Letters to the editor June 7
County litigation record
As current chairman of the Flathead County Planning Board, I want to address recent letters related to Flathead County having a high litigation rate on planning issues. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Consider the following facts: 1). From 2019 throught 2022 to date Flathead County has processed a total of 843 land-use applications including Minor Subdivisions, Major Subdivisions, Final Plats, Zones Changes, Conditional Use Permits, Lakeshore Variances and Lakeshore Permits.
2). Detractors cherry picked two projects with lawsuits as their evidence as bad planning decisions.
3). Those two lawsuits constitute a total of 0.2% of the land use projects that Flathead County has successfully processed.
4). Put another way, Flathead County has successfully and legally completed 99.8% of its land use decisions.
5). Flathead County has successfully defended many land use lawsuits over the years.
I would place Flathead County’s litigation record on land use decisions against any jurisdiction in the United States. We should be proud of our Planning Office and our Flathead County Commissioners for having such a low rate of litigation on land use projects. This proves that the planning office and the Flathead County Commissioners have done an outstanding job.
— Jeff Larsen, Lakeside
Gun restrictions will not protect kids
“How much more carnage are we willing to accept” Biden said.
Evidently the Democrats are willing to accept a whole lot of carnage because nothing they proposed will help save kids’ lives. All the current proposals are about taking away the rights of the American citizens, those people who have committed no crimes. It has been shown a long time ago that kids are protected by having an armed officer on site at the school.
The Democrats are so opposed to having an officer with a firearm on school grounds that they are literally risking the lives of the kids for their feelings about guns. Their only answer is to take away guns from everyone.
The rest of the world knows what keeps kids safe, armed guards. Yet here in the U.S. we are behind the rest of the world in protecting our kids.
Why is that? An irrational fear of guns. Who do you call when there may be an attack on a school? A police officer of course – a good guy with a gun. And that may take 30 minutes to an hour for response time. Why not employ that office on site full time and reduce the response time to zero? Again because of an irrational fear of guns.
Joe Biden and the Democrats have proposed nothing that will keep kids safe. They only propose to take away our rights. We need support for having an officer on site at all schools, but the current administration will never propose something so self-evident and helpful.
— William Fry, Kalispell
Follow the money
Wondering how many Republican senators had received donations from the NRA, I decided to look it up given that we have seen no substantive movement on gun control. Easy to find so I wanted to share part of that list and save you the time: Mitt Romney, Utah: $13,647,676; Richard Burr, N.C.:$6,987,380; Roy Blunt, Missouri: $4,555,722; Thom Tillis, N.C.:$4,421,333; Cory Gardner, Colorado: $3,939,199; Marco Rubio, FL: $3,303,355; Joni Ernst, Iowa: $3,124,773; Rob Portman, Ohio $3,063,327; Todd C. Young, Indiana: $2,897,582; Bill Cassidy, Louisiana: $2,867,074.
Oh, almost forgot Mitch McConnell, Kentucky: $1,267,139!
The full list contains 50 senators in total. Staggering isn’t it?
I’ll let you connect the dots….or should I say, dollars!
— Vera Smith, Kalispell
Thanks for rounding up
I just wanted to write a quick and sincere thank you to Flathead Electric Cooperative’s Round Up for Safety program. Thanks to this opportunity, the Northwest Montana History Museum has been able to install a modern security system to ensure the safety of everyone in and around our 22,000 square foot building.
Thanks to everyone who “rounded up” their bill to help support non-profit organizations in the Flathead Valley!
— Jacob Thomas, Kalispell