MISSOULA — Missoula County this week gave its official “concurrence" to the City Council's decision to spend $1.7 million from the 2018 Open Space Bond on several projects within city limits.
While funding from the bond is split evenly between the city and county, the county serves as the bond's official steward and must give final approval to the city's spending decisions.
Back in 2019, the City Council voted to apply $775,000 from its share of the bond to complete a number of projects, including $225,000 to address access to the Clark Fork River and $250,000 for reforestation efforts on open space lands.
It also approved $300,000 to complete trailhead improvements and projects on conservation lands.
Kalie Becher with the county's parks and trails said the laps between the City Council's decision in 2019 and this week's approval by the county was due to language in the bond and the need to designate the project areas as open space.
“The city is in the process of drafting a resolution that would designate all the areas as open space that's related to these three projects,” Becher said. “The delay was due to that open space designation. The open space designation is a new thing. It's a lot of different lands and a lot of different situations.”
Earlier this year, the City Council also approved allocating $1 million from the 2018 bond to stabilize the banks of the Clark Fork River and create designated access sites.
The restoration and stabilization project has been in the works since at least 2014. The city has documented 90 human-made trails within the project area and more than 630 feet of bank erosion. If not addressed, the problem could threaten public infrastructure.
Portions of the project are now underway, including work to create a hardened access site at Caras Park. Other projects will include hardened access under the Madison Street Bridge and a dedicated take-out under Beartracks Bridge.
Jeff Gicklhorn, program manager for the city's conservation lands, said the Clark Fork effort includes dozens of smaller projects as well.
“We're constructing these hardened, manageable access points and directing users toward them,” he said. “Once users have established those use patterns, we're going back in to close those social access points and restoring them.”
Some of the work will require a complete soil lift, bank stabilization and fencing to bring the riverbank back to health. Both the city and county still have funding available from the 2018 bond.
“There would be roughly $3 million left in the city's portion of the 2018 open space bond,” said Becher. “With all the current approvals on county projects, there's approximately $5.3 million left in the county portion of the bond.”
