Kalispell Planning Commission to weigh new housing rules
The Montana Land Use Planning Act, signed by Gov. Greg Gianforte in 2023, required 10 Montana cities, including Kalispell, to draft a new plan that places a particular focus on housing and is influenced largely through community engagement.
The commission convenes on May 13 at 6 p.m. in City Hall, 201 First Ave. E.
A dedicated city webpage (engagekalispell.com/#tab-59610) allows residents to pick and choose from 14 zoning regulations identified in the act that they believe would most effectively promote attainable housing in Kalispell.
The city is required to adopt a minimum of five out of 14 regulations. Potential ordinances include allowing apartments as permitted use in office and commercial zones, higher density housing near community hubs like colleges or public transit, and having tiny houses defined in building code.
The housing section of the draft plan is aimed at increasing access to attainable housing for all income levels, according to a memo from city planner Donnie McBath. The plan supports compact and connected neighborhoods through infill development, redevelopment of underused sites and higher-density housing near services and transportation corridors.
Recent development has eased the housing market, but affordability, limited vacancy and an imbalance in the geographic distribution of housing types remain key issues, according to McBath.
While the rental vacancy rate sits at a tight 1.1%, close to 30% of Kalispell's total land area remains vacant, amounting to around 2,500 acres. Nearly all of that land has zoning designations that support housing.
"This available land base presents a significant opportunity for accommodating future residential, commercial and public facility needs," wrote Development Services Director Jarod Nygren in a memo.
Kalispell's population is expected to grow by around 19,000 residents by 2045, prompting the need for between 8,800 and 10,000 new housing units, according to McBath.
Between 2021 and 2025, City Hall approved roughly 7,500 new residential units, which was a significant step toward meeting that growth, according to Nygren.
The city is currently home to an estimated 15,847 dwellings, which consists of 60% single-family homes, 30% multifamily units and 10% manufactured or mobile homes, according to the memo.
The Montana Land Use Planning Act has drawn criticism from city officials for limiting public input on site-specific developments and instead frontloads public involvement in developing a plan. The law ends public hearings in front of Council on site-specific construction, which includes subdivisions.
That provision was ruled unconstitutional by a district court judge in Bozeman earlier this year, though, leaving city planners with unanswered questions on how site-specific projects should be approached.
THE COMMISSION also will hear a proposal from the developer of a subdivision south of Kalispell looking to expand its neighborhood.
Colton Behr, developer of the Anderson Ranch subdivision that was OK'd by Council in September 2024, is looking to add 12 acres to the 31-acre property that resides on the west side of Demersville Road and just south of Lower Valley Road.
The extension, which is at the south end of the property, is meant to get the development in line with the city's growth policy, which designates four housing units per acre. The bulk of the new property is within a 100-year flood zone but will only be used for parkland, open space and stormwater detention, according to the development proposal.
The entire subdivision stakes out 166 lots for single-family detached dwellings. The homes will be 1,600 square feet or less on 4,500-square-foot lots, "which equates to small homes on small lots that can provide more attainable housing options for residents of Kalispell," according to the subdivision proposal.
Neighboring units will share a driveway to preserve area for on-street parking. The neighborhood is expected to bring roughly 56 students to the K-12 school system at full buildout and will generate about 1,600 daily vehicle trips, according to a traffic study done last fall.
The PUD proposes 13.31 acres of parkland along the south side of the property.
The subdivision shares a planned unit development with Todd Gardner, who owns property directly west. The combined planned unit development amounts to 95-acres zoned for residential, industrial and commercial uses.
An Amazon distribution warehouse is being built on the Gardner-owned property. The one-story building is set to be about 28,000 square feet and located on United Drive near Fred's Applicance.
The property will also see some road work, including an east/west road connecting U.S. 93 with Demersville Road, which may be fitted with a traffic signal. Another traffic signal will also be built on the portion of road meeting Demersville Road and Bar H Drive.
