5 August 2015

Flathead High School parking mess

Flathead High School parking mess. Two days ago, the Kalispell City Council voted to establish a parking district adjacent to Flathead High School, which does not have enough on-campus parking places for students and staff. That, the InterLake reports, may trigger a lawsuit, hardly a surprise. It will also trigger a spirited campaign for the City Council in that council district.

The parking district buys time, but does not address the underlying problem: Flathead High’s campus is too small for the size of the staff and student body. Ultimately, there are just two viable solutions, neither likely to be adopted anytime soon:

1. Expanding the campus by purchasing adjacent properties and/or reducing the enrollment by moving students and staff to Glacier High, which has plenty of land.


2. Purchasing a field away from the campus for a park-and-ride operation.

Those solutions are expensive. That’s why School District 5 keeps kicking the can down the road, dumping the problem into the city of Kalispell’s lap. Kalispell, faced with no good options, adopted the least evil option, a parking district.