U.S. 191, infrastructure financing and local governance covered at Wednesday’s joint county commission meeting
By Jen Clancey STAFF WRITER
On Wednesday morning, Big Sky community members stood for the Pledge of Allegiance as Madison County Commissioner Dan Allhands held the American flag on his phone. The pledge symbolized that the Madison-Gallatin Joint County Commission meeting, hosted by the Big Sky Resort Area District, had begun.
The meeting, scheduled during Big Sky Community Week, brought commissioners from Gallatin and Madison counties, as well as BSRAD board members together to discuss topics relevant to Big Sky and its county governance. In The Wilson Hotel, the group reviewed highlights about transportation on U.S. Highway 191 and Montana Highway 64 (Lone Mountain Trail), strategies to finance local infrastructure investments, a study of local governance options, and potential tax adjustments.
First, the Montana Department of Transportation presented updates to two priorities, providing new preliminary designs for Lava Lake structure alternatives and a potential roundabout or similar improvement at the U.S. 191 and Montana Highway 64 intersection.
MDT is exploring three preliminary, concept-level designs to improve on the current Lava Lake structure. Joshua Springer with engineering firm HDR, said that his team primarily focused on maintaining traffic flow when designing alternatives. “We realized you can’t close the road network, or even take it down, or turn it around, over the course of one or two construction seasons,” Springer said.
“We looked at what kind of alignments we could build off the highway while keeping the current traffic where they are right now,” Springer told EBS after presenting designs at the public meeting.
The draft designs include “rock cut” ranging from minor to significant. “I mean, that would be the cost, a substantial cost,” Springer said of the price tag on rock cutting. The Lava Lake structure project is expected to cost between $30-50 million.
Project engineers will analyze each design option for Lava Lake structures. “They all have benefits and they all have challenges,” Springer said, noting that the HDR team will work on the process of balancing impacts from river health to rock cut efforts.
Springer also discussed the 191/64 intersection, and presented an image of a conceptual, potential design. “It’s not quite a multi-lane roundabout, it’s kind of a hybrid,” Springer said. The design was informed by projected peak hour traffic in 2044.
“We’re still projecting that it’s about a 3% growth all the way to [2044], and [we are] running that simulation through the roundabout to make sure it’ll perform not only with today’s volumes, but future volumes as well,” Springer said.
Both the Lava Lake section and the 191/64 intersection projects will be included with more details in MDT’s Tentative Construction Program in late November.
On a separate note, Madison County Commissioner Bill Todd gave an update on Jack Creek Road repairs. A $937,000 project replaced the lowest quality bridge along Jack Creek Road, according to Todd. Another bridge at Shack Creek along the route between Ennis and Big Sky is due for reconstruction.
That bridge will still work for the next four to six years according to Todd. “Either beavers will attack it and we’ll have to replace it, or we’ll, you know, still have a functional bridge,” Todd said in the meeting to laughter from the audience.
Finances discussed for Gallatin Canyon water and sewer district, Capital Improvement Plan
BSRAD Executive Director Daniel Bierschwale presented on eligibility criteria for grant applications and plans for long-term Capital Improvement Plan project funding. The longer-term funding for large-scale infrastructure projects like the Gallatin Canyon County Water and Sewer District will require budgets built from multiple sources of funding—Big Sky folks will not bear the brunt of these bills.
In his presentation at Wednesday’s meeting, Bierschwale said that projects valued at under $1 million should still go through BSRAD’s standard grant process, but for longer-term, more hefty infrastructure costs, BSRAD has the option to look toward bonds and debt financing to get projects started, while relying on outside sources like federal and state funds for larger-scale projects.
Bierschwale passed the microphone to Mace Mangold, VP of infrastructure for WGM Group, who presented about the finances behind the Gallatin Canyon water and sewer district effort, a large-scale project to get Big Sky’s Gallatin Canyon properties along U.S. Highway 191 hooked up to a centralized sewer system.
“Funding is our key push right now,” Mangold said, adding that he’s been working with BSRAD to figure out an appropriate “financing stack” to get this project over the funding hump. He presented a “conceptual” model of what the stack could look like.
The canyon water and sewer district would potentially need $20 million total from BSRAD’s 1% tax for infrastructure—voters would need to renew the 1%, which currently has funded much of a $50 million wastewater treatment facility—$20 million total from a loan and user connection fees, $10 million from county-based funding and $5 million from state and federal money, totaling to $55 million.
Mangold described the $20 million from BSRAD’s 1% as a “base backbone” to be able to work with other funding entities.
Local governance study, local motor vehicle tax measure
Meg O’Leary, president of M2O group, discussed the Big Sky Local Governance Study, an ongoing process to collect facts about the Big Sky community and present all the possible options for how Big Sky could govern itself in the future. O’Leary clarified that the research team, a group consisting of M2O, EcoNorthwest and WGM, is not solely looking at incorporation, and instead exploring all options available to Big Sky residents.
“This is not a study that’s going to spend the next 10 to 12 months coming up with recommendations for you,” O’Leary said. “[These are] facts for you to make your own decisions.”
O’Leary announced that the study team will hold public sessions on three Tuesdays: Oct. 15, Oct. 22, and Nov. 12.
Several other topics such as the Gallatin County Future Land Use Map for Gallatin County’s Growth Policy, Madison County’s Growth Policy update, and elections for local government study commissioners, led to the morning’s final discussion with Gallatin County Commissioner Scott MacFarlane.
MacFarlane brought up an issue that will appear on November ballots for Gallatin County voters: a potential 0.2% increase in motor vehicle registration tax. The current tax applied to vehicle registrations in the county is 0.5%, which voters may change to 0.7%. The added motor vehicle tax would go toward road infrastructure.
“Local governments don’t have very many good options for investing in transportation infrastructure. We have an enormous amount of roads, as you might imagine,” MacFarlane said in the meeting, noting that Big Sky does not have county roads, so the additional tax revenue would not have as much of a local impact.
MacFarlane noted that many residents of other states have gone out of their way to register vehicles in Montana, sometimes saving thousands of dollars on luxury vehicles. Even with the small tax increase, Montana vehicle registration would still be far more affordable than most states, he said.
As the meeting adjourned, community members met their commissioners, shaking hands and asking questions about the discussions of the day.
