Parking board recommends higher fines, new technology to enforce rules in downtown Kalispell

City officials and local stakeholders are working on overhauling parking rules in downtown Kalispell.

The municipality’s Parking Advisory Board last week recommended raising parking violation fees, using license-plate recognition technology and adopting a block rule downtown to free up on-street spaces for business patrons and crack down on chronic offenders. 

Kalispell Police officials, representatives from Downtown Kalispell Forward, and the city manager shared suggestions and ideas with the advisory board in the lead-up to its April 23 vote. The recommendations are now headed to the City Council for possible adoption.  

The Kalispell Police Department is considering license plate recognition technology to better enforce parking rules downtown and around Flathead High School. 

The technology would replace the city’s traditional method of tracking parked vehicles: a streak of chalk. Before his retirement over the winter, Dave Hutton, the former parking officer, used the chalk method to keep tabs on automobiles in the downtown neighborhood. A mix of sworn and non-sworn officers has been handling enforcement since his departure, according to Kalispell Police Chief Jordan Venezio.  

License plate reader technology uses cameras and software to read a vehicle's plates, log the location and assign a timestamp. The necessary equipment would be strapped to two vehicles owned by the Police Department and work in tandem, ticketing vehicles that have violated the two-hour time limits on parking downtown.  

The Police Department plans to rework its parking and animal control positions into a “special service officer” position that will handle parking and other complaint-based code enforcement issues, according to Venezio.  

The license plate reader system would not be connected to a criminal justice network. It would track the plate number, not the registered owner, according to Venezio. 

Other cities around Montana, including Bozeman, Missoula and Whitefish, use similar technology to enforce parking rules.  

The Kalispell Parking Advisory Board also recommended allowing officers to issue multiple tickets to a vehicle left in the same spot over the course of the day. Currently, vehicles are ticketed only once per day. 

Although no daily cap was set, Kalispell Police Administration Capt. Ben Sutton said that offending motorists would likely receive no more than two or three tickets per day.   

But the $10 ticket, which may pose only a minor inconvenience for motorists, is expected to increase. The board recommended raising standard parking fines to $20, increasing safety violation fines from $10 to $50, and boosting boot fees from $35 to $100.  

“We’re also very comfortable knowing that with the technology, we will be able to enforce the two hours well, especially in coordination with the recommendation of increased fees. That alone may make an impact that we haven’t seen in the past,” said City Manager Jarod Nygren at an April 16 parking advisory board meeting. 

The board also recommended that Council consider an ordinance to curb so-called “musical cars,” a tactic Downtown Kalispell Forward described as when drivers move their vehicles a few spots every couple of hours to avoid a ticket.  

A block ordinance would require cars to be moved to a different block to avoid a ticket.  

A lack of parking has become a burden to downtown business owners and customers, according to a survey conducted by Downtown Kalispell Forward—the coalition, comprised of six organizations, formed over the winter to strengthen downtown’s economic vitality. 

“We found that really the No. 1 priority, whether it’s real or perceived, is that downtown has a parking issue,” said Lorraine Clarno, president of the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce, which is part of Downtown Kalispell Forward. 

The organization hopes stricter enforcement will encourage downtown employees to stop parking on Main Street and instead use the nearby underutilized permit lots. Nygren said permits for city-owned lots are oversold, yet the spaces remain largely empty.  

The advisory board and Downtown Kalispell Forward also expressed interest in eventually introducing metered parking downtown through a phone app. All on-street parking downtown is currently free but time-limited.  

Bill Moseley, chair of the Kalispell Chamber, said businesses and customers believe they can’t find a place to park, which drives away foot traffic.   

“We want to get to a point where we really have a parking problem, to where there’s so much economic vitality downtown and people are coming down here,” Moseley said.  

“What we have right now really is a situation where employee parking in particular is occupying the Main Street for most of the hours,” Moseley added. “The primary impetus is to get employees off of the main, prime parking and onto some of the side streets.” 

An action plan drafted by Downtown Kalispell Forward recommended converting the Valley Bank parking lot to free public parking with a 90-minute limit, providing free parking permits to all employees and business owners and allowing city-owned lots to be leased on weekends to organizations for events.

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Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 406-758-4407 or [email protected].