Airport vote may settle issue

Now, it will go to a public vote. The question is when.

A petition drive has successfully halted preparations to upgrade Kalispell City Airport. The signatures will now put the airport question on the ballot for Kalispell voters to decide.

The ballot question will ask Kalispell voters to either reject or affirm the City Council’s 5-4 decision in July to upgrade the airport to B-II design standards through the Airport Improvement Program.

Enough signatures were turned in to halt any more City Council action on the upgrade until the estimated $16 million project can be rejected or approved by voters.

While the council can’t move forward on the airport, it still has the final say in when voters get to have their say.

The election can be no later than the November 2013 general election, but the council can opt to hold the referendum anytime before then.

There are some who say the vote should be sooner rather than later; others are content to wait another year.

If the vote isn’t until November 2013, it gives people a chance to recover from what can only be considered airport fatigue.

Idealists among us would hope for a few months of peace and a respite from the endless back-and-forth public discourse about the airport.

One of the downsides of holding an earlier vote is that it would cost the city more money than just including it on the general election ballot next year. On the other hand, accelerating the election would get it over with sooner.

And a complicating factor in waiting a year is that also on the ballot in November 2013 will be City Council elections, which would make the airport question and council races an intertwined issue.

One way or another, however, the public’s decision will in all likelihood finally put an end to decades of dithering over Kalispell’s little airport.