The clinic, the mural, the bulbout and gun sales

Whitefish Pilot

This year's Whitefish City Council election is turning out to be as contentious and heated as expected. While the candidates hustle to answer accusations and innuendoes, the Pilot looked into several issues that have come up in recent weeks.

• One hot-button campaign issue is the loss of the North Star Institute, an eating disorder clinic, to Missoula. Steve Bryson first proposed building the clinic in 2008. He and his partner, John Bennett, who develops health facilities out of his office in Camas, Wash., wanted to build the new clinic on the North Valley Hospital campus for synergistic reasons — they could share maintenance resources and take advantage of the hospital's high-quality food service.

After two years of researching and planning, they came up with a 29,300-square-foot clinic that could employ 19 people. But they didn't own the land where the clinic would be built, Bryson said, and before the hospital could subdivide its property, it had to amend its neighborhood and planned-unit development plans for the hospital campus.

"The city had undergone years of rapid growth and had developed regulations to address that," Bryson said, noting that as a member of the Haskill Basin Watershed Council, he understood the importance of protecting the area's water quality.

To further complicate things, the hospital's CEO, Craig Aasved, had departed for St. Patrick's Hospital, in Missoula, and the hospital's new CEO, Jason Spring, had not yet arrived. There was a vacuum in leadership at the hospital, Bryson acknowledged.

As the process dragged on, and a chance for $450,000 in federal stimulus money came and went, Bryson received offers from other communities, but not Missoula. Bryson said he approached Aasved on his own about establishing the clinic in the Missoula area and was pleasantly surprised by what he characterizes as a "business-friendly" climate there.

Bryson runs a counseling business in the same building where councilor Frank Sweeney has a law office. He said Sweeney asked for details of what happened as soon as news of the move to Missoula appeared in newspapers. Sweeney wanted to know if there was anything Whitefish could do to keep the clinic here, or if there was anything Whitefish could do to prevent the loss of another economic opportunity, Bryson said.

But by the time he told North Valley Hospital he was taking his project to the Missoula area, it was too late to change things, Bryson said — he'd already signed the papers. Since then, he and his backers have put money down on land and found a company to provide much needed food services.

Bryson said there was little he could do himself to speed up the process of getting his project underway. He also noted that the Whitefish City Council had no role in what ultimately happened to the project.

"I'd like to acknowledge the efforts of both Frank Sweeney and councilor Turner Askew in trying to get this project for Whitefish," Bryson said, noting that he would have preferred staying in Whitefish, which he considers his home.

• The city's enforcement of the sign ordinance at the Mrs. Spoonovers restaurant at Second Street and Spokane Avenue has also drawn a lot of attention. Critics of the current city council say the city is treating the owner unfairly.

They also want to know why the city sued Judy Scallen to get her mural removed. A survey conducted by Rick Blake's one-man PAC, We Love Stumptown, asked if respondents "agree with the city's decision to sue the downtown restaurant."

According to city and court records, after city officials notified Scallen that she had exceeded the amount of signage allowed under the sign ordinance, Scallen appealed to zoning administrator David Taylor and was denied. She then appealed Taylor's ruling to the Board of Adjustment and was denied again.

As part of her due process, Scallen's next step was to sue the city in Flathead County District Court, which she did in December 2008. Whitefish attorney Sharon Morrison represented Scallen. The city then filed an "answer and counterclaim" in February this year. The city hired the Kalispell law firm Hammer, Hewitt, Jacobs & Floch to handle the case.

In a technical sense, the city sued Mrs. Spoonovers. To some, the city is trying to enforce its sign ordinance and protect itself from Scallen's lawsuit, which seeks damages for mental and emotional duress. Candidate Phil Mitchell, however, says he wants to see the city negotiate with people rather than work out problems in court.

• Another hot-button campaign issue is the streetscaping project currently underway downtown. While the candidates have focused on the wider sidewalks, some streetscaping opponents are against building bulbouts at intersections.

During the Oct. 8 Quality Whitefish candidate forum, Joanie and Scott Sorensen cited an incident in Missoula in which a bicyclist was seriously injured after colliding with a new bulbout. The Sorensens warned that a similar accident might happen in downtown Whitefish.

But when Becky Broeder hit that bulbout on Phillips Street in Missoula and flew over the handlebars, cracking three molars and leaving her with stitches to her chin, she was riding in a designated bike path on a roadway with no parking. Furthermore, the Missoula bulbout had a standard five-inch curb.

The bulbouts planned for downtown Whitefish, however, will be ramped up five inches over 25 feet to a raised pedestrian-crossing. In addition, there is no designated bike path along Central Avenue, and bikes typically cannot travel along the sidewalk because that space is filled with parked vehicles.

• Another concern raised at the Quality Whitefish forum was whether the city has an ordinance banning the sale of firearms or ammunition at stores inside the city limits.

Both Army Navy and Sportsman & Ski Haus sell ammunition but not firearms. A salesman at Sportsman said the 2 percent resort tax drives away firearm sales, but he said he'd also heard of the council voting on an ordinance that would prohibit sales of firearms in the city.

City attorney John Phelps, however, said he checked city code and could find no ordinances regulating the sale of firearms or ammunition. It is against local ordinances to discharge a firearm inside the city limits, he noted, except while hunting on Whitefish Lake.