Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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The Valley County Community Pool Campaign blew past the $1,000,000 mark in the middle of November thanks to a generous grain donation through our bushel drive program! This comes a month after the committee had another successful fundraising event. The Wine & Charcuterie drive-by event at the fairgrounds raised $20,670 between selling raffle tickets, an online mini-auction, and matching funds received. Interstate Engineering completed the preliminary site survey and base map over the summer. They are now working on the preliminary design...
Many people browse the Black Friday sales and decide the holidays are a good time to upgrade their televisions, computers, laptops, cell phones, etc. These new purchases replace older versions, which are then either thrown away or placed out of sight, out of mind in the house. Glasgow resident and owner/operator of Glasgow Montana Recycling Adam Hooper has teamed up with the Valley County Landfill to help recycle those outdated and unwanted electronics not only for the holiday season but beyond. At the Valley County Landfill there is a new,...
The walls of Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital will have a new addition in the near future due to a generous donation from a local artist. At the end of October, St. Marie resident and artist Leith DeWeese donated nine pieces in honor of her late husband, Jerry DeWeese, who passed away last December. The artwork will be displayed throughout the building including patient rooms, waiting rooms and hallways. The pieces will also be rotated with the existing artwork already on display in order to ens...
The Valley County Health Board passed an updated health order on Nov. 16 expanding on orders issued by the governor of Montana and tightening COVID-19-prevention restrictions on crowd sizes regardless of setting, ability to social distance and whether the venue is outdoors. The order came after four public meetings spanning more than a month. In each meeting public comments, updates from local health care institutions, government and businesses dragged out a debate about what the county could do to curb what, in October, appeared to be a...
There have been over 700 opioid overdose fatalities in Montana since 2000. Many of those deaths were not the result of illicit drugs, but rather due to the use of prescription drugs for pain. In response, the state has sought to field overdose-reversing drugs and put them in the hands of EMTs, law enforcement and care providers to prevent those deaths. One way Valley County is doing this is through a grant administered by the Valley County Care Coalition that funds training and prescriptions...
The Valley County Sheriff is reporting part-time Valley County resident Carl Mann drowned the morning of Nov. 20 after falling through the ice covering the Trout Pond near Fort Peck, Mont. He was 71 years old. Sheriff Tom Boyer told the Courier, Mann was out hunting when his dog traveled out onto the ice and fell through. After the dog was unable to self-rescue, Mann attempted to retrieve the dog and fell through the ice as well. After several failed attempts to rescue the dog and himself, Mann eventually succumbed to the cold and slipped...
The Valley County Board of Health was planning to release a local public health order in response to continued upticks in positive coronavirus cases in the county. The mandate was set to be released Monday, Nov. 9 (as of press time the draft had not been published), for public comment ahead of the BOH meeting, which will be held at 5:15 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 12, via Zoom. KLTZ should also be broadcasting the meeting for their listeners, per an email from Executive Director Clay Berger. The public health order seeks to limit social gatherings to...
A pair of lawsuits filed in Federal Court in Great Falls in early November allege Valley County failed to act in protecting the then-underage victims of ex-Undersheriff and convicted sex offender Luke Strommen when he sexually abused and raped them while on duty as a Valley County Sheriff’s Deputy. The two women, now adults, filed separate lawsuits through the same attorneys last week seeking to hold Valley County responsible for what they see as a failure to protect them. The complaints stated that the county should have been aware that Stromm...
Sherri Turner's decades-long career at the Valley County Sheriff's Office is coming to a close this November after Turner announced her retirement earlier in the year. When she leaves her job as the VCSO administrative assistant this month she will have worked a total of 37 years for the county and served a total of seven different sheriffs-starting with Dan Taylor and ending with current Sheriff Tom Boyer. Turner had never intended to end up in Valley County. She was originally from Omaha,...
The Valley CARE Coalition and Eastern Montana Community Mental Health Center partnered this year for Red Ribbon Week, a national movement to promote drug free youth. This year due to COVID-19 health and safety concerns the partners arranged a community-wide scavenger hunt during the last week of October. Twelve clues in all were posted around Glasgow and community members were encouraged to take photos with the ribbons and email them in as well as post them to the Valley CARE Facebook page for t...
It became the comically contentious subject of 2020, but a two-year effort to change the law in Glasgow to allow for the raising of chickens has failed after being placed before the voters of Valley County. With a 329-vote margin, the people of Glasgow rejected Glasgow City Ordinance No. 971 for hens to be raised in the city limits. The total votes were 1,049 voting against and only 720 voting in favor. The ordinance was spearheaded by Madelyn House, who moved to Glasgow and had hopes of...
A lot will have changed between press time and the arrival of this newspaper, but Valley County's votes have been tallied and counted and the results are in. In total, 4,327 people cast their ballots across all three of the county's precincts out of 5,136 registered voters. That puts the county's turnout rate at just over 84 percent. As of election night the race for President between incumbent Donald Trump and Joe Biden had not been called in favor of either candidate. In Montana's race for...
