Kalispell city shop in line for upgrade
<p>Kalispell Director of Public Works Susie Turner talks about proposed upgrades for the Kalispell Central Garage on Wednesday. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
<p>Improvements at the Kalispell Central Garage include enclosing the office and creating space for better organization. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
<p>Shop Supervisor Karl Jagst works on a Parks Department van on Wednesday at the Kalispell Central Garage. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
By the numbers: A running look at some of the department initiatives in Kalispell’s $46.8 million budget proposed for next fiscal year.
The Kalispell Central Garage could see some long-awaited improvements this year with some equipment purchases and about $40,000 in upgrades to its office, storage and restroom space.
“You can see the clutter,” road and fleet superintendent Daryl Pliley said during a recent tour of the city of Kalispell facility on First Avenue West. “They’ve done the best they can with what they have, but they just don’t have any room to organize it.”
The garage’s corner office is surrounded by a couple of hastily erected walls that try but mostly fail to separate it from the rest of the shop. A dozen-plus feet of chain link fence runs from the top of those walls up to the garage roof overhead.
The office is packed with rows of cluttered shelves stocked with jumbled supplies of parts, accessories and shop manuals.
Better shelving for the office will help tidy things up and lead to a more efficient storage and retrieval system. A ceiling for the office and its adjacent restroom will get rid of that fencing and offer more storage above, providing a place for bulky parts such as car seats and suction tubes.
“The big thing is organization,” Kal Jagst, the shop supervisor, said about the project. “If one of the guys are on the floor and they know we’ve got something, what shelf is it on? Where’s it buried. Where was it, where did it go? It’s time-consuming.”
There’s a lot to keep track of for the three mechanics and one apprentice who work in the garage and service the city’s 400 pieces of mechanical equipment. That equipment ranges from chain saws and lawnmowers to police cars, fire trucks, dump trucks, street sweepers and backhoes.
“We take a lot of pride in that we don’t farm a lot of stuff out,” Jagst said.
Closing in the office with its own ceiling should also cut down on noise and dust from the shop.
“You get an impact wrench or air hammer going and you’re on the phone with a vendor, you might as well forget it,” Jagst said.
As for dusty computer keyboards on the desk?
“A sweeper truck will come in here and to raise up the hopper you have to fire up the rear engine, so any dust in the shop gets picked up and thrown everywhere.”
The project also should improve safety.
It creates a new drop-off window and entryway for people bringing parts or supplies. The way it’s set up now, people just walk through one of the overhead doors out front and through the shop — not good when mechanics are in the middle of a hazardous procedure that could harm them or a bystander.
Other items in the garage’s $454,790 proposed budget would provide $1,000 for flammable storage cabinets, $1,350 for dump bed safety stands and $4,300 for a new diagnostic scan tool.
With all the anti-lock brake, traction control and yaw control systems appearing on newer vehicles the city is buying, the old scan tool just can’t keep up.
“There’s just not enough room to update on the old scan tool. You might as well have a bucket of bolts, shake them around, throw them on the floor and guess,” Jagst said about diagnosing those systems with it.
The Public Works Department has plans drawn for the project, director Susie Turner said. Once the city budget is approved in August, the department will put together bid specifications and price quotes and try to start working on the upgrade by January.
It took several years to fit into the city budget.
“I’m excited,” Jagst said, taking a look up at the fencing around his office. “So it doesn’t look like a bad bar in Alabama.”
This year’s unfunded budget request: $40,000 to buy a used service truck with a crane. That would replace the shop’s 1987 service truck that has no crane. Heavy machinery hoisting currently is done with a backhoe or forklift and chains, and supported with a creative but safe array of jack stands and cribbing.
The crane would mean less work and more safety, Jagst said.
“It’d be a multipurpose service truck with an air compressor and a welder. And a crane makes it a more viable piece of equipment.”
Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.