SD5 accused of bullying neighbors

There is a bully in the neighborhood around Flathead High School and it is School District 5.

The school district participated with its neighbors in drafting the Westside Residential Parking District and that original plan and document is not the one to be placed before the Kalispell City Council for its consideration on Monday, March 23. 

The school district cooperated and supported the work of the neighborhood committees in formulating the original plan. They served on each committee with their neighbors. Representatives from the auperintendent’s office, FHS principal, Elrod principal and teachers participated and sat next to residents of the neighborhood for two years designing the residential parking district. 

Once the plan was presented to the identified 25 block area and to the Kalispell Planning Board with almost 90 percent resident participation and over 182 residents in support of the plan — the school district, with the new superintendent’s participation, switched their position and were against the residential parking district plan.

The school district hijacked the process and appeared with students and parents at subsequent Planning Board meetings driving the westside residents out of a neighborhood process the city had worked very hard to foster. Parents and superintendent staff testified that students would not attend school if they could not park in the neighborhood. 

The school district demanded the 25 block district shrink to five blocks located on only two avenues (Third and Fourth Avenues West) and insisted all streets, including one-way streets, (Sixth and Seventh Street West) would never be allowed into the residential parking district. One-way streets are not as safe as two-way and are being phased out nationally by civic planners; but the school district wants all streets, not just one-way streets, for student parking and give no relief, ever, to the residents whose properties are street addressed.

Shrinking the size of the residential parking district simply moves the parking problem from Third Avenue West to Second Avenue West and out to other blocks and streets. Under this flawed plan, any other resident blocks, desiring to join the residential parking district will have onorous hurdles to meet for inclusion at some distant date. This five-block plan was never designed by the original members of the westside residential parking district committee. 

At no time, did the westside residential parking committee members discuss residential parking district costs. This was an unknown figure to them, but note Whitefish’s residential parking district does not charge residents any fees. 

The original 25-block residential parking plan would have forced the school to look to its own resources and creativity to solve their parking problem. What they have offered does not solve their problem. I suspect they will feel a neighborhood backlash when they next request a school bond. The neighborhood, many of whose residents are alumni of FHS or who have sent children to FHS, not only feel betrayed by the actions of the school district, but pushed out of the process and have left it. 

Shame on you, School District 5.

Karlene Khor is a resident of Kalispell.