The Kalispell City Council seems willing to sponsor Flathead County’s application for a $450,000 grant to help build a new Agency on Aging facility.

Montana cities and counties can apply for funding through several different Community Development Block Grant programs each year. But with a public facilities grant awarded last year for Intermountain Providence Home in Somers, Flathead County cannot apply for another such grant until that money has been spent.

Kalispell finds itself with no public facilities grant project and an “open slot” to apply for a grant this spring — a slot the county is asking to use.

At a City Council work session on Monday, Kalispell Planning Director Tom Jentz told council members that the city doesn’t have a public facilities grant project identified on its horizon for the next two years.

“We don’t see any downside to the city sponsoring this application,” Jentz said.

“We would sponsor it, hold a public hearing and [the county] will do the heavy lifting of preparing and submitting the grant. We’re allowing them to have a chair at our table for a worthy project.”

The City Council at an upcoming meeting is expected to pass a resolution of intent to apply for the public facilities grant. That would schedule a public hearing on the application, likely for some time in April to give the county more time complete a preliminary architectural report and prepare its project.

Flathead County is exploring possible construction sites at the Fairgrounds and the county office complex along Main Street.

The rented building on Kelly Road where Agency of Aging operates “has a number of issues that make it not a good fit,” Director Lisa Sheppard told the City Council on Monday.

Those issues include not enough space in the dining area, makeshift offices for staffers in a food storage area at the back of the building and numerous accessibility issues. And with seniors 60 or older projected to make up a quarter of Flathead County’s population in two years, the building offers a limited ability for the agency to expand services, Sheppard said.

“We’re also hoping we can help Kalispell Senior Center find a better home alongside us as well. They have an even worse situation,” Sheppard said.

Flathead County Administrator Mike Pence said the county is likely targeting a building cost between $2 million and $2.7 million and looking at county cash reserves and up to a $1.5 million low-interest loan from Montana Board of Investments to cover the difference.

He said county commissioners have not decided if they plan to proceed with the project if the Community Development Block Grant is not awarded.

Kalispell Mayor Tammi Fisher and council member Tim Kluesner did not attend Monday’s work session. But with Kalispell having no project of its own, the rest of the City Council seemed willing to sponsor the county’s grant application.

A former director of the Agency on Aging, council member Jim Atkinson encouraged county officials to identify a site prior to a public hearing on the grant application.

“The public is going to want to know where this site is going to be. We need to wait for the [preliminary architectural report], wait for a determination by the commissioners and nail down a site so the public has something to talk about,” he said.

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