read a meets and bounds and go from this township to that township and this section to it where a map is going to supply that.

And it's the map that they've been taxing on, so it should be available through the GIS.

If it's not, it's not gonna be that hard for someone that's familiar with that to draw that boundary.

Ms.

Casey, since you understand the language of what you're requesting the best, could you ask to request that from GIS?

Yes, I will.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Sorry, Miss Sergeant, Ms.

Dolan.

Yeah, sorry, Sarge.

Um thank you, Madam Chair.

Just a a couple.

Do we know why the county attorney is not here tonight?

My apologies.

He's excused he has strep throat and the flu.

Yeah, I just think I think it would be, you know, I obviously so sick, but you know, having his expertise here would be very uh appreciated, and I appreciate all his time so far.

But what I wanted to let folks know tonight is while we're having this discussion, we have asked Anaconda Deer Lodge County multiple times to come to our commission meetings.

I'm not sure where that stands right now, but there's we need to learn more about, you know, it was mentioned earlier with uh um House Bill 547, Butte and Anaconda, but that's a little disingenuous because HB 547 did not affect Anaconda.

Anaconda is autonomous with their fire service.

So, as a just one study commissioner, I would like to learn more about that and how it works, and even if it would, if would it help?

Would it be applicable to Butte Silverbow?

Are we too big?

Is Anaconda small?

They can do that.

What's that flexibility look like?

So we are continuing to ask Anaconda to come to our meeting so we can get educated on extracting it from the charter just to get that education and learn about that.

So in our discussion today, know that we're still working on that, and hopefully that will happen at some point.

Thanks.

And to follow up with Ms.

Dolan, I think we can definitely re refer to their charter and how you know help that shape our conversation a little bit.

We we don't know how their form and function is, we just know what they have written in there.

Um then since we brought up Mr.

Enruth, I will speak to that, which was something I intended to do after we finished this discussion.

But um, he and I had a brief brainstorming session in terms of him letting me know that he was sick tonight, and he would love for us as we work through this working group to come with questions that he and his office can re research because you know, trying to answer the question on the fly while he's in the chair might not be the best um thing to do.

He might not give us the best opinion because he needs to go research all of the things that you guys have outlined in terms of um history in you know from 1970 forward in terms of what that progression in MCA has been, the progression in our charter versus ordinance has been, and he would like some time to be able to study those, but he'd also be like to be directed with some specific questions.

So just for the good of everyone in the room, that's probably how we'll start to proceed.

Now I think I can bring you up, Ms.

Sargent.

Um I'm Kieran Sargent.

I live at 3021 Josephine Street here in Butte.

Um I had a little bit longer thing to say, but with what Raylan just said.

Um I'd like to thank you first off for the opportunity to speak to y'all tonight.

I have 30 years of experience as a professionally trained emergency first responder, proudly serving all of the communities where I've lived.

I have trained and do trained to the same high standards as any of the career departments.

Being on five different volunteer fire departments and three separate search and rescue teams has allowed me the opportunity to experience many different organizational dynamics, both positive and negative.

These experiences have led me to the development of a high level of personal and professional intercommunication skills and knowledge.

Most importantly, I have trained alongside or actively responded to thousands of incidents with many other volunteer and career departments and state, federal, and tribal agencies throughout the states of Montana, Idaho, and Washington.

In all of these experiences, I have witnessed the dedication, commitment, and mutual respect and appreciation for and from the firefighters at those trainings or on-scene incidents.

Upon coming to the Butte community, I was surprised and deeply concerned to observe the lack of cooperation and collaboration between the career department administration and the volunteer fire districts.

The City County Commissioners just spent lots of money on a study from an objective contractor on the career fire department.

On the first page in the executive summary of this study, it was written in quote.

Okay.

I have witnesses many examples of the extent of this lack of quality communication, respect and collaboration, and the loss of this effective teamwork, collaborative efforts, mutual respect and cooperative relationships between the career department administration officers and the volunteer fire districts has resulted in biased and prejudicial decisions being made, contributing to the observable disintegration and erosion of more effective service to our communities.

Now that being said, I understand that you all have a certain level of jurisdiction and responsibilities.

But I prefer to think of solutions as opposed to just pointing out problems.

So a simple task that is within your jurisdictions of the government study commission is to recommend removing any and all language relating to or referencing the volunteer fire departments from the current Butte Silverbow Charter document.

Removing this language would be the first step to re-establishing collaborative or cooperative actions between the career department administration and the volunteer fire departments.

The volunteer departments would then be able to comply with current state laws that not only initially established the fire district, but also our procedural in how the districts should operate.

These are the same state laws that set procedures for every other volunteer fire department throughout the state of Montana.

This action would further allow the volunteer departments to be on a level foundation with the career department in Butte, resulting in moving forward equitably toward desired mutual respect and effectively serving our respective communities.

It is with these reasons that I respectfully request that the government study commission please place on the ballot to remove any and all language referring or relating to the volunteer fire departments from the current Butte Silverbow Charter.

Specifically, and on the papers that I just handed you, or sorry, Shanna just handed you, specifically, but not limited to Section 7.03, subsections A, D, E, F, and H.

And those are all highlighted on the sheets that were you were just handed.

Again, thank you for allowing me to speak.

Do you have any questions or need clarification?

Ms.

Sergeant, I I have a clarification.

Are you speaking on behalf of all the volunteer fire departments as one group on behalf of yourself on behalf of Racetrack?

