“I think they’ve all been an economic boost and they have done a lot to boost the morale of the community,” McDonough said. “When they started, there were a lot more vacant buildings in the Uptown area than there are now.” Nobody, he added, “throws a party like Butte.”
He won his District 8 seat in 2012, getting 54 percent of the vote against Ristene Hall, and won re-election in 2016 with 56 percent of votes against Walter Parrett. He has worked on numerous issues, including economic development, environmental clean-up and historic preservation, and says often that his constituents are free to call him about any matter.
He has served on several council committees and is currently chairman of two them — Judiciary, which considers and helps write new ordinances, and Finance and Budget, which provides oversight of all the county’s money matters.
Big issues
The biggest concern in Butte and everywhere else in America, of course, is the coronavirus. Nobody knows when the pandemic will subside, if or when things get back to normal, and what the economic landscape will look like when it does.
“Currently, everybody is just trying to hang on and survive,” McDonough said.
Besides that, McDonough says, the most pressing issue before Butte-Silver Bow government now is environmental cleanup tied to Superfund and now the consent decree.
