New sheriff schedules five town-hall meetings

As a way of involving the community in the department, Flathead County Sheriff Brian Heino will take his agenda to the public by holding town-hall meetings to discuss changes to the department since he took office.

Heino and Undersheriff Wayne DuBois will travel around the county hosting public updates on topics including school resource officers, the new K-9 program, crime and drug statistics, community relations and more.

“We’re getting out in the community,” Heino said. “Getting out there and talking to people to see what their perspectives are because it’s very easy to lose that community perspective quickly.”

According to Heino, the top priority on his agenda since taking office four months ago has been to implement school resource officers in the Bigfork and Evergreen school systems.

“We’ve had dramatic support for that school resource, so that’s been a focus of ours,” Heino said.

Funding for the school resource officer positions will come, in part, from a Flathead Electric Cooperative grant, which will cover half the cost of the program for five years using unclaimed capital credits.

While the schools have agreed to contribute around $30,000 annually to the program, the remaining $50,000 will come from the county’s budget.

Another recent development within the department was the prompt community funding of two new drug interdiction dogs that will take to the streets with their designated handlers this summer.

Though Heino said he planned to raise funds for the dogs over an extended period of time, a community fundraiser spearheaded by two officers yielded the full amount needed to get the program up and operational.

The resource officers and drug dogs will be among a number of other topics up for discussion starting Monday, April 15, at Kila School.

Subsequent meetings will take place Wednesday, April 17, at Lakeside School; Tuesday, April 23, at Flathead Electric Cooperative; Thursday, May 2, at Bigfork High School; and Friday, May 3, at Columbia Falls High School.

All meetings will go from 6 to 7 p.m.

For those unable to attend the meetings, the office plans to live-stream one of the meetings on a date to be determined.

For more information about the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office, visit http://flatheadcountysheriff.com/ or call 406-758-5585.

Reporter Mary Cloud Taylor can be reached at 758-4459 or mtaylor@dailyinterlake.com.