Um I got permission from my chief as I was driving to this meeting to uh include racetrack in my comments, but predominantly it comes from my experience on all these other different departments, some within and quite a few within the state of Montana, on how things should operate and how things should be decided and voted for or whatever based on state law.

Thank you for that clarification.

Ms.

Casey.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms.

Sargent, in your experience with the other volunteer fire departments, you talk about removing them out of the charter.

If they were removed and followed state law, then it's my understanding that they would have to go out and levy their own mills to fund their district.

Is that correct?

Or could you speak to that with your experience in other areas?

Yeah.

The way it works in other areas is yes, they have their own levies for each fire district has their own levies.

But also they're also allowed to go into uh contracts of mutual aid for not only surround neighboring departments but also neighboring counties.

Um and state agencies.

We uh we have a thing called incident rental agreements that are developed with the DNRC, and it allows us to take our engines out and supply them with water or manpower or whatever for wildland fires.

Uh we used to do this many years ago from what I'm told.

Uh racetrack apparently went quite a few places in the state.

But yes, that would be we'd have our own mill levy for our own district.

Okay.

Mr.

Silk.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh, I guess this question to uh Chief Matter when he was up here when he wanted specific language within the charter, and apparently that has changed.

And I just want to clarify you're speaking for all volunteer departments that want to maintain and bring their budgets back, or just yourself and your department.

We're speaking for uh he allowed me to say that I'm speaking for racetrack fire.

Okay.

But predominantly I was looking to remove the language out of the charter based on my experiences.

Sure, yeah.

And so do you have an estimated cost of how much each volunteer department takes to run, maintain, and ensure the apparatus, the buildings, and workers' comp and do you have any idea of your revenue source?

I have the boundaries by means and bounds.

I have the boundaries of racetracks fire district.

I have not been able to transfer that to a map.

Uh but I for the last 40 years apparently, we have not had our budgets to develop that budget.

Yeah, so I understand that.

So but you don't understand or know the dollar value that you would become and have come in in all of the volunteer departments to confirm that you would be able to survive solely off of your budget.

No.

Okay.

No, I have not.

But then you're recommending to us that you want to be taken out of the charter.

So my fear is that if volunteers are taken out of the charter, they don't need to exist within the Butte Silver Bow Charter or the Butte Silverbow Fire Service, right?

So if your department cannot fund, it doesn't take in enough taxes, or your residents don't want to pay taxes for a volunteer service.

Could your department essentially go bankrupt and your department would fold?

Um I don't know, I'm not an accountant.

However, uh I do believe that the fire districts quantity or mute or the levies that would be filed would be greater than what they were back 40 years ago.

Well, of course, yeah, with inflation.

I guess I would feel more comfortable making a decision on that entertaining that if you guys wanted it, it doesn't mean you're gonna get it.

But if there was a revenue source that we had a dollar amount compared to your expenses to confirm before we put something in the charter that you would succeed or you wouldn't succeed.

Problem is for the last 40 years, the county treasurer has not got that information.

It's not been separated out.

It's always been included in the career fire department's budget.

Yes, I understand that with the uniform fire fund.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I want to make sure before we put anything in the charter, from my point of view, that the volunteers are going to have enough money to be able to support and run their department rather than just off the theory that 40 years ago we think it could have happened.

Well, this is this is why I emphasized when I was reading this, this is why I emphasize this is a first step.

I am not one to take huge steps and give huge solutions to problems when I know it's not going to happen.

So this is the first step.

We can't move forward until the language is taken out of the charter because we can't follow state law because we have to follow the director of fire services, whatever he edicts.

Okay.

Um it's not it's it's hard to compare apples to oranges.

Yes, I took it.

When you don't have that information.

Sorry, I'm just I'm just making a point of order to recognize the chair.

I appreciate the um I appreciate the dialogue and I want us to keep having a free flow flowing dialogue, but I want to keep making sure that we recognize the chair before we proceed.

Um to Mr.

Silk's point, I think there's a really good piece of information and research we need to do here, which is a potential unintended consequence if we were to remove all of the fire districts or all of the volunteer fire department language from our charter.

Would that then trigger us to creating new taxing authority districts?

And then is that a special taxing authority district, like we heard from Mr.

Richardson today?

Um, what would we be allowed to do and or not do?

So I think there's some layers of research that need to be conducted.

Um that sounds like an issue that the the working group would need to consider and and possibly the volunteers would want to maybe go look at it themselves as well.

I agree with that.

Um there are some other options for the volunteer districts to talk about and do, and we are in the process of kind of talking about these things to join together.

And and that way we're not looking at individual districts.

We might be looking at one entity.

So but that's again, this is the just is just the first step.

Um I didn't put anything in here about budget just for that reason because it is a convoluted issue, and I don't really have a desire to steal money from anybody.

I just I just want us to be able to stand on level ground with the career department, which we are not on now, and be able to negotiate and talk and communicate with each other, which we're not doing now.

Okay, that's why this is the first step.

Until we do this, no one's going to listen to us as a volunteer fire department.

They're not going to listen to us because this is the way it's been for 40 years.

The director of fire services has a say, and and that's the end of it.

And we can't, we're not communicating.

We're not talking to each other, we're not negotiating with each other, and I'm seeing, based on my experience, I'm seeing biased and prejudicial decisions being made.

So you know, this was just a suggestion to get the ball started.

Okay.

Get the ball rolling.

We appreciate that.

Mr.

Steppen, and then I'll take Ms.

Dolan.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you.

Um we appreciate a suggested solution.

And and I think when we talk about unintended consequences, you know, a question that I would have is in the case that we remove we remove all language of volunteers from the charter, the existing equipment that's that's at the volunteer station who owns that equipment, what happens with that equipment that that is currently there.

