The Kalispell City Council on Monday endorsed the concept of a revised street maintenance assessment that would raise more funding for road work — possibly in conjunction with an end to the city’s transportation impact fees.

“We’re asking for your consideration of the concept to provide staff with guidance over how to proceed ... I don’t want staff to spend a lot of resources on number crunching unless this has passed the litmus test conceptually,” outgoing City Manager Jane Howington told the council.

After a lengthy discussion, the council voted 8-1 to pass a resolution of intent that tells city staff to keep working on the concept.

“The letter [with the resolution] provides the outline of a possible scenario, but the resolution just says we’re going to study it ... I can support that at this point,” council member Wayne Saverud said.

City officials have talked about various methods for levying street maintenance assessments for nearly 18 months.

The annual assessments raise money for road maintenance, repairs and equipment. The present method charges property owners based on the size of their property in proportion to the size of the city, raising about $1.5 million a year.

“The major purpose is to turn our street maintenance fund into a long-term sustainable fund for the long-term care of our infrastructure ... Many [city] streets are getting older and we haven’t done any advanced planning for how to replace those,” Howington said.

Another goal is to take the bulk of road work costs off the back of residential property owners, and get higher-traffic businesses to pay a fair share.

As things sit, the city’s 7,337 residential parcel owners pay nearly 47 percent of the roughly $1.5 million raised each year for road work, but account for less than 22 percent of traffic generation.

That compares to 329 retail commercial parcel owners who pay less than 18 percent of the funding for road work but account for more than 62 percent of traffic generation, according to city data.

An early proposal taking shape would charge residential property owners just $25 a year. That’s down from a $50 assessment proposed earlier and the roughly $125 they are paying now on average.

The city would grant waivers for small lots that cannot be built on or developed.

Businesses would pay $25 per 1,000 square feet as a base assessment fee.

On top of that, higher-traffic businesses would also be charged nine cents per trip, based on business category and standardized traffic generation estimates listed in the Institute of Transportation Engineers Manual.

Depending on the council’s wishes, that nine cent per trip rate could be lowered or phased in over several years, Howington said.

Small businesses could do actual traffic or customer counts for a week to appeal their assessments.

Larger businesses could also appeal their assessments with the results of an actual traffic study.

Property owners with vacant commercial buildings could notify the city that the building is not being used and get a waiver from the trip generation fee or an adjusted assessment, Howington said.

Depending on the final proposal, officials have estimated that a revised street maintenance could more than double the amount of money raised each year for road work.

THE RESOLUTION OF intent tells city staff to keep working on the proposal, develop a financial master plan for the operation and maintenance of city streets and then present any final proposal through a series of public forums.

This latest proposal uses a trip generation methodology, one of five methods state law allows for cities to calculate their street maintenance assessments.

An earlier “transaction fee” proposal that met significant resistance would have charged businesses based on the number of transactions they complete.

“Using trip generation is much more comprehensive,” Howington said of the newer proposal.

Council member Bob Hafferman was the only vote against the resolution of intent.

“This whole process has been a moving target. Initially it was three cents, then five cents, then nine cents. The target first went to $4.3 million, or maybe $4.5 million, and now I hear it’s $3 million,” Hafferman said, questioning where and how the extra money would be spent.

“What streets are in such dire need that a major tax increase is necessary?” he asked

Hafferman offered an amendment to require the city to put any final proposal on the ballot for voter approval. It died for lack of a second.

Mayor Tammi Fisher moved to include transportation impact fees in the staff study, to see if they can be ended as part of a modified street maintenance assessment.

After discussion and clarification that the amendment would not require the impact fees to be ended as part of any revised assessment method, Fisher’s amendment passed 8-1 with Hafferman opposed.

Fisher said a revised assessment method could be similar in some ways to a local option sales tax, which the city is not allowed to implement.

“This would allow businesses to pass the costs on to the customer [or not], and allow us to look at the long-term stability of our infrastructure,” she said.

Fisher wants to see the transportation impact fees phased out if a revised street maintenance assessment method is implemented.

“The details haven’t been hammered out yet, but what I have said publicly is if we are going to add an assessment, add a fee, then we need to get rid of one,” Fisher said.

Fisher added that transportation impact fees adopted in 2009 have proved “woefully inadequate” at raising money.

“I’d like to see us study this [assessment method] but also look at removing those transportation impact fees to replace them with this one assessment that is fair across the board.”

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.