Let voters decide on Central

After attending several Whitefish City Council meetings to hear opinions on the downtown streetscape, I decided to address the city council to request that they allow the people to vote in November and hold off construction until spring.

Mayor Mike Jenson confirmed that the entire streetscape project would be funded by resort tax money. This means that until the cost to do this project is collected in resort tax, we will not have the funds for other projects.

This is where the vote comes in. We should only do the downtown infrastructure that needs to be done.

Why are we spending excessive monies to widen the sidewalks, narrow Central Avenue and create bulbouts that will be difficult for snow removal? I am in favor of keeping the historical charm of downtown Whitefish. We don't need to change it to Main Street USA.

Most of the downtown merchants are not in favor of the streetscape. They presented the council with another set of signed petitions stating that 77 out of 97 merchants polled were not in favor, and only nine were in favor. I thought it was part of the design firms' job to collect public opinion.

I heard businesses telling the city council that their resort tax payments are lower this year than last year. How long will it take to collect the funds for this project? The city budget is currently 53 percent higher than last year.

If we saved money by not widening downtown sidewalks, maybe we could put that towards other projects. I had listed them here, but was informed by Whitefish city attorney John Phelps that I should contact the city manager for correct information.

I did inform the city council that part of the problem was a lack of communication of what was being done. It would be a good idea for the city manager to inform the public on how we can spend the resort tax money. I think there are a number of options to spend our money more wisely.

It makes sense to let the people decide how their tax money should be spent. If there is such a controversy over this, the people should be allowed to vote.

Please ask your city council to put a measure on the November ballot regarding the downtown streetscape. We were able to vote for the emergency services mill levy, please let us vote on downtown. This way, we will know how the people feel about this change in their town and proceed from there.

Mary Vail is a resident of Whitefish.