þ New stops are welcome signs

Shiny new stop signs went up Tuesday on West Reserve Drive where it intersects with Stillwater Road.

That s a start.

The West Valley community, once out of the way of Kalispell traffic, is now a bustling place. A new high school under construction, growing subdivisions, gravel pits and a commercial building boom to the east have strained the rural, two-lane roadways.

While poor judgment and bad driving can happen anywhere, the community took a sobering look at the mix of heavy trucks and passenger cars on its roads when the driver of a loaded dump truck ran a stop sign and struck and killed 16-year-old Allison Fifield last year.

The effort to improve safety at the Stillwater/Reserve junction has been led by Allison s grieving parents, Paul and Marlene Fifield. They have worked with city and state officials to make the intersection a four-way stop.

It worked: The Montana Department of Transportation put up the signs on Tuesday.

The Fifields hope for future improvements, including redesigning the road and lowering the speed limit.

We, too, hold out hope that major improvements are ahead, particularly as the opening of Glacier High School looms in fall 2007.

But one thing the Fifields are crusading for doesn t require an engineer or a new sign or legislation.

They want drivers to stop at signs, to slow down, to wait for the next green light instead of rushing through a red light.

Those new stop signs on West Reserve will take some getting used to. Drivers will have to pay a little extra attention the first time they have to put on their brakes.

From the Fifields perspective, a little extra attention is always a good thing.

Last week s report of a Columbia Falls horse with West Nile virus raises a lingering question about the need for mosquito control in Flathead County.

Officials are concerned that this confirmed case emerged so early in the year. In the past two years, the virus was found in local horses later in September, within a few weeks of a hard frost needed to kill the virus.

Voters had their say at the primary election in June, turning down a tax levy that could have raised as much as $330,000 to control mosquitoes. The tax request lost by a slim 600-vote margin.

The levy would have cost about $6 a year in taxes for each $100,000 of property tax valuation. It s been a particularly bad mosquito summer, and many of us have spent more on bug spray and citronella candles than it would have cost to pay our share of a countywide control program.

We encourage the Mosquito Control Board to consider another levy vote. A comprehensive control effort makes much more sense than all of us dispensing our own temporary relief.

Mosquitoes are no longer just a summertime nuisance; they re a health threat to be reckoned with.