Olsen tries to clear up questions about his residency, looks for new home

Letter to the Editor,

After all of the lies that Mayor Doug Roll has started, and then has no guts to face it, I wanted to state some facts, about me and my residency.

I bought a house in town in 1978, that I owned for 28 years. The second home I bought was in 2000 which I owned for five years. In 2006, I purchased a piece of property just south of town and sold the two houses that I had in town. Why you ask, because I saw and brought to our ex-mayor’s attention, that a lot of our grant money was leaving our town, so I thought that if  I moved my business to the outside edge of town, that they would spend the money locally. It did not work.

In 2008 the tree board did call my nursery and ordered trees from me. After getting the trees that they ordered one of the tree board people came into my nursery and inspected the trees on a Wednesday, said they looked good. Came back in on Thursday and looked at the trees again, with no comment. Then on Saturday came in to pick up the trees.

Within a couple of hours, here comes some of the trees back. Because they now claim they have the right to refuse any and all trees, they were not bare root, like they claimed they told me to buy, which they did not.

They also claim that they did not have enough money to purchase all of the trees. They did buy $1,465 worth of trees, the other $1,400 I ate. No profit there.

In 2010 there was $68,000 stimulus money meant to spur the economy. This money was spent locally. I did get the planting bid from this money, but did not sell the city any trees, like it is claimed in the paperwork.

At first, I was upset because of the money that I was not paid from my bid, that again I had to eat. If it was not for the fact that my bid was for around $8,500, but was called and told to double my bid, to get the bid, so now my bid was around $17,900. I do not have a number on how much I lost, but I did not get paid the full amount.

The tree board is doing better than they were doing, but have room for improvement still.

In 2010, I still did not like what I was seeing about certain spending habits, so in June 2010 I rented a house in town, with the hopes of running for City Council. In 2011, I ran and won the seat on the council.

In February, pipes broke in my rental house, and the house is still under a remodel. When it is done I will move back in to it.

I do not know how long this will take, we have  been held up because of asbestos in the house. The EPA did some cleanup in the house, but every hole drilled in the house has more asbestos. So, the electrician and plumbers, by law, have to stop the job and bring the EPA back to inspect it. But we are being told that they would not clean it and that we have to do it. We are cleaning it, and it is a slow process.

Before I decided to run for Council I checked into the law to see if I would qualify, by not living in town on a full-time basis. I qualified, ran and won my seat legally. Our Mayor does not want to accept that, so Roll decided that he will not let me do the job I was elected to do, and to see if he could discredit me with a bunch of lies, that he will not and cannot back up.

Right now, I am looking to buy another house in town, even though it will still not be good enough for Doug.

As for D.C. Orr, I want it to be known that he is not my spokesperson, best friend, mentor, boss or daddy, I am older than him. However, he is a good friend of mine, always has been and always will be. We are as good of friends today, as the day that I won his seat on the council. He is a good man and truly wants Libby to be a better place.

I told the people of Libby that I am my own man when I ran, with my own opinion. That is the way it is and will be as long as I am sitting on the council.

—Allen Olsen

Libby