Year in Review, Part 2

Join The Western News in taking a look back at the biggest stories of 2021, a year that won’t soon be forgotten.

April 1

Lauer succeeds Wood as fire chief

Steve Lauer was named the Libby Volunteer Fire Department’s new chief, taking over for longtime Chief Tom Wood.

Lauer, an assistant fire chief with the department and Libby’s fire marshal, ascended to the top spot with the support of his colleagues in the volunteer outfit, who backed Lauer in voting for Wood’s successor.

Scott Beagle moved from second assistant fire chief to first assistant fire chief. Ryan Andreessen was elevated to Beagle’s former position. Ryan Carptenter was named fire inspector. John Hibbs was elected secretary and Eric Uithof was voted in as treasurer. Kyle Keller was named fire prevention officer.

“From the bottom of my heart they are going to do great,” said Wood.

April 5

Homicide in Trego

Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested a Trego man after he allegedly killed his son following a disagreement.

Prosecutors brought Scott Lee Kirkedahl up on a single count of deliberate homicide after law enforcement officers and emergency responders arrived at his trailer in the early morning hours of April 5.

A witness told investigators he spent the day with the father and son, who argued intermittently. The man was headed to the rear of the trailer during the final confrontation when he heard a gunshot, according to court documents. He heard a second gunshot after reaching the rear bedroom.

According to court documents, Kirkedahl joined the witness in the bedroom soon after, telling him that he had killed his son.

April 5

Body of missing local man recovered

Shortly after first responders uncovered human remains near an abandoned truck off of state Highway 56, authorities identified them as belonging to missing local man Dan Dolan.

Dolan was last seen in June 2020. Despite efforts to locate him by his family and local law enforcement, his disappearance remained a mystery. According to a press release, Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office deputies began searching in the area where Dolan’s body was finally found while working off of a tip.

Acknowledging a bit of closure from the discovery of his body, Dolan’s relatives remained committed to solving the mystery of his death.

“Until that’s solved there won’t totally be closure,” said his mother, Jennifer Evans.

April 9

On the lam

Facing two decades behind bars for grievously wounding a former girlfriend in 2013, Jeremiah Kendall fled rather than turn himself in to authorities.

Kendall, a close contact of a coronavirus patient at the time of his March sentencing, was on house arrest ahead of his prison stint. Days before he was expected to turn himself to start his time in the Montana State Prison, local law enforcement officers watched him flee from his home on a four-wheeler.

After a week on the run, Kendall was back in custody — and facing new charges. Deputies honed in on Kendall by tracking his new wife. They suspected she knew his whereabouts and followed her to a U.S. Forest Service road south of Libby.

During his time on the lam, Kendall stole various items, including blankets and a side-by-side, broke into private property and attempted a burglary, according to court documents.

April 19

Sealing the deal

Libby City Council saw the repayment of an outstanding $1.54 million loan after striking a deal with the Cabinet View Golf Club.

The loan dated back nearly 20 years, when city coffers were flush with federal economic development dollars with no strings attached. At the time, officials agreed to front the golf course the money to finance its back nine. Golf club representatives planned to repay the debt by developing nearby property into homes.

But the planned development never came to fruition and the loan went unpaid. In February 2021, club representatives returned before city council with a new proposal after finding a potential buyer for the undeveloped land. Were city officials to forgive a portion of the loan and lift its lien on the property, the club would pay back the bulk of the debt.

After weeks of negotiation, city councilors agreed to offer the club a $541,000 grant with the dollars coming from the full repayment of the loan. The money was slated for construction of a new clubhouse for the organization.

“This is a win-win for everybody,” said George Mercer, who represented the golf club during the occasionally tense negotiations.

May 3

Masked no more

Libby Public Schools lifted mask requirements — with a few caveats — on its campuses after weeks of debate.

The main circumstance where students still needed to don masks: Learning in a classroom with teachers or students particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

School board members voted to rescind the requirement in late April after speaking with a representative from the Montana School Board Association and local health officials. They opted to make the change in policy effective May 3 to give teachers, students and parents time to prepare and get vaccinated, if they so wished.

Superintendent Ron Goodman reserved the ability to reinstate mask requirements if the virus began spreading within buildings or overwhelmed the community at large.

May 3

Market share

Organizers, patrons and merchants of the Libby Vendor Market pushed back against a request by the Libby Chamber of Commerce to restrict open-air bazaars on public land near its U.S. Highway 2 building.

The disagreement began several weeks prior when chamber representatives asked Libby City Council to rescind the permission City Hall gave the vendor’s market to use the nearby parking lot for Fireman Park. The chamber-organized Farmer’s Market at Libby uses the organization’s adjacent parking lot. Chamber representatives worried two markets, though held on separate days of the week, could lead to confusion and potentially damage their brand.

City councilors split on how best to handle the situation, but agreed that the two groups should, at the very least, open up lines of communication with each other.

May 5

Pandemic protest

A group of residents long opposed to local efforts to counteract the pandemic demanded the removal of two health board members while picketing in front of the Lincoln County Courthouse.

Led by Catherine Kahle of Trego, the group met with county commissioners soon after, petitioning them to remove board Chair Jan Ivers and Troy representative Jim Seifert. Both Ivers and Seifert supported the county health officer’s local orders during the pandemic, touted policies like masking and embraced vaccination efforts.

