The Kalispell City Planning Board got an earful Tuesday night from just about every angle on a proposed paid permit parking district for the neighborhood around Flathead High School and Elrod Elementary School.

About 65 people attended the work session, filling council chambers at City Hall to standing room capacity with a strong turnout of parking district supporters as well as opponents, including students and their parents. 

Their combined testimony made it clear that there are dilemmas no matter which way the city might turn: Residents would either continue to endure the impacts of school-related parking congestion or they would pay for parking permits and many students will be displaced from parking near the school.

The city recently sent out about 650 notices to residents in the area outlining the proposal that is similar to parking districts in Missoula, Bozeman, Great Falls and elsewhere. While there has been no agreement on the price of a permit, which would be required for each vehicle and guest vehicles, the notice from the city refers to a price range of $20 to $30 per vehicle.

For many supporters of the idea, the price of sticking with the status quo is too high.

“We’re paying the costs right now for this enduring problem, this chronic problem,” one woman said.

She and other speakers referred to garbage being left around the school by students, poor parking practices, hit-and-run incidents damaging residents’ vehicles, and the ongoing inconvenience of not having parking for themselves and their guests in front of their homes.

Marta Moore, who lives near the high school, described how she called police three times in one day to deal with mischief, such as students revving motorcycles in the back of a truck near her home and driving a vehicle onto her grass.

“The real problem is, and has been, that there is no place for residents to park,” Moore said, describing how she frequently has to pack groceries from two blocks away to her home, and how her elderly mother often cannot park near the home.

“I have never suffered more in terms of quality of life than I have here in Kalispell,” said an emotional Moore.

Lifelong resident Donna Smith said she originally didn’t support the district but eventually became involved with a residents’ advisory committee that has been developing the proposal for about the last year.

Smith said the school district should be doing “everything possible” to alleviate parking congestion. She suggested that an area on the east side of the high school where grass was planted in 2008 should be devoted to parking.

Timothy Norton said he has not heard any proposals about how to mitigate impacts to students if a parking district is established. He predicted that the district would only push the parking problems farther away from the school.

As a real estate appraiser, Norton said he does not believe arguments that parking problems impact property values on homes near the schools carry any weight, partly because people have been aware of the parking situation for decades.

But that claim was refuted by at least a couple of parking district supporters who said their real estate agents advised them of the parking problems and it became a consideration in buying their homes. At the very least, they contended, property values would be higher if the parking problems didn’t exist.

About a dozen students attended the workshop, some of them telling the board how badly they would be inconvenienced if they had to park five or six blocks away from the school.

One girl said she and her sister have to make a 45-minute commute from Lakeside, often to find no parking near the school. 

She and another girl said they need to park near the school in order to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities that often occur at night.

The mother of a student said her family depends in many ways on her daughter being able to drive to and from school, and she emotionally contended that compelling her daughter to walk six blocks to school in the dark — and in the snow during winter months — presented an untenable safety risk.

Kalispell Public Schools officials said that largely because of student safety concerns and concerns about anything that discourages students from getting to school, the school district opposes the parking district.

Flathead High School Principal Peter Fusaro pointed out that the school depends on having nearby parking for tournaments and other events that draw large crowds.

“Our goal is to be good neighbors,” he said, making a case that efforts have been made to address the parking problems.

He said there are daily announcements encouraging students to park in the school lots, there have been regular organized garbage cleanup efforts by students and staff in the surrounding neighborhood, and there has been increased enforcement against any student mischief by the school resource officer.

“As a school, I think we’ve made a huge improvement over the last two years,” he said.

But Planning Board Chairman Chad Graham said he regards those efforts as “scratching-the-surface-type things” that aren’t “alleviating the amount of impacts on the neighborhood.”

Graham pointed out in an interview Wednesday that he appreciates the comments from the school district, “but I wasn’t seeing anything or hearing anything from the school district about what they are going to do relieve the parking congestion.”

He said the Planning Board is in an awkward position “because the community around the high school, they brought something to the table, and they have an implementation strategy behind it ... I have to look at what’s in front of me for a solution.”

Rod Kuntz, who was recently appointed to the Kalispell City Council, took a leadership role in organizing the resident advisory committee’s proposal.

At Tuesday’s meeting, he gave a background presentation on those efforts. He said parking districts have been successful and accepted in Missoula, Bozeman and Great Falls. He noted that Missoula’s district, which was the first in the state, came about after a seven-year legal battle that ended with the state Supreme Court ruling that the rights of property owners around the University of Montana prevailed over parking convenience for students.

Because of that legal authority, he said, Kalispell residents affected by school parking congestion “have a little more weight on that scale.”

Kuntz also said that parking districts in other cities have largely been funded by fines rather than permits, and in the case of Bozeman, residents have pushed to expand the parking districts around Montana State University and the high school.

That point was brought to bear later in the meeting by Gavin Pirrie, Flathead High School’s student body vice president.

He said establishing a district will cause new problems outside the district, and “everyone will just be trying to be included in this parking district.”

The Kalispell Planning Board will hold an official public hearing on the parking district on Oct. 14 at City Hall. After that, it will be up to the board to decide whether to forward a recommendation on the proposal to the City Council.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by email at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.