The Flathead County commissioners have taken a first step toward a long-awaited sidewalk project in Evergreen, where community leaders say children need safer routes to walk and bike to school than the shoulder of a four-lane highway.

After expressing reservations about the project last month, the commissioners last Thursday unanimously agreed to submit a grant application to the Montana Department of Transportation to fund construction of sidewalks along the U.S. 2 corridor through Evergreen.

"We moved the application process ahead," Commissioner Randy Brodehl said in an email Tuesday.

But there's no guarantee the money will come through. And in order to strengthen the grant application, the commissioners still need to initiate a process to establish a rural service improvement district, which would provide local matching funds through taxes levied on property owners along the highway.

The clock is ticking, as the deadline to apply for the grant is June 4.

THE U.S. 2 corridor is lined for much of the year with muddy or dusty foot paths, or nearly impassable mounds of snow and ice. It's a problem not only for business owners who would benefit from easier access to their storefronts, but also for students of Evergreen's elementary and junior high schools, many of whom walk or bike along the edge of the highway on weekday mornings and afternoons.

Community leaders want to apply for roughly $1 million from the state's Transportation Alternatives Program, which requires applicants to cover 13.42% of the total cost of each project. Their sidewalk plan calls for paved paths along U.S. 2 between Montana 35 and Sunset Drive, and along portions of Montana 35 and West Evergreen Drive.

Daren Engellant, a businessman and member of the Evergreen Chamber of Commerce who has helped spearhead the "Safe Routes to Schools" project, said having the service district in place would make the application stronger.

As proposed, the district would cover properties belonging to 61 landowners in the U.S. 2 corridor. The district would be established after offering those landowners a 30-day window to vote in protest, though Engellant and other backers say the project has widespread support in the area.

In what he called a "chicken and the egg" situation, County Administrator Mike Pence said the formation of the service district and the county's ability to accept a state grant are contingent on one another.

Pence said it will be a challenge to get all the "pieces of the puzzle" in place within the next week.

"I promised that we would try to achieve that," Pence said. "But … we're still doing our due diligence that we're required to do. We need to make sure that all these [property] owners are being properly assessed. You've got to be pretty much 100% correct when you send the assessment notices out. You want everything to be accurate."

BACKERS OF the project — including the Evergreen Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club of Evergreen, and Evergreen Community Partners — have used private funds to seed the project, donating a combined $13,000 and hiring an engineering firm to draft a plan and come up with cost estimates.

The county likely would use revenue from a second special taxing district to hire contractors to repair and remove snow from the sidewalks. Backers say they would still be able to raise private funds for sidewalk maintenance as well, reducing the amount of taxes that must be collected.

"With more and more traffic along Highway 2, more and more bigger vehicles going back and forth, we need to get some sidewalks in," Engellant said. "It's of utmost importance."

The state Department of Transportation has about $5.5 million available through the federally backed Transportation Alternatives Program.

In addition to the Evergreen project, the commissioners last week approved grant applications for three other projects. The county will seek about $590,000 for the reconstruction of a switchback trail from Whitefish Stage Road to Lawrence Park in Kalispell, as well as funding for maintenance of 11.4 miles of paved paths around other area schools and maintenance of 12.3 miles of the Rails-to-Trails path system.

Pence said only the Lawrence Park project will compete with the Evergreen project in the grant application process, as there are separate pools of money set aside for maintenance and construction.

Assistant editor Chad Sokol may be reached at 406-758-4439 or csokol@dailyinterlake.com.