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07-02-21 City Manager Report1 City of Kalispell OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER Information Memorandum 7/2/2021 1.Parks and Recreation With the recent heat wave, the parks crews are working to keep irrigation systems up and running to meet the demand for water. The formal garden at Woodland Park has now been completely planted. Our crew at the Kalispell Youth Athletic Complex are preparing the facility for the Firecracker baseball tournament that begins July 2. There are an estimated 60 teams that are coming to participate between Peewee and Babe Ruth. June 19, youth volunteers from Church of Latter- day Saints worked in both Woodland and Lawrence Park on a variety of projects to help better the parks. Graffiti removal, pulling weeds and adding more mulch to the flower beds. Due to the extreme heat this week, we cancelled our day camp field trip to the Hungry Horse Dam and hike at Lion Lake for our younger group (Kindergarten to 2nd grade). We made the decision to move the younger groups field trip inside to the movie theater. The Hungry Horse Dam field trip will be rescheduled at a later date when the weather is more appropriate. The older group (3rd-7th grade) will continue with the previously scheduled field trip to Big Sky Bible Camp in Bigfork. Campers will spend 2 hours swimming and 2 hours on the ropes course. The Woodland Water Park has been busy with the heat and exceptionally sunny days in June. We started our second session of swim lessons on June 28 which will run until July 2. Our group swim lesson registration has increased with 948 children currently signed up (compared to 713 in group lessons last summer). 2 Our 2nd year of competitive 3v3 basketball league, open to boys and girls (3rd-12th grades), will be starting Wednesday, July 6. The league will be played at Thompson Memorial Park which received court renovations mid-June. Teams are limited to 4-6 team members and a coach. We have a total of 6 different divisions with 31 teams participating. Teams will play 6 games over a 6-week period with the league finishing August 11. 2.Police Department Year to date calls for service stand at 16,894. This compares with 15,800 in 2020, and 18,247 in 2019. Officer Toth Mendius graduated from the Montana Law Enforcement Basic Academy in Helena on June 30. Officer Mendius will return to Kalispell and immediately start on completing the field training portion of his training. Chief Overman and Captain Wardensky participated in a radio interview with KGEZ on June 24. The interview focused on the Kalispell Police Department’s Major Crime Unit. Topics included the team’s history, mission, and purpose. Flathead County was awarded $413,750 to continue the co-responder program with law enforcement and to focus on coordination of crisis services and systems improvement. Since August, the program has responded to 582 incidents (countywide). Over 65% of those encounters were resolved without extensive law enforcement involvement. Lt. Jordan Venezio and Detective Sergeant Ryan Bartholomew graduated from the Montana Executive Leadership Institute in Helena on June 23. MELI was designed to develop and nurture those persons within our organizations that will be called upon to manage and lead our criminal justice agencies of tomorrow. The comprehensive design of the MELI curriculum takes a broad field approach towards leadership and management principles that have been proven to be successful in corporate America. These principals will assist managers in accessing the strengths and weaknesses of themselves as well as individuals and groups within their organization and provide them the tools to take action towards improving organizational culture and performance. 3.Planning Department The Board of Adjustment held a public hearing at their meeting on June 29 and heard two application requests: 1.File #KZA-21-01 – An appeal from Darren Dust on behalf of Wentana, LLC and Realty Income Properties 5, LLC regarding a determination made by the Zoning Administrator to require the freestanding sign on the subject property be brought into conformance with the current sign regulations given the replacement of sign panels exceeding 50% of the sign area as required by Section 27.22.170(7) 3 Kalispell Zoning Ordinance. The applicant claims that the sign was damaged as a result of wind or other involuntary causes and should be replaced without bringing the sign into conformance as allowed by Section 27.22.170(2) KZO. The property is located at 520 E. Idaho Street (Wendy’s). 2.File #KAE-21-01 – A notice for an agency exemption from Flathead County that is remodeling the existing structure at 290 N Main Street for the Flathead County Courthouse North building. Flathead County is requesting an exemption from strict application of the Kalispell Zoning Ordinance under State Code 76-2-402. This section specifically allows an entity of state or local government to declare itself exempt from some or all of the provisions of local zoning regulations. The Board unanimously denied the appeal request from Darren Dust and upheld the Zoning Administrators determination. The Board did not make a recommendation on the agency exemption from Flathead County, as it provided a forum for public comment regarding the proposed project and no further action is needed. The Kalispell City Planning Board will hold a public hearing at their July 13 meeting and take public comments on the agenda items listed below: 1.File #KPP-21-05 – A request from Meadows