Creating a separate stormwater district to pay for the completion and ongoing maintenance of the Bigfork stormwater system may be a viable option and is worth exploring.

That was the consensus of the Flathead County commissioners and several Bigfork representatives as they met Thursday in a work session to hash over the best way to finance the remaining work.

It will cost about $1 million to construct the last half of the project from the southern leg of Electric Avenue to Bridge Street and out to Montana 35.

A year ago the commissioners rejected a proposed rural special improvement district that would have tapped property owners within the district an annual assessment spread out over a number of years. But they left the door open, saying the project wasn’t dead; the timing was just wrong.

Sue Hanson, chairwoman of the Bigfork Stormwater Advisory Committee, stepped the commissioners through a history of Bigfork’s drainage problems during the work session, showing slides and explaining the hazard businesses face when stormwater runoff chronically overflows the sidewalks and floods buildings downtown.

One of the frustrations for business owners, she said, is they either have to absorb the costs of flood damage or turn in a claim to their insurance company and then face higher premiums.

And the stormwater flows directly into the Swan River, taking with it any contaminants it picks up along the way.

“We definitely have some pollution issues here,” Hanson said.

When the stormwater committee conducted a survey some time ago that included property owners in the greater Bigfork area, 52.7 percent of the respondents said they weren’t willing to pay for the assessments tied to a rural special improvement district.

There was always a plan to conduct a second survey, however, once the final phase of the project was a little further along, county grantwriter Debbie Pierson said.

Bigfork got about $1.4 million in grants from several state sources to design and build the first half of the system along Grand Avenue. Now that those improvements are up and running, the community is getting a better idea of the ongoing maintenance costs.

“We barely had results from the earlier work on what it takes to clean the filters and maintain it,” stormwater committee member Harry Hyatt said. “Now we can more effectively tell people” what those maintenance costs will be.

The county has estimated it will cost roughly $5 per parcel — about $14,700 total — annually for maintenance of the entire system. If a rural special improvement district were established, a separate maintenance district would be needed.

The discussion then shifted to how Bigfork might be able to set up a special stormwater district separate from the Bigfork Water and Sewer District, but following through boundaries more or less. Hanson told the group the Water and Sewer District has invested heavily in sewer improvements in the unincorporated town and doesn’t have the financial wherewithal or the legal ability to assume the stormwater system.

Commissioner Gary Krueger pointed out that part of the problem is that the stormwater project was begun with no district of any kind in place.

“We need to build a model of how we want to go forward,” Krueger said. “I’d like them [Bigfork residents] to take governance of those services.”

Commissioner Cal Scott also liked the idea of a special stormwater district, saying the community could then take charge of the system and improve and expand it as needed.

“They’re in control of their future,” Scott said.

There are a couple of different scenarios for how a special district might be set up and the level of autonomy the district would have, Pierson said.

The county received a $100,000 grant from the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to help defray the costs of building the final stormwater phase, with the initial idea of forming a rural special improvement district. Pierson said she believes the state agency would be receptive to applying the grant to the formation of a special stormwater district.

“We need to officially propose a district, but based on past discussions they [DNRC officials] are willing to look at options of how to get it done,” Pierson said.