Page 12 - Flathead Beacon // 5.11.16

NEWS
White sh Budget Sees 23 Percent Decline This year’s preliminary budget is $14.6 million less than last year
BY TRISTAN SCOTT OF THE BEACON
The city of White sh’s preliminary budget for next scal year is down 23 per- cent from last year’s total, and at $48.6 million includes a proposed property tax reduction of 5.2 percent due to voters’ approval of a resort tax increase.
At $68.3 million, last year’s budget was an anomaly, according to City Man- ager Chuck Stearns, in ated to 60 per- cent above normal due primarily to its inclusion of $8.5 million to complete the
Haskill Basin conservation easement, and $14.4 million for the new downtown City Hall and parking structure project, construction of which is underway.
Under the budget, property taxes would see a reduction of 7 mills because of an increased property tax rebate that occurred when voters approved a resort- tax hike from 2 percent to 3 percent.
Seventy percent of the revenue from the extra 1 percent will go toward the cost of the conservation easement, while 25 percent is used for property tax rebates
to city property owners.
Changes in the management of the
Stumptown Ice Den will also a ect the budget because it is now privately managed, trimming $464,861 from the budget.
Meanwhile, city employees will see a 3.8 percent pay increase, which is more than the previous year’s increase of 2.3 percent.
Stearns said the budget also marks the rst year in more than 20 years that there will not be a phase-in of property value increases from a reappraisal.
With the State Legislature adopting a two-year reappraisal cycle, there is no general valuation increase this year. The only property valuation or mill value increase available will be from new con- struction going on the tax rolls and some other classes of valuation like Centrally Assessed property.
“We are projecting and hoping that the mill value increases by 3.1 percent to $22,000 per mill this year,” Stearns wrote in the proposed budget.
tscott@ atheadbeacon.com
View Coalition, Friends of the Wild Swan, the Montana Ecosystems Defense Coun- cil, the North Fork Preservation Associa- tion, and Headwaters Montana.
Kruger said he began his career in the area in 1970, ying search and rescue operations for the park, and performed more than 100 missions as an important function of the park.
“There’s a lot of people who wouldn’t be around today if it wasn’t for me and my helicopter,” Kruger said.
He said his company has been ying visitors over Glacier for the last 36 years, and although he’s limited to 750 ights annually he rarely approaches the limit, ying an average of between 300 and 400 tours during the summer season.
The Federal Aviation Administration requires air tour operators to y less than 5,000 feet above national parks or abut- ting tribal lands.
According to McClelland, Glacier National Park administrators have said for decades that their hands are tied, abrogating authority to FAA jurisdiction.
tscott@ atheadbeacon.com
Petitioners Oppose Glacier Helicopter Tours Group calls on Interior Secretary to permanently ground Glacier Park over ights
BY TRISTAN SCOTT OF THE BEACON
Anti-noise activists are sounding o about helicopter tours in Glacier National Park and recently drafted an open letter to Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell in an e ort to quell the landscape by ending scenic tours over the park by 2017.
Mary McClelland wrote the letter on behalf of Friends for a Quiet! Glacier Coalition, which has launched a website to gather signatures for the petition.
In addition to Secretary Jewell, it is copied to National Park Service director Jonathan Jarvis and Secretary of Trans- portation Anthony Foxx, as well as Glacier National Park Superintendent Je Mow.
“Glacier’s solitude has been shattered by hundreds of helicopter over ights,” McClelland states in the letter, “and the incessant noise pollution endured by wildlife and visitors is destroying what Glacier stands for – the pinnacle of natu- ral beauty and tranquility.”
The pilots who run the two helicopter tour companies based in West Glacier said the impact of their vessels on parklands
and visitors’ experience has been over- stated for years.
Jim Kruger, who owns Kruger Heli- cop-Tours, said the noise pollution gener- ated by motorcycles touring the Going-to- the-Sun Road creates far more of a ruckus than his helicopters.
“They’ve been screaming about this for 35 years, but I’ve never heard about anyone trying to ban Harley Davidson motorcycles from driving the road,” Kru- ger said. “Fifteen seconds after I’m gone you’ll never even know I was there.”
McClelland’s letter states that three decades after noise pollution created by helicopter tours in Glacier was identi ed as a priority problem at congressional hearings, 17 years after it was listed as a critical issue in Glacier’s General Manage- ment Plan, and 16 years after passage of the National Parks Air Tour Management Act, not much has changed.
“We still have no peace in Glacier,” McClelland says. “Today, more than 500 helicopters per month y sorties over our nation’s only international peace park and World Heritage Site.”
As of May 9, the website, quietglacier. wix.com/coalitioninformation, whose homepage features waves lapping at the idyllic shore of Lake McDonald over- dubbed with the thrum of a helicopter propeller, had gathered signatures from nearly 170 petitioners.
According to McClelland, Friends for a Quiet! Glacier Coalition includes the Sierra Club, the Alliance for the Wild Rockeis, the National Parks Conservation Association, Wilderness Watch, the Swan
“THEY’VE BEEN SCREAMING ABOUT THIS FOR 35 YEARS, BUT I’VE NEVER HEARD ABOUT ANYONE TRYING TO
BAN HARLEY DAVIDSON MOTORCYCLES FROM DRIVING THE ROAD.”
- JIM KRUGER
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