Category: Park And Rec

If it wasn’t enough for the Great Falls Public School District to deforest the Great Falls High School original campus by cutting down 80 mature and environmentally beneficial city trees without a permit, now they want to do the same thing to a neighborhood icon, Kranz Park.

Donated to the City of Great Falls by the Kranz family in the first part of the last century, Kranz Park offers a shady respite for the residents of an older part of town. That apparently doesn’t mean a damn thing to the Great Falls Park and Recreation Department and its newly imported director, Steve Herrig.

You should be aware that asphalt parking lots act like heat sinks and can easily raise temperatures in the surrounding area, which just might add to your air conditioning bill.

Tomorrow’s city commission meeting will hold a public hearing on the trade of nearly one half of Kranz Park for 10 acres of school district owned swamp land on 57th Street.

At this point, the city doesn’t remotely need the swamp land since they have abandoned the lame idea of developing an indoor recreation and aquatics facility on the property adjacent to MAFB. And obtaining the swamp land would mean that the city would have to maintain the property at least to a minimum degree.

But heck, the taxpayers wont mind spending more of their hard-earned dollars for Herrig’s Folly to help the cash strapped school district because they couldn’t solve the parking problem at Great Falls High after spending $37M of taxpayer’s dollars.

The trade will require a 4/5’s vote of the city commission because vacating a city park is a big deal.

Dale Kranz, recently deceased, reported to the author just a few years ago when the issue first presented, that he was steadfastly opposed to turning any part of his family’s namesake park into a parking lot.

As I mentioned in a previous article, Great Falls has 57 parks, while Billings at twice our size has 47. We don’t need another 10-acre swamp park, unless there is some interpretive value in describing the geological history of Lake Great Falls.

Contact your city commissioners via email – commission@greatfallsmt.net – or phone and provide them with a little guidance on this matter. If you don’t, you will be the ones ultimately paying for this ill-advised trade.

As I suggested in a previous article, by all measure the new Indoor Recreation and Aquatics Facility should be developed at Lions Park.

Lions Park is centrally located, has suitable soils conditions, affords access to hotels and restaurants, is a six-minute drive from MAFB and is of sufficient size while still leaving ample buffers for the adjacent neighboring single-family homes.

The two sites previously considered, the much too small site at 10th Avenue North and 57th Street and the Siebel Soccer Field, had more cons than pros, as I pointed out in Forget The Carrot, Keep Your Eye On The Ball.

In my opinion, the site selection process has been flawed from the beginning and the only way to move forward on the project is to reevaluate the program and seek a more creative design approach that responds to a particular appropriate site.

Lions Park is located in a transitional zone between residential and commercial land uses and the architectural design for the facility should reflect, and reinforce that transitional zone.

A project at Lions Park should respect and enhance the existing environment of the park and not simply be of a transportable design that was developed in haste for a different site, or sites.

It is time to strongly consider the previous consultant selection process and solicit contextual design solutions that can benefit our community. And yes, community members should be represented in a new selection process, not just city employees.

It may be time to pull the plug on the new Great Falls aquatics and recreation center.

At the December 1 Great Falls City Commission meeting, City Manager Greg Doyon gave an update on the design progress of the proposed facility. Mr. Doyon emphasized that fiscal sustainability and addressing the well-known soils deficiencies of the chosen site were top priorities.

He went on to report that architectural and engineering work is moving at a breakneck pace because of the accelerated timeline to complete the work.

According to Mr. Doyon, the selected design team of architects and geotechnical engineers advised that construction costs for the structure’s foundation on the highly undesirable soils at the proposed site would be $2.6M, or, about $95 per square foot.

The depth to suitable bearing is 60 feet. It is helpful to understand the magnitude of the contributing loads for an aquatic facility. A 50 meter swimming pool 25 meters wide with a minimum depth of 2 meters holds 660,430 gallons of water at 8.3lbs per gallon.

That means the pool water alone weighs almost 5.5 million lbs. Not something you want to construct on poor soils.

The City Manager went on to say that newly estimated higher cost of $2.6M could reduce the programmed spaces in the proposed facility that the community is expecting and the projected revenues needed to make the center sustainable.

At this point, the only two ways forward would be:

1. An alternate site with more desirable soils conditions for the facility, or securing more funding from the DOD in addition to the original grant for $10M.
2. Securing additional funding.

It is important to note that the $10M from the City Park Fund, and the $10M from the DOD grant are both taxpayer dollars.

I believe the best strategy moving forward would be to choose another city-owned site for the project and let the DOD chips fall where they may.

A cursory examination of the U.S. Geological Survey, 1965, “Depth-to-Bedrock Map”, indicates two city-owned properties of sufficient size and soils conditions that should be considered.

