Four people are running for one seat on the Jefferson County Commission, but only two of those four will advance from Tuesday’s primary election and head to November’s general election.
The candidates are running in a nonpartisan race for the seat currently held by Leonard Wortman, who is not seeking reelection. Wortman served on the commission from 1993–99, and was appointed back to the body in January 2010 and has been reelected since. County commissioners serve six-year terms.
Although this commission seat represents southern Jefferson County, including the communities of Cardwell, Whitehall and Pipestone, and the candidates must live in the south end, every voter in Jefferson County can vote in the race. All four candidates—Mary Janacaro Hensleigh, Dan Hagerty, Jim Buterbaugh and Jon Goff—will appear on the June 7 primary ballot. Voters can select one candidate. The top-two vote getters will advance to the general election for a final race for the commission seat.
The primary election is being conducted by in-person voting at polling places on June 7. The general election is Nov. 8.
Mary Hensleigh, 68, is a fifth-generation Montanan who grew up “on my grandparents’ cattle ranch in Milligan Canyon,” between Cardwell and Three Forks, she wrote in a questionnaire The Monitor sent to all four candidates (Boulder Monitor, May 18). She graduated from Whitehall High in 1972 and Carroll College in ’77, and “worked at the Boulder River School and Hospital for a short time before working as a counselor at the Intermountain Children’s Home in Helena.”
She was elected in November to her third term as mayor of Whitehall, and serves as Jefferson County Director on the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority Board. She previously served on a variety of county and city boards.
Dan Hagerty, 60, is a fifth-generation Montanan originally from Corbin, near Jefferson City, and has lived in the county “all my life.” He graduated from Jefferson High, and holds an associate degree in criminal justice from U.S. Air Force, where he also completed leadership school. He graduated from the Montana Law Enforcement Academy and the Montana Coroner’s Association, and holds an EMT certification.
Until his recent retirement, Hagerty spent more than 20 years working as a deputy for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, primarily serving Whitehall, and was also captain of Jefferson Valley Search and Rescue.
Jon Goff, 50, moved to Jefferson County in 2016 and settled in Cardwell. He holds a degree in history from Rocky Mountain College in Billings and went to work in the livestock industry after college, splitting time between Montana and Australia. He eventually went into insurance, working with farmers and ranchers, and his “most recent work experience involves having helped run a trucking company and establish a publishing company.”
He also established a nonprofit with his wife, through which they “attempted to help teenage boys within the juvenile system with a work-preparedness program that was aimed at helping them develop personally and establish a plan for successful adulthood following high school.”
Jim Buterbaugh, 67, did not reply to The Monitor’s questionnaire, but he did participate in The Monitor’s candidate forum on May 4. He said he’s lived in Whitehall since 1989. He spent four years in the U.S. Coast Guard as a machinist tech, and since then he’s worked primarily in home remodeling and maintenance, and sometimes as a bartender or cook in the winter. He managed a Town Pump location for three years, he said, and also serves on the Whitehall Parks, Trees and Cemetery Board.
Attracting employers
At the candidate forum, Hensleigh cited new and potential jobs in the Whitehall area, including Golden Sunlight mine ramping up hiring to reprocess mine tailings and efforts to bring a meatpacking plant to the area.
“Full disclosure, my husband Nick is the chairman of the JLDC board. And they look at this a lot,” she said, referring to efforts by the Jefferson Local Development Corporation to attract employers, including a meatpacking facility.
Hagerty concurred with Hensleigh, and also highlighted the area’s recreation as an industry that could support jobs. He supports efforts like the meatpacking plant, he said, and would want to understand prospective employers’ needs.
“Without me being in the commission at this point, I’m not sure what all those needs are right now,” he said, but the JLDC is “always comes up with something new.”
Buterbaugh said, “I know that the communities have to grow, but we don’t want to grow too fast,” and he echoed the others’ remarks about recreation and the meatpacking plant proposal.
He said the Boulder Transition Advisory Committee, created to help the area grapple with the closure of the Montana Developmental Center, has been “working on trails and stuff around here for people to go out and see the sights and stuff. I don’t know what to say about Basin. Basin is Basin I guess. I don’t know what to say about the north end, I don’t know much about the north end.”
Goff was unable to attend the forum due to a scheduling conflict.
County road infrastructure
Asked of their plans for county roads—and their grasp of relevant state code—Buterbaugh said, “MCA codes, I have to learn them, it’s a learning process.” He lauded the chip-sealing of the south end of Whitetail Road, and noted that the county has limited funds to maintain roads, so efficiency is key.
Hensleigh said that, “just speaking from experience in Whitehall, people don’t even know the difference” between city, county and state roads, but that “we do rely on the gas tax to maintain and improve our streets in Whitehall. It’s a small amount but we stretch it as far as it can go.” She said reusing road millings helps to maintain streets at a low cost.
Hagerty said he doesn’t claim to know much about the issue, but that, generally, the commissioners should know how much money they have and then prioritize projects accordingly. He praised preventative maintenance because, “if you don’t stay on top of that, then it becomes more of a cost to this county. In the long run, I would like to say that the taxpayers save money … if you keep up on it.”
Managing growth
Hagerty said the key to preserving quality of life as Montana and Jefferson County grow is planning a framework for development, such as zoning: “We need to have something in place where we can look at it down the road for our growth.” He said he supports careful zoning to preserve low-density areas.
Buterbaugh said he moved to Whitehall because it was small. He said uncontrolled growth without zoning is “one thing that scares me the most,” because zoning prevents overly dense development.
“Part of my life was in Eagle, Colorado, and that was small,” he said. “Well now it’s a ski resort. Screw that.”
Hensleigh noted that, although the county is growing in population, Boulder and Whitehall each shrank slightly from 2010 to 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“If your community isn’t being replaced and it’s growing, it’s dying. And that’s not good for a community,” she said. “We need younger people to be moving in so their kids can go to school, so they can replace us baby boomers who still think we’re 18. We have to have growth, we have to have this younger generation to replace us.”
An appeal to voters
Buterbaugh told the almost three-dozen people in the forum audience—and others tuning in online, on television and on the radio—that he’s “worked my butt off and I’m retired. I would love to have a chance to take Leonard’s job from him since he’s leaving anyway.”
“I think I’d do a pretty good job servicing you people,” he said.
Hagerty said that his candidacy was “for you, we the people. Without you, we can’t do what we need to do”
“We’ll come together for a common goal, but everyone is important,” he said. “Communications and transparency, we don’t have it right now [because] the north side, I don’t think they know what’s going on with the south side … I’m here to represent you guys, not myself or my personal agenda.”
Hensleigh noted that, as Whitehall’s mayor, she already “has a great working relationship with the commissioners.”
“I would enjoy being your county commissioner and I would work very hard for you,” she said, before joking about her hip replacement. “All those years of disco dancing in the ‘70s, it caught up to me.”
As the forum adjourned, Buterbaugh made one final appeal to voters: “I can’t make everybody happy, I’m not pizza. But I’ll do what I can.”
