Fire-safety work under way at Flathead High

Flathead High School’s half-floors will be fire safe before September.

Work has begun in bringing the 12 classrooms in the school’s half-floors up to code, using money from the city of Kalispell. Earlier this month the Kalispell City Council agreed to release $153,400 from the Westside Tax Increment Finance District to Kalispell Public Schools.

About $121,400 of that will be used to install fire sprinklers, alarms and emergency lights and to make electrical upgrades in Flathead’s half-floors. The areas, which sit between the first and second stories, were identified as the No. 1 priority in a building that needs more than a million dollars’ worth of fire safety and electrical upgrades.

Because each of the individual bids was under $50,000, the district didn’t use an open bidding process, Superintendent Darlene Schottle said.

“We went out and recruited individuals we knew could do it,” she said.

API will install the fire alarms. Nelson Electric will take care of emergency lighting and electrical upgrades. Fire Control Sprinkler Systems will install the fire suppression system.

District officials are hopeful the work will be completed by the time school begins next month. Crews may still be in the building as teachers set up their classrooms, but work should wrap up before students start classes Aug. 24.

The remaining $32,000 in tax-increment money will be placed in a contingency fund, Schottle said.

District officials had hoped to pay for Flathead’s fire upgrades with building reserve money. But voters in March rejected a request that would have levied $6 million over five years for high school building and technology projects.

The levy’s failure left school officials at a loss as to how to fix safety issues at Flathead, many of which had been pointed out during a fire inspection walk-through in November. Then-Kalispell Fire Chief Dan Diehl told the district that installing a $900,000 fire suppression system was the least expensive way to bring the building up to code.

If the district had not received the TIF dollars or found some other way to address the half-floors’ safety issues, the fire department could have shut down those classrooms.

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