Commissioners, council reach agreement on bypass spending
The Flathead County Commissioners and Kalispell's City Council are now united in supporting spending all available money on building the southern half of the U.S. 93 Bypass.
And in the next few days, Montana's Department of Transportation is expected to announced what work will be done on the bypass in 2008 - using federal money funneled through the state.
The state has said it will likely follow the wishes of the local governments. The state hopes to seek bids next spring and to begin construction by late summer 2008.
Until Monday, Kalispell's and Flathead County's governments were split.
The commissioners voted 2-1 Monday to reverse a month-old stance that some of the money should also go to build a connecting road from West Reserve Drive behind Mountain View Plaza to the back of Hutton Ranch Plaza, commissioner Joe Brenneman said.
The original early November vote had Gary Hall and Dale Lauman wanting to split the money between preliminary work on the bypass' southern half and the proposed Hutton Ranch plaza connector road. Brenneman dissented at that time.
On Monday, the commissioners voted again with Lauman switching to join Brenneman's side. Lauman could not be reached for comment late Tuesday afternoon.
Kalispell's City Council already supported spending all available federal money on the bypass's southern route in 2008, arguing that a northern connector road would be part of the bypass project.
The argument for building the northside connector road is that it would help relieve congestion at the heavily used intersection of U.S. 93 and West Reserve Drive. That intersection is in the middle of Kalispell's growing northside box-store-based business district. And it is a future funnel point for a few thousand proposed northside homes to connect to downtown Kalispell.
The federal government is allocating money over several years for the $76 million bypass project.
Almost $2.9 million is already in the state's coffers for bypass construction in 2008. And the state is awaiting a federal appropriation to add to the 2008 budget.
However, Congress has trimmed at $6 million 2008 bypass request to $4.02 million. That $4.02 million is in a budget package sent to President Bush for his signature.
Consequently, the most likely scenario allocates about $6.9 million for bypass construction in 2008.
Even when they were split on spending money on a northside connector road, the county and city both supported spending $6.9 million to harden the ground in two spots and to build two bridges on the bypass's southern half between Gardners' Auction and U.S. 2 West.
Northside advocates want the state to spend another $3 million of federal money on the Hutton Ranch Plaza connector road - borrowing the extra money from future federal appropriations.