North Fork Landowners Association is elitist

Hungry Horse News columnist Larry Wilson often ends his column by asking, “What do you think?”

Since you asked — I attended the most recent meeting of the North Fork Landowners Association (NFLA), where elections were held for officers and Larry’s proposed by-law that called for replacing the current name with the original name that was agreed to by the founders and served well for decades.

The outgoing president (she was term limited) called the proposed by-law “divisive” and said at the meeting that she had hoped to serve her two years without “controversy.”

Earlier in the evening, she introduced a “special guest,” a paid spokesman for the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) who proceeded to give a misleading presentation on a proposed wilderness designation for parts of the North Fork. He tried to portray his organization as a neutral arbitrator. He is not a landowner here. He left without taking questions.

The proposal that his organization has put forward and that has been vigorously and vocally supported by the outgoing president of the NFLA, if passed, would make it illegal for me to continue to ride my bike in my own backyard on closed logging roads. Instead, the only people who could recreate on those roads would be hikers or people on horses or mules. How elitist. That apparently doesn’t qualify as controversial or divisive in her mind.

The NPCA is running ads on Kalispell radio stations that states that the greatest threats to national parks is the danger of air and water pollution. They want contributions. But the NPCA has remained silent over the disclosure of the fact that Glacier National Park fails to aggressively monitor air and water pollution.

That qualifies as phonies in my mind — as do the elitists who are collecting an oral history from the descendants of the original homesteaders but disapprove of the original name of the organization.

They can keep (in my opinion) their current elitist and classist name (Larry withdrew his proposed by-law). What they won’t keep is me as a dues-paying member of a group that dishonors the very people they say should be honored.

Joe Novak lives in Polebridge