Kalispell schools pose $6 million levy

Kalispell Public Schools will ask voters to approve nearly $6 million over the next five years to repair and maintain its school buildings.

The board of trustees voted at a special meeting Tuesday to run a building reserve and technology levy in March. If taxpayers approve the issue, about $1.2 million will be levied each year for five years, for a total of nearly $6 million.

Voters will decide the issue March 22. Polls will be open at the Flathead County Fairgrounds and in Kalispell’s outlying elementary districts.

If voters approve the levy, a homeowner with a home with an assessed value of $100,000 would pay $28.80 more a year in property taxes. Annual taxes on a home with a $200,000 assessed value would increase by $57.60.

The money is necessary, school officials say, to keep the district’s buildings safe and functional and to keep its technology reasonably up-to-date.

The district has long relied on building reserve levies to maintain its 14 schools and support facilities.

Voters approved Kalispell’s first building reserve levy in 1982 and renewed the levy every five years starting in 1985. That came to a halt in November 2009, when voters rejected a $4.1 million high school levy request. They approved a $2.8 million elementary request at the same time.

Those were replacement levies; the school board had asked voters for the same amount they had paid during the last five-year levy cycle.

This time the board is asking voters for more money, a decision Superintendent Darlene Schottle said earlier this month was based in large part on results from a Kalispell Fire Department walk-through at Flathead High School.

The department inspected the district’s schools in November and, according to a letter to Schottle from Fire Chief Dan Diehl, Flathead High requires the most attention. The letter, which is available at www.dailyinterlake.com, outlines 35 hazards inspectors found at Flathead.

Some hazards were easily fixed, like moving Dumpsters at least five feet from the building. Others, like installing an automatic sprinkler system throughout the school, are expensive. A building improvement budget from the district estimates a fire suppression system at Flathead could cost $900,000.

That’s the least expensive solution to the district’s primary fire code problem, Diehl said Wednesday. Making sure the entire school has a sprinkler system would allow the school to get around other legal requirements, such as installing fire-resistant doors or fire-separation walls.

“It is the cheapest alternative to their construction problems,” Diehl said of installing sprinklers in the sections of the school that don’t already have them. “A fire sprinkler buys them a lot of exemptions in the current code.”

Before the recession began, the district and the fire department had a plan to address the issues at Flathead, he said.

Flathead isn’t the only facility with problems, however. Diehl’s letter outlines 12 issues at Edgerton School, eight at Russell, two at Peterson, seven at Hedges, six at Elrod, 10 at Kalispell Middle School and four at Linderman, which now houses the district’s alternative high schools. The inspection also found seven issues at Glacier High School, primarily dealing with blocked exists and excessive extension cords in some classrooms.

The fire department will conduct a follow-up inspection Monday to verify that those easily fixed items had been taken care of, Diehl said.

Glacier might be in good shape now, but concern for its future contributed to the levy amount. By the end of the proposed levy’s five-year cycle, the building will be 10 years old and likely starting to need maintenance, Schottle told the Inter Lake earlier this month.

But safety is the primary issue and the main reason the district is asking for the levy, Schottle said.

“We’re very concerned about the safety of our students, especially at Flathead,” she said. “We feel like if we continue to not address these issues, they’re going to continue to worsen.”

If voters don’t approve the levy, the fire department will prioritize the safety issues, and the district will have to pay for them out of the general fund, Schottle said. Kalispell schools are facing at least a $500,000 shortfall in the 2011-12 general fund, depending on how the state Legislature decides to fund education.

Ignoring the issues, particularly at Flathead, isn’t an option, Diehl said.

“We’re both in agreement, the school district and myself, that we can’t let it go any longer. It’s the liability of allowing that school to operate in those conditions. It needs to be fixed now,” he said.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re in the [economic] time that we’re in, but the schools need to be brought up to code.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.