Taxpayers get a break on 911 bid
Inter Lake editorial
Flathead County taxpayers will get a substantial break in the amount they will pay for a new consolidated 911 dispatch center.
This week, the county commissioners approved a $3.3 million bid from Swank Enterprises that turned out to be $1.2 million below the original estimate for building the 11,800-square-foot center near Glacier High School.
That's a significant amount - roughly a 25 percent discount - and it can partly be attributed to slowed construction activity that led to highly competitive bidding.
As a result, the bond issue approved by voters last fall to build the new emergency center will be adjusted downward to reflect the lower cost.
That's a big break for Flathead County taxpayers.
FLATHEAD County residents are putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak, when it comes to road dust.
Numerous neighborhoods signed up for the county's cost-sharing program to apply dust palliatives to gravel roads this summer.
As a result, residents along more than 24 miles of county roads will get a breather from dust that can be choking during times of high traffic.
The county modeled the cost-sharing program after a similar effort in Gallatin County. It's innovative projects like this one that can offer some relief to our rural folks. Even in good times the county simply doesn't have the money to pave the hundreds of miles of road that need it, and recent tough economic times have taken a bite out of the county coffers.
It's amazing to see what can be accomplished if we all work together to solve our problems.
MONTANA'S two senators shared the national media spotlight in a recent edition of Time magazine.
One two-page spread detailed the quest of Sen. Max Baucus for health-care reform, while a back-page column humorously followed Sen. Jon Tester as he changed offices in Washington, D.C.
"Baucus has been surprising almost everyone, most notably by the zeal with which he is tackling what could be the toughest challenge of all: overhauling the health-care system," the Time article said.
On a lighter side, Tester's Montana folksiness came through in a Joel Stein column on moving day in the Senate. Tester is described as "a sweet, back-slappy guy with an $11 haircut."
It's unusual, and a little bit flattering, for Montana to have both its senators in the spotlight.