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WEDNESDAYFEB. 20, 2013105th year, No. 15Sidney, Montanawww.sidneyherald.com75 CENTS
See what’s new at Sidney High School. Page 8A.
seRVInG RICHLand COUnTy and THe sURROUndInG aRea fOR 105 yeaRs
Bulletin board Kindergarten
Sidney School District has its kindergarten registra-tion, Feb. 1-28, at Central School, 200 Third Ave. S.E.
Your child must be 5 on or before Sept. 10, to enroll. Bring your child’s birth certifi cate and shot record to the school. If your child will be or may be attending kindergarten in the fall, he or she must be registered in February.
deadlineAn early deadline for the
Herald’s classifi ed section is Wednesday at noon for the Sunday paper.
Cattlemen’s ballThe Rockin’ Your Heart
Cattlemen’s Ball is at the Richland County Fair Event Center Saturday. Tickets cost $45 and are avail-able at the Foundation for Community Care and the Lucky Buckle. The fun and elegant evening will feature a social at 6:30 p.m., a prime rib dinner at 7 p.m. and a dance at 8 p.m. An auction will take place after the meal. Raffl e winners will be announced near the end of the night for a men’s basket and a women’s basket. Half the proceeds will go to the Foundation for Community Care and the other half will be donated to the American Heart Association of east-ern Montana.
Happy birthdayThe Sidney Herald wishes
happy birthday this week to friends Gene Asbeck, Cathy Wieferich, Rob McKin-ney, Whitney Thiel, Grant Brunsvold, Edna Brown, Brandi Skinner, Jason Hub-bard, Megan Greenwood, Gary Scheetz, Heidi Ander-son, Angi Candee, Michelle Lambert, Diane Prevost Beck, Ashley Miner, Rob Stutz, Toree Tofte, Georgia Lorenz, Wendi Rounce, Dar-ren Mason, Jeromy Hardy, Michael Sifers, Brenda Gervais, Sanda Trupe, April Callaway, Tanner Irigoin, Tyler Sheehan, Casey Burgess, Marsha Kirby, Merna Brown, Steve Kelly, Taylor Sheehan, Casie Dotson, Chara Blaszkowski, Laura Ann Carranza, Kerry Finsaas, Shannon Palmer, Davi Jo Painter, Mary Her-rick, Tana Powers, Gloria Reyna Ramus, Richard Flynn, Caroline Bronowski, Billie Conradsen, Sharon Doll, Mckenzie Gulde, Lacie Whitford and Justine Klempel.
CommoditiesCommodities for seniors
will have its distribution from 9 a.m. to noon Tuesday at the back door of the Nut-ter Building, 123 W. Main, Sidney.
Deathsevelyn Herness, 88Warren C. miller, 89darnell Sparks, 52
Page 3A
Inside Around Town .....2AClassifi eds .......4-6BDeaths ...............3ADial an Expert . .5B
NIE. ...................3BOil report ...........7AOpinion ..............6ASports . . . . .....1-2B
saRaH bLOOM | sIdney HeRaLd
Star quilt ceremonyBrockton’s Chance Roberts presents a star quilt to Jill Vitt, Fairview, during the ceremony held at the District 2-C basketball tournament Saturday night. The quilt was given to Dale and Jill Vitt in honor of their son, Fairview player Cody Vitt.
By Bill Vander WeelesIdney HeRaLd
After a mutual agreement last week between Sidney’s school offi cials and the band director who started the school year, the district is heading in a different direc-tion for the remainder of this school year.
Kilee Sundt, who attended Williston High School and then graduated from col-lege in December, has now taken over leadership of the middle school and high school’s band programs.
Sidney Superintendent of Schools Daniel Farr says Sundt has served as an adjudicator at local music festivals and has led an adult band group in Williston.
Sundt is the fi fth full-time band teacher for Sidney since the start of the 2009-2010 school year.
Farr explained it’s diffi -cult fi nding a good fi t. “You have to be a special person to do all it takes to get the job done.” In order to assist teachers, the school district offers mentoring services and professional develop-ment opportunities.
“It has been a challenge to fi nd a music person,” Farr said. “We want to offer the best quality education that we can. We’re working to see that happens.”
Along with music, other teaching positions that are also diffi cult to fi ll include in the business education, sci-
ence and math departments. The school district, however, has been fortunate to fi ll some teaching vacancies in the recent past with individ-uals who are originally from the Sidney area.
School offi cials will likely have their hands full in late spring/early summer looking for qualify educa-tors because the school district will need to hire additional teachers to meet accreditation standards for its larger enrollment. In ad-dition, Farr estimates about fi ve current teaching staff members will retire. Thirty-fi ve percent of the school district’s staff has enough years in to retire.
bILL VandeR weeLe | sIdney HeRaLd
Zdenek Vajsar directs the band during a concert earlier this school year at Sidney High School.
Changes made in Sidneyschools’ band program
By loUiSa BarBersIdney HeRaLd
Sidney’s Richard and Luella Buxbaum are brim-ming with excitement. And, well, they should be. Their son, Kevin, along with his latest fi lm, “Life of Pi,” is nominated for a staggering 11 Academy Awards, includ-ing Best Picture.
