Page 6 - Flathead Beacon // 1.6.16

CITY BEAT 12 COUNTY BEAT 12 COURT BEAT 13 Newsworthy
County Drops Attempt to Create 911 District Process was awed from the beginning, commission acknowledges
BY MOLLY PRIDDY OF THE BEACON
Acknowledging that the process was awed from the start, the Flathead County Commission has terminated its attempt to create a new special-fee dis- trict to pay for the Flathead Emergency Communications Center.
The Dec. 30 decision came after a con- siderable amount of protest to a new dis- trict, which would have been countywide and charged residential households a $25 annual at fee and put businesses on a $50 to $1,000 sliding scale.
The district would have brought in about $1.9 million in annual, long-term funding for the 911 Center, which is cur- rently funded through county mills and contributions from White sh, Kalispell, and Columbia Falls.
In the fall, the commission voted to move forward with creating the dis- trict, starting a 60-day protest period for taxpayers, which ended at 5 p.m. on Dec. 29. Of the 65,985 notices sent out to taxpayers, 10,390 responded, and 9,527 of those responses were in opposition to the district.
The opposing responses represented $374,535 of the sought $1.9 million, or roughly 19 percent. Since that amount is higher than 10 percent, it triggered a stopgap in the process, forcing the com- mission to either put the issue on a future ballot or stop attempting to form a dis- trict through a commission vote.
The Flathead County Dispatch and Emergency Operation o Stillwater Road in Kalispell. BEACON FILE PHOTO
like to see how other counties in Mon- tana are handling this so Flathead has some comparison.
“We didn’t do a very good job of sell- ing this to you,” Mitchell said of the plan. Krueger said the district was an attempt to fairly fund the center, but the opposing letters and businesses raised good points about how the county and
cities should go about it.
“I will be the rst one to say when we
were looking at certain aspects on this, I just missed the ball,” Krueger said. “We didn’t take into proper account the dif- ference in sizes in businesses.”
While he made the motion to termi- nate the district for now, Krueger said he is wary of kicking this particular can too far down the road, because the costs will only increase as time goes by.
The commission voted to terminate the process, as well as o cially accept the results from the mailing showing 19 per- cent opposition.
When the 911 Center was voted into existence and built in 2009, the levied funds were used for construction. Ini- tially, a future-funding committee was supposed to devise a method of long-term funding for the center, which survives now on county mills and contributions from each city’s budget.
The E-911 District was on the Novem- ber ballot in 2014. The measure failed by
10 votes.
On Dec. 30, the commission voted 2-1 to terminate the entire process, with Commissioners Gary Krueger and Pam Holmquist in favor and Commissioner Phil Mitchell voting in opposition.
During the hearing, Holmquist said once the process of creating the district started, it became obvious that it was awed.
“For me, it became pretty obvious early on in the process that this was not as fair and equitable as we had hoped, especially on the commercial side,” Holmquist said. “It needed a lot of work.”
In previous hearings on the matter, business owners protested the poten- tial district because the sliding scale of fees didn’t seem to be based on size, but instead seemed random.
The district was supported by the county, rst responders, and the municipalities.
“At this point, I would hope that we would slow down and work with the cit- ies,” Holmquist said.
Despite voting against terminating the process, Mitchell said he also felt the process was di cult, and said he would
mpriddy@ atheadbeacon.com
Grain Prices, Drought Among Chief Concerns for Ag Producers in 2016 New cherry, fruit juice facility being built along Flathead Lake
BY DILLON TABISH OF THE BEACON
Stability is a luxury farmers rarely enjoy. One severe weather event can sud- denly swing agriculture markets, as seen by recent widespread oods in the Mid- west that sent corn and soybean prices soaring from consistent lows.
Volatility is commonplace in Mon- tana’s largest industry, and that’s expected to remain the case in 2016 as producers face tumultuous commodity prices and erratic weather conditions.
Wheat prices dropped more than 30 percent in the last year. Cattle prices have experienced a similar slide, leading to dim prospects for the early part of the new year.
This corner of the state has remained in extreme drought since last spring, when an historic heat wave swept across the region and pushed temperatures into triple digits while little to no moisture arrived all summer.
“The summer was obviously very hard on a lot of people in Western Montana,” Jayson O’Neill, public information spe- cialist with the Montana Department of Agriculture.
Ron de Yong, director of the state’s agriculture department, said it is di cult to predict the industry’s outlook for the upcoming year, but the trend of diversi - cation appears to be helping stabilize any major swings that could impact producers.
The agency has continued to
emphasize crop diversi cation among producers, hoping the di erent returns of value-added crops will complement one another among volatile market conditions.
In Northwest Montana, a clear exam- ple of that success is a new facility being built for cherry producers. The Flathead Lake Cherry Growers were awarded a $60,000 loan in early December to develop a processing facility for cherry and fruit juice products. The plant is being built in partnership with Table- tree Juice, a processor in Creston, British Columbia that produces award-winning juices. The company’s products are made without preservatives or sugar.
Tabletree signed a letter of intent with
the Flathead Cherry Growers Association to build the juice plant. The goal is to have the plant developed by the 2016 harvest.
The new plant will help stabilize what can be a very unstable situation — the cherry harvest, de Yong said.
“You can get a bad year so quickly and then you have nothing. But this will give them a plant that can make juice from whatever you’ve got,” de Yong said.
Other producers in the region are similarly nding ways to balance the risks and rewards of the industry, de Yong said.
“We just see so many new businesses trying to innovate and add value,” de Yong said. “It’s really exciting to see.”
dtabish@ atheadbeacon.com
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JANUARY 6, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM