Last night, Kalispell City councilors finally approved a resolution that ensured police and fire impact fees would not increase for the 2025 fiscal year. Mayor Mark Johnson referred to the move as “crossing t’s and dotting i’s,” making official the council’s July vote to not move forward with raising the fees. Adhering to the suggested net allowable impact fees this year would have raised police fees to $183 per residential unit, $147 per multifamily unit, and $529 per commercial 1,000 square feet. Fire fees would have raised to $745 per residential, $596 per multifamily, and $1,113 per commercial 1,000 sq. ft.
Instead, police impact fees will stay at a range from $15 to $39 depending on whether it’s a residential, multifamily or commercial unit. Fire fees will stay between $333 to $460 depending on the type of unit.
All councilors and the mayor approved the resolution, save for Councilor Ryan Hunter who referenced conversations with community members who supported higher impact fees.
“I do believe that when there’s an assessment of the impact of developments that developers should pay that fee,” Hunter said. “I find there’s pretty wide support for having folks pay the impact fee that’s assessed.”
Johnson noted that “developers don’t pay the impact fees, the end consumer pays the impact fee.”
At the end of the meeting, Councilor Sid Daoud brought up the issue of community noise complaints about Kruise Kalispell. Daoud asked if the public city manager report could include data on how many tickets police are handing out on Main Street, First Avenue East and First Avenue West from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday evenings in Kalispell – “now that we have the emergency levy in place and we have more officers available.”
“Just so we can track to see if we’re addressing this problem,” Daoud said. “If not, then we can think of other things the council could do to address it.”
Starting next week, the report should include the Friday night ticketing stats.
I’m Zoë Buhrmaster. Let’s peruse the rest of the news in Tuesday’s Daily Roundup.
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