Fire department reviews Haz-Mat policies
The Kalispell Fire Department is reviewing whether and how it should help hazardous-materials response teams elsewhere in Montana.
The City Council will be briefed on this situation today.
Montana's government has agreements with fire departments in Billings, Missoula, Great Falls, Bozeman and Helena for them to provide help in dealing with hazardous materials for other fire departments without those resources.
Flathead County also has a hazardous materials emergency team. And the county commissioners and state are discussing whether this team should join the other five teams in providing backup help across Montana.
Local concern exists about whether Flathead County's potential participation is outside of the intent of the appropriate Montana law and could put the county at a higher liability risk, said a memo from Kalispell's city staff to the City Council.
Meanwhile, the county government is reviewing Flathead's Haz-Mat team and pondering whether it should be modified. That review is scheduled to finish later this month.
As part of this review, the county has contacted the Kalispell Fire Department, which has hazardous materials technicians.
The city is mulling whether Kalispell's Haz-Mat technicians should be added to the county's team; if and how the two governments should cooperate on this issue; plus training, equipment and liability concerns if Kalispell gets involved.
At its 7 p.m. meeting today at city hall, the council is scheduled to vote on:
. Whether to set up a special improvement district to pay for installing water and sewer lines, roads, sidewalks and landscaping for the fledgling Old School Station industrial park. Industrial park tenants would pay for the improvements.
. A set of conditions that the city's staff recommended for the 8.7-acre Autumn Creek Subdivision on Hathaway Lane. Linda and Lee Hershberger want to put 17 single-family houses and four townhouses on the land.
The city's Planning Board split 2-2 on whether the council should follow the staff's recommendations on traffic fix-it measures. That split came from concerns about extra cars entering and leaving the high-speed U.S. 2 at Hathaway Lane. The Planning Board recommends that the subdivision be annexed and zoned for suburban residential use.
. A set of conditions for developing conditions to put 16 single-family houses and eight smaller plots in the 5.5-acre Sinopah Subdivision between Northwest Lane and Meridian Road, and north of Three Mile Drive.
. Whether to allow light assembly businesses to set up on land zoned for "community businesses." Light assembly businesses produce items whose components can be easily carried by one person.
Most of Kalispell's community-business-zoned areas are north of Idaho Street and west of U.S. 93.
This proposal is prompted by ACG Kalispell Investors, owners of the Gateway West Mall, trying to find a tenant for an empty building. It had a light assembly business lined up, but needed the change in the zoning law to allow such a plant at that location.
That prospective tenant later decided to go elsewhere, but the mall owner still sees the building's potential for a light assembly plant.
To allow a light assembly plant at Gateway West, the city needs to allow similar operations - at least considering them on a case-by-case basis -to set up in all areas zoned for community business.