Local gas tax proposed for road work

The Daily Inter Lake

A possible 2-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax has been floated as a road fix-it idea for Flathead County.

The governments of Kalispell, Whitefish, Columbia Falls and Flathead County plan to explore that idea to see if county voters might approve it on a public ballot.

"That's gonna be a tough sell," Flathead County Commissioner Gary Hall said.

As Kalispell Mayor Pam Kennedy put it: "Obviously, we need all our information and all of our ducks in a row."

This idea was discussed Monday at a joint meeting of the county commissioners and city councils of Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls.

The combined bodies decided to send the idea to a joint county/cities long-range planning commission. If that committee believes the idea has merit, it will send a proposal to the three city councils.

If the councils like the long-range commission's recommendations, they are supposed to send letters to the Flathead County commissioners, who would vote whether to put the tax on a public ballot.

No one was sure Monday what the timetable would be to send a proposal through all these steps.

Whitefish council member Cris Coughlin suggested that main arterial roads that serve more than one jurisdiction be identified - and that the gas tax money be earmarked to upgrade those roads.

"I think [a gas tax] would have a better chance then," she said.

Kennedy and Hall cited Whitefish Stage Road, a narrow two-lane highway with steep ditches next to its shoulders. Parts of Whitefish Stage Road are in Kalispell, rural Flathead County and the greater Whitefish area.

Montana allows individual counties to levy a local gasoline tax of up to 2 cents per gallon - if voters approve such a measure.

This gas-tax proposal is prompted by Congress allowing the Rural Schools and Community Act of 2000 to expire after a seven-year extension.

That federal law provided counties and schools - which had lost much of their taxable bases due to national forests in their jurisdictions - to receive 25 percent of the revenue from those forests. As federal timber revenues began to drop significantly in the 1990s, so did that's law's revenue to local schools and counties.

Congress recently did not renew the law because of the current federal deficit. When the law was extended seven years in 2000, there was a federal budget surplus.

That means the last federal payment to Flathead County - roughly $1.5 million - will be applied to the county's and its schools' 2007 budgets. Unless Congress resurrects that law, that annual $1.5 million won't materialize in 2008 and beyond.

Of each year's $1.5 million, about $900,000 goes to Flathead County's $4.865 million annual road budget, providing 18.5 percent of that total.

On Monday, council members noted that the recently completed overhaul of Kalispell's arterial Meridian Road took years to complete, with the city facing a wait of several more years before it can afford to upgrade another major street.

Meanwhile, the Flathead's rapid growth in population and houses is putting greater strains on rural and city roads throughout the county.

That's what prompted the councils and commissioners to say they want to study a local 2-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax.

They noted that such a tax probably won't make up the entire $900,000 shortfall predicted for 2008.

In 2004, Hall proposed the same local tax. Calculations at that time indicated a 2-cent-per-gallon local tax would raise $550,000. The other two commissioners - Howard Gipe and Bob Watne - opposed a local gasoline tax in 2004.

Since then, Joe Brenneman and Dale Lauman have replaced them as commissioners.

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com