Can I answer that?

Okay.

There are pieces of equipment that do not belong to the career department.

There are pieces of equipment that were purchased with donations and things like that, grants and donations from the community that belong to the individual fire districts.

Okay.

And those would be the ones that we would sign up to go out on wildland fires, tenders, and things like that to earn extra money as well as you know.

Okay.

We we are not allowed to have that opportunity at this point in time.

We're not allowed to go out.

We're not allowed to enter into incident rental agreements with the DNRC.

So we don't have the opportunity to do that.

If I may, could I ask Mr.

Byrne, is he still here?

He was did he already leave.

Okay.

So he had given us um ask me about fire apparatus.

Maybe he would have an understanding of which ones are co-owned, which ones are.

I mean, this is getting down in the weeds too, but of course, I think this question, Mr.

Steppen, is germane because if we dissolve this relationship, who owns what, where does it go?

Now it's not necessarily our purview to do that work, um, but the council of commissioners would probably you know have to do that work, and it would be part of our report in terms of these are possible things you need to consider and look at as if there were to be a removal of uh volunteer fire departments from the charter.

This is another potential route that we would get down.

Um Ms.

Dolan?

Thank you, madam chair.

So my question is, and and I understand all the unintended consequences with pulling stuff out of the charter, but I want you and maybe you can help us, Sarge, with this prior to 1977, prior to consolidation, and then the establishment of a charter.

What did Butte Silverbow do before that?

You had a city and you had a county, and you had the fire and you had volunteer and you had career.

How how does that look with establishing parameters with regard to budget, with regard to staffing, with regard to all kinds of things?

Um I think that would be an important piece of information and learning that we should have because of all these questions tonight with regard to taking out volunteer from the charter.

What would that look like?

But what did it look like before 77?

Well, I can't speak to Butte, uh, but I can speak to other volunteer departments.

Everyone had their they saved money up to make matching funds.

They applied for grants.

Um one of the cities or one of the districts I was in, they bought three new engines the whole time I was there.

And they did it with grant money.

They didn't do it with the tax money that they got.

They use that part of that for matching funds, or they saved up, or they did boot drives, or they did there's all these different things that volunteer fire departments have to do.

Um it's just the history of volunteer fire departments, it's just things that we have to do.

But there are lots of available money out there, there's lots of opportunities that we could be taking advantage of, except we're not allowed at this current time period.

We're not allowed.

And I think that's why if we get the language out of the charter, like I said, it's just a first step.

It's it's actually not that big a step.

It's just a first step so we can fall back on the state law and decide how it's going to project us forward and open up negotiations with the director of fire services.

So Ms.

Dunlin want to follow up.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

So I don't know if there's anyone in the room tonight.

I'm looking maybe at Shane Worley, Mr.

Worley.

Um, if you could come up with specifically, what did Butte Silverbow do prior to 77 with the construct of fire in Butte Silverbow?

That's a big question, and I apologize ahead of time, but it would kind of give us some context as to what transpired in Butte prior to the charter.

Uh Madam Chair, members of the commission, I really have no idea how it worked.

I'd hate to give you false information for such a complex issue.

Um when I'm listening, I would like to bring up is I believe, and please correct me if I'm wrong, in other type type one cities in Montana, it is illegal to have a volunteer fire service in an urban district, a hydrated area, which may be something you know that's we need to look at.

We have you know, many of our, and I'm not suggesting that we get rid of volunteer districts, anything like that.

But if the suggestion is to remove volunteer districts from the charter, where where do they go if if we're gonna follow state law?

State law says they can't exist in a type one city in an in an urban area.

Um I mean, it's kind of a conflict there with what they want to do.

And I I think there's an unintended consequence there that you know should probably be looked at by the county attorney.

Um of the other things too I'd like to bring up.

There you madam chair.

Sorry, Mr.

Worley.

Um, I just don't want to get too far in the weeds on all these different things.

Um, and I appreciate your your insight, but I I really want to pull it back to just my question, which was and I and I appreciate you can't answer that, but I don't really want to go down the rabbit hole of all these other things.

And I see Mr.

Sorich has his hand up to maybe possibly answer that question that I had.

Would that be okay?

Yeah, let me let me take that floor, please.

Um so Mr.

Worley, I appreciate you bringing us back to MCA because I think that is the wicked problem here, is that you have captured the problem very well in terms of if we're following state law, then likely we are not following state law by having volunteer fire districts within this mapped, whatever we're calling it that because we have a city-county um map and we're consolidated.

So I think the attempts prior to consult or at consolidation and then forward or to maintain the integrity and the um the jurisdiction of these volunteer fire districts, but kind of making a hybrid approach between a um fire services for a city and then they what is usually a county fire services, which are staffed by volunteer departments.

Do I have that kind of correct?

That's my understanding.

Okay.

Okay, so um, it would be maybe your recommendation that the study commission work with you know, somebody that's very familiar with that MCA um law and looking at what what language could be in our charter that might be able to be meeting state law, but also providing us some boundaries.

And I think the volunteer fire departments have a lawyer that had come to us to talk to about about that as well.

Um and then I will take Mr.

Sorrich to come up and answer.

But I said one thing too.

Please I think an issue comes up as well when something doesn't, you know, with with the say director of fire services, Osborne, and the volunteer districts.

Our confusion now is he really doesn't have the final say.

Because every time he tries to have the final say, the volunteer the the volunteers just revert back to state law.