One is the unimproved portion of Warden Park west of the school district administration building, and the other is Lion’s Park with frontage on 10th avenue south.

Both sites have convenient access to hotels, restaurants, a major arterial to and from the base, and yes, financial partnership opportunities.

Studies of similar facilities list regional swim meets as the top on-going revenue generator. Swim meets also brings money into the city and that benefits a number of local businesses.

That’s why we should keep a 50 meter pool in the program. We should not forget the Four Seasons vs the Metra competition that has held Great Falls back for years.

Most people who have followed the Indoor Recreation and Aquatics Facility process are left scratching their heads and saying, “How did this thing get so screwed up?”

Well, here are some possible answers:

• When a consultant was needed to prepare the DOD grant application, the Park and Recreation Director did NOT contact all architectural and engineering firms in Great Falls. The A&E firm that was selected from a limited field provided their services for free and emphasized their experience with soil conditions in the area.

• When the original site, 10th Avenue North and 57th Street was deemed too small to accommodate the program, the City traded a portion of Kranz Park to the school district for 10 acres adjacent to the soccer fields.

• Before effecting the trade, a soils investigation was not done.

• The A&E firm selected for the $20M project is the same firm that completed the DOD grant pre-application.

• The selection committee did not include any members from the public.

It would seem that the City now owns a 10 acre site suited for mud puppies and tadpoles.

If we can’t do this project right, then it might be time to call a mulligan and pull the plug before it ends up like the Electric City Power fiasco.

I’d like to know what our readers think.

As I have chatted with folks around Great Falls over the past two weeks since the May 8th mail-in school district levy and Park District 1 election, folks have expressed some surprise that the school levy failed while the Park District proposal passed. I’ve wondered the same thing myself because the school levy was a much smaller tax increase proposal, $1.49 million, than the Park District proposal, $1.5 million annually for the first three years up to approximately $12.6 million over 20 years.

Now it seems likely that one of the main reasons that happened is because a lot of voters may not have been aware that the creation of Park District 1 carries with it a significant tax increase for property owners.

Why wouldn’t voters be aware of that important piece of information? Because it wasn’t included on the ballot as required by Montana law as I and many others read it.

The ballot language for the school district tax increase included the required information –  total amount ($1,349,047.67), total mill 9.84 mills, and annual cost of the tax increase per home market value ($100,00 = $13.28 and $200,00 = $26.57)

In contrast here is the exact ballot language, on the same ballot, for the creation of the Park District.

“Great Falls Park District Number 1

Shall the proposition to organize Great Falls Park District Number 1 be adopted?

(By voting yes, you support creation of Great Falls Park District Number 1 for the purpose of providing certain maintenance, purchasing and improvement services for City-owned facilities, land, and equipment under the responsibility and care of the City of Great Falls Park and Recreation Department and providing for other matters properly relating thereto.)”

That’s it. Not one word about how much it’s going to cost you, or even that it’s going to cost you, if you vote “Yes”.

Montana Code Annotated states very clearly that “…The form of the ballot must reflect the content of the resolution or charter amendment and must include a statement of the impact of the election on a home valued at $100,000 and a home valued at $200,000 in the district in terms of actual dollars in additional property taxes that would be imposed on residences with those values if the mill levy were to pass. The ballot may also include a statement of the impact of the election on homes of any other value in the district, if appropriate.”  –http://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/title_0150/chapter_0100/part_0040/section_0250/0150-0100-0040-0250.html

It’s possible that a lawyer could argue what the meaning of the word “is” is and claim that the above MCA language only pertains to levies, technically, not to special district assessments but that seems a stretch to me since the resolution proposing Park District 1 includes the fiscal impact: “…the estimated 2018 assessment for a property with a 2017 Market Value of $100,000 would be $22.92 per year.”

But a simple, common sense reading of other applicable MCA language seems to close the door on any “assessment vs levy” loophole.

See http://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/title_0070/chapter_0110/part_0100/section_0110/0070-0110-0100-0110.html – “(3)The election must be conducted in accordance with Title 13, chapter 1, part 5” …and http://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/title_0130/chapter_0010/part_0050/section_0050/0130-0010-0050-0050.html – “(5) Unless otherwise specified by law, conduct of the election, voter registration, and how votes must be cast, counted, and canvassed for a special purpose election must be conducted in accordance with the applicable provisions of this title. ”

Then there’s this from the City Park & Rec website: “The cost of the proposed improvements for the district is $1.5 million annually for the first three years; …the assessment method will be based on taxable value;  The amount of the assessment can be adjusted annually and must be set by resolution and adopted by the City Commission.” (That last sentence ought to scare the poop out every Great Falls citizen.)

Here’s my question: Was the Park District 1 fiscal impact language intentionally left off the ballot in an effort to deceive voters, making it more likely they would vote “Yes”?

