Park Board hears about Beaver Creek activities at potluck meeting

The Hill County Park Board heard about activities at a special meeting at Beaver Creek Park Monday, complete with a potluck dinner served by the Friends of Beaver Creek Park.

Board Chair Steve Mariani echoed board member Robbie Lucke in thanking the group, formed to help raise funds for maintenance and improvement at the park and to provide volunteers, for the dinner.

"As Robbie said, we need to do this more often," Mariani said.

The board then approved, by acclamation with no votes against, keeping Mariani as chair and Larry Kinsella as vice chair.

"In light of the tremendously wonderful job you and our illustrious vice chairman have done in running these meetings with a fine degree of perfection for meeting after meeting after meeting," Lucke said when nominating the two, "there can be no doubt with this board that there is no one but you two to nominate and elect for another (one-) year term."

Beaver Creek Park Superintendent Chad Edgar told the board that use of the park — and some abuse — already is picking up.

The park has seen a high number of campers, fishermen and high traffic for this time of year, especially the last weekend, Edgar said.

That included some underage parties, some that were caught and some that weren't and some vandalism including a picnic table being burnt, he said.

"Fortunately, it was an old table," he added. "It wasn't a huge loss, but this vandalism, it adds up."

Work is ongoing including cleaning up the facilities at Camp Kiwanis, he said, and work to replace and repair some areas.

Members of a welding class at Montana State University-Northern have completed a new foot bridge at Pagers Campground, and the Railroad Pagers will install it, Edgar said.

The park still is awaiting money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to replace the bridge at Lions Campground, and he still is working on that, Edgar said.

Edgar also introduced his new assistant, Leah Bentley, who started a few weeks ago.

Edgar said Bentley is doing a good job, and also thanked Pam Wilson for the work she did as his interim assistant and for helping Bentley with the transition into her position.

Ursula Brese said Friends of Beaver Creek Park will have a table at the Holiday Village Mall this weekend, including selling tickets for a raffle as a fundraiser.

Tickets will be sold through September, when the group will hold its gala event at the park, Brese said. The raffle includes Titans football player Marc Mariani gear, a $100 Havre Area Chamber of Commerce gift certificate and one queen-sized quilt, with another coming to be added to the raffle, Brese said.

Rose Cloninger said the park cabin owners association is going to be doing some cleanup on part of the highway in Beaver Creek, and also said she is sending out a notice reminding cabin owners that before a cabin is sold or transferred, the owner needs to notify the buyer if there are any issues the board has notified them about on compliance with park rules.

The board also scheduled its next inspection of cabins, setting it for May 17.