So I think it until that issue is rectified, we're just gonna continue to go like this, you know.

So unfortunately, this commission cannot change state law.

So that's that's you know, we're out of jurisdiction.

But we can provide some some boundaries in terms of what can be in our charter and hopefully send it back to all of you to do the next piece of solving the problem in terms of what those boundaries are, what the um I think you I think it was stated what the um director of fire services responsibilities are.

Um that would be a council of commissioners uh thing in ordinance, I would think.

But again, I might just be pontificating at this point.

So I'll I'll pass the floor to uh Ms.

Casey, who had her hand up, and then I'll take Mr.

Sorrich if he would kind of refer back to what happened prior to charter consolidation.

So Ms.

Casey.

Madam Chair, I would just say if we looked at the city limits map uh that Mr.

Banderob supplied in his uh one of his comments tonight.

I think um just kind of looking at that, the majority of the volunteer fire departments were outside the city limits at that time.

Uh it it was consolidation that brought them in, and it is that meets some bounds description because I have tried to trace that out that brought the volunteer fire districts into what we're calling I'm gonna just call it the urban fire district boundary for lack of a better term, because we do not have city limits anymore, but brought absorbed those majority of volunteer fire districts into that.

A question I would have that for the working group and maybe Mr.

Inroth is if we were to consider removing the volunteer language, we have that boundary of the fire district.

And if the volunteers go out and are successful in getting a mail levy, is that double taxation as as far as the fire fund on those folks?

Or does the fire district boundary become smaller, which then is also a concern for the career and the funding of the career and the paid fire department?

So I think that's going to be important.

I don't think, and I appreciate Ms.

Sargent's suggestion, but it's it's not as simple as just removing because there are unintended consequences, and I think those questions have to be answered by probably maybe with the advice of the county attorney.

Thank you, Ms.

Casey.

Madam Chair, thank you.

Uh I'm gonna kind of echo what Laurie said and in kind of going back to what Chad said.

Uh if they were to take that out, then different districts could eventually have different funding.

Your taxes might be higher than mine because your district's bigger or smaller, or vice versa.

And it's uh and I just think we're opening a can of worms there that we really don't need to get into.

Uh it's going to create just a whole lot of problems.

Uh and I kind of like walking down the street.

I ride motorcycles.

I don't need to get run over.

Thanks.

Mr.

Thielen, I appreciate that very much.

Um I think that the research and mulling the questions and bringing forward the the information to everybody is what the working group is going to need to do because it sounds like we have a lot of maybe miscommunication or misunderstanding about what could happen if we know it this might not be as easy as just striking out the language of volunteer fire departments in the charter.

It might have to be a little bit more complex.

There might be the answer of we do nothing with the charter and we turn it back to you guys to do the work with the study commit or with the commissioners.

But you know, I'm just saying there are many options on the table for us to consider.

I think are we done with Mr.

Worley?

Can we let him sit down?

Okay.

Mr.

Sorich, if you can come up, please.

Ms.

Dolan, I think it was your question.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

John, you know my question, right?

I don't have to repeat the question.

So I'm gonna I'm just going to without getting into a whole lot of politics from 1977 because there was a whole bunch of what caused that.

So what it looked like from my recollection, and I'm gonna use racetrack because that's what I'm probably most familiar with.

I was I was the assistant chief at racetrack for some time.

And there was two districts.

There was a city district and there was a county district.

And the county was the was staffed by the volunteers.

And that was um there was all the people that lived within the racetrack now, the racetrack district, they're they were paid for the equipment.

And same thing with the boulevards, same thing.

And but on the other hand, there was no uh nobody from the uh city district, which was the paid firemen, they would not cross into the county district.

And there is some that's where a lot of the animosity came from over the years.

I mean, there's turf force in essence, but that's what it looked like.

You know, so it was a city and county, and there's uh they were definitely separated, and the people within each district paid for their own fire protection.

Mr.

Soak.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just before I forget, I just want to bring some of these topics up.

Um regarding Mr.

Steppen's question on who owns what.

And I know that the volunteers lawyer just got done in 2001 with the Montana Supreme Court case, I believe, between Eureka, the City of Eureka and the volunteer departments up there.

And that is what in my opinion, Mr.

Enruth is going to be using to decide and going forward.

What I can do is I can send that uh report to the study commission members to read it, um, because I'm not going to be the one that say it at this meeting because of my position.

Um, and that will probably give us some guidance on what would happen if we were to disassemble.

There's a lot of questions.

Um, and there's a lot of opinions, and that is what has stemmed since I have been there.

Um, are the opinions and the emotions that get in the way of facts and truly what is better for the community.

So before we get too far, um the the working group, this group is gonna continue to have to have much needed dialogue with Mr.

Enruth to go ahead and continue some of our our discussions on it before you know we can even have guidance on where to go.

Thank you.

Mr.

Steppen, did you have a question?

I didn't.

I was I thought there was a hand up.

I may peripheral is not the greatest sometimes.

All right.

Um moving forward with this discussion.

Mr.

Banderab.

I would like to address her her question relative to what happened before.

I happen to be the husband of the daughter of one of the founders of the racetrack fire department.

He was instrumental in building the racetrack fire department.

The racetrack fire department doesn't happen to sit on city-county property.

They had to go out and collect money from the community to buy the property or to have it donated.

No.

I'll go the next step.

I will again call your attention to the third option that I brought before you before.

And that is by the way, the mine sits in the racetrack fire district, so I don't think they would have any problem maintaining the cost of what they need to do.

If they had not allowed to go out on their own and get the draft money, etc., etc.

