Just shy of a year since voters approved a levy to boost Kalispell’s emergency services, the city’s Police and Fire departments are beginning to ramp up.  

The mill levy, which went into effect on July 1, 2024 — the start of fiscal year 2025 — is allowing the two departments to onboard new staff, new equipment and eventually another fire station.    

In March 2024, voters agreed to levy 60.9 mills annually for the effort. It is expected to raise about $4.6 million in its first year after adding roughly $369 to the yearly tax bill of a home valued at $450,000. 

City Council began moving on a levy request in 2023 after reviewing the results of an independent audit of the municipality's emergency responder agencies. The audit was conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Public Safety Management and found that both departments provided quality service but lagged behind the national average in response time.  

Kalispell Fire Department currently pushes a 10-minute response time, but Fire Chief Dan Pearce hopes to bring it down to six.   

To get there, the Fire Department brought on 11 new hires, all of them recently completing a 17-week fire academy program. Pearce said he is looking to hire three additional employees as well.  

Since 1999, Kalispell has grown by more than four square miles, and its population has doubled. The department now responds to about 4,600 calls a year, a majority of those within the city limits. 

With only one dedicated fire engine downtown, Pearce said resources are often spread thin and the crew must juggle calls daily. “That’s an everyday thing where all or our apparatuses are out and we get tapped for another call,” he said.  

“It was just a matter of time before we had a significant emergency that we would be totally out of resources,” Pearce added.  

The extra hands paid for by the levy will staff another engine all day, every day out of Station 62 by Costco in North Kalispell. Two ambulances will also be manned 24/7, all of which Pearce expects to be up and running in March.  

A third fire station is also planned for city-owned land off Mountain Vista Way and Farm to Market Road. Fire Station 63 will service the rapidly growing west side of town. It will boast a new ambulance and fire engine.  

“The city is continuing to grow, and there’s hundreds and hundreds of residential units planned for this year. So, we’re just trying to stay ahead a little bit and plan for the future,” he said. 

Pearce expects to have the new station up and running in the next few years, with 15 more employees to run it.  

“Having that third station will bring our response times down so we can get to our citizens quicker when they have an emergency,” Pearce said. 

The third station will also decrease Kalispell’s reliance on mutual aid, according to Pearce. The city often turns to neighboring fire crews for help, primarily Evergreen and Whitefish.  

“We’re still not able to handle all of our call volume on our own,” he said. 

To provide consistent guidance as the department grows, two new training captains were hired, one for emergency services and another for firefighting. Previously, the more experienced crew members had to find the time to train incoming staff, Pierce said.  

Pearce also hopes the expanded department will decrease its ISO rating, which influences insurance rates for commercial insurance holders. The department’s rating is currently at a three and was on the verge of reaching a four before the levy.  

Now Pearce hopes to get it down to two, which he said would lower insurance rates, although it would take a few years.  

The bolstered services will put the Fire Department in a good place for the next five to 10 years, Pearce said.  

“It’s definitely not over preparing, but it’s taking care of the need that we have right now. But it’s also buying some time too,” he said.  

Councilor Jessica Dahlman, who supported the levy, said that the bolstered staffing will help prevent burnout at both the Fire and Police departments.  

“For recruitment and retainment to be successful, we have to think about preventing burnout of the men and women who put their lives into this work,” she said. 

The levy will also eventually fund another fire station north of town on Church Drive, where Pearce anticipates more growth in the coming years, Pierce said.  

THE KALISPELL Police Department is using the tax revenue to onboard 11 new hires, increasing its total staff to 54.

Two new detective positions have been filled, and four patrol officers were sworn in, according to Police Chief Jordan Venezio. A crime analyst will join in April along with four more patrollers.  

“In a nutshell, the vast majority of what we get is manpower and our ability to proactively police better,” Venezio said. 

Kalispell is divided into four zones, and there will now be enough officers to patrol each zone at all times, which should allow officers to more quickly respond to calls in their designated area. The added hires will allow for one to two additional patrollers per shift, meaning four to seven officers patrolling the city at any given time.

And the incoming crime analyst will use data to pinpoint crime hotspots.  

“It can range anywhere from pulling information from our CAD systems, our dispatch center system, to open-source information, social media, gathering intel on suspect,” Venezio said. 

Venezio said crime analysts are becoming much more common throughout the country and hopes to eventually build up the program in Kalispell.   

“That will help direct our patrols, which now have increased staffing, in a more proactive and efficient way,” he said. 

The new detectives will help manage a rising caseload of felonies and allow for more time to be spent on each case. 

Violent crimes spiked in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic and have remained elevated since, according to Venezio.  

The number of felony cases has decreased since 2022 from 629 to 562 through mid-December 2024, according to city data. 

While Venezio said the number of cases has settled down over the last year, he thinks a lack of investment in mental health programs contributes to the overall rise.  

“What we see is people struggling with mental health continue to commit small crimes, and because the justice system is overburdened, they are not held accountable for those smaller crimes, and it grows and escalates into bigger crime,” Venezio said.  

What Venezio thought would be a multiyear process to fill the new positions only ended up taking six months, which he attributes to the community’s positive outlook on law enforcement.  

"People want to work in a community like that,” he said. 

While Venezio said the added staffing will put the city in a comfortable place, there are other potential challenges, one of which being not enough jail space for people committing misdemeanors.  

“It’s mostly going to be your disorderly people, trespassers, petty theft, shoplifters that don’t go to jail and then they’ll just immediately do the same behavior again. Which is taking away resources that can be used in a lot of other areas in the community that we’re now forced to continually deal with, the repeat offenders,” he said.  

“Until those things are more effective, we’ll always be held back a little bit,” Venezio added. 

Mayor Mark Johnson said he hopes the levy will shrink the response times for emergencies. 

“There is the financial impact for residents and business owners but also the lifesaving issue,” he said. “Let’s ask for what we really need and let’s push for it and get it. And that’s what we did.” 

Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 758-4407 and junderhill@dailyinterlake.com.