Emergency services center moving forward

The Whitefish City Council authorized staff at their Jan. 20 meeting to advertise for construction bids for the city’s new Emergency Services Center at Baker Commons. The center will provide a new home for the city court and fire and police departments.

Although serious financing issues exist, the council could consider construction contracts for the $7.8 million project as soon as April or May.

First order of business, however, was purchase of a stormwater detention pond at the southeast corner of Baker Commons from the Montana Department of Transportation. The pond holds water collected from the U.S. 93 strip.

The council unanimously agreed to spend $1,050 to purchase the land so a one-way road can be built from the center to Baker Avenue for emergency vehicles. The city will assume responsibility to maintain the pond and the fence that surrounds it, but the city will be allowed to landscape it, public works director John Wilson said.

Details about the center’s design and costs have emerged as Grover + Co. architects worked on its plans. Councilors had expressed interest in “green” technology, but cost restraints will likely prevent the city from closely following Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards.

Retaining rainwater for irrigating, for example, has a 15-year pay-back, a cost that exceeds its benefits, Grover + Co.’s Aaron Wallace said. But plans call for use of energy-efficient lighting fixtures and heating systems.

Wallace said the design received a favorable review from the city’s Architectural Review Committee, although questions remain about what color the exterior paint should be. Wallace said rock quarried near Spokane, Wash., could be used for the exterior.

The center’s design allows for future expansion, and alternatives exist that could provide $250,000 to $350,000 in savings if removed, Wallace said. Heating concrete aprons in front of the overhead doors, for example, could cost $40,000 a year for 10,000 square feet, but tubing could be installed but not hooked up to boilers, he said.

Wilson advised the council not to dip into the $550,000 contingency fund because of the uncertainty of constructing a multi-million dollar building during a recession.

When councilor Nancy Woodruff asked about the need for a fire-training tower, Wallace told her the tower was an extension of a stairwell and would only add about $15,000 to the building’s total cost.

Wallace also noted that the Architectural Review Committee thought the tower was important as an architectural element to the “look and feel” of the building, and city manager Chuck Stearns noted that training firemen at the rural fire station’s tower on Hodgson Road could affect their response time.

Construction costs and interest rates are favorable for a project like this one, Wallace said, but councilors were concerned about some budget items, including $229,000 for landscaping. On the other hand, councilor Turner Askew noted, the city must follow the same landscaping standards developers are expected to follow.

Among the costs listed in Grover + Co.’s summary are $104,000 for automatic irrigation, $14,600 for rainwater harvesting, $28,800 for skylights, $118,050 for stone masonry, $40,000 for four jail cell doors, $2,736 for bullet-proof glass, $2,000 for a cast plaque, $8,000 for a fireman’s pole, $22,410 for exercise equipment, $4,335 for two television sets and $6,300 for nine La-Z-Boy chairs.

The city might need to get creative to finance all those expenses. As it stands now, the Emergency Services Center is facing a $1 million financing gap.

While construction costs are certainly down, the credit crisis could make it difficult for the city to sell bonds based on its tax-increment financing (TIF) district, and the economic crisis could limit growth in the TIF district, which is needed to finance the bonds, Stearns said.

Stearns said he’s looked at several financing options, including backing up TIF bonds with general-obligation bonds or even resort tax revenue — although both measures would require voter-approval.

He also looked at a private placement of tax-exempt bonds. This could be done by selling, for example, $9 million in bonds to one wealthy person, or $10,000 apiece to 900 people, or even $500 apiece to 18,000 people.

“Such a sale would not be easy, but it might not be impossible in this community,” Stearns said. “A lot of people might be very interested in 4.13 percent tax-exempt bonds when their savings accounts and CDs are not paying very much.”