It's time to stop debating City Hall

The Whitefish City Council made the right decision several years ago, based on much community input, to build a new City Hall and maximum parking on the current City Hall site.

All the facts remain the same. The current site is the very best site for City Hall and parking, and no other location comes close. The City Hall has been on the same site for almost 100 years, and was built there for good reasons by our community’s founders. It is centrally located and convenient to the entire community. It provides an important perpetual anchor to the downtown core of the community. The land is paid for, so the city does not have to go out and buy more expensive property.

This project has been well thought out over almost a decade, with many, many hours of public input at numerous community open houses, Council meetings, and public committee meetings. I have attended most of these and the overwhelming majority of citizens have felt that the current site was the very best place out of the many locations considered, to keep the City Hall and expand the current parking, because of its very convenient, central location to the entire downtown. No other location offered the benefits and advantages of this location.

As for parking, that site is best for similar reasons; it is centrally located and convenient to service all of Central Avenue, Second Street, and the Railway District residents and businesses. Development of important new buildings and remodels is being slowed down because of a huge shortage of parking for customers, employees and residents. The parking shortage is currently getting even worse as properties formerly used for parking lots are being developed into businesses, accommodations, and residences.  

Tax increment funds have been set aside for this project.

TIF is the tax increment portion of commercial property taxes. No residential property taxes are used for TIF projects. The TIF was developed specifically to spur new economic development. This City Hall and parking facility project will do just that by stimulating tens of millions of dollars of new economic development.

TIF guidelines require that expenditures be for “economic development” and “urban renewal.” That is exactly what this project will do.

 We are at an important crossroad in our community. Small towns across America have come completely unraveled, and it usually starts with their downtown area.

Large box stores and shopping centers spring up at the community’s entrance. The unraveling starts in the downtown area with stores closing and even being boarded up.

This actually happened to downtown Whitefish in the 1980s. If we do not continue on and stick with the right decisions made several years ago, that could happen again.

But if we follow through with the good decisions already made, this civic facility downtown, along with the other great public civic facilities we have built downtown in the past 25 years, such as the Whitefish Community Library, the O’Shaughnessy Performing Arts Center, and the new middle school and Performing Arts Center, may just provide the long term stability that will save us from making the same mistakes that so many other small American towns have made. We have made good decisions and have great momentum going in the core of our community now.

Let’s be smart and logical, and continue this momentum in the right direction. It’s time to stop debating and break ground on this project this year.

— John Kramer, Whitefish