Reporter Jack Underhill may be reached at 758-4407 or junderhill@dailyinterlake.com.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
20 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Joe Ferguson and Daniel Anello: Chicago Public Schools can't afford to bail out City Hall
This month marks yet another turning point in the checkered financial history of Chicago Public Schools. With a projected $734 million deficit, as estimated by the interim CEO, the Board of Education must pass a budget by the end of August. The decisions made in the coming days will determine whether CPS begins a path to fiscal stability — or plunges into a tailspin that will make recovery brutally painful. Closing the gap was already a herculean task when it stood at $529 million, before the interim CEO added $175 million in the form of a pension reimbursement that City Hall has been attempting to strong-arm CPS into over the last year. Now, at $734 million, a solution is all but impossible without cuts to critical programs. The Municipal Employees' Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago (MEABF) pension fund, created in 1921, covers both city workers and CPS non-teaching staff. Yet two-thirds of this cost belongs to the city, and the city controls the tax levy designated to cover this pension fund. The law clearly states that it is the city's sole responsibility to fund MEABF, not CPS. The district did make partial reimbursements under an intergovernmental agreement during the COVID era, when it was flush with $3 billion in federal relief. That relief is now gone, but the mayor is insisting that CPS continue to pay. Let's be clear: There is no good way for CPS to pay this $175 million reimbursement. Revenue options are nearly nonexistent. Property taxes have already been raised to the legal limit, and CPS can raise money only through a referendum, which there is no time for. Even without the pension charge, CPS is being forced to make painful choices. Adding $175 million to the burden is like tossing a cinderblock to someone on the verge of drowning. It pushes any necessary cuts from difficult to catastrophic. City Hall's suggested solution for paying the pension reimbursement? CPS should just borrow the money. But a short-term, high-interest loan is a deeply risky move that simply kicks an even heavier can down the road. Borrowing to plug this year's hole may feel like an easy fix, but it's no fix at all. It would saddle CPS with increased interest payments and deepen the district's future budget deficits, just as the district faces yet another financial cliff next year. CPS is still paying nearly $200 million per year in interest on short-term borrowing from its last crisis, between 2016 and 2018. Those payments will last until 2048. Had the district avoided borrowing then, this year's deficit would be smaller. Repeating past mistakes now will only guarantee deeper harm to students and schools tomorrow. Even in the short term, borrowing poses major risks. Using debt to cover operating costs would likely trigger a credit downgrade, dropping CPS even further into junk bond territory. That downgrade would raise borrowing costs across the board, deepening the deficit and limiting future options. The consequences are real. First, higher interest rates would make CPS' debt more expensive, worsening future budget gaps. Second, most CPS borrowing supports capital needs, especially building maintenance. If borrowing becomes more costly, even less will be done to fix the district's $14 billion repair backlog. Third, CPS is banking on saving $100 million by refinancing existing debt at better rates. A downgrade risks erasing those savings and creating a new $100 million gap this year alone. And while these numbers may feel abstract, the impacts are not. Rising borrowing costs divert dollars away from classrooms, counselors and student supports. The true cost isn't just felt by taxpayers; it's paid by children, who lose access to the education resources they deserve. CPS is painting itself into a corner by attempting to cover the city's MEABF pension bill. It all but guarantees the district's only exit is through borrowing. But any loan is a dangerous gamble with the futures of hundreds of thousands of students. Editorial: State control of Chicago Public Schools grows likelier as budget crisis intensifiesA loan now could trigger a spiral of rising deficits, interest payments and more borrowing, culminating in CPS being locked out of credit markets entirely. That's exactly what happened in 1980, when the state had to step in and take over. That kind of crisis could undo the hard-won authority of Chicago's newly elected school board before it even begins. Importantly, when engaged, the public has been clear: Chicagoans overwhelmingly oppose CPS paying the city's pension bill, and they oppose borrowing to cover the current gap with or without the pension expense. The Board of Education should reject this shortsighted proposal. CPS exists to educate students, not to subsidize city pensions. Chicago's children, families and taxpayers deserve better. They deserve a school budget that protects the classroom, preserves fiscal integrity, and puts kids first.
