City awarded $650,000 grant for 24/7 service

Whitefish received some huge news the day after Christmas — $650,280 worth of federal grant money that will help the city transition to 24/7 emergency service has been approved.

The city had applied for the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant back in summer 2007 and persevered when cities other than Whitefish were awarded grants.

“Congratulations to Jo Ann Dial, Writeworks Inc., as the grant writer and to the staff and elected officials who made this grant happen,” city manager Chuck Stearns told the council Monday.

Stearns said he and fire chief Tom Kennelly want to move forward quickly to implement 24/7 emergency service. Kennelly is preparing ads to recruit new, full-time firefighters-paramedics, Stearns said.

In the first year, the SAFER grant will provide $234,090 of the $446,469 needed to pay for additional personnel to provide 24/7 emergency services. After that, the amount of federal grant money will decrease by 20 percent per year, reaching zero in the fifth year.

In the fifth year, the city will have to come up with $542,685 to pay for the additional firefighters and ambulance personnel. Over the five-year period, the SAFER grant will amount to $650,280 out of the $2.4 million needed for additional emergency workers.

Going to 24/7 emergency service was just a matter of time. The number of night calls for emergency personnel has increased by 30 percent since 2004, reaching on average more than two per night in 2007, while the number of firefighters has held steady at 10.

In addition, Whitefish is required to provide 24/7 emergency services once it reaches a population of 10,000 and becomes a Class 1 city. That is expected to happen by the next federal census in 2010.

With the status of the SAFER grant unsure for over a year, the city council put a 24-mill levy on the ballot last summer to pay for the new emergency personnel.

Whitefish voters had drawn the line on a $21.5 million high school bond in April, but 61 percent approved the emergency services levy in August. In other words, voters OK’d a 28 percent property tax hike, based on an 84-mill effective tax rate with the resort tax rebate factored in.

While funding has been found to help with round-the-clock emergency services, there are growing concerns about financing for the $9.1 million Emergency Services Center (ESC) the city hopes to build in the Baker Commons subdivision.

Plans were unveiled in October for the 32,656-square-foot building that will be the new home for the city’s court and police and fire departments. The council will get an update on the project at its Jan. 20 meeting.

Financing the ESC building with tax increment financing (TIF) bonds “will be challenging in the least and may well come at higher than desired interest rates,” Stearns told the council. “The problems are led by the credit crisis and the economy, as to be expected, but all tax increment bond sales are ‘story bonds,’ where one has to tell the tax increment story, the Whitefish story and the prospect for growth in tax increment revenues.”

Stearns told the council TIF bonds could be backed by resort tax revenue or a general obligation bond, but the resort tax would have to be rewritten to allow that. He said he’d prefer to keep looking for someone interested in buying tax-exempt bonds.

One funding prospect Stearns is looking at is president-elect Barack Obama’s proposed economic stimulus package. In December, Whitefish presented a list of seven “ready to go” infrastructure projects to the Montana League of Cities and Towns for inclusion in a statewide list that will be presented to Montana’s congressional delegation.

Stearns said he prefers not to submit a “long laundry list” of projects, but rather a “realistic list of a few ready-to-go projects.” The ESC building tops Whitefish’s list. Rationale for federal funding — “The current economic crisis has decimated the capital credit markets.”

The other six items on the stimulus package list include the $2.3 million Sixth Street to Geddes Avenue street and utility reconstruction project, the $5.3 million downtown street and utility reconstruction project, the $1 million Cow Creek sewer extension project, the $1.1 million water and sewer improvements project for the U.S. 93 West highway reconstruction project, the $1 million Riverside At Whitefish bike path, and a $300,000 match for local funding for Phase 1 construction of the A Trail Runs Through It recreation trail.

Councilor Nick Palmer said he’d like the council to have a chance to go through the priority list. He said the Sixth and Geddes street project isn’t that important.