While Kahle has sparred with both at health board meetings throughout the pandemic, she took issue with a recent decision to eschew Zoom at a recent work session and Seifert’s public critique of a letter she submitted to the board.

Commissioners heard out the small group of protestors, but took no action.

May 6

A knotty problem

Officials with the U.S. Forest Service held a second public meeting on the proposed Knotty Pines project after an earlier attempt at soliciting feedback got mired in misinformation.

The proposal called for a 2,791-acre commercial harvest, fuel treatment on 4,757 acres and pre-commercial thinning on 2,009 acres. The project included adding 4.17 miles of road, 1.2 miles of temporary road construction and 35 miles of road maintenance.

The plans also called for the construction of a campsite to accommodate one RV and up to 150 people.

But when Forest Service personnel first met with residents about the project, they were drowned out by opponents, who accused the agency of hoping to build an RV park and clear-cut up to 7,000 acres. Officials later learned that rumors about the project had swirled online and on local social media pages.

“We don’t even know where some of this stuff comes from,” Chad Benson, superintendent of the Kootenai National Forest, told county commissioners in response to the misinformation.

The second meeting went off without a hitch, officials said.

May 10

Brownfields grant

Libby Public School District officials announced that the district had secured a federal grant to cleanup a former school slated for redevelopment.

Superintendent Ron Goodman detailed the awarding of about $388,000 from the EPA to help mitigate toxic materials on the site. Those hazards included lead-based paint and mercury thermometers as well as asbestos.

The grant was sought to help the district prepare the site for sale and redevelopment. After an earlier land deal fell through in part because of the cost of cleaning up the property, officials turned to the EPA’s Brownfields Program.

After learning about the grant, school board members voted to partner with United Country Real Estate to market the property.

“In my mind, a clean building is worth a lot more to all us in this district,” said Goodman at the time.

May 14

Peck steps down

Just months into his second term, Libby resident Mark Peck announced his impending resignation from the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners.

Peck said he was departing the board effective June 4 in order to take a position as a shared stewardship coordinator with the Lincoln County Port Authority. In that role, he hoped to serve as a nexus between private businesses and public agencies with an eye to bringing in industry to meet the needs of forest fire fuel reduction efforts.

“When I weighed the two, I talked to a lot of people and almost to a person they said, ‘We think what you can get done in that position outweighs anything you might get done as a county commissioner,’” Peck said.

May 21

Fiberboard plant plans announced

Local officials revealed they were pursuing bringing a medium density fiberboard plant to Libby as Gov. Greg Gianforte toured the community.

A joint effort between the county and private partners, the proposed plant would take up shop in what is informally known as the Stinger building on port authority land. Outgoing County Commissioner Mark Peck said the facility could employ as many as 150 workers.

Peck had hinted of a project in the works when he announced his resignation from the board of commissioners in favor of a new role with the Lincoln County Port Authority. The plant was seen as one way to capitalize on material generated by efforts to reduce fuels in the forestland surrounding Libby.

“Traditionally, you’ve got a big sawmill sitting there and you’re trying to get the forest to meet the needs of the mill,” said Peck at the time. “We’ve got an opportunity here to change that paradigm where we’re putting wood products in here at a manufacturing capacity that meets the needs of the forest.”

June 14

Vaccine promotion panned

A drawing aimed at encouraging vaccination among area students drew the ire of parents, who worried employees with Libby Public Schools were pushing their views on children.

Although organized by Team 56, an outside group, the drawing was promoted at Libby Middle High School several times. At a June 14 school board meeting, parents asked why they weren’t warned beforehand of the announcements and questioned whether the drawing discriminated against students unvaccinated for COVID-19.

“We’re not anti-vaxxers, our kids have all their normal approved, you know, tried and true vaccines,” said parent Amy Johnson at the time. “But it is different. It is a different type of vaccine.”

In response, Superintendent Ron Goodman noted that the district made announcements for other outside organizations and events, like Logger Days, the Libby Care Center and Future Farmers of America. Still, school officials had stopped promoting the drawing in late May after officials with the Montana School Board Association warned that the contest could violate new state anti-discrimination laws.

Staff with the state Department of Public Health and Human Services later ruled the contest permissible even under the new state law.

June 16

Seifert sidelined

Realizing that the appointment of Jim Seifert to the county health board in 2020 had not followed proper procedure, Troy officials removed the longtime resident and businessman from the panel.

Officials in Troy learned they had deviated from the normal process in May. Then Mayor Dallas Carr had received Seifert’s name as a possible candidate from county health department staff and assumed he had the authority to make the appointment.

While they planned to redo the appointment process, this time following proper procedure, officials opted to keep Seifert in his role as the municipality’s representative to the board. That changed after Carr spoke with the city’s attorney.

“I’ve already stated that I had made a mistake,” Carr said. “And because of my mistake, that is why he’s gone.”

June 26

Pride month celebration

Libby area residents marked Pride month with a potluck at Fireman Park, the first in what organizers hoped would become an annual tradition.

Beckie Guerra, one of the event’s organizers, said she got the idea after seeing a social media post asking about any local LGBTQ events. Raised in California, Guerra said yearly celebrations of the community were commonplace in her old home.

She floated the idea of hosting an event in Libby and saw an immediate, overwhelming response.

“There were so many people willing to help,” Guerra said.

At the time, Guerra already had spoken to counterparts in Flathead County and Sandpoint, Idaho, for advice and support. She hoped the event, open to all residents, would continue to grow in future years.