Chicago Tribune
20 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: Mayor Brandon Johnson's pension working group slinks away without a word
In a few weeks, a working group appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson is scheduled to provide preliminary recommendations on how to address Chicago's budget crisis. We have little doubt, given the mayor's understandable concerns about the city's $1 billion-plus budget shortfall for 2026, that we'll see a work product from that group. How useful it is remains to be seen, but there will be to read. We wish we could say the same about another mayoral working group that Johnson disbanded recently. That ad hoc body, which Johnson created in mid-2023 to confront the city's desperately underfunded municipal pensions, will provide exactly zero recommendations on how to address that crisis. The mayor acknowledged last week that the group was dissolved without producing a report, a damning indictment both of the internal operations of City Hall and how this mayor doesn't take seriously the cost side of Chicago's ledger while obsessing over finding more revenue to feed the government beast. The two issues — pensions and the city's structural fiscal woes — are tied together inextricably. The main reason taxpayers keep seeing their taxes, fees and fines rise while government services barely improve is the ever-increasing cost of meeting obligations tied to Chicago's four employee pension funds. Chicago is paying $2.9 billion this year for pensions, 17% of its total $17.1 billion budget. That is by far the highest percentage of any major U.S. city. For example, New York City, which also has a pension-debt issue, allocated 9% of its budget to pensions in fiscal 2025. Chicago would for its pensions to eat up just 9% of its budget. Chicago's pension problem just got exponentially more dire with Gov. JB Pritzker's signing earlier this month of legislation substantially sweetening retirement benefits for Chicago police and firefighters who'd been hired after 2010 — so-called Tier 2 employees. That measure alone added $11 billion to Chicago's pre-existing $36 billion pile of pension debt, a mind-boggling 30% increase. Police and fire pension funds that had just 25% of the assets needed to meet present and future obligations saw that percentage reduced to just 18% in one fell swoop. If Johnson's pension working group had managed to produce any recommendations, we'd have hoped that close to the top of the list would have been not to dig the city's pension hole any deeper. Or, certainly not any deeper than what is minimally necessary to comply with federal rules requiring that pension benefits at least match what Social Security would provide. Instead, Chicago got crickets. As recently as last April, we asked the mayor's office when the pension report would be released and were told at the time that it would be 'within the next two weeks barring unforeseen edits.' Two weeks came and went; we checked back on the matter a month later. We were told the group 'needed to go back and do some more work on it.' But it was coming, we were assured. Sort of the municipal-government equivalent of the 'check is in the mail,' we guess. Let's go back to the establishment of the pension working group. In the opening months of his mayoral term, Johnson rightly identified pension debt as perhaps the most important issue affecting Chicago's future. The group he appointed, unfortunately, was made up mainly of public sector union leaders and Democratic lawmakers allied with those unions. There was virtually no representation for taxpayers and businesses. So given its composition the group wasn't likely to offer bold ideas for securing Chicago's future solvency. Johnson apparently quickly realized as much because a year after the group's formation the administration sharply narrowed its focus from a broad look at the crisis to merely ensuring Tier 2 benefits are compliant with federal law. Even given that simple task, the group couldn't make what should have been an easy call. Johnson told reporters last week that members of the ad hoc panel who supported the unaffordable and unfunded sweeteners signed by Pritzker won the internal debate. Johnson called the result 'a disappointment.' What's disappointing is evidence once again of a lack of leadership from this mayor. When you appoint a working group made up overwhelmingly of those representing public sector unions and their political supporters, what sort of result do you expect? Do you expect them to call for sacrifice for their members? Do you expect them to give taxpayers any consideration? Apart from continuing his predecessor's practice of paying more into Chicago's pension funds than is minimally required, Johnson has failed on the issue that is most threatening to Chicago's future. That failure is symbolized most starkly in the mute dissolution of his own group, formed to help save Chicago from its pension morass but which instead silently acquiesced in making that threat markedly worse. A group whose members couldn't even summon the courage to give official voice to further imperiling Chicago's fiscal health and simply slunk away, knowing their favored outcome would win the day anyway.
New York Post
3 days ago
- New York Post
Cuomo: Chicago mayor's ‘incompetent leadership' should be a red flag for anyone supporting socialist Zohran Mamdani for NYC mayor
Chicago's budget woes under far-left Mayor Brandon Johnson should serve as warning to New Yorkers planning to back socialist Zohran Mamdani's mayoral bid. 'Chicago is proof that incompetent leadership can turn a deep-dish city into a half-baked mess,' ex-Gov Andrew Cuomo wrote on X Friday. 'From long before we built the Erie Canal to compete with Chicago, New York has always been about making things happen I believe in government that works,' boasted Cuomo, a registered Democrat who is running for NYC mayor as an independent. 'I have done it time and time again for the people of New York. Let's do it again.' 3 A Zohran Mamdani victory in the race for City Hall could land the Big Apple in the same boat as Chicago, which is facing looming budget shortfalls under far-left Mayor Brandon Johnson. Kyle Stevens/Shutterstock Cuomo's indirect dig at the Democratic nominee and frontrunner to win this year's NYC mayoral race came in response to Johnson earlier this week saying Chicago needs to deal with looming budget shortfalls even as it's education, housing, health care and transportation systems are 'woefully underfunded.' Last year, the Wall Street Journal editorial board dubbed Johnson 'America's worst mayor.' 3 Cuomo is running for mayor of New York City as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani. SARAH YENESEL/EPA/Shutterstock 3 Last year, the Wall Street Journal editorial board dubbed Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson 'America's worst mayor.' Getty Images Mamdani, a Queens state assemblyman, is proposing a series of pie-in-the-sky proposals that his critics doubt he'll find the funding or support to pull off, including eliminating bus fares and setting up government-run grocery stores. Mamdani campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec told Fox News that 'trusting Andrew Cuomo to address New York's affordability crisis is the equivalent of tasking an arsonist with putting out a fire — he created this crisis.'