The 52-year-old, 1978 Sid-ney High School graduate will attend the awards cer-emony Sunday, something he says he’s all too excited about. “‘Life of Pi’ is quite possibly my favorite book,” Buxbaum told the Herald last week. “I spent 10 years chasing this project to actu-ally work on it.”
Buxbaum, one of the fi lm’s producers, knew the novel by Yan Martel was declared unfi lmable, but that’s exactly what drew him to it, follow-ing a lifelong trend: overcom-ing adversity.
After having earned a scholarship to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in L.A. (news that worried his mother), he moved to California to pursue his interest. He graduated with the Presi-dent’s Award for outstand-ing accomplishments in Creative Merchandising and Advertising, and captured an advertising job at American Cinema, which went bank-rupt a year later.
But his supervisor, hav-ing had connections at Paramount Pictures, helped him get his foot in the door, originally to the art depart-ment, but instead the job was in payroll. “You have never seen such a depressed person as I was. Payroll? Heaven’s above, I was ter-
rible in math, and payroll was the last job I would ever want,” he said.
But he took it and spent his lunch hours at the Paramount art department working on his upcoming ap-prenticeship, when the pay-roll master offered to let him travel to Florence. What was he to do – Begin his appren-ticeship he worked years to get into, or travel the world? He chose the latter, and when he informed his supervisor he was ready to go to Italy, “she looked at me like I had lost my mind.” It wasn’t Florence, Italy, but Arizona. “I gave up my lifelong dream to be in the art department to spend three months in the 110-degree heat of the desert, working on the Eddie Murphy fi lm ‘Best Defense.’ One of the worst fi lms ever made,” Buxbaum said.
He didn’t quit, however, having eventually moved on to become an assistant accountant, then accountant and fi nally fi nancial control-ler in which he prepared fi lm budgets and managed the fi nancial side of fi lms with weekly reports to the studio.
“I will have had the good fortune to have fi nancially controlled the three biggest fi lms in Hollywood history, ‘Avatar,’ and in the near fu-ture, Avatar 2 and 3,” he said.
His fi rst feature fi lm he worked on was “Top Gun” and has since joined the crews for “Laverne and Shirley,” “Happy Days,” “Cheers,” “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Moulin Rouge,” just to name a few. He’s worked with some of the biggest names in show business and has traveled all
Oscar nominatedsidney native’s fi lm up for 11 academy awards
sUbMITTed
Kevin Buxbaum worked on “Life of Pi” for three years as a producer and has begun preparing Avatar sequels for fi lming.
By loUiSa BarBersIdney HeRaLd
The town of Fairview has $15 million in water, sewer and street costs that offi cials want to begin addressing in the next three years.
About half is in repairing streets ($8.3 million) done in by years of wear and tear and recently by semi-trucks. The other half is in updat-ing the water and sewer ($7.02 million) systems. And there is no clear-cut way to funding the huge costs
“I can’t even imagine what we’ll do about that,” Mayor Bryan Cummins said following the monthly town council meeting last week.
Interstate Engineering had developed a couple stud-ies for a Special Improve-ment District, but he doesn’t believe “it would fl y” with landowners.
While streets will be the single-most expensive proj-ect, second most is a waste-water treatment system at $2 million, followed by a water treatment plant at $1.5 million and storage tank at $1 million. Fairview also has several feet of cast iron water mains that date back to 1935.
The costs were compiled as part of a collaboration between cities and towns in oil and gas country in which incorporated govern-ments were to submit their estimated infrastructure costs ballooned by natural resource development and give to the Montana Legisla-ture as points of reference. Sidney’s costs come in at more than $55 million.
Fairview leaders say they still haven’t heard back from county commissioners when they approached the
board last spring for some fi nancial assistance. This year’s budget is projected to leave the town with roughly $45,000 in surplus.
“We’re still trying to fi gure out where the money will come from,” Cummins said.
Meanwhile, the council agreed to “sign a blank check” and team with the county and city of Sidney to hire a consultant who will update each entity’s growth policy, which is manda-tory every fi ve years and is long overdue. “[The growth policy has] done like a 180 from what it says was going to happen,” Sidney Public Works director Jeff Hintz
said, requesting Fairview’s partnership. “I don’t know if you really have much choice, but we are going to solicit for consultant ser-vices to update the growth policy.”
At the same time, the county will also conduct a transportation study in conjunction with McKenzie County, N.D. While it’s not required, Hintz said it would be important for the town to be involved. “Fairview’s going to get hit pretty hard, especially with the railroad that’s coming in.”
The study will examine alternative routes, truck routes around Fairview and
fairview estimates $15 million forinfrastructure costs
‘i can’t even imagine
what we’ll do
about that.’
Bryan Cumminsfairview mayor
See moVie, PaGe 12a
See fairVieW, PaGe 12a
310 2nd Ave. NE • Sidney 433-2403
www.sidneyherald.com310 2nd Ave. NE, Sidney, Montana
433-2403 • www.sidneyherald.com
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Locally produced
2012 | 2013
Original watercolor by Afton Rossol
The NEW 2013/2014 Richland County Phone Book will be coming out in April!For information updates or to learn more go to page 4A