But if you look at my third suggestion, that is to make a consolidated volunteer fire district of the county where they would combine their revenues and they would have control of it and share it with each other as needed.

And then the municipal fire department would have their district and their revenues to use.

Now the major problem being is efficiency.

And that I haven't heard really talked about.

And the ambulance from the municipal came down.

And we had a little discussion that what really needs to happen is there are a few districts that could be covered by the municipal fire department more efficiently.

But there are a few districts where the municipal fire department and the volunteer fire department need to need to learn to work together.

And if you look at my suggestion, they need to have a mutually agreed upon memorandum of operation.

So we don't have the problems that they're talking about not being able to get along and do the job.

And they knew to do it efficiently.

So there is a third option to create a municipal fire department or fire district, excuse me, and a county fire district, incorporating the different volunteer fire districts into one district.

Now, if you will also read my suggestion, according to Attorney General opinion, 80, whatever it is, whatever it is, this commission does not have the authority to bring before a subject of consolidation.

So that's the big question.

I think there needs to be a call consolidation.

There needs to be efficiency, and there needs to be a memorandum of a understanding or operation so our fire departments learn to work in harmony.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr.

Banderab, and others for the comments related to this discussion.

I think in moving forward, there's a lot of research that I'd like to assign to a work group to get done and bring back to the board to the commission to look at.

Some of those items being that map that we were referring to, a review of that fire study.

The fire study was shared by the chief in the early days of our commission, if you remember, we we've received that, so I'd like to see a review of that fire study and looking at any recommendations that were coming out of that.

The anaconda deer lodge charter review, which I think is I think it's good to look at that example, but I'm worried that it's not a good example in that they when they consolidated they left their their rural districts and their rural fire departments and followed state law, and their state was the municipal or their city municipal was their city municipal.

So it's a good model because they're consolidated district, but their apples and oranges, maybe they're both through, but not necessarily the same.

But let's look at that review.

Um I think we need to to speak with our um revenue sources with the budget department and with our treasurer looking at the source of levies in the taxing districts because of all of the issues that were raised regarding budget here.

Um the equipment question, I think needs to be answered.

And then um looking at type one cities in terms of we it's class one, type one, class one uh cities in terms of MCA, and you know, we weren't necessarily a municipality of or a city of that size when our consolidation happened, but we certainly are now, so how does that you know factor in, or can we go back and we have a grandfathered in groups or not if we make changes?

Um then that 2001 Supreme Court case review that you asked us to look at, Mr.

Silk.

And then of course anything else that I you know the body is wants to email us that we we need to consider in this conversation.

I'd appreciate that.

Any suggestions that all of you have for how to resolve this or how to to find our way forward, I would appreciate those as well.

Um so at this time I'd like to ask for a small group to volunteer to start the research process and the work group process.

And so Ms.

Dolan.

Uh I'd certainly be a part of that work group.

Thank you.

Mr.

Thielen, Mr.

Steppen.

Okay.

So I have the three volunteers, and then Mr.

Silk, you and I let's um tag team in and out of that group, please, um, to provide um background information and the deeper let the the three do the work with the um analysis that we're asking for, the evaluative analysis, and then the the work group that I asked, or the work pieces that I asked for them, I'll put that in email, and then you and I can tag team in and out with regards to um doing some other background research that we think important to the group.

Can I have a comment?

You may make a comment, you know.

I just want to let everyone know that I chose not to even try to be on this committee.

Um I originally wanted to.

I understand that there is some clear bias that some people think I have.

And there's different levels of biasedness.

I want to make that clear as well.

Um I know when we discussed about early on about the fire boards and and in the city manager board and how um I wasn't gonna be able to talk to that.

I hope that the commission or the subcommittee calls on me to gain experience not only as a perspective from career firefighter, volunteer, firefighter, member of the community, and on the study commission.

I look forward to having the hard conversations and being a part of the solution.

I have a feeling that a lot of these issues might not get resolved by the ballot of 2026.

And I have my own opinions of how I think we can resolve this issue, bringing it back to butte, which everyone wanted to do.

And I don't want to continue to go on because I know Madam Chair is probably trying to get me on a short leash here, and I understand that, but I hope that everyone on the study or the subcommittee truly goes to meetings that they've been asked to go to, listens to people from both sides, contacts the director of fire services, talks to the union, talks to the volunteers with an open mind.

Thank you.

Yeah, come on up.

Yeah, go ahead, Ms.

Dolan.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yeah, I just wanted to respond to what Chad just said.

Um Chad, I appreciate um what you're bringing to the um to the study commission, but I just have a concern um as we're going along.

I don't and I don't think you'll do this, but I just have to put it on the record with regard to um, you know, we're certainly have uh as much input as we possibly can, and it's gonna come back to this full commission.

But um I I really would like your input.

I mean, I and I understand that you are a career fighter, firefighter, but your fire experience in general is appreciated.

So um, but that said, I you know, we I don't want to take three steps forward and then go two steps back when you jump in and out with Ray Lynn.

So can you tell us what that looks like a little bit because I'd rather have a clear course of action because I just want to keep the ball moving forward, but I appreciate your your um investment and and your opinions.

Um but I just want to make sure that we have sufficient guardrails on that.

Thanks.

I think similar to the way that the work of our city county manager and the council of commissioners work group has done where they you the three of you would do the work that I asked of you in terms of these are issues that we need to start studying, um, bring that information back to the body, and then um you know start filling out that analysis.