The Valley County Health Department reported the 400th case of COVID-19 in the county on Nov. 2. The total case count is a sharp increase from the beginning of October when the county was reporting just over 140 cases on Oct. 7. Of the total number of cases, 338 have recovered, 57 are active and five have passed away. Out of the total 400 cases, the county has hospitalized 36 patients, making the rate of hospitalization nine percent. As of Oct. 2, 9 people were hospitalized in Valley County. Seven were positive for COVID and two awaiting test...
"Busy, very busy," said Brian Austin on how work was going at Hi-Line Meats which opened in a brand new facility on Oct. 24 in Glasgow. Situated on Highway 2 beside the VFW, the small facility was packed with workers and wild game two days later. Austin, who has been cutting wild game for 32 years in Glasgow and also manages the Valley County landfill, is hitting the ground running with his partner, Danny Zeiger, who also works in the oilfields in North Dakota. Austin had rushed to get the new...
During a public meeting of the Valley County Board of Health, alongside representatives from Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital, STAT Air Ambulance, Prairie Ridge, Valley View Home, the Chamber of Commerce and county health officer Anne Millard, one issue became clear—health infrastructure in Valley County was starting to feel the pressure brought on by an increase in COVID-19 cases. Board of Health chair Clay Berger presided over the meeting on Oct. 21 and opened by stating the meeting’s purpose to “one, establish an open line of commu...
Election Day 2020 is less than a week away. Tuesday, Nov. 3, is the final day of this year’s general election. This year, Valley County is conducting the election entirely by mail, falling in line with the majority of the state, to observe health and safety concerns amidst the novel coronavirus pandemic. Election ballots for this year’s general election needed to be postmarked by Oct. 26, which was also the final day to register to vote, aside from in-person registration which will be available, Tuesday, Nov. 3, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. The Clerk...
At their regular weekly meeting on Oct. 21, the Valley County Commissioners announced they had unanimously selected Marie Pippen for the soon-to-be vacated Clerk and Recorder and Superintendent of Schools position. Pippen will replace Taryn Aberg, whose resignation will be effective Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020. The Commissioners received four applications for the position and narrowed their selection to three. After independently reviewing the resumes of the applicants, they came together to discuss their findings. Pippen was selected because the...
It has been over two weeks since coronavirus was detected at Valley View Nursing Home on Oct. 5. In that time cases have spread among staff and residents as the home implemented policies, lockdowns and isolation to combat the spread of the virus through the home’s residents. According to Wes Thompson, the home’s administrator, so far, there have been 11 residents confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus all aged between 63 and 98 years. Of those, none were showing serious symptoms and six were expected to be recovered by next week. Fou...
In a digital townhall on Oct. 18, Valley County Health Officer, Dr. Anne Millard, gave an update on the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in the county calling on its residents to “take this more seriously” and urging people to follow mandatory mask requirements, social distancing and hand hygiene protocols to slow the spread of the disease locally. The news of increasing hospital patients was accompanied by the tragic news that the county experienced two more COVID-19 deaths. The two individuals were a woman in her 80s and a man in his 90s. As...
Montanans who thought they had more time to fill out the 2020 Census ran out of time last week when the Supreme Court approved the Trump administration’s request to end the 2020 Census earlier than expected. Another consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Census Bureau has had to adjust their normal processes to ensure everyone in the state is counted. The original deadline for the U.S. Census was July 31 and was originally extended to Oct. 31 to allow the opportunity to respond to challenges the pandemic created. In August, the C...
The Glasgow School Board met for their regular meeting on Oct. 13, and on the agenda was the discussion to add girls wrestling to the Glasgow High School activities. Athletic Director Brenner Flaten outlined the proposal, analysis and a survey taken by middle school and high school girls on their interest in participating in the sport if offered. In the proposal, Flaten explained adding girls wrestling would not incur any additional expense, except for $250 per year to sponsor the additional sport, which would be paid out of internal funds....
Glasgow Public Schools extended distance learning for elementary-aged school children this week pushing back a hopeful date of resuming in-person instruction from Oct. 19 to Oct. 26. The announcement was made in a letter to staff from Superintendent Wade Sundby. The Glasgow middle and high schools are continuing their in-person classes. In the letter Sundby wrote that after conversations with the Valley County Health Department about the stress the uptick in cases has put on department staff, he decided to delay resuming classes for another...
The Valley County Community Pool Campaign held their drive-thru Wine Flight & Charcuterie Night Event Oct. 13 at the Valley County Fairgrounds. The event drew a large crowd despite the rainy weather, with the line of cars extending out to the highway. Volunteers Rod Karst and Taylor Zerbe greeted "guests" and handled the silent auction items while delivering the wine and charcuterie plates to ticket holders. An in-person event had been planned earlier this year but health and safety precautions...
