Cemetery gets needed attention

We’re pleased to see the county developing a work group to oversee the record-keeping and maintenance of the historic Demersville Cemetery.

The cemetery — the oldest known cemetery in the Flathead Valley — is one of our tangible links to the past and an important piece of our local archive. The county has administered Demersville Cemetery since 1893, but it was already being used in the late 1880s by residents of the long-gone riverboat town of Demersville that flourished along the Flathead River before Kalispell was founded.

Demersville Cemetery is important not only from a historic perspective but also because it’s still the place where the county’s indigents are buried.

A work group could be a steppingstone for the creation of a citizen-driven cemetery district that could give Demersville Cemetery the attention it deserves.

Kalispell economy buzzing

The already-busy north Kalispell retail district will be buzzing with construction activity this year.

The north phase of the Spring Prairie Shopping Center, which has one store (Cabela’s) built so far, is expected to have another nine building pads bustling with construction activity, including shops, a cosmetics store, craft store and a pair of restaurants. Construction is well underway nearby at Glacier Eye Clinic and across U.S. 93 for the expansion of Sportsman & Ski Haus.

This mini-boom on the north side, combined with building elsewhere in town, should add up to tens of millions of dollars in construction for Kalispell in 2014.

Bed-tax signs encouraging

Local economic growth is also apparent when you study the growth of bed-tax revenue from Flathead County over the past 15 years.

A story in Sunday’s Inter Lake contained a chart that showed bed-tax revenue every five years since 1998. The increase is stunning, jumping from about $680,000 for the third quarter of 1998 to $1.72 million for the same period in 2013.

And the trend over the past two years has been even more spectacular. Revenue was up 17 percent in the first quarter and up 15 percent in the second quarter. Part of that is attributable to the turnaround of the Best Western facility in Somers, and next year should be even better as a second Hilton hotel opened in north Kalispell in late September.

With our economy largely dependent on tourism, this is great news.

Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.