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First, Second and Third Crocks

Everyone knows Stoltze’s land in Haskill is incredibly valuable – or would be if “planning” politics ever allowed it

By Dave Skinner

On April 28, Whitefish will vote on whether to increase the resort tax from 2 percent to 3 percent. The purpose is supposedly to protect Whitefish’s water supply by buying development rights from F.H. Stolze on about 3,000 acres of company lands in the Haskill Creek basin.

There are so many things wrong with this idea, I don’t have room to discuss them all.

First, since 1912, when Stoltze began putting its ownership together, Whitefish has had endless opportunities to, as Whitefish Mayor John Muhlfeld put it recently, “make legal all the rights we require as a municipality to operate, maintain, and deliver clean water to our residents and visitors.”

Whitefish instead cheaped out at almost every juncture, doing only what it wanted, could get away with, or had to, despite the fact that 75 percent of the city water supply comes from Haskill.

Even with all that neglect, there’s no crisis. Stoltze has harvested out of Haskill for more than 100 years, and the water’s fine. Many times, the company offered to sell property the city objectively needed, at a good price. For example, in 1929, Stoltze sold Whitefish the acre of land needed for the Second Creek intake. According to Stoltze history the price was TWELVE BUCKS – and the city even complained about that. Today, somehow $17 million is okey-dokey?

Second, the resort tax was first implemented 20 years ago, when things were kind of rough – especially Whitefish’s cratered streets. The gambit was to get other people (those darn tourists) to fix Whitefish’s potholes, while squeezed old-timers got a break on their property taxes. It was classic “other people’s money” politics – but even so, voters only accepted a 2 percent tax, not the 3 percent allowed by law.

Fast forward to today – Second Street is gussied up like Park Avenue, and downtown barely hints at Whitefish’s tawdry, hardscrabble past. With Whitefish’s potholes literally paved over with other people’s gold, now’s the time to max the tax on something completely different?

Third, Whitefish really doesn’t need to buy development rights on all 3,000 acres to “deliver clean water.” My eyeballs and every decent map I’ve seen shows the vast bulk of Stoltze’s land below the city water intakes. The First Creek intake to the west, draining Big Mountain’s base, was closed off because of contamination (including fecal coliform) from stupid development policies (thankfully changed) on the ski hill.

That leaves Second and Third creeks. Above the intake on Second (basically east of Inspiration run), the Second Creek basin is roughly two sections (640 acres each) of Forest Service and “other private” and about one section of Stoltze, below the Russ’s Street run/road/traverse that marks the ski area boundary.

Third Creek’s basin above the city intake is almost all Forest Service, with maybe 90 acres of “steep” belonging to Stoltze. Therefore, to “deliver clean water” would require easements on 1,000 acres at most – not all 3,000 acres.

So, is this really about clean water? Nah. This is about a city council that not only has an anti-development fetish but a raging addiction to other people’s money.

Everyone knows Stoltze’s land in Haskill is incredibly valuable – or would be if “planning” politics ever allowed it. And everyone, including the city council, knows that Stoltze does not deserve to be victimized as a reward for its century of neighborly stewardship. The company should be made whole. How?

In America, the city would pay a fair price for the land upstream of the intakes. Then, when the time came, Stoltze could sell the rest for careful development, buying other timber base to supply its mill. The city would get more residents, more tax base, and – this might be important – be better able to pay for the city’s legitimate needs.

But in Whitefish, the council’s “solution” for cleaning up a mess it made is – other people’s money: $9 million dollars of “federal money” taxed away from other people far away who will never benefit, mixed with another eight million to be chiseled out of unwitting visitors’ wallets.