“Here’s my question: Was the Park District 1 fiscal impact language intentionally left off the ballot in an effort to deceive voters, making it more likely they would vote ‘yes’?”

Who’s watching out for us, the taxpayers who pay ALL the bills? Certainly not our do-nothing, failed city commissioners and mayor who should have been on top of this to make certain that the ballot language was “the whole truth”.

I have just recently learned that a local citizen has written a letter referring this issue to the Cascade County Attorney and was told that “it would take some time for them to respond”. I will keep readers informed on the progress of this development.

In the meantime we should all be writing letters and making our voices heard –  this apparent ballot sleight of hand is unacceptable and should not be allowed to stand in my opinion. I believe the appropriate course of action would be to send the issue back to the voters with the required information included on the ballot. In fact we should demand it.

Did you know that if you own property in Great Falls but live outside the city limits you can still vote either for or against the new consolidated Park District 1 tax increase?

I didn’t know that very significant piece of information and I’ve been a voter here for decades. Someone asked me about it on Monday so I called Cascade County Clerk & Recorder Rina Moore and she confirmed to me that, yes indeed, it is a fact.

She also told me that they posted the following information on the Cascade County Elections Department website just today, Monday, April 30. Ballots went out a week ago.

“If you are a property owner within the City of Great Falls you are entitled to vote in the current election for the City of Great Falls Park District #1.  You must go to the elections office with a copy of your property taxes in order to receive a ballot.  We are located at 325 2^nd Ave N, Monday-Friday 7am-5pm and on election day Tuesday May 8^th, we will be located at the Exhibition Hall 400 3^rd St NW from 7am-8pm.”

Moore also told me that the elections office posted the information in the Great Falls Tribune three times. Did anyone see it? Usually those “public notices” are buried somewhere deep in the paper and you have to have a microscope to read them. So it doesn’t surprise me that some folks were totally unaware of this option.

“I think our public officials need to do a better job with press releases, social media and more timely notices on their websites to make the public aware of this kind of important voter information.”

I think our public officials need to do a better job with press releases, social media and more timely notices on their websites to make the public aware of this kind of important voter information. In the absence of a more robust attempt to “get the word out”, some people could come to the conclusion that there are those who prefer the public to remain in the dark on issues like this.

Anyway, I encourage everyone to spread the word about this little-known option for Great Falls property owners who live outside the city limits.

Did you know that the City of Great Falls is spending Great Falls taxpayers money to promote a ballot measure to, wait for it…get more of Great Falls taxpayers money!

The Great Falls Parks and Recreation Department’s yearly Summer Guide, paid for with our tax dollars, came out today in the Tribune and last week at various locations and it was filled with “information” about the new proposed consolidated Park District tax which will be on the ballot this May, including warnings of the dire consequences if voters don’t vote in favor of it and a big, red “VOTE MAY 8, 2018”.

In addition, city staff, paid for by our tax dollars, has been busy with “informational” presentations and flyers and meetings with Mayor Kelly and others. Your city government has been using its resources and moolah, our tax dollars, to promote the Park District plan. And the cost of that plan to taxpayers?:

“The cost of the proposed improvements for the district is $1.5 million annually for the first three years; the assessment method will be based on taxable value; the estimated 2018 assessment for a property with a 2017 Market Value of $100,000 would be $22.92 per year ($1.91/month).  The amount of the assessment can be adjusted annually and must be set by resolution and adopted by the City Commission.” – (emphasis added) https://greatfallsmt.net/recreation/great-falls-park-district-number-1

This expenditure of your money by the city in a campaign to get more of your money is made possible because the City of Great Falls formed an Incidental Political Committee registered with the Montana Office of Political Practices for the purpose of influencing the May election in favor of the Park District levy. The City of Great Falls Incidental Committee lists Melissa Kinzler as Treasurer. Ms. Kinzler is also the Director of Fiscal Services for the City of Great Falls.

It appears that so far the city has spent $6052.78 to promote the Park District plan to get more of our money. Here is a detailed accounting.

This kind of stuff shouldn’t surprise anyone here. Remember last year when the city spent $16,403.35 (not including labor cost) on a full color fancy brochure mail insert promoting the Park District levy which they included with the tax levy protest form! You can’t make this stuff up.

So even though they are not explicitly declaring “VOTE YES FOR THE PARK DISTRICT” in their “informational presentations”, which would not be permitted even under the label of an incidental committee, the City of Great Falls is nevertheless promoting a big new local tax and they are using your tax dollars to do it.

“So even though they are not explicitly declaring “VOTE YES FOR THE PARK DISTRICT” in their “informational presentations”, which would not be permitted even under the label of an incidental committee, the City of Great Falls is nevertheless promoting a big new local tax and they are using your tax dollars to do it.”

Are you okay with that? We’re not.