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6 | MAY 6, 2015 NEWS FLATHEADBEACON.COM Whitefish Voters Approve Resort Tax Increase to
Purchase Haskill Conservation Easement
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Special election results show overwhelming approval of 1 percent resort tax increase to help protect municipal water supply, public access
By TRISTAN SCOTT of the Beacon
WHITEFISH – In a watershed victo- ry for conservation advocates and city of- ficials who saw the need to permanently protect Whitefish’s municipal water sup- ply while preserving recreational access to a 3,000-acre tract of land, voters over- whelmingly approved a 1 percentage point resort tax increase that will help finance the purchase of a conservation easement in Haskill Basin.
Results of the special election were tal- lied April 28, with 1,718 voting in favor and 335 against. Forty-nine percent of the vot- ers who were mailed ballots cast votes.
The 83.6 percent approval means the revenues generated through Jan. 31, 2025 – the date when the existing resort tax expires and goes back to Whitefish resi- dents for a vote – will be used to fund the remaining $8 million needed for the con- servation easement. Twenty-five percent of the increase will be rebated to taxpayers in a similar fashion to how the current per- centage works.
The city’s resort tax on lodging, restau- rant food and drinks and retail items will increase from 2 percent to 3 percent.
The Whitefish City Council voted in favor of holding the special election in an effort to secure additional funding sources to help acquire a conservation easement on prime land owned by the F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Co. and located beside White- fish Mountain Resort on Big Mountain, a tract of land vulnerable to pressures of de- velopment and the source of 75 percent of the municipal water supply in Whitefish.
John Muhlfeld, mayor of Whitefish, speaks about protecting Haskill Basin’s water during a press conference at Depot Park in Whitefish. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
If Whitefish were to lose access to Haskill Basin water, it would force the al- ternative of pumping and treating water from Whitefish Lake, costing an additional $500,000 annually, according to White- fish Mayor John Muhlfeld.
Stoltze values the land at $20.6 million, but the company has offered to sell it for $17 million, according to Alex Diekmann, project manager for the Trust for Public Land, which is the nonprofit organization working to raise money from federal pro- grams, private donors and public funding sources in order to bring the deal to frui- tion.
Earlier this year, the project received a funding boost from the U.S. Forest Ser- vice, which ranks such projects for fund- ing through its Forest Legacy Program, awarding grants to states to purchase per- manent conservation easements.
The agency has given the Haskill Ba- sin Watershed Project its No. 1 spot, posi- tioning it to receive $7 million in Legacy Project funding. An additional $2 million will come from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service’s Habitat Conservation Plan Land Acquisition Program. Together, the grants give the project significant purchase to- ward raising the $17 million needed to buy the development rights from Stoltze by the end of 2015, leaving a balance of about $8 million.
Muhlfeld said the council’s reasoning in selecting the resort tax increase, as op- posed to alternate funding mechanisms like an uptick in water rates, was that it was more equitable to distribute the finan- cial burden through a resort tax increase affecting the half-million visitors White- fish draws annually than placing the mill- stone on the backs of 5,200 households.
Whitefish’s resort tax has raised $25.8 million in the past two decades, with tax revenue increasing at an average of 6 per- cent each year. Muhlfeld said 75 percent of resort tax collections are used for street projects, 25 percent is rebated to property owners, 5 percent is set aside for park im- provements, and the remaining 5 percent helps administer the tax.
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