Edge, LLC for major preliminary plat approval for Meadows Edge Phases 3 and 4. The property is located within an R-3 (Residential) zoning district with a Planned Unit Development overlay, with a total of 125 dwelling units (Phase 3 contains 31 single-family lots and Phase 4 contains 21 single-family lots and 73 townhome lots) on approximately 54.91 acres of land including the lots, streets, and common area. The property is located at 1120 Farm to Market Road. 2.KGPA-21-02 – A request from the City of Kalispell to amend the Kalispell Growth Policy Plan-it 2035 by adopting the MOVE 2040 Kalispell Area Transportation Plan. The Kalispell Growth Policy Plan-It 2035 identified updating the 2008 Kalispell Transportation Plan as a key project. Accordingly, the City of Kalispell and the Montana Department of Transportation initiated the planning process for an updated plan mid-September 2019. The MOVE 2040 Kalispell Area Transportation Plan will serve to update and replace the existing Kalispell Transportation Plan. The transportation plan will help guide the development of the urban transportation system in a comprehensive and methodical fashion. The Transportation Plan includes the urban boundary determined by MDT, the Census Defined Place of Evergreen and additional growth areas outside of the urban boundary. It provides an analysis of existing transportation conditions, transportation demand forecasting, a discussion of alternative travel modes within the area and identification of specific problem areas relative to crash occurrences, intersection capacities, and street corridor capacities. The plan also includes recommendations for travel demand management and provides a series of recommendations for improvements to the transportation system including short term management changes, major street system improvements and miscellaneous upgrades to the existing transportation system. The transportation plan also includes a chapter designated to bicycle and pedestrian system analysis and 4 recommendations. The plan concludes with funding programs and policy plan. The Planning Board will also continue discussion on the Mountain View Planned Unit Development and preliminary plat applications that were tabled at their previous meeting on June 8. Information on the agenda items are posted on our website at https://mt- kalispell.civicplus.com/314/Planning-Board under planning board “upcoming agenda.” 4.Building Department In the last 2 weeks, we have issued permits for 9 single-family homes. That will bring the total of new single-family/duplex and townhouse units for the year to 125, compared to 115 last year at this time. There have been 182 multi-family housing units issued so far this year. Last year at this time we had not issued any multi-family housing permits. There was a total of 142 combined building and/or fire inspections completed in the last 2 weeks. Residential – 78 Plumbing – 20 Commercial – 11 Mechanical - 18 Electrical – 13 Fire - 2 5.Community Development Through the EPA Brownfields program, a Phase I environmental site assessment has been completed on the Great Northern Railway Depot located at 15 Depot Park. The Phase I indicated the need for a Phase II environmental site assessment to evaluate the potential presence of contamination at the building. This information would be used to ensure safe materials handling in the event of maintenance or renovation work. Paving has been completed at the Sweet Peaks location on the northeast corner of Main Street and Fourth Street East. This work completes the tasks related to removal of the underground storage tank and associated fixtures at the site and was completed through the Brownfields program. Proposals are due Friday, July 9 in response to the City’s Request for Proposals to develop the 3rd & Main site formerly referred to as the Valley Bank [parking] lot. In the coming weeks, a review of the proposals will begin with final action anticipated to go before the City Council for action this fall. 5 6.Public Works Water SCADA Update Staff are finalizing the Water SCADA System Upgrade Project. This project upgraded water system remote monitoring and control from an antiquated 1990’s technology to a current technology that allows more operating and control settings of the system. Some of the major improvements within this upgrade include historian, which is the ability to indefinitely store water system trends and conditions to review in the future as well as flow pacing control where the processors at each facility control the amount of chlorine injection based on varying flow rates. Operators can monitor pressures, chlorine, and water levels at each facility along with the ability to remotely adjust the system via on-call iPads. Minor operator preference programming changes continue to take place while the consultant completes the record drawing phase of construction. 7.Information Services Video migration for the new server for the City’s police in-car and body-cam footage has been completed. We are now completing the updates to the new electronic evidence library software. GIS staff participated in training for ArcGIS Enterprise deployment to gain a better understanding of the underlying system architecture for ArcGIS Enterprise. GIS and IT staff adjusted the maximum number of instances map resources could use, reliant on the back-end server processor resources. The maximum number of instances allows the maps to respond to the number of user requests to use the map resources or simply the speed of which the different map layers load.