That this group, the three of you would start with that analysis, and then Chad and I can continue to provide information um in terms of when we're doing research, things that might that we might have run up against, or that his you know, experience from working in the career department maybe he has more access to budgets or something that he could look at and bring forward to you.

And then when we're in the chairs here, I think then we can start those dialogues and you know, in and out if you were uh to use that language that I talked about.

So thank you, Madam Chair.

Um I just am concerned only because in the the first working group, we haven't had people jumping in and out, or maybe we have, and I just don't know about that, um, and leave them autonomous to do that work.

Um and so that's my question.

I think there's been um I just stopped by and jumped in your meeting today, so that was informal, but you know, I think it's I think it's okay.

I think we'll be ad hoc as we go, like you guys will be working, doing the work that we're asking you to.

I don't think that we would join meetings, you know without invitation or anything like that.

Madam Chair.

Yes, Mr.

I think having the complexity of what we looked at, our working group, versus the complexity and complications of what this working group is going to go through, we'll need some advice, whether it's from the volunteer fire departments, whether it's from the professional fire departments, whether from the county attorney's office, whether from MCA.

I mean, so the complexity of this issue and this working group will need every bit of information you can get to make your decision and to bring it back here for discussion.

So I think it's apples and oranges compared to looking at a charter, right?

And everyone has a mayor, everybody has a city county uh manager, everyone has council commissioners or city commission.

This is a new ball game.

This I haven't seen a lot of uh charters that has this complexity of having the fire department as a executive committee or administrative department in their charter.

So we're working with new ground here, and I would believe that any sort of information that is good information, you'll be looking for.

So it's i I think it's totally different.

We had our we had the not an easy group, but you know, we we cheated because we have a bunch of charters.

But this is uh this is a question on its own, right?

So yeah, it's it's complexity, and I think you would want to have all the information you can have uh when you're making your deliberations to bring it back to the to the uh entire group.

Thank you.

Miss Dolan.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So this kind of brings it all around to the first thing that I said this today was um can Shanna, can we reach out to Anaconda Deer Lodge to have this see if someone can come and educate us on the autonomy of a fire department, um not just pulling out the the volunteer, but pulling out all of fire to figure out what that looks like because I think that would help this working group get a sense of that.

Thank you.

We can we can certainly um direct Shanna to try to reach out again, and hopefully they will.

But yeah.

Dan.

Thank you.

I hope I hope I'm speaking at the right time.

Um I'll summarize my stuff so it goes pretty quickly.

Um my name is Dan Olson, uh 1066 standby Creek Road.

Uh as a lot of you know, I I'm a former commissioner.

Uh and uh during the time that I was a commissioner, I served as the fire advisory committee chair with these guys, uh uh Commissioner Soros, Commissioner Callahan, uh, and also Commissioner Silk was on that also.

Um I'm strong believer in, and I'm gonna I'm gonna jump through a bunch of this stuff.

Um I'm a strong believer in rural fire protection uh by volunteers that exist throughout the state of Montana and most of the United States.

They seem to work fairly well.

Um I also have three properties that are covered by um I'll say three different volunteer fire departments.

Uh one in one in uh granite county, one in Anaconda Deer Lodge, and my home here in View.

Um things I found out as uh a member of that uh that group, uh the uh um fire advisory committee, um it's different between the rural fire departments and the city fire departments.

Um within the city def city uh fire protection, most fires occur in well-defined locations with fire hydrants, uh which are familiar to the emergency personnel.

They know where the fire fire fire hydrants are.

In the rural areas, though, a lot of the area is county roads, at least where I'm at.

There's also some gray areas in there.

But out where I'm at, there are county roads.

And there are no fire or generally no fire hydrants.

And they have things called dry fire hydrants, which are pipes that they put into like a local pond, and then the fire tender shows up and pulls the water out of that.

So it's not like, oh, I'm just gonna turn the water on and then it comes on.

That's the other thing is that when you get out there in the rural district, uh you have to have a fire tender deliver your your water, and there has to be multiple ones.

You just can't have one that's gonna drive three miles back and forth, uh fill up and keep the fire, the fire engines that are pumping water on the fire uh supplied.

So there has to be numerous ones.

Uh that's another reason they have multiple volunteer fire departments because you can oh, we'll get terraverties and uh uh home athletes, uh fire tenders, they have people, they'll they'll come service.

Uh also at rocal at uh out in the rural locations, the the firehouses are local to that area.

They don't we can we couldn't depend on uh fire fire station two uh to service uh out in my area, which is out in Basin Crick Road.

Um I've also had a little experience with fire departments, both rural and city.

Uh when I lived in when I when I the house house I grew up in uh was two blocks from fire station number two.

Uh my father had it was a contractor here, he had a fire in his shop.

Uh it caught fire, and it was put out by the city city fire department, and it was put out quickly enough that he was able to rebuild that or re reconstruct the parts that had burned burned, and so that was that was great.

Quick quick response, quality quality control, quality uh fire suppression.

Um when I moved out uh to uh basin basing Creek Road, basically, or standby Creek Road.

Uh one night my wife and I were coming home on uh after a winter Christmas party uh from Montana Power and uh where I worked at the time.

Um one of our neighbors' houses was fully engulfed in flames.

No firemen, no it was like what do I do?

We went to the house, we went to my house at that time.

No cell phones, um went to the house called uh 911.

They said, Oh, yeah, well, we've been looking for that house.

Where is it?

We went out Montana Street, they went out Little Basin Creek Road.

I we live on big basin crick road, 29 minutes difference to get from that place to this, and they said we've been looking for that.

