I just learned that the wise Councilmen of the City of Miles City have decided to gut the parks department. There used to be 7 full time employees in the parks, now there is 3. They would like to layoff 2 more and hire migrant workers to fill the remaining positions. If any of you people care about the Parks that you enjoy for Bucking Horse Sale, Family reunions, Class reunions, baseball, football, Music in the Park (VFW), call your councilperson and or the Mayor and tell them to leave the Parks Department alone and get to the real problems. Talk about spending a dollar to save a penny.

Thank you, Brady Stone-Parks employee since 1991.

I agree. It seems they're gutting good projects to fund more idiotic projects. One project in particular, the underpass. What a surprise that it flooded and how much money was dumped into it?

Brady, are they planning to reorganize the workload at all, or do they really think they can operate the parks with just one person?

Sorry, that last one was from me. Gotta make sure I know who's logged on now that the boss logs on from my computer.

Regarding the underpass it was my understanding that the new pumps they installed were doing a good job of keeping it drained but because the storm sewer system's capacity is inadequate all that water from the underpass was maxing out the system and causing the drains to back up in other, more critical places. The result was flooding on Main St. such as near 10th St. by the library. Apparently Mayor Grenz then requested permission from the State to shut off the pumps on the underpass because it was preferable to have the excess water in the underpass rather than inside the library.

I'm not sure but I suspect the State of Montana paid for much of the work on the underpass since Main St. is a state highway. I.E. that was a State project and not a City project.

The mayor probably wants to use the money saved from the Parks Dept. to pay for infrastructure improvements. Such improvements might include increasing the storm sewer capacity which would really keep the underpass and the rest of the town from flooding.

I do think it is a shame that the Parks Dept. is being so severely cut.

- Dave

Yes, the underpass is the States and the land is BN's. However the parks department takes care of the grass and the sprinkler system. With no money being provided from either of the above entities.

Rick, no they are not taking in account work load or they would have hired three more people.

Frog pool will probably close for there will be nobody certifide to run it.

Yeah, or they could hire one of me. I was a lean mean weed-whackin machine, remember? Ok, maybe not lean. Hopefully all this stuff is preliminary and better solutions will be found. I'd better start attending some of these city council meetings, I guess.

Talk to you soon,
Rick

Tomorrow night at 6:30 meeting on Budgets.

Close the frog pool?? My children spend every day there in the summer. The parks that we have in Miles City are one of the few places that families can go to relax and have fun. Brady, whose bright idea was this?? Let me know what I can do to protest and I will do so with bells on...

$500,000.00?
Does anyone know where that amount of money went?

It costs at least a half million a year to keep Miles City free of mosquitos.

I can't say much in a Public forum about where I think the money went, but what I found odd was last nights paper where they are considering cutting $5,000 from the Economic Developement, yet keep $4,000 for the Historic Preservation Office. So in essance, they care more about Miles City's Past than they do our future. This is the most unprogressive town in Montana.

Take the money from the fire dep.They don't
need to get paid for sleeping all night,they don't need
a sec.to answer the phones,they don't need alot of things
they think they need for a podunk little town like this.
If we where 30,000 or 50,000 people sure,
but not a town of this size.
Shame on them for wasting miles city tax $.