The Kalispell City Council voted, 5-2, Monday night to approve a prerelease center on the city’s south end. The decision left many neighboring business owners upset, while the center’s advocates called the vote an important step toward helping convicted felons transition back into the community.
Councilman Tim Kluesner panned the proposed site, saying the center would infringe on the property rights of existing land and business owners, who expected zoning and uses in the area to remain the same.
“I’m not convinced this is the best location versus other locations,” Kluesner said, noting that many members of the public opposed the site, not the center itself. “I’d like to see more options,” he said.
Kleusner suggested the council table the center until two more possible locations could be brought forward sometime in the next six months. The motion failed narrowly, 4-3, with Councilman Wayne Saverud and Bob Hafferman voting with Kluesner.
When it was clear there weren’t enough votes to prolong the decision, the council voted to approve the center as proposed at 2282 U.S. 93 South – the former Montana Department of Health and Human Services building. Hafferman and Kluesner cast the lone dissenting votes. Mayor Pam Kennedy and Councilwoman Kari Gabriel were absent.
Prerelease centers are designed to help offenders as they transition from prison back to their communities by allowing them to finish out their sentences while starting jobs and staying in a controlled facility that offers counseling, education and job training.
Flathead County is the last urban center in the state without access to a prerelease center, and is the fourth largest contributor to corrections with more than 1,300 offenders in the system – which is why the 2007 Legislature set aside funds to locate one here.
For about a year a local committee has been studying existing centers and gauging community support, and in December the state awarded a contract to build the 40-bed facility to Butte-based Community, Counseling and Correctional Services, Inc (CCCS).
Opposition to the center began to mount only after CCCS announced its proposed location.
On Monday night, council chambers held a standing room-only crowd, as about 30 people spoke about the center and its proposed site.
Members of the city’s south end business community told the council they feared their property values would drop, the safety of their customers and employees could be jeopardized and the southern entrance to Kalispell would no longer be as inviting or attractive.
“This is not the original plan the city led us to believe when we built our building,” said Vaughn Penrod, owner of Penco Power Products, a motorcycle and ATV store located just a few feet south of the prerelease site. “It’s the wrong place and the wrong time to put something like this here.”
Others voiced concerns about public safety and questioned where the convicts would find work – a mandate of their stay at the center – given the poor economy. Several also noted the center’s proximity to a bar, casino and liquor store as an inauspicious location for recovering addicts.
Proponents, however, including several who had ties to other similar centers elsewhere in Montana, stressed that convicts would be returning to the valley anyway and that the prerelease center would help them successfully transition into the community – actually decreasing the risk of repeat crime.
Several also pointed to other centers located in the heart of other Montana cities like Missoula and Butte as proof that the prerelease wouldn’t be a blight on the area or hinder the economy.
“These centers give these people a second chance – and haven’t we all needed one once in a while,” Blake Smith, a Kalispell resident, said.
For Jada Evans, a Columbia Falls resident, a center in Flathead County would’ve been a blessing over the past year, as her family has had to make trips to Butte – sometimes weekly – to visit and support her son as he finishes his sentence at the prerelease center there.
Through her experience, she assured the crowd that the center’s were strictly supervised, safe, and, most importantly, effective.
“As a parent, I can see true changes,” she said. “No one wants to see their son go to prison, but it’s proven to work well in his case.”