And 20 minutes later, they finally showed up and put out what was left of the fire what left left of the fire.

So it's it's a it's a different place.

Um I think if Terra Verde was called, they would have known where Basin Creek was as opposed to little basin creek, but that's you know that's another story.

Uh we can also go into this stuff this stuff about the state law, uh Butte Silverbow Charter and whatever.

Um I went into that when I when I was helping uh trying to defeat House Bill uh 547, and uh there's a lot lot involved there, but we'll I won't go into that any further here.

Um let's see.

Uh uh although volunteer personnel may not be as highly trained as professional firefighters, they do train regularly regularly to standards set by the state.

I also believe that volunteers are highly motivated as professional firefighters and dedicated enough to volunteer their own time to train uh and respond without pay.

But still remote has professional firefighters that are well trained and provide excellent service, but they're also among the most highly paid firefighters in the state.

Uh unfortunately, But also classified economically as a an area of poverty due to the average income and other factors.

I don't believe the citizens of Silver Go But Silver Bo can afford a full staff of professional firefighters that provide the service and provide uh provided by the motivated trained uh qualified volunteer fire departments that we now enjoy.

As a public servant, serving as a commissioner, a local business owner for 27 years, and being highly invited involved in other volunteer organizations.

I understand that each of those organizations are going to have to operate differently.

Administrations of a government government organization and the administration of successful volunteer organization do not well lend well together under one administration uh administrator.

Um I'd also want to return refer to the uh uh 2024 Butal Rebo Fire Department Master Plan that we talked that they were talked about, and their number one priority was improved volunteer and career career relationships.

And that's what I saw on uh as the um on the fire advisory committee is we need to get those relationships straightened out, get the get the respect back, professionalism and whatever.

I think they worked well for when they were on the fires.

Um it's the higher levels and uh administration that was that have caused the problem all along.

Um I believe Buserbo can be served well by both professional and volunteer fire departments who are individually managed and administers like like others in the state of Montana.

Uh we need to foster and rebuild our firefighting services to build collaboration, cooperation, and respect between the volunteers and professionals that I believe we can work out as other communities have in Montana.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Olson.

We have degenerated from the way that we're supposed to run our meetings, but it's fine.

I appreciate the comments.

Um with the further going with the fire department discussion from the commission.

Is there any more discussion tonight?

Okay.

Mr.

Steppen.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um with the way I guess that our meeting has kind of detoured from uh uh Mr.

Worthy was was making some points that I that I feel like he felt were important to make.

And since we've allowed everyone to have their opportunity to speak, did you still want to continue your comments that you weren't able to make?

Thank you, Mr.

Steppenw.

Uh thank you all again for the opportunity to speak.

Um I really don't want to speak for director Osborne.

Um it's a it's a very complex issue.

Um I don't think anybody wants to see the volunteers go away.

Um but there's funding issues, there's equipment issues, there's training issues.

Um of the main things that I I think your group might want to look at is we have a position in the charter, an assistant chief training officer that has been vacant since I believe 1989.

Don't quote me on that.

Um it's mandated to be funded, it's requested every year, and it's not funded.

Um we're at our max at the fire department on the number of mills we can levy.

If there's a way we could figure that out, I think it would solve a lot of the issues, you know, between the standards and training of ourselves and the volunteers.

Um there'd be a we would clearly know, they would clearly know what the expectations are.

Um not everybody has to be trained to the same level either.

But uh it would certainly make it easier as an incident commander if I showed up on a scene and a volunteer department showed up as on a scene.

If I knew what the qualifications of the people that are there are, and currently, I don't know that.

I'm Sarge came up tonight and stated she has 30 years of experience.

I don't I don't question her, but I have no idea what her qualifications are.

We just that's that's not something that we're privy to.

So I think a training officer that's mandated in the charter would go a long way towards solving a lot of the issues that we deal with on a daily basis.

Mr.

Worley, are you suggesting to put a training officer in the charter?

The training officer position is already in the charter.

Um if I could grab mine, I would show you.

I'm looking in the section.

What do you know what section it's in?

It's a it's in the code of ordinances.

Thank you.

Yes.

It's a assistant chief position.

Um the only assistant chief position that's been funded is the fire marshal.

Okay, so it's in ordinances, and that one is and is not I'm sorry, I got I got confused.

I got I got confused.

Mr.

Thielen?

Madam Chair, Mr.

Worley, why do you think that's never been filled?

It's not that it's never been filled.

I believe it was filled until 1989.

I believe was and it's been vacant since it's been vacant, I believe, since 89.

I believe uh firefighter Dumasich was the last training officer.

And uh there's uh basically funding is the is the reason we're given every year.

I mean, I do know that you know uh uh director Miller.

I don't know about Director Armstrong.

Um I only served under him for a little bit less than a year, but you know, Jeff Miller, Brian Doherty, Director Osborne, they do put in the request every year, and it just never seems to get funded.

And I think it'd be a I think it'd be a huge step for our department, you know, in order to have some standardized training for everybody, includ including ourselves.

Thank you, Mr.

Worley.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Yeah, appreciate what you're trying to tackle here.

And to that end, is there any other comments for our fire department discussion?

We've we've gone way off the rails, so I'm I'm fine with us being whichever whichever decorum we want to operate under.

Yeah, James.

So thanks uh again, study commission for having me up here.

This was a learning curve when I came here across all departments because when we look when we try to do a job um administratively through the executive branch, we don't have a clear cut of is it city or is it county, right?

And and you kind of can understand that with zoning and things like that, where you kind of look if you're in Bozeman, you look in there and you say, Okay, we're a class one city.

