Ellen Thompson
Havre Daily News
ethompson@havredailynews.com
The Hill County commissioners want to add a little bite to a permit that people must apply for before building on, under or near a county road or right of way.
The encroachment permit application asks people to get their work cleared through the Hill County Road Department before beginning and asks for specifics about what the person intends to do. A revised form would also include penalties for failure to comply.
"If we're going to be liable, we'd like to know what's there," Hill County Commissioner Doug Kaercher said Monday.
The commissioners asked Hill County Attorney Cyndee Peterson to find out what types of penalties are possible, Kaercher said. It's something the commissioners have wanted looked at for some time and they revisited it Monday.
"There's more of it going on and we just want to get ahead of the curve," Commissioner Mike Anderson said about people circumventing the permit process.
The addition of penalties should "jog their memory" about the application process, Kaercher said.
Examples of common encroachments are pipelines laid under a road or right of way, but any kind of building near a road or right of way is included, he said. As the commissioners review the policy, they may make other changes to revise it.
What the commissioners don't want, Kaercher said, is for someone to put in a pipeline and then not tell the county about it, because county workers could run into it while doing other work on the roads.
