Former CVFSA board members file legal appeal

The Cabinet View Fire Service Area and the board that governed it may be no more, but that didn’t stop two former members of the panel from filing a lawsuit that challenges the dissolution of the agency.

Former Cabinet View Fire Service Area board members Bill Clark, who was the board’s chairman, and Robert Mast filed a lawsuit Sept. 11 in 19th Judicial Circuit Court seeking to overturn the Lincoln County Commissioners decision last month to dissolve the FSA.

The lawsuit questions the Commissioners’ original resolution to dissolve the fire service area, and the process that was used to count signatures to halt the process of dissolution.

“They (county) refused to tell us how many signatures we needed,” Clark, the former CVFSA Board Chairman, said Wednesday.

“They alleged attorney-client privilege, which is nonsense,” Clark said. “That’s public information.

“How were we supposed to address the dissolution without knowing how many signatures we were to have?”

Clark and Mast contend an overwhelming majority of people who attended a public hearing on June 6 were against dissolution and the Commissioners subsequent resolution to dissolve the FSA “was passed in arbitrary and capricious disregard of the overwhelming evidence against dissolving the fire service area.”

The Cabinet View petition numbered 234 signatures, but it was determined to be insufficient.

“We never found out whose names were not accepted, nothing. No response,” Clark said.

The suit, which was filed by attorney Kim Christopherson of Kalispell, alleges the dissolution was not conducted in accordance with Montana code and therefore is void.

Commissioners said the reason for the dissolution stems from Cabinet View’s refusal to comply with Montana law relating to licensing to respond to emergency medical calls, failure to file requests from Lincoln County officials to stop self-dispatching to emergenices of which the agency was not licensed and failure to work in a spirit of cooperation with other emergency services.

Christopherson, who did not request a change of venue, said she is confident in the legal process but will take the issue all the way to the Montana Supreme Court.

“I have absolute faith that Judge (James B.) Wheelis will apply the law without regard to who the parties are and will grant relief that is just and equitable,” Christopher stated Wednesday. “(Yes), if necessary,” she said about taking the case to the state’s highest court.

“Our only options are state district court first then the Supreme Court if we want to appeal the district court’s decision,” Christopher said. 

“We filed in state district court just 30 days after Lincoln County made the decision to dissolve the fire service area.”