Fire inspection shows potential hazards at FHS

A recent fire inspection walk-through at Flathead High School revealed 36 “areas of concern” — potential safety hazards at the school.

Among the most serious problems is a fire alarm and sprinkler system in desperate need of an upgrade, Superintendent Darlene Schottle said. There is no sprinkler system at all in part of the school.

Flathead also needs railings in some balconies, manual fire alarms, better venting for some clothes dryers, modifications in the auto shop to improve safety, better ventilation in the kitchen and an improved emergency power system, which doesn’t always work when it’s supposed to, Schottle said.

Those items are only a handful of a lengthy list of repairs and upgrades Flathead and other buildings in the Kalispell School District need.

To pay for them, the school board has decided to ask voters to approve a $5.9 million building reserve and technology levy.

The district has long relied on such levies to help it maintain its buildings. There are 14 schools and support facilities in the district, all of which need occasional help to keep them safe and functional.

Voters approved Kalispell’s first building reserve levy in 1982 and renewed the levy every five years starting in 1985. That came to a halt in November 2009, when voters rejected a $4.1 million high school levy request. They approved a $2.8 million elementary request at the same time.

Those were replacement levies; the school board opted to ask voters for the same amount they had paid during the last five-year levy cycle. This time, trustees are asking voters for more.

That’s largely because of the results of the Kalispell Fire Department’s walk-through at Flathead, Schottle said. The district might be able to complete necessary projects there for a little over $4 million, but it wouldn’t be able to do much at any of its other sites. The fire irrigation system alone has a $500,000 price tag.

“There would be no money left to do some maintenance that may begin to occur” at other sites, including Glacier High, which will turn 10 years old by the end of the levy’s five-year cycle, Schottle said. “We would have no flexibility.”

If voters approve the levy request, a homeowner with a home with an assessed value of $100,000 would pay $28.79 more a year in property taxes, Schottle said.

“Most houses in our community are between $100,000 and $200,000 [in assessed value, not appraisal value],” she said. “That’s somewhere between $29 and $58 for most homes per year.”

The district knows many taxpayers are still struggling financially because of the recession. But school officials and trustees felt they had no choice but to ask for the levy anyway, Schottle said.

“We’re very concerned about the safety of our students, especially at Flathead,” she said. “We feel like if we continue to not address these issues, they’re going to continue to worsen.”

The fire department understands that fixing most of the issues will require significant money, Schottle said.

“I’m certain they will work with us, but they are making us aware that we need to address these issues,” she said.

If voters don’t approve the levy, the fire department will have to prioritize the safety issues, and the district will have to pay for them out of the general fund, Schottle said. Kalispell schools are facing at least a half-million-dollar shortfall in the 2011-12 general fund, depending on how the state Legislature decides to fund education.

The biggest demands on the district’s general fund are for salaries and benefits. That’s one reason many districts rely on special levies for building and technology projects. Building reserve levies are used entirely for facilities.

The dollars raised aren’t enough to build new schools, but they might build or remodel classrooms, improve schools’ technological capacities or make buildings safer for students.

Past levies have allowed Kalispell to replace roofs, pave parking lots, and buy servers, computers and digital whiteboards. With a matching donation from the community, $600,000 of building reserve money improved Legends Stadium.

General fund budgets do include an allotment for buildings’ core operations, but the amount is small and is the same across the board, regardless of how many buildings are in a district. That means Kalispell and its 14 buildings receive the same amount as Whitefish, which has four school sites.

Voters will decide March 22 whether to approve the levy request. The district hasn’t yet decided whether it will use mail ballots, one central polling place or open polls in each of its so-called “feeder districts,” Schottle said.

“There are pros and cons” to each option, she said. “It’s a cost determination.”

The election already will cost the district more than it would have if it had been combined with the regular school elections in May. But the trade-off, Schottle said, is that if voters approve the levy, the district can get started on projects this summer.

Flathead’s fire suppression system will have to be engineered and bid out, she said, and it likely will include some asbestos abatement. Initiating that project in mid-May, after regular school elections, would mean “the likelihood it would be finished before school started is not very good,” Schottle said.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.