Council weighs separate Parks fund

The Daily Inter Lake

A public hearing on whether Kalispell should separate Parks and Recreation funding from its general fund is scheduled for tonight.

Afterward, the Kalispell City Council will vote on whether it wants to effect that split, effective April 1.

This would not be a new tax, but rather would split the city's current property-tax revenues into two streams.

Most would go to the general fund. The rest would go to the Parks Department, which has been the biggest sacrificial lamb in the city's budget cuts.

The Parks Department -unlike the rest of the departments served by the general fund - has some major income sources of its own.

Consequently, separating Parks Department funds from the general fund - with some general-fund tax money going to Parks - is thought to be easier than trying the same concept with the Police and Fire departments.

Such a move would have the Parks Department mapping out its budget without having to compete with other departments. The Police and Fire departments are expected to fare better than the Parks Department in avoiding general-fund cuts because of their lifesaving duties.

Also at 7 p.m., the council is scheduled to:

n Vote to give final approval to a compromised package of road impact fees. The compromise fees passed by an 8-1 preliminary on March 9.

An impact fee is a one-time charge against a new home or commercial building built in or annexed into Kalispell. Its purpose is to help the city pay the extra costs of serving that structure.

n Hold a public hearing and then vote on whether to adjust the city Public Works budget to upgrade the Grandview Drive lift station to increase the volume of sewage that can go from northern Kalispell to the treatment plant on the city's south side.

n Vote on whether to approve a preliminary plat for Silverbrook Estates' second and final phase at Kalispell's northernmost tip.

The preliminary plat calls for 197 single-family homes, 90 townhouse lots, 13 commercial lots and one fire station lot on the second 167-acre phase of the 325-acre Silverbrook project. A handful of homes have been built in the first phase.

This vote was delayed for a few weeks because an expanded Grandview lift station would have the unallocated capacity to handle 175 extra homes after factoring in all the other northern Kalispell homes that are on approved preliminary plats.

Preliminary plats are essentially rough initial plans on how a development will be laid out after the City Council approves them.

A preliminary plat also needs the approval of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, which looks at a developer's likely sewage volumes and the city's capacity to deal with them.

In February, the state raised questions on whether it would approve more than 175 new homes north of the Grandview lift station.

However, Kalispell and the state recently reached an agreement to allow the city to continue its long-standing ways of dealing with sewage volumes in preliminary plats.

The agreement calls for Kalispell to design solutions when sewage reaches 80 percent of the bottleneck's capacity, regardless of what the preliminary plats map out on paper.

Then the city begins installing improved sewer lines and upgrading lift stations when the bottleneck is at 95 percent capacity.

n Vote on whether to rezone four acres of Cornerstone Community Church land to allow a Valley Bank branch on the site at the intersection of Northridge Drive and U.S. 93 north.

The city staff is supposed to answer some earlier council questions on traffic turns at that intersection if a bank is built there.

n Vote on whether to transfer a 1978 fire ladder truck to Columbia Falls.