I'll bring the Butte Silver Bow Council of Commissioners Committee of the Whole Meeting to order for Wednesday, March 11th, 2026.

Can we please have a roll call, please?

One presiding, ten present, one absent.

Uh please let the record reflect that Commissioner Shea is excused for tonight.

Uh Commissioner Walker, would you please lead us in the prayer and the pledge?

Next item on tonight's agenda is any public comment on any items that's on the agenda.

If there's a member of the public that would like to speak on any item that's on the agenda, now would be your opportunity.

Okay.

Seeing none.

But I want the commissioners to to be aware of that.

So that's why I'm giving it in my report of the chair.

Chief Fire Services Director Osborne.

Okay, good evening.

Some of you guys remember, this started last year when we um uh attempted to make this adjustment.

We ran into some timing issues, knew that we had basically just start over, and now we're starting over.

But before we jump right into what our plan is, tonight's presentation is just giving a uh history background of Montana Connections and uh uh how we treat it uh towards the fire fund.

I did bring, I'm fortunate enough to bring a couple guests with me.

Uh a few slides have to do with the history of Montana Connections that umette will cover for me.

She is very knowledgeable as you guys know in the in the history of this, uh, as well as finance director Karen Hassler is in the back that um uh said she'd be willing to come up and answer any finance questions when I'm done.

So um we'll start and now Danette's gonna talk for about four or five slides.

Ms.

Gleeson.

Um yeah, for the record, my name is Danette Gleason.

Uh my address is 8735 U.S.

Highway 10.

Like Zach had mentioned, I worked here at the local government for many, many years and um have the history and the knowledge um of the creation of the district and kind of how the fire districts were established.

Um time to 1994 and a little before, so nobody gets to comment on my age here, but anyways, um it's actually a pleasure to come and talk to um all of you again tonight.

Um, like Zach had told me um before we kind of talked about what I present to you is he gave me some ideas of some questions that he had faced um the last time he presented to you, as well as some recent questions.

So I just want to start by saying um you're gonna find out in these slides a lot happened between the time frame of 1994 and 1998.

There was a lot going on in that time frame.

Actually, you could run back to 1992.

And in 1992, um everybody's aware the water division was getting taken over by the local government.

And in those transactions as well, was the transfer of the Silver Lake Water System to Butso Reboe.

And all the result of that transfer and all the happenings that were going on, um we were able to create a tax increment financing district called the Ramsey Tiffet District number two, um, south of town here, and start to attract manufacturing and industry, and therefore needed a lot of different local government services.

So that included what were we going to do to add fire services.

You're bringing whole new manufacturing to town, it required a lot of different types of fire services.

How were we going to support not only the district as it expanded, but current to that time as me, now known as REC.

So I think you're also going to see that a lot happened.

Um we had some significant thought by our former leadership at that time.

Um had some transitions of chief executives.

So we had Chief Executive Don Peoples working on this, former Chief Executive Dave Fisher, former Chief Executive Jack Lynch, we had the 1994 Study Commission, and then of course the Council of Commissioners, all working together to try to resolve what were we going to do with the TIFIT, what were we going to do with fire services, how were we going to handle what was currently needed at that time, and what were the avenues to make changes for the community and growth in industry as we move forward.

So if we look at the slides up there, and I'm not gonna I put a lot of information on these slides.

Hopefully, um Zach can share this presentation with you, and you if you ever have to reference back to looking at old resolutions and all that, they're there.

I'm just not gonna talk about a lot of it, but the district again was created May 20th, 1994.

It was expanded under ordinance um 546 and 95 to take into the um property that ASMI was to be located on, now REC.

Again, I mentioned during this whole time period the study commission of 1994 was working.

They were doing a lot of different charter amendments at that time.

A lot of them uh were focused on fire services, and then also brought forth just as the study commission is meet today.

They were bringing people in asking them what do we need, and of course, at that time the former fire service director Barb Armstrong was bringing up this new whole TIFIT being expanded and how he was gonna serve that, and also you're gonna see the expansion of the uniform fire district.

So a lot was going on at that time, and then on June 4th in 1996, the voters approved these recommendations to the charter, eventually creating Article 7 and amending Article 7, um, section 703G1 and 70 um 3G2.

Some of these handouts were put on your desk tonight, just snapshots of the charters and the municipal code that I'm going to talk about.

So what really happened here in these amendments, the main goal was to change the 1976 uniform fire district boundaries.

So the original fire district boundaries of 76.

My the again, this is all my recollection of everything and how we operated when I was here, but the boundary was more down to just about row road area, picking up some of it from front to row road, a little bit a weird shot there.

Kind of now where we know Elizabeth Warren shooting a little bit over there, grabbing a little bit of the country club and coming up continental.

So 1997 or 1996, and then transitioned over to the consolidated government in 77.

We had a pretty small fire district.

And then all this stuff was happening in 94.

We had growth going south of town to serve.

We had the new district forming.