CRESTON – It just takes two.
That’s the number of consenting property owners Flathead County needs to create a controversial Rural Special Improvement District to pave sections of Mennonite Church Road and Creston Road.
According to state law, a RSID district can’t be formed if it’s protested by 50 percent of the affected landowners – or, in this case, 73 people.
At a recent informational meeting, Creston-area residents panned the idea, saying that the project’s cost – estimated at a little more than $800 a year for 15 years per lot owner – was an unreasonable tax burden. But many of those opposed may not have a say.
Seventy-one of the 144 landowners in the proposed district’s boundaries signed “waivers of protest” when they moved into their subdivisions, meaning they couldn’t object to infrastructure improvements in the area.
The goal of the waivers is to keep residents of new developments from shirking the costs of infrastructure improvements necessitated by growth. For years the county implemented the waivers on a sporadic basis. Then, in 2006, they became commonplace; every subdivision since has included a condition requiring the waivers.
“One of the biggest things we hear at my office from citizens, especially those who have lived here a long time, is how can the commissioners continue to allow all these developments in rural areas,” Mike Pence, county administrator, said. “They say the dust wasn’t bad until they got here.”
And the dust is bad. Driven by resident complaints, the state Department of Environmental Quality hit the county with a $29,000 fine for dust pollution in 2007 – a fine it then deferred on the condition the county work to improve the problem.
But rather than feeling protected by the waivers, property owners at last week’s meeting said they were being cheated. “The rest of us (who didn’t sign a waiver) feel like it’s been fixed against us, and that we can’t possibly win because its already been decided,” Scott Johnston, a Creston area landowner, said.
Another man added: “It’s being shoved down our throats.”
A few days later, at a meeting for another proposed RSID project on Jensen and Berne Roads, residents voiced the same objections over the waivers. In their case, however, the waivers accounted for only 13 of the proposed district’s 115 property owners.
That project would create a district to pave three sections of roads: Jensen Road from Kelley Road north to the intersection with Berne Road; Jensen Road from Montana 206 east to the corner where it turns north; and Berne Road from Montana 206 east to the end of Jensen, then north for one-quarter mile.
Preliminary estimates show the project could cost anywhere from $550,950 to $1.1 million.
RSID districts are used to finance infrastructure improvements. In the last two years, the county has completed six RSID paving projects – all at the request of residents of those neighborhoods.
All of those roads, though, were dead ends or cul-de-sacs. The projects on Jensen and Berne and Creston and Mennonite Church are the county’s first on through roads. As a result, the county is offering to foot part of the bill.
An independent traffic study would determine the amount of traffic from residents outside the district, and the county would pay that percentage of the project’s paving costs. In addition, at the Jensen/Berne meeting, Pence said the commission was also considering paying for all of the projects’ initial prep work.
On the Creston project, the developers of the Foxhill Estate would pay $87,000 to pave 1,000 feet of Mennonite Church Road.
Those contributions were little consolation, though, for residents concerned about making ends meet in a recession.
“I’m a widow … and it’s a very difficult struggle,” an elderly woman said at the Jensen/Berne meeting. “Right now, the economy is bad and it’s going to be bad for awhile – been there done that. I can’t afford to have my taxes increased.”
Other property owners at both meetings questioned why they had to pay at all, when, in the past, other county roads were paved with county funds.
County officials explained that while the road department’s budget allowed for paving in past years, as federal funding has decreased and the county’s tax levels peaked, it’s become difficult to even keep up maintenance. For the past three years, the county hasn’t done any new paving projects.
“What happened in years past, I’m sorry we can’t do with our resources now,” Dave Prunty, county public works director, said.
Or as one man in the Jensen Road crowd put it: “It sucks to be last.”
Property owners also questioned how the boundaries were drawn, whether the county would maintain the roads in the future and how the RSID projects would proceed.
Commissioners will likely officially start the process for both road projects with resolutions in the coming weeks. At that point, a public notification will be printed and affected landowners will be mailed information and have 30 days to formally protest. They can also give public comment at any of the weekday commission meetings or in a hearing that will be set before the final decision.