Well, we are not a city, we are not a county.

We are city-county government.

So everywhere in Butte Silver Bow, city-county government, we hold that title of city-county government.

We are not an individual city.

So, for example, there's a question on before 1977 um fire services.

So if you look at Floral Park, the it was uh an agreement between the territory of Floral Park and the Silver Bow County.

Which is crazy because I live in Butte and I'm like I but if you guys were to throw away the charter and us not go through consolidation, I wouldn't live in Butte anymore.

I would live in Flora Park territory.

And I could send you some of that information and it really helped me out, kind of understanding the complexities of all this.

I do want to so one thing that helps me personally do my job is going back to that taxing area, right?

Because who holds that responsibility?

And uh I will send you guys this in an email.

I sorry I did not bring it out, but there is an attorney general opinion that says if the county commissioners opt to govern the fire service area or fire district themselves, then the responsibility for indemnification would rest within the county, and if they choose to do it within the trustees, then the trustees would have to indemnify their employees, right?

Um or their volunteers.

So again, following the money.

So I I want to so when you guys I invite you guys when you guys do that, uh please let me know.

I think I have over 63 articles pulled from the Montana standard going back to 1927 over this issue.

So I would gladly share with you all my research.

Uh I listened to the the tape recordings of the study commission.

They're available at the archives.

There's a box there for you.

Uh they have the original recordings, and um county attorney McCarthy is very passionate.

He's like a he's really good around this issue, but he was really forceful in this idea of city-county.

We are one city-county government.

Uh and to uh uh a uniqueness about Butte is that we do guys get to be very creative because this issue is hearing things about the volunteers being removed.

Uh it I I don't think any of us like to see our community like this, right?

We are uh everyone here has a has a great heart.

They do it all for the right reasons.

Uh our paid guys are our volunteer, uh guys and girls, sorry.

Uh so uh it's about there is an implication when you guys make a decision that affects us administratively and doing our jobs.

And this is where when I gave my presentation, I'm very thankful for.

Uh so lean on the staff, ask them maybe ask questions about what kind of safety and health concerns would this be.

And right now, I I mean I can I could lose sleep at night thinking that there are respirators assigned in Butte Silver Bow without proper medical evaluation and fit testing.

I mean, that is so unacceptable on Butte Silver Bow.

And the responsibility, and that is is Butte Silver Bow.

That's is our the fire district within itself.

So uh something to think about, please uh keep us keep uh the administrative the people who do this every single day for a career.

Uh keep us in mind when you're making these decisions and reach out and see how how these decisions might impact um or might be the unintended consequences.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Dolan.

Uh thank you, Madam Chair.

James, sorry, um, I'm just gonna make a comment.

Yeah, I don't know, I don't think you'll have a follow-up, but um could you I I do remember your presentation um that you gave us with um all of the the ramifications for your particular job in like OSHA and or uh sorry risk yeah what is your title again risk manager?

Yeah, sir safety and health coordinator.

Yes, thank you.

So could you for us um and for the working group, could you go through that presentation and a lot of your um items in that presentation were national figures?

So could you drill that down to what it looks like locally for Beauty Silver Bow City County and some of those suggestions with fit testing and other things throughout your presentation?

Could you do that for us?

Okay, are you talking about standards within itself?

So I'm just gonna be very specific because it does get a little bit complicated, but to answer your question, so public employees are not Montana's not an OSHA state.

Montana has yes, yeah, Montana has adopted 1910, 1926, and 1904 record capee as administrative rules.

So we have to follow all of those OSHA standards, and then there's the NFPA standards, which is a consensus standards, best practice, which are more stringent in many times and that fulfill the OSHA standards as well.

And I'll happily go through those standards with you and see what they look like.

Actually, next Thursday night we have a volunteer and career fire safety meeting that uh I'm hosting at the EOC that all the volunteers and paid career guys have been invited to where we're gonna discuss some of these safety topics, which we're really excited about.

I'm really excited about.

Uh so there's that that to look forward to as well.

But yeah, there I think safety and health is a big issue, so I can do that for you.

I can leave now.

You're welcome.

You can go.

Yeah, thank you.

All right.

So to let's um try to move this discussion forward in terms of we need to authorize a working group.

We have three volunteers, and so I need I'd like to have a motion to authorize that working group to get going on the questions that we have brought forward tonight.

Mr.

Denahee.

Madam Chair, I would make a motion that the three member working group comprised of Cindy Perdue Dolan, Ben Thielen, and Matt Stippen can be uh uh appointed and start working on the issue of the fire department um language in the charter is there a second second?

Ums Casey seconds.

Um all those in um let's have a discussion on the motion.

Is there any discussion?

Okay, all those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, so motion carries will authorize that, and then I I will put that list in email and then please add to that list any questions that you know you all have tonight as you're mulling.

And then I would certainly welcome questions or um issues to get into from those folks that are in the audience tonight as well through our email, our study commission email, please send those that way.

Um I do think that um having Mr.

Nruth ahead of the curve with you might be helpful.

So reaching out to him to see what might work for him in order to get together with you at the beginning of your work session might be helpful.

We don't have a public hearing tonight.

Any other scheduled matters besides dinner?

All right, and our announcements our next weekly study commission will be November 17th, and we'll take on the issue of neighborhood councils.

Um could I have a motion to adjourn?

Make a motion to go on.

Mr.

Thiel Nix makes the motion.

Is there a second?

With Dolan, all those in favor?

Thank you, folks.

We'll see you next week.

I know you are.