Kalispell budget faces hearing on Monday
The Daily Inter Lake
A public hearing on the city of Kalispell's fiscal 2008 budget will be held at 7 p.m. Monday at City Hall.
The Kalispell City Council is expected to adopt the budget in August for fiscal 2008, which began July 1.
The proposed fiscal 2008 budget is currently $63.246 million pending changes made in the next few weeks - which is down from fiscal 2007's predicted budget of $65.028 million. The final 2007 figures will be nailed down in a few weeks.
The biggest budget segments for both years involve $20.5 million to expand the sewage treatment plant's capacity from 3.1 million gallons a day to 5.5 million gallons a day in late 2008 or early 2009, and eventually to 7.5 million gallons a day when needed in a few years.
Also at 7 p.m. Monday, the council is scheduled to:
. Hold a public hearing and then vote on whether to change Kalispell's growth policy to allow the one-square-mile Starling housing project to be eventually annexed into Kalispell.
A partnership of Phoenix-based The Aspen Group and the Grosswiler family - which owns the land - wants to build roughly 3,000 homes on that land west of Glacier High School during the next 20 years.
. Hold a public hearing and then vote on whether to change Kalispell's growth policy to convert 30 acres of the 140-acre Willow Creek project from industrial to residential use.
Wade and Hubert Turner want to build 580 homes on the 140-acre site southwest of Kalispell - with Foy's Lake Road on the south, Ashley Creek on the north and the U.S. 93 bypass route on the east.
On Tuesday, the Kalispell Planning Board told the Turners that the development plans cram in too many homes, and that they should shrink the number of proposed housing units.
. Vote on giving final approval to zone the 181-acre Flathead Village Greens - which is south of Silverbrook Estates and north of Big Mountain Golf Course along U.S. 93 north - for residential use. The council gave preliminary approval on July 2.
No development plans have been unveiled for this site.
. Vote on whether to give final approval to zoning the recently annexed 81-acre Valley Ranch subdivision for R-2 single-family housing. An R-2 designation allows a minimum lot size of 9,600 square feet. The council gave preliminary approval on July 2.
The developer, Gateway Properties, originally wanted a planned unit development for this site, which would allow some more densely built areas on the site.
But it withdrew that request a few weeks ago.
Gateway had been planning to put 222 single-family houses and an assisted living complex on the site just south of Ponderosa Estates.
Silverbrook Estates, Flathead Village Greens and Valley Ranch form a huge island of Kalispell surrounded by unincorporated land. That island would turn into a peninsula of Kalispell if the city annexes the 481-acre Glacier Town Center site south of Valley Ranch and north of West Reserve Drive.
An annexation request is expected within two to three months for Glacier Town Center.
. Vote on whether to exempt Daniel Abbott from the city's zoning and building codes or to pursue legal action against him.
In 2006, Abbott had a 400-square-foot bedroom built on top of his garage next to his house at 86 Juniper Bend Drive.
That second-story bedroom broke city zoning laws, and it was not inspected to see if it complied with building codes.
In late 2006, the City Council ordered the bedroom and garage to be inspected to see if they complied with the building codes. Since then, city inspectors have found some violations, but were not allowed to finish their checks of the structure. That bedroom is now occupied.