Kalispell city staff identifies 'wish list'

The Daily Inter Lake

It's a long wish list.

Expensive, too.

The Kalispell City Council will be briefed today by city staff on the list of projects that Kalispell will submit to the U.S. Congress to compete with numerous other cities for money from President Barack Obama's stimulus package.

This is essentially a $172 million wish list with no guarantees that the federal government will provide money for any of the requests.

The requests are:

n $105 million for the U.S. 93 Bypass project.

n $11.644 million for sewage-treatment-plant expansion.

n $600,000 to upgrade the Grandview Drive sewage-pump station to help transfer future northern Kalispell sewage to the southside treatment plan

n $6.21 million to build an additional main sewer line from northern Kalispell along the city's west side to the treatment plant.

n $500,000 to help move KGEZ's radio towers out of the airspace of the Kalispell airport, which would release another $8 million in federal money to expand the airport.

n $5.5 million for a downtown parking garage.

n $5.6 million to expand the Hockaday Museum of Art.

n $300,000 to create a community land-trust organization that would buy land and houses, and then sell the homes while keeping ownership of the sites. This measure is to trim house-buying costs.

n $591,000 in water-line projects.

n $377,500 in other sewer line projects.

n $6.24 million to overhaul Whitefish Stage Road.

n $28.076 million in other the proposed street upgrades around Kalispell.

n $821,748 in various drainage projects.

n $400,000 for an indoor police firing range.