Another Folly For Fort Peck Rural County Water District Board Members

Dear Editor,

I am concerned the Fort Peck Rural County Water District Board has learned NOTHING from public input and their expensive legal opinions regarding open meeting laws and public transparency, consider the following:.

After seeing the notice in BS Buzz that the rebuttal to my campaign materials would be available on April 24, 2024, I immediately sent the Board an email. I inquired about how the ads, the expenditure of funds and and rebuttal all got accomplished without a Board meeting! This is the Board's second open meeting violation in two months.

In an effort to ratify their work AFTER the fact, the Board posted an agenda for a special meeting on Friday, April 26, 2024 (a day when the Water District just happens to be closed) for a meeting to be held that Sunday at 6:00 AM. Who holds a public meeting at 6AM on a Sunday? And (instead of posting the meeting at the Fort Peck post office, which has normally been the case for many years) the Board chose to post the meeting announcement at the Valley County Courthouse! Since we all know that the Courthouse does not elicit weekend traffic, one is left to conclude that these efforts were done purposefully in hopes that no one from the public would see the special meeting notice or attend the meeting.

The Board proactively making decisions and implementing this plan without a board meeting and public input strongly suggests their actions are intentional. That is, I doubt very much that a special meeting would have occurred had I not called them out on the open meeting violation.

Josh Kittleson and Joe Yeoman have both been on the Board 7+ years; recently Linda Parpart claimed that she "knows the law." To me, the Board's conduct is unbelievably arrogant, and they do not inspire trust. Somebody on this Board needs to put a stop to this behavior.

Mary Kaercher

Fort Peck, Mont.