Panel renews search for pre-release center site

The local working committee tasked with finding a site for a Kalispell-area prerelease center met Thursday morning to begin the process of picking a new location for the proposed 40-bed facility.

Residents in May rejected the previously proposed site in the old Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services building at 2282 U.S. 93 South.

The working committee, which convened Thursday following a revision of state rules governing the siting process, began considering general geographic areas suitable for the proposed facility.

Possible locations include areas along U.S. 93 South in the Four Corners area, commercial and industrial areas in the Kalispell city center, and along U.S. 2 in Evergreen.

The state requires pre-release centers to be within a 15-minute response time from law enforcement and have access to 24-hour fire and medical services.

In addition, the working committee implemented further restrictions barring the pre-release center from residentially zoned areas and from areas within 1,500 feet of a school.

Public meetings and a survey of surrounding residents must be conducted when a new site is chosen.

"I think we need to go back and pick a geographic area, then survey the area, then let [Community, Counseling and Correctional Services] go find what they can in that area, and go from there," said Kelly Speer, chief of the Montana Department of Corrections' Facilities Program Bureau.

A survey of residents within a half mile of the previously proposed site on U.S. 93 South found that 74 percent of property owners opposed the location, sinking the project in its final stage.

Community, Counseling and Correctional Services - a Butte-based nonprofit that operates 12 detention or treatment facilities in three states - won the contract to operate the Kalispell pre-release center last December.

Should the nonprofit be unable to buy or build a facility within a reasonable range of its original proposal, which was site-specific, the project could be reopened to bidding.

"As soon as the site has been selected we'll do our due diligence... We'll have to crunch the numbers and make sure it's feasible for us," said Steve McArthur, Community, Counseling and Correctional Services' director of community correctional programs.

The working committee, appointed jointly by the city and county in January 2008, strongly supports a Kalispell pre-release center. Officials have been clear the debate is now more about siting the facility than whether a pre-release center should be built.

A survey, conducted in mid-2008 by MSU-Billings, polled residents both inside Kalispell and within a 10-mile radius of the Kalispell city limits and found support to bring a pre-release center to the area.

"We know we have people here who have committed crime, however they come," said working committee chairwoman Bonnie Olson.

Pre-release centers hold inmates nearing the end of their prison sentences and help them readjust gradually into society. Residents, whose average stay is six months, receive treatment, counseling, job training and placement services.

Flathead County has more than 1,300 people in the state corrections system and is the only large county in Montana without a pre-release center. Lake and Lincoln counties have contributed about another 650 offenders.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com