County commissioners consider public nuisance petition

The Ravalli County Commissioners held a public meeting on December 5th to take public comment on the Grantsdale Public Nuisance Petition, a petition alleging a public nuisance created by barking dogs at property located on Grantsdale Road and owned by Desiree Dunham. The petition contained 38 signatures and was accompanied by various individual letters of complaint that raised many other issues beyond the barking dogs.

The petition claims that the property is a public nuisance under Montana Code which reads:

“Anything which is injurious to health, indecent or offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property, or which unlawfully interferes with the free passage or use, in the customary manner, of any navigable lake, river or stream, canal or basin or any public park, square, street or highway is a nuisance… A public nuisance is one which affects, at the same time, an entire community or neighborhood or any considerable number of persons, although extent of the annoyance or damage inflicted upon individuals may be unequal.”

One of Dunham’s neighbors, Abraham Olsen, who said he put the petition together, told the Commissioners that the numerous dogs that Dunham brought to the property last summer were constantly barking. He claims he tried to talk to Dunham about it but found her argumentative and unreasonable in her response and she made no effort to quiet the dogs.

“She immediately became argumentative with the neighbors, stating, ‘there are no covenants or noise ordinances so I can do as I please,’” he wrote at the top of the petition. 

Another neighbor, Hannah Sadowski, submitted a letter of complaint, stating that she found the property owner to be “aggressive in their communication.” She said the property was trashed and covered in garbage and feces. She also claimed to have personally witnessed abuse of the dogs which were being kept in a tiny cage. 

“I would plead with you to put yourself into this neighborhood’s shoes,” she told the Commissioners. “What if your children had to listen to disgusting lyrics blaring at 10 p.m. while they try to sleep? What if they had to see people abusing animals on a daily basis? It’s completely out of line and they need to be reprimanded for their blatant disregard of this community. They need that reprimand to come from someone who can enforce it. If we fail to act, this neighborhood will continue to suffer. It will degrade… Your task in balancing the many needs of our community is a difficult one, I empathize. But I believe this should be a priority. As there are those that refuse to take accountability, there must be those in charge who force them to do so. Our neighborhood wants to live in peace…”

Olsen, who circulated the petition, said he was born in the house he lives in and they have done nothing to provoke the kind of negative response they got just for asking that the dogs be kept quiet.  

“It is creating anxiety and stress for the whole community,” he said. “If there were any other way to handle this in a civil manner, trust me, there would be multiple options and multiple things that could have been done or taken advantage of, tools to address this situation, but here we are. There is no other way around this. It came to this and here we are.”

Undersheriff Jesse Jessop said that he had read the petition and that there have been calls to the police. 

“It’s true there is no noise ordinance, but there is Montana law,” said Jessop. He said he had seen a few times here in the county just about exactly the same thing happening and the statute was used.

“In these cases,” he said to the public, “a sheriff’s deputy may have advised you to get a petition together and you’ve done that. So, I would tell you and the county commissioners that now that the Sheriff’s Office has that petition, we can start a public nuisance case. Even though there is no noise ordinance, if what is happening affects the entire neighborhood, we can run an investigation for public nuisance and turn that investigation over to the County Attorney’s Office. This would be the most appropriate way to handle this if the community members can’t handle this themselves. 

“I will say that since the spring of 2022 we have responded to this address half a dozen times about the same sorts of things from different complainants over and over again and I see that this new resident has a history of this that comes from Hamilton,” said Jessop. “So it is a report and an investigation that we can follow up on if that at least resolves it here for the Board of Commissioners.” 

Several people spoke at the meeting about their own difficulties in dealing with the barking dog situation and how it disrupted their lives. 

Dunham spoke up for herself at the meeting, saying she grew up in Grantsdale and was excited to have the chance to buy this property.  

“The property is going to get worse before it gets better,” she said. “Every time we do ground work out there we are digging up junk.” She said there’s been seven dumpsters, 14 dump trucks and multiple pick-up truck loads of trash, debris, and junk removed. New water lines had to be put in. She said she owns two lots and is starting work on the lot she resides on. 

“I’m 26 years old, a single mom raising two kids on my own and literally doing this by myself,” said Dunham. “I do involve myself in the hound world. But I don’t agree with how some hound people treat their dogs.” She said she got these hounds because they were being treated so poorly and their owner was going to “leave them in the mountains with a bullet.” She said she got bark collars and ran and exercised the dogs regularly. She said the Sheriff was called multiple times. She said they came out and found the dogs have food, water and shelter, protection, “everything a dog needs.”  

“I am not volatile,” said Dunham. She said the first time she met her neighbors it was them yelling at her. “One family is always a screaming match,” she said.   

Dunham claimed that the dogs that caused all this were not there anymore and that the only hounds remaining were “house dogs and not aggressive.”

“Vehicles, dogs, music, everything I do is a complaint,” she said. “I’m not the only person in the neighborhood with barking dogs. My dogs get out. So do other dogs and they come to my place. If you are going to come after me about my dogs, make sure you are perfect first.”

Commissioner Jeff Burrows said that the issue before the public was the barking dogs.  

“I know there are other issues, maybe involving the junk vehicle ordinance, septic regulations if there is another dwelling out there, but those are all separate issues,” said Burrows. “The petition is for the dogs and is there a solution for addressing the dog barking. I wouldn’t enjoy listening to dogs all day every day. I’d try to work with my neighbor to see if there was not some way we could get the dogs quiet.”

Burrows quizzed Dunham about the dogs she still has and what her intentions were in the future. 

“So, the dogs that caused the problem are gone and you are not going to run a dog rescue mission,” said Burrows.  

“The dogs that were a problem are gone,” said Dunham. “I had one family get upset about it. Everybody except one family has been easy to get along with. I’m not going to be pushed around. I’m young and I feel like I’m being bullied. People didn’t like that I had kids. “

“We all love living in Ravalli County,” said Burrows. “We don’t have regulation here. We don’t have over-zealous ordinances. And I don’t want to do a noise ordinance. I like living in a place where people get together and work out solutions. I don’t want you to be a reason for coming up with an ordinance. But I can send a deputy out to cite you for the dogs, so come up with a solution. That’s what you need to do. You need to accept that the dogs are an issue. I’ve seen noise petitions with four or five signatures in the past, but not 40 signatures. So it is an issue. This is not five or six people picking on you. There is clearly an issue out there.” 

Commission Chair Dan Huls said, “At least part of the problem has gone away. The dogs are gone. So, if we can just mitigate the remaining nuisance, then we can just send the deputy out if we have to.” 

“What remains to be mitigated?” asked Dunham. “There is still a lot of work to be done on my property.”

Burrows said that work was not a part of this discussion. “You inherited a garbage hole and are trying to deal with it. But dogs barking all day long is a problem and it needs to be fixed. If we get calls we will send a deputy.”

Both Huls and Burrows said they hoped that the voice of reason might prevail in the neighborhood.