Council to work on impact-fee panel

The Daily Inter Lake

Formation of an impact-fees committee faces Kalispell's city council today.

The state requires such an advisory committee to review the calculating, assessing and spending of standard one-time fees to be levied against developers. The fees pay for extra expenses resulting from the construction of new dwellings and business buildings.

These impact fees are meant to cover the city in providing extra water, sewage treatment and streets, plus fire and police protection.

The city's staff and the Portland consulting firm HDR/EES are working on the fee system and expect to finish the project by early 2006.

Also today, the council is scheduled to:

. Decide whether to order developer Dennis Carver to tear up and replace a significant number of new sidewalks in the Ashley Park subdivision.

Those sidewalks were installed without a city-required six-inch gravel base and with inconsistent thicknesses in the concrete slabs.

Two weeks ago, the council pondered two options: order Carver to replace the sidewalks to ensure the city's laws are enforced consistently and to send a signal to other developers; or allow him to guarantee durability of the current sidewalks for 10 years with a bond.

. Vote on a final plat for the roughly 10-acre Cottonwood Park Subdivision at the corner of Stillwater Road and Three Mile Drive. The proposed plat consists of 31 lots for single-family houses and eight lots for townhouses.

. Vote on allowing the number of parking spaces at future Glacier High School to decrease from 1,920 to 874, with additional parking spaces to be added later as needed. The council will also vote on allowing the school building's height to go up to 55 feet in places.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. at City Hall.